{"id":280,"date":"2022-10-28T15:59:10","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T20:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/humanencounter\/?p=280"},"modified":"2023-01-24T14:19:24","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T20:19:24","slug":"7-surprises-inside-the-vaticans-secret-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/humanencounter\/2022\/10\/7-surprises-inside-the-vaticans-secret-archives\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Surprises Inside the Vatican\u2019s Secret Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Vatican has a creepy reputation and, speaking as a devout Catholic, I have to admit that sometimes it can be well-deserved. There aren\u2019t very many 2,000-year-old institutions running around, much less ones that spent three-quarters of that time messing around with some of the world\u2019s largest empires.<\/p>\n

So when you hear people talk about the Vatican Secret Archive, that sounds pretty unsettling. That\u2019s where you find out where the bodies are buried, right?<\/p>\n

(Well, the bodies are technically buried in the Vatican Necropolis<\/a>, but you know what I mean.)<\/p>\n

The real history is less exciting. In Latin it\u2019s known as the\u00a0Archivum Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum<\/em>, and the meaning of\u00a0secretum<\/em> is closer to the English word \u201cpersonal\u201d than the English word \u201csecret.\u201d Archivum <\/em>just\u00a0means archive and\u00a0apostolicum<\/em> means it\u2019s associated with an apostle (in this case, the Pope), so a more literal dynamic translation might be \u201cThe Pope\u2019s Personal Document Stash.\u201d This distinguishes it from the Vatican\u2019s more general museums, libraries, and document repositories.<\/p>\n

Pope Paul V\u2019s decision to call it the Vatican Secret Archive in 1612 was a branding decision.\u00a0Pope Francis tried to make a better branding decision in October 2019 by renaming it the Vatican\u00a0Apostolic\u00a0<\/em>Archive, which emphasizes another part of the Latin name.<\/p>\n

This might be a gradual rebranding effort. Google tells me the phrase \u201cVatican Apostolic Archive\u201d returns 2,850 results. \u201cVatican Secret Archive\u201d returns over 15,000. The fact that the Archive was secret in\u00a0both<\/em> senses of the word <a href=\u201chttps:\/\/www.historians.org\/research-and-publications\/perspectives-on-history\/may-1999\/palazzo-del-santuffizio-the-opening-of-the-roman-inquisitions-central-archive\u201d>until the late 1990s<\/a> didn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n

Neither does the fact that there are numerous documents held at the Vatican that really\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0still secret, but are not part of the Archive. These include most Vatican documents less than 75 years old.<\/p>\n

But as more scholars access the Apostolic Archive\u2019s documents, we\u2019re running across some interesting pieces of history we might not have expected to see. These include\u2026<\/p>\n

1. The Excommunication of Martin Luther<\/h3>\n The Vatican Apostolic Archive contains an original copy of Pope Leo X\u2019s papal bull\u00a0Decet Romanum Pontificem<\/em><\/a> (1521), which followed through on a prior threat to excommunicate Martin Luther.In a poetic touch, Leo made the document accessible by nailing it to a cathedral door\u2014a means of publication Luther might have appreciated<\/a>.<\/p>\n 2. Henry VIII\u2019s Ultimatum<\/strong><\/p>\n English king Henry VIII and 81 of his closest friends promised \u201cextreme remedies\u201d if Pope Clement VII didn\u2019t grant him an annulment. The rattling seals<\/a>\u00a0of the nobles, visible in the Vatican Secret Archive\u2019s original copy, made the letter resemble a windchime.<\/p>\n Pope Clement said no, and the result was Henry\u2019s excommunication and, eventually, the founding of the Church of England by his daughter Queen Elizabeth.<\/p>\n 3. The Last Stand of Mary, Queen of Scots*** ***\n<\/strong>Mary was Catholic; Scotland was not. This would have created tension between her and Queen Elizabeth even before the awkward assassination conspiracy<\/a> business.<\/p>\n On death row at Fothingerhay Castle in November 1586, Mary wrote to<\/a> Pope Sixtus V pleading for her life. As far as we know, she received no reply. She was executed the next February.<\/p>\n 4. The Trial of the Templars* *\n<\/strong>Over a three-day weekend in mid-August 1308, Templar grandmaster Jacques de Molay and his closest knights were interrogated and absolved by the Pope at Chinon Castle in western France.<\/p>\n Grandmaster de Moray ran afoul of the French monarchy again in 1314; he was burned at the stake in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, and the pope who absolved him died a month later.<\/p>\n The details of this mysterious event are still fuzzy, but we learned the broad outline after Italian textual historian Barbara Frale discovered the Chinon Parchment<\/a>, a firsthand record of the 1308 trial, in the Vatican Secret Archive. The Parchment seems to suggest that homophobia was a key factor in the suppression of the Templars.<\/p>\n 5. Dialogue with the Dalai Lama*** ***\n<\/strong>Although St. Pope John Paul II met with<\/a> the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) in 1980, this wasn\u2019t the first time a Pope and his Tibetan Buddhist<\/a> counterpart had exchanged words. Nineteen Popes and seven Dalai Lamas ago, in 1738, Pope Clement XII asked the Seventh Dalai Lama (Kelzang Gyatso) to help him secure safe passage for some Franciscan friars. A copy of the letter was found in the Vatican Secret Archive.<\/p>\n 6. The Trial of Galileo*** ***\n<\/strong>One of the hierarchy\u2019s least popular decisions was the lifelong house arrest of Galileo (following threats of torture and execution) for saying that Earth is not the center of the cosmos. There\u2019s no way to sugarcoat it: this was a pretty dark and embarrassing moment for our Church. St. Pope John Paul II formally apologized<\/a> for the scandalous error in 1992.<\/p>\n The Vatican Secret Archive\u2019s documents on his trial largely just confirm what we already know<\/a>, which is arguably surprising in and of itself; there was nothing that made Galileo\u2019s persecutors look any better, but at least the Vatican didn\u2019t have documents in the papal stash that made things look even\u00a0worse<\/em>.*** ***\n<\/strong><\/p>\n 7. More Questions Than Answers About Pope Pius XII*** ***\n<\/strong>The relative lack of a surprise is also a surprise in the cased of Pope Pius XII, whose record in World War II has been the subject of considerable criticism. His supporters hoped that the Vatican Secret Archive\u2019s documents, 170 volumes of which were released earlier<\/a> this year by Pope Francis, would help to rehabilitate his reputation; critics hoped that they would solidify the case against him.<\/p>\n So far the Vatican Secret Archive\u2019s records have done neither. It is clear that Pius XII met several times in secret with Nazi envoy Philipp von Hessen in 1939; it is also clear that he\u00a0did not trust<\/a>\u00a0von Hessen at all, and even lied to him several times. The Vatican Secret Archive\u2019s transcript of their 1939 conversation (which was conducted in German without translators, and secretly recorded by a papal aide) speaks to a situation that the new Pope knew was rapidly getting worse.<\/p>\n Pope Pius XII\u2019s words to von Hessen several months later, to the effect that the Church would not interfere with anti-Jewish persecution, should probably be read in light of this atmosphere of suspicion and deception\u2014but they are still terrible words, and speak to a terrible reality.\u00a0The new documents do not entirely resolve the question surrounding Pope Pius XII; they complicate it, as the historical record tends to do.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Vatican Secret Archive is an incredibly exciting place, but not for the reasons you might 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