ST - Illumination - long but interesting

Fri Feb 25 17:22:43 PST 2000

Mission for posterity

By Stephanie Simon Los Angeles Times, 2/24/2000

OLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - An Ethiopian mountaintop monastery wants them.

They are coveted by a stable owner on the island of Malta.

They are, some claim, part of the ancestry of a German prince.

In myriad remnants of the medieval past, these manuscripts are sought. Some
are wrinkled and smudged, ancient pages of parchment scribbled in cramped
script. Others are gorgeous, afire with art, shimmering with golden ink.

They may tell of St. George slaying the dragon. Or relate a recipe for stew.
They may tote up a carouser's debt. Or explain a surgical technique.

But this they have in common: They are old. They are rare. And the monks of
this modest town are determined to find and preserve them.

Indeed, the Benedictine monks of St. John's Abbey here have set themselves
an audacious goal. They aim to photograph and catalog every page of every
text written in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa before the
invention of printing.

They want, in short, to preserve - on microfilm - the cultural heritage of
Western civilization.

It is a job for the eons.

They have a start: In the past 35 years, they have photographed more than 25
million pages. Some foreign curators have refused to cooperate, unwilling to
share control of cherished manuscripts, and reluctant to let copies of the
texts into broad circulation.

Still, through persuasion and persistence, the monks have accumulated 200
miles of microfilm. They have ensured that for generations, scholars will be
able to study the lyrics to Gregorian chants, the astronomical calculations
of the 13th century, the lavish illustrations for a Persian epic poem - even
if the original manuscripts crumble, or mold, or burn.

In a vault, the monks of St. John's have amassed the world's most
comprehensive collection of medieval texts on microfilm.

But plenty of texts are still out there.

''Enough to keep us going for another 500 years or so,'' said the Rev. Eric
Hollas.

The task sounds dusty and dull. Search, find, photograph, catalog. Search,
find, photograph, catalog.

There is drama in it, in mystery of deciphering old texts, the peril of
climbing rope ladders to reach mountaintop abbeys tucked in among the
clouds. There's humor, too: One researcher collecting manuscripts on Malta
found an account of a woman so fed up with her husband that she journeyed
three days by boat and donkey to denounce him to the Grand Inquisitors - for
the alleged offense of eating meat on Fridays. (He was let off with a
warning.)

Above all, there is a sense of mission.

In the Middle Ages, most copying of documents fell to monks. The brothers of
St. John's consider themselves heirs to that tradition, armed with better
technology but the same drive to share and preserve precious knowledge.

''I got this feeling as we handled the manuscripts,'' said the Rev. John
Kulas, who oversaw microfilming in Germany last fall. ''Here you have the
work of a monastic scribe who copied this text'' in medieval days. ''And
here you are, 1,000 years later, another monastic scribe recreating the
manuscript in another medium so it can survive another 500 years.''

Theresa Vann, a medieval scholar who curates the Malta collection, put it
this way: ''It's good to be part of something bigger than yourself.''

Legend has it that the microfilm project was inspired shortly after World
War II, when Pope Pius XII, alarmed at the destruction of Europe's great
treasures, asked: ''What's going to happen to the manuscripts?''

The pope had good reason to be concerned. Bombs had blasted libraries,
churches, and castles. Refugees had burned surviving texts for warmth.

''People tried to rebuild the medieval cities,'' Hollas said, ''but no one
even tried to recreate the manuscripts.''

Still, the loss wasn't total. An estimated 1 million of the West's founding
texts - calculations charting the movement of the stars, philosophies
championing representative government, law books, sermons, zoological
tables - survived the war intact.

The 200 monks at St. John's Abbey knew they couldn't protect the fragile
manuscripts forever. But spurred by the papal plea, they vowed at least to
preserve the contents.

Backed by foundation grants and private donations, the monks in 1965 began
microfilming the collection of an 8th century Austrian abbey.

In years since, abbey monks have directed the filming of about 90,000
volumes, most written before 1600, in Spain, Germany, Ethiopia, Malta,
Switzerland, and Portugal.

The project has built a $3 million endowment, with 10 full-time staff
members at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library on the campus of St. John's
University in Collegeville, a farm town 90 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

Even though the microfilm project is preserving ancient texts, microfilm
eventually deteriorates. So in time, the ancient scribbles stored here will
again need rescue.

The monks of St. John's predict that new technology will be along by the
time the microfilm fades.

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