Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Pope's Library: a history open to the future

“Shhh!” “Shhh!” We’re inside the Pope’s Apostolic Library and everyone is invited to be quiet. 

We turn our heads from one side of the frescoed reading room to the other to see disgruntled scholars looking up from their work as we walk in. 

Our video guide whisks us back through space and time, explaining how from verbal evolution, man first invented the written word… and how, for centuries, to protect and preserve the world’s rich, evolving patrimony of handwritten tomes and printed volumes, the Vatican has kept ahead of the times, employing some of the most technically advanced instruments known to man.

A state of the art microchip system ensures no volume can get lost amid the mile after mile of bookshelves – or worse, pilfered from the centuries’ old institution. 

The finest photographic equipment and digital scanners not yet on the market record and reproduce the tiniest details of manuscripts dating back to the 3rd or 4th century.

But no – we’re not really inside the Papal Library – only accredited scholars and qualified students can get in there. We’re inside the next best thing: a physical room in a virtual world - recreating the Vatican Library’s 16th c. frescoed Sistine Hall reading room, complete with wooden tables, chairs and lecterns. 

Here, like real scholars, we can slip on white gloves and examine exact replicas of ancient illustrated manuscripts on subjects that vary from the nutritional and therapeutic properties of herbs, to religious texts including one of the world’s oldest bibles – the fourth century Codex Vaticanus B, geographical maps and a guide to falconry.

These are only a sampling of the Library’s vast collection of some 150,000 manuscripts and more than 1.5 million printed books. 

In fact, if you were to line up all the institution’s books in a row, they’d lead you to Rome’s Fiumicino Airport and back – a trip covering some 60 kilometers!

The Library also possesses some 1300 early block print volumes and one of the world’s most important collections of coins and medallions numbering some 300,000.

We’re inside the first room in this very special exhibit, celebrating the September reopening of the Vatican Library after three years of restoration. It is open to visitors in the Braccio Carlo Magno hall to the left of St. Peter’s Square through January 31, 2011.

The exhibition is comprised of several sections, including: History of the Library, Manuscripts, Drawings and Paintings, Printed Volumes, Prints, Numismatics, Archival Services, and Restoration and Photographic departments. 

An audio tour accompanies the visitor in one of five languages through a series of thematic exhibit rooms, many of which are enhanced by audiovisual effects.

Among the items on display are important historical manuscripts dating from the early Christian centuries to the modern era, rare incunabula or block printed books where wood cuts were used to print entire pages, hand illustrated manuscripts and drawings and prints by master artists and a selection of rare coins and medals, some dating to the time of Jesus himself – perhaps one is among the coins Judas received for his betrayal?

But the collection also extends beyond Europe to the Middle East and Asia, with a handsomely illustrated XIII c. Arabic love story of Bayad and Riyad, and from Palestine: an XI c. Melchite lectionary in Aramaic – the language Jesus spoke, and from Burma: a XIX c Illustrated Life of Buddha.

Eighty percent of the objects and texts on display are original manuscripts, volumes, sketches and prints from some of the Europe’s most renowned artists from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. 

Here, you’ll find a first edition volume of Piranesi’s Scenes of Rome, a self portrait by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and poetic verses and sketches by Michelangelo, not to mention a bizarre work by Botticelli depicting scenes from the Divine Comedy.

Vatican Library restorers are also present at the exhibit to explain how they preserve and repair centuries’ old codices and torn or dog-eared pages, damaged bindings and book covers.

SIC: VR/INT'L