Library of the Piarists in Radom in the light of the inventories on the years 1858 and 1865

Abstract

The author starts with a brief history of the Piarists (The Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools (Latin: Ordo Clericorum Regularium Pauperum Matris Dei Scholarum Piarum) and characterises their attitude towards a book as a fundament of their pastoral, education, research, and pedagogical work. The other part of the article presents curriculum and activity of the Piarists’ College in Radom (since 1682). The library was the school’s pride, with a large collection of secular books, concerning mostly Polish and universal history, as well as religious texts. The sources, in particular inventories of 1858 and 1865, which were used for reconstruction of the history of the Piarists library and its collection, were characterized in the third part of the text. They enabled presentation of the ways of gathering and complementing collections. Fifth and sixth parts of the text include quantitative and content analysis of the collection, amounting in 1858 to 2710 works in more than 3900 volumes. When the January Uprising collapsed, the Piarists order was dissoluted on the Russian partition territory by the Russian tsar Alexander II ukase on 27.10.1964. The book collection of the Radom school was dispersed – books were moved to Petersburg, Warsaw, and Sandomierz.