On 21st May, 1836 the director of the Universitat de València, Francisco Villalba, signed the original and the copy of the book stock that were introduced at the UV library coming from the Montesa convent.  Around six hundred titles were incorporated to the academic institution together with the funds of other disentailed institutions. All of them were used to open the University public library in 1837.

 

The purpose of the current exhibition is to make known a small sample of the books that have been entered in the UV library coming from the library of the order of Montesa. Originally, this library was located on the Montesa’s castle that has been destroyed by a earthquake in 1748. After the disaster, the books that had survived were moved to the Temple de Valencia palace. To these books, it were added those acquired by D. Vicente Blasco García between 1767 and 1771, conforming a library that constitutes a faithful reflection of the cultural context of the Valencia of the second half of the s. XVIII. It is an erudite collection, where you can find from ecclesiastical literature to the great representatives of Spanish humanism of the s. XVI or the figures of the historical science of the s. XVII.

 

The procedence of the books are known thanks to the printed exlibris and manuscripts. The most part of them are applied labels on the front cover or in the respect sheets at the beginning of the book. Apart from give us information about the owner, it provides us data of capital importance to discover the "order of books", that is, to know how "knowledge" was organized in the convent library. Others have preserved the silent testimony of handwritten notes in which the ownership of the books is remembered by some distinguished Montesinos, among whom are the principal Vicente Blasco García and Francisco Estruch.

 

This exhibition has been designed following the ordination by subjects conceived by the bibliographer and German scholar Oliver Legipont. This system divides the knowledge into four classes (theologic, philosophic, historic and legal) and into eighteen subjects. Furthermore it is contemporary to the time when Vicente Blasco acquired the majority of copies of the Montesa bookstore and served as a model for the organization of the university library after its reopening in 1837.

 

Francisco M. Gimeno Blay

Bàrbara Barberá Matías

Carlos M. García Giménez