BIBLIOTECA BALMES. – A centre of higher religious culture founded by Fr. CASANOVAS, ICNASI (v.) Jesuit in 1923 as a section of the Foment de Pietat (an institution promoting Catalan religious literature, founded in 1913 by the priest Mossèn Eudald Serra y Buixò).
Its activity extends beyond the modern library to periodic conferences, courses in advanced religious culture for the laity, and publications. Among these, particular mention should be made of the Obras completas del Balmes, edited by Fr. Casanovas (33 vols., 1925–26); the Obres completes of the bishop of Vich, Dr Josep Torras y Bages, patriarch of modern Catholic Catalonia (30 vols., 1935, still in press); and the Biblioteca histórica de la Bibl. Balmes, in which appeared, among others, Fr. Casanovas’s foundational studies on
Balmes (3 vols., 1932) and on José Finestres e la cultura catalana del '700, of interest for its connections with Italy, principally after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 (3 vols., 1933–35); the work by Fr. Art. Codina Jesuit on the Origenes de los Ejercicios espirituales de san Ignacio de Loyola (1925); that by the priest Sanp Capdevila on La Seu de Tarragona (1935); the Episcopologio de la sede barcinonese by Canon Seb. Puig (1929), with many documents on Pope Luna; La fortuna dello Shakespeare en la lit. española by Alfonso Par (2 vols., 1935); Francisco de Vitoria y la doctrina de la gracia en la escuela salmantina (1934) by F. Stegmüller, etc.
The periodical publication of the Biblioteca Balmes is Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia, issued from 1925 to 1931 in the form of large yearbooks and subsequently continued as a journal; from 1928, the librarian J. Vives has been publishing the Bibliografia hispánica de ciencias histórico-eclesiásticas, an indispensable repertory for anyone interested in the history of the Church in Spain. Among its most regular contributors are P. Batlle, J. M. Bover, J. Carreras y Artau, P. Ginebra, E. Junyent, J. M. Madurell, F. Mateu, F. Miquel, B. Pascual, J. Rius y Serra, J. Sanchis y Sivera, F. Segarra, J. Serra y Villaró, F. Valls, M. B., as well as the foreign contributors G. M. Bertini, A. Ferrua, J. Wilpert, H. Finke, J. Vincke, G. Schreiber, K. Bihlmeyer, J. Lebreton, A. Mallon, J. Viellard, B. de Gaiffier, G. de Tervarent.
In 1939 the institution took the name Balmesiana, of which the Biblioteca Balmes is a section; its successive general directors have been Frs. F. M. Palmés and C. de Dalmases Jesuit. The Analecta immediately resumed the same activity as before, as did the Biblioteca histórica and the Biblioteca Filosófica, in addition to the new Biblioteca teológica and the Obras del p. Casanovas, in Spanish (18 vols., 1942… still in press). Among the more recent publications, those of particular interest for Italy are J. Serra y Villaró’s San Próspero de Tarragona y sus discípulos refugiados en Italia el año 711 (1943), and M. B.’s Francisco Gustá: Barcellona 1744-Palermo 1816 (1942).
Until 1936 there also operated an Officina románica, with its Annari and its Biblioteca, under the direction of Fr. José Calveras Jesuit.