The National Library of Portugal “does not have a single Latinist”, a “serious lack that must be resolved soon,” said this Wednesday the director of the institution, which has a valuable Latin heritage in its custody.
“It is a serious mistake that the institutions that have in their custody a heritage with so much richness in Latin terms do not have two or three Latinists,” said Diogo Ramada Curto during the opening session of the presentation of the exhibition “Aquiles Estaço: A Portuguese Humanist in 16th century Europe.
In statements to Lusa, on the sidelines of the presentation, the person in charge explained that part of the library’s own program is the valorization of two areas in which it lacks specialists: one is paleography (study of ancient and medieval manuscript texts) and the other It is that of Latin.
“The National Library does not have, as other heritage institutions do not currently have, a reference Latinist, nor a reference paleographer, and, therefore, we are working to bring that knowledge to the National Library, which meets one of our values, which the more erudite, the more restricted in valence, the more linked to research, the more linked to humanistic studies“he stated.
This lack is not due to a lack of specialists in these areas, but to “decades of non-hiring of senior technicians in this same area, which was abandoned for decades.”
“It is not about strictly accusing anyone. Today there is, from my point of view, a very interesting and quite correct appreciation of what goes through the digitization process, which is a complicated process, and we are involvedWe obtained funds and we are very interested in this digitization program, but we consider that the fulfillment of our purpose, which is to care for and study the Portuguese bibliographic heritage, involves many other aspects and one of them has to do with paleography, with knowledge of Latin and, I would also say, of Greek itself”, he added.
Contextualizing, Diogo Ramada Curto clarified that one of the objectives of the BNP is the preservation of your bibliographic legacywhich, in relation to certain periods, “not only includes Portuguese, it also includes Latin and Spanish”, a “triangle, especially for the 16th and 17th centuries”, in relation to which the library wants to enhance the bibliographic heritage.
At the same time, you want to value “this part is more erudite, more related to Latin studies”he stated, highlighting the importance of the coordination work carried out with the universities, in particular with the Center for Classical Studies of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon, “which is one of the centers of excellence in the promotion of these studies.”
However, this articulation does not replace the need to have “our own specialists in these same areas”, who are “capable of studying and explaining this bibliographical heritage of ours, which It is also bibliographical heritage in Latin”he defended.
“We need to have specialists who can act as partners in relation to research institutions and university research centers. This, in essence, is the tradition of the National Library and its most golden era, which occurred during the direction of Jaime Cortesão, between 1919 and 1927,” he considered.
However, Diogo Ramada Curto expressed confidence that this void will be filled and stated that he has “hopes of doing many things in the National Library”, because “there is total alignment” with the Minister of Culture, who – in his opinion – has “a very deep and very complete understanding of institutions like the BNP.”
Source: Observadora
