Institutum Mauritanum

The first library in Estonia was established in 1246 in Tallinn by the Dominicans. It was situated in the eastern wing of the Dominican Monastery. The objective of the library was to satisfy the literature needs of local friars and a school which had been founded by the monastery. As a disciple of St. Albertus Magnus, Lecturer Mauritius played an important role in establishing new and much stricter standards of teaching in educating local Dominicans. Under his instructions, both the school and the library achieved a considerable standard. Many original documents preserved from the library are now kept in the Tallinn City Archive and the incunabula department of the National Library of Estonia. The library worked in the rooms of the monastery until the beginning of the Reformation, whereafter the monastery lost its natural function and its premises found use as a military and construction warehouse. During the Soviet period, the rooms of the library accommodated a vegetable store of the restaurant "Euroopa" and, after renovations carried out at the monastery in the 1960s, the depository of historical ashlars of the Tallinn City Museum.

raamatukogu

Priors room

In 1994, the library was restored and named Librarium Mauritanum in the honour of Lecturer Mauritius. The resources of modern philosophical literature have been replenished significantly by several projects, depositions, and personal donations by the fellows of the Institute. The library has acquired the level of an academic scientific library and became one the best collections of philosophy in Estonia or, as many philosophers prefer to think, the entire Baltic region.

In 1998, the Mauritian Institute was visited by Mr. Frederico Mayor, the Director General of UNESCO, who donated a lot of valuable literature from the part of UNESCO. The library was also rapidly supplemented by personal depositions, projects and donations. The greatest gift (4500 books) came for the theology section of the library from the Seitenstetten Benedictine Abbey in Austria. It was decided that a part of that delivery be re-donated to the Faculty of Theology of the University of Tartu and the Brigittine Convent of Pirita. In 1999, a partnership and cooperation agreement with the Estonian National Library was concluded. In 2004, Wim A. de Pater, Professor Emeritus of the University of Leuven, donated an outstanding collection of 500 books on Scholastic thought to the Librarium Mauritanum.