Vatican: Library Repair Causes a Plea to the Pope

Library Repair Causes a Plea to the Pope

Originally published: NYT 23 June 2007

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

ROME, June 21 — Normally a sanctuary of scholarly meditation, the Vatican Library has been the scene of unusually hectic activity lately, as word has spread that it will close in July for a three-year renovation.Since the Vatican announced the impending shutdown, dozens of scholars have been lining up each day at ever earlier hours to snatch one of the 92 available spots in the manuscript room, where they can pore over archaic texts in forgotten languages. The library staff, traditionally prompt in responding to requests, has been struggling to keep up with the demand.

The hall of Sixtus V at the Vatican Library, which is expected to close for renovations for three years. //  Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

“We’re kept waiting like the virgins in the Gospel for their bridegroom to come,” Lucas Van Rompay, a professor of religion from Duke University who specializes in Eastern Christianity, said jokingly. He was referring to Jesus’ Parable of the 10 Virgins, a lesson on maintaining faith, after two particularly frustrating mornings of his own. “It’s getting worse every day.”

Like the British Library and the National Library of France, the Vatican has one of the most important manuscript collections in the world. The prospect of being cut off from their sources with crucial research under way is sowing panic among visiting scholars.

“It’s tragic,” said Barbara Roggema, a scholar who is leading a three-year study on Christian-Muslim relations during the Middle Ages for the University of Birmingham in England and had counted on continued access to the library, which is to close on July 14.

Petitions addressed to Pope Benedict XVI, the ultimate authority on Vatican matters, are circulating among scholars. Some ask that the manuscript division at least remain accessible to the public during the three-year renovation. Others request that the closing be delayed until 2008 so that scholars will have time to wrap up research and meet publishing or teaching deadlines.

An antiphonary manuscript from the 16th century.

The Pope is scheduled to visit the library on Monday, according to Ambrogio Piazzoni, the library’s vice prefect. “He wants to understand what’s going on,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Piazzoni said that close examination of the 16th-century wing of the library had revealed dangerous structural weaknesses. Because of the way the wing is laid out, he added, reinforcing the foundations and floors requires that the entire building be closed.

Engineers say that the sooner the work begins, the better, he added. “We couldn’t wait for the palazzo to crumble,” Mr. Piazzoni said.

But what seems to worry Dr. Roggema and other scholars most is that “when Italians say three years, in reality it’s going to be much longer.”

Vatican officials acknowledge that tensions have been growing in recent days. “Even in the silence that continues to be miraculously observed, you can sense the nervousness of the scholars and the stress of the staff,” Raffaele Farina, the library’s prefect, wrote this month in the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. But the decision to close was not taken lightly, he and others say.
Mr. Piazzoni said the library had sought in recent years to relieve some of the structural stresses — for example, by removing about 400,000 books to lighten the load on floors that had begun to sag — without inconveniencing scholars. “We had hoped it was enough,” he said.

A view of the print reading room at the Vatican Library.

But engineers concluded that only some reconstruction could remedy the problem. During the period that the library is closed, other renovations — of the consulting room, the photographic laboratories and the manuscript deposits, for example — will also be carried out.

The library’s most important manuscripts — around 60,000, or 80 percent of the collection — are on microfilm and available to scholars. Thousands of copies are made each year. American scholars can also gain access to about 37,000 Vatican-owned manuscripts in various languages through St. Louis University in Missouri, a Jesuit institution.

Mr. Piazzoni is the first to acknowledge that there is no substitute for an original manuscript: Before he became vice prefect of the library in 1999 (the first lay person to hold the post), he was a Latin scriptor, a researcher in the manuscript section.

“We are perfectly aware of what this means,” he said of the closing. “We’re here, after all, to make books available to the public, so clearly if we close, it’s because we can’t do differently.”

The library was founded in 1451 and is open to scholars and academics who submit a letter of accreditation from a university or research institute. Its collection consists of about 1.6 million volumes, including some 75,000 manuscripts and 8,300 incunabula (printed books from the second half of the 15th century). It also has almost 400,000 coins and medals and prints and engravings. Each year about 20,000 scholars peruse material in the collection.

A view of the galleries of the Vatican's Apostolic Library.

The existence of microfilm versions for many volumes is small consolation to some academics.
“Why don’t they separate what is unique from what’s not unique?” asked Professor Van Rompay, who is preparing a catalog of Syriac manuscripts originating at the Monastery of the Syrians in the Egyptian desert. The most ancient of the 900 Syriac manuscripts owned by the Vatican came from this monastery, and 34 barely survived an 18th-century boat accident that left them water-damaged.
For him, handling the original objects is not only preferable but also critical. “There are times where you can’t distinguish between a dot on a letter or an insect that just plopped on the page,” he said. “If I am going to publish a text, I need to see it.”

When other major libraries have shown signs of strain, they have received modern makeovers or moved to new sites. In 1996 the National Library of France moved to four 24-story towers in an unfashionable Left Bank neighborhood in Paris (though manuscripts have remained at the historic Richelieu branch on the Right Bank).

The Vatican says it does not have a comparable option. “We can’t build a tower in the middle of the Vatican gardens and just move the books,” Mr. Piazzoni said.

In an added cause of concern, some other major libraries in Rome are also shut for restorations. The American Academy is expected to reopen in September after a 13-month hiatus, and the library at the German Archaeological Institute closed last September and is scheduled to reopen in about a year.
“This comes at an especially difficult moment, with other libraries closed,” said Herbert L. Kessler, a professor of medieval art history at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

A deeper concern is that once the renovations begin, new structural problems could arise. Many scholars cite the endless restorations that kept the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan under wraps from 1990 to 1997, and, more troublingly, the renovation of the Bibliotheca Hertziana of the Max Planck Institute for Art History here in Rome. It has been closed for renovations since December 2001 and is not expected to open until 2009, though an off-site reading room for the printed books collection has been available to scholars since 2003.

Professor Van Rompay said that the Vatican should find some way to provide access to the original texts during construction. “There’s no doubt that the restorations at the Vatican are urgent and important, but this is the most drastic approach they could have chosen,” he said. “In the modern world it must be possible to find another solution.”