Page - 764 - in Jacopo Strada and Cultural Patronage at the Imperial Court - The Antique as Innovation, Volume 2

Chapter 14764 The Index sive catalogus is a very important document, not only for its information on the holdings of Strada’s Musaeum, as discussed in Chapter 13, but also because it provides the complete and final summary of Strada’s pub- lishing project. It was this document he sent to potential sponsors, it was this document he paraphrased in his letter to Plantin, and most significantly, it was this document that he appended unchanged to his will, charging his heirs and his executors to realize this specific programme. It took him about fifteen years since his first publications to establish this final programme, so it was well-considered, and must reflect both his own tastes and convictions, and his perception of what was feasible, considering the patronage available and the demand in the marketplace. The results of his efforts demonstrate that this perception was overly optimistic; yet a brief survey of the programme will be useful in providing a more clear idea of Strada’s tastes, convictions and ideals. The contents of the Index sive catalogus corresponds closely with Strada’s in- terest as we have seen them in discussing his earlier career and his collections: its principal components are antiquarian, artistic and historical materials, to which are added a number of projected publications on similar aspects of the Ottoman Empire. Strada’s library was very large and covered all faculties and disciplines, and doubtless he provided his patrons with literature in all these fields. But in the Index popular subjects such as theology, medicine, jurispru- dence, even classical literature are conspicuously absent. It is clear that Strada did not intend to set up a sort of general publishing house, but explicitly spe- cialized in the few fields of his own expertise. In the following the document, the text of which is annexed in Appendix D, can only be briefly surveyed. 14.7.2 The Dictionarium xi Linguarum The principal works listed, and with which the Index opens, are huge com- pilations of antiquarian material: inscriptions, coins and other remains from the ancient world. Though no classical texts are included as such, neverthe- less the philological aspect is present in the most ambitious work in the whole list, the Dictionarium xi linguarum, a profusely illustrated polyglot encyclopae- dia that has already been discussed above (Ch. 14.5.2). In its description in the Index sive catalogus Strada explicitly points out that its entries are all based on the phrases provided by the ‘best received authors’ of classical Antiquity or, as he wrote to Grand Duke Francesco i: ‘all these languages are presented ac- cording to the phrases of [= as found in the works of] Cicero and other learned men’.94 Such interest in language and correct usage was only natural, since it 94 Doc. 1577-10-04(d): ‘Tutte queste lingue si parlano secondo le frases di Cicerone et altri huomini dotti’.