Public Library

We are assembling this online public library where one can find a large assortment of relevant documents, articles, historical sources, music, artwork, etc. that every thinking person should have available to understand and appreciate the concepts of Renaissance Humanism.
This is neither an attempt to create an archive of the world's documents, nor an attempt to create a exeption list of "approved material". Instead, it is a necessary project to assemble an educational library in a world increasingly dominated by those who would like to suppress critical thought and those who would deny the validity of critical thinking as a politically incorrect form of elitism.
Throughout history, both state and private libraries blossomed during periods in which individuals embraced the idea of the importance of expanding human knowledge, literature and art.

The organizing of libraries as a means to preserve and promote the accumulation of human knowledge has been a key component in the ability of successive generations to make qualitatives leaps in progress beyond anything that oral tradition could provide.

Plato's Academy in 383 BCE and the Lykeion School of his rival student Aristotle, led to the creation of one of the largest private collections of the ancient world.

Alexander the Great contributed to this collection during his exploits. By 283 BCE he decided to found an ecumenical library of grand proportions and gave orders for the translation of all known writings into a cuniform script.

Ptolemy Soter fulfilled Alexander's vision by establishing the Great Library of Alexandria with the Greek language being the new standard.

The Poloemy's (Egyptian kings I, II,& III) built the collection to 750,000 scrolls using confiscation, purchases, and the "borrowing" of originals and then returning copies to the owners. These were scrolls of papyrus and leather, with title tags hanging from their ends as they were stored in pigeon hole racks.

Fires and theft during numerous invasions eventually led to the destruction of the library's great collection by the 7th century CE.

Meanwhile, in the Byzantine world with Constantinople established as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire in 330 CE, there was a potential for expansion and education and the building of great libraries. Themistio, under the direction of Constantine's son, Constantus II, undertook the establishment of a scriptorium employing calligraphers to collect and restore works of Greek literature and to reproduce multiple copies.

Unfortunately, by 546 CE Justinian insisted upon ruling a completely Christian state, in which pagans were not employed and teaching was forbidden to those considered sacrilegious Greeks. Instructions were issued to forbid the teaching of philosophy or the interpretation of law. Teachers and grammarians were imprisoned and tortured and their works were burned.

Not until the 9th century do we find a new attempt to create a classical library. Leo the Wise, also called the Mathematician, frustrated by the inability to find educated teachers in Constantinople, began to browse the various monastery libraries. He managed to uncover original works which formed his personal library. It was private libraries like this that maintained a humanist movement that exported over 1000 manuscripts to Italy. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, many fled to Italy and adapted their beliefs to the Italian Renaissance.

By the 15th century, with the ending of the longest period of the Black Plague and the opening up of world commerce and the great city states of Italy, there was a new inspiration and resurgence in interest in Greek and Roman art and literary classics.

In Venice, Cardinal Bessarion donated his personal collection to the Venetian Republic. The poet, Petrarch, then conceived of the idea of a public library in Venice and provided his collection of manuscripts from cathedrals and monestaries where he had lived in exile in France.

Cosimo de Medici, head of the famous Florentine banking family and patron of this new Renaissance, was just one of the many who were dedicated to building private libraries. His collection formed the basis for the Laurentian Library.

The Laurentian Library was built in 1559 in Florence in a cloister of the Medicean "Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze". It held 11,000 manuscripts and early printed books and was designed by Michelangelo.

By 1450,Johannes Gutenberg had developed a printing press with movable and re-usable type. This reprented the kind of technological breakthrough that catapulted the rate of the spread of human knowledge in a manner not seen since the oral tradition of storytelling was enchanced by written language. We are only now beginning another such leap for humankind in the potential of the Internet to collapse distance, time, and labor in the spread of ideas.

In the late 1600's, Thomas Bray established the first free lending library in the American Colonies.

Whenever classical humanist philosopy has fourished, we find a resurgence in the importance of libraries.

In 1731, Ben Franklin and others founded the first subscription library, "The Library Company of Philadelphia", where member dues paid for the books that were purchased and borrowing priviledges were free.

The Library of Congress was established by an act of Congress in 1800 when President John Adams signed a bill providing for the transfer of the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington.

Originally it was suppose to be only a refernce library for Congress and limited to books for their work alone.

In 1814, during the War of 1812,invading British troops set fire to the Capitol Building, burning and pillaging the contents of the library.

Within a month, retired President Thomas Jefferson offered his personal library as a replacement. Jefferson had spent 50 years accumulating books, "putting by everything which related to America, and indeed whatever was rare and valuable in every science"; his library was considered to be one of the finest in the United States. In offering his collection to Congress, Jefferson anticipated controversy over the nature of his collection, which included books in foreign languages and volumes of philosophy, science, literature, and other topics not normally viewed as part of a legislative library.

Jefferson wrote, "I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from their collection; there is, in fact, no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer."

In January 1815, Congress accepted Jefferson's offer, puchasing his 6,487 books, and the foundation was laid for a great national library. The Jeffersonian concept of universality, the belief that all subjects are important to the library of the American legislature, is the philosophy and rationale behind the comprehensive collecting policies of today's Library of Congress.

Today the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world with over 130 million items, including 29 million books.