Christian Library - The Twentieth Century and Beyond: Growth, Retrenchment, Redefinition

The Twentieth Century and Beyond: Growth, Retrenchment, Redefinition

Depending upon one’s perspective, trends during the last century can be seen as evidence of a bright or an uncertain future for theological libraries.

In Europe, by the end of the 19th century theological education and training for the ministry had come almost universally under the auspices of the universities. Among other things this usually meant the demise of discrete theological collections within separate facilities, though this did not necessarily mean the devaluation of such collections. Indeed, it is fair to say that as the 20th century opened, not only the finest theological collections but the most erudite and distinguished centers of theological research were in Germany and in Britain (Heidelberg, Tübingen, Göttingen, Berlin, Oxford and Cambridge, to name only a few).

What no one could have predicted was the devastation brought by wars, from the beginning to the end of the century. The University of Nancy in France lost its library in 1914, as did Louvain in the same year. Great libraries of theology at Monte Cassino, at Dresden, and at Caen were wrecked in 1944. As recently as 1992 the state library at Sarajevo fell victim to a rocket attack. The numerical losses here and elsewhere were high: Hamburg and Frankfurt each lost 600,000 vols., Würzburg 350,000, and so on.

Political as well as military upheavals have had an adverse effect on European theological library collections and activity. Libraries in Eastern Europe illustrate this vividly: collection priorities in places such as Jena, Rostock and Leipzig could hardly be said to have been favorable to theological research during the years 1945-1990. Moreover, since the reunification of the two German states, the massive amounts of money and personnel which it would take to bring theological collections back to acceptable standards has not been easy to come by/

Of all Continental theological collections, few managed to navigate the various catastrophes of the century better than the Vatican Library. Steadily enriched by a sequence of outstanding gifts over several centuries, even the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era did little lasting harm. By the end of the 19th century the Library encompassed close to half a million books, and tens of thousands of manuscripts. Several of the Popes (Leo XIII and Pius XI) have taken a keen and active interest in the library, and great effort and expense has been taken to ensure that the collections not only continue to grow but are well cared-for. Like many of Europe’s great theological libraries, bibliographic searching is now enabled globally via the WWW. Increasingly, well-financed libraries such as the Vatican’s are working aggressively to develop plans for mounting digital versions of some of their treasures (most often archival materials) on web-servers.