Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/349

 The Vatican Library. 337 The Liber Diurnus under Pope Hilary I. (461-8) speaks of the libraries founded by him at the Lateran. These may have been merely church libraries. We now come to the next library founded by the popes. Pope Agapetus (535-6) in founding a University at Rome, con- nected a library with it and gave up the private house of his family for it on the Cselian. The inscriptions which were put up in the building in commemoration of the fact are preserved to us only in the Codex of Einseidlen (given, of course, by De Rossi). 1 Agapetus seems to have been exclusive in his tastes, for he ordered one MS. to be brought from the treasury or chest, and publicly burnt. 2 The condition of libraries at this time may be known from that of Cassiodorius who retired to the Calabrian Monastery at Viviers, and there founded one, giving minute in- structions for the binders who were specially attached to it ; and for the lighting of it by means of lamps and the addition of water-clocks and sundials. 3 The library of Pope Agapetus at Rome was enlarged and improved half a century later by Gregory the Great (590-604). Lanciani sees in the library of S. Gregorio at Monte Celio the lineal descendant of this time. 4 The letters of Gregory the Great are full of references to the scrinia of the Roman Church. We may quote one instance. Gregory more than once made inquiries as to the authenticity of the acts of the Council of Ephesus ; and he did this by collating MSS. at Rome and at Constantinople, claiming those preserved by the Holy See to be the more correct. " Our Roman books," he writes to Narses, " are much more truthful than the Greek ones, because, as we are blessed with fewer brains than you, we are not such good hands at imposture." An interesting sidelight is thrown by a bishop of Saragossa, who by the command of King Chindaswinth 5 (642-9) had occa- sion to refcr to the Moralia. The book could not be found 1 Op. cit. t pp. Ivi.-lvii. Cf. Lanciani, p. 190. 2 De Rossi, I.e., p. li. 3 Cassiodorius speaks of this library in his profoundly interesting De institu- tione divinarum literarum. Cf. De Rossi, Ixi.-lxii., and Lanciani, p. 198- 4 Ibid., p. 198. 5 See Mr. H. Bradley's delightful book, The Goths (Story of the Nations, Lond., 1888, pp. 338-9), for this King. His great-grandson is the Roderic treated of by Scott and Southey.