a cura di Neil Harris, 13 (2012), n. 4, p. 489

At the end of the sixteenth century, some fifty years after its foundation in 1542, the Congregazione della Sacra Romana e Universale Inquisizione, more simply known as the Inquisition, ordered a full-scale bibliographical inventory of the holdings of monastic libraries in Italy. Long, handwritten lists arrived, were filed and duly forgotten about, until quite recently when they were rediscovered as some sixty large bound volumes in the Vatican Library. Though errors and inaccuracies abound, these inventories tell us a great deal about the make-up and organization of religious libraries at a very precise moment in time and so they have become the object of a large-scale project aimed at transcribing and editing them. The papers published here, mostly dealing with test cases, were presented at a seminar in Rome in May 2009, and are signed by Monica Bocchetta, Rosa Maria Borraccini, Margherita Breccia Fratadocchi, Flavia Bruni, Luca Ceriotti, Domenico Ciccarello, Carmela Compare, Sara Cosi, Federica Dallasta, Anna Delle Foglie, Giovanna Granata, Giovanni Grosso, Valentina Lozza, Roberto Rusconi, Romilda Saggini, Elena Scrima, Rosaria Maria Servello, and Paola Zito. The quality and the extent of the indexes also deserve praise.;