Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/348

336 The Library. shape of this scriptorium of Pope Damasus has in all probability been safely conjectured. And not only is thus much known, but it is certain that here were deposited the acts of the Council held by Pope Damasus in the year 369 at Rome, for to the acts is expressly added the note : " In the same way also 146 other oriental bishops subscribed their names, the authentic copy of which is to-day preserved in the archives of the Roman Church." 1 Dr. Lanciani claims that some of this library of Pope Dama- sus still remains, in the Palazzo della Cancellaria courtyard a double tier of light columns of red Egyptian granite. " These are the very columns," he says, " which Pope Damasus carried from Pompey's theatre to his library, and which Cardinal Riario, in 1486, removed from the library to his palace." 2 St. Jerome always speaks of the " chartarium " of the Roman Church. In the 5th century this came to be known more generally under the name of scrinium or scrinia. And this is the word used by Boniface I. (418), Caelestine I. (422), and Leo the Great (440-461), and others generally. There is no mention of the site, and as to the date at which the archives were transferred from the building of Pope Damasus to the Lateran, De Rossi confesses himself to be ignorant. 3 The scrinium, shrine, or chest is familiar in appearance to most of my readers. As late as the middle of the i4th century (1341) a chest or case sealed with three seals and locked with three keys, containing some privileges and muniments affecting the Church of Rome, found its way somehow to Treviso, and was recovered by Benedict XII. These scrinia which subsequently became the " regesta " of the popes were early distinguished by a number, and German erudition has discovered proofs of this in the letters of Innocent I. (402-417). The words of St. Jerome with regard to the letter of Anastasius I. (400-1) bear out the fact that they could be easily referred to. " If you suspect that this letter has been forged by me," he asks, " why do you not look it out in the archives (in chartario) of the Roman Church ?" And we know that this method of filing and preserving decrees was exactly copied from that used for the rescripts of the Caesars, the acts of the Roman Senate, and the prefecture of the city. 1 De Rossi, xliii. Cf. Lanciani, Ancient Rome (1888), pp. 187-190. - Op. cil., p. 190. For a completer description of the theatre of Pompey, see Middleton, Rome in 1888, pp. 295-6. P. xlv.