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A Bible and heresy The Ariostea library keeps a treasure which caused discussions, all the more up-to-date when acquired. Thanks to the information provided by a noted book collector, Renzo Bonfiglioli, in 1959 the Municipality of Ferrara acquired a treasure of history and culture: the Biblia Latina annotated by Girolamo Savonarola, when a novice in Ferrara, between 1479 and 1482.
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A Bible and heresy

Written by  Andrea Nascimbeni e Leopoldo Santini

The first leaf of the “Biblia Latina” annotated by Savonarola.The Ariostea library keeps a treasure which caused discussions, all the more up-to-date when acquired.

Thanks to the information provided by a noted book collector, Renzo Bonfiglioli, in 1959 the Municipality of Ferrara acquired a treasure of history and culture: the Biblia Latina annotated by Girolamo Savonarola, when a novice in Ferrara, between 1479 and 1482.

This monument of history and book art is an incomplete copy, counting 467 leaves (out of 470); 250 of them annotated by Fra Girolamo. Until 1926 in the collection of the Marquis Meli Lupi of Soragna, this Bible was purchased by the Tammaro De Marinis, bookseller and bibliophile, at the time an apprentice at the Marghieri antiquarian bookshop in Naples. De Marinis was not new to such scoops: in a catalogue "Manuscrits et Livres Rares Autographes Incunables" of 1911, lot 86, offered a «Lettre Autographe par Girolamo Savonarola, signée, addressée à Ludovico il Moro, Duc de Milan 'Ex conventu S.cti Marci Florentiae die xj április 1496', long unpublished letter of the utmost importance», as the young bookseller boasted. At the time of the acquisition, more than one voice criticized the expenditure. In the City Council, Professor Adolfina MelloThe moment of the redelivers of the Bible to the city of Ferrara. In the foreground Luciano Capra; in the second row, from left: Renzo Bonfiglioli, Mario Paoli, Giorgio Bissi, Arnaldo Angelini.ni (Liberal Party) questioned the "haste" with which the negotiations were conducted, the amount, the absence of acounter-offer which might have been reasonable and advantageous «for the city, with a budget in trouble, grappling with the problems of poverty: slum clearance, for example». After discussions and skirmishes between various members of the City Council, Senator Mario Roffi, masterfully, concluded: «I do not think you should ever draw a comparison with other needs, when making a charge towards cultural and civic investments. [...] If our country, having failed to resolve these problems [of housing and unemployment] had closed its art galleries, libraries and all its artistic and cultural institutions we would not solve the problems of housing, unemployment and others which we suffer, but rather would push our country backwards in the protection of its cultural heritage: more backward than itManuscrits Autographes Incunables et Livres Rares unfortunately is in the purely economic and social sectors. In Italy, it's finally time to do justice of a classification of expenditure which considers "luxury goods" anything that relates to culture in general, and specifically on this aspect of culture, which is the preservation of our monuments, be they pieces of architecture or books. This heritage is not only of high spiritual value, but of high economic and commercial value too. [...} For these reasons, we believe that this is not an unproductive expenditure, not an expenditure on luxuries, but an expense that has the same legitimacy of all the social investments that we bear to provide our city with infrastructures, schoools and the such».

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