Jonathan Kirkpatrick (2nd from left) with catalogue co-authors, Jennifer Atwood and Rory Crowley (David Trobisch not pictured), the Most Rev. Jean-Louis Bruguès, OP, Librarian and Archivist of the Holy Roman Church (who has oversight of the Vatican Library) and Dr Jerry Pattengale, the Executive Director of the Green Scholars Initiative.
Drs Jonathan Kirkpatrick, co-author of the exhibition catalogue Verbum Domini II, and Stan Rosenberg, member of the Green Scholars Initiative (GSI) board of advisors, attended the grand opening of the special exhibition on 1 April 2014. The exhibition is currently taking place at the Braccio di Carlo Magno, Vatican City, and displays ancient manuscripts and bibles dating from antiquity to the present and includes a page of Codex Vaticanus, a page from the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, early fragments of the New Testament dating from the 2nd and 3rd centuries, a host of early translations from around the world from the earliest Tyndale and King James translations through to translations into Ojibwa, Seneca, Swedish, and a host of other languages. These are assembled from the Green Collection and the Vatican Library primarily and represent internationally important collections of manuscripts. This follows an earlier exhibition, Verbum Domini, which was held at the Vatican in 2012, and ‘features a unique assemblage of Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Jewish treasures, displayed against immersive backgrounds, to tell the story of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures throughout the ages’ (from Verbum Domini advertising). Information on the exhibition can be found at www.verbum-domini.com.
As part of this trip Stan Rosenberg received special permission to go down into the archaeological dig underneath the Scala Sancta (across from the Lateran basilica, San Giovanni) to view the sixth-century fresco of St Augustine of Hippo in what was probably Gregory the Great’s library of the Lateran palace.
As well as contributing to these research projects, SCIO also organizes on the behalf of the Green Scholars Initiative the annual Logos in Oxford: A Summer Workshop on Biblical Texts, Vocation, and the Christian Mind.
Cover of exhibition catalogue for Verbum Domini II