Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/393

The Vatican Library. 381 perhaps the most interesting of all the private collections of the 1 6th century, and as forming a memoir of the Renaissance. I need not expatiate at greater length on a man so distinguished. M. Pierre de Nolhac has devoted a whole volume to the library and the man ; and he has dedicated his work in sufficiently noble language to M. Leopold Delisle. 1 It is interesting to note on the authority of a German traveller, Schott, that at this time, 1601, the Vatican Library was used by a large number of all classes of readers. The exclusiveness for which, at a later period, it became proverbial, had not crept in. 2 Between 1605 and 1621 came a notable accession of MSS. from the Benedictine Monastery at Bobbio, which is worth a chapter. The library did not come to the Vatican entire ; some MSS. went to the Ambrosian library at Milan, and some to the Royal Library at Turin. But it was from this collection that Cardinal Mai in the next century made his great discovery, in a palimpsest, of the six books of Cicero's Republic which had been lost for centuries. The additions of Paul V., whose ponti- ficate fell between the last mentioned periods, occupied the two rooms to the right. Since Sixtus V., every Pope had endeavoured by the donation of large collections to add his name to the list of benefactors of the Vatican Library. The close of the Hundred Years' War gave Gregory XV. such a chance. At the capture of Heidelberg by the Catholics under Tilly, in Sept., 1622, Caraffa, the papal nuncio, was packed off to Regensburg, to ask the Emperor Maximilian, of Bavaria, for the famous library of the Elector Palatine. It was granted, " haud sine pretio " says Pitra. 3 By December, Leo Allatius was in Heidelberg. In January, he took the best part of the library back over the Alps on mules. The books were placed in the two rooms to the left. A considerable number of the MSS. were among those which went to Paris in 1797, but were returned for the most part in 1815. At the peace of Europe in that year, the King of Prussia at Humboldt's suggestion applied to Pius VII. for the restoration of some of the MSS. particularly relating to Germany. A more favourable moment could not have been chosen : for the pope owed the restoration of his throne to the European concert. The request 1 P. de Nolhac, La Bibl. de Fulvio Orsini (Paris, 1887). 2 Iter Italicum. 3 Bibl. Apost. Vat. MSS. Grace. (Praef., p. 12).