Pope Innocent VIII

Giovanni Battista Cibo was born in Genoa on 5 November 1432. His father was a prominent politician in Naples and then Rome, and Giovanni grew up exposed to Naples politics. He became a Canon of the Cathedral in Capua, and was given the Priory of Santa Maria d'Arba in Genoa. He resigned these positions at the urging of the Archbishop of Genoa after antagonizing King Alfonso. He went to Padua and then Rome to study.

There he came under the influence of several popes. Pope Paul II made him Bishop of Savona, but in 1473 he became a cardinal by Pope Sixtus IV, after being supported by the man who became Pope Julius II. When Sixtus IV died (1484), the conclave to elect his successor was chaotic because of two opposing factions. One faction disliked the other so much that they gave their votes to Giovanni Cibo to prevent Cardinal Marco Barbo (a cousin of Paul II) from the papacy. Giovanni Cibo won the next vote and became Pope Innocent VIII.

One of the new pope's first acts was to call a Crusade against the Turks—the Ottoman Empire was expanding rapidly, and had conquered Constantinople a generation earlier. This did not get off the ground due to King Ferdinand I of Naples, mostly due to his own orneriness that led to the 1485 Conspiracy of the Barons, a revolt against Ferdinand's attempt to strengthen his own power at the expense of the feudal hierarchy. Innocent excommunicated Ferdinand in 1489 and asked King of France Charles VIII to come to Italy and take over Naples.

Charles was intrigued, because his paternal grandmother was Marie of Anjou, the eldest daughter of Louis II of Anjou who had been a claimant to the throne of Naples (and ruled part of it from 1390 to 1399). In September 1494 (Innocent had died two years earlier!) Charles invaded with 25,000 men, using gunpowder artillery to march practically unopposed through Pavia, Pisa, Florence, and then Naples. (That, however, is an entirely different story that we might never get to; back to Innocent now.)

Innocent could not get his Crusade against the Turks off the ground, but another opportunity to do something about them came because of Bayezid II, who had become sultan of the Ottomans in 1481. Bayezid was opposed by his brother, Cem, who first tried to get help from the Mamluks of Egypt, and then from the Knights of St. John in Rhodes. Cem made an offer to the Christian world that was very tempting; I'll explain tomorrow.

The Vatican Library

In 1451, Pope Nicholas V wanted to establish a library at the Vatican. A "library" existed already—since popes had gathered important texts and manuscripts—but not in any formal way. The Avignon Papacy (1309 - 1376) had seen an increase in book collection over the course of seven popes, but Nicholas was hoping to promote Rome as a destination for scholarship, so he wanted to make a public library that would attract scholars.

He brought together his personal library, about 350 Greek, Latin, and Hebrew texts from his predecessors, and items from the Library of Constantinople. He hired scholars to translate Greek classics into Latin. He also wanted non-religious texts. In a few years, the collection held 1200 books, one-third of them in Greek.

In 1475, Pope Sixtus IV added the Palatine Library, aiming at collecting theology, philosophy, and artistic literature. In 1481, the Palatine listed 2,527 books, at that time the largest library in the world.

In 1587, Pope Sixtus V had a new building constructed to hold the growing collection. This building is still used today, and from this point was referred to as the Vatican Library. In modern times the first semi-basement houses a papyrus room. The first floor houses a restoration laboratory. The second floor holds a photographic archive.

It was intended to be a public library. During the Renaissance, books were not stored on shelves, but chained to benches with tables nearby where visitors could study the texts. These days, some of the collection is open to the public, but for most access you need to have appropriate credentials and be a professional researcher, a university professor, or a PhD student. The rules of the library allow access by 200 people at a time.

Besides one of the largest collections of books in the world (if not the largest), the Vatican Library contains 20,000 works of art and over 300,000 historical coins and medals.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about some of the acquisitions and how they came to the library.