THE VATICAN LIBRARY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 88, 12 January 1928, Page 3

THE VATICAN LIBRARY

A MILLION BOOKS TO BE CATALOGUED The Pope who lias decided to draw up a new general catalogue of all the books and manuscripts in the Vatican Library, according to the latest and most 'approved systems, is himself an expert in these matters, having first been librarian of the famous Ambrosian Library of Milan, and later, been Prefect of the Vatican Library itself. This immense enterprise, both difficult and costly, but which will be a great boon to students all over the world, is rendered possible by the generositv of the Carnegie Peace Foundation, which has placed at the disposal of the Holy See almost unlimited means for the realisation of the plan (writes a correspondent of the “Observer”). The necessity of the compilation of a new general catalogue of all the printed books in the Library has been long felt, as the absence of the complete catalogue has rendered the consultation of the books very difficult. Besides, many of the existing catalogues were out of date. They were prepared on different and often on eutirelv opposite methods, sometimes containing mistakes, some of them being practically useless. • • The original nucleus forming the Vatican Library was classified according to geographical divisions, each _ country having its own section. 11ns certainly might have been practical some centuries ago, but it rendered the search for books on the part of scholars an z extremely difficult'task, entailing considerable loss of time. With tbe gradual incorporation of individual collections of books and manuscripts, new catalogues were added, each referring to the particular collection, lhe number of catalogues, indeed, has grown so great that a special catalogue for the said catalogues would not have been amiss. Almost all these catalogues were hand-written, and, while some were easily legible, such as that of the Barberni collection, others were almost unreadable. There is one catalogue of a collection of the books belonging to one Cardinal, prepared and. written by the Cardinal himself when in advanced age. The most curious existing catalogue ot the Vatican Library is certainly that m which al! the works are classified only under the Christian names of the authors-a catalogue which some egoist. compiler must have prepared for ins own personal use. The last complete catalogue was prepared in the seventeenth century but since then a verv considerable number of individual collections were either beaueathed to, or acquired by, the Ho y See The important additions of Un. last thirty years were the Library, of 30,000 volumes and 10 000 manuscripts; the . Rosiana coHect on 6000 books: the Chigi collection. .V 000 books; and the Ferraiuoh collection. 40,000 books and 1.400 manuscripts. 'The last library contains a most valuable collection of English books of classics and history, gathered together in the middle of tbe last century b\ the Marchese Ferraiuoli. The -Assistant Prefect of the Librar , Monsignor Tisserant, has been recen in the United States to study A™ er ' ca " Libraries ' On his return to Rome he stronglv' recommended the. Pontiff o accept the Carnegie Foundations offer to prepare a new catalogue on the lines ot that of. the Library- of Congress at Washington. Two Vatican sl } b ' llb s‘ rians have now been sent . to ? V ?nr ’the ton and are studying methods -" r completion of the catalogues, and after their retuFn'this February the work will immediately begin. Only a general catalogue of books' will be now. prepared. It hoped ’to complete it in ten or twelve years, which is not long wheui o c considers, the enormous number of 1 1e books —certainly over a million . have to be catalogued, and especiall. Js fevv among the’ existing catalogues will be of real help. nrnb . There 1 are still many difficult prob lems which remain to be settled. Many private collections, for instance, have been left to the Vatican, on condition that the books should be kept together and . should not be incorporatedw th other collections, but it is .hoped «£ something can be done: to give _ a b ° geneous character to the whole lib • • New premises, which are actuary occiipied bv a mosaic factory, are shortly to be added to those at present housing the Library, thus enabling a better reorganisation of the wbo e Among the important results expect from the completion of the new’ cat - logue, the following may be mentioned fl rs f- a greater number of students will flock to the Vatican L j b . rar X ’be to the greater facilities winch will be offered for research work; secondl. , the possibility that rare books whose existence in the Vatican L,b J ar '’ ; J o ‘ v ! hitherto unsuspected, may be disc ered among the huge mass of hitherto untouched, books. As is "e ’ known, the Vatican has a unique collection of eariv printed books, single copies of whidi may be found , d ! a P the various.libraries of the world- 1 1 possibility that many more earlv books hitherto 'believed to be - entirely lost may be discovered will give the' enormous advantage of consultilto these books in one place, instead of going .to several and often most distant ,libraries for their