After almost twenty years of renovation, several hundred copies of extremely valuable books that were threatened with deterioration were recently returned to the Mostar Franciscan Library.
The work of restoring 869 copies of the immense library treasure of the Franciscan Province of Herzegovina, among which the oldest copies of books better known as “rara”, was carried out by experts from the Croatian State Archives (HDA) in Zagreb.
“The Franciscan library in Mostar is the central library of the Franciscan province of Herzegovina, and the Franciscan order in the description of its monastery always has three rooms: where to pray, where to eat and where to read. From the beginning, the Franciscans treated the library as something necessary and something that was part of the system of studying theology and preparing for the priestly and religious vocation,”said in an interview for Fena news agency, Fr. Ante Marić, head of the Franciscan library in Mostar.
Speaking about the history of the Franciscan monastery in Mostar, Fr. Ante recalled that it was founded in 1890, and five years later the first high school in Mostar and Herzegovina, in general, the Franciscan seminary, which had to have a library, was founded there.
The library survived the First World War and the Second World War and the Homeland War, when the area of the church and monastery was on the front line, and the friars of that time closed the windows with metal plates and sandbags.
“The church was demolished and the monastery was damaged, so the library “had its turn” only in 2005. The Province appointed me as the manager, and since I am not a librarian by vocation, I received permission from the late Provincial, Fr. Slavko Solda, to employ one professional person. That was Mrs. Zdravka Šilić. She knew the spirit of the library and she put our library on its feet,” Fr. Ante Marić reflected on those years.
Restoration of books
The oldest part of the fund, the Franciscan library, books printed in the period from 1455 to 1835, were in bad condition due to bad conditions.
“Before the renovation, the books were full of moths and dust, and when you touched them, the paper stiffened and crumbled. The windows were broken in the mentioned wars, both humidity and drought reached the books, and the only thing is that there was no fire. In 2006, we, especially Mrs. Šilić, processed 869 books and put them in the system, which was quite a job. Many books were without the first pages, and we looked for the same books in the libraries of the world, and many of our books are not available in any library in the world, so we also used searches on the Internet, in order to process them and learn as much information as possible about them,” said Ante.
Therefore, it was necessary to begin their restoration, which was an extremely expensive job. In that story, the then Minister of Culture in the Government of the Republic of Croatia, Božo Biškupić (Minister from 2003 to 2010), played a significant role.
“He was given an estimate of the value of our “rare” and an estimate of how much it would cost. He realized what a treasure this was and called the then director of the Croatian State Archives, Stjepan Ćosić, where it was decided that the books would be transferred to the HDA, where they would be restored, and the Croatian state would help through the Central State Office for Aid to Croats Outside the Republic of Croatia. Each year, funds were allocated for the restoration of books, and in the Archive, they restored as many books as they could,” Marić said.
The restoration process was carried out in the Central Laboratory for Conservation and Restoration as part of the Mostar Franciscan Library Renovation project. Most of the work has been completed, and another hundred books are awaiting restoration.
“Among them is the oldest book of the Franciscan library from 1535, the one by the Roman historian Titus Livius “Decades tres cum dimidia”. The books are mostly on religious topics, there is a lot of literature, books on construction, art and everything else, and yet it is normal that most of them are on theological and philosophical topics, after all we are Franciscans,” said Ante Marić.
The books have been renewed, but they have not yet been digitized.
“We thought a lot about digitization, but if we had digitized them before the restoration, they would have been destroyed due to the conditions before the restoration. That’s the next step we should do. We currently have in digital form the condition of the books before restoration, the course of restoration, a description of what was done to them and a photo of the books after restoration,” he said.
The national treasure of the Franciscans and Bosnia and Herzegovina is accessible to everyone
Speaking about the most valuable copies of restored books, Fr. Ante singled out four works of St. John Chrysostom, there is also the oldest copy of the “Bible” in Herzegovina dating from 1574, then Bartolo Kašić’s work “Rituale Romanum” from 1640, as well as two books of Fr. Matija Divković saved from the flames.
“These are all rare books, and the only thing we don’t have are incunabula. The Franciscan Province of Herzegovina is a young province, but it owned ten incunabula on Široki Brijeg in our first monastery, but unfortunately they were burned by the partisans and OZNA in 1947, together with everything that was written on Široki Brijeg, and even maticas from the 16th century,” added Friar Ante.
The books will be located in the reading room of the Mostar Franciscan Reading Room, which now has optimal microclimate conditions, favorable for storing books.
“The books will not be in humidity or heat, but at 45 percent relative humidity and at a temperature of 17 to 23 degrees, which are optimal conditions. Here in this reading room, there will also be books of Herzegovinian Franciscans who were taken away and killed by the partisans in 1945. We want to mark this very area of the library as monastic and provincial victimology, because we suffered a lot,” he pointed out.
The library will be open to everyone, regardless of religion or nationality, with strict storage conditions, said Ante Marić, head of the Mostar Franciscan Library, at the end of the conversation for Fena news agency.
Photo: Fena
