The exhibition which this book accompanies is the first in a series of exhibitions that the Library of Congress plans to present about great libraries of the world. The catalogs that will provide a record of each of the exhibits intend to go far beyond simple descriptions of artifacts. These books will be distinguished by highly readable scholarly studies, written by leading specialists, of the intellectual, social, and cultural environments that created the objects on display.
It is especially fitting that this series begin with the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. The Vatican Library is the prototypical modern research library of western culture. Surprisingly, its collections are not primarily theological. From its founding by Pope Nicholas V in the 1450s, the Vatican Library consciously pursued an acquisitions policy that focused upon the liberal arts and sciences. Consequently, the library has special strengths in unexpected areas, such as the history of the exact sciences, East Asian languages and literatures, and music history.
As Professor Grafton makes clear in his introductory essay, this counterintuitive acquisition policy was not accidental; it reflected the conscious determination of the Renaissance papacy to place knowledge systematically at the service of governance. Heir to that tradition, Thomas Jefferson assigned precisely the same function to the Library of Congress in the context of American democracy: to ground the world of public affairs in the world of learning. It is, therefore, fully appropriate that this exhibition take place in the Library of Congress, an institution that represents the ultimate modern embodiment of an ideal that originated with the Renaissance popes.
This volume and the exhibition it describes also testify to a special relationship that exists between the Library of Congress and the Vatican Library. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Library of Congress, supported by a grant from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, sent teams of technical experts to assist in the modernization of the Vatican Library's technical operations. The first time I met Fr. Leonard Boyle, the present prefect of the Vatican Library, he recounted to me the history of this extensive collaboration. As Father Boyle suggests in his essay, this unique exhibition is the Vatican's elegant way of repaying the assistance given by its American collaborator.
The Library of Congress's curatorial team learned new and surprising things in the process of selecting the two hundred manuscripts, rare books, maps, and fine prints for display. Certain schools of western historiography have depicted the papacy as fighting a long rearguard action against the rise of modernization and enlightenment. Our curators discovered quite a different reality. They were impressed by the level and depth of papal sponsorship of the life of the mind throughout the Renaissance--especially the birth of Near and Far Eastern studies and the rise of modern science and classical studies. Beyond the well-known story of papal patronage of the arts remains another untold story of great historical interest.
It is my hope that this magnificent exhibition and its accompanying volume will stimulate serious academic research on this and other heretofore neglected topics.
JAMES H. BILLINGTON
The Librarian of Congress
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