The Intellectual Interests Reflected in Libraries of the Fourteenth and ...

260 PEARL KIBRE
A study of the library catalogues for the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, reveals first of all that Greek literary texts were
slow in making their appearance in these collections before the first
half of the fifteenth century. Whatever earlier interest there had
been shown in western Europe toward Greek during the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries had been directed particularly toward
theological and scientific writings,10 and it was toward Greek books
of this nature that such fourteenth century bibliophiles as Richard
de Bury and Walter Burley1" turned their attention. This was also
true for the courts of southern Italy especially in that of Robert of
Naples, where Greek works were being translated all during the
fourteenth century.12 Only an occasional Greek literary text appears
in the inventories of the fourteenth century. Petrarch who
had never succeeded in learning the language did treasure the
Greek texts of Plato and of Homer that he had obtained;"3 and
Boccaccio who not only studied Greek but also, probably at the suggestion
of Petrarch, sponsored the first complete, though adjudgedly
poor, translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, appears
to have had few Greek texts in his possession.14 Greek manuscripts
were also rare during the first half of the fifteenth century especially
in the princely libraries. The famous library of the Visconti
in Pavia, one of the richest and most important of the Italian contemporary
collections, in 1426 had only four Greek books, despite
the fact that Giangaleazzo Visconti had welcomed Manuel Chrysoloras,
the leading teacher of Greek, when he came to Pavia in
1400 to help the Byzantine emperor in his appeal for aid against
the Turks.'5
10 Cf. Louise R. Loomis, Medieval Hellenism (Lancaster, Penna., 1906), 29 if.;
R. Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici (Nuove ricerche [Firenze, 1914]), 1 ff.
11 Ibid. 2 ff.; Loomis, op. cit., 45.
12lbid., 3, 29 ff.; Sabbadini, op. cit. (1905), 71, 189, n. 28.
13 P. de Nolhac, Petrarque e l'humanisme (2nd ed., Paris, 1907), II, 129 ff.; G.
Fracassetti, Lettere di Francesco Petrarca delle cose familiari (Firenze, 1892), II,
474-75; L. R. Loomis, op. cit., 89 ff., 101.
14 Fracassetti, op. cit., IV, 96-97; Lettere senili, II, 462, lib. xvi, let. 1; I, 173-76,
lib. iii, let. 6; I, 267, lib. v, let. 1; I, 321, lib. vi, let. 1; I, 326-27, lib. vi, let. 2;
Boccaccio, De gen. deorum, xv, cap. 6-7; Loomis, Medieval Hellenism, 93 ff.; 0.
Hecker, Boccacio-Funde (Braunschweig, 1902), 5.
15 [Girolamo d'Adda], Indagini storiche artistiche e bibliografiche sulla libreria
Visconteo-Sforzesca del Castello di Pavia (Milano, 1875), nos. 8, 120, 122, 547. For
the catalogue of 1459 see G. Mazzatinti, "Inventario dei codici della biblioteca Visconteo-Sforesca
redatto da Ser Facino da Fabriano nel 1459 e 1469," Giornale
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