Provenance Puzzle #3 solved!

Michael Widener
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Charles du Moulin, Consilia quatuor (1552)


Another provenance puzzle solved! I was intrigued by the inscription on the title page of Charles du Moulin’s Consilia quatuor (Paris, 1552), because I had remembered seeing the same inscription on a law dictionary I had purchased when I was at the Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas at Austin: Jakob Spiegel’s Lexicon Iuris Civilis (1554).

The colleague who took my place at Tarlton, Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch (Rare Books Librarian and Archivist) was kind enough to decipher the inscription, and provided considerable detail on the book’s early owner.

The inscription reads “Bibliotheca Slakoverdensis Scholarum Piarum”, i.e. the library of the Piarist college in Schlackenwerth, the modern day Ostrov, Czech Republic. The Piarists are a monastic order dedicated to education. The order’s official name is Order of Poor Clerks Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools (Ordo Clericorum Regularium Pauperum Matris Dei Scholarum Piarum).

In an email to me, Elizabeth explained that the order “was founded by Saint Joseph Calasanz, and recognized by Pope Paul V in 1617. In 1622, Gregory XV approved the Constitutions, and conferred the privileges of the mendicant orders upon the order. In 1666, Anna Magdalena Duchess von Sachsen-Lauenburg founded a Piarist college in what was then Schlackenwerth. The complex was consecrated in 1674. The community disbanded in 1876. Major donations to the library included the collection of Princess Maria Piccolomini. In 1910 the library was sold by the last owner – the municipality of Ostrov - to a Viennese second-hand bookshop. There are still quite a few books from this library for sale. For more information, see Wenzl Sommer, Kurze Geschichte der Stadt Schlackenwerth in Verbindung mit dem Piaristen-collegium: Nebst Anhang: Der grosse Brand am 9. Mai 1866 (Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 1866), available in Google Books.”

Thanks to Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch for solving this puzzle for me. An image of Tarlton’s Lexicon Iuris Civilis, with the inscription “Bibliotheca Slakoverdensis Scholarum Piarum”, can be seen on Tarlton’s website, announcing their current exhibit, “Rare Law Dictionaries at Tarlton Law Library.” If you’re in the Austin area, this exhibit is well worth a visit.

MIKE WIDENER

Rare Book Librarian


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