Ancient printed works
The ancient printed works at the Inguimbertine total to around 80,000 volumes.
The personal collection of d’Inguimbert alone accounts for 18,000 of these. It is composed of books he brought back from Italy as well as the considerable collection from the Thomassin de Mazaugues family, descendants of Peiresc, which he acquired in 1745.
The collection was organised methodically following d’Inguimbert’s instructions, which called for divisions into different categories bearing a letter reference (A: holy writings; B: holy men, etc.). Part of this organisational system is what was famously used in bookshops in Paris at the start of the 18th century: theology, jurisprudence, sciences and arts, literature, history.
The Barjavel collection in turn accounts for around 10,000 printed volumes, monographs, essays, collections, antiquities, reference works and music scores, all collected by Casimir Barjavel (1803-1868), a doctor from Carpentras who bequeathed everything to the city upon his death. The broad range and value of the works in this collection are typical of modern learned practices. The collection includes many rare ancient editions, contemporary documentary works from Barjavel himself on a vast array of subjects, and a wealth of documents on local life and culture. After this bequest, further acquisitions followed until 1945, which together constitute a very large corpus that was named the fonds moderne (‘the modern collection’).
Between 1954 and 1965, the Garsin-Cavaillon family, a Jewish family from the Comtat Venaissin, donated and bequeathed a series of more than 400 printed works, including 230 in Hebrew, to the City of Carpentras. Many of them were devoted to Jewish practices in the Comtat.
Finally, other significant additions to the collection over the 20th century include the bequests from the Sobirats (1957) and Raspail (1972) families. The Inguimbertine is continuing to expand on its collection of printed works, as shown through the recent purchase in 2023 of L’usage des globes célestes et terrestres de Nicolas Bion (‘The use of celestial and terrestrial globes according to Nicolas Bion’), published in Paris in 1699.
The online catalogues
Printed books in the French heritage collection can be consulted using the search bar and via the French-language CcFr heritage collection database (Catalogue collectif de France).
Please note however that this database is not updated as frequently.
Note: The catalogue lists printed books and booklets, maps and diagrams, a significant proportion of the printed and etched music scores, as well as, as far as can be currently processed, the collections of periodicals and some iconographic documents: posters, ephemera, illustrations, etc. The Inguimbertine also houses a significant collection of prints, drawings and photographs that are still being listed in the museum database. The time frame for publication of this information online remains to be decided.