It is located in the architectural complex of the Cathedral of Verona and is considered the oldest library in the world still in activity. It is not a record celebrated with a big drum, because the Chapter Library has simply existed since Europe, in the form we know, did not yet exist.
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The foundation dates back to the 5th century as an emanation of the Scriptorium of the Schola majoris Ecclesiaea book workshop where the Canons of the Cathedral Chapter edited and composed books on parchment for the education of future priests. The first certain documentary evidence is the Codex of Ursicinoby the priest Ursicino, who, after having copied two hagiographic works (il Vita Sancti Martini of Sulpicius Severus and the Vita Sancti Pauli primi eremitae of San Girolamo) affixed his signature with the indication of place and date — Verona, the calends of August of the year of Agapito’s consulate, i.e. 1 August 517 AD We must, however, underline the presence of even older codices, such as the De Civitate Dei of Sant’Agostino and those of Gaius, which could trace the foundation of the library back to at least the previous century.
Earthquakes, plagues, Napoleon and Allied bombs
Surviving sixteen centuries is also a question of luck, and La Capitolare, over the years, has taken on the connotations of an immortal building to say the least: it survived an earthquake in 1117, the plague, Napoleon’s robberies, the flood of 1882 and the bombings. Each of these events left a mark. The Adige flood of 1882 ruined over 11,000 parchments with mud, while the aerial bombardment of 4 January 1945 hit and destroyed the main hall. On that occasion the librarian Giuseppe Turrini – the same one who had worked on the restoration of the flood damage – had already saved the manuscripts and incunabula. The less valuable volumes left under the rubble were mostly recovered.
There is also an episode that smacks of legend: in 1630 the plague hit Verona and killed two thirds of the inhabitants, including the prefect of the library Agostino Rezzani, who had hidden the oldest manuscripts. With him the exact location of that priceless heritage was lost, which would remain hidden for over a century, until Scipione Maffei, a leading figure of eighteenth-century Italy, made a fundamental contribution, assisted by Canon Carinelli, in rediscovering the ancient manuscripts.
The heritage: over 1,200 manuscripts and three unique pieces in the world
The Capitolare houses a collection of over 1,200 manuscripts, including unique works in the world, with texts relating to theology, law, poetry, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, botany and history. Added to these are approximately 100,000 printed volumes including incunabula, sixteenth-century, seventeenth-century and modern texts, plus an archive of approximately 11,000 parchments, the oldest of which dates back to 710.
Three pieces deserve separate mention. The first is the one already mentioned Codex of Ursicinophysical evidence that the scriptorium was active in the 6th century. The second, also mentioned at the beginning, are the Institutions of Gaius, dating back to the 5th century, the only text of classical Roman jurisprudence in the world that survived the Byzantine manipulations of Justinian’s reform, preserved in the form of a palimpsest, i.e. a recycled manuscript. The third is theVeronese riddleone of the first attestations of a language transition between Latin and vernacular, pinned to the margin of an 8th century codex. That little enigma scribbled in the margin of a Spanish codex is, in fact, one of the first documents written in what would become Italian.
From Dante to Charlemagne: who attended the Capitulary
In the fourteenth century the rooms of the Capitolare had become a center of cultural aggregation, and both Dante Alighieri, in 1320, and Francesco Petrarca, in 1345, passed through them. Before them, Charlemagne and his son Pippin had relations with the Veronese Chapter. Later, the German epigrapher Barthold Georg Niebuhr in 1816 was the first to identify the text of the Institutions of Gaius, one of the most famous philological discoveries of the 19th century.
The library is still open to scholars, historians and researchers who access it to analyse, transcribe and interpret the manuscripts, without forgetting the continuation of cataloguing, conservation and restoration activities. Fifteen hundred years, and the work is not done.
Useful information
When: permanent
Where: Verona Capitolare Library Foundation, entrance from Piazza Duomo 19
Opening hours: every day from 10:00 to 18:00, closed on Wednesdays (last entry at 17:30).
Tickets: can be purchased on shop.midaticket.it
Official website: bibliotecacapitolare.it
