The librarian profile of the Augustinian convent of Santa Maria del Popolo in the Roman socio-cultural panorama of the 16th century

Between 1596 and 1600 the Italian regular Orders were called to provide the Congregation of the Index with detailed lists of the books present in the libraries of the convents or in use by individual friars, with the aim of verifying the application of the Index librorum prohibitorum, issued by Pope Clement VIII in 1596. The mss. Vat. Lat. 11266-11326 bring together the numerous inventories sent by the various convents and constitute an extraordinary snapshot of the Italian convent library panorama at the end of the 16th century. Among the libraries of the Augustinian observant Congregation of Lombardy there is also the collection of the Roman convent of Santa Maria del Popolo. This library had had an incredible development since 1472, when Pope Sixtus IV had called the Lombard Augustinians to govern the Roman convent. The favour shown by numerous popes (Sixtus IV, Alexander VI, Julius II) to the Augustinian friars had led many intellectuals and jurists to donate their books to the convent library, which had thus become very rich. The growth and evolution of the composition of the library during the 16th century can be reconstructed thanks to three ancient surviving inventories: one from 1480/1482, one from the mid-16th century and the description drawn up in 1600 for the Congregation of the Index. Just over 100 years after the arrival of the Lombard friars, the inventory present in the ms. Vat. Lat. 11285 gives us the image of a book collection based on juridical and theological arguments, but there is no lack of volumes of literary or scientific subjects. The reconstruction of the book presence in the convent of Santa Maria del Popolo at the end of the 16th century is completed by the lists of books “ad usum” of the friars of the convent, also collected in the Vatican manuscript.