The Vatican Secret Archives: the Archives of the Pope, Custodian of the Historical Memory of Peoples

Abstract

The Vatican Secret Archives was founded in 1612 by Pope Paul V and were opened to researchers by Pope Leo XIII in 1881. Nowadays, the Vatican Archives is consulted by more than a thousand scholars every year, coming from 60 nations and with no-one being excluded on grounds of their religion.

The name they bear (“secret”) and their almost 85 kilometers of space frequently attract considerable popular curiosity, especially on the part of those who expect to find in the Archives the explanation for every kind of “paranormal enigma”. In actual fact, the “treasures” of the Vatican Archives are very different: they are those which are the reflection of more than 800 years of the continuous history of humankind. In this fairly rapid survey, we shall concentrate upon some of the more important of these documents, giving particular attention to those which pertain to Russia.