spamandham

Personally, I won't be satisfied until they hand over the original long form birth cert...uhm, I mean documents.

Clivedurdle

Who does this stuff belong to?

I would assert it belongs to humanity in perpuity and therefore should be freely available to all, including the originals so that proper archaeological and scientific research can be carried out.

How many more Archimedes Palimpsests are there? Would a digitised version show what was originally written before it was replaced with a psalm?

The only legitimate charges would be a proportionate one to make the stuff available - and arguably that is an international cost to be born by we the people from taxation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8597779.stm

And of course as the Vatican is a nation state, its library is not a private institution.

Roger Pearse

I agree that this is a possible outcome. I merely think that there is a tide running through the world at the moment, which is against this. Every institution wants to be seen to be "with it" and up-to-date. This is why the project exists in the first place; the pressure of the wind of change, as it were.

I agree that greedy people will try to profit from this somehow. But remember that there are few people more greedy-stupid than the British Library, and that even they put Sinaiticus online. The people paying -- disbursing grants -- will also want to see stuff online.

So I think it will all go online, shyly at first, and then in greater quantities as people realise there simply are no bad consequences.

Roger Pearse

Legally it belongs to the Vatican state.

Morally, I agree. I think the Vatican will take a fairly positive view. The Vatican library is one of the easier collections to access, and one of the better known.

There must be many more palimpsests out there, in books no-one ever opens. Mind you, the Vatican mss were all turned over fairly thoroughly in the 1820's by Angelo Mai, who got himself appointed Cardinal and Prefect of the library, and then proceeded to publish a series of texts from palimpsests, including the letters of Fronto, and the remains of Cicero's De Republica.

It is generally obvious that a page is palimpsest, because the under writing is imperfectly erased.

I don't think we pay the Vatican in taxes. But I agree with the general principle; that state-owned collections should not charge us again to view our own property.

Actually it is, really, because the Vatican state is an absolute monarchy. Everything in it belongs to the Pope.

But in our case, this has worked to our advantage. It is often far easier to get access to private collections than national ones. I've photographed several medieval manuscripts; all of them privately owned. The state-owned ones are in the hands of petty officials who don't give a damn.

I suspect that this very factor is why the Vatican is breaking ranks and plunging into mass digitisation. I suspect that Pope Benedict personally has decided it should happen. He's a scholar, remember. He's the sort of person who reads the Dialogues of Manuel Paleologus, which few of us would do unless forced to!

Short lines of management, you see, and no committees of bureaucrats or congressmen to consider: one direct question, one direct answer, and all systems are go.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Godless Raven

Fair enough.

Apparently I'm the only person on the planet that you do not wish "all the best" to, and I'm starting to wonder if it's any coincidence that I've had a string of bad luck for about 24 hours. Thanks a lot Roger, thanks a lot. :angry:

Roger Pearse

Well! You chose to insult the Holy Catholic Church and God's representative on earth, you have to be willing to take the consequences...

Zaphod

On the other hand, he might be anticipating an upcoming need to recover extremely large future capital expenses due to (ahem) litigation.

PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

I wonder if the 80,000 manuscripts are all the manuscripts in the library? Did they promise that all manuscripts would be digitized or only the 80,000 manuscripts that agrees with official Church history? Will one or two manuscripts not be published? Will 50 or 100, will a thousand or twenty thousand not be published?

It seems likely that a great deal of these manuscripts will simply be ordinary and routine reports from the Sixth though the Fifteenth centuries. Unless all manuscripts are published, I am not sure how useful this will be for understanding the origins of Christianity.

We should remember that 80,000 may seem like a huge number, but this only represents 80 documents per year, if we are talking about a 1,000 year period. If, say, 100 documents per year were preserved than this would still leave a great deal of room for hiding important historical truths.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

arnoldo

Hi MM,
Unfortunately Constantine did not leave any will. Upon his death there was much bloodshed upon who should inherit the throne. Eventually his three sons, Constantine II, Constantinus and Constans assume control of the Roman Empire. Constantine apparently left a poor example for his sons on how to run an empire and soon Constantine II tried to overthrow Constans. Constantans was able to kill his brother leaving two brothers in charge of the empire. When Constans died this left Constantinus in charge of the Empire. Having no heirs of his own he resorted to placing his cousin Julian to be his heir. How much different would our present history had been if Julian was able to extinguish this monstrous lie of his uncle Constantine, eh?

mountainman

In second place it would be interesting if they found in the Vatican Archives a lost copy of Ammianus's "Obituary to Constantine".

Science and technology may yet perform this task that had got well beyond the power of Emperor Julian.