It was only in 1475 that Pope Sixtus the fourth issued a decree that the Vatican Library was founded. It is known that it was based on the collection of Pope Nicholas the fifth, which consisted of 834 Latin codes. Where did the Pope personally get so many old manuscripts from, historians do not report. Allegedly, he himself collected them somewhere, for his personal use he was not a dad yet, and then brought them with him to the Vatican. Nicholas the fifth was at the head of the Vatican from 1447-1455, that is, twenty years earlier than Sixtus the fourth.
It is interesting that in 1475 the Vatican library already had 2,527 Greek and Latin manuscripts. Except for the collection of Nicholas the fifth, in the year of its foundation the library already had 1,793 books. If popes had collected and passed these books from the fourth century onward, as is often thought, it would come as no surprise that such a large collection had been gathered over a thousand years.
The production of books in the Middle Ages was an expensive business, so they were kept very carefully. In addition, books were needed for worship. But if in reality the Vatican Library was founded only in the fifteenth century, where did the number of books come from?
The Vatican Library was located in the basement for a long time
The place that was chosen for the Vatican book depository is also interesting. This is the bottom floor of the north wing of the papal palace. Before the formation of the library, there was a cellar or barn here. It is strange that the dads did not find a more suitable place for storing books. But this is not surprising, because in the middle of the fifteenth century, the Vatican was still under construction. There was not enough space and therefore the library had to be located in some former utility block.
The Vatican library received a more spacious room only a hundred years later at the end of the sixteenth century. By order of Sixtus the fifth, the architect Dominique Fantano built a transverse wing in the Belvedere courtyard on the site of the first Bramante stairs. This is where the papal library is located.
The walls of the new luxurious building were painted with paintings that told about ancient libraries and about the inventors of writing. And, of course, episodes of the reign of Pope Sixtus the fifth were posted on them. Of course, the chronological gap of more than a thousand years between the founding of the Vatican allegedly in the fourth century and the appearance of the Vatican library in the fifteenth century is so striking that historians are forced to explain it somehow. But their explanations, as is often the case, do not look completely convincing.
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Was there a secret library?
Historians say, yes, the Vatican library was founded only in the fifteenth century, but one should not think that at this time there was no library at all in the Vatican. There was a library, only a secret one. So secret that none of the outsiders knew anything about it. Therefore, medieval information about her has not been preserved.
The existence of a secret library is just an assumption, which today is no longer possible to verify. Therefore, it is quite obvious that such a strange explanation does not explain anything.
