Itinerari di viaggio in Terra Santa del Quattro e del Cinquecento nelle biblioteche francescane di Gerusalemme

The General Library of the Custody of the Holy Land and the Library of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem held collections of ancient books of great relevance. One of the most important is the collection of travel accounts from the Holy Land from the Middle Ages until today. The antique part of this collection is constituted of about 150 printed editions, which also include copies dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries, with the texts of Bernhard von Breydenbach, of the so-called friar Noè (actually a revisiting of Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s account), of Burchardus of the Mount Syon, of Antonio Cruzado and others. The collection is valuable not only because the single items are sometimes of extreme rarity, but also because books are held in the same place that they describe. The collection was constituted progressively, also with documentary purposes, but it is not rare to find books donated to the friars by pilgrims at the end of their journey. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the Custody played a key role not only in promoting the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but also in the elaboration of the image of the Holy Land constructed in Europe between the Middle and Modern Ages. The friars contributed in fact in the writing of accounts that then became guides for those who undertook the journey, physically of just “in spirit”. This essay, as result of a cataloguing work conducted in Jerusalem, aims to present the rare books collection of the Custody, focusing in particular on the 15th and 16th century copies, with analytical bibliographical descriptions and the reconstruction of the stories of single copies (provenances, owners, uses…).