Elena Tîrziman the Special Collections of the National Library of Romania

Elena Tîrziman The Special Collections of the National Library of Romania Bibliotheca Nostra : śląski kwartalnik naukowy nr 4, 10-29 2014 BIBLIOTHECA NOSTRA. ŚLĄSKI KWARTALNIK NAUKOWY NR 4 (38) 2014, S. 10-29 ELENA TÎRZIMAN The National Library of Romania THE SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OF THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ROMANIA The National Library of Romania owns two patrimonial collections located in Bucharest and Alba Iulia (the “Batthyaneum Library” Branch). The core of the Special Collections in Bucharest is represented by a series of archives that belonged to the Romanian Athenaeum Library which subsequently grew and became more diversifi ed through various acquisitions, donations, and transfers. They currently hold almost all types of bibliophile and patrimonial documents. The “Batthyaneum Library” Branch of the National Library located in Alba Iulia (hung. Gyulafehérvár, lat. Apulum, germ. Weißenburg, since 1711 Karlsburg) was established in 1798 by the Roman Catholic bishop of Transylvania Ignác Batthyány (1741-1798), as a part of a cultural foundation originally called Institutum Batthyaniani Albae Carolinae. Bishop Bat- thyány’s personal collection was the core of the library. The publications (the manuscripts collection, together with the old books and the contemporary documents collections) now amount to 72,000 bibliographical units of ency- clopaedic nature. The library also includes a rich museum collection. The article highlights the most important documents part of these two collections and also provides information on the “Polonica” collection, part of the Special Collections of the National Library of Romania: documents of Polish origin, works which were copied, purchased or held by Poles or which deal with events in Polish history and the lives of Polish saints. The Special Collections of the National Library of Romania, the Bucharest Headquarters The core of the Special Collections in Bucharest is represented by a series of archives that belonged to the Romanian Athenaeum Library, a representative cultural and academic institution in the late nineteenth and ARTYKUŁY 11 early twentieth centuries1. The collections subsequently grew and became more diversifi ed through various acquisitions, donations, transfers, etc. They currently hold almost all types of bibliophile and patrimonial documents. The department is structured according to the specifi c content of each collection into seven separate compartments as follows: Bibliophile Docu- ments, Manuscripts, Historical Archive, Old Romanian Periodicals, Prints, Photographs, Cartography. In addition, the library has an Audio-video Documents Department which holds a collection of sheet music and collections of records on different media ranging from gramophone disks to CDs and DVDs. The Bibliophile Documents Cabinet holds about 53,000 bibliographical units – incunabula, old books, rare and bibliophile books, historical documents, bills. The Romanian book collection consists of 7,043 titles (12,638 bibliographical units) and includes rare books printed between 1508 and 1830 on the national and political territory of Romania, as well as in printing centres abroad, such as those in Uniev, Rome, Lvov, Aleppo, St. Petersburg, Venice, Vienna, Buda, Leipzig, Tifl is, Paris or Ausbach which printed Romanian books for the Romanian Principalities. The National Library holds in its collections old and rare prints such as: a copy of “The Slavonic Missal” printed by the monk Macarius, of Serbian origin, the only original copy on the Romanian territory of the “Slavonic Acts of the Apostles”, and one copy of the “Slavonic Prayer Book”, the lat- ter two having been printed between 1545 and 1547 by Dimitrie Liubavici. The modern bibliophile book collection is composed of rare and precious editions, editiones principes, author’s editions, luxury editions illustrated by renowned Romanian artists or having special artistic binding, editions printed on special paper or on precious materials. The editio princeps of Eminescu’s poems printed in 1883, as well as the editiones principes and the defi nitive editions of the classics of Romanian literature such as the representatives of the Transylvanian School, Timotei Cipariu, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Vasile Alecsandri, Mihai Eminescu, George Coşbuc, Alexandru Vlahuţă, Alexandru Odobescu, Mihail Sadoveanu, Camil Petrescu, Tudor Arghezi, etc. or of the historians Nicolae Iorga and A. D. Xenopol are worth being mentioned. The collection of books in foreign languages is highly humanistic – it contains almost all the classical authors from Antiquity to the twentieth century – editiones principes, fi rst editions, original and defi nitive editions, editions including scholarly comments by world famous personalities such as Donatus, Erasmus, Melanchton, Guillaume Budé, Paulus Manutius or Henri Estienne, editions illustrated by famous artists such as Pierre Le Rouge, Wolgemuth, Lucas Kranach, Gustave Doré, etc. 1 I.e., the collections of the “Ion I. C. Brătianu” Cultural Institute; the document collection of the “Al. Saint-Georges” Museum; of the “M. Kogălniceanu” Foundation; the “Scarlat Roset- ti”, “Exarcu”, and “Gheorghe Adamescu” collections. 12 BIBLIOTHECA NOSTRA. ŚLĄSKI KWARTALNIK NAUKOWY NR 4 (38) 2014 Fig. 1. Slavonic Liturgikon printed at Dealu Monastery by the monk Macarie in 1508. National Library of Romania, Special Collections Department, Old and rare Romanian books. Photo by E. Tîrziman The Collection of Bills includes documents various in terms of content: election posters of parties and personalities that ran for elections, calls regarding specifi c political or social events, instructions issued by the authorities, lists of subscriptions to raise money in order to build monuments, circular letters, ordination diplomas, certifi cates confi rming a Masonic order, decrees granting orders and medals, various calls including the call written and signed by Lajos Batthyány – “Romanian Brothers” or the call of King Ferdinand I of Romania to the citizens on the occasion of Romania’s joining the war, proclamations – for example, of Emperor Franz Joseph I to the peoples of the empire, on the occasion of his ascent to the throne, issued in Olmütz in 1848 or the release by King Carol I of Romania when the Balkan war broke out in 1913. The Manuscripts Cabinet contains nearly 40,000 bibliographical units, unique documents of great variety both in terms of presentation and source that have unfortunately been lesser studied so far. We are referring to the Latin, Arabic, Persian, Slavic, Greek manuscripts: approx- imately 30,000 bibliographic units of correspondence and diary pages (Titu Maiorescu, Martha Bibescu, George Enescu, Simona Lahovari, Mir- cea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Vasile Voiculescu, Mihail Sebastian etc.), liter- ARTYKUŁY 13 ary manuscripts (O. Goga, N. Iorga, I. Pillat, Duiliu Zamfi rescu, L. Blaga, Camil Petrescu, M. Sadoveanu, Tudor Arghezi, G. Călinescu, etc.). There are, for example, two large paper rolls containing fragments of Torah in Hebrew. There are about 20 Turkish fi rmans and an Indian manuscript on dried palm leaves. Of the bibliographical units mentioned above, around 1,500 book-type manuscripts, 35,000 bibliographical units constitute the collection of letters, the rest – to 40,000 – are various documents and even offi cial papers. The book manuscripts vary in format, dating, and content, from a large format manuscript written in Latin on parchment dating from the fourteenth century to a small Persian manuscript of hexagonal shape, from ancient religious texts, such as a Slavic Gospel Book from the thirteenth century to the Great Canon of Agapius the Cretan copied and illustrated in the nineteenth century by the miniature artist Picu Pătruţ. The collections also include manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Turkish. The Historical Archive Cabinet accommodates a substantial archival collection regrouped in separate archival units: the “Saint Georges”, “Brătianu”, “Kogălniceanu”, and “Bălcescu” collections. It also includes Fig. 2. Document issued by Antioh Cantemir’s chancery, September 1696. National Library of Romania, Special Collections Department, The Historic Archives. Photo by E. Tîrziman 14 BIBLIOTHECA NOSTRA. ŚLĄSKI KWARTALNIK NAUKOWY NR 4 (38) 2014 a historical documents collection dating from the fi fteenth to eighteenth centuries and other smaller collections that are currently being set up. The “Saint Georges” Collection is the largest of them, with over 4,000 archival units. It originated in the collections of the “Saint Georges” museum and contains a wide variety of documents covering the Romanian history of the sixteenth to the twentieth century, perseveringly collected by Alexander Saint Georges. The collections of documents and plans of architects Dumitru Berindei (1832-1884), Paul Smărăndescu (1881-1945), Dimitrie Maima- rolu (1859-1926), Edmond van Saanen Algi (1871-1938) are an important resource for researching the Romanian architecture history. The documents of the “Brătianu” Collection refl ect the activity of the Forty-Eighter generation who took part in the events that led to the devel- opment of modern Romania: the Revolution of 1848, the post-revolution- ary period, the exile of some revolutionaries, the political and diplomatic efforts prior to achieving the Union of the Romanian Principalities in 1859, the reign of Alexandru Ioan Cuza, the establishment of the monarchy in 1866, the War of Independence, and the proclamation of the Kingdom in 1881. The political life in the second half of the nineteenth

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