A History of Bibliographies of BibliographiesTaylor, Archer
History
A History of Bibliographies of Bibliographies
Taylor, Archer
Bibliography of bibliographies -- History
The titles in this list are interesting because some are rarely
mentioned and others are difficult to track down. Examples are
"Augusti sereniss. Ducis Brunsvicensis Bibliothecae Sciagraphia,
Bibliothecae Catalogus. Wolfenb. 1650. in 4-to;"[113] "Henricii
Furenii Bibliotheca Medica." Hafn. 1659. in 4-to;[114] "Hamburgensis
Bibliothecae scripta memoria." Hamb. 1651. fol.;[115] and Bartol.
"Moseri Thesaurus Bibliatricus seu Bibliotheca gemina Onomastica
& Classica." Dilingii. fol.[116] The list includes a few
autobibliographies, for example, those written by such librarians and
bibliographers as Peter Lambeck (Lambecius) and Philip Labbé. The
most surprising title that the compiler names is "Joan. Brunderii
[sic] index librorum MS quae in Bibliothecis Belgicis extant."[117]
This union catalogue of manuscripts owned in the Low Countries was
made by the Belgian Dominican Johannes Bunderius or Bunderus (b.
1481 or 1482, d. 1557). Down to 1666 it is mentioned occasionally by
men who had consulted it, but our author probably never saw it and
no fragment of it is known to have survived the dispersal of Anton
Sander's library. A reference to such a manuscript was by no means an
idle display of erudition. Allusions in various seventeenth-century
works show that men used this union catalogue. For example, the
Spaniard Pedro de Alva y Astorga, the author of several very rare
encyclopedic works, which were published at Madrid and Louvain,
drew upon it, and the Italian Antonio Possevino quoted it in his
_Apparatus sacer_.
This curious list in _Die neu-eröffnete Bibliothec_ shows some signs
of carelessness. Its compiler has not seen all the books in it. For
example, he assigns Petrus Bertius's catalogue of the university
library at Leyden to 1591 instead of 1595 (this error is probably a
slip of the pen) and mentions the famous ghosts announced by Jodocus
a Dudinck. He credits the _Philobiblon_ to both Richard de Bury
and Richard Dunelmensis (De Bury's name as Bishop of Durham). With
all its faults, this "Series" is nevertheless a respectable piece
of work by a man who saw clearly the nature of a bibliography of
bibliographies.
A generation later, in 1734, Johannes Gottfried Unger published a
pamphlet entitled _De libris bibliothecarum nomine notatis_, a
classified list of books entitled _bibliotheca_, and added critical
and descriptive comments. Julius Petzholdt, who is often a severe
judge, deals with it generously, when he says (p. 79) that it is
worth a glance and can then be forgotten. Although he seems to be
unaware of any predecessor, Unger's idea was not novel. His execution
of the idea leaves much to be desired. Since his list contains few,
if any, books that cannot be easily found elsewhere, his list has
little value and his comments do not enrich it. His strict adherence
to the task of collecting books entitled _bibliotheca_ prevented him
from seeing the possible greater usefulness of what he was doing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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