The Vatican Library. II. FROM 1295 T0 J 447 T3ONIFACE VIII. it was, in 1295, in the first year of his ponti-
- ~r ficate, by whose orders the first catalogue was made which
has come down to us, of the Papal Library. From that date, through six centuries, there is a nearly continuous series of them, now published by F. Ehrle and others. So that from Boniface VIII. the history of the library can be made out, not from a comparison of evidence and the help of conjectures, but from actual library records. The library then consisted of nearly 500 volumes. Another hand has added, " and 160 papers." It has been left to F. Ehrle to discover that the library of Boniface VIII., which was so mysteriously dispersed in the i4th century, contained in 1311, those 33 Greek MSS., arranged in a separate division, and to his great work upon this subject we must now turn. 1 It is only necessary here to point out that to the library of the Popes at Avignon, F. Ehrle has devoted his most exhaustive researches. The student will find in his remarkable volumes all that will probably for many years, perhaps ever, be known about them. 2 In 1303 troubles began again. The tragic end of Boniface affords the historian ten of his most brilliant pages, and Dante one of his most burning lines. 3 Through such a storm no craft could live. One manuscript only, a Latin pentateuch apparently of the time of Nicholas III., now in the Vatican (Vatic. 7793) remains to us. For the rest, F. Ehrle in the course of his re- searches among the libraries of Rome, Assisi, and elsewhere, has never come across any trace of any of the books which occur in 1 MUntz and Fabre, op. cit. , p. iii. 2 Historia Bibliothecce Romanorum Pontificumtum Bonifatiance turn Avenio- nensis and narrata, et antiquis earum : indicibus, aliisque documentis illustrata. (Romse, typ. Vat.). Tom. i., 1890.
- Milman, Latin Christianity, fourth ed., 1867, vol. vii., pp. 145-155. Dante,
Purgatorio, xx., 89. 28
