1,600 Year-Old Vatican Vergil Manuscript To Be Reproduced

MessageToEagle.com – The Vatican Vergilius Vaticanus, (also known as the Vatican Vergil), a manuscript created in ancient Rome around 400 A.D, is one of the oldest manuscripts in existence today.

It contains fragments of Virgil’s Aeneid and Georgics with 76 surviving leaves and 50 illustrations and is widely regarded as a true ancient masterpiece. The Folio 22 recto includes an illustration from the Aeneid that depicts Creusa trying to detain her husband Aeneas from battle.

The Vatican Apostolic Library has now announced it is allowing reproductions of the manuscript to the first 200 people/organizations who donate 500 euros or more to support an ongoing project that is using NTT DATA technology to digitally archive thousands of manuscripts at the Vatican Library.

The Vatican Library was founded in 1451 AD and holds over 80,000 manuscripts, prints, drawings, plates and incunabula (books printed prior to 1500 AD) written throughout history by people of different faiths from across the world.

The Vatican Apostolic Library is digitizing its valuable ancient religious manuscripts and putting them online via its website, available for the public to view for free, as well as turning to crowd funding to help it complete its work.

NTT DATA joined the Vatican Apostolic Library’s digital archiving project in April 2014. The project aims to create digital copies of some 3,000 ancient manuscripts for archiving and sharing with both scholars and the general public around the world.

See also:

10 Mysterious Ancient Manuscripts With Hidden Secrets

Vatican Library Puts 4,000 Ancient Manuscripts Available Online For Free

Thousands Of Ancient Thai Manuscripts Now Available Online

“We are honored to use our state-of-the-art technology to help the Vatican Apostolic Library preserve these irreplaceable cultural treasures as a legacy for future generations,” said Toshio Iwamoto, President and CEO of NTT DATA. “NTT DATA will continue to leverage its digital expertise in support of the arts and academia for the benefit of future generations.”

“Our library is an important storehouse of the global culture of humankind,” said Monsignor Cesare Pasini, Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library. “We are delighted the process of digital archiving will make these wonderful ancient manuscripts more widely available to the world and thereby strengthen the deep spirit of humankind’s shared universal heritage.”

“Every donation will be used to support our mission of preserving the priceless historical manuscripts of the Vatican Apostolic Library,” said Maite Bulgari, President of Digita Vaticana. “The reproduction that will be sent to 200 donors will enable people to understand how digitization and new technologies can reproduce the actual appearance and the essence of a page from an ancient manuscript created some 1,600 years ago.”

MessageToEagle.com