and was used, as the Cortile di San Damaso is at present, to provide access to the different parts of the palace. On the south side the floor of the building is on the same level, or nearly so, as the court, but on the opposite or north side the ground falls away abruptly, and the general level of the ground-floor is more than thirty feet above that of the Cortile del Belvedere. On this side therefore there is a basement, once used as a kitchen, or perhaps a cellar.
The former destination of the rooms fitted up for library-purposes by Sixtus IV. is indicated in the following epigram by Aurelio Brandolini:
De bibliotheca ex poenu facta. Epygramma xiii.
Que fuerat quondam cereri madidoque lyeo
Nunc phoebo est Sixti munere sacra domus.
Sic versat fortuna vices hominumque deumque
Omnia sic fiunt Hoc meliora Duce[1].
I presume that these classical allusions mean that the rooms had been used as a provision-store, and that corn and wine had been laid up in them.
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 up till 1480 or 1481, was called Bibliotheca pontificia. In addition to MSS. it contained the papal archives and registers (Regesta). In the catalogue dated 1512 this library is called the Intima et ultima secretior bibliotheca, and seems to have contained the most valued treasures. This quadripartite
- ↑ MS. Vat. 5008, fol. 60. b., quoted by Müntz, p. 118. My transcript has
been collated with the original.
