THE VISITS OF MONTAIGNE AND MISSON TO THE VATICAN LIBRARY

The great essayist, Montaigne, when he made his famous journey into Italy by way of Switzerland and Germany in 1580 and 1581, kept a journal of his travels, part of it dictated to his secretary-valet, expressed now in the first, now in the third person; part of it written with his own hand.

He visited Rome, it will be observed, a few years before the accession of Sixtus V., which took place in 1585: the great Hall of the Vatican Library built by that Pope, and called after him, the Sala Sistina, in which the most valuable manuscripts are now exhibited, was not erected till three years after Sixtus’s accession, in the year of the Spanish Armada, 1588.

I give here the few hundred words in which Montaigne wrote his impressions of the Vatican Library, as translated by Mr. W. G. Waters, in the scholarly and delightfully illustrated edition published in three volumes in 1903, by Mr. Murray, under the title of _The Journal of Montaigne’s Travels_.

“On the 6th of March I went to see the Library of the Vatican, which is contained in five or six rooms, all communicating one with the other. There are many rows of desks, each desk having a great number of books chained thereto. Also, in the chests, which were all opened for my inspection, I saw many manuscripts, of which I chiefly remarked a Seneca and the _Opuscula_ of Plutarch. Amongst the noteworthy sights I saw was the statue of the good Aristides, with a fine head, bald and thickly bearded, a grand forehead, and an expression full of sweetness and majesty. The base is very ancient, and has his name written thereupon. I saw likewise a Chinese book writ in strange characters, on leaves made of a certain stuff much more tender and transparent than the paper we use, and because this fabric is not thick enough to bear the stain of ink, they write on only one side of the sheet, and the sheets are all doubled and folded at the outside edges by which they are held together. It is said that these sheets are the bark of a certain tree, as is a fragment of ancient papyrus which I saw covered with unknown characters. I saw also the Breviary of Saint Gregory in manuscript, which has no date, but the account they give of it states that it has come down from one hand to another from Saint Gregory’s time. It is a missal not unlike our own, and it was taken to a recent Council at Trent as an authority for the ceremonies of our Church. Next, a book by Saint Thomas Aquinas, containing corrections made by the author himself, who wrote badly, using a small character worse even than my own. Next, a Bible printed on parchment, one of those which Plantin has recently printed in four languages, which book King Philip presented to the Pope, according to an inscription on the cover. Next, the original manuscript of the book which King Henry of England wrote against Luther, and sent fifty years ago to Pope Leo X. It contains a subscription and a graceful Latin distich, both written by his own hand:

“‘Anglorum Rex, Henricus, Leo decime, mittit Hoc opus, & fidei testem & amicitie.’

“I read both prefaces, one to the Pope and the other to the reader. The King claims indulgence for any literary shortcomings on the score of his military occupations, but the style is good scholastic Latin. I inspected the Library without any difficulty; indeed, anyone may visit it and make what extracts he likes; it is open almost every morning. I was taken to every part thereof by a gentleman, who invited me to make use of it as often as I might desire.

“Our ambassador quitted Rome just at this time without having ever seen the Library, and he complained because pressure had been put upon him to beg this favour of Cardinal Charlet, and that he had never been allowed to inspect the manuscript Seneca, which he desired greatly to see. It was my good luck which carried me on to success, for, having heard of the ambassador’s failure, I was in despair. Thus it seems all things come easily to men of a certain temper, and are unattainable to others. Right occasion and opportunity have their privileges, and often hold out to ordinary folk what they deny to kings. Curiosity often stands in its own way, and the like may be affirmed of greatness and power. In the Library I saw also a manuscript Virgil in an exceedingly large handwriting, of that long and narrow character which we see in Rome in inscriptions of the age of the Emperors somewhere about the reign of Constantine, a character which takes somewhat of Gothic form and misses that square proportion which the old Latin inscriptions possess. The sight of this Virgil confirmed a belief which I have always held, to wit, that the four lines usually put at the opening of the Æneid are borrowed, since this copy has them not. Also, a copy of the Acts of the Apostles, written in very fair Greek golden character. The lettering is massive, solid in substance, and raised upon the paper, so that anyone who may pass his finger over the same will detect the thickness thereof. We have, I believe, lost all knowledge of this method.”

As he speaks of the Library being in five or six rooms opening out of each other, it was probably still in the rooms under the Sistine Chapel, where it was placed by Sixtus IV. We know that the manuscripts collected by Nicholas V. were kept in chests, and that he had a Seneca of which he was proud. Montaigne may have seen some of his chests. The Aristides is still considered one of the gems of the Vatican Library collections. The papyri of the Library are famous. The Saint Gregory is not Gregory the Great, but St. Gregory Nazianzen: that extraordinary compromise between a hermit and a man of action, who, when he was at college at Athens, was the intimate friend both of Basil the Great and Julian, afterwards branded as the Apostate: who was in his time both Archbishop of Constantinople and a hermit in the desert: whose writings at some times rose to such sublime flights of poetry, such classical eloquence, that he is in his inspired moments, in the words of Chambers, “one of the first orators and most accomplished and thoughtful writers of all times,” though the mass of the enormous number of writings he has left behind him are redundant, pedantic, and heavy with far-fetched similes. He was born in Cappadocia about 330 A.D., and belonged originally to that extraordinary sect the “Hypsistarians, worshippers of the Most High, but also of the Fire, like the Persians, and keepers of the Jewish Sabbath, and the law of the purity of meats.”

St. Gregory comes prominently into Gaetano Negri’s great _Life of Julian the Apostate_ (Fisher Unwin. Translated 1906).

The Council of Trent, to which Montaigne refers, sat with certain interruptions from December 13, 1545, to December 4, 1563.

Before I had read Montaigne’s description of his visit to the Library, I had, in a preceding chapter, drawn attention to the remarkable prominence of Henry VIII.’s autographs among the manuscripts chosen for exhibition in the glass cases in the Sala Sistina.

The three famous Vatican manuscripts of Virgil have been referred to in the last chapter.

I have not been able to find out anything about Maximilian Misson beyond the fact that he wrote _A New Voyage to Italy, with curious Observations on Several other Countries: as Germany, Switzerland, Savoy, Geneva, Flanders, and Holland: together with useful instructions for those who shall travel thither_, which was published by Tonson and others in the reign of Queen Anne, and dedicated to “The Right Honourable Charles, Earl of Arran; Viscount Tullo; Baron of Weston; and Claghernan, Captain of a Troop of Guards: Lieutenant-General in the Armies of Her Majesty.”

I quote from the fifth edition, published in 1739. Misson had more to say about the Library than the rest of the Vatican and St. Peter’s put together. He mentions the bequest by Alexander VIII., the Ottoboni Pope, of nineteen hundred manuscripts, which had belonged to Christina, Queen of Sweden, who was given the name Alessandra by Alexander VII. when she declared herself Roman Catholic. He mentions the pictures with which it (the Library) is filled by various hands, representing “the Sciences, Counsels, most celebrated Libraries, _Inventors_ of Letters, and some passages of the Life of Sixtus V.” Father Norris, presumably an Englishman or Irishman, was chief library keeper when he was there, and became a Cardinal. He examined the famous Codex of the Septuagint very closely, and has left us an interesting note about it:

“As it was not long since I had much observed the famous _Septuagint_ Manuscript that was then in the hands of Mr. Justel, Keeper of the Royal Library in London, and which was given, or rather sold, by the poor Patriarch Cyrillus, etc., I was extremely desirous to see the _Codex Romanus_ (of the Vatican) which has been printed, and with which the Alexandrian contends, both for value and antiquity. I was extremely surprised to find the Aspirates and the Accents distinctly marked everywhere through the whole Book, and even upon the Initial Letters. But the Abbot _Laur. Zacagna_, Library Keeper under F. Norris, and a person of great merit, told me that he was inclinable to believe that those Accents were added by a modern hand; and that this very Hand had taken the Pains, as he believed, to run over all the Characters through the whole Manuscript with a Pen, _atramento super imposito_. I remember his very words, to make the Accents and the Letters appear to be of the same Ink.” What has modern criticism to say to this?

Misson was a very sceptical person: he doubted the authenticity of the ninth-century manuscripts of Terence and Virgil, which are among the treasures of the Vatican, and of which the much-improved scholarship of the present day entertains no doubts. To him, also, as to Montaigne, a hundred years before, they showed the manuscripts of King Henry VIII., as among the most interesting things in the collection. They also showed him a German Bible, pretended to be in Luther’s own hand, which has a scurrilous prayer in the same hand which convinced him of its unauthenticity.

“I observed among the Manuscripts of the last Age, written by, and to Cardinals, that in them they style one another Messer Pietro, Messer Julio. They also showed us, as they do to all Englishmen, a little volume of fourteen Letters from Henry VIII. to Anne of Bollen. One is easily induced to believe what these Gentlemen say, that these Letters are of the King’s Own Hand, for the Writing is not fair. I read two or three of ’em in French, and as many in English. They are Love-Letters, full of _Dear Heart_, _Cruel Absence_, and such Expressions, but without any of what we call wit; not that the King wanted it, but he did not write those Letters with a Design to have them plac’d among the curiosities of the _Vatican_ Library; no more than _Scaliger_ ventur’d in familiar Discourse, a Thousand things Uncertain; sometimes ridiculous; which they have printed as so many Oracles, in the little Book called _Scaligeriana_. Next to the Love-Letters, they have placed the King’s printed Book, the Title of which is _Assertio septem Sacramentorum_, against _Martin Luther_: an admirable Subject indeed, for a King, or even any Body else to write on! But _Henry_ VIII. compos’d this book no more than _Cæsar_ did his Commentaries, or _James I._ his _Demonology_. You may see what _Theod. de Beza_ has said of the pretended Book of K. _Henry_, in his Life of _Calvin_. The