Acknowledgements
Project historian Katherine Gill
and archivist Elizabeth Yakel
A great number of individuals and institutions were of enormous help in formulating the project and in helping the work to completion. The idea for this project first emerged as the result of a short research trip to Rome funded by the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan. Once the idea took hold, the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Michigan provided a grant to test the proposed methodology among the diplomatic holdings of the ASV. Support for the first phase of the project was provided by the Getty Grant Program with matching funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency. Support for the second phase of the project was provided by the Lilly Endowment, Inc., The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. At the start of the second phase, the Homeland Foundation of New York provided funding for a conference at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City that drew together archivists who are familiar with database construction and scholars who use the ASV. Final editing of the work was funded jointly by the American Friends of the Vatican Library and the Homeland Foundation. To these offices and foundations we submit this final report of our work with a profound sense of gratitude.
Deborah Marrow and Jack Meyers at the Getty Grant Program; Jane Rosenberg, George Farr, Jeff Field, and Barbara Paulson at the NEH; Edward Queen and Fred Hofheinz at the Lilly Endowment; Richard Ekman at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Msgr. Eugene Clark and Patricia Donahoe at the Homeland Foundation; Msgr. Francis Canfield and the members of the board of the American Friends of the Vatican Library were all of enormous assistance in helping to focus and sharpen the thrust of what at the start seemed an overwhelming project.
The project staff proved a team in the truest sense of the term. Each member brought a particular expertise without which the project could not have succeeded.
Elizabeth Yakel, currently a doctoral student at the University of Michigan and formerly the archivist for the Archdiocese of Detroit, compiled the basic MARC record for each of the series in the ASV and for the Archives of the Propaganda Fide. Her clear sense of fundamental archival principles and their application to the complexities of the Vatican Archives was the critical factor in the ability of the project staff to complete the work thoroughly and in a timely manner. Her intelligent applications of the spirit as well as the letter of the USMARC-AMC format have resulted in a comfortable integration of the Vatican archival material into a database designed for modern archival records.
Leonard Coombs, associate archivist at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, had charge of the database itself. He reviewed all entries before entering the information to be sure they were in a consistent form. He carefully determined the strategies for entering the information first in a personal computer and later into the mainframe computer of the Research Libraries Group. He prepared many of the agency histories and worked with Sr. Carlen in all phases of this work. Moreover he determined the structure of the indices and the choice of the index terms. In all this he worked steadily and patiently as the project began and grew. The printed version of the database required another intensive round of checking and standardizing of the information gathered. The careful attention to consistency in presentation that characterizes this volume is another of his fine accomplishments.
Vatican Project staff l-r: Sister Claudia
Carlen,
Elizabeth Yakel, Len Coombs,
Tom Powers, Fran Blouin
Sr. Claudia Carlen, IHM, has devoted a significant portion of her sixty-five years of service in the Catholic church to the study of papal documents. For this project she conducted painstaking research on the histories of the most complex agencies of the Holy See through the standard sources and through the appropriate papal bulls. She also prepared histories of the various individuals and families who deposited private papers in the ASV. Her combination of experience and persistence was the prime factor in the completeness of the histories contained herein.
Katherine Gill, now assistant professor of history at the Yale Divinity School, served as principal historical adviser to the project. She advised on the scope and content of particular series in the ASV as well as on the structure of the most complex parts of the ASV holdings. As a graduate of the Scuola vaticana di paleografia, diplomatica e archivisitica, she had a thorough knowledge of the types of documents in the archives. A specialist in medieval history, she had an extraordinary ability to comfortably read sample documents. Her understanding of the complexities of the archives as well as her interest in communicating the results of this project to the scholarly community that makes use of these archival materials was important to this overall effort.
The project gained much from the dedication of those who worked in a supporting role. At the Bentley Library, Thomas Powers worked on the initial pilot project and helped develop the basic argument that modern archival descriptive principles would prove useful in this work. This project generated complex administrative demands and resulted in a very complex text. Diane Hatfield patiently coped with the administrative challenges and Kimberlee Mayer worked carefully with the text. Linda Powers assisted with the greatest care in the preparation of the bibliography, data entry, and in the adaptation of the information on records in the Archivio di Stato di Roma. Lisa Gibbon assisted with the use of Latin titles and terms. Ben Alexander helped in the initial surveys. The members of the Bentley Library Administrative Committee, Bill Wallach, Marjorie Barritt, Nancy Bartlett, and Thomas Powers, helped keep the core work of the Bentley Library running smoothly as this project progressed.
Many individuals and institutions were of great help, most importantly, at the Archivio Segreto Vaticano. Rev. Josef Metzler, OMI, prefect, first suggested and encouraged the need for a comprehensive view of extant papal documentation. He launched our efforts to seek outside funding to accomplish his vision. Throughout the ten years of our work on this project he was always encouraging and appreciative of our work. He encouraged its appearance in both digital and printed form. We are particularly grateful for the privileges he extended that facilitated this work beyond me sure. We hope this work will serve as an appreciation for his interest in making the research resources of the Archivio Segreto Vaticano accessible to scholars worldwide. Project staff always appreciated conversations with other members of the staff of the archives, most notably Germane Guild and Msgr. Charles Burns. Mr. Saver and his staff in the reading room were unfailingly helpful in the many requests a work of this kind entails.
At the Archives of the Propaganda Fide, Rev. P. Saris Tabard was extraordinarily helpful in the early stages of our survey work. We only regret that he had moved 01 before the project work at that archives could be completed. At the Propaganda Fide Mr. Giovanni Fosci and his assistants were always ready to retrieve what was needed.
At the Archives of the Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro, Rev. Anthony Ward was most generous with his time and provided important information on that extraordinary collection.
At the University of Michigan, John D'Arms, Raymond Grew, and Alfred Sussman provided critical advice as this project took its initial form. Sidney Fine, chair, and Farris Womack, Walter Harrison, James J. Duderstadt, John D'Arms, Gilbert Whitaker, and Robert Warner, members of the Executive Committee of the Bentley Historical Library, were a source of constant encouragement as the project took shape and developed. In the provost's office, Mary Ann Swain, John D'Arms, and the late Susan Lipschutz, to whom I reported in succession over the life of this project, were extremely supportive of this effort. At the School of Information, Dean Daniel Atkins and my faculty colleagues were helpful in the conceptualization of this effort.
At the American Academy in Rome, Sophie Consagra, then president in the New York office, saw the need for this work and was particularly important in helping identify a community of scholars who could verify the significance of the project and validate its methodology. At the Academy itself, Jim Melchert, then professor in charge, and Darby Scott, professor of classical studies, welcomed this project to the academy in its early stages. Members of the staff including Pina Pasquantonio and Pat Weaver helped facilitate two periods of residence. Christina Heumer, librarian at the Academy, was helpful as well. Also in Rome Carl Nylander of the Swedish Academy and of the Unione was particularly encouraging as this project became a real possibility.
At the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, Maristella Lorch and Andrea Bartoli extended several invitations to lecture and explore these ideas with interested scholars and archivists. I am particularly grateful to the Academy, to Elaine Sloan and Patricia Molholt at the Columbia University Library, and to Jonathan Cole, provost of Columbia University, for the invitation to be in residence at Columbia for two months, which provided time away to focus on the preparation of this work for publication.
At the Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Maria Pia Rinaldi-Muriani was particularly helpful. At the Archivio di Stato di Roma, Lucio Lume and Maria Grazia Ruggiero were generous with their time and interest in the dimension of this work that touched on the holdings of the Archivio di Stato di Roma. Also in Rome, Elio and Carla Lodolini, both distinguished archivists, were particularly helpful.
In Paris, Paule Rene-Bazin extended an invitation to me to lecture on this project at the Stage Technique Internationale at the Archives Nationales. Conversations with Bernard Barbiche, Olivier Gyotjenin, and Bruno Delmas at the Ecole Nationales des Chartes in Paris were very helpful. Olivier Poncet at the Ecole Francaise de Rome offered several helpful suggestions and assisted in the preparation of the list of the ASV indici. The staffs of the Bibliotheque Nationale and of the Archives Nationales were of great assistance in working with their respective papal holdings. I am also grateful to the staff of the Manuscripts Division of the Library at Trinity College Dublin, who facilitated a brief but efficient visit.
At the North American College in Rome, I am very grateful to Rev. Charles Kosanke and Rev. Steven Raica, who on several occasions hosted me as a guest of the college during stays in Rome. The College provided a perfect environment for learning more about aspects of the organization of the Holy See.
Many others were interested in this work and offered very sage advice. They include Luciano Amenti, Rudolph Arnheim, Melissa Bullard, Francesca Consagra, Margaret Child, Steven Hensen, David Bearman, Herbert Bloch, James O'Toole, Hope Mayo, Richard Szary, Robert Brentano, Lawrence Dowler, Luciana Duranti, George Fletcher, Marion Matters, Mary McLaughlin, Avra Michaelson, Laurie Nussdorfer, Elizabeth O'Keefe, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Rev. John O'Malley, SJ, Kathleen Roe, Nancy Siraisi, Jonathan Spence, Anne Van Camp, the late Alan Tucker, Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, Christine Weideman, and Richard Wilson.
I am grateful to the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame for an invitation to lecture on this topic before an audience particularly familiar with the complexities of the organization of the Holy See. The Divinity School at Yale University kindly made space available for research materials assembled to support the work of Katherine Gill. At Yale, Joanna Webber, Paul Dover, Jennifer Andersen, and Janet Robson assisted Professor Gill in various facets of her work.
This work required access to a wide variety of publications. Three libraries and their superb staffs were very helpful in this effort. The Theological Collection of Sacred Heart Seminary (Detroit) and The Papal Collection of Marygrove College Library (Detroit) were very helpful in their support of the work of Sr. Claudia Carlen. The extensive material on the Vatican among the vast holdings of the University Library of the University of Michigan were invaluable.
The publication of this report was unforeseen in the initial stages of the project. I am grateful to Oxford University Press for agreeing to take on this text in its entirety and in its complexity. Claude Conyers, Jeff Edelstein, and Marion Osmun proved superb editors. The initial destination for this information was the database of the Research Libraries Group (i.e., RLIN). I am grateful to Jim Mahalko, president, and to all the staff for their interest in receiving this information. I am particularly grateful to the programming staff who downloaded the information in a way that facilitated an easy transition from database to standard book format. Also I extend appreciation to Frederick Honhart of Michigan State University who made his MicroMARC software available to us for initial preparation of the information for inclusion in RLIN.
In the final editing stages, Daniel Williman of the faculty of Classics at the State University of New York at Binghamton agreed to review the entire sections on the Curia Romana. His deep knowledge of history of the Holy See prior to the Council of Trent was particularly helpful. He suggested many revisions of our presentation of these early documents that have added precision and clarity to that portion of this work. I am particularly grateful to him for this assistance.
The Vatican Library is administratively separate from the Vatican Archives. Rev. Leonard Boyle, op, prefect of the library, through his general commitment to enhance the presence of the Vatican as a central locus for scholarship, was a constant source of encouragement and inspiration at every stage of this work. His own work on the holdings of the archives stands as the critical point of entry for any student interested in the medieval holdings of the archives. We can only hope that this project is a worthy complement to that extraordinary book. Also at the library, Paul Weston was a: available to consider matters relating to the structure of the database and its compatibility with efforts under way to create a comprehensive database for the holdings of the Vatican Library.
For the Supplemental project,I am grateful to Mons. Alejandro Cifres for his interest in the project and to the staff of the archives of the CDF for welcoming this work; to Peter Horsman of the Archives School of the Netherlands who was a full partner in the conduct of the inventory; to Leonard Coombs of the Bentley Library who assisted in insuring standardization across the entire project; to the American Academy in Rome, and to the Trustees of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation of New York for providing funding.