Replies

Exactly.

“But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust does corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Matt 6:19,20

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/08/60minutes/main20052140.shtml

But the Vatican agreed to let “60 Minutes” and correspondent Morley Safer in to see some of the priceless artifacts of our collective past.

In Rome, turn a corner and you bump into antiquity - we arrived at the Vatican to find a medieval costume parade in progress. What better way to begin a trek through history.

“There’s about two million printed books,” library curator Timothy Janz told Safer.

And inside the library, the past surrounded us again, as we were shown the magnificent building and its riches.

For instance: the spectacular Bible commissioned in 1476 by the Duke of Urbino. Janz tells us the Bible took years to make by hand: letter by letter, picture by picture.

“Decorated with real gold,” he pointed out, while showing Safer the magnificently ornate pages.

It’s just one of the library’s 80,000 handwritten manuscripts from the ages before the printing press. Add to that two million or so printed books, Christian and pagan, sacred and profane, in virtually every language known to man. There are thousands of prints and drawings

And there’s a huge collection of ancient coins, including the money used in Palestine 2,000 years ago. There are the kind of silver coins Judas was said to have been paid to betray Christ.

There is a map of the world, drawn 50 years before Columbus: at its edge, the Towers of Paradise are depicted. And the library holds an immediate best seller - Columbus’ description of his voyage to the new world, published in 1493.

“In a certain way, the library is kind of the attic of Western civilization,” Safer noted.

“It’s so true. And it’s like many attics, you know? You put things up all the time. You keep on pushing over boxes to make space for more things,” Father Michael Collins, an Irish priest who has written extensively about the Vatican, told Safer.

If you would put the library’s shelves end to end, they would stretch for 31 miles.

“Is there anyone, any single person who really knows what the library holds?” Safer asked.

“Nobody knows exactly what’s there. Because it will be impossible for the human brain, I think, to understand, to remember the titles, who wrote it, when they were written,” Father Collins said.