Digital Library
This project began in 2009 with an initial core of treaties chosen from among the most representative and fundamental texts in the history of insurance in Europe.
Digital collection
A collection in electronic format of its most precious texts, to enable their consultation from the farthest places by bringing them to the scholars' table with all the original features of format and color.
San Bernardino da Siena
De contractibus et usuris is one of the earliest treatises on contracts, if not the very first, that developed a study of economic thought. This valuable manuscript codex, datable to the second half of the fifteenth century, addresses the necessity of trade and the ethical rules by which it should be exercised, and examines the determination of the just value of things and their just price.
Pedro Santerna
The Tractatus de assecurationibus & sponsionibus mercatorum constitutes in order of time the first systematic treatise on insurance in which, among other things, the fundamental principle on which this contract is based is clearly stated: good faith. This editio princeps (1552) was printed more than 60 years after its compilation, which a manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Angelica Vaticana dates back to 1488.
Benvenuto Stracca
The Tractatus de assecurationibus was completed after eleven years of work was published in this first edition in Venice in 1569 and, combined with other works, again in Venice in 1583, Geneva in 1651, and Amsterdam in 1658 and 1668. This treatise focuses on the commentary (divided into forty Latin glosses) of the ritual formula (in Italian) used in Ancona for the insurance contract.
The Lombardy Digital Library (BDL), developed from 2008 onward, collects about 40,000 publicly accessible digital documents (totaling more than 4 million images), created as part of multiple projects promoted and supported by the Lombardy Region, with the aim of spreading knowledge and significantly increasing the enjoyment of documentary collections of relevant historical and artistic value present at Lombard cultural institutions.
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After an initial start-up phase (2009-2012) that saw the collaboration of a small group of Lombard libraries, with the project “Digital Library: digitization and online availability of scientific and educational documentation,” implemented in the years 2013-2015 and financed through resources from the European Social Fund, the Digital Library has acquired a new dimension thanks to the publication of more than 10,000 fully digitized documents of different types (manuscripts, ancient editions, modern books, music librettos, periodicals, cartography).
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In autumn 2018, the implementation of a second remarkable project, financed through resources of the European Social Fund, was started, representing the indispensable development of the Digital Library in both quantitative and qualitative sense.
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The Museum's library collaborated in this second phase, enriching the BDL with a library collection of 118 volumes dedicated to the history of insurance companies in Italy since the 19th century.
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Click here to view the video made by Space spa, the digitization company in charge of the project.
