Privatna knjižnica zadarskoga učenjaka Šimuna Ljubavca i kultura čitanja u jednom dalmatinskom gradu 17. stoljeća
Private Library of the Zadar Scholar Šimun Ljubavac and the Reading Culture in a 17th-Century Dalmatian City

Summary/Abstract: Centuries-long connections between the two Adriatic coasts have resulted in vivid exchange of experiences, with cultural activity being one of their essential components. The aim of this paper is to use the specific aspect of culture consumption to see how cultural life in the city of Zadar, as the centre of the Venetian Province of Dalmatia and Albania, functioned in the mid-17th century, during the long Candian War (1645-1669), which proved exhausting for both warring parties – the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire. Based on the reading habits of a prominent resident of Zadar, the wealthy nobleman and scholar Šimun Ljubavac (1608-1663), the paper discusses the intellectual preoccupations of the social elites in the Eastern Adriatic. As a lawyer, historian, and typical polymath of his time, Ljubavac owned a rich private library with some four hundred titles from various fields of sciences and arts, from ancient to modern authors. An inventory of his library was put together after his death and is today preserved in the State Archive in Zadar. Although such inventories are rare, which hinders a detailed comparative analysis, Ljubavac can be taken as a paradigmatic case to make conclusions about the extent to which Dalmatian scholars were able to follow the main trends in sciences and arts, which may help define the general role of the Eastern Adriatic among the cultural centres and peripheries of the Mediterranean and Europe during the given period.

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