Franca Trasselli

The monastery of S. Salvatore a Settimo, near Florence, founded in the 10th century, joined the Cistercian Congregation of ‘‘San Bernardo in Italia’’ in 1497 and was suppressed in 1782; its MS library was substantial. In the 17th century a large group of MSS was transferred to the main house of the Congregation, S. Croce in Gerusalemme of Rome. This paper aims at providing a census of the surviving MSS, which are to be found all over the world. More than a hundred have been identified. Main places of conservation are Florence and Rome, in Florence the Laurenziana Library, the Central National Library, the archiepiscopal Seminary (ex Cestello Nuovo), the Archivio storico dell’Istituto degli Innocenti, the Archivio di Stato. In Rome all the MSS have been directly inspected, at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, the monastery of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, the Vatican Library.

Gioacchino Besozzi (Milano 1679 - Tivoli 1755), a cistercian monk, who became Cardinal of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, was a scholar and a book collector. When he was abbot, the building of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme library, called the Sessoriana, was finished and frescoed, and a bust of pope Benedict XIV, sculpted by Carlo Marchionni, was placed in the hall. Artistic shelves, medals and paintings, including some by Pieter Paul Rubens, adorned the library. All the extant MSS acquired by Besozzi for the Sessoriana are examined: most of these are now in the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome, a few are scattered in other libraries. Chronology of acquisition and provenances, old indexes, bindings, shelf-mark and arrangement of Besozzi’s manuscript collection are here investigated.