Word: lateran
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Dates: during 1883-1883
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...history of the Vatican Library, which now contains perhaps the rarest collection of books and manuscripts in Europe, reaches back to the time of Nicholas V., who, in 1447, transferred the manuscripts in the Lateran, the church of highest dignity in the Roman Communion, to his own palace. In all he collected about 9,000 manuscripts, part of which were destroyed by his successor. Pope Sixtus V., however, showed great zeal in builking up the papal library. In 1588, he erected the beginning of the present structure. The celebrity of the Library dates from the sixteenth century, when important additions...