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75-680: The book exists in several manuscripts, the oldest of which is an 8th-century manuscript in the Vatican Library , acquired from the library of Queen Christina of Sweden (thus MS Reginensis 316); in German scholarship this is referred to as the Altgelasianum , and is considered the sacramentary used by Saint Boniface in his mid-8th century mission on the European continent. This is the most important surviving Merovingian illuminated manuscript , and shows

150-582: A clear difference in status between those who had converted and those who resisted. The ecclesiastical penalties were directed towards those who were enslaving the recent converts. As a civic patron in Rome, even the anti-papal chronicler Stefano Infessura agreed that Sixtus should be admired. The dedicatory inscription in the fresco by Melozzo da Forlì in the Vatican Palace records: "You gave your city temples, streets, squares, fortifications, bridges and restored

225-484: A destination for scholarship. Nicholas combined some 350 Greek, Latin and Hebrew codices inherited from his predecessors with his own collection and extensive acquisitions, among them manuscripts from the imperial Library of Constantinople . Pope Nicholas also expanded his collection by employing Italian and Byzantine scholars to translate the Greek classics into Latin for his library. The knowledgeable pope already encouraged

300-540: A hereditary ally and champion of the papacy. The angered Italian princes allied to force Sixtus IV to make peace to his great annoyance. For refusing to desist from the very hostilities that he himself had instigated and for being a dangerous rival to Della Rovere dynastic ambitions in the Marche , Sixtus placed Venice under interdict in 1483. He also lined the coffers of the state by unscrupulously selling high offices and privileges. In ecclesiastical affairs, Sixtus promoted

375-602: A large collection of texts related to Hinduism, with the oldest editions dating to 1819. During the library's restoration between 2007 and 2010, all of the 70,000 volumes in the library were tagged with electronic chips to prevent theft. Notable manuscripts in the library include: The library contains over 100 Quran manuscripts from various collections, cataloged by the Italian Jewish linguist Giorgio Levi Della Vida : Vaticani arabi 73; Borgiani arabi 25; Barberiniani orientali 11; Rossiani 2. The largest manuscript in

450-732: A line of Della Rovere dukes of Urbino that lasted until the line expired, in 1631. Six of the thirty-four cardinals that he created were his nephews. In his territorial aggrandizement of the Papal States , his niece's son, Cardinal Raffaele Riario (for whom the Palazzo della Cancelleria was constructed) was suspected of colluding in the failed Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 to assassinate both Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano and replace them in Florence with Sixtus IV's other nephew, Girolamo Riario . Francesco Salviati , Archbishop of Pisa and

525-596: A main organizer of the plot, was hanged on the walls of the Florentine Palazzo della Signoria . Sixtus IV replied with an interdict and two years of war with Florence. However, Infessura had partisan allegiances to the Colonna and so is not considered to be always reliable or impartial. The English churchman and Protestant polemicist John Bale , writing a century later, attributed to Sixtus "the authorisation to practice sodomy during periods of warm weather" to

600-411: A medieval manuscript once owned by Francesco Petrarch . One of the stolen leaves contains an exquisite miniature of a farmer threshing grain. A fourth leaf from an unknown source was also discovered in his possession by U.S. Customs agents. Melnikas was trying to sell the pages to an art dealer, who then alerted the library director. The library is located inside the Vatican Palace , and the entrance

675-566: A modern library. They visited the Library of Congress , and libraries in Princeton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburg, Chicago, Champaign, Toronto, and Ann Arbor. Once back in Rome, a reorganization plan was implemented. The main goals were to create a summary index by author of each manuscript, and likewise a catalogue for the incunabula. Once the project was completed, the Vatican Library was one of

750-479: A patron of the arts, Sixtus was a patron of the sciences. Before he became pope, he had spent time at the very liberal and cosmopolitan University of Padua , which maintained considerable independence from the Church and had a very international character. As Pope, he issued a papal bull allowing local bishops to give the bodies of executed criminals and unidentified corpses to physicians and artists for dissection. It

825-519: A pope" and "true flood of corresponding lampoons, reviling poems, and fictional epitaphs" following his death are at the very least evidence for his contemporaries' opinions about the promotions of these young men. The secular fortunes of the Della Rovere family began when Sixtus invested his nephew Giovanni with the lordship of Senigallia and arranged his marriage to the daughter of Federico III da Montefeltro , duke of Urbino ; from that union came

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900-462: A synthesis of Late Antique conventions with "barbarian" migration period art motifs comparable to the better known insular art of Britain and Ireland. In none of its old manuscripts does the book bear the name of Gelasius but is simply called Liber sacramentorum Romanae ecclesiae ("Book of Sacraments of the Church of Rome"). However, an old tradition linked the book to Pope Gelasius I , apparently based on Walafrid Strabo 's ascription of what

975-476: A time, and it sees 4,000 to 5,000 scholars a year, mostly academics doing post-graduate research. While the Vatican Library has always included Bibles, canon law texts, and theological works, it specialized from the beginning in secular books. Its collection of Greek and Latin classics was at the center of the revival of classical culture during the Renaissance . The oldest documents in the library date back to

1050-451: Is a papyrus room and a storage area for manuscripts. The first floor houses the restoration laboratory, and the photographic archives are on the second floor. The library has 42 kilometres (26 mi) of shelving. The library closed for renovations on 17 July 2007 and reopened on 20 September 2010. The three-year, 9 million euro renovation involved the complete shut down of the library to install climate controlled rooms. In

1125-419: Is a research library for history , law , philosophy , science , and theology . The Vatican Library is open to anyone who can document their qualifications and research needs. Photocopies for private study of pages from books published between 1801 and 1990 can be requested in person or by mail. Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) envisioned a new Rome, with extensive public works to lure pilgrims and scholars to

1200-462: Is by Antonio del Pollaiuolo ; it was completed by 1493. The top of the casket is a lifelike depiction of the Pope lying in state. Around the sides are bas-relief panels depicting allegorical female figures representing Grammar, Rhetoric, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Painting, Astronomy, Philosophy, and Theology—the classical liberal arts , with the addition of painting and theology. Each figure incorporates

1275-486: Is evidently this book to the 5th-century pope. The sacramentary was compiled near Paris around 750, and it contains a mixture of Gallican and Roman elements. The dating of the liturgical contents are not based on characteristics of the surviving manuscript itself (ca 750): most of its liturgy reflects the mix of Roman and Gallican practice inherited from the Merovingian church. In 785-6 the reforms of Pope Gregory I , Gregory

1350-442: Is expected that the initial phase will take four years. DigiVatLib is the name of the Vatican Library's digital library service. It provides free access to the Vatican Library's digitized collections of manuscripts and incunabula. The scanning of documents is impacted by the material used to produce the texts. Books using gold and silver in the illuminations require special scanning equipment. Digital copies are being served using

1425-537: Is through the Belvedere Courtyard . When Pope Sixtus V (1585-1590) commissioned the expansion and the new building of the Vatican Library, he had a three-story wing built right across Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere, thus bisecting it and changing Bramante's work significantly. At the bottom of a grand staircase a large statue of Hippolytus decorates the La Galea entrance hall. In the first semi-basement there

1500-450: Is variously counted as 3,500 in 1475 or 2,527 in 1481, when librarians Bartolomeo Platina and Pietro Demetrio Guazzelli produced a signed listing. At the time it was the largest collection of books in the Western world. Pope Julius II commissioned the expansion of the building. Around 1587, Pope Sixtus V commissioned the architect Domenico Fontana to construct a new building for

1575-562: The Acqua Vergine as far as the Trevi ..." In addition to restoring the aqueduct that provided Rome an alternative to the river water, which had made the city famously unhealthy, he restored or rebuilt over 30 of Rome's dilapidated churches such as San Vitale (1475) and Santa Maria del Popolo , and he added seven new ones. The Sistine Chapel was sponsored by Sixtus IV, as was the Ponte Sisto ,

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1650-568: The CIFS protocol, from network-attached storage hardware by Dell EMC . The Vatican Apostolic Archive , located in Vatican City , is the central archive for all of the acts promulgated by the Holy See , as well as the state papers , correspondence, papal account books, and many other documents which the church has accumulated over the centuries. In the 17th century, under the orders of Pope Paul V ,

1725-592: The College of Cardinals to elect him Pope upon the unexpected death of Paul II at the age of fifty-four. Upon being elected Pope , Della Rovere adopted the name Sixtus, which had not been used since the 5th century. One of his first acts was to declare a renewed crusade against the Ottoman Turks in Smyrna . However, after the conquest of Smyrna, the fleet disbanded. Some fruitless attempts were made towards unification with

1800-800: The Gallican Church and could never be shifted as long as Louis XI manoeuvred to replace King Ferdinand I of Naples with a French prince. Louis was thus in conflict with the papacy, and Sixtus could not permit it. On 1 November 1478, Sixtus published the papal bull Exigit Sincerae Devotionis Affectus through which the Spanish Inquisition was established in the Kingdom of Castile . Sixtus consented under political pressure from Ferdinand of Aragon , who threatened to withhold military support from his kingdom of Sicily . Nevertheless, Sixtus IV quarrelled over protocol and prerogatives of jurisdiction; he

1875-466: The Greek Church . For the remainder of his pontificate, Sixtus turned to temporal issues and dynastic considerations. Sixtus IV sought to strengthen his position by surrounding himself with relatives and friends. In the fresco by Melozzo da Forlì , he is accompanied by his Della Rovere and Riario nephews, not all of whom were made cardinals; the protonotary apostolic Pietro Riario (on his right),

1950-524: The Sala di Consultazione or main reference room of the Vatican Library looms a statue of St Thomas Aquinas ( c.  1910 ), sculpted by Cesare Aureli . A second version of this statue ( c.  1930 ) stands under the entrance portico of the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum . The collection was originally organized through notebooks used to index the manuscripts. As

2025-569: The Sistine Bridge (the first new bridge across the Tiber since Antiquity), and the building of Via Sistina (later named Borgo Sant'Angelo ), a road leading from Castel Sant'Angelo to Saint Peter. All of that was done to facilitate the integration of the Vatican Hill and Borgo with the heart of Old Rome. That was part of a broader scheme of urbanization carried out under Sixtus IV, who swept

2100-511: The Spanish Inquisition through the bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus (1478), and he annulled the decrees of the Council of Constance . He was noted for his nepotism and was personally involved in the infamous Pazzi conspiracy , a plot to remove the Medici family from power in Florence . Francesco was a member of Della Rovere family, a son of Leonardo della Rovere and Luchina Monleoni. He

2175-721: The Thirty Years' War . A token 39 of the Heidelberg manuscripts were sent to Paris in 1797 and were returned to Heidelberg at the Peace of Paris in 1815. A gift of 852 others was made in 1816 by Pope Pius VII to the University of Heidelberg , including the Codex Manesse . Aside from these cases, the Palatine Library remains in the Vatican Library to this day. In 1657, the manuscripts of

2250-540: The Vatican Library or informally as the Vat , is the library of the Holy See , located in Vatican City , and is the city-state's national library . It was formally established in 1475, although it is much older—it is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. It has 75,000 codices from throughout history, as well as 1.1 million printed books, which include some 8,500 incunabula . The Vatican Library

2325-568: The "Cardinal of Santa Lucia". This prompted the noted historian of the Catholic Church, Ludwig von Pastor , to issue a firm rebuttal. Sixtus continued a dispute with King Louis XI of France , who upheld the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438), which held that papal decrees needed royal assent before they could be promulgated in France. That was a cornerstone of the privileges claimed for

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2400-485: The Archives were separated from the Vatican Library, where scholars had some very limited access to them, and remained absolutely closed to outsiders until 1881, when Pope Leo XIII opened them to researchers, more than a thousand of whom now examine its documents each year. Pope Sixtus IV Pope Sixtus IV (or Xystus IV , Italian : Sisto IV ; born Francesco della Rovere ; 21 July 1414 – 12 August 1484)

2475-712: The British Isles. By 700 the influence of the Roman sacramentary had modified Gallican usage. This mixture of rites represented in the Gelasian Sacramentary was superseded when Charlemagne asked Pope Hadrian to provide an authentic Roman sacramentary for use throughout the empire. In 785-86, the pope sent the emperor the Sacramentarium Hadrianum, a version of the Gregorian Sacramentary for papal use, which

2550-581: The Canary Islands, and in the spring of 1478, they sent Juan Rejon with sixty soldiers and thirty cavalry to the Grand Canary, where the natives retreated inland. Sixtus's earlier threats to excommunicate all captains or pirates who enslaved Christians in the bull Regimini Gregis of 1476 could have been intended to emphasise the need to convert the natives of the Canary Islands and Guinea and establish

2625-500: The Dukes of Urbino were acquired. In 1661, the Greek scholar Leo Allatius was made librarian. Queen Christina of Sweden 's important library (mostly amassed by her generals as loot from Habsburg Prague and German cities during the Thirty Years' War ) was purchased on her death in 1689 by Pope Alexander VIII . It represented, for all practical purposes, the entire royal library of Sweden at

2700-678: The Franciscan order at the age of 50. In 1467, he was appointed Cardinal by Pope Paul II with the titular church being the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli . Before his papal election, Cardinal della Rovere was renowned for his unworldliness and had written learned treatises, including On the Blood of Christ and On the Power of God . His reputation for piety was one of the deciding factors that prompted

2775-672: The Great, were supplied to Charlemagne by Pope Hadrian I . The spurious ascription to Gelasius gave an added authority to the contents, which are an important document of pre-Gregorian liturgy. Among several distinct rites current in the West before the 8th century, the two most influential were the Roman rite used in Italy south of Lombardy and the Gallican in use in most of the rest of Western Europe, save Iberia and

2850-584: The Italian historian Stefano Infessura , Diary of the City of Rome , Sixtus was a "lover of boys and a sodomite" ( Latin : puerorum amator et sodomita ) awarding benefices and bishoprics in return for sexual favours and nominating a number of young men as cardinals. Sexualised polemics, in truth concerned with politics and not the sexual lives of their victims, were not uncommon during this time; but as Pfisterer (sic) notes "the novel flood of accusations of sodomy against

2925-629: The Orient to bring back manuscripts, and is generally regarded as the founder of the library's Oriental section. A School of library science is associated with the Vatican Library. In 1959, the Vatican Film Library was established. This is not to be confused with the Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library , which was established in 1953 at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri . The library has

3000-514: The Portuguese the rights to acquire slaves along the African Coast by force or trade. Those concessions were confirmed by Sixtus in his own bull, Aeterni regis , of 21 June 1481. Arguably the "ideology of conquest" expounded in those texts became the means by which commerce and conversion were facilitated. In November 1476, Isabel and Fernando ordered an investigation into rights of conquest in

3075-448: The bachelor's, master's, licentiate, and doctoral degrees. The archbishop of Uppsala was also named as the university's Chancellor , and was charged with maintaining the rights and privileges of the university and its members. This act of Sixtus IV had a profound long-term effect on the society and culture of Sweden, an effect which continues up to the present. Sixtus IV became ill on 8 August 1484; this illness worsened on 10 August while

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3150-494: The city to begin its transformation. Nicolas wanted to create a "public library" for Rome that was meant to be seen as an institution for humanist scholarship. His death prevented him from carrying out his plan, but his successor Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) established what is now known as the Vatican Library. In March 2014, the Vatican Library began an initial four-year project of digitising its collection of manuscripts, to be made available online. The Vatican Apostolic Archive

3225-418: The collection grew to more than a few thousand, shelf lists were used. The first modern catalogue system was put in place under Father Franz Ehrle between 1927 and 1939, using the Library of Congress card catalogue system. Ehrle also set up the first program to take photographs of important works or rare works. The library catalogue was further updated by Rev. Leonard E. Boyle when it was computerized in

3300-539: The collections of the Capitoline Museums . He also refounded, enriched and enlarged the Vatican Library . He had Regiomontanus attempt the first sanctioned reorganisation of the Julian calendar and increased the size and prestige of the papal chapel choir, bringing singers and some prominent composers ( Gaspar van Weerbeke , Marbrianus de Orto and Bertrandus Vaqueras ) to Rome from the north. In addition to being

3375-532: The dogma of the Immaculate Conception , which had been confirmed at the Council of Basle in 1439, and he designated 8 December as its feastday. In 1476, he issued the apostolic constitution Cum Praeexcelsa , establishing a Mass and Office for the feast. He formally annulled the decrees of the Council of Constance in 1478. The two papal bulls issued by Pope Nicholas V , Dum Diversas of 1452 and Romanus Pontifex of 1455, had effectively given

3450-409: The early 1990s. Historically, during the Renaissance era , most books were not shelved but stored in wooden benches, which had tables attached to them. Each bench was dedicated to a specific topic. The books were chained to these benches , and if a reader took out a book, the chain remained attached to it. Until the early 17th century, academics were also allowed to borrow books. For important books,

3525-590: The facilities were for such an important collection. Several American organizations, including the American Library Association and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace , offered to assist in implementing a modern cataloguing system. Along with this, librarians from the Vatican Library were invited to visit several libraries in the United States to receive training on the functioning of

3600-479: The first century. The library was founded primarily as a manuscript library, a fact reflected in the comparatively high ratio of manuscripts to printed works in its collection. Such printed books as have made their way into the collection are intended solely to facilitate the study of the much larger collection of manuscripts. The collection also includes 330,000 Greek, Roman, and papal coins and medals. Every year about 6,000 new books are acquired. The library

3675-505: The future Pope Julius II / Giuliano Della Rovere standing before him; and Girolamo Riario and Giovanni della Rovere , behind the kneeling Platina , author of the first humanist history of the popes. His nephew, Pietro Riario, possibly also benefited from his alleged nepotism. He was successively promoted to be a cardinal, the bishop of Florence, the Patriarch of Constantinople and given some 45 additional benefices . Pietro became one of

3750-429: The impression they left on his contemporaries as causal. Criticisms of Pietro 's meteoric rise were not constrained to the charge of benefiting from nepotism as Sixtus IV's nephew, nor to allegations of possibly having been Sixtus IV's illegitimate son. Indeed, Pietro and his brother Girolamo Riario were alleged to have been lovers of Sixtus IV in polemics against the latter. According to the later published chronicle of

3825-548: The inclusion of pagan classics. Nicolas was important in saving many of the Greek works and writings during this time period that he had collected while traveling and acquired from others. In 1455, the collection had grown to 1200 books, of which 400 were in Greek. Nicholas died in 1455. In 1475 his successor Pope Sixtus IV founded the Palatine Library . During his papacy, acquisitions were made in "theology, philosophy and artistic literature". The number of manuscripts

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3900-805: The library moved to the Lateran Palace and lasted until the end of the 13th century and the reign of Pope Boniface VIII , who died in 1303, by which time he possessed one of the most notable collections of illuminated manuscripts in Europe. However, in that year, the Lateran Palace was burnt and the collection plundered by Philip IV of France . The Avignon period was during the Avignon Papacy , when seven successive popes resided in Avignon , France . This period saw great growth in book collection and record-keeping by

3975-408: The library's manuscripts within four years. NTT is donating the equipment and technicians, estimated to be worth 18 million Euros. It noted that there is the possibility of subsequently digitizing another 79,000 of the library's holdings. These will be high-definition images available on the library's Internet site. Storage for the holdings will be on a three petabyte server provided by EMC . It

4050-544: The library, Vat. Ar. 1484 , measures 540x420mm. The smallest, Vat. Ar. 924, is a circle of 45mm diameter preserved in an octagonal case. In 2012, plans were announced to digitize, in collaboration with the Bodleian Library , a million pages of material from the Vatican Library. On 20 March 2014, the Holy See announced that NTT Data Corporation and the library had concluded an agreement to digitize approximately 3,000 of

4125-510: The library, which is still used today. After this, it became known as the Vatican Library. During the Counter-Reformation , access to the library's collections was limited following the introduction of the Index of banned books . Scholars' access to the library was restricted, particularly Protestant scholars. Restrictions were lifted during the course of the 17th century, and Pope Leo XIII

4200-419: The long-established markets from the Campidoglio in 1477 and decreed in a bull of 1480 the widening of streets and the first post-Roman paving, the removal of porticoes and other post-classical impediments to free public passage. At the beginning of his papacy, in 1471, Sixtus had donated several historically important Roman sculptures that founded a papal collection of art, which would eventually develop into

4275-487: The most modern in all of Europe. This joint effort highlighted the importance of international relationships in the field of librarianship and led to the founding in 1929 of the International Federation of Library Associations , still at work. In 1992 the library had almost 2 million catalogued items. Among a number of thefts from the Library committed in modern times, in 1995 art history teacher Anthony Melnikas from Ohio State University stole three leaves from

4350-471: The most notable being Bonaventure (1482); he also beatified one person, John Buoni (1483). In 1477, Sixtus IV issued a papal bull authorizing the creation of Uppsala University – the first university in Sweden and in the whole of Scandinavia . The choice of this location for the university derived from the fact that the archbishopric of Uppsala had been one of the most important sees in Sweden proper since Christianity first spread to this region in

4425-485: The ninth century, as well as Uppsala being long-standing hub for regional trade. Uppsala's bull, which granted the university its corporate rights, established a number of provisions. Among the most important of these was that the university was officially given the same freedoms and privileges as the University of Bologna . This included the right to establish the four traditional faculties of theology , law ( Canon Law and Roman law ), medicine, and philosophy, and to award

4500-399: The oak tree ("rovere" in Italian), symbol of Sixtus IV. The overall program of the panels, their beauty, complex symbolism, classical references and their relative arrangement are compelling and comprehensive illustrations of the Renaissance worldview. None of them actually states how he died. Sixtus created an unusually large number of cardinals during his pontificate (23) who were drawn from

4575-430: The period between the two World Wars at the instigation of Pope Pius XI , himself a scholar and former librarian, with the cooperation of librarians from around the world. Until this point in time, while it had drawn on the expertise of numerous experts, the Vatican Library was dangerously lacking in organization and its junior librarians were undertrained. Foreign researchers, particularly Americans, noticed how inadequate

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4650-476: The pope himself would issue a reminder slip. Privileges to use the library could be withdrawn for breaking the house rules, for instance by climbing over the tables. Most famously Pico Della Mirandola lost the right to use the library when he published a book on theology that the Papal curia did not approve of. In the 1760s, a bill issued by Clement XIII heavily restricted access to the library's holdings. The Vatican Library can be accessed by 200 scholars at

4725-490: The pope was attending an event in Rome. He felt unwell that evening and was forced to cancel a meeting he was to hold with his cardinals the following morning. The Pope grew weaker during the night of 11 August and he was unable to sleep. Sixtus IV died the following evening – 12 August. The envoy of the Medici family summed up Sixtus' reign in the announcement to his master, "Today at 5 o'clock His Holiness Sixtus IV departed this life – may God forgive him!" Pope Sixtus's tomb

4800-438: The popes in Avignon, between the death of Boniface and the 1370s when the papacy returned to Rome . The Pre-Vatican period ranged from about 1370 to 1447. The library was scattered during this time, with parts in Rome, Avignon, and elsewhere. Pope Eugenius IV possessed 340 books by the time of his death. In 1451, bibliophile Pope Nicholas V sought to establish a public library at the Vatican, in part to re-establish Rome as

4875-419: The richest men in Rome and was entrusted with Pope Sixtus IV's foreign policy, in addition to being given an unofficial post as the de facto ruler of Rome. He reportedly spent 200,000 gold ducats on foodstuffs and festivities during two years in office. Pietro died prematurely in 1474. Chroniclers of his life seem to regard his death as unnatural and thus connect his alleged grandiose spending habits and

4950-413: The time. Had it remained where it was in Stockholm , it would all have been lost in the destruction of the royal palace by fire in 1697. Among the most famous holdings of the library is the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 , the oldest known nearly complete manuscript of the Bible . The Secret History of Procopius was discovered in the library and published in 1623. Pope Clement XI sent scholars into

5025-501: Was adapted for the Carolingian empire. The "Gelasian Sacramentary" comprises the pre-Gregorian three parts, corresponding to the liturgical year, made up of masses for Sundays and feasts, prayers, rites and blessings of the Easter font and of the oil, prayers at dedication of churches, and for the reception of nuns. Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library ( Latin : Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana , Italian : Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana ), more commonly known as

5100-406: Was born in Celle Ligure , a town near Savona . As a young man, Della Rovere joined the Franciscan Order , an unlikely choice for a political career, and his intellectual qualities were revealed while he was studying philosophy and theology at the University of Pavia . He went on to lecture at Padua and many other Italian universities. In 1464, Della Rovere was elected Minister General of

5175-410: Was destroyed in the Sack of Rome in 1527 . Today, his remains, along with the remains of his nephew Pope Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere), are interred in St. Peter's Basilica, in the floor in front of the monument to Pope Clement X. A marble tombstone marks the site. His bronze funerary monument, now in the basement Treasury of St. Peter's Basilica , made like a giant casket of goldsmith's work,

5250-424: Was enriched by several bequests and acquisitions over the centuries. In 1623, in thanks for the adroit political maneuvers of Pope Gregory XV that had sustained him in his contests with Protestant candidates for the post of Elector , the hereditary Palatine Library of Heidelberg , containing about 3,500 manuscripts was given to the Holy See by Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria . He had just acquired it as loot in

5325-412: Was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 9 August 1471 until his death. His accomplishments as pope included the construction of the Sistine Chapel and the creation of the Vatican Library . A patron of the arts, he brought together the group of artists who ushered the early Renaissance into Rome with the first masterpieces of the city's new artistic age. Sixtus founded

5400-524: Was separated from the library at the beginning of the 17th century; it contains another 150,000 items. Scholars have traditionally divided the history of the library into five periods: Pre-Lateran, Lateran, Avignon, Pre-Vatican and Vatican. The Pre-Lateran period, comprising the initial days of the library, dating from the earliest days of the Church . Only a handful of volumes survive from this period, though some are very significant. The Lateran era began when

5475-495: Was that access to corpses which allowed the anatomist Vesalius , along with Titian 's pupil Jan Stephen van Calcar , to complete the revolutionary medical/anatomical text De humani corporis fabrica . The Pope created 34 cardinals in eight consistories held during his reign, among them three nephews, one grandnephew and one other relative, thus continuing the practice of nepotism that he and his successors would engage in during this period. Sixtus IV named seven new saints, with

5550-575: Was to formally reopen the library to scholars in 1883. In 1756, the priest Antonio Piaggio , curator of ancient manuscripts at the Library used a machine he had invented to unroll the first Herculaneum papyri , an operation which took him months. In 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte arrested Pope Pius VII and had the contents of the library seized and removed to Paris . They were returned in 1817, three years after Napoleon's defeat and abdication. The library's first major revitalization project took place in

5625-672: Was unhappy with the excesses of the Inquisition and condemned the most flagrant abuses in 1482. As a temporal prince who constructed stout fortresses in the Papal States , he encouraged the Venetians to attack Ferrara , which he wished to obtain for another nephew. Ercole I d'Este , Duke of Ferrara , was allied with the Sforzas of Milan , the Medicis of Florence along with the King of Naples , normally

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