The Hispanic holdings of the Trier Library have not yet been systematically recorded and studied, although some of the works in its custody are bibliographical rarities. These include an illustrated edition of the Celestina (Seville, ca. 1515), one of the few surviving copies of the first edition (1544) of the Problemas Juan de Jarava, as well as important works of natural history, accounts of the discovery of America, historiographical treatises and writings by Spanish humanists such as Vives, Antonio de Guevara, Pedro Mejía and Arias Montano. In addition to the Spanish printed texts, there are Italian and French translations of many of them, often with handwritten annotations. The British historian A. Pettegree described the French Bibliothèques Municipales as ‘the great unknown treasures of the library world’. The Trier library is also an unknown treasure.
This research project takes the case and example of this library as its starting point in order to examine the material history of its holdings, the routes of dissemination of Hispanic letters in the Moselle region and, consequently, the complex cultural and geopolitical relations between the Hispanic monarchy and the Palatinate in Habsburg times.
