Secret Archives of the Vatican, The

The Secret Archives of the Vatican flow through history like a vast river. Much of the material is fragmentary, some trivial, some obscene; but there is much gold as well. Here are the records of the triumphal progress of Queen Christina into Rome; the trials of Galileo, Pico della Mirandola and Savonarola for heresy; Beatrice Cenci's murder of her father; the rise and fall of the Knights Templar; the Great Schism; and many other diverse people and events. And through it all there is the ordering logic of the endless gathering of the written word, from bejeweled psalters to papal laundry lists, from the record of the sale of a fifty-cent indulgence to the Donation of Constantine. By their very nature, the documents in the Secret Archives constitute the living record of an all-too-human institution.