The paper presents a project entitled Biblioteca Nonantolana Virtuale, which has been initiated and is being carried forward by the National Library of Rome. It aims at virtually reassembling the dispersed library of Nonantula and making it available on the Web to the scholarly community.
The library of Nonantula Abbey (established 752, near Modena) was one of the major Italian mediaeval libraries; it is well known to experts in palaeography, patristic, liturgy, philology. Many of its manuscripts left their companions during the centuries; but a certain percentage has been identified thanks to ancient catalogues. The National Library of Rome holds the richest collection of manuscripts coming from Nonantula, consisting of 45 items (VI-XII century; among them there are the oldest witnesses of S. Augustin’s works and Pliny the Elder’s Natural history). They have been fully digitized and will be placed on the Internet in the next months; it will be the first step towards the reconstruction of the library of Nonantula. About 30 manuscripts are scattered in more than ten Italian (Nonantula Abbey, Bologna University Library, etc.) and foreign (British Library, Fondation Bodmer, Chester Beatty Library, etc.) institutions; we hope in their cooperation to give Nonantula library a new life on the Web.