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Manuscripts

The collection houses digital reproductions of manuscripts selected for their rarity and importance in relation to the disciplinary fields and the history of the University libraries and their heritage. These manuscripts are datable for the most part from the sixteenth century onwards but taken from even older literary and scientific works, some of which became known to the general public only in the printed version. 

From the ancient archive of the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, the Biomedical Library has inherited a heterogeneous collection in terms of type and content. These are manuscripts not only of medical content (among which the Tractatus de venenis by Pietro D'Abano and the Trattato de tumori preternaturali by Mario Cecchini) but also of works related to other disciplines. This is the case with the two agricultural and horticultural treati Dell'utilità della villa by Pietro Crescenzi (a fifteenth century manuscript considered, if not the original, at least the copy of the first print in 1478) and the Trattato di agricoltura by Agostino del Riccio. To these is added the treatise of local history by Historie fiorentine Scipione Ammirato (1531-1601), a large format sixteenth-century manuscript perhaps partly autograph. Also worth mentioning are the Libri dei segreti, a miscellany of recipes, for the most part containing indications on medical care and the manufacture of natural remedies. 

The selection of the Humanities collection intends to document the two specialties of the library of Humanities: Letters (Eromena) and Philosophy (the three philosophical manuscripts concerning both ancient philosophy -Aristotle- and modern philosophy). In order to document the history of the library, a representative sample from the grand-ducal collections and then passed to the Museum of Physics and Natural History was chosen: the treatise of Tuscan military history on mortars and cannons by Zanobi Cecchi, captain of the Grand-Ducal Guard. To this, we added a text such as the Commentary of Aristotle (Commentaria in universam philosophiam ...Tournon 1620) coming from the Bardi Serzelli collection, acquired on the antiquarian market, that ideally completes another important private collection, the Bardi Gualterotti collection.

The Sciences Library adds a small pamphlet of mathematics penned by the Pistoia naturalist physician Antonio Maria Matani (1730-1779) belonging to the book collection donated by Guido Toja.

Last update

29.01.2024