Ancient book heritage and religious libraries. The case of Sardinia

Abstract

The essay studies the presence of the ancient book heritage in the libraries of Sardinia where, apart from the case of the two University Libraries of Cagliari and Sassari, the most important institutions for the presence of ancient collections are the religious libraries. The relevance of religious libraries for library historiography is one of the topics of the disciplinary debate on which, starting from the specificity of the Sardinian reality, it is possible to develop some reflections. The essay underlines the need to also historically address the study of religious collections in relation to the notion of system. The individual realities, often of modest size and strongly rooted at the territorial level, should be understood as local articulations of a complex library organization, not surprisingly based on centrally defined norms, at the ecclesial or religious order level. On this basis, the case of the Capuchin Library of Cagliari is investigated, one of the most important in Sardinia for the number of ancient volumes, seen in the dialectical relationship between local microcirculation phenomena and adherence to the cultural paradigms of the Order.

Keywords

• religious libraries
• history of libraries
• ancient collections
• sardinia
• capuchin convent of cagliari