Ancient manuscripts from the Vatican

The Vatican Library built on its previous deposit with more ancient manuscripts, making it the Archive’s largest contributor. The 60 manuscripts are carefully preserved in a limited access reserve, within the vaults of the Library, where documents that are particularly important, rare, or delicate can be attended to by the conservators. Including: • One of the most important and precious manuscripts of the Gospels, Hanna Papyrus 1 (Mater Verbi), It was copied in the early third century A.D. and it is one of the oldest surviving witnesses of the text of the New Testament. • The famous De arte venandi cum avibus (On The Art of Hunting with Birds), it is a Latin treatise on ornithology and falconry written in the 1240s by Frederick II, and dedicated to his son Manfred. It’s a two-column parchment codex of 111 folios now in the Vatican Library in the Palatina Collection. • The Vatican Virgil: It was copied in about 400 A.D. and it is one of the oldest surviving sources for the text of the Aeneid and it is the oldest and one of only three ancient illustrated manuscripts of classical literature.