Nearly 100 new digitizations at the BAV

On March 4, 2015, the digital library of the BAV or Vatican Library placed online nearly 100 newly digitized manuscript codices and map folders.

As is usual, there was no public announcement of this. I have no contact with Rome, so I can only speculate as to the reasons for such a silence. It may be that the library's server has a limited capacity and could not cope with the acute surge of requests that would follow any publicity.

Or there may be no funding to conduct public relations for a project that is being mainly funded by corporate and private sponsorship. It is possible too that funding institutions such as the Polonsky Foundation, which has a key role in digitizing the Hebrew manuscripts, wish to make their own public presentations at a later date. Polonsky announced February 24 it had reached the 1-million page mark.

But perhaps there is simply a modest sense at the BAV that this is no big deal yet, given that the project started years ago and the intermediate goal of getting 3,000 manuscripts online may not be met until 2016 at this rate. To get the entire stock of 82,000 BAV manuscripts digitized may take four decades, and at the same time, the BAV has committed to separately digitizing thousands of incunables. (See the presentation of one of the world's oldest printed cookbooks.)

Nevertheless the release is quite remarkable.

Less than a year ago, the manuscripts site consisted only of clones of independent digitizations by the Heidelberg state library in Germany and a paltry 24 Roman manuscripts, as I noted at the time. Today the BAV site offers a total of 1,787 works and has surpassed the tally of digitized manuscripts offered online by the British Library (1,220 at the last tally) or by e-codices of Switzerland (1,233).

Of the 151 collections making up the Rome library (see the BAV’s own list), 50 are now represented in some way in this digital presence.

Using comparison software, I have identified the following 97 newcomers this week. I have added notes on content, which are in some cases guesses more than anything else.

1. Barb.gr.6, Maximus Confessor, 580-662, Opere spurie e dubbie
2. Barb.gr.372, Psalter
3. Barb.lat.2724, Chronicon Vulturnense: Miniatures, most of them showing the handing over of donation charters to St. Vincent, like Bishop John's
   .
   This extraordinary compilation was made about 1130 and tells the history of the monastery at Volturno, Italy (Wikipedia). A monk of the monastery, Iohannes, composed the Chronicle.
4. Barb.lat.4076, is an autograph of Francesco da Barberino's Renaissance poem, Documenti d'Amore. Here is a cartoon-style blurred action image showing some impressive rapid-fire archery in all directions:
   
5. Barb.lat.4077, More Francesco da Barberino
6. Barb.lat.4391.pt.B, maps of Roman fortifications in 1540
7. Barb.lat.4408, working drawings for mural restorations in 1637
8. Borg.gr.6
9. Borg.isl.1
10. Borg.lat.420, Coronation of Clement VII
11. Borg.lat.561, Life of Roderico Borgia
12. Borgh.2, texts of Leontius and of Ephraem the Syrian
13. Borgh.4, Gregory the Great: Moralia in Job
14. Borgh.6, collected sermons
15. Borgh.7, Pope Boniface, Decretales
16. Borgh.9, Porphyry of Tyre and Boethius
17. Borgh.10, Letters of Seneca
18. Borgh.11, Order of Consecration
19. Borgh.12, Works of Godefridus Tranensis
20. Borgh.13, Works of Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā Rāzī, 865?-925?
21. Borgh.17, Henry of Ghent’s Summa
22. Borgh.18, Boethius
23. Borgh.19
24. Borgh.20
25. Borgh.23, Italian sermons
26. Borgh.24
27. Borgh.25, Vulgate bible
28. Borgh.26, 13th-century legal text, Apparatus Decretorum
29. Borgh.27, Gerardus de Bononiensi
30. Borgh.29, Wyclif?
31. Borgh.30
32. Borgh.131, Boethius, Variorum
33. Borgh.174, 14th century sermons
34. Borgh.372, Glossa on Justinian. Here's a miscreant in blue hauled into court on 147r
    
35. Borgh.374: A 13th-century text of the Emperor Justinian's legal codifications including the Institutions, annotated by medieval lawyers. Justinian was emperor at Constantinople 527-565. Here's a widow under the heavy burden of a no-incest provision in Borgh 374 at 4r:
    
36. Borg.Carte.naut.III. This is Diogo Ribeiro's 1529 map "in which is contained all that has been discovered in the world until now." Less than four decades after Columbus’s first voyage across the Atlantic, it shows the Americas in detail, but not New Zealand, which the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman was not to document until l642 and which James Cook was not to circumnavigate and map until 240 years after this map was drawn. Jerry Brotton's History of the World in Twelve Maps features it.
    
    
    
    Unfortunately the resolution of this digitization, welcome as it is, falls short of what one would hope for. The section above is the Gulf of Mexico, and it is impossible to zoom in far enough to read the place-names. I would presume the map has been scanned at much higher resolution, and I hope @DigitaVaticana can upload this so that the fourth and closest zoom level provides legible text.
37. Chig.B.VII.110
38. Chig.C.VII.213
39. Chig.C.VIII.228
40. Chig.P.VII.10.pt.A
41. Ferr.30, letters of Giuliano Ettorre
42. Ott.gr.314
43. Ott.lat.1050.pt.1
44. Ott.lat.1050.pt.2
45. Ott.lat.1447
46. Ott.lat.1448
47. Ott.lat.1458, Ovid’s Metamorphoses
48. Ott.lat.1519
49. Pal.gr.55
50. Pal.gr.135
51. Reg.gr.80
52. Reg.lat.88, French chronicle
53. Reg.lat.695, Life of St. Denis
54. Reg.lat.720
55. Reg.lat.721
56. Reg.lat.1480, Ovid in French, illuminated. Here's one of the fine pictures (folio 156r). I think it is Diana about to sock it to Actaeon, who will be trying desperately to explain that he is not a stag. With those feeble arms, she really ought to spend less time at home curled up on the couch and more time at the gym:
    
    
57. Ross.61
58. Ross.70
59. Ross.74
60. Ross.181, Missal from St Peter's Monastery, Erfurt, Germany, datable to about 1200: see the post on this by Klaus Graf (reproduced below as comment) with a search that points to comparable missals in German archives and the influence of Conrad of Hirsau, a Benedictine author, on the German scriptoria.
61. Ross.186, Gilbert of Hoyland
62. Ross.198
63. Ross.206, Psalter
64. Ross.292
65. Ross.553, Hebrew Ms.
66. Ross.554, illuminated Hebrew Bible
67. Ross.556, Hebrew Psalter
68. Ross.733
69. Ross.817, Gilles Bellemère
70. Urb.ebr.2, Kennicott-Rossi 225 according to @RickBrannan
71. Urb.ebr.4
72. Urb.ebr.5
73. Urb.ebr.6
74. Urb.ebr.7
75. Urb.ebr.8
76. Urb.ebr.10
77. Urb.ebr.11
78. Urb.ebr.12
79. Urb.ebr.14
80. Urb.ebr.15
81. Urb.ebr.17
82. Urb.ebr.18
83. Urb.ebr.19
84. Urb.ebr.21
85. Urb.ebr.22
86. Urb.ebr.23
87. Urb.ebr.24
88. Urb.ebr.26
89. Urb.ebr.28
90. Urb.ebr.29
91. Urb.ebr.30
92. Urb.ebr.31
93. Urb.ebr.37
94. Urb.ebr.38
95. Urb.ebr.39
96. Urb.ebr.40
97.  Vat.ebr.71, Ḳimḥi, David ben Yosef, c.1160-c.1235, Commentary on Latter Prophets

There is so much here that it will take some time to trawl through all the digitizations. If any codex which I have listed is of especial interest to you, why not use the comment box below this post to briefly introduce it and explain its importance to other readers.

Follow me on Twitter (@JBPiggin) for more news of these digitizations. [This is Piggin's Unofficial List 4.]