The Marciana Library or Library of Saint Mark (, but in historical documents commonly referred to as the ) is a public library in Venice, Italy. It is one of the earliest surviving public libraries and repositories for manuscripts in Italy and holds one of the world's most significant collections of classical texts. It is named after Mark the Evangelist, the patron saint of the city.
The library was founded in 1468 when the humanist scholar Cardinal Bessarion, bishop of Tusculum and titular Latin patriarch of Constantinople, donated his collection of Greek and Latin manuscripts to the Republic of Venice, with the stipulation that a library of public utility be established. The collection was the result of Bessarion's persistent efforts to locate rare manuscripts throughout Greece and Italy and then acquire or copy them as a means of preserving the writings of the classical Greek authors and the literature of Byzantium after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. His choice of Venice was primarily due to the city's large community of Greek refugees and its historical ties to the Byzantine Empire. The Venetian government was slow, however, to honour its commitment to suitably house the manuscripts with decades of discussion and indecision, owing to a series of military conflicts in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries and the resulting climate of political uncertainty. The library was ultimately built during the period of recovery as part of a vast programme of urban renewal aimed at glorifying the republic through architecture and affirming its international prestige as a centre of wisdom and learning.
The original library building is located in Saint Mark's Square, Venice's former governmental centre, with its long façade facing the Doge's Palace. Constructed between 1537 and 1588, it is considered the masterpiece of the architect Jacopo Sansovino and a key work in Venetian Renaissance architecture.Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art, p. 633Howard, Jacopo Sansovino..., p. 28 The Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio described it as "perhaps the richest and most ornate building that there has been since ancient times up until now" ().Palladio, I quattro libri dell'architettura..., p. 5 The art historian Jacob Burckhardt regarded it as "the most magnificent secular Italian building" (),Burckhardt, Der Cicerone eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens, p. 325 and Frederick Hartt called it "one of the most satisfying structures in Italian architectural history". Also significant for its art, the library holds many works by the great painters of sixteenth-century Venice, making it a comprehensive monument to Venetian Mannerism.Humfrey, Painting in Renaissance Venice, p. 194
Today, the building is customarily referred to as the '' and is largely a museum. Since 1904, the library offices, the reading rooms, and most of the collection have been housed in the adjoining Zecca, the former mint of the Republic of Venice. The library is now formally known as the . It is the only official institution established by the Venetian Republican government that survives and continues to function.Zorzi, La libreria di san Marco..., p. 407
Historical background
Cathedral libraries and monastic libraries were the principal centres of study and learning throughout Italy in the Middle Ages. But beginning in the fifteenth century, the humanist emphasis on the knowledge of the classical world as essential to the formation of the Renaissance man led to a proliferation of court libraries, patronized by princely rulers, several of which provided a degree of public access.Raines, 'Book Museum or Scholarly Library?...', pp. 31–32 In Venice, an early attempt to found a public library in emulation of the great libraries of Antiquity was unsuccessful, as Petrarch's personal collection of manuscripts, donated to the republic in 1362, was dispersed at the time of his death.Pittoni, La libreria di san Marco, pp. 5–10Raines, 'Book Museum or Scholarly Library?...', pp. 32–33
In 1468, the Byzantine humanist and scholar Cardinal Bessarion donated his collection of 482 Greek and 264 Latin codices to the Republic of Venice, stipulating that a public library be established to ensure their conservation for future generations and availability for scholars.Howard, Jacopo Sansovino..., p. 17Pittoni, La libreria di san Marco, pp. 10–19Raines, 'Book Museum of Scholarly Library?...', p. 33Zorzi, La libreria di san Marco..., pp. 80–85Bessarion's private library was among the most important in the fifteenth century. In 1455, the collection of Pope Nicholas V, the largest, contained 1209 codices. Significant private libraries belonged to Niccolò Niccoli (808 volumes) and Coluccio Salutati (circa 800 volumes). Among the larger court libraries were those of the Visconti (998 volumes in 1426), Federico da Montefeltro (772 volumes), the Estensi (512 volumes in 1495), and the Gonzaga (circa 300 codices in 1407). With regard to the Greek codices, Bessarion's personal library was unrivaled in Western Europe. The Vatican collection, the second largest, included 414 Greek codices in 1455. See Zorzi, Biblioteca Marciana, p. 20. The formal letter announcing the donation, dated 31 May 1468 and addressed to Doge Cristoforo Moro () and the Senate, narrates that following the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and its devastation by the Turks, Bessarion had set ardently about the task of acquiring the rare and important works of ancient Greece and Byzantium and adding them to his existing collection so as to prevent the further dispersal and total loss of Greek culture. The cardinal's stated desire in offering the manuscripts to Venice specifically was that they should be properly conserved in a city where many Greek refugees had fled and which he himself had come to consider "another Byzantium" ().Labowsky, Bessarion's Library..., pp. 27–28, 147–149The formal letter announcing the donation is preserved in Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana ms Lat. XIV, 14 (=4235) and is on-line at . The documents relative to the donation are transcribed in Labowsky, Bessarion's Library..., pp. 147–156.The legal act of donation preceded the formal announcement and is dated 14 May 1468. See Labowsky, Bessarion's Library..., p. 27, 153–156 and Zorzi, La libreria di san Marco..., p. 82.
Bessarion's first contact with Venice had been in 1438 when, as the newly ordained metropolitan bishop of Nicaea, he arrived with the Byzantine delegation to the Council of Ferrara-Florence, the objective being to heal the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches and unite Christendom against the Ottoman Turks.Zorzi, 'Bessarione e Venezia', pp. 197–201 His travels as envoy to Germany for Pope Pius II brought him briefly to the city again in 1460 and 1461.Zorzi, 'Bessarione e Venezia', p. 204For a detailed discussion of Bessarion's legation to Germany and the attempts to raise troops for a crusade, see Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. II, The Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1978), pp. 213–218, . On 20 December 1461, during the second stayover, he was admitted into the Venetian aristocracy with a seat in the Great Council.Zorzi, La libreria di san Marco…, p. 204The deliberation of the Great Council is in the State Archives of Venice in Grazie Maggior Consiglio, fol. 75v (in Avogaria di Comun, b. 168, fasc. 6).
In 1463, Bessarion returned to Venice as the papal legate, tasked with negotiating the republic's participation in a crusade to liberate Constantinople from the Turks.Zorzi, 'Bessarione e Venezia', p. 205 For the duration of this extended sojourn (1463–1464), the cardinal lodged and studied in the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, and it was to the monastery that he initially destined his Greek codices which were to be consigned after his death.Zorzi, La libreria di san Marco..., pp. 79–80 But under the influence of the humanist Paolo Morosini and his cousin Pietro, the Venetian ambassador to Rome, Bessarion annulled the legal act of donation in 1467 with papal consent, citing the difficulty readers would have had in reaching the monastery, located on a separate island.Zorzi, La libreria di san Marco..., pp. 82–83The terms of Bessarion's original act of donation to the monastery of San Giorgio (untraced) are recorded in the papal bull authorizing the revocation that Pope Paul II issued on 16 September 1467. The text of the bull is published in G. Nicoletti, 'Bolla di Paolo II ed istrumento di donazione fatta della propria libreria dal cardinale Bessarione ai procuratori di s. Marco', Archivio Storico Italiano, Serie terza, Vol. 9, No. 2, 54 (1869), pp. 195–197. Also, abbreviated, in Pittoni, La libreria di san Marco, pp. 14–15 (note 1). The following year, Bessarion announced instead his intention to bequeath his entire personal library, both the Greek and Latin codices, to the Republic of Venice with immediate effect.Zorzi, 'Bessarione e Venezia', p. 220Marino Zorzi attributes the sense of urgency in Bessarion's donation to the conspiracy to assassinate Pope Paul II in February 1468 and the resulting arrest, imprisonment, and torture of several noted Roman humanists, members of the Academy of Julius Pomponius Laetus, who were largely associated with Bessarion's own intellectual circle. There were additional charges of heresy that reflected the pope's deep aversion to Platonism, secular poetry, rhetoric, and astrology. Zorzi argues that in this climate of suspicion and repression, Bessarion would have been anxious to quickly remove his library to safety, outside the territory of the Papal States. See Zorzi, La libreria di san Marco..., pp. 80–82. For a detailed discussion of the assassination plot against Paul II, see Anthony F. D'Elia, A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009) . For Paul II's relationship with Humanism, see A. J. Dunston, 'Pope Paul II and the Humanists', Journal of Religious History, 7 (1983), pp. 287–306 .
On 26 June 1468, Pietro Morosini took legal possession of Bessarion's library in Rome on behalf of the republic.Zorzi, La libreria di san Marco..., p. 83 The bequest included the 466 codices which were transported to Venice in crates the next year.Zorzi, La libreria di san Marco..., p. 84The full inventory is published in Labowsky, Bessarion's Library..., pp. 157–188.In the preliminary letter of acceptance, the Senate valued the manuscripts at 15,000 ducats. The letter, dated 23 March 1468, is published in Labowsky, Bessarion's Library..., p. 124. For Bartolomeo Platina, Bessarion's precious codices had cost 30,000 golden scudo. See Bartolomeo Platina, Panegyricus in Bessarionem doctiss. partriarcham Constantin (Colonia: Eucharius Cervicornus, 1529) p. . Regardless of the differing figures, the value was considerable: from several contemporary contracts, a well-paid professor earned 120 ducats a year. See Zorzi, La Libreria di San Marco..., p. 60. To this initial delivery, more codices and incunabula were added following the death of Bessarion in 1472. This second shipment, arranged in 1474 by Federico da Montefeltro, departed from Urbino, where Bessarion had deposited the remainder of his library for safekeeping. It included the books that the cardinal had reserved for himself or had acquired after 1468.Zorzi, 'Bessarione e Venezia'..., p. 221