Treasure in Microfilm

When Jesuit scholars at St. Louis University opened a medieval studies curriculum two years ago, they found themselves long on students and qualified professors, but short on the materials of church scholarship. Father Lowrie J. Daly, 37-year-old instructor in medieval history, suggested that his superiors ask permission to make microfilm copies of as many as 42,000 rare and ancient manuscripts in the Vatican Library, which some U.S. librarians have called "the most important manuscript library in the western world." Not very hopefully, St. Louis' President Paul C. Reinert forwarded a request through church channels to the Vatican librarians.

A fortnight ago, to the jubilation of the St. Louis faculty, the Vatican's permission arrived. "It was as if nobody had made copies of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta and you asked permission to do so and got it," one Jesuit gulped. Among the manuscripts likely to be photographed: the 4th Century Codex Vaticanus, a Greek Bible with the oldest and most important extant copy of the New Testament; the Codex Marchalianus, a 6th Century vellum scroll containing the complete Old Testament prophets; the original author's manuscript of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Contra Gentiles.

In Rome this week, Father Daly was making a tentative selection of manuscripts to be copied. Back in the U.S., St. Louis University was looking for foundation money to pay for the project. The complete microfilming process will cost $125,000, take 25 months to complete. When it is finished, said St. Louis' Father Bernard Dempsey, who is engineering the project, scholars in the U.S. will have access to "a treasure without parallel anywhere outside Rome."

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