The Laurentian Library: the Medici Codices and Michelangelo's Hall

Next to the basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, a staircase designed by Michelangelo leads to one of the most famous reading rooms in the world. This is the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, which keeps the manuscripts collected by the Medici in the fifteenth century. Among its codices are Greek texts of philosophy and astrology read and translated in Marsilio Ficino's circle, which shaped the culture of the European Renaissance.

The Medici Collection

The collection began with Cosimo the Elder (1389-1464), who funded the search for and copying of ancient manuscripts and entrusted booksellers and humanists with procuring Greek and Latin texts for him. His grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent enlarged it by sending agents to the East to buy Greek codices; the humanist Janus Lascaris brought back many from his travels in the lands of the former Byzantine empire.

After the Medici were expelled from Florence in 1494, the family library went through mixed fortunes and was moved to Rome for a time. It was Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, who became pope as Clement VII, who decided to bring it back to Florence and give it a monumental home at San Lorenzo, the church linked to the family since Cosimo's day.

Michelangelo's Architecture

Michelangelo received the commission in 1524. He designed the vestibule, with its dramatic staircase, and the long reading room with wooden benches, called plutei, on which the codices were kept chained. Having left Florence in 1534, the artist did not complete the work, which was continued according to his drawings; the staircase was built by Bartolomeo Ammannati around 1559.

The library opened to the public in 1571, under Grand Duke Cosimo I. Even today the shelfmarks of many ancient manuscripts begin with the word Plut., followed by the number of the bench and the position: a direct trace of the original arrangement, in which the physical location of a book coincided with its name in the catalogue.

Codices of Philosophy, Astrology and Magic

The Laurenziana holds an extraordinary wealth of Greek manuscripts, many once owned by the Medici and used by the humanists of their circle: texts by Plato, the Neoplatonists and authors on astronomy and astrology. It is no accident that the first volume of the great catalogue of Greek astrological codices, published in 1898, was devoted precisely to the Florentine manuscripts.

Alongside the Greek texts are Latin and vernacular manuscripts of science and natural philosophy, translations from Arabic and medical treatises, often annotated by fifteenth-century readers. Among its most famous treasures are also the Codex Amiatinus, the oldest known complete Latin Bible, and the Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún, devoted to Aztec culture.

To visit the Laurenziana is to enter a place where architecture and the history of books coincide. Michelangelo's rooms still hold the codices that nourished Florentine humanism, and the study of those manuscripts continues to reveal how, in the fifteenth century, ancient philosophy, astrology and the search for a lost wisdom were interwoven on the same pages.