The Library of Gray was founded in 1799 after the confiscation of the properties of the Catholic Church. The library first opened in an old convent before moving to a proper building adjoining the city hall in 1859. The library is divided into two sections. One section stores only documents that cannot be borrowed and the second contains documents that can be borrowed by the public.

History

The Library of

Gray Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed o ...

emerges after the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...

and the confiscation of the properties of the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. From 1792 to 1798, the abbot Lempereur is asked to preserve the documents that comes from the nearby convents. The municipality of Gray requests the executive directorate in order to found and open a new library. The 30 March 1799, the library is founded and inaugurated in the old convent of the ''cordeliers''. Since then, the library is open to the public. This library serves also as a kind of museum because in 1801, the curator enumerated 107 paintings, some of which are now in the Baron-Martin Museum.

The Great Library

In 1859, the municipality of Gray wants to have a proper building for the library. This new building, adjoining the city hall, is conceived as a sumptuous place with its panelling and its gallery surrounding the hall. The building is achieved in one year. The library is inaugurated the 6 December 1859 and open to the public the 1 January 1860. Since this period the new library is called "the Great Library". Since then, the library is divided in two parts. At the ground floor, there is the part with modern books that can be borrowed and upstairs, there is the part with old books that cannot be borrowed and can only be read at library. Nowadays, the modern part contains 13.000 books when the old part contains 25.000 books.

Collections

The old part contains 18

incunabula In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were pro ...

among which there is a book of

Jean Buridan Jean Buridan (; Latin: ''Johannes Buridanus''; – ) was an influential 14th-century French people, French Philosophy, philosopher. Buridan was a teacher in the Faculty (division)#Faculty of Art, faculty of arts at the University of Paris for hi ...

about Aristotle's Ethics (1489), ''

The Consolation of Philosophy ''On the Consolation of Philosophy'' ('' la, De consolatione philosophiae'')'','' often titled as ''The Consolation of Philosophy'' or simply the ''Consolation,'' is a philosophy, philosophical work by the Roman statesman Boethius. Written in 52 ...

'' by

Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the tr ...

(1480) and also the ''Fasciculus temporum'' by

Werner Rolevinck Werner Rolevinck (1425–1502) was a Carthusian monk and historian who wrote about 50 titles. He was born near Laer, Westphalia, the son of a wealthy farmer. In 1447 he entered Cologne Charterhouse, where he later died. His most famous work was his ...

(1495). The library hosts also many pictures from amateur photographers living in the

commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to: Administrative-territorial entities * Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township ** Communes of ...

. Among them, there are Eugène Noir (1855-1904) and Louis Guichard (1866-1934) who were peculiarly active during the Belle-Époque. Books from famous Gray inhabitants are also hosted by the library, like Jean-Baptiste Romé de l'Isle (mineralogist considered as one of the creators of the modern

crystallography Crystallography is the experimental science of determining the arrangement of atoms in crystalline solids. Crystallography is a fundamental subject in the fields of materials science and solid-state physics (condensed matter physics). The wor ...

Augustin Cournot Antoine Augustin Cournot (; 28 August 180131 March 1877) was a French philosopher and mathematician who also contributed to the development of economics. Biography Antoine Augustin Cournot was born at Gray, Haute-Saône. In 1821 he entered on ...

(mathematician, economist and philosopher) and

Edmond Bour Jacques Edmond Émile Bour (; 19 May 1832 – 8 March 1866) was a French engineer famous for the . His parents were Joseph Bour and Gabrielle Jeunet. He was a student at l'École Polytechnique and graduated at the top of his class in 1852. After ...

(mathematician and engineer).

Partnership with Wikimédia France

In 2008, Wikimédia France made a parnership with the library of Gray in order to digitize an atlas from 1828 and some engravings of ''

George Anson's voyage around the world While Great Britain was fighting the War of Jenkins' Ear with Spain in 1740, Commodore George Anson led a squadron of eight ships on a mission to disrupt or capture the Pacific Ocean possessions of the Spanish Empire. Returning to Britain in 17 ...

''.

Exhibitions

Some exhibitions are organized in the library of Gray, especially for the event called ''Patrimoines écrits en Bourgogne-Franche-Comté''.

2017

* ''Habiter son territoire : espaces intimes, espaces publics'' : An exhibition about the place of man in a territory, from documents of the library.

2018

* ''Le travail c'est la santé'' : An exhibition about the universe of work.