LOCATION Vatican City
NEAREST POPULATION HUB Rome, Italy
SECRECY OVERVIEW Access restricted: the historical archives of the Roman Catholic Church.
The only entry in this book so hush-hush that it includes the word “Secret” in its name, the Vatican Secret Archives is the repository for many of the most important documents related to the history of the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church. Although open to accredited researchers, much of the Archive’s contents remains off-limits: critics suggest it hides evidence of numerous dark episodes from the past.
In reality, the word Secretum in the Archive’s Latin name Archivum Secretum Vaticanum has more of a sense of “privacy” than “secrecy”—that is to say, the Archive is the papacy’s private possession. Today it contains somewhere in the region of 85 kilometers (53 miles) of shelving, holding materials that date back to the eighth century.
It was Pope Paul V, in 1611, who commanded the construction of what became the Secret Archives, now located next to the Vatican Museums. The Archives opened on January 31, 1612, with Baldassarre Ansidei as their first custodian. In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte transferred many of the contents to Paris, but most were returned by 1817 following Napoleon’s fall from power. In 1881, Pope Leo XIII took the momentous step of opening up the Archives for scholarly research. Documentation has subsequently been released on a pontificate-by-pontificate basis—at present, access is available to materials dating to the end of Pope Pius XI’s reign in 1939.
In 1980, Pope John Paul II inaugurated an extension to the Archives, a two-story underground bunker beneath the Vatican Museums’ Cortile della Pigna. Providing 31,000 cubic meters (330,000 cu ft) of climate-controlled storage in a reinforced, fire-resistant concrete structure fitted with the latest security features, it is now home to some of the Church’s most valuable documents.
QUIET PLEASE A view of the Reading Room at the Vatican Secret Archives. In the forefront is a letter written by the great Renaissance artist, Michelangelo. Despite creating the astonishing Sistine Chapel ceiling for them, he nonetheless had some frosty standoffs with the Vatican authorities.
Among the Archive’s treasure are documents relating to the bloody period of the Inquisition. It also houses King Henry VIII of England’s petitions for divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the rejection of which led to the foundation of the Church of England beyond papal jurisdiction. (Pope Clement VII may have received as many as 80 petitions on the issue, all bound in red ribbons that some believe are the origin of the phrase “red tape” to indicate excessive bureaucracy).
There is also literature relating to the trial of Galileo in 1633 on charges of heresy (the papacy not being overly keen on his insistence that the Earth was not at the center of the Universe), as well as a letter from Michelangelo complaining about late payment for his painting and decorating work.
However, some outside of the Church accuse the Archives of being too reticent about sharing its history. For instance, many questions have been posed about the Catholic Church’s actions during the Second World War. In 2005, the US-based Coalition for Jewish Concerns even threatened to sue the Vatican unless it produced materials that could identify Jewish children baptized as Catholics to save them from Nazi persecution.
The Church, on the other hand, points to the fact that it is quite normal for deposits in other archives to remain unopened for decades and even centuries in the hope that the passage of time will protect them from the threat of political manipulation. Furthermore, it has sanctioned some early releases, as in 2004 when it opened files relating to the Vatican’s relations with Germany from 1922 up to the outbreak of the war. Pope John Paul II also granted early access to files concerning prisoners of war in the 1939–45 period.
Yet access even to those parts of the Archive that are open is no simple business. All researchers must have a university degree or equivalent, and members of the clergy need a licentiate degree or PhD. Before access is granted, a formal application must be made, accompanied by a letter from a recognized institute or qualified individual in the field of historical research. If there is already someone researching in your particular area of interest, you’ve probably had it.
One group that can command early access to documentation are postulators of sainthood (i.e. those putting forward a candidate for sainthood). This, it must be presumed, is to ensure that the Church’s saints have no nasty skeletons lurking in the cupboard. But even postulators must be granted special access from the Vatican’s secretary of state, and are duty-bound not to divulge any information that they may turn up.
In 2012, an exhibition featuring a hundred documents from the Archives was held in Rome’s Capitoline Museums. It was the first time any of them had been allowed outside of the Vatican. While it was a further step along the road to transparency, the suspicion lingers that the Archives are rather like a giant iceberg—the bits you can see are fascinating, but the really amazing stuff is hidden underneath the surface.
ALL SQUARE A satellite view of the Vatican City highlights St. Peter’s Square and St. Peter’s Basilica, widely regarded as the chief church of the Roman Catholic faith. With a total area of 44 hectares (110 acres) and a population of little more than 800, the Vatican is the world’s smallest independent state.
