AFTER THE publication of the Murphy report last November, many commentators were outraged by the Holy See’s assertion that in the matter of obtaining information from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and from the papal nuncio in Ireland, the commission had not gone through “appropriate diplomatic channels”.For this reason, the Holy See had been less than co-operative.
To many, this seemed like a miserable excuse, a palpable, papal bureaucratic runaround.
Indeed it may well have been, but, during a recent walk around the Vatican’s Secret Archives, it occurred to your correspondent that the Holy See is an organisation that takes diplomatic niceties and indeed diplomatic archives very seriously.
The Secret Archives, which are not open to the general public, are really a huge library, occupying 85km of bookshelves.
They cover a span of 800 years and contain original documents from or to such as Henry VIII, Emperor Charles V, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Michelangelo, Mary Queen of Scots, Lucrezia Borgia, Boccaccio, Voltaire, Mozart, Galileo Galilei and many others.
The first thing that our guide, archivist Enrico Flaiani, wants to make clear is that the term Secret Archives is something of a misnomer.
Used since the 15th century, the term secretum really means private or personal.
These, then, are the private archives of the pope, full of fascinating material but nothing really secret.
Although most of their precious documents are not on display, even the blase Vatican archivists could not resist a special showcase to house the letter from the Lords of England to Pope Clement VII in July 1530, basically calling on him to hurry up and annul Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
If you do not get on with it, Holy Father, intimated the Lords, then there will be big trouble down England way.
The document itself is remarkable, written in Latin on parchment about 90cm wide, with a 16th-century version of a spread sheet containing 83 signatures in 13 columns below the Latin text.
More remarkably, 81 ornate wax seals, representing the signatures of the lords, the archbishops of Canterbury and York, four bishops and 22 mitred abbots, hang attached to the petition. Pope Clement, of course, was not much impressed.
Furthermore, following Henry’s proclamation of the separation of the Church of England from Rome, many of those loyal figures who had signed the petition on his behalf were beheaded by way of thanks.
There are other documents in the archives which the Vatican would probably prefer to forget.
What can you say about Lucrezia Borgia’s letter to Pope Alexander VI, who just happened to be her father? In those days, the Holy See was not so fussy about priestly celibacy.
Alexander (Rodrigo Borgia) had four children with Lucrezia’s mother, Vannozza Cattanei.
Accused of various forms of incest (including sex with her Holy Father), Lucrezia was cynically used by the utterly corrupt Pope Alexander who had her betrothed twice before the age of 13, only to call off the marriages because they were no longer politically advantageous.
The letter reproduced is, understandably, innocent enough.
In it, Lucrezia describes the sumptuous reception she received on arrival in Pesaro with her first husband, Giovanni Sforza – a marriage arranged by her father and destined to fail.
Three marriages, countless affairs and at least seven (known) children later, the remarkable Lucrezia died at just 39 after giving birth to her eighth child.
As you might imagine, much of the Vatican archives tend to look the same. Rows and rows of dusty, musty old books, ledgers and files lead on to more rows and rows of more dusty old documents.
However, they also comprise La Torre Dei Venti (The Tower of Winds). Built between 1578 and 1580, the tower was initially used for astronomical studies linked to the reform of the Julian calendar, eventually replaced by the Gregorian calendar in 1582.
Richly frescoed by Nicolo Circignani, the tower still features the meridian or floor sundial that was used by astronomer Ignazio Dante for his experiments.
It also served as a rather special guest suite to none other than Queen Christina of Sweden, the Protestant monarch who publicly converted to Catholicism in 1654, just months after abdicating the throne.
When Christina and her entourage of 250 servants and 250 horses arrived in Rome in December 1654, she entered the Holy City in some style at the Porta Flaminia, which had been decorated by Bernini, no less, by way of welcome.
As for her initial digs, the Holy See offered her rooms in the Tower of Winds.
Even if the Secret Archives are not open to the public, all is not lost for those curious about this remarkable library.
In association with the Belgian publishing house VdH books, the Vatican has just published a lavishly illustrated guide to the Archives, called The Vatican Secret Archives.
For €50, this magnum opus takes you on a guided tour, providing beautiful illustrations and a detailed Vatican text that recounts the historical context of each document.
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