The paths of a volume superbly bound for Pope Pius V

Augustinus Aurelius (354-430).

Quintus tomus operum D. Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi, contines XXII. libros de Civitate Dei. Cui accesserunt Commentarii Io. Ludo. Vivis ab Authore recogniti. Venice, ad Signum Spei, 1551.

The Quintus tomus – containing the De civitate Dei – from the great eleven-volume edition of Augustine published in Venice in 1550- 1552, magnificently bound with the coat of arms of Pope Pius V Ghislieri (1504-1572).

The fine tooling ‘alla moresca’ is the work of an as-yet unidentified binder who was mainly active for the Pope and his family and whose style recalls the late production of Nicolò Franzese and other masters of the Farnese age. Similar bindings are kept in important institutional libraries and private collections in Italy and abroad, including, of course, the Vatican Library, whose examples were bequeathed by the bookseller Tammaro De Marinis. The interest of the present volume is, however, not at all limited to its sumptuous binding, for the Quintus tomus also narrates an important story of requisitions and dispersions – typical features of the history of Italian religious libraries.

Its title-page bears the stamp of the library of the Dominican convent of Santa Caterina at Trino (near Vercelli, in the Piedmont region), which was closed in 1994. In 2018, the volume was declared – in accordance with the Italian Code of the Cultural and Landscape Heritage (2004) – an item of great ‘cultural interest’ for the Italian State, owing to the fact that its binding attests to its original provenance from another more famous Dominican convent located in Piedmont, that of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo, near Alessandria. Pius V himself was born in Bosco Marengo and used to gift volumes bound with his Papal arms to that library. Transmissions of books between the two Dominican convents are documented, first as efforts to escape requisitions, which have marked the history of ecclesiastical libraries in Piedmont from the start of Napoleonic possession in 1802 to the suppression of religious congregations following Italian unification in 1861. In fact, the eleven-volume edition of the Venetian Augustine is already absent from catalogues of the library of Santa Croce in Bosco by the mid-nineteenth century.

The volumes remained in Santa Caterina at least until the 1950s – that is, all volumes apart from the Quintus tomus presented here. This particular volume – containing Augustine’s major work, the Civitate Dei – had already been moved to England by the first half of the nineteenth century, as attested by the ex libris pasted on the front pastedown with the coat of arms of Sir Joseph Radcliffe (1799-1872) of Rudding Park, Yorkshire. Our research at the West Yorkshire Archive Service in Leeds, which preserves the Radcliffe family papers, revealed a portrait of a passionate bibliophile who significantly enlarged the library he had inherited from his father, the first Baronet Radcliffe. Sir Joseph may have purchased the Quintus tomus in England, where finely bound volumes bearing the arms of

Pope Pius V had begun to circulate in the 1830s as a result of French confiscations. Alternatively, he may also have acquired the precious volume in Italy, where he travelled frequently, buying – as evinced by letters, invoices and lists kept in Leeds – jewels, artworks, and books. We have also tried to reconstruct the paths of other volumes from the great ad Signum Spei edition that left Italian soil more recently. For the moment, we have been able to trace four volumes, all housed in identical armorial bindings and bearing the stamps of the convent of Santa Croce in Bosco and/or that of Santa Caterina in Trino Vercellese. The Secundus tomus is described by the aforementioned De Marinis in the catalogue of the library once owned by Prince Hans Fürstenberg (cf. Die italienischen Renaissance-Einbände der Bibliothek Fürstenberg, Hamburg 1966, p. 64), and is now part of the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library. The Quartus tomus is presently in a private collection in the United States. We have no information on the current ownership of the Septimus tomus, which was offered by Breslauer in 1979 (cf. Catalogue 104: Fine Books in Fine Bindings from the Fifteenth to the Present Century, no. 46), nor that of the Decimus tomus, which was likewise offered by Breslauer in 1993 (Catalogue 110. Fine Books and Manuscripts in Fine Bindings, no. 53).

U. Rozzo, Pio V e la biblioteca di Bosco Marengo, G. Ieni – C. E. Spantigati (eds.), Pio V e Santa Croce di Bosco. Aspetti di una committenza papale, Alessandria 1985, pp. 315-340; R. Livraghi, La libreria del Seminario di Alessandria. Nascita ed evoluzione di una biblioteca di Sette e Ottocento, Alessandria 1991; Preziosi in biblioteca. Mostra di legature in raccolte private piemontesi. A cura di F. Malaguzzi, Torino 1994; U. Rozzo, Biblioteche italiane del Cinquecento tra Riforma e Controriforma, Udine 1994, pp. 235-29; F. Malaguzzi, De libris compactis. Legature di pregio in Piemonte. Il Monferrato e l’Alessandrino, Torino 2002; Idem, Libri e legature per Michele Ghislieri e la Biblioteca di Bosco, F. Cervini – C. E. Spantigati (eds.), Il tempo di Pio V. Pio V nel tempo, Alessandria 2006, pp. 287-302; U. Rozzo La biblioteca di Santa Croce “riletta” vent’anni dopo, ibid., pp. 267-302.