Vatican and Bodleian libraries launch online archive of ancient religious texts

Bodleian Library Oxford
Radcliffe Square, Oxford University. The Bodleian Library, together with the Vatican, is putting thousands of religious texts online Photograph: Alamy




"Where you can see these ancient texts there is just a lifting of the spirits … I think those who did the printing in the past would think the scanning was a very considerable improvement, it must have been very hard work. Essentially the scanners of today and the printers of the past are engaged in very similar work."

The two institutions are equally venerable. The Vatican library was founded in 1451 by Pope Nicholas V for "the common convenience of the learned", while the Bodleian opened to scholars in 1602 but incorporated Duke Humfrey's library of 1488, and including much older collections.

The two libraries hold material which was originally in the same collections, or even the same volumes, so the four-year project will reunite material separated for centuries.

