The Collection

The collection of the Vatican Library is one of the biggest in the world.  It includes many important historical pieces.  I was able to find information regarding the collection using the internet, in particular, the Vatican website.  The video below was shown on sixty minutes. People, other than scholars are rarely allowed to visit the library so this video gives an insight to places most of us will never see.

The collection includes manuscripts, archives, printed books, prints and engravings, coins and medals

Manuscripts

The manuscript section includes a collection of around 80,000 literary materials.  There are manuscripts which are Latin, Greek and Oriental.  It has papyrus codices of the Gospels and other New Testament writings and masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance.  It is thought that some of the documents on papyrus date back to the year 200.  It also includes collections  of letters and papers from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century.  For example letters written by Henry viii to Anne Boleyn.  

Archives

The Vatican Archives were separated from the library at the beginning of the 17th century; they contain another 150,000 items.  Today, the materials kept in the Vatican Secret Archives occupies eighty-five linear kilometres of bookshelves.   It has two reading rooms, admitting about 1500 scholars from over 60 Countries every year, an index room, an internal library, a laboratory for preservation, restoration and bookbinding, a laboratory for the restoration and the study of seals, a laboratory for photography and digital reproduction, a data processing centre and a computer laboratory,

  

Printed Books

The Vatican Library possesses about one and a half million printed books, predominantly old and rare books.  The Library preserves two types of collections of printed books: “closed collections” and “open collections”.

Prints and engravings

The Prints Cabinet of the Vatican Library  preserves engravings and loose prints, i.e. images which are not bound into books or which are not accompanied by printed texts. It also preserves a considerable number of drawings which have, over the course of time, become part of the Library’s collections and which were added to the collection of engravings due to the similarity of the necessary conservation measures. 

Coins and Medals

The Numismatic Cabinet or Medagliere of the Vatican Library preserves coins, medals, plaques, seals, tablets, engraved stones, sulfur and plaster casts, and other similar materials.

In particular:

• ·    Roman coins of the Republican Period
• ·    Roman coins of the Imperial Period
• ·    Coins found in the Roman Catacombs
• ·    Byzantine coins
• ·    Pontifical coins (the largest collection in the world)
• ·    Coins of the cities and dominions of Italy
•      Coins from other countries, including a large number of Oriental countries
• ·    Papal medals (the largest and most complete collection in the world)
• ·    Italian medals, from the Renaissance to the present day
• ·    Medals from other countries, from the Renaissance to the present day
• ·    Pontifical lead bulls
• ·    Seals
• ·    Roman lead tesserae
• ·    Roman engraved stones from the Imperial Period
• ·    Sulfur and plaster casts of gems, coins and medals
• ·    Plaques
• ·    Tablets

Video


http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7362330n




Resources

http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?pag=storia

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7362330n