Location: Cortile del Belvedere, V-00120 Vatican City
Telephone: +39/06698-79411
Hours: Vary, view top right corner of website, under ‘calendar’
Contact: His Excellence Most Revered Msgr. Jean-Louis Bruguès, O.P., Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church
Email: Researchers must register here (https://www.vatlib.it/home.php?pag=login#) in order to be able to contact an office or person of the Vatican Library by email
Access: Must provide documentation in support of research qualifications and needs
Website address: https://www.vaticanlibrary.va/
The Vatican Library is home to 16th-century translations of many ancient works on the natural world, including classical texts on anatomy, physiology, medicine, and botany, such as Avicenna’s Canonis libri, Galen’s De usu partium and De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus, Hippocrates’ Works and Octoginta volumina, Juan Valverde de Amusco’s Anatomia del corpo humano, Bartolomeo Eustachi’s Tabulae anatomicae, and illustrations of materia medica. Other notable Renaissance manuscripts and incunabula on medicine include those by Gentile da Foligno, Thomas and Dino del Garbo, Bartolammeo de Montagnana, Benedetto di Reguardati, Antonio Guaineri, and Marsilius de Sancta Sophia, as well as a number of experimental books on medicine, magic, and the sciences. The Vatican Library also houses rarities such as a 16th-century herbal by Aztec physician Martin de la Cruz, the only known Aztec medical text, and Jacopo de’ Dondi’s Aggregator, sive de medicinis simplicibus, the first printed encyclopedic dictionary of medicine, dating to the 15th century. (A copy of the dictionary is also housed at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France).
The Vatican Library is undertaking a major digitization project, and many manuscripts may be accessed here: https://www.vaticanlibrary.va/en/the-collections/the-digital-project.html