On Saturday, Pope Benedict visits the Vatican Apostolic Library after a three year
long restoration to update the centuries-old institution. Though journalists were
treated to a peek upon its reopening in September, the library is generally off-limits
to all but accredited scholars and researchers.
But Tracey McClure takes
us on a virtual tour of a new temporary exhibit which opens the doors of the Vatican
Library to the public: “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.
Listen to Fr. Caesar Atuire, CEO of the Pilgrimage tour operator Opera
Romana Pellegrinaggi which collaborated in the realization of the exhibit. He explains
why the exhibit focuses on “a History open to the Future”: Listen to the program
:
The exhibit
in the Braccio Carlo Magno hall runs through January 31, 2011. To reserve a tour,
visit: