The listing of books that contain the word Bibliotheca in their titles is a special bibliographical development in the seventeenth century and continues into the eighteenth. It might have led by easy stages to making a bibliography of bibliographies, but it unfortunately attracted little notice and maintained a tenuous existence for only about a century. The word bibliotheca, which often appears in titles, has such more or less bibliographical meanings as bibliography, subject index, catalogue of a public or private library, and collection of materials dealing with a particular subject. Consequently, a list of books entitled bibliotheca has much in common with a list of reference works and, more particularly, a bibliography of bibliographies. Although there was no proper place for such a list in his Bibliotheca bibliothecarum, Philip LabbÉ included one under the heading Bibliotheca in an alphabet of authors. LabbÉ limited himself strictly to works of a bibliographical nature. He did not, for example, include the collections of the church fathers that were very familiar to him, although they bore the title Bibliotheca. Many books that he cites are hard to identify: some titles seem to have been made up and others refer to books that were never printed. LabbÉ uses the term bibliotheca so loosely that we do not always know whether he is referring to a LabbÉ's classification of books entitled bibliotheca shows a remarkable understanding of their different kinds and calls attention to their remarkable variety. I cannot easily cite an equally instructive and suggestive review of bibliographies. The anonymous author of The Newly Opened Library (Die neu-erÖffnete Bibliothec), in which good information about libraries as well as convenient directions for acquiring, maintaining, and using them are put into the hands of students and inquiring friends. To which are added: the chief European libraries and what travelers ought to notice in visits to them (1702) hit upon the same idea of listing bibliothecae. Our author begins with Valerius Andreas, Bibliotheca Belgica (1643), a biobibliographical dictionary of writers in the Low Countries. In the letter "A" he includes the Augustanae Bibliothecae Catalogus (1633), which he also enters under the name of the compiler, Elias Ehinger, librarian at Augsburg. He cites the BibliothÈque universelle, a critical journal edited by Jean Leclerc, because the title contains the word BibliothÈque. Such titles show that he was thinking in bibliographical terms, for Andreas's book and the Augsburg catalogue are bibliographies and Leclerc's journal was a review of current publications. The titles in this list are interesting because some are rarely mentioned and others are difficult to track down. Examples are "Augusti sereniss. Ducis Brunsvicensis Bibliothecae Sciagraphia, Bibliothecae Catalogus. Wolfenb. 1650. in 4-to;" This curious list in Die neu-erÖffnete Bibliothec shows some signs of carelessness. Its compiler has not seen all the books in it. For example, he assigns Petrus Bertius's catalogue of the university library at Leyden to 1591 instead of 1595 (this error is probably a slip of the pen) and mentions the famous ghosts announced by Jodocus a Dudinck. He credits the Philobiblon to both Richard de Bury and Richard Dunelmensis (De Bury's name as Bishop of Durham). With all its faults, this "Series" is nevertheless a respectable piece of work by a man who saw clearly the nature of a bibliography of bibliographies. A generation later, in 1734, Johannes Gottfried Unger published a pamphlet entitled After some general remarks on libraries and bibliographies and a definition of the task, Unger cites seven general works: LabbÉ's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum (he mentions here Teissier's Catalogus and Auctuarium, but he has not seen them); G. M. KÖnig, Bibliotheca vetus et nova; Latinus Latinius, Bibliotheca sacra et profana; Jean Leclerc, BibliothÈque universelle et historique (this is the BibliothÈque universelle and its continuation, the BibliothÈque historique); Conrad Gesner, Bibliotheca universalis; Johannes Groeningius, Bibliotheca s[ive] codex operum variorum; and Louis Ellies DuPin, BibliothÈque universelle des historiens. "And these are the books entitled Universal Library or: Bibliography." His comments contain some information but do not on the whole show much familiarity with the books. For example, the remarks on KÖnig's late seventeenth-century biobibliographical dictionary are lifted from D. G. Morhof, Polyhistor. He points out that the subtitle of Latinius's Bibliotheca gives a good idea of its contents: "Observationes, correctiones et variae lectiones in sacros et profanos scriptores, ex marginalibus notis codicum ejusdem [Latini Latinii] a Dominco Marco editae." In other words, the book is a miscellany of emendations and critical comments rather than a bibliography. He describes Unger's account of forty-one theological bibliographies and collections of texts entitled bibliotheca is not altogether bad. He often quotes the titles of chapters from these books or says that a book is a collection of texts and not a bibliography. Much of this information was even then available in well-organized reference works, and Unger's only contribution is the selecting of the books entitled bibliotheca. His account of legal bibliographies begins with Martin Lipenius, Bibliotheca juridica, "which was published at Frankfurt in 1607 as a folio and was enlarged by F. G. Struve in 1720." This is not a good start, for the first date is wrong (it should be 1679) and he would have found five more legal bibliographies entitled bibliotheca by opening Lipenius. In this category he cites nine more titles, counting three works by Caspar Thurmann as one book. This combination is not particularly objectionable. Thurmann had made a classified legal bibliography and finding no publisher, had printed portions as small bibliographies. The sixty folio pages (double columns) filled with entries beginning with the word bibliotheca in Michael a San JosÉ, Bibliographia critica (1740-1742) have the appearance of a list of books, but on closer examination many titles prove to be made up. In other words, San JosÉ offers what amounts to a general survey of bibliography. Since his book is almost unknown and the entries are often curious, a brief description will not be out of place. The articles are arranged alphabetically according to the adjective that follows the word bibliotheca. Thus, the list begins with J. F. Reimann, Bibliotheca acroamatica (Hannover, 1712), a condensation of Peter Lambeck's catalogue of manuscripts in the Imperial Library at Vienna. The next entry consists of two columns headed "Bibliotheca Adriani Baillet" and is a brief discussion of the Jugemens des savans (1685-1686) and a long summary of a prospectus of a philosophical dictionary that Baillet planned but never published. More entries follow in an alphabetical order according to proper names or adjectives derived from proper names or the subject matter. Laurentius de Cremona, Bibliotheca aethiopica is entered under "Aethiopica," and Albert Bartholin, Liber de scriptis Danorum under "Alberti." It is difficult to discover the plan of arrangement, and equally difficult to see the reasons for choosing the books. The presence of more than twenty entries entitled "Bibliotheca Biblica" is not surprising, but eleven botanical bibliographies and twelve pages summarizing the Linnean The last list of books entitled bibliotheca is the Dissertation sur les bibliothÈques (1758) by J. D. Durey de Noinville (1683-1768). The efforts that we have surveyed in this chapter produced nothing of lasting value. The list written by the author of Die neu-erÖffnete Bibliothec did not lead to either a bibliography of bibliographies or a guide to reference works. Durey de Noinville's disorderly book was not good enough to suggest making anything better. All these writers worked independently and made little or no use of their predecessors. We might see in this fact an omen of the course of bibliographies of bibliographies in the next century. |