The library of a “provincial scholar”: the Canon Marco Moroni (ca. 1520-1602)

Abstract

Marco Moroni died between 1599 and 1602. He left his library as legacy to the Friars Capuchins in Bergamo. The library consisted of about 1130 editions, and it was at the time the largest collection of books in Bergamo, even larger than the local monastic libraries, surveyed by the investigation of the Congregation of the Index between 1599 and 1603. The intellectual morphology of this collection, studied through two inventories post-mortem, refers to the bibliographic canon of the Counterreformation, whose centrepiece is represented by Theology, Exegesis, Ecclesiology, and Patristics. All these subjects made alone half of the collection. At the same time, the book collection reflects the life of its collector, attracted from both the model of rigour Reform of Cardinal Borromeo – in which he also took part –, and intellectual and religious heterodox influences, confirmed by the presence of about fifty prohibited books in the library, and by the inquisitorial trial in which Moroni was involved between the Seventies and the Eighties.