Vatican Library Digitizes 4,400 Ancient Manuscripts and Gives Them Away for Free

The Vatican Apostolic Libraryis now digitizing its valuable ancient religious manuscripts and putting them online via its website. All of the content is available for free.

The Library was originally founded in 1451 AD and holds over 80,000 manuscripts, prints, drawings, plates and books printed prior to 1500 AD. The titles are all written throughout history by people who had different faiths or religions, from all over the world.

In order to properly digitize the rest of the library, the Vatican is estimating that it will cost €50 million and take fifteen years. They are looking for corporate sponsors and normal people who want to see this work.

So one of the richest Organisatiions in history is looking for backers for this project this is small change really in the big scheme of things and is way overdue to get done .

I would recommend trying the E.U Parliament for the cash as they have just upped the U.K s yearly bill from £8.7 BILLION to £ 10.5 BILLION and £ 1= 1.3euros small change really .

So enjoy the Vatican archives or what we will ever see

goodereader.com...
digital.vatlib.it...

Wow, thanks for posting this.

S & F for you.

a reply to: douglas5

I would think the Vatican owes it to the world to pay for this themselves. After all, their money came from the world thru donations, theft and wars.

Time to give a little something back. 50 million is nothing to them.

Peace

a reply to: Elton

Well i have the avatar of Father Dougal Mcguire from the show Father Ted so this one was right up my street .

I might start taking confession next

Someone tell me some RARE occult titles?

a reply to: jude11

The church probably blows that on tea and biscuits every year Jude and they have been caught out owning firms that make arms but any excuse for more money

originally posted by: cavtrooper7

Someone tell me some RARE occult titles?

Semiphoras and Schemhamphorash

Semiphoras and Shemhamphoras Salominis is the title of a 1686 occult book attributed to King Solomon printed by Andreas Luppius. ...

The Dark God: Satan Worship and Black Masses by Gerhard Zacharias,

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: douglas5

The link you provided only has 9 featured manuscripts and the library was inaccessible.

Where are the other 4.406 that have been digitalised? Am I missing something?

a reply to: Wifibrains

it is working at my end Wifibrains 4415 manuscripts online ?

www.vatlib.it...

now gone down with me too

a reply to: douglas5
I only seen 4.415 Out of 82,000. Apparently, they have not gotten very far into the process. Only just beginning their 5 th one. Wow, that is a slow process. One would think that they would save money by having individuals volunteer their services, rather than just ask for $$$. Oops, I forgot we were talking about the Vatican! They make money by asking for $$$ even though volunteers would do it for free. Thanks for sharing though.

a reply to: douglas5

I wonder if any items/ manuscripts were taken by the Vatican from the Library at Alexandria before it burned down...?

the Vatican is estimating that it will cost €50 million and take fifteen years. They are looking for corporate sponsors

Is that a joke?

Considering the untold trillions the Vatican Bank has accumulated they are begging for 50 million euros?, the pope probably spends more than that in a weekend on under aged Filipino boys.

a reply to: douglas5

Super exciting! Thanks for the info!

Now if only they would open the Vatican vaults for tours, that would be a dream come true. Just imagine all the historical treasures and items from antiquity that are just sitting down there waiting to be explored. That will never happen...but a girl can dream!

I wonder why it costs E625 to digitize each document.

Surely all you have to do is to lay it on a scanner bed and hit one button then clean it up a little in the digital form.

That is a lot of money for each one.

P

Neat. Some of the pictures look like modern day people, except for the fact that the guys are wearing skirt like things.

I wonder what they would back then to someone who turned up wearing bluejeans and a t-shirt with cowboy boots?

originally posted by: pheonix358
I wonder why it costs E625 to digitize each document.

Surely all you have to do is to lay it on a scanner bed and hit one button then clean it up a little in the digital form.

That is a lot of money for each one.

P

I'd assume there's more to it than just scanning these things. They probably need proper sanitary handling materials, perhaps light diffusers or filters, depending. We're talking about some very old and likely extremely fragile documents. Not just anybody should be trusted to handle them & not destroy them. I honestly don't know the first thing about how to handle old parchment, and would probably end up ruining it somehow.

But I agree, the church might as well be extorting people to scan these. "$50 million, and you can see them after scanning is complete." WTH kind of highway robbery is this? Pay for it yourselves, buttholes, it's not like you don't have the money.

originally posted by: pheonix358
I wonder why it costs E625 to digitize each document.

Surely all you have to do is to lay it on a scanner bed and hit one button then clean it up a little in the digital form.

That is a lot of money for each one.

P

You are paying someone to do all the work ... there are also special machine that you can lease that do the automatic page flipping for you and also apply image correction software to correct for the distorted perspective due to the curvature of the pages.

Looks like they are also going to need to pay for translators to convert all the Latin into English. I've seen some amazing websites where you could see the original page on side, and English on the other. Then you could move the cursor over Latin words and see their direct translation in English.

a reply to: douglas5

Excellent Find

Cookies and tea for you.

Anything in there about the rampant sex abuse and pedophelia in the catholic church?

A big thank you to everyone for dropping in