Building the Vatican Library

Vespasian gives us a list of the principal among these five thousand volumes, the things which he prized most, which the Pope bequeathed to the Church and to Rome.

Continuing Nicholas V Rebuilds Rome,
our selection from Makers of Modern Rome by Mrs. Margaret Oliphant published in 1895. The selection is presented in three easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Nicholas V Rebuilds Rome.

Time: 1447-1455
Place: Rome

This is one of those practical arguments which are always more interesting than those which depend upon theories and opinions. However, there are many books on both sides of the question which may be consulted. We are content to follow Signor Lanciani. The special sanctity and importance of Il Borgo originated in this belief. The shrine of the apostle was its center and glory. It was this that brought pilgrims from the far corners of the earth before there was any masterpiece of art to visit, or any of those priceless collections which now form the glory of the Vatican. The spot of the apostles’ execution was indicated “by immemorial tradition” as between the two goals (inter duas metas) of Nero’s Circus, which spot Signor Lanciani tells us is exactly the site of the obelisk now standing in the piazza of St. Peter. A little chapel, called the Chapel of the Crucifixion, stood there in the early ages, before any great basilica or splendid shrine was possible.

This sacred spot, and the church built to commemorate it, were naturally the center of all those religious traditions which separate Rome from every other city. It was to preserve them from assault, “in order that it should be less easy for the enemy to make depredations and burn the Church of St. Peter, as they have heretofore done,” that Leo IV, the first pope whom we find engaged in any real work of construction, built a wall round the mound of the Vatican, and Colle Vaticano — “little hill,” not so high as the seven hills of Rome — where against the strong wall of Nero’s Circus Constantine had built his great basilica. At that period — in the middle of the ninth century — there was nothing but the church and shrine — no palace and no hospital. The existing houses were given to the Corsi, a family which had been driven out of their island, according to Platina, by the Saracens, who shortly before had made an incursion up to the very walls of Rome, whither the peoples of the coast (luoghi maritimi del Mar Terreno) from Naples northward had apparently pursued the corsairs, and helped the Romans to beat them back. One other humble building of some sort, “called Burgus Saxonum, Vicus Saxonum, Schola Saxonum, and simply Saxia or Sassia,” it is interesting to know, existed close to the sacred center of the place, a lodging built for himself by Ina, King of Wessex, in 727. Thus the English have a national association of their own with the central shrine of Christianity.

There was also a Schola Francorum in the Borgo. The pilgrims must have built their huts and set up some sort of little oratory — favored, as was the case even in Pope Nicholas’ day, by the excellent quarry of the Circus close at hand — as near as possible to the great shrine and basilica which they had come so far to say their prayers in, and attracted, too, no doubt, by the freedom of the lonely suburb between the green hill and the flowing river. Leo IV built his wall round this little city, and fortified it by towers. “In every part he put sculptors of marble and wrote a prayer,” says Platina. One of these gates led to St. Pellegrino, another was close to the castle of St. Angelo, and was “the gate by which one goes forth to the open country.” The third led to the School of the Saxons; and over each was a prayer inscribed. These three prayers were all to the same effect — “that God would defend this new city which the Pope had enclosed with walls and called by his own name, the Leonine City, from all assaults of the enemy, either by fraud or by force.”

The greatest, however, of all the conceptions of Pope Nicholas, the very center of his great plan, was the library of the Vatican, which he began to build and to which he left all the collections of his life. Vespasian gives us a list of the principal among these five thousand volumes, the things which he prized most, which the Pope bequeathed to the Church and to Rome. These cherished rolls of parchment, many of them translations made under his own eyes, were enclosed in elaborate bindings ornamented with gold and silver. We are not, however, informed whether any of the great treasures of the Vatican library came from his hands — the good Vespasian taking more interest in the work of his scribes than in codexes. He tells us of five hundred scudi given to Lorenzo Valle with a pretty speech that the price was below his merits, but that eventually he should have more liberal pay; of fifteen hundred scudi given to Guerroni for a translation of the Iliad, and so forth. It is like a bookseller of the present day vaunting his new editions to a collector in search of the earliest known. But Pope Nicholas, like most other patrons of his time, knew no Greek, nor probably ever expected that it would become a usual subject of study, so that his translations were precious to him, the chief way of making his treasures of any practical use.

The greater part, alas! of all his splendor has passed away. One pure and perfect glory, the little Chapel of San Lorenzo, painted by the tender hand of Fra Angelico, remains unharmed, the only work of that grand painter to be found in Rome. If one could have chosen a monument for the good Pope, the patron and friend of art in every form, there could not have been a better than this. Fra Angelico seems to have been brought to Rome by Pope Eugenius, but it was under Nicholas, in two or three years of gentle labor, that the work was done. It is, however, impossible to enumerate all the undertakings of Pope Nicholas. He did something to reestablish or decorate almost all the great basilicas. It is feared — but here our later historians speak with bated breath, not liking to bring such an accusation against the kind Pope, who loved men of letters — that the destruction of St. Peter’s, afterward ruthlessly carried out by succeeding popes, was in his plan, on the pretext, so constantly employed, and possibly believed in, of the instability of the ancient building. But there is no absolute certainty of evidence, and at all events he might have repented, for he certainly did not do that deed. He began the tribune, however, in the ancient church, which may have been a preparation for the entire renewal of the edifice; and he did much toward the decoration of another round church, that of the Madonna delle Febbre, an ill-omened name, attached to the Vatican. He also built the Belvedere in the gardens, and surrounded the whole with strong walls and towers (round), one of which, according to Nibby, still remained fifty years ago, which very little of Nicholas’ building has done. His great sin was one which he shared with all his brother-popes, that he boldly treated the antique ruins of the city as quarries for his new buildings, not without protest and remonstrance from many, yet with the calm of a mind preoccupied and seeing nothing so great and important as the work upon which his own heart was set.

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