The Vatican Apostolic Library (Latin: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Italian: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established by Pope Sixtus IV on June 15, 1475, by the papal bull Ad decorem militantis ecclesiae, although it is much older. It is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. It has 75,000 codices from throughout history, as well as 1.1 million printed books, which include some 8,500 incunabula.
The Vatican Library is a research library for history, law, philosophy, science, and theology. The Vatican Library is open to anyone who can document their qualifications and research needs. Photocopies for private study of pages from books published between 1801 and 1990 can be requested in person or by mail.
Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) envisioned a new Rome, with extensive public works to lure pilgrims and scholars to the city to begin its transformation. Nicolas wanted to create a "public library" for Rome that was meant to be seen as an institution for humanist scholarship. His death prevented him from carrying out his plan, but his successor Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) established what is now known as the Vatican Library.
In March 2014, the Vatican Library began an initial four-year project of digitising its collection of manuscripts, to be made available online.
The Vatican Apostolic Archive was separated from the library at the beginning of the 17th century; it contains another 150,000 items.
Historical periods
Scholars have traditionally divided the history of the library into five periods: Pre-Lateran, Lateran, Avignon, Pre-Vatican and Vatican.
Pre-Lateran
The Pre-Lateran period, comprising the initial days of the library, dating from the earliest days of the Church. Only a handful of volumes survive from this period, though some are very significant.
At the Lateran
The Lateran era began when the library moved to the Lateran Palace and lasted until the end of the 13th century and the reign of Pope Boniface VIII, who died in 1303, by which time he possessed one of the most notable collections of illuminated manuscripts in Europe. However, in that year, the Lateran Palace was burnt and the collection plundered by Philip IV of France.
At Avignon
The Avignon period was during the Avignon Papacy, when seven successive popes resided in Avignon, France. This period saw great growth in book collection and record-keeping by the popes in Avignon, between the death of Boniface and the 1370s when the papacy returned to Rome.
Prior to establishment at the Vatican
The Pre-Vatican period ranged from about 1370 to 1447. The library was scattered during this time, with parts in Rome, Avignon, and elsewhere. Pope Eugenius IV possessed 340 books by the time of his death.
At the Vatican
In 1451, bibliophile Pope Nicholas V sought to establish a public library at the Vatican, in part to re-establish Rome as a destination for scholarship. Nicholas combined some 350 Greek, Latin and Hebrew codices inherited from his predecessors with his own collection and extensive acquisitions, among them manuscripts from the imperial Library of Constantinople. Pope Nicholas also expanded his collection by employing Italian and Byzantine scholars to translate the Greek classics into Latin for his library. The knowledgeable pope already encouraged the inclusion of pagan classics. Nicolas was important in saving many of the Greek works and writings during this time period that he had collected while travelling and acquired from others.
In 1455, the collection had grown to 1200 books, of which 400 were in Greek.
Nicholas died in 1455. In 1475 his successor Pope Sixtus IV founded the Palatine Library. During his papacy, acquisitions were made in "theology, philosophy and artistic literature". The number of manuscripts is variously counted as 3,500 in 1475 or 2,527 in 1481, when librarians Bartolomeo Platina and Pietro Demetrio Guazzelli produced a signed listing. At the time it was the largest collection of books in the Western world.
Pope Julius II commissioned the expansion of the building. Around 1587, Pope Sixtus V commissioned the architect Domenico Fontana to construct a new building for the library, which is still used today. After this, it became known as the Vatican Library.
During the Counter-Reformation, access to the library's collections was limited following the introduction of the Index of banned books. Scholars' access to the library was restricted, particularly Protestant scholars. Restrictions were lifted during the course of the 17th century, and Pope Leo XIII was to formally reopen the library to scholars in 1883.
In 1756, the priest Antonio Piaggio, curator of ancient manuscripts at the Library used a machine he had invented to unroll the first Herculaneum papyri, an operation which took him months.
In 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte arrested Pope Pius VII and had the contents of the library seized and removed to Paris. They were returned in 1817, three years after Napoleon's defeat and abdication.
The library's first major revitalization project took place in the period between the two World Wars at the instigation of Pope Pius XI, himself a scholar and former librarian, with the cooperation of librarians from around the world. Until this point in time, while it had drawn on the expertise of numerous experts, the Vatican Library was dangerously lacking in organization and its junior librarians were undertrained. Foreign researchers, particularly Americans, noticed how inadequate the facilities were for such an important collection. Several American organizations, including the American Library Association and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, offered to assist in implementing a modern cataloguing system. Along with this, librarians from the Vatican Library were invited to visit several libraries in the United States to receive training on the functioning of a modern library. They visited the Library of Congress, and libraries in Princeton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Champaign, Toronto, and Ann Arbor. Once back in Rome, a reorganization plan was implemented. The main goals were to create a summary index by author of each manuscript, and likewise a catalogue for the incunabula. Once the project was completed, the Vatican Library was one of the most modern in all of Europe. This joint effort highlighted the importance of international relationships in the field of librarianship and led to the founding in 1929 of the International Federation of Library Associations, still at work.
In 1992 the library had almost 2 million catalogued items.
Among a number of thefts from the Library committed in modern times, in 1995 art history teacher Anthony Melnikas from Ohio State University stole three leaves from a medieval manuscript once owned by Francesco Petrarch. One of the stolen leaves contains an exquisite miniature of a farmer threshing grain. A fourth leaf from an unknown source was also discovered in his possession by U.S. Customs agents. Melnikas was trying to sell the pages to an art dealer, who then alerted the library director.
Location and building
The library is located inside the Vatican Palace, and the entrance is through the Belvedere Courtyard. When Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590) commissioned the expansion and the new building of the Vatican Library, he had a three-story wing built right across Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere, thus bisecting it and changing Bramante's work significantly. At the bottom of a grand staircase, a large statue of Hippolytus decorates the La Galea entrance hall.
In the first semi-basement there is a papyrus room and a storage area for manuscripts. The first floor houses the restoration laboratory, and the photographic archives are on the second floor.
The library has 42 kilometres (26 mi) of shelving.
The library closed for renovations on 17 July 2007 and reopened on 20 September 2010. The three-year, 9 million euro renovation involved the complete shut down of the library to install climate controlled rooms.
Architecture and art
In the Sala di Consultazione or main reference room of the Vatican Library looms a statue of St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1910), sculpted by Cesare Aureli. A second version of this statue (c. 1930) stands under the entrance portico of the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum.
Library organization
Catalogue
The collection was originally organized through notebooks used to index the manuscripts. As the collection grew to more than a few thousand, shelf lists were used. The first modern catalogue system was put in place under Father Franz Ehrle between 1927 and 1939, using the Library of Congress card catalogue system. Ehrle also set up the first program to take photographs of important or rare works. The library catalogue was further updated by Rev. Leonard E. Boyle when it was computerized in the early 1990s.
Reading and lending
Historically, during the Renaissance era, most books were not shelved but stored on wooden benches, which had tables attached to them. Each bench was dedicated to a specific topic. The books were chained to these benches, and if a reader took out a book, the chain remained attached to it. Until the early 17th century, academics were also allowed to borrow books. For important books, the pope himself would issue a reminder slip. Privileges to use the library could be withdrawn for breaking the house rules, for instance, by climbing over the tables. Most famously, Pico Della Mirandola lost the right to use the library when he published a book on theology that the Papal curia did not approve of. In the 1760s, a bill issued by Clement XIII heavily restricted access to the library's holdings.
The Vatican Library can be accessed by 200 scholars at a time, and it sees 4,000 to 5,000 scholars a year, mostly academics doing post-graduate research.
Collections
While the Vatican Library has always included Bibles, canon law texts, and theological works, it specialized from the beginning in secular books. Its collection of Greek and Latin classics was at the centre of the revival of classical culture during the Renaissance. The oldest documents in the library date back to the first century.
The library was founded primarily as a manuscript library, a fact reflected in the comparatively high ratio of manuscripts to printed works in its collection. Such printed books as have made their way into the collection are intended solely to facilitate the study of the much larger collection of manuscripts.
The collection also includes 330,000 Greek, Roman, and papal coins and medals.
Every year about 6,000 new books are acquired.
The library was enriched by several bequests and acquisitions over the centuries.
In 1623, in thanks for the adroit political manoeuvres of Pope Gregory XV that had sustained him in his contests with Protestant candidates for the post of Elector, the hereditary Palatine Library of Heidelberg, containing about 3,500 manuscripts, was given to the Holy See by Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria. He had just acquired it as loot in the Thirty Years' War. A token 39 of the Heidelberg manuscripts were sent to Paris in 1797 and were returned to Heidelberg at the Peace of Paris in 1815. A gift of 852 others was made in 1816 by Pope Pius VII to the University of Heidelberg. Aside from these cases, the Palatine Library remains in the Vatican Library to this day.
In 1657, the manuscripts of the Dukes of Urbino were acquired. In 1661, the Greek scholar Leo Allatius was made librarian.
Queen Christina of Sweden's important library (mostly amassed by her generals as loot from Habsburg Prague and German cities during the Thirty Years' War) was purchased on her death in 1689 by Pope Alexander VIII. It represented, for all practical purposes, the entire royal library of Sweden at the time. Had it remained where it was in Stockholm, it would all have been lost in the destruction of the royal palace by fire in 1697.
Among the most famous holdings of the library is the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, the oldest known nearly complete manuscript of the Bible. The Secret History of Procopius was discovered in the library and published in 1623.
Pope Clement XI sent scholars into the Orient to bring back manuscripts and is generally regarded as the founder of the library's Oriental section.
A School of library science is associated with the Vatican Library.
In 1959, the Vatican Film Library was established. This is not to be confused with the Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library, which was established in 1953 at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri.
The library has a large collection of texts related to Hinduism, with the oldest editions dating to 1819.
During the library's restoration between 2007 and 2010, all of the 70,000 volumes in the library were tagged with electronic chips to prevent theft.
Manuscripts
Notable manuscripts in the library include: