Vatican Library offers digitalized manuscripts

February 01, 2013 - More than six centuries after it was founded by Pope Nicholas V, the Vatican Library announced this week that it has made a first selection of ancient manuscripts available for consultation online. The first 256 documents to be digitalized are part of a broader project to make a large section of this prestigious archive freely available to students, scholars, researchers and teachers. The library, founded in 1451, has been supported in this work of digitalization by a £2 million grant from the Polonsky Foundation and other sponsors. Msgr Cesare Pasini, the prefect of the Vatican Library told Vatican Radio it took two years to make this first selection of manuscripts available online. He said the majority of the documents have been digitalized as a result of a joint project with the University of Heidelberg in Germany. A similar project with the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford is underway to make more material available. For full details of how to obtain an electronic reader’s pass for access to these documents, visit the website: