La biblioteca conventuale di Sant'Agostino di Crema tra XV e XVI secolo

The article aims to reconstruct the book heritage of the convent of Sant'Agostino di Crema, the parent house of the Observance of Lombardy (founded in 1439), in order to better define the cultural guidelines of the Augustinian Friars in the context of the Congregation of the Lombard Augus-tinians between the 15th and 16th century. The library, dispersed after the Napoleonic suppression of the convent, is reconstructed on the basis of three main documentary sources: the Liber expensarum fabricae of the convent, the inventory of the volumes stored in the convent at the end of the 16th century compiled by the Sacred Congregation of the Index librorum prohibitorum (contained in the ms. Vat. Lat. 11285) and the inventory of the convent's manuscripts compiled in the 18th century by the Augustinian scholar Tommaso Verani. The study of the library's book heritage, compared with that of the other neighbouring Augustinian libraries of the Observation of Lombardy (Milan, Bergamo, Cremona), allows to outline the two fundamental values of the friars' culture: on the one hand, the Augustinian ratio studiorum, still Medieval, defined by Egidio Romano; on the other hand, the openness towards humanistic culture which represents a typical trend of the Observation of Lombardy, born within the Order with specific intentions of spiritual renewal. In this perspective, the article's last paragraph deals with the possible relationships between the Augustinian Lombard convents and the secular schools of grammar in the context of Lombard pedagogical humanism.