STUDI E TESTI. — A series of texts «published under the direction of the scholars of the Vatican Library» (in 1929, «and of the archivists of the Secret Archives» was added).
They began in 1900 through the efforts of Fr. Fr. Ehrle, prefect of the Library. Although intended chiefly to disseminate unpublished texts drawn from the Vatican manuscripts and to publish original studies based on them, the series subsequently also included authors unconnected with the Library, as well as editions or studies not derived from its codices. In the collection, which after fifty-two years numbered more than 170 volumes, the Western and Eastern worlds, secular and ecclesiastical literatures, and the philological and historical sciences are represented.
Among the editions, the following should be mentioned: Pappus and Theon of Alexandria, George Pachymeres, Patzes for the Basilika, the book of Agathangelus, Nilus Cabasilas, Ramberto de’ Primadizzi, Vacarius, Cardinal Giovanni Bona, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Venturino De Prioribus, T. Tasso, the Libro della Scala in several medieval versions, and Arabic, Mandaic, and Turkish texts. Biblical exegesis and ancient Christian literature are represented by works of Cardinals G. Mercati and E. Tisserant, R. Devreesse’s publications on Theodore of Mopsuestia, and the Costantiniana of P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri; hagiography by the latter’s Note agiografiche (9 fascicles),
U. Monneret de Villard’s Leggende orientali sui Magi evangelici, and F. Lanzoni’s Genesi, svolgimento e tramonto delle Leggende storiche; liturgy by M. Andrieu’s Histoire du pontifical romain au moyen âge and I. M. Hanssens’s Amalarii episcopi opera liturgica omnia. Works of great importance include M. Vattasso’s Initia patrum della Pl., the Miscellanee in onore di mons. A. Mercati, by Cardinals F. Ehrle and G. Mercati, the collection of the minor works of the latter, and G. Graf’s Geschichte der christl. arab. Literatur (5 vols.).
Ecclesiastical history, represented by works such as F. Lanzoni’s Le diocesi d'Italia..., M. H. Laurent’s Le bienheureux Innocent V, and J. Rouët de Journel’s Nonsautures de Russie (4 vols.), is also served by the Rationes decimorum Italiae in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (13 vols.), with geographical maps. Before this series of the archivists of the Vatican Secret Archives, they had begun, in 1926, the series Sussidi per la consultazione dell'Archivio Vaticano (so far 3 vols.).
Several volumes are devoted to inventories of libraries or archives (P. Guidi, H. Hoberg), and especially to the manuscripts of the Vatican Library (U. Cassuto, G. Levi della Vida, A. Maier, E. Rossi, A. Wilmart). Many frequently illuminate Italian men of letters and humanists through unpublished texts and correspondence. Finally, St. Kuttner’s Repertorium der Kanonistik should be noted, along with publications on palaeography, Latin-Italian glossaries (by P. Sella), municipal statutes, and ancient inventories.