Very little is known of the Vatican…
December 1587 CE
Very little is known of the Vatican Apostolic Library, the direct heir of the first library of the Roman pontiffs, up to the thirteenth century, but it appears to have remained only a modest collection of works until Pope Nicholas V (1447–55) greatly enlarged it with his purchase of the remnants of the imperial library of Constantinople, which had recently been conquered by the Ottoman Turks.
Popes Sixtus IV (1471–84) and Julius II (1503–13) had further enlarged the library, and under Sixtus V the architect Domenico Fontana erects the library's present building.
Fontana, born in Melide, Milan, had come to Rome in 1563, where in 1585 he had been employed by Montalto to design a chapel in the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore.
When Montalto was elected pope, he had appointed Fontana as architect to the papacy.
Fontana also designs the Acqua Felice (1587) and the present Lateran palace, built on the ruins of the old medieval palace.
His most famous undertaking is the removal of the Egyptian obelisk (brought to Rome in the first century CE) from its place in the circus of the Vatican and its erection in front of St. Peter's in 1586.
In 1585 the Italian engineer Guido Toglietta had written a thoughtful treatise on a pavement system using broken stone that represents a marked advance on the heavy Roman style.
Under the vast program of city planning by Sixtus and Fontana, new streets and squares are laid out, obelisks raised, the Lateran and Vatican palaces rebuilt, and aqueducts repaired.
The statue of Trajan on his eponymous column having disappeared in the Middle Ages, the top is crowned by the pope on December 4, 1587, with a bronze figure of St. Peter, which remains to this day.
Fortunately, the pope’s project to convert the Colosseum into a wool factory to provide employment for Rome's prostitutes comes to nothing.
Sixtus founds a printing press, Typographica Apostolica Vaticana, and formally establishes the office of Advocatus Diaboli, the promoter of the faith who critically examines the life of and miracles attributed to an individual proposed for beatification or canonization.
He is popularly called the devil's advocate, a term that seems to have been introduced by Pope Leo X, in the early fifteenth century, because his presentation of facts includes everything unfavorable to the candidate.
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The Sistine Hall of the Vatican Library. (Photo by Ghirlandajo, 2007)
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