You will begin your work in Kremsmünster! Part 1: Laying the Groundwork

Since there seems to be some haziness as to how the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library was conceived and begun, I, who was in the deal from its start, will try to give a clear and complete picture of how the project was born and evolved.[1] 

Father Colman had come to his grandiose idea from the example set by the Vatican Library.  In 1951 this library arranged with the Jesuits from Saint Louis University in Missouri to have its precious manuscript collection put on microfilm.  Father Colman maintained that, since the Vatican Library had shown the way, the Benedictines should follow its good example and photograph all old manuscripts still preserved in Benedictine monasteries in Europe which have enjoyed an unbroken existence since the Middle Ages.

Actually, it was also a Benedictine who conceived the idea to microfilm the Vatican Library, namely, the late Cardinal Anselmo Albareda, who was at the time prefect of the Vatican Library.  He was also the Vatican librarian during World War II and came to realize firsthand that their whole library collection could be blown to smithereens in a matter of hours, thanks to the destructive clout of modern warfare.

The story goes that Albareda arranged the deal with an American Jesuit from the Gregorianum at some afternoon coffee sessions in Rome.  The Jesuits in turn approached the Knights of Columbus to fund the project and received a grant of $500,000.  Operating with six cameras and Jesuit brothers serving as cameramen, the work ended after five years when the fund was used up and thirty thousand Vatican manuscripts had been put on microfilm.  That constituted not quite one half of the extensive Vatican manuscript collection.

That is some of the background of how Father Colman arrived at the idea of undertaking a Benedictine manuscript microfilm project.  Actually, he only knew that the Vatican Library project was done, but was hardly informed as to the complexity involved in carrying out the work.  I got busy making an estimate, first of how many medieval manuscripts actually were preserved in European Benedictine monasteries.  Fortunately, Paul Oskar Kristeller, a distinguished Columbia professor, had toured European libraries, including monasteries, in order to make an estimate of extant medieval manuscript collections.  In 1960 he published the first edition of his results in a volume entitled Latin Manuscript Books before 1600; a List of the Printed Catalogs and Unpublished Inventories of Extant Collections.

From that book I estimated that the three major Benedictine libraries in Italy, three in Switzerland, and eleven in Austria possessed a total of from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand old manuscripts.  I also knew that the only firm in this country engaged in major microfilm work was University Microfilms Inc. in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  I wrote to its director, Eugene B. Power, mentioning what we had in mind and requested a meeting with him during Easter Week of 1964 when the Catholic Library Association would hold its annual convention in Detroit.

At the meeting he impressed me that he was in full command of such work, and I also saw how smoothly his firm functioned.  He suggested that the work be done with two cameras, while camera operators would be trained in the country where we were stationed.  University Microfilms would do the microfilming. 

Father Oliver Kapsner typing up inventory cards.

The very first inventory card prepared for HMML at Kremsmuenster in April 1965.

Myself, or somebody like me, would have to be on hand to make the proper arrangements with each monastery for moving in and seeing to it that a convenient, separate room which could be darkened was provided.  That person would be in charge of getting the manuscripts and returning the manuscripts undamaged to the respective library every day.  I would also have to prepare a typed sheet or card which was to be photographed ahead of every film.  This sheet would identify the manuscript by its proper library signature and contain a summary of its contents.  Then, for University Microfilms, I would also keep an eye on the cameramen so they did careful work and wouldn’t loaf; send the films to some firm in the country to be developed; see that the cameramen carefully inspect the developed film on the reader and compare it against the original manuscript; pay the cameramen their salaries and cover occasional expenses from a bank account which University Microfilms would establish in each European country; get the developed negatives packed and shipped to Ann Arbor where they are stored in temperature-and-humidity controlled vaults.  Two positive copies of the films would be made, one for Saint John’s and one for the respective Austrian library.

The charge for all this would be $.04 per original negative, which would cover all overseas expenses: films, developing, shipping, salaries, van or small truck, and occasional expenses.  Positive copies of the film would cost about $.01 per exposure.  The charges for positive copies are actually computed by film footage.  That seemed fair.  At The Catholic University of America in Washington, where I had been a catalogue librarian ten years previously, they also did some microfilming, mostly magazine articles, and charged $.03 per exposure.  During July 1964 the American Library Association met in Saint Louis.  I  attended the meeting and also visited the Pius XII Memorial Library at Saint Louis University.  The Jesuit librarian was very gracious, showed me the microfilm collection of the Vatican Library manuscripts, and even offered to let us use their portable cameras.  But University Microfilms only use mounted cameras and a solid table for doing the work.  Again I had learned something.

In July I returned to Saint John’s.  Abbot Baldwin had written in April to fifteen Benedictine monasteries in Italy, Switzerland, and Austria, presenting our project to them and requesting permission to photograph their manuscripts.  In explaining the purpose of our project to the European abbots, Abbot Baldwin’s letter stressed two main reasons for our action, namely: (1) to secure the preservation of all hand-written or manuscript books dating prior to 1600 still extant in Benedictine libraries and (2) to make these resources available under certain conditions to all scholars in a single center in the United States.  So far only one had answered, and that seemed to be a kind of half-hearted response from the Archabbey of Monte Cassino, motherhouse of Benedictines worldwide.   I went to a confrere who was well versed in Italian for help in obtaining a clear idea of the letter.  He also had the impression that, while the Monte Cassino librarian did give his consent, he also seemed to hint that he would rather not be bothered.[3] 

The Hill Foundation agreed to support the project for two years at a time, and said the first check would be forthcoming that fall (1964).  At a subsequent meeting at Saint John’s, Fr. Florian Muggli, abbey treasurer at that time, asked whether the $40,000 included a salary for me.  When I said that it didn’t, Abbot Baldwin remarked that if the Hill Family Foundation could be so generous, then Saint John’s should be disposed to provide a field director for the project gratis.  Actually, as it turned out, if I had been salaried as a foreigner, I could have stayed only six months in Austria.  This highly socialized republic takes precautions that all its citizens are guaranteed a job.

I then contacted some medieval scholars in our country to obtain their opinions about the project and whether we should do selective photographing, and if selective, how to select which manuscripts to photograph.  I wrote to  Harvard and Yale Universities and medieval institutes in the United States and Canada, ten altogether.  They all approved highly of the project and said we should not do selective photographing but should photograph everything up to the year 1600 as that is the accepted standard for considering a document a medieval manuscript.  Saint Louis University had done selective photographing at the Vatican library and scholars in this country were complaining of gaps. 

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Notes:

[1] Cr. with adaptations Oliver L. Kapsner, “History of the Manuscript Microfilm Project” The Scriptorium XXV (Christmas 1986) 71-90.

[2] Cf. Colman J. Barry, “Preserving Manuscripts of Our Religious and Cultural Traditions,” Studies in Catholic history in Honor of John Tracy Ellis, N. H. Minnich, R. B. Eno, and R. F. Trisco, eds. (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1985) 417-39.

[3] The restrictions were actually much more prohibitive.  Cf. Archives of Saint John’s Abbey, Thommaso Leccisotti to Baldwin Dworschak, Monte Cassino, March 9, 1964:

As the archivist in charge of the manuscripts, I have been asked by the Rev.mo P. Abate of Monte Cassino to write you.

The proposal to have the Cassinese codices reproduced in microfilm, excluding however the right of printing and publishing the collected material, is acceptable under the following preliminary conditions.

1) For centuries the codices formed part of the archives; hence they are not clearly distinguished and separated from strictly archival material.  The photographing would have to be limited to those manuscripts which, according to our judgment, do not belong to this latter category; everything that has the character of an archival document remains excluded. 

2) Since our contribution, both in quantity and in quality, is very notable and not similar to that of other monasteries, it seems to us that we must ask for a mutual favor, namely, that you deposit also at our abbey a copy of all the reproductions of codices made in the various libraries. 

These are the conditions that it will be opportune to establish before the Father in charge prepares to come here.

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