Ernesto de la Torre Villar, a book historian and director of the National Library of Mexico for thirteen years, was born in Mexico in 1917. From the second half of the last century onwards, he was one of that country’s most representative Catholic intellectuals. He was also the founder of the Chair of Historia de la Civilización Mexicana at the Catholic Institute of Paris and member of the Editorial Commission of the Revista de la Facultad de Teologia of the University of Navarra. His publications include La Iglesia en México de la Independencia a la Reforma, Los Guadalupes, Testimonios Guadalupanos and Album conmemorativo del 450 aniversario de la aparición de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. He died in January 2009.

His private library is important for several reasons: first of all, it is an irreplaceable source for contemporary and future historians wishing to reconstruct the intellectual journey of a great 20th century figure. We all know the difficulty of reconstructing the intellectual biography of a scientist or scholar, caused in part by the dispersion of the private libraries of the authors being studied.
A collection of this size and variety can also provide contemporary and future specialists with indispensable information on the state of Mexican publishing in particular, and American publishing in general throughout the 20th century.

But the De La Torre Villar Collection is especially important for anyone who wants to deal with the history of republican Mexico and the history of the conquest and evangelisation of America. The quantity and quality of the book collections is unparalleled in Italy and perhaps in the whole of Europe. It is perhaps worth making a list, albeit summarised, of the books in the collection. They range from the Archivos of the Presidents of the Republic Benito Juárez and Porfirio Díaz, to the classics of 19th century Mexican political thought, such as the works of Lucas Alamán, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, and the facsimile editions of Alexander von Humboldt’s Ensayo político sobre el Reyno de Nueva España and Humboldt and Bompland’s Essai sur la geographie de plantes (facsimile of the 1805 Parisian edition); unique and unobtainable works such as Periodismo insurgente, a multi-volume anthology, also in facsimile, of the periodicals that accompanied the Mexican independence process.

A considerable part of the collection consists of chronicles of the conquest, colonisation and evangelisation of Mexico and America, such as those by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Diego de Landa, Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, La Historia de Tlaxcala, by Muñoz Camargo and the Relación de los ritos antiguos, idolatrías y sacrificios de los indios de la Nueva España, by Fray Toribio de Paredes Motolinia (with reproductions of the original manuscripts).

Another significant part of the collection is occupied by studies on the pre-Colombian Maya and Aztec cultures by the most important authors of the 20th century, such as Miguel de Leon Portillo, Angel María Garibay, José Alcina Franch, along with editions that reproduce in facsimile the most important Pre-Cortesian codices, such as the Codex Borgia; the Codex Osuna; El Tonalamatl de la colección de Aubin (an ancient Mexican manuscript kept in the National Library in Paris); the Codex Colombino; etc. The collection contains other important and valuable works which are also of economic value, such as the 18th-century editions of the Istoria della Conquista del Messico, della popolazione, e de’ progressi nell’America settentrionale conosciuta sotto nome di Nuova Spagna by Antonio de Solís, published in Venice in 1704, and Obras del ilustrísimo, excelentísimo, y venerable siervo de Dios don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, published in Madrid in 1762.

Another no less appreciable part, in both quantitative and qualitative terms, is that relating to sources and studies on the history of education in Mexico in all orders and grades, as well as the regional history of the country’s educational system.

Last, but not least, is the section on sources and source guides. A collection within a collection, extremely rich and of extraordinary importance, for the research of sources for the study of Latin America. These range from the Guía del Archivo Histórico Nacional, to the Repertorio bibliográfico de los archivos mexicanos y de las colecciones diplomáticas fundamentales para la historia de México, from the guide to the Archivos franciscanos de México, to the Archivos Nahuas, to name but a few examples. The same section includes several bibliographic periodicals and yearbooks of the most important public libraries in Mexico, such as Bibliografía Mexicana, or the Revista de los archivos nacionales, along with catalogues of private and public libraries and exhibitions, such as Los manuscritos de América en las bibliotecas de España, the Guía de las obras en lenguas indígenas existentes en la Biblioteca Nacional, the Catálogo de incunables de la Biblioteca Nacional, and the catalogue of the Colección Lafragua, up to the Catálogo de seudonimos, anagramas, iniciales y otros aliases usados por escritores mexicanos y extranjeros que han publicado en México and other bibliographical repertories concerning the other countries of America.

The possession of the Ernesto de la Torre Villar Collection is therefore an honour and a privilege for the Library of the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, because it is a tribute to a great intellectual and a great country, to which the University is also particularly attached for anagraphical reasons, having been the birthplace of the Legionaries of Christ in 1941. The existence of this collection makes the UPRA Library a point of reference for scholars and researchers interested in Latin America. It constitutes the first consultation tool of the Library’s Americanist collection, not only for professors and researchers, but also for all university students in search of material for their research, and is the first step in the project to create a Faculty of Church History in Latin America at our University.

The Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum Library, in agreement with the Ministry of Culture, houses the personal library of Aldo Carotenuto, professor of Personality Psychology at ‘La Sapienza’ University in Rome and a leading exponent of the Jungian school, who recently passed away.

The collection, consisting of some twenty thousand books, some of great value, has been catalogued and made available to scholars, both for in-house consultation and for inter-library loans.