Fifth post.

In this post I would like to discuss about collections of the Vatican library and especially about manuscripts. From the beginning I would like to offer a short documentary which I downloaded from 'Google video'.

I have to note that the most comprehensive information, which I found about manuscripts, contains in on-line "Catholic Encyclopedia" in the chapter "The Vatican as a
Scientific Institute".
It was interesting to know that when Bartolomeo Platina made the first catalogue, the library held over 3500 items. Today the library holds some 75,000 manuscripts and over 1.1 million printed books, which includes some 8,500 incunabula.
Among the most famous books there is the oldest known manuscript of the Bible "Codex Vaticanus", written approximately in 4th century. The presented picture, taken from "New World Encyclopedia", contains texts from New Testament.It is interesting to know that all found manuscripts are divided into two parts: closed (historical ) and open collections. The former are collections which were obtained by library complete and administrated as one entity. The latter are added new acquisitions which do not form a complete collection in themselves.
Continuing the research I found interesting information connected with collection of medicine and natural history. The material was shown by the Library of Congress in a special exhibition.
There were introduced absolutely fantastic books and manuscripts such as Plato"Timaeus" which is Calcidius's version of Plato's cosmology, produced in the fifth century or
"De usu patrium" by Galen ( the image was taken from 'Medicine - Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library & Renaissance Culture) .
I would like to tell about the latter in more detail.
This book is one of the most important ancient contribution to human anatomy and physiology was written by Galen in second century A.D. In this exhibition is shown the earliest and the best manuscript which came to the papal library in fifteenth century from Cardinal Jacobo Ammannati Piccolomini.

Everybody who is interested in medical collection of the Vatican library can find in in the web-site 'Medicine - Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library & Renaissance Culture' pointed above.