University of Barcelona: number one in Spain with more incunabula

Incunabula are all the models born since the invention of Printing in 1453 until 1500. In the University of Barcelona, CRAI Biblioteca de Reserva takes care of storing the incunabula collection. Itʼs one of the most important in the country: not only is the first one regarding number of copies among the Spanish universities but it also holds the 3rd position among State universities, after the Spanish National Library and the Colombus Library of Seville (Biblioteca Colombina de Sevilla). All incunabula are catalogued in the online catalogue of the University of Barcelona, and there is a gradual revision of records in order to add more specific and complete data for each copy.

It is a great collection, not only for its number of copies but also for their quality. Most of them come from monasteries which were expropriated due to Mendizábalʼs expropriation in 1835. This explains the existence of 200 copies of some of the works, because the big amount of religious libraries used to guard the same editions. Despite the big presence of religious books, there are also other themes such as philosophy, philology, science, history, geography, medicine and law. Another interesting fact is that they depicted very well the printing houses of Barcelona, and others from other parts of Catalonia and Spain, as well as European ones.

Almost a hundred of these incunabula are impossible to find in other Spanish libraries and some of them are unique copies: Auctores octo, Conceptus et insolubilia magistri Petri de Alyaco, Postilla super epistolas et evangelia, Soliloquio de Sant Buenauentura i Liber aggregationis; De mirabilibus mundi. Several of them have been decorated with xylographic engravings or lightened with capital letters, frames and shields from old owners. More than sixty have artistic bindings and the most represented styles are Mudejar, gothic and Renaissance.
 

The oldest incunable of the universityʼs collection is the Orator, by Cicero: the first book printed in Italy (1465) and outside Germany. There is also the first Catalan edition of Llibre dels angels by Francesc Eiximinis, printed in Barcelona in 1494, and the Latin dictionary Comprehensorium by Johannes Gramaticus, printed in Valencia in 1475, the first Spanish incunable with dated colophon. 

The deposit of the University of Barcelona has other unique pieces such as the Spanish edition -and it seems to be a unique incunable nationally and internationally- of Soliloquio de San Buenauentura (printed in Sevilla in 1497); or Gramatica sobre la lengua castellana by Antonio de Nebrija (printed in Salamanca in 1492), which is the first grammar manual of vernacular language. There is also Opera by Publius Vergilius Maro (printed in Venice in 1470), the 2nd edition of  The Eclogues (also called The Bucolics), The Georgics and The Aeneid; and the first printed work by Wendelin of Speyer, after his brotherʼs death- Johannes, the introducer of printing in Venice. In Spain there is just one more copy in El Escorial Library.     

Former Owners

Rare Book and Manuscript CRAI has been pioneer in working deeply on the old owners in the country, both in its catalogue and creation and maintenance of the Ownsership database. Apart from analysing the typology, age and place of the old owners, they also work on the uses of different property marks. “We have created a database linked to our catalogue. This allows us to rebuild how libraries were originally and we can also gather their collections virtually”, says Neus Verguer, responsible of Rare Book and Manuscript CRAI Library. 

Digitalization and incorporation of incunabula to International catalogues

In order to have access to this precious repository and ease researchers and librariansʼ tasks, the University has been working on incunabula digitalization for years. There are currently 89 and the figures are increasing. All of them are in the digital collection of BiPadi (Digital Heritage Library of the University of Barcelona) and they share them with other European institutions, aiming to promote and value this collection.

On the one hand, 40 incunabula of our deposit have been digitalized in order to give access to their digital version in Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (GW), the incunabula catalogue per excellence, the oldest and most important internationally. These 40 works are part of a hundred proposed by the director of GW, Falk Eisermann. They are rare models in the country and some of the editions are kept within only two and five known copies in the entire world.

Although this initiative has been born in GW, it is happening at a moment in which Rare Books and Manuscript CRAI Library is giving a special interest in their incunabula collection. “We are very glad to bring this group of copies accessible to people. Our aim is to proceed to a digitalization of the rest of the editions proposed by the director of the GW, in a second stage”, says Verger. The few available copies, the existence of bibliography varieties and the study of the marks of origins- make it necessary.

On the other hand, the bibliographic descriptions and the models of each copy have been revised, corrected and slowly growing at the same time that specific origins data have been included in the European project Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) within the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL). It is a database which gathers entities from around the world in which the University has participated since October 2012 in order to create the circulation map of these printings, from their creation to their current location.

In addition, it is also common to lend incunabula models to participate in International exhibitions at the University.

Support a document

Incunabula are also susceptible to be fostered within the patronage program driven by CRAI in 2013. The aim of this initiative, named Apadrina un document (Support a Document) is to collect contributions, both particular and institutional, to restore works in danger of preservation. “They are works which need a lot of attention; we have to invest in them because they are documents which have suffered from human effects, fungus and paper insects”, says the commissioner for Information and Documentation Systems, Carina Rey.

Cosmographia by Claudius Ptolemy (printed in Vicenza in 1475) was the 1st supported incunable in this project. Three more copies are waiting in the shelf for someone to support them. They are Opus insigne by Iaudibus beate Marie virginis, alias Mariale appellatu by Albert the Great (printed in Strasbourg in 1493); Speculum historiale by Vincent of Bauvais (printed in Venice in 1494) and Aristeas ad Philocratem fratrem per Mathiam Palmeriu[m] e Greco in Latinu[m] co[n]uersus (printed in Rome in 1471). But the list of candidates is not closed: “Proposals are offered whenever there are new people who want to support them, or when we think it is necessary their intervention for the modelʼs value and its current preservation state” says Verguer.