The book of books II - Pontifical Javeriana University Libraries

This second volume of the Book of Books is part of the dissemination work that the Javeriana University, together with Villegas Editores, has undertaken to publicize the bibliographic and artistic heritage that the University has in Bogotá and that rests both in the General Library Alfonso Borrero Cabal SJ, as in the Mario Valenzuela SJ Library of Philosophy and Theology. As in the previous one, the surprises that this volume holds are extraordinary.

Here are copies that illustrate the origin of the printing press in the New Kingdom, texts on philosophy, natural sciences, geography, history, law and art, as well as books by authors from classical antiquity. They are books that arrived by different paths. Some come from the old colonial Bartoline library, which was not part of the expropriations of the time; others returned to the Jesuits after the expulsions; others were acquired expressly to complete or enrich the collections; others are the product of generous bequests or donations.

There are representative specimens of the humanistic or scholastic tradition and of marginal authors in that tradition, such as Ramón Llull or Justo Lipsio. There are novel works for their time, such as the texts of Christian Wolff, a great popularizer of rationalism in the 18th century. There are complete editions of the sources of Roman and canon law, and of commentators on both these rights and Spanish law. There are also copies of Grotius and Pufendorf, the Protestant natural lawyers of the 17th century.

In short, an extraordinary example of the desire to disseminate knowledge, an invaluable and beautiful set of that admirable object of culture that is the book.