Present for the Vatican

In a small auditorium of Rome's Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, New York's Cardinal Spellman stood last week before 200 assembled notables to dedicate an impressive gift. Everyone on hand knew the value of the 100,000 photographs and 500,000 duplicate catalogue cards that had come from the U.S. "It is," said one Vatican scholar, "just as if an encyclopedia had never existed before, and the first encyclopedia had just been issued." The gift the cardinal was presenting: a complete copy of Princeton's massive Index of Christian Art.

The original index, still at Princeton, was begun back in 1917, when Charles Rufus Morey, assistant professor of art and archaeology, started searching for a way to make a permanent record of Christian art. This seemed a hopelessly ambitious scheme, for it meant listing every published example of early Christian art, describing it, compiling opinions on its date and meaning, and finally cataloguing it with a photograph. Scholars felt the need for such an index, but, says Professor Morey, "only we were fools enough to get on with it."

A kindly, dedicated man, Morey at first limited himself to the first seven centuries of the Christian era. Later, he decided to include works of art up to 1200, finally raised his sights to 1400. The index not only had to cover every illustration--sculpture, frescoes, paintings, coins, medals, tapestries--inspired by the Bible, but also those based on the lives of the saints, the writings of the church fathers, and the history of the church.

In spite of its 500,000 cards, the index is still not complete. In one day, a staff member may have to catalogue an 6th century statue, a 6th century painting, a 9th century illuminated manuscript, a 4th century funeral slab. He may have to catalogue each work in several different ways--by character, by scene (e.g., Christ teaching), by object (e.g., Solomon's Temple). Finally, he has to enter his information on one of 16 different types of cards--grey for textiles, brown for leather, white for sculpture, etc.

After 35 years, Professor Emeritus Morey, now 74, has come close to realizing an old dream: giving scholars a chance to see all the examples of art on any particular subject almost at a glance. Where-ever complete copies of the index exist--at Princeton, and at Dumbarton Oaks--U.S. scholars have been able to do in one day research that would once have taken months. Now, with a third copy safely installed in Rome through funds raised by Cardinal Spellman, European scholars are at last able to do the same.

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