Sunday 12 July 2015

Keeping To A Book Theme,

the first of many manuscripts and texts,


are being made available on line, last year, non-profit organisation Digita Vaticana Oculus was founded with the aim of helping fund the digitisation of 80,000 of the manuscripts, or 41 million pages, held by the Vatican Library which was founded in 1451 by Nicholas V,

the library itself holds some 180,000 manuscripts, 1.6 million books and 150,000 images and engravings, so it is going to be a Herculean task to scan and digitise them all,


the first 500 manuscripts are now available to view, along with 600 incunabula – books or pamphlets printed before 1500 AD, what a great help to scholars around the world, the books illustrated above are,

top. Hebrew manuscript of the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides, dated between 1451 and 1475.

middle. Vatican Virgil produced in Rome around 400 AD, one of the few surviving examples of ancient illustration of a classic text.

bottom. Pre-Columbian Aztec manuscript.


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