Legacy in preservation: Notre Dame safeguards irreplaceable manuscripts

Each year, 1.3 million people visit the archaeological marvel Stonehenge.

As one of the most famous prehistoric monuments in the world, it showcases a remarkable feat of engineering and ingenuity—and provides researchers with valuable insight into Neolithic and Bronze Age societies and practices.

But what if scholars could see a reproduction of the stones as they were when erected—what new context would be considered and what discoveries could be made by studying a perfectly preserved version of its original form?

The University of Notre Dame offers the opportunity for such insight into 30,000 equally important, and equally irreplaceable, works of human creativity—reproductions of rare medieval manuscripts whose destruction was twice threatened during periods of intense geopolitical conflict.

“These are a preservation of cultural heritage, but in a book form,” said Julia Schneider, the medieval studies subject librarian with Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries.

In her role, Schneider works closely with the College of Arts & Letters’ Medieval Institute and assists students, faculty, and visiting researchers with accessing the unique historical documents, books, and manuscripts housed on the seventh floor of the Hesburgh Library.

For more than six decades, Notre Dame has played a pivotal role in ensuring timeless treasures can never be lost, housing approximately 12,000 reels of microfilm—small-scale photographic negatives of documents and two-dimensional art pieces—containing reproductions of the collections of Biblioteca Ambrosiana, a 400-year-old library in Italy.

The seventh floor of the Hesburgh Library is the only place in the world outside of the Ambrosiana where the collection can be viewed, and for decades scholars of Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, theology, classics, and history have traveled to campus to study what it holds.

“Notre Dame brings many, many scholars from Europe to campus as visitors for lectures or research, and they often say that this is the best library they’ve ever worked with,” said Thomas Burman, the Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute and a professor of history. “They’ll spend an enormous amount of time with our library databases because they can’t get those materials elsewhere. That kind of testament from scholars is an indication of how important our work here is.”

This February, the 65-year relationship between the Hesburgh Libraries and the Ambrosiana will be celebrated with a two-day symposium in which world-renowned medieval scholars will discuss the importance of the partners’ steadfast commitment to preserving history and the need to digitize the collection to ensure its future.

“We want to continue this relationship between the Ambrosiana and Notre Dame,” Schneider said. “And we wanted to recognize this relationship now because we’re at a crossroads as we move from the analog world into promoting the digital collection. We want to commemorate what’s gone before, but also to celebrate what’s coming.”

The historical symbiosis

Founded in 17th-century Milan, the Ambrosiana holds thousands of important books, manuscripts, and art from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia—pieces such as Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit, Petrarch’s Ambrosian Virgil, Cicero’s De Divinatione, and da Vinci’s Portrait of a Musician and Codex Atlanticus.

The library has also been at risk of wartime destruction on more than one occasion.

During World War II, the Ambrosiana was heavily damaged after 500 planes bombed Milan over two days in August 1943. Most of the treasured pieces were saved, but rare books and irreplaceable librettos were lost.

“A manuscript is unique in that there’s only one,” Schneider said. “Every handwritten copy of a text is different. So when one is gone, then it’s gone—there’s nothing left of it.”

Less than 20 years later, as Cold War anxiety heightened over the potential use of nuclear weapons, distinguished Milanese leaders—including Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, the archbishop of Milan—shared a desire to proactively preserve the works held inside the Ambrosiana.

Concurrently, in the United States, Notre Dame President Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., was overseeing the construction of a 13-story, $8 million library that positioned his institution to become a leading research university.

In 1960, Father Hesburgh invited both US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Cardinal Montini—who, three years later, became Pope Paul VI—to South Bend to receive honorary degrees. A tour of campus and conversations about plans for the new library led to Father Hesburgh and Cardinal Montini forming an agreement.

The Ambrosiana would create microfilm from as much of its 30,000 early and medieval manuscripts as possible, and Notre Dame would provide the logistical and financial support needed to house the reproductions for researchers to access and study.

The result of this partnership accomplished both leaders’ goals—Cardinal Montini was able to preserve Ambrosiana’s collection in case of disaster, and Father Hesburgh positioned Notre Dame to become a leading resource for medieval scholarship in North America.

Medieval Institute Director Rev. Astrik L. Gabriel was tapped to help oversee the meticulous process. He garnered $600,000—$3.5 million in today’s dollars—for the project from the Kress Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The entire microfilm project took about 15 years from inception to completion, and the reciprocal relationship continues to be strong today. Over the past six decades, global scholars have sought out the Hesburgh Libraries to use Notre Dame’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana collection, and the Medieval Institute has provided logistical and financial support to assist their research.

“The Medieval Institute aims to be one of the handful of great centers in the world for the studies of the Middle Ages. And for that to happen, we need Hesburgh Libraries resources like the Ambrosiana collection and incredible databases of medieval materials,” said Burman, the institute’s current director. “There was a time when the only way to look at a medieval manuscript was to go where it was held, and that’s obviously costly when the majority of manuscripts are not available on these shores. Having these microfilms more available and accessible makes it possible to do concerted intensive research in a cost-effective way.”

Opportunity through digitization

Now, though, the spools of Ambrosiana microfilm have begun to deteriorate—“like, as we speak,” Schneider said.

“If you were to walk by the room where the films are stored, you would notice that it would smell like vinegar, which is a sign that the microfilm is deteriorating,” she said.

The overall quality of the microfilm imaging was not always optimal to begin with, Schneider said, and the passing of time has only made them worse. The reproductions were generated as photo negatives, which can often make it harder for researchers to get a full scope of the manuscripts as material objects. And, during the microfilming process, the Ambrosiana staff’s focus was often on the quantity of works preserved, so the quality of the images sometimes suffered, resulting in text that is difficult to read or incomplete.

“Analog equipment is good but not perfect, and it doesn’t give a real understanding of the artifact,” Schneider said. “We do the best that we can to preserve the film—like using acid-free paper boxes and metal cabinets for storage—but it is the nature of the medium to deteriorate. Digital images are the next step for all of us and, through a Hesburgh Libraries and Notre Dame Research effort and in cooperation with the Ambrosiana, the project will be realized.”

Reprising its role from decades ago, the Hesburgh Libraries is pursuing financial support to provide the equipment for the Ambrosiana to digitize its manuscripts, as well as provide cloud storage for the high-resolution reproductions, granting access to Notre Dame faculty, students, and visiting scholars. The digitization process has steadily progressed over the past several years, Burman said, and about 10 percent of the manuscripts have been photographed. Afterward, the high-resolution photos will be cataloged and uploaded to Ambrosiana and Notre Dame digital databases.

“It is bringing manuscripts and medieval studies into a new era,” Schneider said. “And hopefully helping people understand why these artifacts are so important.”

By offering better-quality copies of the historical manuscripts and making them even more easily accessible, Hesburgh Libraries and Medieval Institute leaders hope a new generation of scholars will be able to continue groundbreaking research with new perspectives.

“A great deal of what’s in these microfilms and manuscripts has never been read before, has never been published in any modern printed form, and has scarcely been studied before,” Burman said. “You can’t just depend on the books in any library to contain the great evidence of the medieval past. There’s still so much more to be discovered.”