THE NEW LEONINE LIBRARY OF THE PRINTED BOOKS OF THE VATICAN

Leo XIII. was a very thorough man. More than willing to restore to the Vatican, under proper conditions, one of its greatest art treasures, he determined at the same time to house the books removed from the Borgia Apartments in a manner more worthy of the premier library of the world. At the same time he formed the really magnificent conception of carrying out Nicholas V.’s project of making the Vatican Library the focus of European scholarship. No collection of ancient manuscripts can compare with that of the Vatican; and its archives have a value which can hardly be exaggerated as materials for the history of the Middle Ages. Pope Leo determined to place both the manuscripts and the archives at the disposal of scholars, and to arrange the printed books in whatever way was most convenient for reference to those who were working at the manuscripts and archives.

He set a connoisseur to work to suggest the most suitable sites to him, and as soon as the present site was suggested saw its points. It lies, roughly speaking, under the Sala Sistina, the superb hall of Sixtus V., which cuts Bramante’s vast Belvedere court in half. Ordinary visitors who are going over the Vatican Library spend most of their time in this magnificent chamber, brilliantly arabesqued, and filled with glass cases which contain the most famous manuscript treasures of the Vatican. But only students, or those specially privileged, descend to the Leonine Library below it, which consists of eight fine chambers, six under the Sala Sistina, one in a room at the east end taken from the Vatican Mosaic Factory, and one in the corresponding room at the other end adjoining the Archivio.

Hardly any of the guide-books deign to notice the existence of this new Leonine Library, which contains all the printed books of the most famous library in the world. And those which do mention it, with one exception, practically ignore it.

The six chambers are so lofty and so admirably suited to their purpose that you wonder how Pope Leo had to his hand such a heaven-sent suite for a library. But they present a very different appearance now to that which they presented when he chose them to receive the Library of Printed Books from the Borgia Rooms. They were at the time an armoury, though prior to this some books had been stored here; they had been stables; they were paved in the way you would expect from such uses; and on the north side the walls were, up to a considerable height, below the level of the ground. In May 1889, the Conte Vespignani, the architect of the Vatican, set to work to convert these rather unpromising premises into an ideal library. First he attacked the Giardino della Stamperia, which divided this large building from the Stamperia, or printing-house, where the Vatican Press still does its printing. He lowered the level of the earth by a good many feet; then he tore up the pavement of the future library, and built what the Italians call Vespai (literally, wasps’-nests--a cellular flooring), under it to allow the air free circulation between the floor and the soil. And this he re-covered with the style of paving called _alla Veneziana_, which is very close and compact, to prevent any possibility of the damp rising from the ground. The walls were then carefully plastered and decorated with paintings which harmonized with those of the Sala Sistina above. The result was a complete success, and within two years every printed book in the Vatican had been transferred to the new Leonine Library.

The whole bears the impress of the personality of this great Pope. At one end, where you descend from the Vatican Library above, you pass the noble statue of the late Pope’s favourite Saint, S. Thomas Aquinas, which was sculptured by Cesare Aurelio, and presented to Leo XIII., on the occasion of his Jubilee, by a subscription from all the Roman Catholic seminaries in the world. At the other end is an admirable statue of the Pope himself. Quite close to the statue of S. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest ecclesiastical philosopher of the Middle Ages (remembered by Englishmen chiefly as the most eminent of the Nominalists, the rival of Duns Scotus, the Realist), is the new Reference Library of Biblical Commentaries, Protestant as well as Catholic, which is to be the armoury of the future Aquinas against heresy, and is already much used. The priests are encouraged to come and study here. I saw them studying, and was much struck by the proportion of young men. The great room at this end, transverse to the main building, contains the latest acquisitions--the Terza Raccolta, and the Ruland Library, which was bequeathed by the famous bibliophile Canon, Antonio Ruland, Librarian of Würzburg. The Prima, Seconda, and Terza Raccolta are the three ancient collections formed at various times in the Vatican. In this library the students can go to the shelves themselves.

The main building under the Sala Sistina is one vast chamber divided into six bays by jutting-out bookcases, which do not, however, interfere with the vista extending from the statue of the Pope to the statue of Aquinas. The three bays to the south, which are naturally the most cheerful, are used for a reference library; the three bays to the north contain the famous Palatine Library, captured by Piccolomini at Heidelberg, and presented to the Vatican in 1623; the books from the Aracœli Library and the Library of Cardinal Zelada, acquired in the Pontificate of Pius VII., with the books comprised in the Prima Raccolta and Seconda Raccolta. The other transverse chamber, between the statue of Leo XIII. and the Archivio, contains the library of the famous Cardinal Mai. If not luxurious, the rooms embody the very latest improvements in the arrangement of libraries. The bookcases are of iron, whilst the shelves are lined with fragrant pine to keep away moths and bookworms. One room is devoted to a Library of Catalogues. For its own catalogue the Library uses a card system, managed in the latest way, in which the cards are locked in, so that their order cannot be disturbed without unlocking the case, though they can be consulted with perfect ease.

In the days before the new Leonine Library was formed, those who were studying the Vatican archives had to walk about half a mile to get to the Library of Printed Books if they wished to refer to anything; and even the students in the reading-room of the manuscripts had a good long way to go before they could get from the Library to the Borgia Rooms. Leo XIII., in looking about for a location for his new library, had it in his mind, above all things, to find a site equally convenient as a reference library for the students of the archives and the students of the manuscripts. It forms an actual passage between the two. No other site of anything like equal claims could have been found except in the great Sala Sistina itself; and to have blocked that up with bookcases would almost have been robbing Paul to pay Peter.

In the reference room, called the _Biblioteca_ or _Sala di Consultazione_, are kept the works which are most likely to be consulted by the students of the archives and the manuscripts, and it is a most notable collection. An offer was made by the authorities to the various Governments and learned bodies in all civilized countries to exchange for their official publications copies of the valuable Vatican documents which Leo XIII. was having printed. Many of them disclaimed all idea of exchange, and hastened to present all their publications to the Pope, partly as a compliment to that great man on the completion of his great project, and partly out of gratitude for the throwing open of the Vatican archives and manuscripts to scholars of all nations and creeds. The Government of England, for instance, presented superbly bound copies of all the volumes in the Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland; the Calendar of State Papers; the Calendar of Documents of Scotland; the Register of the Council of Scotland; the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, and Rymer’s Fœdera. The University of Oxford followed suit. The Grand Duke of Baden has been specially liberal, and the Czar, the Emperor William, and the Emperor of Austria have all contributed handsome donations. All the English Catholic books published during the reign of Leo XIII. have been presented to it. It is said that all the English books published in Leo XIII.’s Jubilee year were presented. I do not know if all the good books were presented, but an unconscionable number of bad ones seemed to be there. I saw many which appeared to me below the dignity of a library like this.

Among the finest works contained in this library are the splendid work on the Sistine Chapel prepared by Steinmann, by order of the Emperor Wilhelm of Germany, to commemorate his visit to Rome. A high staging was erected to take the photographs, from which the plates were prepared, from the most favourable positions. Another magnificent reprint is the reproduction of the Virgil of the Fourth Century, which is one of the most celebrated manuscripts in the Vatican Library. This is published in a wooden box.

One of the most interesting departments is that entitled “Popes, Cardinals, and Rome,” which is a collection of biographies of the first and topographies on the antiquities, churches, institutions, and civil and ecclesiastical offices of the Eternal City. Especially noteworthy are the two bookcases which deal with Italian inscriptions, geography, heraldry, genealogy, chronology, and palæography--such as the _Inscriptiones Christianæ_ of G. B. de Rossi.

Beyond Cardinal Mai’s Library is the Archivio, the new rooms of which face the Vatican Gardens and adjoin the Pope’s coach-house. The _Biblioteca di Consultazione_ is divided from the Palatine, Aracœli, and Zelada Libraries by the massive wall supporting the great piers which divide the Sala above.

The work of transporting the quarter of a million printed volumes which were housed in the Borgia Apartments is described in _La Nuova Biblioteca Leonina nel Vaticano_, by Monsignor Ugolini, the senior _Scrittore_ of the Vatican Library.

The Borgia Apartments are on the first floor of the north side of the two inner courtyards which open out of the Cortile della Sentinella--the courtyard in which the sentinels stand under the wall of the Sistine Chapel, where the road turns round from the back of St. Peter’s to ascend to the entrance of the Sculpture Galleries. The Leonine Library is, as I have said, under the great Hall of the Vatican Library, which is known as the Sala Sistina, and goes right across the middle of the two long wings which unite the part of the Vatican containing the Borgia Rooms to the principal apartments in the Museum of Sculpture. Between it and the road which leads up to the Sculpture Galleries is the Archivio, which has several new rooms opening on to that road. It was decided to lower the books from the windows of the Borgia Apartments into the Cortile del Portone di Ferro, and take them through the Cortile della Sentinella; then to turn round and go up the Stradone del Giardino, which divides the Vatican Gardens from the Belvedere, till they reached the Archivio, through which they were transported to the Leonine Library.

In the Cortile del Portone di Ferro a solid staging in wood was constructed, which was built right up to the window of one of the rooms in the Borgia Apartments which were to be emptied. From above was fixed a crane to lower the books gently into the courtyard below, from which they could easily be transported on a trolley to their destination. Twenty-seven strong wooden cases made their appearance; they were each of them about thirty inches long, sixteen inches broad, and twenty inches high, and easily moved by two handles fastened to the sides. Their measurements were chosen so that they could easily contain folio volumes on the one hand, and could be easily moved and taken out on the other. The number twenty-seven was decided on after calculating the space in the rooms, the capacity of the trolley, the distance that had to be traversed, and the time necessary for each workman to do the handling. It was calculated that there would be nine at a time in the Borgia Apartments to be filled, nine in the new Library to be emptied, while the trolley was carrying the other nine alternately full and empty from one place to the other. In order that the arrangement of the books in the old Library should not be disturbed, orders were given that, except in the case of folios, all the books which came together in a shelf, up to a certain measure, should be bound with numbered straps, and laid in order in the boxes, following the respective number preceding that with which each one was marked. The boxes were locked, and, in order to avoid any danger of injury to the books, the insides of the boxes were made soft with quilting; and the straps, which are generally made of leather, were made of cloth, three or four inches wide, in order not to damage the bindings of the works, some of which were very valuable. The work was carried out with marvellous regularity, and with singular rapidity, as well as with mathematical precision; in such a way that, after only fourteen days’ work, which fell between the 25th of May and the 11th of June, performed by only fifteen workmen, with the assistance of the _scrivente_ and the other employees of the library, the quarter of a million of volumes which were stored in the Borgia Apartments found themselves in the new Library arranged in exactly the same order as they had been before, without one book being damaged. Since the printed books have been in the new Library their number has about doubled.

Monsignor Ugolini was very broad-minded in his remarks upon the Protestant books in the Library of Biblical Studies. He pointed me out quite a number; from Sir William Smith’s _Dictionary of the Bible_ and _Christian Dictionary_, to the works of Bishop Ellicott and Bishop Lightfoot. He replied freely to all the questions I asked him, and showed much dignity and humour in the excellent English in which he couched his answers. An English Roman Catholic lady, who was with me, pressed him to show her the _Index Expurgatorius_, which, as everyone knows, is the list of books which Roman Catholics are forbidden to read. “No, my dear lady,” he said. “It is much better for you not to see it, then you can read whatever your own judgment permits you to read, without committing any offence.” Poor, dear lady, she did not want such broad-mindedness; she wished to mortify the mind as, in the Middle Ages, she would have mortified the flesh!

In the new Library is preserved a writing-table bought and bequeathed by the antiquary de Rossi, one of the most celebrated explorers of the Forum and Catacombs. On this table Cardinal Mai, the most famous of the librarians of the Vatican, transcribed from a palimpsest, discovered by himself, on which St. Augustine’s _Commentary on the Psalms_ had been written, the long-lost _Republic_ of Cicero--not the only one of Cicero’s works which he discovered. Mai, who was born of poor parents in a village near Bergamo, in 1782, was librarian of the great Ambrosian Library at Milan before he was appointed to the Vatican. He died Cardinal Librarian of the Roman Catholic Church, in 1854. An account of his work will be found in the next chapter.

Some idea of the size of Cardinal Mai’s library may be formed from the fact that the first of the Borgia Rooms in which it was housed required forty thousand tiles to cover its floor.

It is well for it to be under the guardianship, in marble, of the greatest scholar of the Middle Ages, the Angelic Doctor, who wrote the _Summa Theologiæ_.