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Incunabula

The Collection of Incunabula testifies of the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere present in the religious and educational institutions, and also within the cultured circles in the old Dubrovnik Republic. Considering the provenance, age and rarity, along with the content, authors, material equipment etc., these incunabula are of utmost significance in the total corpus of incunabula in Croatian libraries as part of the national and European printed heritage. The incunabula kept in the Dubrovnik Research library were printed between 1469 and 1500 in 56 European printing centres in numerous cities: Augsburg, Bologna, Brescia, Brno, Cremona, Firenzea, Mainz, Milan, Nuernberg, Padua, Rome, Strasbourg, Tarvisio and Venice. The collection contains 81 volumes of incunabule. Almost all of them were written in Latin, except several Petrarca's works and a medical encyclopaedia Liber de Homine by H. de Manfredis published in Italian.

As for the origin of the incunabula, 45 of them comes from the library of the Collegium Ragusinum (former Jesuit college in Dubrovnik). Four titles come from other monasteries: two from the Benedictine monastery of St. Jacob in Dubrovnik, one from St. Dominic's, and one from an unidentified monastery. One was presented to the Library as a gift in 1932 (author Dragišić, shelfmark Ink. 45), and four have been purchased recently. The rest come from unknown secular sources (most likely private libraries). Based on the ex-libris inscriptions we can identify the family libraries of Bona, Caboga, Gondola, Gozze, Gradi, Pozze and others. Five of the incunabula bear the ex-libris of father Marin Gundulić(Gondola), the founder of the Jesuit college, which confirm that the books used to be his private property. The oldest incunabulum in our collection is De Bello Gallico, ... by Julius Caesar, printed in Rome in 1469 (godine (Cajus Iulius Caesar ; ed. Iohannis Andreae. – Rome : in domo Petri de Maximis [Conradus Suueynheym et Arnoldus Pannartz], die uero. XII. mensis maii 1469 [12. svibnja 1469]). – (Ink. 5), which is also thought to be the oldest completely preserved incunabulum in the wider region. The most recent title is Najmlađa je Psalterium secundum usum Romanum (Ink. 44) printed in Mainz at the famous J. Schffer on 15th February 1500.

 Content-wise, these are mainly theological, philosophical and historical works, but there also examples of medical field, rhetoric, poetry (Petrarca), grammar books and dictionaries and several editions of the Bible. Among history books, the most famous are two editions of Hungarie Regum chronica by  Johannesa de Thwrocz, both from 1488, with very detailed woodcut illustrations.

Among the Croatian-provenance incunabula, the rarest and most valuable is the exquisitely illuminated incunabulum by Juaj Dragišić De natura caelestium spirituum quos angelos vocamus (Ink. 45). Printed in Florence in 1499, commissioned by the Dubrovnik Senate, it was finally gifted to the City of Dubrovnik and its library by Sir Arthur Evans in 1932. Of the twenty known copies of this work, this is the only one decorated with illuminated miniatures of gread artistic value. The text on the title page is framed in numerous multi-colored miniatures, figures of angels, crests and the portrait of St. Blaise – patron of Dubrovnik. Incunabulum No. 73 (Uocabolarius utriusque iuris) contains the ex-libris of Sigismund Đurđević and his indexes, summaries and comments of the collection of Ragusan laws and notes about legal practice in civil courts. The collection also contains three incunabula printed by Andrija Paltašić from Kotor and three printed by Dobrić Dobrićević from Lastovo. The Dubrovnik Research Library has 42 incunabula which are so far known to be the only Croatian copy. The Catalogue of the Collection of Incunabula can be found on ZDUR digital platform.