Bullarium - Mainardi's Roman Bullarium

Mainardi's Roman Bullarium

This Roman edition of the bullarium, which still remains the most accurate and practically useful, bears on the title pages of its thirty-two volumes, the name of the publisher, Girolamo Mainardi, while the dedications to the cardinals prefixed to the different volumes and extending from 1733 to 1762 are also signed by him. The arrangement of the volumes, however, is peculiar, and the neglect to indicate these peculiarities has made the accounts given to this edition in most bibliographies almost unintelligible. Mainardi began with the idea of printing a supplement to the latest Roman edition of Cherubini's bullarium. As this was six volumes and stopped short at the pontificate of Clement X (1670–76), Mainardi called his first published volume Tome VII, and reprinted the bulls of Clement X from the beginning of his pontificate to his death. Moreover, an engraved frontispiece prefixed to this volume, printed in 1733, bears the words "Bullarium Romanum Tom. VII." The book further contains a promise that the six volumes of Cherubini's bullarium should in the course of time be reprinted in a corrected and enlarged form, with the aid of the documents contained in the secret archives of the Holy See. Seven other volumes followed in sequence to this first. They were printed from 1734 to 1744 and brought the collection from Clement X in 1670 to the accession of Benedict XIV in 1740.

Meanwhile, the publisher had engaged an able scholar, Charles Cocquelines, to re-edit the six volumes of Cherubini's bullarium from Leo I to Clement X. In his hands an immense mass of material accumulated. The first volume was printed in 1739 and it bore a slightly different title from that of the installment which Mainardi had already published, beginning at "Tom VII." Cocquelines' section was headed "Bullarium privilegarium ac diplomatum Romanorum Pontificum amplissima collectio" and in comparison with Cherubini's meager gleanings from antiquity the epithet amplissima was fully deserved. This series, like all good work, advanced very slowly. A tabular arrangement will best show the details. The editor had to make his numbering correspond with Cherubini's six volumes and consequently some of the nominal tomi of the new edition were divided into several parts.

Some time before the compilation of this series, Cocquelines had died, and the last five volumes to appear did not bear his name. Simultaneously with this amplified edition of Cherubini, Mainardi had also been publishing, in folio, but somewhat smaller, the four volumes of the bullarium of Benedict XIV, the first of which, as already noted, appeared with that pontiff's own authentication. In sum, the whole collection which issued from Mainardi's press amounted to thirty-two folio volumes and extended from Leo I in 450 to the death of Benedict XIV, 1758. As this in time grew antiquated, Andrew Barberi began in 1835 the publication of the Bulls of Pope Clement XIII and his successors "Bullarii Romani Continuato" (19 volumes, fol.), Rome, 1835–57. These came down to the fourth year of Gregory XVI, i.e. to 1834. There is also another series of the same kind which appeared as a continuation of the Bullarium of Benedict XIV at Prato in 1843–67 (10 vols., folio).