Chartaceous presence, material impact: Works by Paduan Aristotelians in German libraries (a bibliometric study)

Author: Dr. Heinrich C. Kuhn

Paper read: 2000-09-04, Padova, Palazzo del Bo
Occasion: International Symposium In memoriam Charles B. Schmitt: The presence of Paduan Aristotelianism in Early Modern Philosophy

Nota bene: This paper represents the texts as I read it at Padua (except some minor oral additions not present here). Thus the text presented here is slightly (slightly only!) superior to the handout provided for the participants at the conference. Things that should be added have not yet been added, things that should be changed have not yet been changed ….

Nota bene etiam: Reactions to this paper were extremely helpful in some cases: Some of the participants of the conference (especially Jill Kraye, David A. Lines, Charles Lohr and Ian Maclean) shared with me important and valuable arguments and information; lots of thanks to all of them!!! I'll try to incorporate as much of it as possible into the version of this paper that is to be printed with the acts of the conference. If that version should be in some aspects better than the one presented here, most of such improvement will be due to these participants to the Padua conference.

Document created: 2000-09-14
Last update: 2000-09-14

Content:

• Text of the paper
• Appendices (Tables provided for additional illustration):
  • Appendix A: Popularity of Works by Paduan Aristotelians in German Libraries
  • Appendix B: Popularity of Paduan Aristotelians in German Libraries: Table by authors
  • Appendix C: Popularity of "fields" of philosophy of nature
  • Appendix D: Popularity of "fields" of philosophy of nature (more detailed view)
  • Appendix E: Popularity of "fields" of logics
  • Appendix F: "Impact" of "Paduan Aristotelians" on various German libraries
• Footnotes

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Text as it was read:

Chartaceous presence, material impact:

Works by Paduan Aristotelians in German libraries

(a bibliometric study)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

a philosopher might read another philosopher's text and understand it and use it and quote it, · he might read the text and not understand and not use and not quote it, · he might quote the text and not read it, he might use it and not understand it, etc. § Many of the papers at this conference on "the presence of Paduan aristotelianism in early modern philosophy" will deal with the traces of such behaviour. I will not do so. Instead I'll deal with part of the "material" preconditions that have to be fulfilled in order that a text can be understood, or misunderstood, or used, or read, or quoted:

In order to have an impact a work needs to be read; in order to be read it has to be in a place where the reader has access to it; part of the results of past presence for access is nowadays presence in libraries.

Most of the papers presented here were or will be about conclusions that can be drawn from real books. My paper is about virtual books: about representations of books in cataloguing databases, in the German regional library union catalogues. Most of this paper presents inferences from the result of a census of works by "Paduan aristotelians" ; [1] printed before 1700 [2] and catalogued in these databases: I searched for works by 13 persons [3] who taught philosophy at Padua between the advent of printing and the mid of the 17th century, and fed the results of these searches (records representing a bit more than 1100 books) into a database of my own, added some flags that might help to group those records, and then tried to find out things that can be found out by grouping and counting these records.

At the basis of most of what I'll talk about in this paper are numbers.

Most of these numbers are (at least to some degree) false . [4]

There are a number of reasons for this. As I promised to Prof. Piaia to talk for not longer than 30 minutes and 10 seconds, and as the main subject of my paper is not "Caveats concerning the data collected by Heinrich C. Kuhn for his paper", but "Chartaceous presence, material impact: Works by Paduan aristotelians in German libraries (a bibliometric [5] study)", I'll just mention the main reasons: § Not all German libraries have some presence in the catalogues I used; § not all the libraries present there are present there with all of their holdings; § the records presented there are at various levels of cataloguing, § they reflect different rules for cataloguing , [6] § cataloguing into these databases of works by Paduan aristotelians is not yet finished but continued probably even as we meet here, § and, as already mentioned: I did not search for works by just anybody who ever taught philosophy in Padua in the old times, but just for works by 13 persons: · Gaetano da Thiene, · Nicoletto Vernia, · Agostino Nifo, · Pietro Pomponazzi, · Marco Antonio Zimara, · Marcantonio Genua, · Archangelo Mercenario, · Vincenzo Maggi, · Alessandro Piccolomini, · Giacomo Zabarella, · Cesare Cremonini, · Giorgio Raguseo and · Fortunio Liceti . [7]

In spite of this: the data collected and its use will in any case permit the demonstration of part of the kinds of inferences that can be drawn from that types of data, they may serve as an example of the bibliometric studies that have become possible thanks to the existence of electronic union catalogues, and they may even permit the presentation some results that may present some of you with some - though probably minor - surprises and some food for thought.

If the assumption, that our interests in the works of Paduan Aristotelians are more or less the same as where the interests of those who from the 15th century onwards bought their books and thus sometimes made them the material basis for presences of the thought and works of Paduan Aristotelians in German early modern philosophy and preserved them in a way that led to their entry into and survival [8] in a German library, if this assumption about the identity of interests now and then is correct, and if the interests of those present at this conference are somehow representative of the interest that nowadays exists in works by Paduan Aristotelians that had major impact on early modern Germany: if these assumptions are correct: then we may expect, that the work by Paduan aristotelians that has most material impact, that has most chartaceous presence in German libraries, that this work is a text about some or several aspects of epistemology, and that it is with quite some probability a work by Giacomo Zabarella.

And indeed: this is almost true:

With 41 copies each Zabarella's Opera Logica and his De rebus naturalibus head the list, then there is quite some gap, and only then the graph of popularity begins to look smooth as one would assume it to do. The popularity of the two mentioned works by Zabarella is clearly extraordinary; on the first three places of the "ordinary" list, however, there are three works, some of you might (like me) not have expected there: Nifo's De pulchro et amore (with 24 copies), Liceti's work(s) about monsters (with 23 copies) and Nifo's De auguriis with 22 copies . [9]

This may serve as a first indication of possible future surprises. An indeed: Once we look not at the popularity of single works (or collections thereof), but at the popularity of the authors, the winner is no longer Zabarella, but - the winner is - Agostino Nifo (with 247 copies), closely followed by Fortunio Liceti (with 246 copies), Zabarella comes in third (with 175 copies - just some 70% of the number of copies existing of works by Nifo), closely followed by Alessandro Piccolomini (with 172 copies), then there is a considerable gap, after which there are Pomponazzi (79 copies), Zimara (69 copies) and Cremonini (42 copies). None of the other authors reaches 30 copies:

If we look at the most popular authors and have a look at which were the subjects in which they are the most popular, the results we get, are these:

Zabarella is the only one present primarily as a writer on logic, all the others amongst the 5 most popular authors examined here are most prominently present as authors of works about philosophy of nature - including Alessandro Piccolomini.

Once we completely shift our focus from authors to subjects, we see the following:

More than half of the total of the copies examined here are copies of works on philosophy of nature.

This probably merits a more detailed look at the popularity of the various "fields" of philosophy of nature that are represented in the sample : [11]

No single field is predominant, but that there are less works for Physics , [12] than for subjects concerning the generation of animals [13] and De generatione et corruptione [14] might be not exactly like what one might have expected . [15] Of the 90 copies that represent the context of De cœlo 68 are copies of rather "general" works, whereas 11 are copies of works concerning phenomena, that for Aristotle himself where either inexistent (like new stars) or 'meteoric' phenomena (like comets) and 11 concern the prime mover. Of the 64 copies concerning De generatione animalium 17 concern the subject of "innate heat" (that may be dealt with also as "belonging" to Meteora IV ). [16] By far most popular, however, with 168 copies, are works, that in some way or other can be assigned to De anima. A more detailed look shows a (probably not surprising) great popularity of works concerning human immortality, and a (perhaps more surprising) considerable interest in works concerning the sensitive soul:

If we ask for the most popular authors amongst those writing on philosophy of nature, we get the following answer:

Liceti outnumbers Nifo by 153 to 126; Piccolomini follows third with 83 copies. Zabarella (whose De rebus naturalibus is, as mentioned, one of the two most popular books by Paduan aristotelians found in German libraries ), [17] follows fourth with 74 copies.

Let's shift the subject.

As you will remember, after "philosophy of nature", the second most popular special field of philosophy was logic . [18]

There is no single copy for a single work dealing specially with the categories, - and the Sophistical Refutations are more popular than the Topics, - but at least one thing is consistent with the traditional views of the areas of importance of logical works by the Paduan aristotelians: Analytica posteriora is the work triggering the most popular special texts by them in this field.

And when asking for the most popular Paduan authors in the realm of Logic, we get an answer, that is - again - rather as expected (and, just for a change, doesn't need graphic illustration): Zabarella leads with 93 copies, followed by Nifo with 31 and Zimara with 4.

It is apparently intuitive, that the chances for resonance in Germany of works by the Paduan authors this paper is about would be dependent not only on the prominence of the author and the interest in the subject, but also on the language, the work is available in. And not all of the editions in the sample are editions of Latin texts: there are present also three vernaculars: Italian, French and German. Thus it might be worthwhile to examine whether there are indicators for a language barrier (with a special look at Italian). Of the about 400 editions present in the sample 303 are in Latin, 90 in Italian, 6 in French and 2 in German.

If we look at the average number of copies found per edition according to the language of that edition, we might seem to find an indication of such a language barrier:

Latin is most prominent, German follows next, and Italian editions enjoy just a bit more than half the popularity of the Latin ones.

However: This is misleading [19] : The picture is quite different if we look at the works instead of the editions: in this case the picture is as follows:

Latin remains most prominent, but the difference to Italian is a minor one. It can be concluded, that publishing in Italian instead of Latin did not considerably diminish the chances of a certain work to have some sort of impact in Germany.

Up to know I have dealt with "Germany" without distinguishing between any possible difference of "profile" between the 46 libraries in the sample. One might want to ask, whether this is licit. I plotted the popularity of the various subjects in the various libraries, and received the following graph:

With the possible exception of some over average representation of works on philosophy of nature and on practical philosophy in the Bavarian State library , [20] the profiles are (at least in my present view) similar enough.

It might, however, be worth mentioning, that, although 46% of the libraries in the sample that hold copies of works by "Paduan aristotelians" are situated in the north of Germany, they do hold only 23% of the copies in the sample . [21] This might be an indication that the impact of the "Paduan aristotelians" on Germany was a predominantly southern phenomenon. But: This may be so, but it is not necessarily so: it might be as well an artefact created by different progress of retrospective cataloguing activities in the south and in the north of Germany and by the absence of records from the Berlin/Prussian state library due to the inexistence of electronic catalogues for older materials held there . [22]

From a conclusion not drawn from the sample to uses not made of the sample: I have now talked for some 23 minutes and presented you with something like a dozen examples of what types of information can be gathered · and what conclusions can - by the use of bibliometric data - be drawn concerning the impact of Paduan Aristotelians in Germany. Additional questions can be asked and can be answered by use of the same (or similar) data. I will not try to do so here and now, but I will provide you with some examples of the additional uses that type of data might be usable for:

One might go into more detail concerning those minor differences in the "profiles" of the libraries that have holdings of works by Paduan Aristotelians ; [23] one might ask what are the libraries of major impact for single authors [24] - this last one is by the way indeed a question that shows some differences in profile of the single libraries.

If one should ask what is the best German library for studies on the impact of the Paduans in Germany, there would be an obvious answer: Munich's Bavarian state library, with its 284 copies far ahead of the 98 copies of its closest competitor, the Dresden state and university library; although there would be an obvious restriction to the truth of this statement: The Munich state library is an ideal place for such studies, unless there are five persons from Munich preparing at the same time papers for the same Padua conference on "the presence of Paduan aristotelianism in early modern philosophy" … .

There are a number of other questions one may ask on the basis of bibliometric data like the one used here, questions the answers to which are less dependant on 21st century connections between Padua and Munich; § such questions concern e.g. the provenience of the various copies in the cases where information about proveniences is available ; [25] § one can examine what works and what editions where bound together to one physical volume , [26] and by examining the years of the editions bound together one can try to get information about the time when those editions where collected together into one volume . [27]

One can ask for the "other activities" of those (German or other) printers who printed the works in the sample , [28] and in the case of the Germans either build an new, not too tiny database for the thousands of records available for Wechel , [29] marvel about the transnational Ciotti enterprise and their reasons to print a certain title either at Venice or at Cologne, find Nifo's De falso diluvii prognostatione printed by Grimm & Wirsung next to works by and concerning Luther and works in German and Latin by Erasmus , [30] one may suspect that one underestimated the Schönwetter family, wonder whether the almost complete concentration of the Sybold press [31] on material of interest to medics might have been among the reasons of the short life of that press , [32] etc. etc. pp.

One could try to find out, whether German printers had a more successful approach to the German market, than the Italian ones - and find out, that most probably late printers in the Netherlands had ; [33] and that the situation shows no clear winner of the possible contests with the exception of Zimara's Antrum and Problemata (where there is a clear predominance of German prints) and Zabarella, where non-Italian printers seem to rule the German market.

Let that suffice as examples for questions that can be asked and answered on the basis of bibliometric data like the sample used here.

The conclusions one may draw from the responses to the various questions I dealt with in the first (and illustrated) part of this paper, are rarely - if ever - sensational, but some of them might be worth meditation - especially as the conclusions either come as questions, or can lead to questions. Conclusions and questions like these:

• The prominence and popularity of both Zabarella's Opera logica and his De rebus naturalibus is extraordinary, and sets these two works aside from all the others examined here. One might try to find out, why they were of that eminent interest.
• Both Nifo and Liceti had more impact in Germany that one might expect judging by the number of studies hitherto dedicated to them: Their impact in Germany - and the reasons for this impact - might be worth having a look at.
• The main impact, the Paduan aristotelians had, was their impact in the various areas of natural philosophy. Additional interest in the influences they had on philosophy of nature in Germany might be legitimate.
• The texts focussing on matters from · cosmology and · generation of animals and · generation and corruption are definitely not without prominence; the history of these fields in German natural philosophy and the influences of the Paduans in these fields might merit attention.
• There was more interest in matters concerning the sensitive soul than one might have expected; this subfield might be deserving some closer investigation.
• There was apparently more interest in Paduans dealing with the Elenchi than in Paduan texts on Topics. Perhaps one should devote more study to these texts and their influence.
• As there were apparently no high language barriers for Italian texts in Germany, perhaps additional consideration of the influences of texts in Italian language on German philosophy authors might lead to some interesting results.

My impression is, that bibliometric studies like those presented to you here and now, tend to produce results that seldom are of the type where the mind comes happily to a rest, but that these results are most often of the kind that induces to pursue further questions, of the kind that stimulates to investigate additional problems.

The paper read to you here was something of an experiment. Whether you judge the experiment and its result to be of any value: I don't know. But if the results are of the type of results just mentioned, studies like the rather tentative and imperfect one presented to you here, might be of some potential service to further studies of intellectual history.

Thank you very much for your attention and your patience. And thanks in advance for your comments and your questions.

Thank you.

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Appendices

Popularity of works by Paduan Aristotelians in German Libraries

Author	Abbrev. title	Number of copies
Zabarella	De rebus naturalibus	41
Zabarella	Opera logica	41
Nifo	De pulchro (et amore)	24
Liceti	De monstris	23
Nifo	De Auguriis	22
Pomponazzi	Opera	20
Zabarella	De doctrinae ordine apologia	19
Piccolomini	Della istituzione della vita	18
Pomponazzi	De immortalitate	18
Mercenario	Dilucidationes	17
Piccolomini	Della Sfera	16
Nifo	De falsa diluvii prognosticatione	16
Liceti	De lucernis	16
Pomponazzi	De nat. eff. causis sive de incatat.	15
Piccolomini	Alessandro	14
Nifo	In De anima	14
Zabarella	In De anima	14
Nifo	In Metaph.	13
Zabarella	In An. post.	13
Piccolomini	Della Filosofia naturale	13
Nifo	De diebus criticis	13
Zimara	Tabula	13
Zimara	Theoremata	12
Zimara	Problemata	12
Zabarella	Tabulae logicae	12
Mercenario	De putredine	12
Piccolomini	Della istituzione morale	12
Piccolomini	Amor costante	11
Nifo	De intellectu	11
Nifo	In Meteor.	11
Zabarella	In Phys. (de nat. scient. const.)	10
Liceti	Pyronarcha	10
Zimara	Antrum magico-medicum	10
Zimara	Solutiones	10
Piccolomini	Della Sfera (lat.)	10
Liceti	Hieroglyphica	10
Piccolomini	Instrumento della filosofia naturale	10
Gaetanus <de Thienis>	Super De anima	10
Liceti	De quaesitis	9
Cremonini	De calido innato et semine	9
Pomponazzi	In Metero. 4	9
Liceti	De immortalitate	9
Zabarella	In Phys.	9
Nifo	In Metaph. 12	8
Piccolomini	Della creanza delle Donne	8
Zabarella	Opera	8
Nifo	In De coelo	8
Liceti	De ortu animae hum.ae	8
Liceti	De pietate Aristotelis	8
Piccolomini	In Mechanic.	8
Liceti	Litheophosphorus	8
Piccolomini	Della grandezza della terra et dell'acqua	7
Nifo	In Soph. Elench.	7
Nifo	In Phys.	7
Nifo	In Av. De mixtione	7
Nifo	In An. prior.	7
Nifo	De primi motoris infinitate	7
Nifo	In Av. De subst. orb.	7
Liceti	De spont. viv. ortu	7
Gaetanus <de Thienis>	Super meteor.	7
Cremonini	De origine et principatu	7
Liceti	Viventes sine alimentum	6
Liceti	Anima non propensa	6
Liceti	Alleg. De gen.	6
Nifo	In Av. Destr. Destr.	6
Liceti	Ara Pythia	6
Piccolomini	Theoriche: dei pianeti	6
Liceti	De lucidis ...	6
Liceti	De intellecu agente	6
Nifo	In Av. De beat.	6
Vernia	De unitate	6
Vernia	De subiecto phil. nat.	6
Liceti	De annulis	6
Liceti	De anim. coext. corp.	6
Piccolomini	Ortensio	5
Maggi	In poet.	5
Liceti	Anima non tribuens	5
Pomponazzi	De nutr. et augm.	5
Liceti	Alas	5
Nifo	De nostr. calam. causis	5
Genua	In De anima	5
Liceti	De novis astris	5
Cremonini	Disp. de coelo	5
Liceti	De centr. et circumf.	5
Piccolomini	In Rhet. 3	5
Raguseo	De divinatione	5
Piccolomini	In poet.	5
Zimara	Antrum magico-medicum (dt.)	4
Nifo	De immortalitate animae	4
Liceti	Mulctra: De c.i.	4
Nifo	De daemonibus	4
Liceti	De const. hom. in utero	4
Zimara	De primo cognito	4
Liceti	Ara mystica	4
Liceti	Athos	4
Liceti	Syr. Theocrit.	4
Liceti	De lunae luce	4
Liceti	De motu cometarum	4
Liceti	De natura et arte	4
Liceti	De natura primo movente	4
Liceti	De feriis animae	4
Nifo	In De interpr.	4
Cremonini	De formis 4 corp. simp.	4
Piccolomini	Delle stelle fisse	4
Nifo	Raggion. Moral.	4
Nifo	In Top.	4
Cremonini	Pompe funebri	4
Cremonini	Tract. 3 de sensibus	4
Cremonini	De calido innato	4
Nifo	In Ant. Post.	4
Nifo	De vera vivendi libertate	4
Pomponazzi	De reactione	4
Gaetanus <de Thienis>	De sensu agente	4
Genua	De immortalitate	3
Liceti	De lumine	3
Liceti	De transformatione hominum	3
Raguseo	Disp. peripat.	3
Nifo	Moralia	3
Pomponazzi	Apologia	3
Liceti	De analogia mundi et hominis	3
Piccolomini	In Rhet.	3
Liceti	De centru motus caeli	3
Nifo	De verissim. temp. signis	3
Nifo	In An. post.	3
Cremonini	Expl. proem. phys.	2
Liceti	De natura assistente	2
Nifo	De his que ab optimis Principibus agenda	2
Piccolomini	De iride	2
Liceti	Ara Lemnia	2
Piccolomini	De novo calendario	2
Liceti	De comet. etc.	2
Piccolomini	Alessandro?	2
Piccolomini	Prima parte della filosofia naturale	2
Nifo	Dialectica ludrica	2
Liceti	De prop. operum hist.a	2
Pomponazzi	Q. an actio realis	2
Liceti	De vita	2
Liceti	Enc. Ep.	2
Liceti	Hydrolog. peripat.	2
Nifo	In Ptol. Apotelesm.	2
Cremonini	Nascimento	2
Liceti	Syr. Publ.	2
Pomponazzi	De immisione et remiss. form.	2
Cremonini	De quinta caeli subst.	1
Zimara	Problemata (franz.)	1
Gaetanus <de Thienis>	In De caelo	1
Zimara	In Phys.	1
Zimara	Problemata (dt.)??	1
Gaetanus <de Thienis>	Super Phys.	1
Gaetanus <de Thienis>	De intent. et rem. form.	1
Gaetanus <de Thienis>	De reatione	1
Nifo	Cortigiano	1
Piccolomini	Della istituzione morale (franz.)	1
Piccolomini	Della sfere	1
Piccolomini	In Mechanic.(it.)	1
Piccolomini	In Rhet. 2	1
Piccolomini	Istrumento	1
Nifo	In Rhet.	1
Piccolomini	Lettura	1
Piccolomini	Sacfrificio	1
Nifo	In De hist. an.	1
Nifo	In De gen. et corr.	1
Piccolomini	Theoricae: dei pianeti	1
Liceti	Laureae	1
Pomponazzi	Tractatus contradictionum	1
Zimara	De movente et moto	1
Vernia	Visiones	1
Zabarella	De medio demonstrationis	1
Liceti	Opera	1
Piccolomini	Della Sfera (franz.)	1
Zabarella	De methodis	1
Zabarella	De natura Logicae	1
Zabarella	De propositionibus necessariis	1
Zabarella	De quarta syllogismorum	1
Zabarella	De regressu	1
Zabarella	De speciebus demonstrationis	1
Zabarella	De tribus praecognitis	1
Nifo	De sensu agente	1

Appendix B:

:Popularity of Paduan Aristotelians in German Libaries: Table by authors

Author	Copies of his works
Nifo	247
Liceti	246
Zabarella	175
Piccolomini	172
Pomponazzi	79
Zimara	69
Cremonini	42
Mercenario	29
Gaetanus <de Thienis>	25
Vernia	13
Raguseo	8
Genua	8
Maggi	5

Appendix C:

Popularity of "fields" of philosophy of nature

Field of Natural Philosophy	Number of Copies
De anima	168
De coelo	90
In general or without special attrib. by hck	74
De generatione animalium	64
Meteora	46
De generatione et corruptione	43
Special problems	41
Physica	36
Miscelaneous	30
Mechanica	9
Mineralogy	8
De partibus animalium	7
De historia animalium	1

Appendix D:

Popularity of "fields" of philosophy of nature (more detailed view)

Subfield	Detail	Number of copies
In general or without special attrib. by hck		74
Physica	In general	35
Physica	Special problems	1
De coelo	In general or without special attrib. by hck	68
De coelo	"meteoric phenomena"	11
De coelo	near metaph: About god	11
De generatione et corruptione	In general or without special attrib. by hck	30
De generatione et corruptione	some "calculatoric" approach	13
Meteora	In general	21
Meteora	Special problems	16
Meteora	Liber IVus	9
De anima	In general	59
De anima	Vegetative soul	10
De anima	Sensitive soul	33
De anima	Intellective soul	23
De anima	On immortality	43
De historia animalium		1
De partibus animalium	In general or without special attrib. by hck	7
De generatione animalium	In general or without special attrib. by hck	47
De generatione animalium	De calido innato	17
Mechanica	In general	9
Special problems	Not linked by hck to *one* of Arist.'s treatises	41
Mineralogy	Not linked by hck to *one* of Arist.'s treatises	8
Miscelaneous		30

Appendix E:

Popularity of "fields" of logics (more detailed view)

Field	Subfield	Number of copies
In general or without special attrib. by hck		53
De interpretatione	In general	4
Analytica priora	In general or without special attrib. by hck	8
Analytica posteriora	In general or without special attrib. by hck	20
Analytica posteriora	Special problems	24
Topica	In general	4
Elenchi	In general	7
Not linked by hck to *one* of Arist.'s logical treatises		6
Not linked by hck to *one* of Arist.'s logical treatises	Dialectics	2

Appendix F:

"Impact" of "Paduan aristotelians" on various German libraries

Name of library	Copies	Region
BSB München	284	South
SuUB Dresden	98	South
SuStB Augsburg	82	South
UB Leipzig	71	South
SuUB Göttingen	66	North
UB München	64	South
UB Erlangen-Nürnberg	62	South
HAB Wolfenbüttel	56	North
UB Tübingen	37	South
StuUB Köln	31	North
UuLB Jena	30	South
HAAB Weimar	24	South
Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart	24	South
UB Mannheim	22	South
UuLB Halle	20	North
UB Freiburg	19	South
StB Trier	18	North
UB Augsburg	18	South
UB Rostock	10	North
UuLB Münster	10	North
SB Regensburg	8	South
Arnoldinum Steinfurt	7	North
Stadtarchiv u StB Soest	7	North
UuLB Bonn	7	North
Koeln Erzb.Dioez.	4	North
UB Heidelberg	4	South
UB Kiel	4	North
UuLB Düsseldorf	4	North
BVB: no library indicated	3	South
Konstanz, Heinrich-Suso-Gymnasium	3	South
Peutinger-Gymnasium (Ellwangen)	2	South
UB Greifswald	2	North
UB Konstanz	2	South
UB Würzburg	2	South
B.St.Albert Bornheim	1	North
HBZ Köln: keine Bibliotheksangabe	1	North
Historische Bibliothek der Stadt Rastatt	1	South
Historische Bibliothek der Stadt Rastatt im Ludwig-Wilhelm-Gymnasium	1	South
Leopold-Sophien-Bibliothek Überlingen	1	South
Marienbibliothek Halle	1	North
StiftsB Xanten	1	North
UB Bielefeld	1	North
UB Eichstätt	1	South
UB FU Berlin	1	North
UB PhTh HS Geistingen (Hennef)	1	North
ZB Med (Köln)	1	North

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Footnotes

[1] Joseph Freedman has warned (with good reasons) against the use of terms like "Aristotelian" as a label for 16th and 17th century philosophers (see Freedman, Joseph S.: Philosophy and the arts in central Europe, 1500-1700. - Teaching and texts at schools and universities. Aldershot [Ashgate] 1999, I, 10-13). The term "Paduan aristotelian" is used in this paper without any ideological load: it is used just as a sort of handy label equivalent to the longer "professors of philosophy subjects at Padua university in the later 15th, 16th and earlier 17th centuries".
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[2] Works printed after 1699 have not been included (thus e.g. there are no numbers for the Tübingen 1791 edition of Pomponazzi's "De immortalitate animae", and the same holds true for reprints, xerocopies, and all copies on Microfiche (at least wherever I was able to tell from the data in the catalogues that the record I was seeing was about such a thing ...).
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[3] A complete study concerning all of the "Paduan aristotelians" would have to include at least all those mentioned by Riccoboni (Riccoboni, Antonio: De Gymnasio Patavino ... Commentariorum Libri Sex, Patavii [Apud Franciscum Bolzetam] 1598 [he mentions 9 metaphysicians on f. 20vs, 34 professors for natural philosophy {incl. Parva naturalia} on f. 22v-24r, 39 persons reading on moral philosophy on f. 24rs, 45 professors of Logic in general, and 67 "Explicatores sophisticæ" on ff. 26v-27v]) and Tomasini (Tomasini, Giacomo Filippo: Gynasium patavinum ... Libris V comprehensum. Utini [Ex Typographia Nicolai Schiratti] 1654 [inter alia 27 metaphysicians p. 287-290 and 45 teachers of moral philosophy {p. 322-324}, not to mention those reading on natural philosophy and logic ...). To check for the presence of all of them probably would be something for a patient Hercules or a studious slave, in any case for somebody who strives for more perfection, than I do. I made, however, some probes for several of the authors not used by me for my sample, and found for none of those I probed for any hit in any of the German regional union catalogues (this includes F. Pendasio!). Thus my impression is, that I certainly did check only a tiny part of those names somebody really rigorous would have checked, but that going for all of the "Paduan aristotelians" from the advent of printing to ca. 1648 would not have led to a significantly increased sample - the most probably only "major" exception being the 11 copies of Bérigard's "Circulus pisanus" (less than 1% of the data in the sample, and not a very aristotelian text ...). (Please note, that I had not checked for works by Francesco Piccolomini - works by whom are present in many copies in German libraries - for the version of this paper that is intended for publication in the acts of the conference. [hck, 2000-09-14])
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[4] Though certainly not intentionally falsified ... .
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[5] Using bibliometric methods for studies on renaissance philosophy seems to be rare. The one major example that I know of is Blum's use of the Data contained in the "Studies in the Renaissance" and "Renaissance Quarterly" versions of Lohr's "Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries" (Blum, Paul Richard: "Der Standardkursus der katholischen Schulphilosophie im 17. Jahrhundert", in: Eckhard Keßler, Charles Lohr & Walter Sparn (edd.): Aristotelismus und Renaissance. - In memoriam Charles B. Schmitt. Wiesbaden [Otto Harrasowitz] 1988, pp. 127-148. This paper here might very well present the first use of a number of union catalogues for a bibliometric study concerning renaissance philosophy - certainly not an excuse for any of its shortcomings, but perhaps an explanation of some of the less evident ones amongst these shortcomings.
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[6] both of which will have led to some misattribution by me of some entries to a certain edition.
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[7] 22 other reasons for "problematic" numbers are: · due to inconsistencies in the union databases sometimes there is one entry for a certain edition and sometimes there are separate entries for texts contained therein; § as the catalogues don't give printers' names for all items, some editions may have been taken for one and the same, that are not identical; § due to the same cause some copies may have been correlated to the wrong edition; § I have not seen all of the texts this paper is about; some weird misconceptions about some of the books that I'll mention my have resulted from this; § specimens that are lost or destroyed have been included where bibliographic evidence of was available that they once existed; § some entries that apparently where entries for old prints may have represented xerocopies, reprints, and the like; § in the case of Gaetano da Thiene I did not create records for his edition of Albert of Saxony's Questions; § in the case of Alessandro Piccolomini · I did not enter data for the works he just edited, · his comedies are present only in part of the cases where they form part of a collection of works by him and other authors, · his de iride is present only in part of the cases where it goes together with Alexander, · poetical works are not present in cases where the attribution of the works to Piccolomini is due to the decision of a librarian and not due to date in available from the item itself; § in the case of Vernia I did create no records for his edition of Walter Burley's Physics-commentary; § in the case of Nifo I did · treat all versions of his commentary on De anima as one work, · and did do the same all versions of his Physics -commentary, · and his Metaphysics; · furthermore, I did not create records for his translations (Physics, De gen. & corr, De interpr., Topica, Parva naturalia); § in the case of Zimara I did include none of his editions; this probably has led to the absence of some records for editions and or copies that contain Aristotle's Problems together with those of Zimara; the editions of John of Jandun that come with Zimara's "annotationes" where likewise not included; § in the case of Mercenario I did not include records for Brigotti's "Theoremata philosophica"; § in the case of Genua I assumed, that the philosopher is not identical with the author of the same name who rote about pastoral theology; § in the case of Liceti · I did not include his "ad epistolam Tomasini de Petrarchae cognominis orthographia responsum" that is included in Tomasini's "Petrarcha redivivus (Patavii [Frambotti] 1650) · and I did treat all the versions of his works on monsters as just one work; § in some cases my own database will most probably contain typographical and factual errors that are due to my limited ability to type correctly and my limited knowledge about the works and editions I am writing about.
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[8] at least a survival long enough to leave traces in the present electronic catalogues (there are in the sample at least 5 BSB München copies that where destroyed in WW II and 1 copy of a book missing from UB München since at least 1869 ...).
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[9] For the rest of the "popularity list" see Appendix A .
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[10] It should be noted, that I did assign works with some astrological content (like Nifo's "De falsa diluvii prognostatione" and his "De diebus criticis" not to astrology, but to meteorology (special problems) and philosophy in general (subsubject "De divinatione"). Astrology is just used for books I did not know to deal with better, than to regard them as works of astrology pure, unmixed and proper.
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[11] cf. Appendix C .
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[12] 36
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[13] 64
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[14] 43
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[15] for more detail see Appendix D .
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[16] cf. the 9 copies of works especially concerned with the fourth book of the Meteora.
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[17] See above: Image 1
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[18] for detailed numbers see Appendix E .
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[19] because of the different number of editions found in the sample for works in the different languages
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[20] This focus on natural philosophy in BSB is even a bit stronger than in the graphic presented here, as for this graphic Nifo's "De falsa diluvii prognostatione" was not assigned to natural philosophy.
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[21] North: 44.65% of the libraries and 22.74% of the copies. South: 54.35% of the libraries and 77.26% of the copies.
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[22] cf. http://www.sbb.spk-berlin.de/deutsch/kataloge/bestandsnachweise.html (Version of document: 1999-03-29, seen 2000-08-08: predominantly post 1908 monographs presented electronically in the "BerlinOPAC"; a search there on 2000-08-08 for books by Zabarella resulted in just 3 hits, all of which where for editions from the second half of the 20th century)
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[23] asking for different rankings of popularity of single works or authors.
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[24] For Nifo the 5 most important ones are (in descending order of importance): BSB München, StUB Augsburg, UB Leipzig, UB München, SuUB Dresden; for Liceti we get SuUB Dresden, UB Erlangen-Nürnberg, BSB München, UB Leipzig, SuUB Göttingen; for Zabarella we find: BSB München, SuSTB Augsburg, UB München, UuLB Halle, HAB Wolffenbüttel; for Pomponazzi the top 5 are: BSB München, SuUB Dresden, SuUB Göttingen, HAB Wolfenbüttel, SuUB Augsburg.
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[25] for the cases for which there are data available from the catalogues used for the sample, the numbers are: · 32 copies known to have been formerly owned by private persons, · 7 copies known to have been formerly owned by university libraries, · 19 copies known to have been formerly owned by court libraries or other princely libraries, and · 3 copies known to have been formerly owned by monasteries. One should, however, be aware, that only very few libraries in the sample have up to now added provenience data to their electronic catalogues, and that even in such cases most probably provenience information exists in the "real" copies in cases where it does not exist in the records for these copies.
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[26] The data collected suggests, that the by fast most frequent case is the binding together of several works by one and the same author.
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[27] Here are some examples: § BSB München 2 A.gr.b. 260 : several works from one and the same year (1514), · same for 2 A.gr.b. 270 (1507), · same for 2 A.gr.b. 291 (1514), · 35 years difference for 2 A.gr.b. 296 (1524, 1554, 1559), · 2 years difference for 2 A.gr.b. 306 (1503-1505), · 13 years difference for 2 A.gr.b. 348 (1505-1518), · 54 years for 2 A.gr.b. 363 (1505-1559), ... § UB Leipzig: · 34 years difference for Anat.2220 (1631-1665), · two years for Philos.21-a (1503-1505, § etc. etc. pp.. It should be noted, that the data given in the prior part of this footnote is only for works by the 13 persons examined for this paper, and that works from different dates by other authors may as well also be present in these volumes. My impression is, that there are two quite distinct sorts of volumes: A) "bought together, bound together" and B) "later collectors' items". I have up to now not been able to discover any sort of reliable pattern accord to which a certain edition, work or author could be predicted to find its place with more probability into a volume of type "A" or "B". Nor is my impression, cat certain libraries have extremely predominances of either volumes of type "a" or "B" in their holdings.
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[28] Perhaps the most astonishing examples is Schiratti at Udine who seems to have striven on less than 10 authors, Liceti taking the lion's share, Tomasini following, and B. Selvatico and C. Bérigard being examples of other "Paduan" authors printed in that press.
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[29] 805 titles in the GBV-database, 963 for the BVB database, 2443 in the VK97 (which contains only data for records catalogued electronically before autumn 1997, but which is the only catalogue where you can search for publishers in cases where the local union catalogues do not index the publishers; it is a great shame indeed, that this database will become unavailable by end of this year [2000]!). BTW.: Zetzner is a publishing house that might (almost) as well be worth further study.
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[30] My impression is, that Grimm & Wirsung printed everything that hat chances to sell fast and high.
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[31] Publishing in 1528 Nifo's De diebus criticis.
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[32] apparently ca. 1528 to ca. 1537.
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[33] The Leiden Elsevier print of Cremonini's De calido innato and the Amsterdam Frisius print of Liceti's De monstris both led to more copies in the libraries in the sample, than did the corresponding Italian prints. In this context of potential interest: the 1534 Basle Hervagius print of Nifo's De auguriis is apparently the most popular edition of that work. That the Augsburg print of Nifo's De falsa diluvii prognostatione is found more often than any other edition of this work, may be due to regional proximity.
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