
Vatican to Digitize 41 Million Pages of Ancient Manuscripts - jamesbritt
http://hyperallergic.com/117932/vatican-to-digitize-41-million-pages-of-ancient-manuscripts/
======
pjungwir
I got to spend a few days once visiting St. Catherine's Monastery in the
Sinai, one of the oldest monasteries in the world, which is famous for having
never been sacked. The Codex Sinaiticus was found there, one of the two oldest
complete manuscripts of the Bible. It also has some of the only surviving
iconography in the world from before the iconoclast period.

Their librarian is American from Boston, and he has been digitizing their
library for several years now. My traveling companion was also a Boston
librarian, and we had an amazing tour of the library. It was very strange to
see, surrounded by ancient stone walls and crumbling manuscripts, top-of-the-
line Macs, shelves of USB drives, and a giant digital camera in a room-size
metal frame, with a cradle for resting books on.

I'm delighted to hear more such works are being preserved!

~~~
bane
There's something strangely appropriate about old books and works of art and
high-tech in the same space. It feels like you're present in a continuous
stream of thought from ancient to present.

~~~
dhughes
I find it amazing that the books and manuscripts are still around hundreds if
not a thousand years later meanwhile the dye medium of my data CDs from the
mid 90s is probably rotten.

~~~
rmc
Lots of books and manuscripts from that period _aren 't_ around any more. A
monestry in the middle of the desert is going to be hot and dry, which is
great for preserving books.

"Never been sacked" is important as well. Often books can get burned and
destroyed during political upheaval, either intentionally (burn the books) or
accidentially (the building with the books goes on fire).

When the Spanish conquered what is now Mexico, they destroyed all the Mayan
books.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices#Background](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices#Background)
> "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."

~~~
thaumasiotes
There's an interesting anti-parallel to ancient mesopotamian history. From the
superlative book Brotherhood of Kings ( [http://www.amazon.com/Brotherhood-
Kings-International-Relati...](http://www.amazon.com/Brotherhood-Kings-
International-Relations-Ancient/dp/0195313984/) ):

> Mari holds the key to much of our knowledge of this era. The site of Babylon
> has physically sunk over the years so that now the palace and archives of
> Hammurabi are below the water table and, presumably, reduced to mud

> As in the case of Ebla, the vast archive of thousands of documents from
> eighteenth-century [BC] Mari is preserved because the palace burned down.
> [...] Because of this, it is possible to read, in some of the letters baked
> and buried in the conflagration, about Hammurabi's relations with Mari in
> happier times.

Our documents from that period come from conquering kings who, in their zeal
to raze enemy cities, forever preserved those cities' records. Literature
wasn't as much of a presence then as it is now (tablets run to accounting and
correspondence), but it (and history) existed; cf the epic of Gilgamesh.

------
earksiinni
As a former history Ph.D. student who has done research in the Archivum
Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum (ASV), this is kind of an uninformed
announcement, or at least it is not the whole truth. The truth is that the
Vatican already has all of its pre-modern manuscripts (e.g., roughly pre-1700)
digitized. In fact, you're not allowed to read the original copies of the
older manuscripts. Instead, when you request a manuscript they hand you a CD
that you then take down a flight of stairs to a room with iMac G4's that
aren't connected to the Internet where you can view the jpeg's using some
early 2000's image viewer. Anyone with a master's degree and with a legitimate
claim to being a researcher can visit the archive after a brief interview, and
the application process is perfectly straightforward and made public on the
ASV's website in multiple language. There is nothing "secret" about it. (It is
"secret" in the Latin sense of the word meaning "apart," because it was
established as a central archive meant to replace the decentralized archives
that were hitherto held in each of the Vatican's individual departments.)

They could have put the digital copies up a long, long time ago if they had
felt like it, but libraries are institutions of power and old attitudes die
hard. I don't know what the new digitized copies will add, but I'm guessing
that they will be in color and that they will also include the more modern
manuscripts in the collection. There are more important reforms that they
could divert their resources to, however, like better and more uniform
indexing and cataloging. Perhaps these will follow, but even once (if) they
put the copies on the Internet the state of the Vatican catalogs is such that
it will be extremely difficult for any interested members of the public to
approach the source material.

~~~
frozenport
Any ideas if they are hiding anything fun?

~~~
rmc
After the Da Vinci Code book & film, people think there's some sort of secret
early Christian books that are being hidden and if the world knew about them,
Christianity/Catholic church would fall.

But there are loads of early Christian books / "gospels" that survive or
rediscovered which are quite different from what's in the bible, and no-one
really cares.

For example in 1945, a pile of early books were discovered in Nag Hammadi,
Egypt[1], including a Gospel of Thomas[2]. There is a Infancy Gospel of
Thomas[3] from ~145CE which claims to talk about Jesus as a child, in which
child Jesus uses his supernatural powers to kill children who bully him.

Have the revelations of all this "brought down the Catholic Chruch"?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_thomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_thomas)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas)

~~~
Cthulhu_
No, but (as I gather it) the bible as it is known today (and for the past
millennia) is a whole, and anything extra - gospel of Thomas, the apocryphal
books, etc - are seen as just that - extra, non-canonical, and not to be
treated as fact / truth or handled during sermons.

~~~
rmc
Exactly. But those "extra books" have been know about for centuries. It's not
like there are new "extra books"

------
Mikeb85
No matter what your feelings are about religion, this is a great thing for
humanity in general. The preservation of ancient manuscripts only makes us
richer.

~~~
duaneb
It's sad you have to qualify it—religion is part of all our past, whatever our
opinions of it now, and it will only increase our wisdom to understand our
ancestors.

~~~
nsxwolf
It's also very much a part of our present, perhaps Silicon Valley not
withstanding.

~~~
ekianjo
Oh, don't worry, Silicon Valley still has some forms of religion. Like the
idea of Singularity, with Kurzweil as a prophet. You also have Saint-like
figures such as Steve Jobs, whose achievements are God-like for all his
believers, no matter how he mistreated employees, competitors and humans in
general.

It's a strange thing, actually, to see people reject older _nonsensical_
beliefs while creating their owns devoid of all rationality.

------
jonah
They already have some things from their catalog digitized.

e.g.
[http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp](http://www.mss.vatlib.it/guii/scan/link.jsp)

[http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?pag=cataloghi_online](http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/home.php?pag=cataloghi_online)

~~~
kimmel
They are watermarking scans of items that are not in copyright since they
predate the copyright system. What kind of bullshit is this?

These should all be public domain. Is there anyone besides Google and the
Vatican that watermark public domain works?

~~~
fhars
The reproduction itself is still a protected work, but you are free to
reproduce the content if you copy it from the original or a reproduction that
is no longer protected (i.e. older than 50 years in most jurisdictions I know
about).

~~~
pandesmos
I don't believe so. INAL but if the photograph attempts to exactly replicate
an image I'm pretty sure copyright doesn't hold. So like, a high resolution
image of a Caravaggio is still usable as public domain.[0]

I'm pretty sure the Vatican's got to "ruin" the images with a watermark or
anyone would be able to use them as is for whatever they want. It'd be
different if it was sculpture, but these pics seem to me like they'd
definitely fall into the "slavish reproduction of a public domain work"
category.

[0] [http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-
domain/welcome/#...](http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-
domain/welcome/#dear_rich_she_wants_to_use_bloch_paintings_on_tv)

~~~
dragonwriter
Er, why are we looking at reference on _US_ copyright law here? The State of
Vatican City is not a US jurisdiction, and it has its own copyright law (which
incorporates, to the extent that it is not preempted by the special laws
promulgated by the Vatican, the copyright law of Italy.)

------
carlob
I highly doubt most of that stuff will be publicly accessible. A friend told
she had a very hard time finding the documents she needed for her thesis at
the Vatical Library. She had the definite impression, after a lengthy process
to get clearance, that the inventory was kept patchy on purpose to make it
hard for external visitors to find stuff in the allotted time.

~~~
earksiinni
The interview process is short and straightforward, or at least it was in my
case, but the indexing system is a nightmare and a patchwork of centuries of
amateur and professional librarians cobbling together catalogs. Some of the
collections can only be referenced using catalogs that are 250+ years old--
literally. I don't mean copies or modern printings of the catalogs. I mean
literally some dude wrote on the pages in front of you 250 years ago and that
is the tool that you are supposed to use to find your sources. Yes, very low
quality facsimiles are tucked away in a corner of the reading room, but you
need to figure out which catalog they're in to find them...

One definitely wonders at some point whether the whole thing is organized as a
conspiracy to confuse new Ph.D. students!

~~~
carlob
I think it also depends on what you're looking for. My friend was working on
libertines in the XVII century, so probably documents the church is not
especially proud of now.

It did not help that one of her advisors had published a paper on homosexual
marriage in a roman church in the late XVI century [0, 1]

[0]
[https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiesa_di_San_Giovanni_a_Porta...](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiesa_di_San_Giovanni_a_Porta_Latina#Confraternita_segreta)

[1]
[http://books.google.it/books?id=tOANjJswdRQC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA2...](http://books.google.it/books?id=tOANjJswdRQC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=gay+marriage+san+giovanni+porta+latina&source=bl&ots=UtEfte8joE&sig=Y_K65JooqRLLoOtE6Erj84KYG6Y&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rlQ-U8XpO8iZtQbanoCwBQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

~~~
earksiinni
I defer to your friend's expertise on the subject, but really, the Church
isn't trying to hide anything. This was not the case when the ASV opened to
the public in the late nineteenth century when in fact the Vatican's hope was
that researchers would read their documents and write nice things about the
church. These days, however, the ASV is one of Europe's main archives, curated
by respected professionals. There is no hidden agenda.

A more likely reason why your friend had such a hard time was Napoleon, who
made a policy of transferring all the grand archives of the countries he
conquered back to Paris. An enormous number of documents were lost during the
transfer and the eventual repatriation, somewhere around one third. Records
relating to Galileo's trial were lost, for example. Of course, the most likely
reason that your friend and I had difficulty is just the incredibly user-
unfriendly systems of cataloging that the ASV uses.

At the risk of sounding like an apologist for the Vatican, I should also point
out that the fact that these archives are open at all is remarkable. These
aren't a national archive, for instance, where the state maintains records as
a service for its citizens and to keep the nation's heritage alive. The ASV is
quite simply the dumping ground for the Vatican's bureaucracy over the past
1700 or so years. They don't owe this to anyone.

It would be like if Microsoft pooled all documents generated by HR, marketing,
product development, engineering, legal, and its other divisions, physically
dumped them in various containers over the centuries, and one day in the year
3749 A.D. announced that the public could rifle through the papers if they
wanted to. The immediate impetus would be to demonstrate that Office 3750 was
not in fact part of an anti-competitive plot to secure a monopoly on
productivity software sold in Alpha Centauri and Venus. But by 3800 A.D., that
original purpose would have been long forgotten and researchers, regardless of
which office suite they use, would be able to mine the archives for anything
that anyone working for Microsoft ever said, did, or observed during the work
day, so long as those thoughts were captured on some format that eventually
made its way to paper.

...to make the analogy more complete, let's also assume that most of the other
major institutions and their archives have been wiped out by this time. What
ends up happening, then, is that researchers in 3749 A.D. dig through MS'
archives for glimmers of things like what people ate during the day in 2014 or
what sort of music they listened to.

------
protomyth
The announcement [http://www.news.va/en/news/agreement-to-
digitise-82000-manus...](http://www.news.va/en/news/agreement-to-
digitise-82000-manuscripts-in-the-vat)

------
Fuxy
Now we really need a long term storage medium.

Has anybody else though about just how fragile data is these days I mean these
books/manuscripts are ancient?

What is the likelihood of any of our data surviving for over 1000 years in the
digital realm?

We need a long therm digital data archive or we risk loosing a lot of
important but not very popular data since the internet favors popularity over
importance.

~~~
ekianjo
Problem is, data storage evolves very fast and new technologies come and go.
Even if you designed the ultimate, 1000-year durable floppy disk 20 years
back, nobody would use it now because it's obsolete in terms of storage. You
can only reach this kind of thinking when storage density reaches a plateau.

Personally, rather than data storage, i'm much more concerned about the
formats and the OS we use for our files - will they still be supported 50-100
years down the road ? For the ones which are open-sourced, maybe, but how
about all the proprietary formats ? How can we ensure they will remain
readable ?

~~~
nodata
You store the data in an open lossless format at the highest quality that
makes sense, then transfer the digital copy from storage medium to storage
medium as they are developed.

So for your example you'd transfer from floppy disk to bluray.

~~~
Fuxy
Regular storage mediums are just too fragile and if you have a lot of data
transferring it over takes too long we're still digitizing books.

Long term storage medium capacity doesn't need to progress in line with
regular storage mediums it just need to be updated once it's too out of sync.

The old data can stay on the old version since there's no urgency in
transferring it over as long as the spec for it is kept on the latest medium a
reader can always be built to read it.

We tend to worry about not having devices to read it but given how 3D printers
are progressing having the spec and building a replacement reader should be
easy enough.

------
stefantalpalaru
From the original press release[1]:

> The project consists of an initial four-year phase during which three
> thousand manuscripts will be digitised, which may be extended into a second
> phase to include the 82,000 volumes – more than 40 million pages – of
> manuscripts preserved in the Library and dating from between the second and
> twentieth centuries.

It's going to be slow but it's a step in the right direction.

[1]: [http://www.news.va/en/news/agreement-to-
digitise-82000-manus...](http://www.news.va/en/news/agreement-to-
digitise-82000-manuscripts-in-the-vat)

~~~
quanticle
Slowness isn't surprising. These books are _old_ and one-of-a-kind. Even with
the best technology, it's still a very delicate process to scan them without
damaging them. Some of these works are so old, that even the wrong kind of
_light_ will hurt them.

------
JetSpiegel
If only the Vatican Bank was so transparent...

------
UbuntuJon
An attempt to stay relevant and continue to paralyse certain communities with
superstitious bullshit from the iron age, for the foreseeable future!

~~~
Abraln
I'm assuming you did not read the link, the library includes art from feudal
japan, a book from the Aztec empire, etc. Did you think it was just a bunch of
old bibles? Missionaries would report what they saw when they traveled the
world (often making "first contact"). I don't think digitizing texts in
Ancient Greek will help "relevance" much.

