Miscellanea Giardini
Of the Miscellanea Elia Giardini is not possible to reconstruct the origin, not existing in the archives of the Library any document capable of ascertaining the events. In particular, it is extremely difficult to understand whether the collection has been ordered by Giardini himself in the years when he directed the university or whether it results from a later donation.
The Miscellanea is composed by over 3,000 pamphlets mostly printed, preserved in 31 volumes accompanied by indices manuscripts, collects written for the most part dating from the last decades of the XIX century and 1825, when Giardini left the direction of the Library, although there are written before 1700, among which the oldest is the 1593 edition of the Statuti, ordini et costitutioni della ven. comp. et università delli barbieri e stufaroli dell'alma città di Roma (Roma, Paolo Biado, 1593; location Misc. Giardini T. 9 n. 14). Finally, there are texts dated between 1825 and 1832 and collected by Giardini himself the years before his death.
The collection is deeply uneven in content: many occasional writings alongside scientific studies, in particular prolusions taught by academics at the opening of the academic year of the University Ticinese. There are also moral treatises, philosophy, theology.
Particularly interesting is the writing by which the Miscellanea opens: it is a project of a criminal procedure code, drafted in 1806 by Gian Domenico Romagnosi and printed in the same year by the Imperial Regia Stamperia. The tome XXVIII is then formed exclusively from publications of the Napoleonic era, including the text of the Constitution of the Republic Cisalpina 1797 and many works of a political nature.
The Miscellanea has a manuscript inventory and is partially described in Cultura e vita universitaria nelle miscellanee Belcredi, Giardini, Ticinensia.
Download the Inventario della Miscellanea Giardini
(PDF - 6,68 mb)
Download the text of Miscellanea Giardini
(PDF - 1,9 mb) by Alberta Mosconi Grassano and the Index
(PDF - 3,7 mb). Excerpt from Cultura e vita universitaria nelle miscellanee Belcredi, Giardini e Ticinensia, Milano, Istituto editoriale Cisalpino-La goliardica, 1986