Observations and remarks about the monastery of San Salvatore in Bologna and its Greek manuscripts

Dr. Elisa Bianchi (Research Assistant at the AHRC-funded project “Greek manuscripts in Renaissance Venice: the library of Guillaume Pellicier and its contribution to Europe’s intellectual heritage”, SAS, the Warburg Institute).

The library of the Augustinian monastery of San Salvatore in Bologna grew considerably during the 16th century thanks to purchases of Greek and Latin manuscripts; most of these acquisitions were made in Venice by the erudite Pellegrino Fabretti, very active on the Venice book market at the time.
Recent cataloguing work with the study of the old inventories and the investigation of the 33 Greek manuscripts (11th-16th centuries), which belonged to the Augustinian monastery and are now kept in the Biblioteca Universitaria in Bologna, allowed us to trace an overview of copyists involved in the growth of the Augustinian library. We were also able to shed light on the reading and studying of the Greek language in the Bolognese monastery, mainly in the first half of the 16th century.