Niccoli did not want to see the work of his lifetime suffer a similar fate. He drew up a will in which he called for the manuscripts to be kept together, forbade their sale or dispersion, prescribed strict rules for loans and returns, appointed a committee of trustees, and left a sum of money to build a library. The building would be constructed and the collection housed in a monastery; but Niccoli emphatically did not want this to be a monastic library, closed off to the world and reserved for the monks. He specified that the books26 would be available not for the religious alone but for all
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