18 
The Vatican Collections 
This vast collection consists of schedules prepared in the various pontifical 
offices to facilitate reference to their archives; inventories and indexes pre¬ 
pared for private collections before their incorporation in the Archivio; and 
the work of Vatican officials. They are made upon an immense variety of 
plans, and probably form the most interesting body of material in the world 
for the study of the history of library methods. Their value and accuracy are, 
naturally, as varied as their mode of attack. Of the work done in the Vatican 
the most interesting is that by De Pretis and Garampi, who used respectively 
the two typical methods of dealing with such problems. 
De Pretis, who worked in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, 
produced inventories, or practically shelf-lists, of the Archivio Segreto, indice 
133 ; of the material from the office of the secretary of state, indice 134 ; and 
of the Miscellanea, indice 136 . The descriptions are very brief, giving the 
number of the cupboard or armadio in which the volume is found: the indi¬ 
vidual number within the armadio; generally the extreme dates of its con¬ 
tents ; and a description in three or four words. Although the location of the 
volumes has in many cases been changed, this system of reference has been 
retained; additions have been internumbered or otherwise provided for, losses 
have been noted; and the work of De Pretis still stands as a finding list and 
as a means, albeit with labor, of exhaustively examining most of the material 
he set in order. 
The more ambitious plan of Garampi was to index the archives preparatory 
to the production of a great work on the orbis Christianas. 1 * Under his direc¬ 
tion a force of subordinates, of whom the chief was Pistolesi, worked during 
the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and even after his death the 
scheme was not abandoned, for portions of the material come down as late 
as 1808. Each item was noted on a small slip of paper, scheda, of which 
about a million are said to have been collected. These were then pasted in 
the order desired on large sheets which, by the care of Mgr. Wenzel, have 
lately been bound and made available. The series into which they have been 
united are: 
Indici 437 - 440 , “ Apparatus ad universalem Orbis Christiani notitiam ”; 
442 , “ Patriarchatus, archiepiscopatus et episcopatus in partibus infidel- 
ium ”; 
445 - 474 , “ Beneficia ”; _ 
475 - 511 , “ Orbis catholicus seu series episcoporum ”; 
512 - 534 , “ Miscellanea ” ; 
535 - 537 , “ Abbates ”, which is incomplete; 
538 - 549 , “ Indice chronologico,” A. D. 163 to 1808 ; 
550 , “ Papi ”; 
551 , “ Cardinali ” ; 
552 - 554 , “ Offici ”; 
555 , “ Chiese di Roma ”; 
670 - 681 , another “ Miscellanea ”. 
All these are alphabetically arranged except that described as chronological. 
There are also other volumes of indexes bearing the name of Garampi, but 
not belonging to this general series. It is never easy and it is sometimes im¬ 
possible to tell just what collections were examined to produce each of these 
sets. It would also be laborious, but quite necessary, to discover the content 
of each collection at the time when it was examined. The whole is subject, 
13 Kehr, Papsturkunden in Rom, pp. 392-394. 
