Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève
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Contents
Introduction
Sainte-Geneviève Library (French: Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, pronounced [biblijɔtɛk sɛ̃t ʒənvjɛv]) is a university library of the universities of Paris, administered by the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University (a public liberal arts and humanities university) located at 10, place du Panthéon, across the square from the Panthéon, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.
Sainte-Geneviève Library
Location
10, Place du Panthéon, 5th arrondissement of Paris
Established
1838
It is based on the collection of the Abbey of St Genevieve, which was founded in the 6th century by Clovis I, the King of the Franks. The collection of the library was saved from destruction during the French Revolution. A new reading room for the library, with an innovative iron frame supporting the roof, was built between 1838 and 1851 by architect Henri Labrouste. The library contains around 2 million documents, and currently is the principal inter-university library for the different universities of Paris, and is also open to the public.[1] It is administratively affiliated with Sorbonne Nouvelle University.
History
The Abbey of St Genevieve is said to have been founded by King Clovis I and his queen, Clotilde. It was located near the present church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont and the present Panthéon, which was built atop the original abbey church. The abbey was said to have been founded at the beginning of the 6th century at the suggestion of Saint Genevieve, who selected the site, across from the original Roman forum. She died in 502 and Clovis died in 511, and the basilica was completed in 520. It held the tombs of Saint Genevieve, Clovis, and his descendants.
By the 9th century, the basilica had been transformed into an Abbey church, and a large monastery had grown up around it, including a scriptorium for the creation and copying of texts. The first record of the existence of the Sainte-Genevieve library dates from 831, and mentions the donation of three texts to the Abbey. The texts created or copied included works of history and literature, as well as theology, However, in the course of the 9th century, the Vikings raided Paris three times. While the settlement on the Ile-de-la-Cité was protected by the river, the abbey of Saint-Genevieve was sacked, and the books lost or carried away.
The library was gradually reassembled. During the reign of Louis VI of France (1108–1137) the Abbey had a particularly important role in European scholarship. The doctrines originally taught by Saint Augustine, and promoted by Suger (1081–1151), the influential religious advisor to the King, required the reading aloud of scriptures, and specified that each monastery have a workshop to produce books and place to keep them. From 1108 to 1113, the scholar Peter Abelard taught at the Abbey school, challenging many aspects of traditional theology and philosophy.
Around about 1108, the theology school of the Abbey of Saint Genevieve, was joined with the School of Notre Dame Cathedral and the school of the Royal Palace to form the future University of Paris.
By the early 13th century the university library was already famous throughout Europe. The early holdings of the library from this time are listed in a 13th-century inventory (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 16203, fol. 71v). The 226 titles and authors included in the 13th century inventory include bibles, commentaries and ecclesiastical history; but also books on philosophy, law, science and literature. It was open not only to students, but also to French and foreign scholars. The manuscripts were of considerable value: each manuscript was marked with a warning notice that any person who stole or damaged a manuscript would be punished by anathema, or excommunication from the church.
15th Century to the 18th century
Shortly after Gutenberg produced his first printed books in the mid-15th century, the library began collecting printed books. The University of Paris invited several of his collaborators to Paris to begin a new publishing house. The library possesses a text of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili published in 1499, with engravings after the drawings of Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini. At the same time, the Abbey continued to produce manuscripts illuminated by hand. The Wars of Religion seriously disrupted the activities of the library. In the 16th and 17th century he library ceased to acquire new books and stopped producing catalogs of its holdings. Many manuscripts were dispersed and sold.[7] Reading room of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève
The library was brought back to life beginning in 1619, during the reign of Louis XIII, by Cardinal Francois de Rochefoucauld. He saw the library as an important weapon of the Counter-Reformation against Protestantism. He donated six hundred volumes from his personal collection,.[8] The new library director, Jean Fronteau, asked writers including Pierre Corneille, and famous librarians including Gabriel Naudé, to help update and expand the collection. However, he had to leave, under suspicion of being a heretical Jansenist.[9] He was succeeded by Claude Du Mollinet, librarian from 1673 until 1687. Du Mollinet founded a famous small museum, the Cabinet of Curiosities, with Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, medals, rare minerals and stuffed animals, within the library. By 1687 the library possessed twenty thousand books, and four hundred manuscripts.[10]
During the late 18th century, the library acquired copies of the major works of the Age of the Enlightenment, including the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. In the same spirit, the library and the Cabinet of Curiosities were opened to the public. The Library was still attached to the Abbey and the University of Paris, but it ceased to be a library of theology only; by the mid-eighteenth century a majority of the works were in other fields of knowledge. While the Abbey still paid part of the cost, the major part was paid by the City of Paris.
The Revolution and its aftermath
Following the French Revolution, the status of the Library changed dramatically. In 1790, the Abbey was secularized, and all of its property, including the library, was confiscated, and the community of monks who ran the library was broken up. Due to the diplomatic skills of the director, Alexandre Pingré, his reputation as an astronomer and geographer, and his contacts within the new government, the collection was not dispersed, and actually grew, as the library took in the collections confiscated from other Abbeys. The library was granted equal status with the National Library, the future Mazarine Library and Arsenal Library, and could draw books from the same sources. Pingré remained as director until his death in 1796.
In 1796, the name of the library was changed; it became the National Library of the Panthéon. named for the neighboring Abbey church, then under construction, which had also been confiscated and renamed. While the collection of books remained intact, the famous cabinet of Curiosities was broken up and some its collection was dispersed to the National Library and Museum of Natural History. However, the Library did manage to retain a large number of objects, including the celebrated astronomical clock, the oldest example of its kind, acquired by the library in about 1695, and a variety of terrestrial and celestial globes, as well as objects illustrating cultures around the world, which are on display in the library today. The library also displays a notable collection of eighty-six busts of French scientists, some made by the leading French sculptors of the 17th and 18th centuries, including busts by Antoine Coysevox, Jean-Antoine Houdon, and François Girardon.[12]
The early 19th century
The library continued to flourish in the early 19th century, under the French Directory and then the Empire of Napoleon. After the death of Pingré the library was directed by Pierre Claude Francois Daunou. He traveled to Rome, following Napoleon's army, and arranged for the transfer to Paris of books confiscated from the papal collections. The library also received collections of books confiscated from nobles who had fled abroad during the Revolution. At the time of the fall of Napoleon, the library had a collection of one hundred ten thousand books and manuscripts
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