2007-10-29 10:33:24 · 14 answers · asked by musiclov3r17 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
There are probably things they don't want the general population to read. Almost every organized religion has skeletons in their closet.
2007-10-29 10:37:32 · answer #1 · answered by gumby 7 · 2⤊ 1⤋
The Vatican Library (Latin: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana) is the library of the Holy See, currently located in Vatican City. It is one of the oldest libraries and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. From July 2007 the library is temporarily closed to the public for rebuilding which is expected to be completed by September 2010].
2007-10-29 10:40:38 · answer #2 · answered by TigerLily 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
The Vatican Library has always been open to legitimate researchers and others qualified to work with the valuable and irreplaceable historical documents stored there. Obviously it cannot be open to the general public, any more than many areas of the Library of Congress can be.
2007-10-29 10:49:25 · answer #3 · answered by PaulCyp 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Knowledge is power....
The Vatican Library contains almost 2,000,000 printed books and serials, including over 8,000 incunabula (books printed before 1500).
It also contains:
75,000 manuscripts in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Ethiopian, and Syriac from the second century onwards
65,000 units of archival volumes in 23 deposits
100,000 prints, engravings, maps and drawings
330,000 Greek, Roman, and papal coins and medals
There are 2 million cards in the card catalog. Every year about 6,000 new volumes are added. About 25 percent are purchased; the rest are donations. The staff numbers 80 in five departments: manuscripts and archival collections; printed books and drawings; accessions and cataloguing; the coin collections and musei; restoration and photography. Use of the Vatican Library is restricted to scholars with a letter of introduction from their university or institution describing their project. People entering the library are limited to what they are allowed see and must receive permission on each book they want to look at.
2007-10-29 10:44:20 · answer #4 · answered by Primary Format Of Display 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
It's not closed to the public.....there are parts that are off-limits because some of the things there are very very old and they protected.
Remember the Vatican is an Ancient country.
2007-10-29 10:44:38 · answer #5 · answered by daljack -a girl 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Well, this is the Church that has continually refused to release the Dead Sea Scrolls. I would say they have a LOT to hide.
2007-10-29 10:39:30 · answer #6 · answered by Brendan G 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
A lot of it is irreplaceable. It makes sense to screen visitors to it, same as the U.S. government (and any other) only allows certain people into the archives, same as major universities only allow certain people to view the original papers of various geniuses (Albert Einstein, for example), and so forth.
2007-10-29 10:40:39 · answer #7 · answered by sparki777 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋
They get a cut of Dan Brown's profits.
2007-10-29 10:43:15 · answer #8 · answered by Ray Patterson - The dude abides 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They are a spooky secretive lot, I think the Vatican is probably run by the Mafia don't you?
2007-10-29 10:37:46 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
because they might find the ancient "holy doctrine of vatican law".
if they find it, then someone might change it to prevent priests from raping children.
also they would find out that the pope actually worships the "queen spider".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hot_Catholic_Love
2007-10-29 10:41:29 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋