The role of the friars’ libraries in the Middle Ages has generated a large literature, especially lists of books or the inventories of the vast libraries of the Sacro Convento in Assisi, the Basilica del Santo in Padua, Santa Croce in Florence and San Fortunato at Todi. Such libraries sustained and informed the friars’ studies and teaching, playing a central role in the scholastic life of the order. A team of scholars has now carried forward this examination of the friars’ books and conventual libraries from the Renaissance to the modern age and has opened up research on the later period of Franciscan history with realignment of theological studies in the aftermath of the Council of Trent. Papers by Edoardo Barbieri, Ugo Rozzo, Francesca Nepori, Domenico Ciccarello, Giovanna Granata, Giovanni Grosso, Antonella Mazzon, Flavia Bruni, Massimo Carlo Giannini, Gabriella Zarri and Fabienne Henryot were delivered at Assisi between 18 and 20 October 2018.

Domenico Ciccarello's ‘Tra grandi bibliotheche e grandi lettori: i Conventuali’ traces the question of learning and books from the Regula bullata and the general constitutions of the order. More than once the author points to the recent research by Pietro Maranesi. Theological study presupposes books, as Bonaventure pointed out in his Epistola de tribus quaestionibus ad magistrum innominatum, a treatise which is cited from the Seraphic Doctor's Opera omnia of 1898 rather than from the more recent edition of Fr François M. Delorme of 1951. Books were the key to the friars’ studies and their successful programme of expounding the Gospel to contemporaries. The general constitutions of Narbonne in 1260 continue the theme raised by Bonaventure in his afore-mentioned treatise. Attention was given to the provision of books and the need to take care of them, especially for students at the studia generalia. Once again the author prefers to cite Fr Michael Bihl's edition of the general constitutions in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum of 1941 rather than the new edition published by Frs Cesare Cenci and George Mailleaux in 2007. The author does the same with the edition of the statutes for the order promulgated by Benedict xii's Redemptor noster on 28 November 1336 and edited by Fr Michael Bihl in Archivum Historicum Franciscanum in 1937 rather than the second volume of the general constitutions prepared by Cenci and Mailleux in 2010.

There are two parts to Giovanna Granata's contribution, ‘Dalle povere origini alle grandi bibliotheche: gli Osservanti’. The first focuses on Il patrimonio librario dei conventi degli Osservanti and the second on Le librarie. The study opens in 1600 with the request from the Procurator General, Francesco da Lugnano, to the minister provincials to register details of collections of books. The returns filled fourteen volumes of the Vatican Library and were deposited in the Archivio della Congregazione dell'Indice. The provinces of Milan, the Veneto, Bologna, Tuscany, Umbria, Rome, Calabria, Puglia and Campania and Sicily were of particular interest to the author. Despite the lacunae, the evidence amassed was extensive, embracing 330 friaries and a total of approximately 82,000 books. In the province of Bologna we have the names of at least three friars entrusted with the task of compiling the inventories. Livio da Imola was the friar for Imola and Arcangelo da Bussetto for Bobbio. The books in question were for the most part printed volumes, with a modest number of manuscripts. On p. 190 n. 7 information on the number of manuscripts which were obtained by the Observant communities is supplied. The writings of friars loomed large in the lists submitted in July 1600. The treatises of John Duns Scotus, Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales and other Franciscan authors enjoyed some popularity.

Edoardo Barbiero's ‘I francescani italiani e i libri: dal manoscritto alle edizioni di stampa (xv–inizi xvi secolo)’ allocates much space to Jordan Dinslaken of Cologne, who was active as a bookseller and editor in the Veneto in the first two decades of the sixteenth century. In 1520 he was the first bookseller of Lagunato to be accused of importing Lutheran books to Italy only three years after Martin Luther's protest. The first five volumes printed by Dinslaken reflect his interest in Franciscan texts. A note in another manuscript identifies him as a donor of books to the friars – ‘opera divi Ambrosij donavit fratribus minoribus Sacri Montis d(ominus) Jordanus d(e) Dinslaken Alemanus anno d(om)ini’ on 7 April 1521. Copies of Bonaventure's Legenda maior sancti Francisci in Italian, the Fioretti and the poems of Jacopone da Todi were printed between 1470 and 1490 at Rome, Milan and Florence. Lorenzo da Venezia, a Conventual friar and a master of theology, collaborated in the first printed edition of the Bible by Nicholas Malerbi in 1471 and then was superior (probably minister provincial). He installed a printing press at the friary of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice between 1474 and 1478. The Observants, too, were active in editing and printing books and this was exemplified by Federico da Ròdigo. He was born around 1430 and entered the community of San Francesco at Mantua, where he served as lector at the theological school. Between the end of 1460 and the beginning of the 1470s he was in contact with the Marchese, Ludovico Gonzaga. A decade later he was transferred to Venice, where he devoted himself to the revision of some important theological texts, according to the Roman rite.

This is an attractive collection of studies on diverse aspects of the friars’ book collections in the Renaissance. It offers a sample of the theological tastes of the friars and the books which nurtured their studies. The volume should whet the appetite for what might be called the second period in Franciscan history in the world of the early printing presses. Each of the three main strands of the Franciscan tradition, the Observants, the Capuchins and the Conventuals, is well represented.