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Great Events from History: The 18th Century

Great Events from History: The 18th Century
Philip V Founds Royal Library of Spain

A French aristocrat who succeeded to the Spanish throne, Philip was eager to demonstrate his support of institutions that fostered Spanish culture. By founding the Royal Library of Spain, he helped to revive the Spanish Golden Age that thrived under the Habsburgs. The Royal Library, controlled by the Crown, became the government-run National Library of Spain in 1836.

Locale: Madrid, Spain
Categories: Cultural and intellectual history; education; organizations and institutions; architecture

Key Figures
Philip V (Philip of Anjou; 1683-1746), king of Spain, r. 1700-1746
Pierre Robinet (1652-1753), a French Jesuit, confessor to Philip V, and the
first head of the Royal Library

Guillaume Daubenton (1648-1723), a French Jesuit, confessor to Philip V,
and the second head of the Royal Library

Summary of Event
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Habsburg Dynasty ruled Spain. Of Austrian origin, the dynasty's last monarch was Charles II, who died without an heir in 1700. He appointed Philip, the duke of Anjou and the grandson of King Louis XIV of France, to be his successor. A French aristocrat from the powerful Bourbon Dynasty, Philip reigned as Philip V. Threatening the balance of power in Europe, his accession prompted the start of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701, a conflict that ensued until 1714.

Because he was a foreign-born monarch, Philip V wanted to ensure support for his reign by demonstrating his solidarity with Spanish culture and character. So, he encouraged the foundation of institutions of learning that were to be based on the French models that had enriched French culture. The National Library of France, one such model, began as a royal library in the fifteenth century, becoming a deposit library for newly published books in the sixteenth century. France had opened its first public library, the Mazarine Library, in 1643. The legal scholar and royal official Melchor Rafael de Macanaz, who supported the Bourbon monarchy and the assertion of royal authority, emphasized the establishment of Spanish cultural institutions to revive Spain as a nation.

Although initially designated a royal library, the institution that Philip inaugurated stipulated that its collections were to be accessible to the general public. Planned in 1711, the Biblioteca Real (the Royal Library) began to function in 1712, comprising various types of collections. The king contributed approximately six thousand books he had brought from France, and his mother, Princess Marie Anne of Bavaria, donated more than two thousand books and manuscripts, making much of the original collection, books as well as archival material, multilingual. Additionally, Philip donated a collection of medallions, coins, and other items that gave the library holdings similar to a museum.

To manage the library, the king appointed his Jesuit confessor, Father Pierre Robinet, a French theologian, to head the institution. (Robinet earlier had been a seminary rector and diplomatic adviser.) The library was located near the palace at Alcazar. The collections occupied a portion of that building and the facilities for the public were installed in a historic cloister nearby. The district was actually rather raucous, an area of theaters, gaming houses, and diversion parlors. The library was open on weekdays, with hours in the morning and again in the afternoon. It had a budget based not on the king's purse but on luxury taxes. Within a few years the library's personnel included several librarians and staff, and a guard.

Less than half the budget was allotted for acquisitions, but this did not affect the library's ability to increase its holdings. In 1716, Philip singularly enhanced the capacity of the library to grow by making it a mandatory depository library: The institution was to receive not only one copy of each commercially published book but also government publications. The reliability with which these regulations were followed and enforced varied markedly. The inclusion of government documents and public records, however, enhanced the archival nature of the collections. The depository policy also enhanced the Spanish-language nature of the holdings. The collections grew also with additional donations from the monarch and his officials, and through confiscations. Spain's many domestic and international conflicts during the eighteenth century especially favored the latter source of collection building.

In 1715, Robinet had to leave Spain because he had to defend Macanaz against the Spanish Inquisition. Robinet later returned to France and his duties as a seminary rector and enhanced his institution's library. His successor, both as royal confessor and head of the royal library, was another French Jesuit, Father Guillaume Daubenton. A philosopher and seminary administrator, Daubenton took up his royal posts in 1716, returning from a trip to Rome. Daubenton divided his library duties with a Madrid parish priest, and the two augmented the library staff and carried out the king's new depository policies. Daubenton continued his library work until his death in 1723.

Significance
Although not a particularly forceful or decisive ruler, King Philip V did have a significant impact on intellectual and cultural development in Spain. His idea for a royal library came with ideas for other cultural enhancements. He authorized the founding in 1713 of the Spanish Royal Academy, which was dedicated to preserving and propagating the Spanish language, especially through publication of the Dictionary of the Spanish Language. In 1738, Philip authorized the establishment of the Royal Academy of History. Among this academy's principal objectives was compiling a critical dictionary of Spanish history that would apply an analytical perspective to past events, which would free the Spain's history from myth and fable. Both of the academies developed significant libraries as well.

In conjunction with his decrees regarding the depository rights of the library, Philip V also required that booksellers remit to the library their vendor lists. A tradition of Spanish national bibliography comes from these lists.

The Royal Library of Spain, with its original "royal" designation, should not be confused with two other "royal" libraries: the library at El Escorial and the library at Madrid's royal palace, which were private and for royal use only. El Escorial library, established by King Philip II, is among the world's most beautiful and sumptuous. Philip V's institution grew from much more modest circumstances.

The Royal Library of Spain, through its literature, ephemera, and scholarship, substantively contributed to Philip's efforts to revive the once-flourishing Spanish Golden Age. However, Spain's economic and political decay during the eighteenth century accelerated. Decades of destabilizing conflict followed, from the time of the Napoleonic invasion at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the Civil War and to the Francisco Franco regime of the mid-twentieth century. The library has, however, remained a keystone for Spanish culture throughout the world, having been established as a national library, La Biblioteca Nacional de España, in 1836.

Edward A. Riedinger

Further Reading
Girón, Alicia. "The Biblioteca Nacional of Spain." Alexandria 6, no. 2 (1994): 91-103. Girón examines the history of the National Library of Spain, describing the nature and origin of the initial holdings donated by King Philip V.

Kamen, Henry. Golden Age Spain. 2d ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Kamen traces rise and fall of Spanish cultural development from late the fourteenth to the mid-eighteenth century.

__________. Philip V of Spain: The King Who Reigned Twice. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. Kamen reviews the life and reign of Philip V, including his cultural objectives and policies influenced by his French background.

Laubier, Guillaume de, and Jacques Bosser. The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003. An illustrated tour of the historic libraries of Europe and the United States, including El Escorial. Introduction by James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress.

Lynch, John. Bourbon Spain, 1700-1808. Oxford, England: B. Blackwell, 1989. Lynch, a noted specialist on Spanish history, chronicles the reigns of Spanish Bourbons, including Philip V.

Massimo, Angels. "Libraries and Librarianship in Spain." IFLA Journal 19, no. 2 (1993): 131-146. An overview of the professional development of librarianship and the general development of libraries in Spain. Emphasizes the twentieth century.

McCrank, Lawrence J. "National Library of Spain." International Dictionary of Library Histories. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001. Places the founding of the library and its early years in the context of the institution's overall history.

See Also
1701-1714: War of the Spanish Succession; 1713: Foundation of the Spanish Academy; 1723-1756: Growth of Austria's National Library; Foundation of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences; 1747: First Public Library in Poland; 1785: Beginnings of State Universities.

Related article in Great Lives from History: The Eighteenth Century, 1701-1800: Philip V.