Sélestat - Bibliothèque Humaniste

Sélestat was probably not more than a village when Charlemagne stayed here over Christmas 775. Nowadays Sélestat claims to be the place of origin of the christmas-tree, based on an invoice from 1521.

The library is one of the important cultural treasures of Alsace. Actually, there are two Renaissance humanist libraries involved, the library of the Humanist School and the private library of the famous scholar, Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547).

In 1441, the municipal authorities appointed Ludwig Dringenberg to be the leader of the local Latin school. Dringenberg turned out to be a gifted and committed educator. Under his leadership emerged the first school on the Upper Rhine where Humanist thinking was fostered. His successors increased the reputation of the school further. Thus, the school was the training place of an entire generation of Alsatian Humanists. The school also had a library which steadily grew in extent through endowments and gifts.

Beatus Rhenanus bequeathed his entire private library to his home city of Sélestat. This library contained about 670 bound leather volumes at the time of his death in 1547. Even at that time, the library was of inestimable value, since books were only published in small numbers of copies and they were extremely expensive. The library of Beatus Rhenanus is the only larger Humanist library preserved virtually intact, as most other libraries were scattered after the deaths of their owners.

The oldest book in the library is a Merovingian manuscript from the 7th century.

Since 1889, both libraries have been housed under a single roof in a former covered market