World’s oldest library survived plague, plunder, floods and bombs

When you’re the oldest library in the entire world, you’re a survivor and, aside from your venerable books, you have a few stories of your own to tell. We heard some of those tales during an excellent guided tour of Biblioteca Capitolare in Verona, Italy.

Anything to do with books – libraries, book stores, book stalls, book fairs, those tiny neighbourhood libraries on posts, mobile libraries – makes my heart go pit-a-pat, even when they’re in a language inaccessible to me. So, during our two-week stay in Verona, a visit to this oldest continuously operating library was mandatory. Although self-guided tours are available to anyone who shows up, we arranged for an English guided tour.

Stepping first into the Monumental Hall, we were awed not just by the dramatic space but also by the library’s holdings:

• 100,000 books
• 1,280 manuscripts
• 750 pieces of art
• 11,000 scrolls

We gazed around the dimly lit two-storey space, with upper bookshelves facing a balcony that circled the room. Select pieces of art occupied niches, including a bust of Homer from the 2^nd century AD. Many of the books, however, looked the worse for wear, with tears across their ragged spines.

“Wherever you see the books in bad shape, don’t worry, we don’t mistreat them!” said Valeria, our guide. “They are survivors.”

Bombed

The Monumental Hall suffered a direct hit from an American bomb during the Second World War and was later rebuilt based on old photos and plans. The circular staircase, however, was too costly to replace.

Those ragged books had been dug from the rubble after American bombs during the Second World War hit the library and severely damaged the Monumental Hall. Bombs fell all over Verona, destroying many significant buildings but missing the train station, their target.

Valeria stated the facts with no blame in her voice, but I suffered pangs of remorse – the Allies, including Americans and us Canadians, damaged the oldest library. When I come face to face with the consequences of war, even when it’s just books rather than people who are destroyed, it makes me sad all over again about the futility of war.

She showed us several blown-up photos, the first from the 1930s.

“This is the original [library] with the spiral staircase in the middle of the hall,” she said. “The ceiling was frescoed.” The tops of the bookshelves were curved, with finials and other carvings – much more ornate than the rebuilt library’s more simple lines.

“This is after the 4^th of January 1945, when an air raid struck,” Valeria said, holding a photo of the bombed library. “You can see the oval staircase.” She pointed to the stone oval, just above a door with columns and a triangular pediment that led nowhere. Pockmarked buildings surrounded the former library. Many books were lost but some were recovered and placed upon the rebuilt shelves that we saw. Homer was the only bust that survived.

The library’s tagline is “where knowledge meets emotion.” I felt what that meant.

Saga of sin

A monk named Ursicino sinfully signed and dated a manuscript when he finished copying it, thus offering proof that the library is the oldest continuously functioning in the world.

After the sobering reflection on war’s destruction, we stepped from the hall into new exhibition rooms, opened to the public in 2023. There, a selection of ancient books told more fascinating stories.

The oldest library is right next to Verona’s cathedral – the Duomo – which began as a basilica in the late 300s, later replaced by bigger and grander buildings. A school was set up for boys to be educated to become priests, but they needed school texts. So, a scriptorium was established beside the cathedral, where monks with the best handwriting spent their lives copying and producing manuscripts and books. As the books were created, they formed the library and were lent to other monasteries and churches to spread the Christian message.

I imagined a big room with monks hunched over angled desks, quills scratching letters onto parchment made of sheep, goat or calf skin. Making a book was a long and costly process, taking months or years. So finishing one was cause for celebration.

On Aug. 1, 517, a monk named Ursicino completed a book about the lives of saints and committed the sin of vanity – he signed his name and the date in the book. While the church may have taken a dim view of his sin, it thrilled historians, since Ursicino’s signature and date offered written proof that the library was active in 517.

“It’s quite rare to find a signature,” said Valeria. The library is thought to date from 100 or 150 years or so before Ursicino’s pride got the better of him, but there’s no proof, so 517 is the key date.

“This is what makes us special,” she said. “It’s the oldest still-functioning library in the world.”

“There’s not an older library in the Middle East or Asia?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. The important distinction is “still-functioning” or “continuously operating” since other libraries whose history may go back longer are not operating today or have gaps in their history.

Making and borrowing books

Information panels provided lots of background about making books by hand.

Back in medieval times, a large library consisted of 70 to 80 books.

My eyebrows raised at hearing those numbers. My kids had more than 80 books when they were toddlers. In my radically pared-down retirement library while living in Portugal, I have precisely 77 books right now (I just counted) plus hundreds of ebooks.

“Can you imagine copying out one of our books by hand?” Bill asked, as we surveyed our bookshelf with new eyes. “You’d have to have such good handwriting.”

I laughed. Bill has sometimes-indecipherable handwriting. No way he’d be an amanuensis. “You’d be hoeing the turnips,” I predicted.

Making a book was not only slow and expensive, but also dangerous. Monks used to suck the tips of their quills to keep them clean, ingesting mercury, lead and other dangerous toxins from the substances used to make ink.  

While the library was founded to create and lend texts to religious men, that started to change after universities began. Lay intellectuals from the nearby universities of Bologna and Padua, founded in 1088 and 1222 respectively, began asking to study texts at the Biblioteca Capitolare. Famous writers Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch visited and studied there. From the 1200s the first real librarians helped people find information, while monks continued to create books by hand.

Starting in the late 1100s, Arabs introduced paper (invented in China) to Europe, and from the 1200s onward, Italian paper mills produced paper from hemp and linen rags. Paper gradually replaced parchment, especially after 1436.

Johannes Gutenberg spelled the beginning of the end for parchment and the scriptorium part of the library. In 1436, his new-fangled printing press with moveable type allowed eight to ten books to be printed in one day! That would have blown Ursicino’s mind! Understandably, the demand for hand-copying books declined; Capitolare’s scriptorium closed but the library operations continued. In 1472, the first book was printed in Verona with moveable type printing.

Plague, bombs and hidden books

Dante Alighieri studied at the Capitolare in the 1300s. No word on whether he incurred overdue book fines.

The plague of 1630 hit Verona hard: of its 55,000 people, 35,000 perished, including the Capitolare’s librarian. In anticipation of a new library being built, he had stored some of the most valuable manuscripts to protect them, but he died of plague and took the secret location to his grave. No one could find them for 82 years.

Finally, late one night in 1712, the librarian found the manuscripts in cupboards with fake bottoms. He was so excited he went straight to Scipione Maffei’s house to share the good news. Maffei, a local nobleman and illustrious studier, was also so happy he ran to the library in his pyjamas to see the long-lost documents. The discovery brought attention to the library from other noble families, who then donated their book collections. The library rooms proved too small, so noble money finally funded the new library built in 1725 – the one that the air raid demolished.

During the Second World War, the most valuable books were packed into 53 of these wooden boxes and hidden from the Allies (us).

And speaking of hidden papers, when the Second World War got underway, the most valuable books were again hidden. Monsignor Giuseppe Turrini, library prefect, packed 53 wooden boxes with manuscripts, printed texts, documents and some art objects. Some were placed in safe rooms in the cathedral next door and others hidden in the rectory of Erbezzo, a mountain town north of Verona. This strategy ensured they were saved from the 1945 bombing. 

“We were very lucky, and unlucky at the same time,” Valeria said. “It’s a very beautiful story about love for culture.”

During the rebuilding after the war, a German officer who had studied at the library helped with the design. Also, an American who was one of the Monuments Men helped raise funds to rebuild.

Despoilment, souvenir or plunder?

Napoleon took this manuscript to Paris, where the national librarian stamped it with a big ol’ red stamp right over the illumination.

Napoleon, who showed up uninvited all over Europe in the late 1700s and early 1800s, paid an unwelcome visit to Verona too.

“Napoleon had a terrible habit of taking souvenirs,” said Valeria, in a vast understatement. Or, as the library’s timeline noted: “1797 – despoilment of the library by Napoleon.”

Napoleon sent 45 books and illustrated manuscripts back to Paris as a memento of his visit. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the national library of France stamped a book! A big red stamp beside the handwritten words and over part of an illumination. That boggled our minds and Valeria’s too.

“Paris stamped it!” she said indignantly.

You’d think a librarian would have a love of books deep enough to prevent such a desecration, no matter where the book came from.

Fortunately, France returned 30 documents to the Capitolare, but still has the remaining one-third of the plunder. How galling.

Roman law on a palimpsest

The Palimpsest of Gaius, “a nightmare to read,” has Christian text written over top of Roman laws.

Valeria led us to a document that’s valuable to every law school in the world, but it looked like it’d been burnt or stained. Before we could understand its value to lawyers, she had to explain what a palimpsest is.  

Palimpsests are parchments that have been scraped and reused with new text written over top. However, the words below don’t disappear completely. Chemicals were used in the 1800s to read the text underneath (hence the damage); then ultraviolet light in the 1900s; and now, multispectral imaging is used.

The so-called Palimpsest of Gaius has 8^th-century Christian text written on top. But researchers in 1816 discovered that underneath is a collection of Roman laws initially written by a jurist named Gaius about 160 AD. However, the laws weren’t written onto the parchment until the 5^th to 6^th century. Still, they are the only remaining evidence of classical Roman laws, dealing with personal and property rights.

“Every faculty of law in the world is based on this book,” she explained. “It’s a nightmare to read it – no spaces or punctuation.”

Veronese riddle

Nearby was the Veronese riddle – the earliest written evidence of the Italian language.

The riddle is a scribble, written by a manuscript writer in the margin of an 8^th-century book of prayer. No one could decipher the scribble for the longest time, until 100 years ago when a researcher finally realized it was a riddle, an agricultural metaphor for writing: “He pushed the oxen forward (the fingers of his hand), ploughed a white field (the pages of the book), held a white plough (the quill) and sowed a black seed (the ink).”

Apart from figuring out the riddle, the document is notable because it was written in a mix of Latin – the predominant language for writing then – plus some words of the vernacular (commonly spoken) language of Italian for the first time.

Mass murder

I can read music, but not this 14^th-century chant written on a four-line staff!

In just about every big church or cathedral we’ve toured, we’ve seen enormous wooden book stands near the choir stalls. Some hold two music books while others hold four. Valeria showed us one of those books – and they are indeed large, so that choir members could see the music from a distance.

This music book, from the late 14^th century, was one of the latest produced at the Capitolare. Used in the cathedral until 1902, the music was a chant, with notes on a four-line staff (not the five-line staff of modern music). The book is so large it took one sheepskin to make each parchment page.

“It was a mass murder of sheep,” joked Valeria.  

Survivor

You don’t get to be the oldest library without being a survivor!

The library has suffered through earthquakes and, since it backs right onto the Adige River, numerous floods over the centuries. The worst flood, in 1882, covered 11,000 manuscripts in mud.

“It’s almost a miracle it managed to survive,” said Valeria.

Through 15 centuries, the oldest library has adapted to change, reinvented itself and stayed in business. Offering tours to the public is a relatively new venture – just since fall 2023.

“Many Verona people still don’t know it’s here,” she said, as our excellent tour came to an end.

Dare I say the Biblioteca Capitolare is a hidden gem? (I dislike that vastly overused phrase but in this case it is true.)

Valeria was so knowledgeable and enthusiastically relayed the library’s stories in such an engaging way that I wanted the tour to keep going and going. Anyone who loves books should visit.

We visited Verona’s Biblioteca Capitolare in June 2024. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.