Page - 118 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 1

Chapter 3118 [Fig. 3.10], did not hesitate to compare Fugger’s library with the most exalted foundations of modern times, such as the Vatican Library and the Bibliotheca Marciana at Venice, which had been founded by Cardinal Bessarion; the library of King Matthias Corvinus at Budapest; the Laurenziana in Florence, and the library of Francis i at Fontainebleau.16 This was no mere flattery: Fugger had in fact used his great wealth and the facilities that the firm put at his disposal, to realize a library that far exceeded any private library, both for its size and for its comprehensive, almost encyclopaedic character; excepting the Heidelberg Bibliotheca Palatina, it was at that date (1556) unrivalled even by the princely institutions of Germany. Fugger sought to acquire a possibly complete collection of texts in the three ancient languages, that is including Greek and Hebrew, the study of both of which was still very recent; in particular that of Hebrew, which was only com- ing into its own with the advent of the Reformation, and the consequent in- crease in interest in the Old Testament. To Fugger, completeness meant that if no printed edition of a given text was available, he would strive to acquire a manuscript copy: and in fact the editio princeps of some texts was prepared on the basis of manuscripts from his own library.17 He often employed the agents of the Fugger firm in the various capitals of Europe to provide him with new editions, to discover the manuscripts of important, unpublished texts and, if these could not be acquired, to have them copied by expert scribes. Moreover he occasionally employed more specialist agents, who were scholars them- selves, such as the Flemish neo-Latin poet Niccolò Stopio—acting director of Bomberg’s printing house in Venice, which specialized in Hebrew editions— who kept him informed of the Venetian book market; Stopio’s compatriot Arnoldus Arlenius, a learned student and merchant of ancient manuscripts and curator of the important collection belonging to Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Charles v’s ambassador to the Serenissima; and, some years later, the brilliant young antiquary Onofrio Panvinio.18 Though Fugger provided his (welche mit sonderm Lob, von vilen gelerten aus ferrer landen besucht wirdet) versamlet, zusammenbringen, auch mit guter ordnung regieren vnd bewahren lassen <…>. 16 Preface to Aelianus Claudius, Opera quae exstant omnia, Graecè et Latinè (Zürich 1556), quoted in Hartig 1917, p. 194, n. 4. 17 For instance, Fugger had provided Conrad Gesner with two manuscripts of Aelianus’ De Natura Animalium (first published in Gesner’s edition of Aelianus’ works, Zürich 1556), one from the Augsburg town library, one from his own collection (Hartig 1917, p. 210). 18 On Stopio, see below, Ch. 12.2.1; on Arlenius—who also styled himself ‘Peraxylus’—see Hartig 1917, pp.215–216; he later worked as a corrector for the printer Torrentius, his com- patriot, at Florence. Mendoza’s collection was later acquired by Philip ii; on Panvinio, with whom Fugger kept up a intensive correspondence between 1562 and 1567 (now in the Vatican, and excerpted in Maasen 1922, pp. 96–126), see Perini 1899; Ferrary 1996.