Vatican Latin Manuscripts in the History of Science and Medicine

Abstract

This paper is the outcome of six weeks spent in the summer Of I927 in the Manuscript Study Room of the Vatican Library in the endeavor to obtain some idea of the materials there available in the Latin language, especially for the history of science. During the hot summer months in Rome the Vatican library is open only in the morning from eight to half past twelve, and some religious holidays also intervened, but I tried to avail myself to the full of every precious moment. Besides the ordinary collection of Latin manuscripts which runs into five figures, the Vatican of course has other rich collections of Latin manuscripts which have been acquired at one time or another, such as those amassed by Queen CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN in the seventeenth century (shelf-marked Reg. Suev. etc.), or those which once belonged to the ill-starred Elector of the Palatinate (shelf-marked Palat. lat. etc.). There is the Barberini collection, of which the mere inventory fills twenty-three volumes, and the Ottobonian collection, to mention only those of most importance for our present purpose, although the Codices Rossianae also offer a few items of interest. So far as Latin manuscripts are concerned, only a small beginning has been made towards printing catalogues of these collections. The old catalogues in long-hand are accessible only at the Vatican and usually give very brief and insufficient descriptions of the codices and their contents. It is to be earnestly hoped that the recently announced gift of the Carnegie Corporation to the Vatican Library may be expended not primarily in introducing American library methods and cataloguing the printed books, most of which are probably accessible elsewhere, but rather in pushing on the publication of scientific catalogues of its manuscript collections which are so important, yet still to such an extent a closed book to scholars and researchers. Those parts of the collections where works on philosophy, nature,