Raphael de Mercatellis

Raphael de Mercatellis, also known as Raphael of Burgundy (1437–3 August 1508), was a church official, imperial counsellor and bibliophile. He was the illegitimate son of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy and a woman of Venetian origins, the wife of a merchant. He was born in Bruges. While pursuing a career within the Catholic church, and particularly after becoming abbot of Saint Bavo's Abbey in Ghent, he assembled a collection of lavish illuminated and decorated manuscripts. The library he created is of historical importance as the earliest library in the Low Countries containing a significant number of Renaissance humanist books. Sixty-five books from his library have been traced to collections worldwide, making it an unusually intact medieval book collection attributable to a single owner. Biography Raphael de Mercatellis was the illegitimate son of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy and a woman from the merchant family Mercatelli. The Mercatelli family was of Venetian origins and had settled in Bruges, where Raphael de Mercatellis was born, for reasons of trade. Raphael's mother was the wife of a merchant named Bernardus. Raphael de Mercatellis was one of a large number of illegitimate children of Duke Philip, and like most of his male half-siblings was provided with an education and a career by the ducal court. De Mercatellis studied theology in Paris (graduated in 1462) and pursued a career within the church. Already at the age of 27 he was appointed abbot of the Abbey of St. Peter in Oudenburg west of his hometown Bruges. There he became friends with the early humanist Jan Van de Veren or Johannes de Veris. In 1478 de Mercatellis was appointed abbot of the prestigious Saint Bavo's Abbey in Ghent. In 1487 he was made titular bishop of Rhosus and auxiliary bishop of Tournai, and one year later Emperor Maximilian I appointed him as a counsellor. He retired to Bruges in 1507 from his official duties and died the following year. He planned a large funerary monument for himself, and upon his death his body was supposedly transported from Bruges to Ghent by a retinue including 100 horses. Throughout his professional life, de Mercatellis appears to have paid little attention to his religious duties. He is reported as having neglected paying proper attention to the upkeep of the abbey buildings, and though he amassed a large library it contained very few religious texts, not even a bible or a book of hours, a popular kind of prayer book at the time.