Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Part I of this collection contains 140 literary and political papers and documents relating to Venice and Venetian families from the 15th through 18th centuries. The material includes a group of the Busenello family papers which are largely wills, transfers of property, laudatory verses, and Latin prose (related to Dr. Livingston's LA VITA VENEZIANA NELLE OPERE DI GIAN FRANCESCO BUSENELLO, Venice, 1913); a series of moral and political sonnets in the Venetian dialect by Angelo Mario Labia (1690-1775); and a number of other documents and papers related to the Viscordi family and tne Venetian state.

Mostly photostat negative copies of various medieval primary resources from the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

This collection of 3,933 volumes is formed from the union of the Spinoza collections of Adolph S. Oko and Carl Gebhardt, and contains material by and about Baruch Spinoza. Purchased and presented to the University by Dr. Simon L. Millner, Mrs. T.W. Lamont, Corliss Lamont, and Mr. E.A. Zabriskie, 1947.

The documents seem to be copied in full with dates. Each entry has a page reference which is preceded by the abbreviation "Dod. no." and followed by the name "David Hughes." These appear to be references to some collection, possibly of the original documents. David Hughes may have been the copyist responsible for this volume, but there is no conclusive evidence as to this. The material is in Latin and the script is clear and legible.

Manuscripts, subject files, index cards, printed materials and microfilms relating to the CATALOGUS TRANSLATIONUM ET COMMENTARIORUM. The two manuscripts are contemporary and deal with the letters of St. Basil. The subject files include correspondence, notes, and printed materials providing largely biographical information on a wide range of medieval translators and commentators. The index cards list the present day locations of many relevant medieval and renaissance books and manuscripts. The printed materials include photostatic copies and negatives of medieval texts as well as catalog listings of and articles about these texts and their authors. The microfilms, some of which are negatives, are of some of the relevant medieval and renaissance works

Letters, manuscripts and documents, primarily from Germany, Austria and Hungary of the 17th-19th centuries; most are 19th century German. Included are materials about music, theatre and contemporary events; documents from the German aristocracy; and 18th and 19th century business and military records; passports and manuscripts of poems.

Copies of original and, at that time, unpublished manuscripts in various European libraries which deal with the activities and policies of the Inquisition in France around the 13th and 14th centuries, made by the French scholar, Charles Molinier (b. 1843). Included are a history of the Inquisition in Langue d'oc, interrogations by Brother Bernard de Caux, inquisitor, records of the Inquisition in Carcassonne, a chronicle of Guillem Pelisson, and writings of Brother Bernard Guidonis. Some of these materials were used by Molinier as sources for his published works, but apparently all of the materials here collected have not been published.

The Columbia collection includes ca. 2150 papyri and over 3600 ostraca in a variety of languages including Greek, Latin, Egyptian (Demotic, Coptic and Hieratic) and Arabic. Among the papyri, there are also a few texts on parchment and paper. The papyri range in date from the 3rd century BCE to the 7th century CE and come from different parts of Egypt. About 300 have been published in the volumes of Columbia Papyri (P.Col., volumes I-XI) and a few more were published elsewhere. The papyri preserve a variety of texts, from ancient fragments of important literary works (Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Euripides' Orestes, Plato's Phaedrus) written much earlier than the medieval manuscripts upon which modern editions are usually based, to mundane documents such as private letters, tax receipts, petitions and contracts, which illustrate the economic activities, personal relationships, legal conflicts and contractual arrangements of people in Greco-Roman Egypt over a period of about 1000 years.