Biblioteca Nicolò V e Seminario Vescovile

The current building housing the Bishop's Seminary, founded shortly after the Council of Trento, consists of a single building constructed on a pre-existing house between 1616 and 1619, which was renovated and extended several times until 1842. Today, the Seminary is also the seat of the Niccolò V Library (with a collection of around 160,000 volumes, largely from private donations) and the Lunensi Archives. In addition to works of theological nature, necessary for the training of priests, there are collections of great value. The archive preserves documents of utmost importance (from diplomas of Popes and Emperors to papers from the Napoleonic period, up to more recent parish files, often of fundamental importance for reconstructing genealogies). Among the best-known collections is the Codex Pelavicino, one of the most important documentary collections of the medieval period: the codex, commonly known as the Pelavicino Codex, was compiled at the end of the 13th century on the initiative of the Bishop of Luni, Enrico da Fucecchio (bishop from 1273 to 1296/1297): In order to safeguard the property and rights of the Church of Luni, Bishop Enrico reorganised the offices of the curia, had a general inventory of the ecclesiastical archive compiled and set up a scribe's office, in which various amanuenses worked, from which the codex, which includes the transcription of various previous documents and was gradually 'updated' with further texts up to the 15th century, came out. It is worth mentioning that, thanks to an ad hoc project of the University of Pisa, a complete digital edition of the Pelavicino Codex is now available.