The Vatican Film Library is a film archive established in 1959 by Pope John XXIII . The collection comprises over 8,000 films including historic films, Church events, commercial films and documentaries.
8-515: It is to be distinguished from the Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library at Saint Louis University . The Vatican Film Library was instituted by Pope John XXIII on November 16, 1959, with the aim of collecting and preserving films and recorded television programs on the life of the Catholic Church. It was initially entrusted to the then Pontifical Commission for Cinematography, which in 1964 became
16-759: A film organization is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library The Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library in St. Louis, Missouri is the only collection, outside the Vatican itself, of microfilms of more than 37,000 works from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana , the Vatican Library in Europe. It is located in the Pius XII Memorial Library on
24-517: The 9th to 16th centuries, in the series Registra Vaticana and Registra Supplicationium . The Film Library also collects manuscript catalogs and handwritten inventories of Vatican Library manuscripts, as well as those of other libraries, including a collection of microfilmed copies of over 2,500 medieval and renaissance manuscripts from other libraries, over 20,000 incunabula (early printed books), and 52,000 color slides of illuminated manuscripts. The collection also includes many hardcopy works on
32-634: The Library has microfilmed versions of over 37,000 manuscripts, with material in Greek , Latin , Arabic , Hebrew and Ethiopic , as well as several more common Western European languages. There are reproductions of many works from the Biblioteca Palatina and Biblioteca Cicognara at the Vatican, as well as Papal letter registers from the Archivio Segreto Vaticano ( Vatican Secret Archives ) from
40-731: The Pontifical Commission for Social Communications and in 1988 the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. Today the Vatican Film Library is part of the Dicastery for Communication . The library's projection hall hosted Pope John Paul II on several occasions, along with numerous directors presenting a preview of their works, including Liliana Cavani , Roberto Benigni , and Martin Scorsese . This article related to
48-601: The campus of Saint Louis University . The Library was created by Lowrie J. Daly (1914–2000), with funding from the Knights of Columbus . The goal was to make Vatican and other documents more available to researchers in North America. Microfilming of Vatican manuscripts began in 1951, and according to the Library's website, was the largest microfilming project that had been undertaken up to that date. From 1951 to 1957, twelve million manuscript pages were recorded, from 30,000 different works. This represents approximately 75% of
56-592: The manuscripts available in the targeted language groups. Other microfilm projects in the 1950s included Jesuit archival material from Rome , archives in both North America and South America , and the Philippines . The Library opened in 1953, and moved to the St. Louis University campus, in the Pius XII Memorial Library, in 1959. The first librarian was Charles J. Ermatinger, who served until 2000. As of 2007,
64-404: The subjects of palaeography , codicology , illumination , and other topics related to manuscript studies. The Library hosts an annual conference on Manuscript Studies, which is held in St. Louis in mid-October. Manuscripta is a biannual academic journal published by the library. Established in 1957, it covers topics related to the study of medieval and renaissance manuscripts. The journal
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