The Irish Standard

He Tells of What Really Happens at the Vatican Library.
Untrue That Protestant Scholars Are Not Allowed to Use the Book and Can Only Look at the Closed Cases—Number of Printed Volumes, 200,000.

Dr. Philip Schaff, D. D., D. C. L., in a recent letter from Rome, gives the following account of the Vatican Library:

Much has been said and written about the illiberality of the management of the Vatican Library. Tischendorf, Tregelles and Dollinger have complained bitterly of it. The opinion still prevails that Protestant scholars are not permitted to use it and can only look at the closed cases in which the manuscripts and books are kept. Even the twelfth edition of Hare's "Walks in Rome," which appeared in 1887 and is considered one of the most accurate of guide books, the author asserts that the Vatican Library "is only shown by special order, and no time is given for an examination of the individual objects."
This statement is certainly incorrect at this date. It is quite true that no such unlimited freedom in the use of books is allowed as in the public libraries of Germany, France, England and the United States. The library is open only on about 200 days of the year, and is closed during the numerous holy days and during the whole Passion week and Easter week. It is difficult to find what you want, as there are no topical catalogues. You have to examine the alphabetical or numerical indexes of the various collections (the Palatine, the Ottoboni, the Regia, etc.), which takes very much time and trouble.
But within these restrictions the Vatican Library, owing to the liberal policy of the scholarly Pope Leo XIII., is accessible to all scholars, Protestant as well as Catholic.
On my first visit I found in the reading room, which is adorned with the portraits of the Cardinal Librarians, including Mai and Maiandini, about twenty scholars of different nationalities, engaged in copying Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic manuscript books.
I expect to use also the Papal archives, which are under the direction of Cardinal Hergenrother, the Church Historian, and Dr. Denifle, an eminent ecclesiastical scholar and author of a "History of the Medæval Universities." I have letters of introduction to him, but he will be absent for two weeks in Austria. It may be necessary to write for special permission to the Pope or Cardinal Hergenrother. It is remarkable that the chief librarians should be Germans.
A brief sketch of this famous library may be of interest to your readers. I understand that an authentic history of it is in course of preparation.
The Vatican library, began, we may say, with the archives of the Popes, which are first mentioned under Damasus I. (366-384), and were preserved in the Lateran Palace, the Papal residence given by Constantine the Great to Bishop Sylvester (313). After various losses and changes of locality, the library was finally settled, after the return of the Popes from Avignon, in the Vatican Palace, where it occupies seven (out of 11,000) rooms.
Nicholas V., the first Pope of the Renaissance (1447-1456) founded the Public Library, with 9,000 volumes, and appointed Giovanni Tortelli as the first librarian. He had a passion for books, and collected manuscripts through agents from all parts of Europe at great expense.
Great libraries were added from time to time by donations or purchase. They are separately catalogued. The invaluable Bibliotheca Palatina, of Heidelberg, after being captured by Tilly in the Thirty Years' War, was presented to the Pope by the Elector Maximilian I., of Bavaria in 1623, and transported to Rome by twenty-six mule teams. It is very rich in Latin, Greek and Hebrew manuscripts and in the literature of the Reformation period. I mean to examine it more carefully. At the fifth centenary of the University of Heidelberg, in 1886, Pope Leo XIII. sent as a centenary gift a printed catalogue of it, in four magnificently bound volumes, through a delegate, Henricus Stevenson, but not the books which belong to the patrimony of St. Peter. The manuscript catalogue was begun by Josephus de Julijs and finished by Josephus de Camillis; the printed catalogue of the Codices Palatini was prepared under the late Cardinal Pitra by Henricus Stevenson, Sr., and Henricus Stevenson, Jr., and J. B. de Rossi (Roma, 1885 and 1886). The Bibliotheca Urbana, founded by the Duke Federigo da Monte Feltro, was added in 1657, and is described in an alphabetical catalogue of 161 large folio leaves, made in 1875. The Bibliotheca Regiensis, once the property of Queen Christina, of Sweden, the apostate daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, was added in 1690, and has a catalogue of 206 leaves folio. The Bibliotheca Ottoboniana (also separately catalogued in two folios of 631 leaves) was purchased by Pope Alexander VIII. of the Ottoboni family in 1746. Napoleon carried these treasures to Paris, but most of them were restored in 1814.
The Vatican Library contains about 25,000 Latin, Greek and Oriental manuscripts and 50,000 printed books. But the estimates vary very much. One of the sub-librarians told me that the number of printed books exceeds 200,000.