Elisa Andretta et al., « I linguaggi del mondo. Religione, lingue e storia naturale: i cantieri della Biblioteca Vaticana (XV-XVI secolo) », HAL-SHS : histoire, ID : 10670/1.52wq9o
The article offers up a number of reflections on the Vatican Library –from its origins in the fifteenth century to the years of Sixtus V’s pontificate– as a centre for the recovery of ancient texts – both sacred and profane,and for the study of language and of natural knowledge. Combiningan examination of the library’s institutional history and its key figures withthe history of the projects and cultural practices that emerged inside it or inrelation to it, the article adopts a unitary perspective in looking at two fieldsof knowledge which an anachronistic view of the relationships between disciplinesoften tends to separate, but which at the time were closely intertwined:the study of languages – the languages of sacred texts, but also thelanguages of the different sources of evangelization – and natural history.These domains of knowledge, in fact, shared common actors, instrumentsand working practices which manifested themselves in different ways withinthe papacy’s various cultural programmes. Starting from these two fields, thelong time period proposed will make it possible to better grasp the dialecticbetween continuity and change in the papacy’s cultural policies betweenthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, their relationship with humanistic cultureand the political and religious aims connected to the reassertion of Romeand of papal primacy both after the period of the Conciliarism and the confessionalbreak that occurred with the Reformation.