The Vatican Library

The New Yorker has an extensive article on the Vatican Library in this week's number. Alas, it seems to be one of those behind the subscription wall. You might try here. If that doesn't work, it would be worth your while to dig up a copy of the January 3, 2011 issue, provided old books, Renaissance history, and ecclesiastical arcana make your eyes light up and say "Howdy!" Most libraries take The New Yorker. (So do most newsstands. But here we're talkin' six bucks a throw. I dunno. That's a bit steep when you consider the author tantalizes us with the existence of dreadful revelations about the Empress Theodosia that Procopius makes in his Historia Arcana and never tells us what they are.)