Il regno degli Slavi (1601) by Mauro Orbini acquired on Zdunic Fund Important acquisition of a rare book by one of the founders of modern Croatian historiography
The University of Toronto Libraries has acquired an exceptional first edition of Mauro Orbini's Il regno degli Slavi [Realm of the Slavs], the first comprehensive survey of South Slavic history and an early contribution to Pan-Slavism. The purchase was made possible through the generosity of John and Anne Zdunic who for years have been supporting the development of the University's Croatian library collection.
The author of the book, Mauro Orbini (ca. 1550-1611/1614), was born in Dubrovnik, in Croatia. The area at the time was part of Venetian Dalmatia and Dubrovnik (Ragusa) enjoyed the privileges of an autonomous city-republic. Straddled between Western and Eastern Europe—Rome and Byzantium—and populated by an ethnic mix of Illyrians, Greeks, Romans, and Slavs, Orbini's Dalmatia in the 16th century was experiencing its cultural golden age. Orbini, after entering the Benedictine order, spent most of his life in various monasteries of the region. A short appointment as abbot of a monastery in Bačka, in Hungary, and occasional visits to archives in Italy were the only occasions on which he left Dalmatia. Following a dispute with fellow monks at the monastery on the island of Mljet, he was sequestered from 1604 to 1606 in the monastery on the island of Šipan. During his stay there, Orbini wrote his Zrcalo duhovno (Spiritual Mirror), an adapted translation of the Italian work by Frate Angello Elli da Milano, Specchio spirtual del principio, e fine della vita humana (1598). This work, translated into what Orbini called "dubrovački" (the language of Dubrovnik) is an important milestone in the development of the Croatian literary language.
Il regno degli Slavi (Pesaro: Girolamo Concordia, 1601) however, remains Orbini's principal achievement. He wrote it to bright to light the history and past glories of the Slavs, writing about their origins, the history of the kings of Dalmatia, and the medieval history of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Bulgaria. The work gained greater importance among the Orthodox South Slavs when Tsar Peter the Great commissioned Sava Vladislavić to translate it from Italian into Russian. The abridged translated version was published in St. Petersburg in 1722, and was an important influence on Russian Balkan policies and on national consciousness among Serbs in the 18th century. Orbini's book was also for a long time the authoritative source for the study of late medieval South Slavic history, particularly the history of the Croats, Serbs, and Bulgars, and contributed to the formation of future historians from those nations and the ideological concept of Pan-Slavism.
The copy purchased for the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is from the book collection of the Earls of Macclesfield, once one of Britain's greatest privately-owned libraries. The library of some 12,000 books and manuscripts mostly written or published prior to 1750 was formerly housed in the earls' ancestral home of Shirburn Castle in Oxfordshire, and is being sold in a series of auctions by Sotheby's. The Orbini volume, formerly the property of Thomas Augustus Wolstenholme Parker, 6th Earl of Macclesfield, includes a 19th-century bookplate with the Macclesfield coat of arms bearing the motto "Sapere Aude" above "North Library." The handsome 473-page folio is bound in 18th-century speckled calf gilt and includes two full-page engraved plates of warriors representing Slavo del Mar Germanico and Slavo dell'Illyrico. Further illustrations consist of two Slavic alphabets, numerous coats of arms, woodcut initials, head-pieces, and ornaments.
Of historical interest are a number of deleted names, and sometimes of longer passages, a result of the expurgation by the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church. Among the thirteen names that were cited by Orbini on the Index Liborum Prohibitorum [List of Prohibited Books], and that have been expurgated from the text of Il regno degli Slavi are Byzantine Greek scholar Laonicus Chalcondyles (c. 1423-1490); and a number of German scholars: historian Johannes Thurmayr [Aventinus] (1477-1534); cartographer, cosmographer, and Hebraist Sebastian Münster (1488-1552); humanist and Protestant reformer Kaspar Hedio (1494-1552); poet and classical scholar George Fabricius (1516-1571); historian Hans Löwenklau [Leunclavius] (1533-1593); and theologian David Chytraeus (1531-1600). For the most part those censored from the text by the Inquisition were either Byzantinists, sympathetic with the Humanists, or adherents to Lutherism. Orbini's work itself was placed on the Vatican's index of prohibited books in 1603 by order of Pope Clement VIII.
The University of Toronto Library is grateful to John and Anne Zdunic for funding the purchase of Il regno degli Slavi, a work that helped launch modern Croatian historiography.
http://content.library.utoronto.ca/pjrc ... 5644835589
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