The Vatican Library during the war.

Abstract

II Vatican Library, an essentially international organization, was necessarily reduced. With practically all frontiers closed and exchanges with neutral countries difficult if not impossible, it was forced to limit its services to Italian and German students and to the few other foreigners who remained in Rome regardless of the risks. This state of affairs lasted until September, I943, when the capitulation of Italy and the consequent occupation of the city by the German troops made advisable a temporary closure of the library -a closure that lasted until October, 1944, a few months after the Allied armies entered Rome. Meanwhile, serious problems presented themselves to those who had the grave and delicate task of protecting and preserving the priceless cultural and artistic patrimony contained in the library. The aerial warfare had begun to bring destruction to many Italian cities, and many libraries had seen the total or partial ruin of their buildings and their collections. In addition, there was the even greater peril from the march of the fighting armies across the peninsula. The more important Italian libraries had dispersed their precious collections to isolated locations in villas and in monasteries in order to avoid the bombardments for which the cities were frequent targets. At this time no locality could any longer be said to be completely safe, and those in whose custody so much valuable material had been placed were greatly worried. The Vatican Library, situated in a state whose neutrality was universally recognized, should theoretically have had nothing to fear from military action. Too often, however, the situation was not so tranquil. The priceless collection of manuscripts and incunabula of the Vatican Library is kept in a four-floor repository over the study-room and is particularly exposed to aerial attack. During the first days of the conflict, whenever the approach of an Allied plane was announced, an intense barrage of anti-aircraft fire was sent into the Roman sky, and the danger that anti-aircraft bomb fragments or an unexploded projectile might pierce the ceiling was a cause for serious worry. In order to remove this danger, it was decided to evacuate the two upper floors and to remove the manuscripts and incunabula to more protected sites. Thus was transferred the Reserve, including among other famous antiquities the Vatican codex of the Bible (Codex B. Vat. gr. 1209), the four ancient Vergilian manuscripts (Augustan, Vatican, Palatine, Roman), the De re publica palimpsest, the Terence of Bembo, the autographs of Petrarch, etc.; and the Palatine (2,027 manuscripts), Reginensis (2,120 manuscripts), Ottoboni (3,394 Latin and 479 Greek manuscripts), Chigi (3,704 manuscripts), and Rossi (ij,96 manuscripts) collections, as well as the Vatican oriental collections (Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Georgian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Rumanian, -Translated from the Italian by Lewis A. Bilancio.