Un acquisto da farsi prudenter et sine strepitu: l’arrivo in Vaticana di manoscritti e stampati del Collegio Romano all’inizio del XX secolo

Based on a series of unpublished documents found in the Vatican Library and in the Vatican Archive, this article reconstructs the purchase in 1912 of manuscripts and printed books of the Collegium Romanum by the Vatican Library, during the papacy of Pius X. The purchase negotiations, which took place between June and July 1912, involved the praepositus and the consultor of the Roman province of the Jesuits, Augusto Spinetti and Pietro Tacchi Venturi, and the prefect of the Vatican Library, the Jesuit Franz Ehrle. The volumes arrived in the Vatican Library via the Jesuit novitiate of Villa Torlonia in Castel Gandolfo, where the manuscripts and books were transferred from the Collegium Romanum during the early 1870s, under the auspices of the then-praepositus generalis of the Society of Jesus, Pierre Jean Beckx. Furthermore, this paper sheds light on two hand-written indexes, now preserved in the Historical Archive of the Pontifical Gregorian University, which record the manuscripts and printed books of the Collegium Romanum acquired by the Vatican Library in 1912, as well as other codices purchased by the antique-book dealer Wilfred M. Voynich between 1911 and 1912, and now housed in various libraries. At the end, this work details the Vatican Greek manuscripts from the 1912 purchase (Vat. gr. 2341-2390), locating them in the above-mentioned indexes and identifying their previous owners where applicable.