A History of Bibliographies of Bibliographies

Beginnings of the Bibliography of Bibliographies

The introduction to St. Jerome's De viris illustribus written in A.D. 392 may contain the first bibliography of bibliographies. Here we find a list of nine men who had written bibliographies of various kinds. St. Jerome writes as follows:

You urge me, Dexter, to arrange ecclesiastical writers in imitation of Suetonius[1] and to do for men of our faith what he has done in listing men famous in heathen letters. Among the Greeks some have done the same thing: Hermippus Peripateticus,[2] Antigonus Carystius,[3] the learned Satyrus,[4] and Aristoxenus, the musician,[5] who was by far the most learned, [and] furthermore, among the Romans, Varro,[6] Santra,[7] Nepos, Hyginus, and Suetonius, whom you cite as a model.[8]

After a brief digression St. Jerome refers to Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, which he has found very useful, and then concludes with an allusion to Cicero, whom few would now think of as a bibliographer. In this passage he makes it clear that bibliography was not highly esteemed even in A.D. 392:

And so I pray to the Lord Jesus Christ that, since your master Cicero, who stood at the pinnacle of Roman eloquence, has not disdained to compile a list of orators in the Latin language in his Brutus, I may execute such a task worthily, pursuant to your request, by listing the writers of His church.

St. Jerome's list is an altogether acceptable bibliography of bibliographies. It includes Antigonus Carystius and Satyrus who wrote general biobibliographies, and Aristoxenus who listed the pupils of Isocrates or the writers of tragedy. We can infer that St. Jerome saw a common element in the works of all these men. This common element is the idea of a list or bibliography. Had he cited only writers of general biobibliographies, we might imagine that he thought of them as historians or chroniclers. In the context of an introduction to his own bibliography of Christian writers he must have thought of them as bibliographers. He neglected to mention many other early bibliographers with whom he was probably familiar.

Almost thirteen centuries later Philip Labbé, whom we shall learn to know as the first author of a bibliography of bibliographies to be published as a separate work, found St. Jerome's list and after making some additions, put it in alphabetical order. He could not find a proper place for it in his own bibliography of bibliographies, the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum of 1664, and buried it without any apparent reason immediately after a reference to a book by Constantinus Felicius that dealt with Cicero's exile and glorious return. I suspect that the slip containing this information had been misplaced in his manuscript. Labbé wrote as follows:

Besides Damastes Sigiaeus,[9] many have written on the lives of scholars, for example, Agatharcides of Cnidus,[10] Amphicrates,[11] Antigonus Carystius, Aristoxenus, Artemon of Magnesia,[12] the Carthaginian Charon,[13] Clearchus of Soli,[14] Hermippus of Smyrna, Satyrus, Timagenes of Miletus,[15] and others, and among Latin writers, Varro, Santra, Nepos, [and] Hyginus, whom St. Jerome cites along with Suetonius on p. 62.[16]

Labbé's careless treatment of this information suggests that he had not finished preparing it for publication. The text itself is not entirely intelligible. He did not put it, as St. Jerome had done, in the introduction and failed to find any other logical place for it. St. Jerome's list obviously interested Labbé, for he quoted it again in the article "Sanctus Hieronymus." When Antoine Teissier revised and enlarged the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum in 1686, he came upon this duplication and retained only the passage in the article "Sanctus Hieronymus."

Except the long-forgotten Labbé, subsequent bibliographers know nothing of St. Jerome's brief list. It did not set anyone to writing bibliographies of bibliographies, and no example has been reported in the almost uncharted area of bibliographical history that lies between St. Jerome and the Renaissance.

Modern bibliographies of bibliographies begin as sections in general subject indexes. In any such index bibliography is, as a matter of course, represented. Conrad Gesner's Pandectae, 1548,[16a] which is the first subject index to be printed, begins with bibliography. The first book (liber) of the Pandectae is entitled "De grammatica" and deals with the classification and organization of knowledge.[17] Chapter (titulus) XIII, with which we are especially concerned, is a treatise on general bibliography.[18] Its eight sections (partes) deal with books of general usefulness and some related matters. Pars i, "Greek and Latin Writers of Miscellanies and of Books Containing Critical Comments on More than One Author," is well described by its title. Gesner divides it into two parts: "Greek Miscellanies," including such works as Aelian, Varia historia;[19] Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae;[20] Clement of Alexandria, Stromata;[21] and Johannes Tzetzes, Historia varia.[22] Books of this sort were reference works consulted for information on almost any subject. To this alphabetical list Gesner adds three titles: the accounts of marvels found in various works by Aristotle; Julius Pollux, Onomasticon; and Plutarch, Symposium.[23] For a bibliography of books of table talk similar to Plutarch's work Gesner refers the reader to Liber Politica, Titulus Convivia.[24] He adds a concluding remark that Caelius Rhodiginus and Nicolaus Leonicenus-men who had written widely used contemporary miscellanies-as well as other makers of compilations have drawn freely on the authorities that he has listed. Gesner is a good bibliographer. He has arranged these titles carefully and has clearly indicated how much he knows about them and the translations of them.

The second part of Titulus XIII, Pars i, is devoted to Latin miscellanies. It begins with Alexander ab Alexandro (Alessandro Alessandri, d. 1523), Geniales dies, "which contains grammatical and legal collectanea and comments on various authors." Gesner remarks that he has preferred to cite miscellanies and collections of loci communes because a separately printed treatise can be easily found but the information in a miscellany is likely to be overlooked.[25] He then names some fifteen Latin miscellanies of various dates according to the first names of the authors. Among them are the writings of Angelo Poliziano, Aulus Gellius, the Adagia of Erasmus, the Varia of Cassiodorus, the Saturnalia of Macrobius, the De honesta disciplina by Petrus Crinitus, and the De inventoribus rerum by Polydore Vergil. This mingling of classical and contemporary authorities is characteristic of Renaissance scholarship. Gesner concludes with a citation of a quarto Miscellanea printed in Paris by Gormont and written by an unidentified author (nescio quo authore).[26]

Gesner's free use of cross-references shows how carefully he planned his book. For example, he reminds the reader that miscellanies dealing with such natural objects as metals, stones, animals, and plants will be found in the book entitled Physica,[27] those concerned with the words and deeds of famous men will be found in Caelius Rhodiginus,[28] and epistolographers, who may be thought of as authors of books of a miscellaneous character, will be found in a later section.[29] In a subdivision indicated by a paragraph sign but without a centerhead Gesner says that dictionaries contain miscellaneous information, cites examples, and adds a cross-reference to his discussion of dictionaries. As is evident, he has covered the sources of miscellaneous information rather fully.

In a second division of this part Gesner names writers who have written comments on several authors and have printed them in a single volume. He cites eleven examples, beginning with Bassianus Landus (Bassiano Landi, d. 1562), Epiphyllides[30] and including the manuscript notes of his contemporary, the Neapolitan grammarian, L. J. Scoppa. Since the Epiphyllides does not seem to have been printed and a contemporary scholar's manuscript notes are obviously difficult to find, Gesner can be said to have taken great pains with the list. He excludes those who have written one or more volumes of commentary on a single author.

In Pars ii, De indicibus librorum, an extremely interesting discussion of indexes with rather little bibliographical baggage, Gesner differentiates and discusses several varieties and brings his discussion of methods to a close with some remarks about page numbers and chapter numbers.[31] A paragraph sign sets off a list of indexes to various books, chiefly editions of the classics and Biblical or patristic writings. This list would have been very useful to H. B. Wheatley in writing What is an Index? (London, 1879). On the next page (fols. 21a-21b) Gesner names a few publishers' catalogues and, after a paragraph sign, a few library catalogues.[32] Pars ii ends with a long discussion of the ways of cataloguing books (fols. 21b-22b).

Pars iii, Problemata, Quaestiones & Disputationes, is a strictly bibliographical account of special varieties of miscellanies.[33] The next two Partes contain a discussion of the methodology of note-taking and are not directly bibliographical in nature. Pars vi lists some forty collections of commonplaces (fols. 27b-28a). Among them are Antonius Corvinus's arrangement of Erasmus's Apophthegmata in commonplaces,[34] Stobaeus, Thomas Hibernicus,[35] Maximus Planudes (who expurgated and arranged the Greek Anthology in loci communes), Otto Brunfels (whose Pandectae sacrae[36] Gesner has used freely), and Valerius Maximus. Such books were more or less like general reference works. Here, as elsewhere, Gesner names classical and contemporary writers in a single list.

We have been examining thus far Gesner's account of general reference works and come finally to the seventh pars, which is the most interesting division of the titulus for a student of bibliographical history. It is entitled Bibliographies, i.e. alphabetical list of catalogues of books, the classification of books, the care of them, mottoes, and the buildings.[37] This title is virtually the table of contents of a handbook of library science.[38] We shall consider only the first sections of this pars and in particular Gesner's bibliography of bibliographies.

Gesner begins the seventh pars with miscellaneous notes on pertinent books and on libraries. He carefully separates these notes from the following bibliography of bibliographies. This is an alphabetical list of thirty-one names, beginning with

Alberti Magni de antiquis authorib. astronomiae liber[39] Amphicrates de viris illustrib. scripsit, Athenaeo teste Apollodorus Athenien. Bibliothecae pars etiamnun extat.

In this list Gesner includes both general and special bibliographies. He cites St. Jerome's De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (a variant title of the De viris illustribus) and the continuations by Bede, Gennadius of Marseilles, Honorius Augustodunensis, Isidore of Seville, and Sigebert of Gembloux; Johannes Tritheim, who compiled the original work of St. Jerome and the continuations into a single volume; and Sophronius, who translated it into Greek. He cites contemporary legal bibliographies, one by Bernardinus Rutilius (Bernardino Rutilio, 1504-1538), who dealt with men of his own time, and another by Johannes Fichardus (Johann Fichard, 1512-1581), the often published Juris consultorum vitae veterum quidem, which surveyed older authorities.[40] He has seen or heard of Jacob Rueff's survey of astrologers, Lilio Gregorio Giraldi's literary history, Otto Brunfels's bibliography of medicine in classical times, and Philip Ribot's biobibliographical dictionary of the Carmelite order. The last he has not seen but believes to have been utilized by Johannes Tritheim.

These names illustrate the variety of bibliographies known to Gesner and his clear conception of what a bibliography of bibliographies should be. He has admitted only pertinent books and has arranged their titles carefully in alphabetical order according to first names. He has given sources for citations that he has not verified and for books that he knows to be in manuscript or probably lost. He has commented occasionally on the quality of a book or has told how it was arranged. For example, he says that Rueff's astrological bibliography contains pictures of men and instruments and comments in German verse. He does not give the dates and places of publication, but bibliographers have been slow to learn the importance of citing these details. No doubt he expected his readers to consult his biobibliographical dictionary, the Bibliotheca universalis of 1545, for that information. A sixteenth-century scholar, who was accustomed to find books arranged according to format, might have complained that Gesner did not indicate the size of the books. In his procedure he goes beyond St. Jerome, who was content to cite only names. Gesner cites titles.

In Pars viii, "De mirabilibus," the last subdivision of Titulus XIII, Gesner gives a hasty account of books about marvels and noteworthy things. Although he cites several lost classical works on the subject and Alessandro Alessandri, Geniales dies, which had appeared in print a generation before the Pandectae, he makes no great effort to deal bibliographically with the subject. He obviously regards such works as collections of odds and ends and therefore akin to miscellanies. He says, for example, that geographers tell strange tales about the shapes and manners of men and the nature of countries, skies, and seas. He could, he says, have given here references to ancient statues and inscriptions, but has preferred to classify them under history. Poetry and invented tales might also be mentioned and riddles, he thinks, are not to be neglected. The remaining tituli of the first book deal with matters akin to grammar in its usual modern sense but include several specialized bibliographies that we need not examine closely.[41] Gesner's bibliography of bibliographies represents an auspicious beginning of a very difficult variety of bibliography.

The foregoing details about the first book in Gesner's Pandectae make clear Gesner's skill in organization and classification as well as the place that the bibliography of bibliographies had in his scheme. They give some notion of sixteenth-century scholarship and explain why Gesner's Pandectae failed to be continued or revised and, more especially, why his bibliography of bibliographies has not been noticed. Even A. G. S. Josephson, who had a very sharp eye for bibliographies of bibliographies concealed as chapters in subject indexes, did not come upon Gesner's work. Josephson's study will be mentioned in its proper place at the end of this essay. Gesner's subject bibliography was not appreciated fully because it contained many references to classical sources and did not give a comprehensive account of contemporary writings. Although Gesner's classification was logical and although he adhered with remarkable care to the categories that he set up, no one but Gesner himself could make additions to the book or revise it.

It remains to say a word about the relation of the Pandectae to the book of which it forms a part. Gesner published four volumes-the Bibliotheca universalis of 1545, the Pandectae of 1548, the Partitiones of 1549, and the Appendix of 1555-that are ordinarily regarded as a single work. The Bibliotheca and the Appendix constitute a biobibliographical dictionary. The Pandectae and the Partitiones are a subject index that lacks a promised section on medicine. The dictionary and the index have no close relations to each other, except to the degree that the dictionary gives additional information about books cited by authors' names in the index. In Gesner's situation a modern scholar would have distributed according to subjects the slips that he had made for his biobibliographical dictionary and would thus have obtained a subject index almost immediately. Gesner did not proceed in this way, but undertook and completed the subject index as a virtually independent work.

The next man to write a bibliography of bibliographies gives no evidence of having read Gesner's work or, more specifically, of having come upon Gesner's bibliography of bibliographies. He is Israel Spach (1560-1610), who wrote a general subject index at the end of the sixteenth century. In the bibliographical section, "Writers of Bibliographies (Bibliothecarum scriptores)," of his Nomenclator philosophorum et philologicorum, (1598), Spach names twenty-nine books. Of these only two medical and two legal bibliographies were known to Gesner, and one of these legal bibliographies is cited in a better edition that appeared long after the publication of the Pandectae. Spach's emphasis lies on contemporary works. Although he mentions the medieval continuators of St. Jerome, he does not mention St. Jerome himself. Inasmuch as these continuators were brought together in Johannes Tritheim, De viris illustribus, which he cites,[42] he could have dispensed with them. He begins with Antoine du Verdier's supplement (1585) to Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis and then mentions Apollodorus, whose Bibliotheca was still unpublished. Apollodorus and Claudius Ptolemy, Sententiae (also unpublished) are the only two bibliographers of classical times that he names. Spach knows general works like Conrad Gesner's Bibliotheca, Robert Constantin's compilation (1555) that purported to be a supplement to it, and Nicolaus Basse's cumulation (1592) of the semi-annual catalogues of the German booktrade; national bibliographies like Anton Francesco Doni's La libraria (1556)[43] and John Bale's list of English authors; and, finally, bibliographies of special disciplines like ecclesiastical history, medicine (Otto Brunfels and Symphorien Champier), and law. In these categories he has chosen appropriate books. Although he includes Hierimias Paduanus, who wrote a very popular collection of loci communes that circulated also under the name of Thomas Hibernicus (Thomas Palmer),[44] he agrees with Gesner in preferring to list such works separately.

In the fifty years between the publication of Gesner's Pandectae and Spach's Nomenclator bibliographers had come to recognize the value of several kinds of compilations that Gesner had not chosen to include. For example, Spach cites the catalogues issued by publishers,[45] a category that Gesner knew but separated from his bibliography of bibliographies. He includes some titles that most bibliographers would not now include in a bibliography of bibliographies, for example, a book dealing with the book trade,[46] a book dealing with a particular library,[47] a famous catalogue of Greek manuscripts at Augsburg.[48] Titles such as Wolfgang Lazius, Catalogus partim suorum, partim aliorum scriptorum[49] do not indicate clearly the contents of the book. Spach has thrown his net wide and has caught some fish that we can not call bibliographies. Nevertheless, all the works that he cites deal with books, and we shall not quarrel with him for including treatises on the Frankfurt book fair or the Vatican library. Two titles show how widely he ranged in the search for materials. John Boston's fourteenth-century union catalogue of manuscripts owned in England has come to his knowledge,[50] and he has picked up Claudius Ptolemy, Sententiae sive de utilitate librorum,[51] which was, in one form or another, a popular book about books during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Spach's omission of regional or national bibliographies and biobibliographical dictionaries, except for Bale and Doni, and of biobibliographical dictionaries of the religious orders is obvious. Perhaps he regarded them as historical rather than bibliographical reference works.

As we have seen, Spach offers a good account of sixteenth-century bibliographies and especially of those published in the latter half of the century. When taken in conjunction with Gesner's earlier bibliography, which reviewed classical writers and his own contemporaries, Spach's list provides us with a good account of sixteenth-century bibliography.

The bibliographical section, "Writers of Bibliographies (Bibliothecarum Scriptores)," in a general subject index entitled Bibliotheca philosophica (1616) by Paulus Bolduanus continues the tradition represented by Gesner and Spach. I have not been able to learn much about the life and works of this obscure Pomeranian minister of the gospel, who apparently lived and died in or near the village of Stolp.[52] He wrote bibliographies of theology, history, and philosophy between 1614 and 1622, publishing in the latter year a supplement to his theological bibliography. Petzholdt rightly commends (pp. 458-459) the Bibliotheca philosophica as superior to Spach's Nomenclator but curiously fails to see that Bolduan's notion of philosophy was in general use in the first half of the seventeenth century. A bibliotheca philosophica of that time would include as a matter of course everything but theology, law, and medicine. Petzholdt praises (pp. 771-772) Bolduan's Bibliotheca historica (1620) as a respectable work that shows bibliographical skill and accuracy. These are kinder words than Petzholdt can ordinarily find for a seventeenth-century bibliography and are a corrective to Burkhard Gotthelf Struve's harsh judgment: "In our day, when other works of this sort are available, we can easily dispense with these efforts."[53]

Bolduan's bibliography of bibliographies[54] is both longer and more carefully made than Spach's. He has arranged nearly seventy titles alphabetically according to the first names of the authors. He cites catalogues of university libraries (only the Leyden catalogue of 1595 could have been within Spach's reach and he did not know it), the compilations made for the book trade by Nicolaus Basse, Johannes Clessius, and Henning Grosse, the ubiquitous publisher's lists issued by Goltzius and Oporinus, and bibliographical dictionaries of various subjects and the religious orders. Like Spach, whose list he seems to have taken over completely, he has heard of John Boston's catalogue and, like Spach, is ignorant of the author's first name and is compelled to cite it under "Bostonus." He corrects Spach's misspelling of Muzio Pansa's name. He does not, however, include any classical Greek or Latin bibliographers. We can therefore infer that he did not find Gesner's bibliography of bibliographies, where they were mentioned. He might have omitted them on principle, but he also fails to mention some early sixteenth-century bibliographies known to Gesner which he would surely have included, had he known them. An example of such a bibliography is Jacob Rueff's book on astrology. Bolduan names no title that cannot be called a bibliography in some sense. In both extent and accuracy he surpasses Spach. As comparison with Theodore Besterman, The Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography,[55] shows, this competent workman gives a good account of the bibliographies available in 1616.

A dozen years later, in 1628, Franciscus Sweertius (Francis Sweerts, 1567-1629) printed a bibliography of bibliographies about as large as that by Bolduan. He does not cite his predecessors and probably did not know them. This learned Antwerp merchant and author of several scholarly works printed his bibliography of bibliographies in his Athenae Belgicae.[56] It has no organic relation to Sweerts's purpose of writing a Belgian biobibliographical dictionary. In this compilation, which has a slightly stronger theological tinge than its predecessors, Sweerts lists seventy-eight bibliographies in twenty paragraphs according to subjects. This is, therefore, the first classified bibliography of bibliographies. Except in five instances with such headings as "De Bibliothecis" and "De Vitis & Scriptoribus Ord. S. Dominici," the subjects are to be inferred from the typographical arrangement. Although he has not completely worked out a scheme of organization, he progresses from general works on libraries and books to special bibliographies of theology, law, and medicine. He is less careful than Spach and Bolduan about the bibliographical details of place and date of publication, but the need for this information was just beginning to be recognized at the time when he wrote. He adheres closely to the idea of listing bibliographies and admits only one perhaps pardonable interloper, a compilation of the Church Fathers. It is curious that he cites the Bibliotheca theologica by Johannes Molanus (Jean van der Meulen), which was published in 1618, as being still in manuscript. Later bibliographers have picked up all the titles cited by Sweerts and his selection does not differ sufficiently from that made by Spach and Bolduan to need characterization by quoting titles. Sweerts wrote the first independent or almost independent bibliography of bibliographies and at the same time the first classified bibliography of bibliographies.

The four bibliographies of bibliographies published in the eighty years between Gesner's Pandectae (1548) and Sweert's Athenae Belgicae (1628) are, as their authors intended them to be, relatively complete. In The Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography, Theodore Besterman adds only a few rather unimportant titles and these may indeed not have seemed to be bibliographies or to have deserved mention in the eyes of Gesner and his successors. Instructive technical developments are evident in these first four compilations. Gesner cites both classical Greek and Latin works and contemporary bibliographies. Spach, Bolduan, and Sweerts adopt the modern practice of preferring to list bibliographies of contemporary usefulness. Gesner, Spach, and Bolduan do not separate their work from the larger task of writing a general subject index. Sweerts sees that the bibliography of bibliographies can be an independent enterprise. Gesner, Spach, and Bolduan offer alphabetical lists. Sweerts adopts the modern plan of a classified list. Although the bibliography of bibliographies has continued to be a necessary part of a general subject index, I shall limit myself in the following discussion to bibliographies of bibliographies that have been published as separate works.

The Bibliography of Bibliographies Comes of Age

In the seventeenth century several bibliographies of bibliographies were undertaken as independent enterprises. One of them was actually completed and published and after several editions had the good fortune to be revised and to receive a supplement. A century after Gesner had published his bibliographies of authors and subjects, in the decade between 1643 and 1653, Jodocus a Dudinck, who did not fulfill his promise, and Philip Labbé, sought to survey all scholarship and hit upon the idea of a bibliography of bibliographies as a means to this end. Like Conrad Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis of 1545-1555 (which was a list of all writers and their works), Philip Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum of 1653 (which was a bibliography of bibliographies) enjoyed a successful career for a little more than a generation and then disappeared from view. After the first revisions and supplements no one chose to continue either Gesner or Labbé. This analogy between the century that began with the invention of printing and ended with Gesner's survey of 1545-1555 and the following century that ended with Labbé's survey of 1653 is perhaps more curious than important. It does nevertheless emphasize a twice-repeated interruption in the historical development of bibliographies. In the two generations between 1643 and 1705 men in various countries compiled or promised to compile bibliographies of bibliographies and with the beginning of the eighteenth century they ceased to do so.

The first separately published bibliography of bibliographies is, if it actually exists, Jodocus a Dudinck, Bibliothecariographia (Cologne, apud Jodocum Kalcoven, 1643.) No one has ever seen it and many have searched for it during the last three centuries. Back in the seventeenth century the Lutheran theologian Caspar Sagittarius (1643-1694) sought it in vain. A little later Johann Andreas Schmidt or Schmid (1652-1726), who was both a theologian and a writer on library science, was similarly defeated in an effort to find the book. Probably Hieronymus Augustinus Groschufius was right when he said in one of the earliest treatises on rare books (1709-1716) that the Bibliothecariographia was never printed.[57] The first reference to the book is found, as far as I know, in a Belgian biobibliographical dictionary of 1643 and all our information about the book and its author goes back to this source.[58] The announcement is not particularly suspicious because the publisher Jodocus Kalcoven of Cologne seems to have been an agent or a limited partner of the famous firm of Willem Blaeu (later Jan Blaeu) of Amsterdam.[59] This firm used Kalcoven's name on various scholarly books.[59] Little as we know about Dudinck's book, its title indicates that he clearly understood the nature of a bibliography of bibliographies. He called it "A Bibliography of Bibliographies. A list of all authors and works that have appeared under the title of bibliography, catalogue, index, list, athenae, and so on."[60] Jodocus a Dudinck had a very good eye for opportunities in the bibliographical field. He announced a general treatise on libraries[61] and both a bibliography of the Virgin Mary and an account of the places associated with her.[62] No one has even seen any of Dudinck's books, but the fact that books on all these subjects were written by other hands within a generation shows his ingenuity and judgment as a bibliographer. Nothing appears to be known about Dudinck beyond what Valerius Andreas has to say. He was a priest in a small village in the Rhineland, "multae vir lectionis."

Ten years after the announcement of Dudinck's book Philip Labbé (1607-1667) printed a bibliography of bibliographies as a supplement to his Novae bibliothecae specimen (1653).[63] He seems to have regarded this later as a separate publication and has caused some confusion by doing so. On its separate title page the date of this supplement is 1652, but the supplement does not appear to have been issued separately and the title page of the book bears the date 1653. This bibliography of bibliographies is entitled: "Supplementum novae bibliothecae, sive speciminis antiquarum lectionum, coronis libraria. Hoc est, Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum, & Catalogus Catalogorum, Nomenclatorum, Indicum, Elenchorum, &c. quibus Scriptores in quavis arte & professione praecipui, &c. libri ferme omnes, partim editi, partim inediti repraesentantur." Here Labbé has defined the proper contents of a bibliography of bibliographies. He has included very few inappropriate titles in his list of nearly three hundred separately published bibliographies, bibliographies that were still in manuscript, and bibliographies published in non-bibliographical works. There are very few examples of the last category. He is careful about his work. For example, he cites a manuscript biobibliographical dictionary by Alfonsus Ciaconius (Alfonso Chacón, 1540-1599) and gives his authority in Antonio Possevino, Apparatus sacer (Cologne, 1608). Chacón's dictionary was not printed until 1731, and then only as a fragment. Labbé knows Alfonso Barvoet's catalogue of manuscripts in the Escorial; Alfonso García's list of famous Spaniards; Ambrosio Gozzi's biobibliographical dictionary of Dominicans; Andreas Quercetanus's (André Duchesne, 1584-1640) bibliography of French history (three editions are cited); autobibliographies like "Index librorum F. Angeli Rochensis. Romae 1611"; national bibliographies like that for France by Antoine du Verdier; and a classical miscellany like Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, which scholars then regarded as a bibliography. In other words, Labbé has named examples of varieties of bibliographies that we now recognize. Although he mentions a publisher's catalogue (which he has not seen), he seems doubtful about its pertinence to the task. He comments, for example, on a collective volume in the De Thou library that contained catalogues issued by Plantin, Froschauer, Wechel, and other publishers and says that he is not including it. Labbé's comments are abundant and informative. This first independent bibliography of bibliographies is a commendable piece of work.

Labbé realized that he had hit upon a new and important idea and worked diligently to improve and enlarge his collections. In 1662 he published a sample of his plans for several bibliographies under the title of Sexdecim librorum initia. This consisted of the first eight pages of each of ten bibliographies on which he was working and discussions of six more that he expected to write. The first eight pages of the bibliography of bibliographies extend to Antonius Possevinus (inclusive). A comparison of the complete list of 1653, the sample of 1662, and the book that was finally printed in 1664 is necessarily limited to a portion of the alphabet. In 1653 he cited fourteen names (some of these authors were responsible for several bibliographies), in 1662 he cited thirty-three names, and in 1664 he cited sixty-eight names (including the additions made in a supplementary alphabet). In 1653 he regretted his inability to find a publisher's catalogue issued by Aldus Manutius. In 1662 he reported that he had not found it. In 1664 he cited publishers' catalogues issued by both Aldus Manutius and Aldus Manutius, Junior. In both 1662 and 1664 he made additions to the titles listed under various names, introduced new cross-references, and made improvements in details. As an example of an improvement, note his correction of the name Antonius Bumaldus to Joannes Antonius Bumaldus. This apparently minor change is important because Labbé's arrangement of authors according to their Christian names required him to transfer the name from the letter "A" to the letter "J."

Although Labbé greatly improved his book between 1653 and 1664, he nevertheless published it without incorporating all the additions into the main alphabet and without making full and accurate indexes. Subsequent editions did not completely remedy these serious defects. In 1672, when Labbé had been dead for five years, an anonymous editor combined the additions with the main alphabet, but did not correct errors in the text or improve the indexes. In 1678, the unsold sheets of the 1672 edition were issued with a new title page and a brief appendix containing John Selden's numismatic bibliography. The last edition of the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum was printed at Leipzig in 1682. It is called "enlarged (auctior)," but in a rather extensive comparison I have found only one new title. The German editor removed some of Labbé's comments on Protestant writers but did little more.

Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum is an alphabetical list according to first names of some eight hundred authors of bibliographies. According to Besterman, it includes about fifteen hundred titles. Labbé's arrangement according to first names causes no difficulty to a modern user because he provides an index of family names. Unfortunately, however, this index of family names is incomplete, and the lack of care in its preparation is evidence that Labbé hurried to get his book to the printer.

Eight subject indexes-only the fourth is not alphabetical-make the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum fully usable. When the reader has familiarized himself with them (and apparently very few have done so), he can understand the book and its value to a scholar. In working with the indexes he will discover that Labbé did not make them complete and reliable. Part of the difficulty in understanding and using the indexes arises from Labbé's old and unfamiliar classification according to men instead of subjects. This classification was firmly established when Labbé wrote and he probably never thought of any other. St. Jerome had called his book by the alternative title "De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis," that is to say, "Ecclesiastical Writers," but it was a bibliography of ecclesiastical literature. A bibliography of astrology was, in Labbé's conception, a list of men who wrote on astrology. He soon ran into difficulties and adopted devices to get around them that show bibliographical method in a transitional state. In "Index I. Practitioners of Various Arts and Sciences (Index Primus. Professores variarum scientiarum atque artium representans)" we find such entries as "Advocatorum Consistorialium, Advocatorum Parisiensis Curiae, Aristotelis Graecorum Interpretum, Arithmeticorum," which we can translate (changing to the nominative case) as "Consistorial Lawyers, Lawyers of the Parisian Court, Greek Interpreters of Aristotle, Arithmeticians." These designations are to be understood as references to as many subjects. "Index II. [Bibliographies of] Nations and Countries" and "Index III. [Bibliographies of] Religions and Religious Orders," which does not include non-Christian religions or heretical sects, give him no trouble. In the fourth index Labbé meets his Waterloo. This "Index IV. Authors Writing on Various Subjects" is awkwardly conceived in terms of the authors but is arranged according to the theological merit of the subjects on which they wrote. It descends from the Virgin Mary to inventions in the following order: (1) writers about the Virgin Mary, (2) [writers about] the Immaculate Conception, (3) writers who were popes, (4) writers who were cardinals, (5) writers who were French cardinals, (6) women writers, (7) writers about heretics, (8) writers on the prohibition of heretical books, (9) compilers of catalogues of manuscripts, (10) compilers of catalogues of ancient and modern libraries and writers on library science, (11) writers on academies, universities, and Jesuit colleges, (12) writers of catalogues and eulogies of individual academies and their faculties, (13) writers on the inventors of things, arts, and sciences. In order to fit his material into this pattern Labbé changes his procedure and writes in an individual entry in No. 10 above: "Manuscriptorum catalogus varias exhibent Antonius Sanderus, Aubertus Miraeus,..." In other words, the subject heading takes the place of a heading in terms of the author. The fifth index lists bibliographers of men who have borne the same name. Anton Sander's book on Antonies is an example. Such works were very popular in Labbé's day and deserved this special attention. The sixth index is a list of bibliographies, which are often autobibliographies, of individual writers and of indexes to their works. The seventh index includes publishers' and booksellers' catalogues. In the somewhat confused eighth index, which again illustrates the difficulty already discussed, Labbé intended to list bibliographies having a proper name in their titles. Here are found books on the Ambrosian and Amsterdam libraries, Labbé's own anti-Jansenist bibliography, and an anonymous catalogue of anti-Jesuitica. He preferred to put the last two bibliographies here and not in the third index, which contained religious bibliographies. He had already set up a category for writers about the Virgin Mary in the fourth index, but he named others in the eighth. I cannot see why he placed writers of dictionaries in the eighth and not in the fourth index, and certainly he should have put writers on chemistry and politics in the first and not the eighth index. These irregularities are difficult to explain. In a search for a subject bibliography a modern reader must turn to the first, fourth, and eighth indexes. He will find a national or local biobibliography in Index II, a biobibliography of a religious order in Index III, a list of works on homonyms in Index V, a bibliography of an individual author in Index VI, and a catalogue issued by a publisher or bookseller in Index VII. The classification is complicated but not altogether unusable.

In the eleven years that passed between the first publication of the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum and its final appearance in 1664, Labbé might have worked out the details more carefully than he did. We can of course pardon some faults because modern bibliographers are more demanding than those of 1664. We may, however, say fine words about these demands and be forced to eat our words when we look later in this essay at the modern bibliographies of Léon Vallée, Henri Stein and the very recent work of Hanns Bohatta and Franz Hodes. While we are mindful of the old saying about those who live in glass houses, we can nevertheless point out inconsistencies, irregularities in procedure, awkward arrangements of materials, and outright errors. The faults to be found in Labbé's book are relatively slight and do not seriously impair its value.

Labbé is inconsistent and irregular in method. He seems to have learned to cite titles in the original languages when he was nearly through collecting them. It was too late to change and furthermore his sources probably often gave him Latin and not the original French or Italian titles. For example, he cites a book by Augustinus Superbus by its Latin title and adds the note "Italicè."[64] In the seventeenth century this was an altogether regular way of citing an Italian title. He also cites the same book with an Italian title. In reading the proof he could have removed the duplication. The article on Augustinus Marloratus seems to have been written before he realized the necessity of bringing the author's name into the first place for the purpose of alphabetizing the entries. He is irregular in regard to critical comment, which the plan of his book did not require. He usually adds none, but see, as exceptions, the remarks on Angelus Roccha, Conradus Gesnerus, Conradus Lycosthenes, and Joannes Neander. It will be noticed at once that all but one of these men are Protestants. In a few instances Labbé gives additional information about the subject of the book that he is citing. For example, he adds a paragraph to the citation of a catalogue of heretical writers compiled by Bernardus Luxemburgensis:

Regarding these men [i.e., heretical authors] ancient writers ought also to be consulted: Philastrius, Augustine, the author of Praedestinati (edited by Sirmondus), St. Epiphanius, St. John Damascene, and others.

This paragraph may indicate that Labbé considered including subjects but did not find a way to do so. Critics of the Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum and among them Adrien Baillet, who should have known better, have called for interpretative and critical comments. They ought to have perceived that such comments, although useful, would have greatly exceeded Labbé's purpose. In all the later history of bibliographies of bibliographies only two men-Gabriel Peignot and Julius Petzholdt-have made a systematic effort to add comments. Labbé does, to be sure, often express his opinion about heretical books, and his warnings have awakened Protestant wrath and have caused Protestant bibliographers to speak harshly of him. He has rarely expressed himself so vigorously as he does in the article "Robertus Cocus" (Robert Cooke, 1550-1615), where he writes:

He wrote Censura Patrum (London, 1623. 4o; 1614. 8o), but it ought to be utterly rejected, along with Rivet's Criticus, Scultetus's Medulla, the outburst of Hottinger, and similar commentaries of the most virulent heretics, by all holding the Catholic faith or it ought to be put far away in the castle of Hell, whence it is forbidden to depart, along with the Magdeburg Centuriators, Mathias Flaccius Illyricus, and the works of others that have been assembled in several volumes. I hear also that a criticism of ancient writers by the same Cooke was published at Helmstadt in octavo in 1655.

Labbé makes mistakes in details and perhaps more mistakes than a modern bibliographer. We can easily pardon minor troublesome mistakes in alphabetization. In an index according to Christian names it is not fatal to have the last name of Christophorus Ferg misspelled Freg.[65] Labbé should have eliminated many duplications like those of Christophorus Giarda and Christophorus a Giarda or Philibertus Fezaius and Philibertus Fresalius (the latter is an error).

A comparison of Labbé's text with the indexes discloses serious discrepancies that reduce the value of his book. One can usually go from the indexes to the text without much trouble, although a few references lack the name needed as a guide.[66] A reverse comparison of the text with the indexes is much less satisfactory and shows that Labbé added names to the text after he had made the indexes.[67]

We can justly object to Labbé's inclusion of subject entries in an alphabet of authors.[68] Had he given more thought to them, he would no doubt have hit upon the idea of a dictionary catalogue of authors and subjects and might have simplified the complicated indexes. His plan required him to put subjects into the indexes, but he had no good place to put an article "Bibliothecae." This contains a classified list of catalogues and libraries that I shall discuss in the next chapter. He put it in its alphabetical place, in a list of names. A curious bibliography of fictitious bibliographies is entered under "Fictae Bibliothecae." When Labbé put a bibliography of guides to university studies at the end of his alphabet of authors, he showed his realization of the fact that he had no place for it.

As all bibliographers have at one time or another, Labbé included some titles that had little to do with his task. The differentiation of biography and bibliography was perhaps less clear then than now, and general treatises on scholarly matters probably seemed more closely akin to bibliographies than we find them to be. Honoratus Montecalvus, Speculum tragicum Regum, Principum & Magnatum superioris seculi celebriorum ruinas exitusque calamitosos breviter complectens, which is adequately described by its long title, is not a bibliography but one of many accounts of the mishaps that have befallen great men. Jacobus Gretser, De jure et more prohibendi, expurgandi et abolendi libros haereticos et noxios is obviously a book about books, but it is scarcely a bibliography. Although Jacobus Middendorpius's famous treatise on universities is a general account of its subject, Labbé is probably too generous in admitting it. These examples suggest some laxity in Labbé's definition of bibliography.

In its conception and execution the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum is excellent. Although rarely consulted, it is still valuable for reference purposes. An occasional difficulty will arise, but a modern reader must not object to Labbé's short titles.[69] Theatri, which was then immediately understood as a citation of Theodor Zwinger, the Elder (ed.), Theatrum vitae humanae, a standard sixteenth-century encyclopedia, was then no more difficult to understand than The New International might be today.[70] Labbé is a good bibliographer because he cites pertinent references to non-bibliographical books.[71] He is careful to indicate whether he has seen the book he is citing[72] and occasionally comments on its bibliographical value.[73]

In brief, Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum is well conceived, neatly arranged, and relatively accurate in details. In plan and arrangement it surpasses, for example, such a modern work of similar size and purpose as A Bibliography of Bibliographies that the famous bibliographer Joseph Sabin published in 1877. As I have already said, the references are as accurate as those to be found in three of the bibliographies of bibliographies published in the last seventy years. His choice of an arrangement according to authors' names has been adopted only by Joseph Sabin (1877) and Léon Vallée (1883-1887). Unpopular as it has been, it nevertheless seems to me a good method of dealing with intractable material. A classified bibliography requires both an index of subjects and an index of authors. An alphabetical index of subjects requires cross-references and an index of authors. Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum needs only a new index of subjects to become a reference work useful to a modern scholar.

The time was not ripe for a bibliography of bibliographies and Labbé's contemporaries and immediate successors neither perceived the novelty of his idea nor fully appreciated its value. Contemporary recommendations of the book have a perfunctory flavor. Valentin Heinrich Vogler, who wrote an admirable survey of scholarly books entitled Introductio universalis in notitiam cuiuscunque bonorum scriptorum (Helmstadt, 1670), is representative. He passed a judgment on a book that he had not seen. When Heinrich Meibom made a new edition of Vogler's handbook in 1691, he summarized Vogler's comment and having seen Labbé's book, added some characteristic and interesting remarks of his own:

Vogler did not see it [the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum]. Nevertheless, with only a few excerpts available to him, he did not use bad judgment in saying that it offers only a brief review of authors arranged according to their names[74] and makes no comments on the way in which these men have dealt with their materials. Still, the work is very useful (Utilis tamen valde labor est), although I have found many authors cited, of whom some have no pertinence and others tell the lives of men who are famous for their reputations and deserts rather than in literary endeavors and writing. From not a few entries it would also appear that he has often not seen the books, but, deceived by the title, he has nevertheless cited them. This is, for example, the case when he cites David Fr?lich, Viatorium.[75] And he does not blush to make venomous remarks in his usual fashion about some excellent men, especially those who differ from him in religious matters.

Meibom speaks harshly, and more harshly than Labbé has deserved, but he does grudgingly acknowledge that the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum is useful. Daniel Georg Morhof, whose Polyhistor, a general treatise on university studies, demanded some mention of indexes, bibliographies, and reference works, expresses much the same judgment on Labbé and leaves one in doubt whether he has actually seen the book. In a chapter entitled "De catalogorum scriptoribus," Morhof begins with general remarks about the kinds of bibliographies that a scholar then had within his reach, but fails to identify clearly the bibliography of bibliographies as a special variety. He does, however, go on to say, "Like Hodegeta and Janus Patulcis, Philip Labbé is vigilant at the very entrance to learning."[76] This means that he recognized Labbé's book to be one of the first books to be consulted in undertaking an investigation. He should have said more. Perhaps Vogler, Meibom, and Morhof, whose acquaintance with the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum seems superficial, knew it only from book reviews, especially Denis de Sallo's review in Le Journal des s?avans. Adrien Baillet, who quotes this review, mentions also a brief notice by Henning Witte, who seems to have an equally superficial knowledge of the book.[77]

A few scholars did understand what Labbé had done. Probably Vincent Placcius (1642-1699), who spent his life in the study of anonyma and pseudonyma, would have continued the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum in Labbé's spirit.[78] Theophilus [or Gottlieb] Spitzel (1639-1691), a very intelligent bibliographer and theological writer of Augsburg, gave more attention to the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum than anyone else of his generation. He obtained it after considerable delay and with some difficulty. After reading the preface, in which Labbé explains his plan, he characterized Labbé's flamboyance as "really gorgeous indeed (satis profecto splendidam Praefationem)."[79] In order to justify his criticism of the book, he reprinted the eighth index-a list of men who had compiled bibliographies (bibliothecae) and similar general works-and added a supplement to show how many titles Labbé had overlooked. Spitzel's additions amount to nearly one hundred titles, which are grouped in sixty categories. They show that Spitzel understood the true nature of a bibliography of bibliographies, but they do not show the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum to be seriously incomplete or unsatisfactory. Some additions-for example, the Oriental bibliographies by Paul Colomies-were published after Labbé had given the last touches to his book or indeed after he had died. Others are bibliographies hidden in non-bibliographical works. For example, one can suspect his pleasure in adding "Joh. Nadasi, in libro cui Tit. Annus dierum memorab. S. l. [sine loco] ed. Antw. 1665"[80] to the bibliographies of the Jesuits. Labbé was a Jesuit and seems to have been caught napping, although he had cited Rivadaneira's bibliography of the Jesuits and had published his own bibliography of French Jesuits. Spitzel did not point out that the first edition of Labbé's book was printed in 1664, a year before the book cited by Spitzel appeared, and that Labbé died in 1667, five years before the second edition was published. Labbé could not have included this title. Such victories are easy. Furthermore, Spitzel did not learn to use Labbé's indexes. His failure brings some comfort to a modern reader who does not find them very convenient. In his additions, for example, Spitzel cites some bibliographies of medicine. Labbé had found them, too, and had cited them in the first index, where they properly belonged according to his plan. Spitzel should have seen that Labbé cited Michele Poccianti's list of Florentine authors and Cornelius Loos's list of German authors in the right places.

A generation after Spitzel, J. F. Reimann (1668-1743), a theologian and the author of several very curious surveys of the history of learning, showed his full appreciation of Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum. His praise is significant because he was not accustomed to stint himself in condemning books that he did not like. In the Versuch einer Einleitung in die Historiam Litterariam, so wohl insgemein, als auch in die Historiam Litterariam derer Teutschen (Halle, 1708-1713), he writes: "Let this book of Labbé's be commended to you for diligent study above all others, for (disregarding the obscenities, which are scattered about in it like mouse dirt in pepper) it is one of the very best works in the field [of general bibliography]." He concludes his remarks on this field by recommending it a second time, when he mentions along with it the anonymous Bibliographia Historico-politico-philologica curiosa as a meritorious work.[81] After this, Labbé's book ceases to be mentioned because it was replaced by a new edition, to which we now turn.

In 1686 Antoine Teissier (1632-1715), a Frenchman who became historiographer at the court of Frederick I of Prussia, published a revised and enlarged edition of Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum and gave it a new title: Catalogus auctorum, qui librorum catalogos, indices, bibliothecas, virorum literatorum elogia, vitas, aut orationes funebres, scriptis consignarunt. This new title, which he signs "By Antoine Teissier (Ab Antonio Teisserio)," obscures the fact that the Catalogus is essentially a new edition of Labbé's bibliography. The title page gives credit to Labbé only for an appendix entitled Bibliotheca nummaria. Teissier could, to be sure, claim that his emphasis on eulogies, biographies, and funeral orations representing a category of biographical writings that Labbé had not included amounted to a sufficiently large alteration to justify a claim to authorship. We can at least say that he did not treat his predecessor generously. In a preface addressed to the reader he says that he has doubled the number of bibliographies cited and has added twelve hundred biographical works.[82] He has made the Catalogus both an index to biographies and a bibliography of bibliographies. He could scarcely have added the biographies if he had fully perceived the nature and usefulness of a bibliography of bibliographies.

Teissier was a diligent collector and a good organizer. Although he has corrected errors and has filled in gaps in the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum, he was not always as careful as he should have been. He added two new indexes: Index V (Catalogus, pp. 353-355), listing writers of biobibliographies of miscellaneous scope (i.e., works that were not restricted to men of a particular country or profession), and Index X (Catalogus, pp. 364-400), listing the men who were the subjects of biographies. These indexes show that Teissier was chiefly interested in biography. He transferred an index of last names that Labbé had given in the preliminary pages to the end of the Catalogus and made it Index XI. He showed bibliographical sense in perceiving and remedying the serious difficulties that the references to "Anonymus" in Labbé's indexes had caused. In order to run them down in the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum one must read the entire book. Teissier assembled all anonymous works in a single place ("Auctores anonymi," pp. 319-332) and thus made it possible to identify a reference rather easily. He removed the brief account of fictitious libraries to a new place (Catalogus, p. 363) and added to it a short but very interesting list of sixteen seventeenth-century catalogues of private libraries.

Teissier did not learn from Labbé's experience that titles should be cited in the original languages. Consequently, the Catalogus offers the same mixture of Latin titles translated from the vernacular and vernacular titles as we found in the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum. Probably he could not have achieved any substantial improvement in this regard. He could not see many books that he cited and the sources from which he took the titles usually gave them in Latin translation. Like Labbé, he cited bibliographical sections of non-bibliographical works.[83] He made some mistakes and corrected some that Labbé had made.[84] His most serious fault is his failure to verify his references. In the seventeen pages devoted to authors whose first names begin with "H" (Catalogus, pp. 121-138) Teissier cited eight books with the remark "He is said to have written-(scripsisse dicitur)." This number is much larger than it should be. Since he usually neglects to cite his source (Labbé is more careful in this regard), search for the title may be difficult. He is often careless in details.[85]

Teissier did not improve his technique in the Auctuarium, a supplement published in 1705. This book of 388 pages contains many new bibliographies and substantial additions to the indexes.[86] He has turned up some new bibliographers of classical times that had escaped Labbé and were not included in his revision of 1686. For example, he cites Xenocrates as the writer of a list of geometricians and Varro as the writer of a list of poets. He has brought up to date the list of English bibliographers by adding Henry Holland, who is the H. H. of the Herwologia,[87] Richard Smith, whose library was the subject of an early catalogue; and William Winstanley, who wrote on English poets. He knows "Rossus Warwicensus" from John Pits's biobibliographical dictionary of English authors, but of course has not seen Thomas Hearne's edition, which came out a few years later.[88] He is as neglectful as he had been in the Catalogus about giving dates and places of publication and citing authorities for titles that he has not seen and works in manuscript.

Labbé's original plan survived without substantial change in Teissier's revision of 1686 and supplement of 1705. In the Auctuarium, the fourth index, "Writers on Various Subjects (De variis argumentis scriptores)," has grown enormously. If Teissier had given any attention to remaking the structure of the book, it might have suggested to him the idea of an alphabetical subject index. He has no longer adhered strictly to listing bibliographies in terms of men who specialized in various subjects but shifted somewhat in the direction of an emphasis on the subject. He could have introduced many practitioners of various arts and sciences into the first index, but his decision to put them into the fourth index shows a breaking down of the scheme that Labbé had invented. When he says (Auctuarium, p. 398) that the seventh index will supplement the list of library catalogues, which are in the eighth index, he is confessing to uncertainty about the scheme. Wavering of this sort is evidence that he did not fully understand the scheme or did not choose to adhere to it.

Although scholars no longer remember Antoine Teissier and his bibliographies, the Catalogus and the Auctuarium offer a uniquely useful summary of seventeenth-century scholarship. In them we find such bibliographies as a list of twenty-two medical bibliographers (Auctuarium, p. 288), fifteen writers (Catalogus, p. 349) on academies and universities (these authors are scarcely bibliographers, but contemporary practice did not separate them sharply from bibliographers), twenty compilers of catalogues of manuscripts (Catalogus, p. 352), twenty authors of lists of famous women (Catalogus, p. 352), and four bibliographers of dictionaries (Auctuarium, p. 298).[89] There is even a reference to a bibliographer of books of anagrams.[90]

The reception of Labbé's and Teissier's books shows that the world was not ready for a bibliography of bibliographies. We can see additional evidence to this effect in the announcement in 1680 of a bibliography of bibliographies that did not get into print. Cornelius a Beughem (fl. 1678-1710), a Dutch bookseller who compiled and published several bibliographies, borrowed the title Bibliotheca bibliothecarum from Labbé and the title Bibliothecariographia from Dudinck for books that never got into print. Presumably the Bibliothecariographia was a treatise on library science. In his subtitle Beughem makes clear what he intended to include in the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum. It was to be An Account and Fuller Listing of all Books and Works that Have Appeared up till now under the Titles Bibliotheca (Bibliography), Catalogus, Index, Athenae, etc.[91] We can perhaps infer that he did not include bibliographies published in non-bibliographical works. His bibliographies of incunabula and of medical, juridical, and historical writings as well as his survey of articles in journals (a Poole's Index at the end of the seventeenth century!) show him to have been a most diligent worker.[92] We can only regret his failure to print his two books on bibliography and library science.

With Cornelius a Beughem's unfulfilled promise of a Bibliotheca bibliothecarum, Antoine Teissier's Catalogus and Auctuarium, and Charles Mo?tte's lost manuscript bibliography of bibliographies that I shall mention in Chapter IV, the making of bibliographies of bibliographies came to a temporary end shortly after 1700. Scholars do not seem to have esteemed Teissier's books very highly then or later and Teissier himself concealed their nature by including a large number of biographies. The tentative efforts to write lists of books entitled Bibliotheca that might have developed into bibliographies of bibliographies are the subject of the next chapter, but it may be said in advance that they had no important result.

Explanations for the disappearance of bibliographies of bibliographies around 1700 are readily found. Even a casual reading of the subject indexes to Labbé or Teissier reveals few themes to attract eighteenth-century scholars, who were studying theological, political, economic, historical, literary, and scientific problems in new ways. The great encyclopedias, of which Moréri's Le Grand dictionnaire, first published at Lyons in 1674 and revised, enlarged, and supplemented down to 1759, is typical, gave scholars information that they might otherwise have sought in bibliographies. The changes in the intellectual climate around 1700 are too varied and numerous to discuss here. It is enough to note that they included the disappearance of bibliographies of bibliographies from the list of scholarly tools.

Lists of Books Entitled "Bibliotheca"

The listing of books that contain the word Bibliotheca in their titles is a special bibliographical development in the seventeenth century and continues into the eighteenth. It might have led by easy stages to making a bibliography of bibliographies, but it unfortunately attracted little notice and maintained a tenuous existence for only about a century. The word bibliotheca, which often appears in titles, has such more or less bibliographical meanings as bibliography, subject index, catalogue of a public or private library, and collection of materials dealing with a particular subject. Consequently, a list of books entitled bibliotheca has much in common with a list of reference works and, more particularly, a bibliography of bibliographies. Although there was no proper place for such a list in his Bibliotheca bibliothecarum, Philip Labbé included one under the heading Bibliotheca in an alphabet of authors.[93] This is an early example of a list of books chosen according to their titles.

Labbé limited himself strictly to works of a bibliographical nature. He did not, for example, include the collections of the church fathers that were very familiar to him, although they bore the title Bibliotheca. Many books that he cites are hard to identify: some titles seem to have been made up and others refer to books that were never printed. Labbé uses the term bibliotheca so loosely that we do not always know whether he is referring to a library and its catalogue (for example, Bibliotheca Augustana may mean the library or may be a short title for its catalogue) or a book (for example, Conrad Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis). In either case, he is thinking as a bibliographer, and we can easily conceive the enlargement of his list into a bibliography of bibliographies.

Labbé's classification of books entitled bibliotheca shows a remarkable understanding of their different kinds and calls attention to their remarkable variety. I cannot easily cite an equally instructive and suggestive review of bibliographies.[94] Labbé's classification is as follows: (1) Bibliothecae named for places (vel a locis dictae): Augustana,[95] Floriacensis,[96] Ingolstadiensis,[97] etc.: (2) bibliothecae named for persons (vel a personis): Borromaea,[98] Bodleiana,[99] Thuana,[100] etc.; (3) bibliothecae named for rulers (vel a principibus): Regia Gallica,[101] Caesarea,[102] Bavarica,[103] etc.; (4) bibliothecae named for religious orders (vel a Ordinibus Sacris): Augustiniana,[104] Carmelitica,[105] etc.; (5) bibliothecae named according to the subjects with which they deal (vel a materia quam tractant): Chymica,[106] Concionatoria,[107] Juridica,[108] etc.; (6) bibliothecae named according to their arrangement or like circumstances (vel a forma similibusve circumstantiis): Classica,[109] Selecta,[110] Universalis.[111]

The anonymous author of The Newly Opened Library (Die neu-er?ffnete Bibliothec), in which good information about libraries as well as convenient directions for acquiring, maintaining, and using them are put into the hands of students and inquiring friends. To which are added: the chief European libraries and what travelers ought to notice in visits to them (1702) hit upon the same idea of listing bibliothecae.[112] In this book a special section or appendix labelled "A List of Authors Who Have Written Books Entitled 'Bibliotheca' and Books about Libraries (Series Authorum qui Bibliothecas & de Bibliothecis scripserunt)" names books called bibliotheca, catalogues of libraries, and treatises on library science. The selection is obviously even more definitely bibliographical in character than Labbé's list had been. The compiler arranges the titles alphabetically according to the author's last names or, in the case of an anonymous work, according to an important word in the title. This arrangement and the choice of titles show that he had no knowledge of Labbé. Like Labbé, he includes none of the collections of texts that were entitled bibliotheca.

Our author begins with Valerius Andreas, Bibliotheca Belgica (1643), a biobibliographical dictionary of writers in the Low Countries. In the letter "A" he includes the Augustanae Bibliothecae Catalogus (1633), which he also enters under the name of the compiler, Elias Ehinger, librarian at Augsburg. He cites the Bibliothèque universelle, a critical journal edited by Jean Leclerc, because the title contains the word Bibliothèque. Such titles show that he was thinking in bibliographical terms, for Andreas's book and the Augsburg catalogue are bibliographies and Leclerc's journal was a review of current publications.

The titles in this list are interesting because some are rarely mentioned and others are difficult to track down. Examples are "Augusti sereniss. Ducis Brunsvicensis Bibliothecae Sciagraphia, Bibliothecae Catalogus. Wolfenb. 1650. in 4-to;"[113] "Henricii Furenii Bibliotheca Medica." Hafn. 1659. in 4-to;[114] "Hamburgensis Bibliothecae scripta memoria." Hamb. 1651. fol.;[115] and Bartol. "Moseri Thesaurus Bibliatricus seu Bibliotheca gemina Onomastica & Classica." Dilingii. fol.[116] The list includes a few autobibliographies, for example, those written by such librarians and bibliographers as Peter Lambeck (Lambecius) and Philip Labbé. The most surprising title that the compiler names is "Joan. Brunderii [sic] index librorum MS quae in Bibliothecis Belgicis extant."[117] This union catalogue of manuscripts owned in the Low Countries was made by the Belgian Dominican Johannes Bunderius or Bunderus (b. 1481 or 1482, d. 1557). Down to 1666 it is mentioned occasionally by men who had consulted it, but our author probably never saw it and no fragment of it is known to have survived the dispersal of Anton Sander's library. A reference to such a manuscript was by no means an idle display of erudition. Allusions in various seventeenth-century works show that men used this union catalogue. For example, the Spaniard Pedro de Alva y Astorga, the author of several very rare encyclopedic works, which were published at Madrid and Louvain, drew upon it, and the Italian Antonio Possevino quoted it in his Apparatus sacer.

This curious list in Die neu-er?ffnete Bibliothec shows some signs of carelessness. Its compiler has not seen all the books in it. For example, he assigns Petrus Bertius's catalogue of the university library at Leyden to 1591 instead of 1595 (this error is probably a slip of the pen) and mentions the famous ghosts announced by Jodocus a Dudinck. He credits the Philobiblon to both Richard de Bury and Richard Dunelmensis (De Bury's name as Bishop of Durham). With all its faults, this "Series" is nevertheless a respectable piece of work by a man who saw clearly the nature of a bibliography of bibliographies.

A generation later, in 1734, Johannes Gottfried Unger published a pamphlet entitled De libris bibliothecarum nomine notatis, a classified list of books entitled bibliotheca, and added critical and descriptive comments. Julius Petzholdt, who is often a severe judge, deals with it generously, when he says (p. 79) that it is worth a glance and can then be forgotten. Although he seems to be unaware of any predecessor, Unger's idea was not novel. His execution of the idea leaves much to be desired. Since his list contains few, if any, books that cannot be easily found elsewhere, his list has little value and his comments do not enrich it. His strict adherence to the task of collecting books entitled bibliotheca prevented him from seeing the possible greater usefulness of what he was doing.

After some general remarks on libraries and bibliographies and a definition of the task, Unger cites seven general works: Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum (he mentions here Teissier's Catalogus and Auctuarium, but he has not seen them); G. M. K?nig, Bibliotheca vetus et nova; Latinus Latinius, Bibliotheca sacra et profana; Jean Leclerc, Bibliothèque universelle et historique (this is the Bibliothèque universelle and its continuation, the Bibliothèque historique); Conrad Gesner, Bibliotheca universalis; Johannes Groeningius, Bibliotheca s[ive] codex operum variorum; and Louis Ellies DuPin, Bibliothèque universelle des historiens. "And these are the books entitled Universal Library or: Bibliography." His comments contain some information but do not on the whole show much familiarity with the books. For example, the remarks on K?nig's late seventeenth-century biobibliographical dictionary are lifted from D. G. Morhof, Polyhistor. He points out that the subtitle of Latinius's Bibliotheca gives a good idea of its contents: "Observationes, correctiones et variae lectiones in sacros et profanos scriptores, ex marginalibus notis codicum ejusdem [Latini Latinii] a Dominco Marco editae." In other words, the book is a miscellany of emendations and critical comments rather than a bibliography. He describes Leclerc's journals by a long quotation from the preface to the first volume. They are, he thinks, a better example of this genre of books than Latinius's collectanea. He dismisses Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis with the remark that it "also deserves mention (praeterea notatu digna est)" and a reference to Morhof, Polyhistor. He does not describe the book by Johannes Groeningius.[118]

Unger's account of forty-one theological bibliographies and collections of texts entitled bibliotheca is not altogether bad. He often quotes the titles of chapters from these books or says that a book is a collection of texts and not a bibliography. Much of this information was even then available in well-organized reference works, and Unger's only contribution is the selecting of the books entitled bibliotheca. His account of legal bibliographies begins with Martin Lipenius, Bibliotheca juridica, "which was published at Frankfurt in 1607 as a folio and was enlarged by F. G. Struve in 1720." This is not a good start, for the first date is wrong (it should be 1679) and he would have found five more legal bibliographies entitled bibliotheca by opening Lipenius. In this category he cites nine more titles, counting three works by Caspar Thurmann as one book. This combination is not particularly objectionable. Thurmann had made a classified legal bibliography and finding no publisher, had printed portions as small bibliographies. Unger then proceeds to historical, medical, and philosophical categories, but we need follow him no further. He finally resigns himself to naming titles in a confused order. His disappointing performance has the merit of naming books called bibliotheca, but it does not suggest, as Labbé and the anonymous author of Die neu-er?ffnete Bibliothec had done, that they were primarily interesting as bibliographies.

The sixty folio pages (double columns) filled with entries beginning with the word bibliotheca in Michael a San José, Bibliographia critica (1740-1742) have the appearance of a list of books, but on closer examination many titles prove to be made up. In other words, San José offers what amounts to a general survey of bibliography. Since his book is almost unknown and the entries are often curious, a brief description will not be out of place. The articles are arranged alphabetically according to the adjective that follows the word bibliotheca. Thus, the list begins with J. F. Reimann, Bibliotheca acroamatica (Hannover, 1712), a condensation of Peter Lambeck's catalogue of manuscripts in the Imperial Library at Vienna. The next entry consists of two columns headed "Bibliotheca Adriani Baillet" and is a brief discussion of the Jugemens des savans (1685-1686) and a long summary of a prospectus of a philosophical dictionary that Baillet planned but never published. More entries follow in an alphabetical order according to proper names or adjectives derived from proper names or the subject matter. Laurentius de Cremona, Bibliotheca aethiopica is entered under "Aethiopica," and Albert Bartholin, Liber de scriptis Danorum under "Alberti." It is difficult to discover the plan of arrangement, and equally difficult to see the reasons for choosing the books. The presence of more than twenty entries entitled "Bibliotheca Biblica" is not surprising, but eleven botanical bibliographies and twelve pages summarizing the Linnean classification seem an unnecessarily generous allotment to that subject. A few pages later San José cites collective works-not bibliographies-that deal with Byzantine history and canon law, but he ordinarily limits himself to bibliographies and biobibliographies. He shows no sense of proportion in the choice of titles. Out of hundreds of regional biobibliographies he chooses one for Naumburg for mention. It can have meant very little to most readers of his book, and he might have omitted it. A "Bibliotheca occulta concionum P. Paulini a S. Joseph" (Rome, 1720) did not deserve three pages or a revision of Antonio León Pinelo, Epitome (an early bibliography of American subjects) five. San José is careless with names and titles. Martin Hancke, the writer of a Silesian biobibliography (p. 528), acquires an Oriental look, when he is called Han Kii. San José's strange medley may yield a curious bit of information now and again, but it need not detain us longer.

The last list of books entitled bibliotheca is the Dissertation sur les bibliothèques (1758) by J. D. Durey de Noinville (1683-1768).[119] He does not hold to the purpose announced in the heading "Alphabetical list of both works published under the title of bibliothèque and printed catalogues of collections in France and foreign countries."[120] He offers virtually a bibliography of bibliographies. His use of an asterisk to mark works containing an alphabetical index of authors shows some bibliographical sense, but the lack of a clear plan of selection and organization makes the book unusable. In a hodgepodge of seven hundred and fifty titles-I take the figure from Besterman-Durey de Noinville may list a book according to its author or its subject without any apparent reason for his choice of either method. His knowledge of available bibliographies is entirely inadequate. The accounts of reference books dealing with Belgium, church history and France are scanty,[121] the list of learned journals is almost worthless,[122] and the remarks about journals entitled Mercure exceed somewhat the scope of his enterprise.[123] In addition to these faults Durey de Noinville makes bad mistakes in details.[124] His virtually worthless compilation yields an occasional nugget, but such discoveries are rare.[125] His book is only interesting or important for showing how a bibliography of bibliographies might have grown out of a list of books entitled bibliotheca.

The efforts that we have surveyed in this chapter produced nothing of lasting value. The list written by the author of Die neu-er?ffnete Bibliothec did not lead to either a bibliography of bibliographies or a guide to reference works. Durey de Noinville's disorderly book was not good enough to suggest making anything better. All these writers worked independently and made little or no use of their predecessors. We might see in this fact an omen of the course of bibliographies of bibliographies in the next century.