Codex Vaticanus at St. Louis University

Vatican microfilm resides in St. Louis

Published: Saturday, July 14, 2007 7:44 AM CDT
E-mail this story | Print this page


ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The Vatican library in Rome closes Saturday for three years of renovation, a move that’s expected to bring scholars interested in the collections to, of all places, St. Louis.

Thanks to a project that began in the 1950s, Saint Louis University, a Jesuit school, has microfilm copies of nearly half of the Vatican library's medieval and Renaissance manuscripts.

Saint Louis University is preparing to welcome more out-of-town scholars than usual in the upcoming weeks and years. Many academics were caught off guard by word earlier this year that structural weaknesses in the 16th-century Vatican library will force the building to close for repair and improvements.

“From what I’m hearing, the Vatican reading room is inundated these days,” said Gregory Pass, head of the Vatican Film Library in St. Louis.

Scholars who haven’t been able to squeak into the Vatican library before it closes are looking into Saint Louis University’s microfilm collection as an alternative.

A Stanford University professor, Paula Findlen, said she was doing research at the Vatican library two weeks ago in Rome “and lamenting its closure, along with everyone else.”

She is encouraging her dissertation students who need to see the Vatican collection to visit St. Louis instead, and also recommending the film library to colleagues in other countries who may not be aware of it.

She said by e-mail that reading manuscripts on microfilm is “never as good as seeing the originals but far better than not seeing them at all!”

The microfilm from the Vatican came to St. Louis after a Jesuit priest here, the Rev. Lowrie Daly, received approval from Pope Pius XII to place many of the Vatican's rare manuscripts on microfilm. The Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library opened in 1953 at Saint Louis University.

“Certainly, the Vatican was very concerned about the safety of its collections during the Second World War,” Pass said. Valuable manuscripts were even hidden in caves or underground vaults in Europe to protect them during the war, he said.

The collection in St. Louis allowed for microfilm copies to be kept of rare manuscripts, and made it easier for scholars in the Western Hemisphere to access the materials.

The Vatican Film Library in St. Louis may look frozen in time to an outside observer. It has several large microfilm readers from decades ago that don't make copies and even a retro-looking wall clock.


Links
Original article (here)
Codex Vaticanus (here)