Bibliotheca Palatina

[3] The Palatinate suffered heavily in the Thirty Years War, and in 1622 Heidelberg was sacked by the Catholic League, whose general Count von Tilly was in the employ of Maximilian of Bavaria.

[2] Although many books were torn or "dispersed among private hands"[3] during the sack, Pope Gregory XV convinced Maximilian to present the remaining manuscripts to the Vatican as "a sign of his loyalty and esteem"[4] and to support his claim to the Palatinate's electoral title.

The victors were concerned not just with carrying away the collection and thus stripping the Calvinist party of one of its most important intellectual symbols; they also had wanted to eliminate all documentation of the library's provenance.

After the Congress of Vienna in 1814–1815 decreed "the general restoration [or return] of works of art, of which the French had robbed other countries,"[3] the contested manuscripts were conveyed from Paris to Heidelberg, rather than to Rome.

[clarification needed] In 1816, Prince Hardenberg and Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg persuaded Pope Pius VII to make a gift of 852 manuscripts, mostly in German, to the University of Heidelberg.