Now that we are well into the 21st century, have medieval social historians, like Joëlle Rollo-Koster from the University of Rhode Island, faded into the thin night air and lost their relevance?
Hardly!
Turns out, Rollo-Koster is more relevant than ever. With the COVID-19 pandemic gripping the world (deaths having soared past the two million mark worldwide), many are seeking out her knowledge and expertise to learn how COVID compares with the Black Death of the 14th century. About 25 million people are estimated to have died in Europe from the plague between 1347 and 1351.
But thanks largely to the digitization of documents from the Vatican Archives, mostly on CD-ROMs, researchers like Rollo-Koster are able to search 14th century manuscripts to see how the word, “plague,” for example, was used, before, during (1348) and after the Black Death.
Thanks to the magic of digitization (including advanced key word functions), Rollo-Koster didn’t have to plow through 500,000 documents (an impossible task) and was able to narrow her search down to a manageable 300 entries to see how the word was used.
Rollo-Koster discovered the word, “scourge’’ was used to describe heretics or bad rulers. It wasn’t until after Black Death that scourge was used to describe the disease. If she hadn’t been able to access the Vatican Archives, such precise information would have never been found.
The digitization of documents from the Vatican Library and Vatican Archives is still far from being completed, but even at this early stage, it has been an incredible boon for researchers. The Avignon registrars from the Avignon papacy (1309 to 1376), for example, which totals about 500,000 documents, all are digitized.
Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), opened the Vatican Archives to historians in 1883.
Anthony Grafton, an American historian of early modern Europe at Princeton University and author of “Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture,” tells me that “DigiVatLab (Digital Vatican Library) during the last year, “has enabled scholars all over the world to continue to make discoveries and publish them, even when the library had to close (due to COVID), and it will continue to provide that service as normal conditions resume.”
Prior to DigiVatLab, Grafton said, scholars would have to journey to Rome on a sabbatical or during the interval between Commencement and the annual closing of the library.
Daniel Gallagher, a lecturer of Latin in the Department of Classics at Cornell University, says the digitization has helped expand accessibility to a wider group of scholars, especially those unable to make the trek to Rome. Gallagher said “there are many scholars of Chinese history who have the expertise and access to corresponding sources outside the Vatican collection who can shed light on what is in the connection related to the Church’s activity in China.” Exciting stuff, Gallagher thinks. “Correspondence between the missionary Jesuits and Franciscans in China and the Holy See reveals much about the culture and religion the missionaries were encountering and the means they used to communicate the Christian message to the natives they encountered. “
Once you consider how much rare material is actually housed inside the Vatican Library, you have a greater appreciation why it will take quite some time to digitize the entire collection.
It’s literally unfathomable to think that the library preserves 80,000 manuscripts of late-antique, medieval, Byzantine, and Renaissance provenance, in dozens of languages, from Aramaic to Old Church Slavonic just for starters. Also, at the Vatican Library, there are 60,00 or more of western manuscripts, 8,000 books printed before 1500, along with a vast collection of nonwestern books and manuscripts, treasures of humanity. It houses two million printed books. In fact, if you placed the books end to end in the Vatican Library it would measure 31 miles. Add to this: a 4th-century Bible, the world's oldest, as well as copies of St Peter's letters and the gospels of Luke and John, dating from the 3rd century and written in Greek on papyrus.
Of particular interest to many is a 1493-book about Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World and 11 or 12 love letters of King Henry VIII to his alluring mistress, Anne Boleyn, which includes a hand drawn heart at the bottom of the page by the smitten English king. Henry’s love letters were actually stolen by a Vatican spy to build a case against his annulment request from Catherine of Aragon. A 1,600-year-old manuscript, displaying Virgil's poems once studied by Raphael can be found at the Library as well, though that manuscript is largely off-limits even to the most credentialed scholars.
Believe it or not, prior to the 17th century, the Vatican lent out its holdings to the general public. Patrons would often check out books with the chain still on them as a reminder they belong to the library. The Vatican Library, as you might imagine, back then, maintained a primitive circulation system (simple notebooks, registrars). Still, according to Anthony Grafton, “librarians from Platina [Italian Renaissance Humanist] on swore solemn oaths to preserve and account for every book in their care.”
Professor Joëlle Rollo-Koster
Photo by Michael Salerno Photography
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To get a sense of a typical day for a scholar in the Vatican Library or Vatican Archives in the 21st century, Professor Joëlle Rollo-Koster, after rushing home to feed her dog on a pleasant Kingston, Rhode Island afternoon, took some time with me over the phone to discuss her experiences researching at the Vatican Library, mostly the Vatican Archives.
Rollo-Koster first explained to me that the Vatican Library is used primarily by literary scholars, the Vatican Archives, on the other hand, are mainly used by historians, especially social historians such as herself.
The criteria for gaining access to the library or archives is fairly straightforward: you need to be a researcher, historian, or scholar and need a letter of introduction. If you write a book using sources from the Archives, you need to give the book to the Library/Archives.
You can’t enter the library until you stopped by the Prefect or Secretary, were they’ll check your credentials, letter of introduction, and passport. At that point, they’ll issue you a pass which records exactly when you entered the Library. All your personal items, moreover, are kept in a locker room. Personal items are strictly forbidden inside the Library or Archives.
Well into the 1980s, women who entered the Vatican Library or Archives had to be dressed in a long skirt. Pants worn by females were forbidden. The dress code imposed on women was relaxed sometime in the 1990s. Patrons to the Library aren’t allowed to make Xerox copies themselves. They need to fill out a form and present it to a library employee, which is then sent to the Prefect for approval.
Rollo-Koster said her area of study requires her to examine documents from the 1300s. To my surprise, Rollo-Koster said many of the documents are gorgeous, in tip-top shape, others are old and decrepit. Most librarians will then display the documents on a table underneath a book stand.
If patrons get hungry at the Library, they’re allowed to exit in the courtyard between the Archives and the Library. Many of the scholars will smoke cigarettes and talk with others about their projects. They also have access to a coffee shop and small cafeteria. “You have some of the best food in Rome here,” Rollo-Koster said. If you arrive early enough, you can find a table. Otherwise, you just eat outside.
The French born Rollo-Koster (born and raised in Toulon) tells me the biggest satisfaction she gets through researching and writing about the 14th century, is she is able to look at records of the lesser-known characters and bring their history to life. “For hundreds of years,” Rollo-Koster continued, “no one paid attention, no one was interested in social history. They were interested in the history of the popes and the kings. The fact that those documents have been preserved, gives me a gate of entry. Those little guys who have disappeared from history, can have their stories retold, thanks to the Archives. “
Another major point that Rollo-Koster stressed to me is that contrary to popular belief, the 14th century documents found at the Vatican Library and Archives are not dry, dead documents. “Documents can really bring life” “My aim” Rollo-Koster said, “is to bring back to life, all those people who have disappeared from history. The Vatican Archives gives me access to those people.”
So, exactly when did the Vatican Library and Archives collect such a staggering amount of information?
Most historians point to the well-read Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455), beginning in 1451, who re-established Rome as an academic center of worldwide stature, by building a modest library of over 1,200 volumes, including his personal collection of Greek and Roman classics and a series of texts brought from Constantinople. Nicholas wanted to establish not only a collection of books, but an institution. Nicholas additionally wanted to create a library at St Peter’s for general use by the Roman Court.
Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) is credited with propelling the Vatican Library into an institution with the installation of books in a custom-built and beautifully decorated suite of rooms with gorgeous paintings.
A lesser-known fact about the growth of the Vatican Library is many from the Vatican were dispatched to ransack private and institutional libraries across Europe, searching in monasteries, above all for rare texts that had been copied and studied in antiquity and the early Middle Ages; documents, in other words that had fallen out of fashion. Leading erudite copyists were employed by the Vatican to translate into Latin the works of Greek poets, philosophers, and historians, many of which had been unknown in the West since ancient times.
Others, such as historian and Italian humanist Furvio Orsini, sold his books to the Vatican in exchange for a pension. The books remained in his possession until his death.
By Sixtus’s death in 1484, the Vatican Library housed more than 3,600 manuscripts. The concept of a central archive of the Holy See didn’t develop until Pope Paul V (1605-1621). In 1783, all remaining material in Avignon was brought to Rome; and in 1798 the archives of Castel Sant'Angelo (papal residence, fortress) were transferred to the apostolic palace, the official residence of the pope.
Today, the library now includes a rich history of science, learning, and the arts, on par with any institution in the world. This we have Pope Nicholas V to thank for rejecting the common belief in the 15th century that Renaissance humanism represented a potential threat to the Church and its teachings. Nicholas, undoubtedly going against the grain, encouraged the study of the pagan classics.
Diana Walsh Pasulka, Professor of Catholic Studies at University of North Carolina Wilmington, underscores how preserving and learning from history is so critical to the continuation of civil society. Pasulka, for example, tells me that she has “uncovered primary sources that enrich our understanding of not only European history, but also data that helps contemporary industries, such as the space industry and others.” “The digitization of these materials,” Pasulka continued “is one of the most important endeavors that has been undertaken to preserve knowledge of historical records that are fragile and in danger of being lost forever.”
Most importantly, the digitization of the Vatican Library and Archives means it is joining the ranks of other prominent institutions who have digitized their archives, such as the British Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Cambridge University, and the Library of Congress.
--Bill Lucey
February 28, 2021
