The Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

 is the only collection, outside the Vatican itself, of microfilms of more than 37,000 works from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Vatican Library

Vatican Library

The Vatican Library is the library of the Holy See, currently located in Vatican City. It is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. Formally established in 1475, though in fact much older, it has 75,000 codices from...

 in Europe. It is located in the Pius XII Library on the campus of Saint Louis University

Saint Louis University

Saint Louis University is a private, co-educational Jesuit university located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1818 by the Most Reverend Louis Guillaume Valentin Dubourg SLU is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River. It is one of 28 member institutions of the...

.

History

The Library was created by Lowrie J. Daly (1914–2000), with funding from the Knights of Columbus

Knights of Columbus

The Knights of Columbus is the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization. Founded in the United States in 1882, it is named in honor of Christopher Columbus....

. The goal was to make Vatican and other documents more available to researchers in North America.

Microfilming of Vatican manuscripts began in 1951, and according to the Library's website, was the largest microfilming project that had been undertaken up to that date. From 1951-1957, twelve million manuscript pages were recorded, from 30,000 different works. This represents approximately 75% of the manuscripts available in the targeted language groups. Other microfilm projects in the 1950s included Jesuit archival material from Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, archives in both North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 and South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

, and the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

.

The Library opened in 1953, and moved to the St. Louis University campus, in the Pius XII Memorial Library, in 1959. The first librarian was Charles J. Ermatinger, who served until 2000.

As of 2007, the Library has microfilmed versions of over 37,000 manuscripts, with material in Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

, Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, Arabic, Hebrew and Ethiopic

Ge'ez language

Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the northern region of Ethiopia and southern Eritrea in the Horn of Africa...

, as well as several more common Western European languages. There are reproductions of many works from the Biblioteca Platina and Biblioteca Cicognara at the Vatican, as well as Papal letter registers from the Archivio Segreto Vaticano (Vatican Secret Archives

Vatican Secret Archives

The Vatican Secret Archives , located in Vatican City, is the central repository for all of the acts promulgated by the Holy See. The Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, having primal incumbency until death, owns the archives until the next appointed Papal successor...

) from the 9th to 16th centuries, in the series Registra Vaticana and Registra Supplicationium.

The Film Library also collects manuscript catalogs and handwritten inventories of Vatican Library manuscripts, as well as those of other libraries, including a collection of microfilmed copies of over 2,500 medieval and renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 manuscripts from other libraries, over 20,000 incunabula (early printed books), and 52,000 color slides of illuminated manuscripts.

The collection also includes many hardcopy works on the subjects of palaeography

Palaeography

Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...

, codicology

Codicology

Codicology is the study of books as physical objects, especially manuscripts written on parchment in codex form...

, illumination, and other topics related to manuscript studies.

Conference

The Library hosts an annual conference on Manuscript Studies, which is held in St. Louis in mid-October.

Journal

Since 1957, the Library has published a bi-annual journal, Manuscripta

Manuscripta

Manuscripta is a biannual academic journal published by the Knights of Columbus' Vatican Film Library. It was established in 1957 and covers topics related to the study of medieval and renaissance manuscripts. The journal is printed and distributed by Brepols Publishers....

, which focuses on manuscript studies of medieval and Renaissance documents. It is published through Brepols Publishers.