Your ShelfYour Projects

The Vatican

17%

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 20, 1876

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 2, No. 19.

Read the full edition

The Vatican.

The word “Vatican” is often used, but many persons do not understand its import. It may not be amiss to enlighten such of our readers as may be at fault in this particular. The term refers to a collection of buildings on one of the seven hills of Rome, which covers a space of 1,200 feet in length and 1,000 feet in breadth. It is built on the spot once occupied by the garden of the cruel Nero. It owes its origin to the bishop of Rome, who, in the early part of the sixth century, erected a humble residence on its site. About the year 1160 Pope Eugenius rebuilt it on a magnificent scale. Innocent II., a few years afterwards, gave it up as a lodging to Peter II., King of Aragon. In 1305, Clement V., at the instigation of the King of France, removed the Papal See from Rome to Avignon, where the Vatican remained in a condition of obscurity and neglect for more than seventy years.
But soon after the return of the Pontifical Court to Rome—an event which had been so earnestly prayed for by poor Petrarch, and which finally took place in 1376—the Vatican was put into a state of repair, again enlarged, and it was thenceforward considered as the regular palace and residence of the Popes, who, one after the other, added fresh buildings to it, and gradually encircled it with antiquities, statues, pictures, and books, until it became the richest depository in the world.
The library of the Vatican was commenced 1,400 years ago. It contains 40,000 manuscripts, among which are some by Pliny, St. Thomas, St. Charles Boromeo, and many Hebrew, Syrian, Arabian, and Armenian Bibles.
The whole of the immense buildings composing the Vatican are filled with statues found beneath the ruins of ancient Rome; with paintings by the masters; and with curious medals and antiquities of almost every description.
When it is known that there have been exhumed more than 70,000 statues from the ruined temples and palaces of Rome, the reader can form some idea of the richness of the Vatican.—Sel.