Vatican Apostolic Archive
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Vatican Secret Archives (Archivum Secretum Vaticanum), located in Vatican City, is the central repository for all of the acts promulgated by the Holy See. These archives also contain the state papers, correspondence, papal account books, and many other documents which the church has accumulated over the centuries. In the 17th century, under the orders of Pope Paul V, the Secret Archives were separated from the Vatican Library, where scholars had some very limited access to them, and remained absolutely closed to outsiders until 1881, when Pope Leo XIII opened them to researchers, of whom now more than a thousand examine its documents each year.
The word "secret" in the title "Vatican Secret Archives" does not have the modern meaning: it indicates instead that the archives are the Pope's own, not those of a department of the Roman Curia. The word "secret" was used in this sense also in phrases such as "secret servants", "secret cupbearer", "secret carver".
See also
- Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Acts and Documents of the Holy See relative to the Second World War)
- Acta Apostolicae Sedis
- Archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
- Chinon Parchment
- Henry Denifle, sub-archivist at the Vatican (1883–1905)
- Pontifical secret
- Relations between Catholicism and Judaism
- Vatican Film Library, which contains microfilmed versions of some of the documents from the Archives, in St. Louis, Missouri
- List of national archives