
Vatican Library Puts 4,000 Ancient Manuscripts Available Online for Free - Shivetya
http://www.messagetoeagle.com/vaticanlibrary.php#.VEkMGhZ0Yim
======
adriand
Absolutely incredible. Historical documents like this are priceless. I always
get a chill when I look at stuff like this: these manuscripts give us the
opportunity to "hear" from minds that vanished from this earth centuries ago.

Even if you can't read the text, there's something moving about seeing the
painstaking and beautiful work that went into creating these. Those marks were
made by a hand that has long since turned to dust... Made by someone who felt
that what they had to communicate was vitally important to humanity.

~~~
sho_hn
Your post reminded me of one of my favorite books of all time, Chadwick's _The
Decipherment of Linear B_.

Linear B is the name given to a syllabic script used on clay tablets excavated
on Crete around 1900. Chadwick's book recounts the tale of how Michael Ventris
ultimately deciphered it and revealed the text to be Ancient Greek rather than
any other language, which was against scholarly opinion of the time - and even
his own. It's a wonderful story about human intelligence (there was no Rosetta
stone equivalent for Linear B; the decipherment had to be accomplished purely
by deriving rules from the corpus), the transferability of skills (Ventris was
an architect, not a linguist or cryptographer), dispassionately following
where the evidence leads, and the value of sharing information openly in the
sciences (Ventris' insights were enabled by data compiled and shared by
others, notably the equally brilliant American researcher Alice Kober, as
Margalit Fox documented in a more recent book).

Now, after it gets done describing this accomplishment, it ends with a brief
section on how the now-readable documents revolutionized our view of ancient
European history, and what their contents tell us about their authors and
their lives.

It was a hugely inspirational read on so many levels. I read it as a teenager,
and if there's any teen around you who seems like they might enjoy it - give
it to them.

------
sadfaceunread
Can we change this link to the actual source?
[http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp](http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp)

Or the Vatican library homepage or this tweet:
[https://twitter.com/vaticanlibrary/status/522270002012246016](https://twitter.com/vaticanlibrary/status/522270002012246016)

~~~
Shivetya
One feature I would love within HN submissions is to include alternate links,
chose to link to the page I did because it the article was eye grabbing in the
pictures they chose and they did provide sufficient background on the project
I didn't feel as if it were merely blog spam; I have never been to that site
before.

------
valarauca1
The Vatican is really a amazing piece of history in and of itself. Despite how
you may personally feel about its religion, or the effects of it on the world.
The _enlightened_ western world we live in today would not exist without it,
and without all the knowledge, art, and culture it (and its local branches)
preserved for ~1000+ years.

~~~
netcan
Well… That's true of any strong and long lasting institutions.

Incidentally, many of the ancient documents in those archives were copied into
it during the renaissance after surviving for hundreds of years in the Muslim-
Arab world. The Hebrew document in that article (I think 'Supplement to The
Torah' is a decent translation) by Maimonides is a great example.

Maimonades was a Jewish Scholar who lived in Spain (during the Muslim period),
Morocco & Egypt. He can (and is) claimed by Arabs, Jews & the Helenic culture
of the middle ages. If you think in terms of 'The Flame of Western
Civilization' he was part of the movement that carried that flame for a few
hundred years before it was carried back to Christendom during the
Renaissance. You could also make the argument that European Christianity joins
Western culture during the Renaissance.

But certainly, the Vatican is an incredible influence on Western culture,
good, bad or odd.

~~~
huxley
Though forgotten by pretty everyone who doesn't study Medieval history, the
Muslim scholar Averroës (Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rušd) was perhaps
the single most significant figure, influencing all medieval scholars
including Maimonides.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes)

"Famous scholastics such as Aquinas believed [Averroës] to be so important
they did not refer to him by name, simply calling him 'The Commentator' and
calling Aristotle 'The Philosopher.'"

~~~
dbdr
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119629/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119629/)

I saw this film a long time ago, and as I remember it was enjoyable and
inspiring, so I recommend it as an easy to watch introduction on this topic
and era.

------
orionblastar
At one point in time before we had universities, science and math research was
done in monasteries. The Vatican paid for a lot of that research and
education. So I assume they got a lot of books they collects or had written
that they want to made free access to the public by digitizing them.

A lot of people have left the Catholic Church to go to Non-Denominational
Churches, or else just became Atheists. So passing the hat around doesn't work
as well as it used to.

Priests and Nuns take a vow of poverty, they are not spending the money on
themselves. They use it for food panties, for homeless shelters, for
healthcare, for education, and to pay their employees. A lot of times churches
are in debt even if the people pledge to donate over a million dollars to the
church, people don't always donate what they pledge or promise and many
families even with good paying jobs just don't donate at all. There is nothing
that forces people to donate 10% of their salary to a church, in fact most
donate less than that. Some don't donate anything at all.

The documents won't rot away they are being taken care of and preserved. If
there is not enough donations to digitize them, the world will have to go
without them.

Just think this is a large collection of books from around the world that
hasn't been seen since the Library of Alexandria. Books that were protected
from the Nazis who wanted to burn them. Books that governments had wanted
banned or censored. Books that brought about human advancement and
civilization throughout history.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Priests and Nuns take a vow of poverty"

It depends. "Priests who belong to a religious order (e.g., Benedictine,
Dominicans, Franciscans, etc.) take the vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience. Diocesan priests make two promises, celibacy and obedience; these
promises are part of the ordination ceremony."

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_poverty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_poverty)

------
netcan
_The Vatican is also turning to crowdfunding and is now seeking donations of
€5o save a single page in a manuscript, while donations of at least €1,000
will see the backer included on the official supporters list_

If they had literally put this on kickstarter, it would have been sureal.

~~~
JonnieCache
Why is the catholic church panhandling in this way? Surely they can afford to
do it themselves.

They talk about "saving" the documents. Are they going to just let them rot
away if we don't cough up?

~~~
coliveira
This is how the church does everything. They never use their resources (other
than personnel) to do things, instead they rely on donations and keep their
money in their own pockets.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The Church is a body of people. The people of the Church donate money towards
its purposes - the preservation of manuscripts isn't a main focus of the
Church and is something the support of which isn't confined to Christians (or
in this instance Catholics, who may or may not be Christians!).

In the same way that you might donate to a soup kitchen run by a Church
fellowship, because the money goes to feeding hungry people, you might donate
to manuscript preservation.

That people in the Church donate their time and money towards such causes and
ask for other people to donate their money doesn't seem wrong.

------
sakri
That Aztec illustration!

I was a bit disappointed with all the mentions of "ancient" and the oldest
thing on that page was 400 AD.

~~~
tragomaskhalos
Glad to see it, especially when compared to the fate of Mayan codices that
fell into catholic hands:

"We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained
nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we
burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and
which caused them much affliction." (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices))

~~~
xico
Catholics, in particular Franciscans, have also been extremely useful in
describing, preserving and creating codices describing the life, history and
mythology of the precolumbians, not to mention their roles in the syncretic
emerging culture. Once could cite [Bernardino de
Sahagún]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardino_de_Sahag%C3%BAn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardino_de_Sahag%C3%BAn))
for instance.

------
amass
My university has a very similar digitized collection, albeit smaller. One
common denominator with these types of online collections is software that
leaves much to be desired. Accessing the collection and searching through it
is usually very painful. I realize they are on a tight budget, but it is
disappointing nonetheless. Maybe it would be a good open source project.

------
WalterBright
> The Vatican is also still seeking funds to digitise the remaining 76,000
> manuscripts, which it estimates will take more than 15 years, over €50m, and
> the efforts of more than 150 specialised experts.

What I'd do is do a quick pass over all the documents with a basic digital
camera and store them as jpgs. Then, go back and do the painstaking, hi res
scans.

I also worry about "FITS, the format developed by Nasa" for long term storage,
as we all know what has happened to older Nasa storage formats and
technologies. When I archive family pictures and stuff, I use jpg, for the
simple reason of its ubiquity.

~~~
krapp
I don't think you can do a "quick pass" over 76,000 fragile, ancient
manuscripts, for any sane definition of "quick."

------
mmmm
Anyone know if it's ok to make profit out of these?

Think: Retouch and sell as a painting.

~~~
joshvm
IANAL

Short answer, no. Long answer, it depends and you'd need to be careful.

The issue isn't copying the artwork per se, it's copying the Vatican's picture
of the artwork. They will likely release the images for free, but retain
copyright over the digitisation.

Would you be caught for stealing a plate from an ancient book and
incorporating it somewhere? Dunno. The Holy See is part of the Berne
convention so you're still bound by their claimed copyright. Are they really
going to go after you? I find it rather unlikely unless you're peddling images
of the Sistene Chapel.

On the other hand if you made a reproduction of the image, say you found a
drawing and manually vectorised it, then I think you would be safe - as after
all, it's the photo that's copyright, not the manuscript.

In principle, taking a photo of a Van Gogh and putting it on a Tshirt is
perfectly legal. The bans on photography in galleries boil down to:

\- Light sensitive works

\- Copyright on newer exhibits

\- Profit making for the gallery (as many galleries in the UK are free, this
is how they make their money)

\- House rules, you may not be violating image copyright, but you may be
violating house rules which they could kick you out for

~~~
ars
> The issue isn't copying the artwork per se, it's copying the Vatican's
> picture of the artwork. They will likely release the images for free, but
> retain copyright over the digitisation.

In the US they can not claim copyright for this. This is very clear. See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp).
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_Wikimedia_Foundation_copyright_dispute)

------
ommunist
This is just in time. When everyone but the clergy forgot how to read those,
they are putting 'em online. I especially like Old Slavonic ones, where
notation for numbers is purely alphabetical with tilde. A+B is not boolean
there. It returns Г, meaning V.

------
gdonelli
Is there actually a website to see the digitized art works?

~~~
gdonelli
Found it:
[https://www.vatlib.it/home.php?ling=eng&res=1920x1080](https://www.vatlib.it/home.php?ling=eng&res=1920x1080)

~~~
twright
More specifically here's an index of digitized manuscripts. Click on the book
to view one.
[http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp](http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp)

------
tempodox
Om nom, this is highly tasty. I hope one day all libraries will be accessible
like that.

------
JoeAltmaier
They want to crowd-fund the digitizing of their own collection? A multi-
billion-dollar outfit needs to pass the hat to keep their own house in order?

~~~
pfortuny
As a catholic I understand that you may not want to cooperate but calling it a
'multi-billion dollar outfit' is really off the mark by eons.

But you are entitled to your own opinions. Not that they are necessarily
right.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
[https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060715051049A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060715051049AAJwh7u)

Their US investments alone are worth a half-billion. Not so far off the mark.

~~~
excitom
Citing Yahoo Answers as a source? Whoa.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Well, citing a quote from an authority presented in a Yahoo Answer.

Ok, I googled again for you. Here's an expert from Georgetown U quoted in a
Google Answer:
[http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=54617](http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=54617)

~~~
ceejayoz
The "authority" quoted in the Yahoo Answers thread is Jack Chick, who's
rapidly anti-Catholic (see
[http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractByKeyword.asp?Subject=Cath...](http://www.chick.com/catalog/tractByKeyword.asp?Subject=Catholicism)),
claims Dungeons and Dragons involves true demon worship, etc. - he's pretty
much anti-anything that isn't hard-core fundamentalist Christianity.

The Vatican is certainly wealthy, but Yahoo Answers should never be used as a
"see? evidence!" item.

