nd secular persons, having no fear of God before their
eyes, have taken sundry volumes in theology and other faculties from the
library, which volumes they still presume rashly and maliciously to hide
and secretly to detain"; such persons are warned to return the books in
question within forty days. If they disobey they are _ipso facto_
excommunicated. If they are clerics they shall be incapable of holding
livings, and if laymen, of holding any office. Those who have knowledge of
such persons are to inform against them. The effect produced by this
document has not been recorded; nor are we told what the extent of the
loss was. It could hardly have been very extensive, for a catalogue which
Platina prepared, or perhaps only signed, on the day of his election,
enumerates 2527 volumes, of which 770 were Greek and 1757 Latin[371]. The
number of the latter had more than doubled in the twenty years that had
elapsed since the death of Nicholas V., an augmentation due, in all
probability, to the activity of Sixtus himself.

The place selected to contain this extensive collection was the
ground-floor of a building which had been erected by Nicholas V. and
subsequently used as a provision store. The position of it, and its
relations to neighbouring structures, will be understood from the
accompanying plan (fig. 97), which I borrow from M. Fabre's paper. In
order to shew how the building was arranged when it was first built,
before other structures abutted against it, I have prepared a second plan
(fig. 98) drawn from measurements taken by myself.

[Illustration: Fig. 97. Ground-plan of part of the Vatican Palace, shewing
the building of Nicholas V., as arranged for library purposes by Sixtus
IV., and its relation to the surrounding structures.

From Letarouilly, _Le Vatican_, fol. Paris, 1882; as reproduced by M.
Fabre.]

The floor is divided into four rooms by party-walls which are probably
older than 1475, but which are proved, by the catalogue of 1481, to have
been in existence at that period. The first of these rooms, entered
directly from the court, contained the Latin Library; the second, the
Greek Library. These two, taken together, formed the Common, or Public,
Library (_Bibliotheca communis_, _B. publica_, or merely _Bibliotheca_).
Next to this room, or these rooms, was the _Bibliotheca secreta_ or
Reserved Library, in which the more precious MSS. were kept apart from the
others. The fourth room, which was not fitted