The Vatican State is not yet a century old, but the history of its archives, libraries and repositories goes back 2000 years. All this time, thousands of scouts scoured the world in search of art, rare books, state secrets or scientific discoveries. Unfortunately, all this fell into the hands of the keepers and was hidden from scientists, not to mention ordinary people. Using all the accumulated knowledge, the Vatican was preparing to make Catholicism the dominant world religion.
Papal ark
In antiquity, the territory that the Vatican now occupies was outside the city. The area was swampy, and the Romans were not eager to settle there. Then the emperor Claudius ordered the construction of a hippodrome there, where social games were held.
According to legend, it was at this hippodrome that Saint Peter was crucified. After 326, when Christianity was equalized in rights with other religions, the Basilica of Constantine was erected at the place of his burial, and the area began to be gradually settled.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, most of central Italy fell under the rule of the papal state. Even in those years when the Holy See left Rome, a huge administrative apparatus remained in the Vatican.
In 1870 the papal state was abolished and Rome became the capital of Italy. In 1929, representatives of the Pope and Benito Mussolini concluded the Lateran Agreements, according to which about 1.5 square kilometers of the city's territory - the Vatican itself - were allocated into a special state formation - the sovereign auxiliary territory of the Holy See. Own passports help Vatican citizens move freely around the world and are respected.
The Vatican's underground storage contains 85 kilometers of shelving. The Apostolic Library, founded in 1475 by Pope Sixtus IV, has over 1.6 million publications, 150,000 manuscripts, 300,000 medals, 8,300 early printed books and 100,000 prints. At the end of the 19th century, the Holy See for the first time declassified some of the documents, but only for selected researchers. If scientists are allowed to enter the Vatican archives with the same speed in the future, then their initial analysis will take another 1250 years.
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Collecting valuable artifacts began with the most noble goal. During the fall of Rome, the spiritual impoverishment of Europe, turmoil and wars, the pope wanted to save as much of the cultural values of the ancient civilization as possible. At first, the Vatican's vaults served as a kind of ark for works of art and scientific achievements, later they became a "prison for knowledge."
For the first time, church hierarchs began to think about making the storehouses closed after the Council of Nicaea in 325. Pope Damasius I spoke out against Arianism, and on his order, not only the texts of the Holy Scriptures were corrected, but also many documents that were once handed over to the Church by people allegedly personally acquainted with Jesus himself were hidden forever. Manuscripts dating back to the first centuries of Christianity are still the most guarded secrets of the Vatican.
Family secrets
At first, church hierarchs fought among themselves, using certain sacred texts as arguments. Then the winners tried to "cover their tracks" by removing documents that did not correspond to their concept.
Something was hidden for political purposes. This is most of the evidence for Jesus' existence, life and environment. Recently, for example, the remains of an ancient parchment were found, which speaks of … the wife of Jesus. This plot was well known in the early Middle Ages. For example, in the south of France, many ancient basilicas are dedicated to Mary Magdalene, who was the wife of Jesus. It was here that she fled after the execution of her husband, and back in the 10th century, stories related to this were widespread among the aristocracy of Languedoc and Provence. Allegedly, Mary Magdalene left Palestine with a baby, her son with Jesus, and took some relics with her. Including the famous Grail.
It was here that a new dynasty began. It was rumored that their direct descendants were the Counts of Foix - powerful feudal lords from the south of France. Could the Church allow a particular family to be revered as the relatives of the Son of God himself? Of course not.
But that's not all. Judging by fragments of documents (not related to Christianity) of the beginning of our millennium, Jesus came from the royal Israelite family of David's tribe, and Mary - from the aristocrats of the tribe of Benjamin. That is, their son was a contender for the Palestinian throne. And the inscription on the cross on which Jesus was crucified - "King of the Jews" - is not a mockery, but a statement of fact.
All this could not but be recorded. And it was probably discovered in the vaults by Pope Urban II. Ever since he read about the true identity of Jesus, organizing the First Crusade and capturing Jerusalem has become more than a matter of honor for him.
Science is silent …
It is believed that a huge part of the secrets kept by the Vatican are scientific discoveries of different times. An example is the papers of Leonardo da Vinci, the publication of which may undermine the foundations of the Church. Some researchers are sure that in the treasures of the Vatican you can find a book by Count Cagliostro, in which he describes a recipe for rejuvenation, reminiscent of modern Hindu techniques, thanks to which a person can fully live for more than 150 years.
The church archives probably contain the works of Chinese and Arab doctors, revealing the mechanisms of spread and methods of treating diseases that were fatal in the Middle Ages. Among them are cholera, smallpox and even the bubonic plague, which mowed down half of Europe in the 14th century. If this information were available to the then doctors, such a number of victims could have been avoided. But some of the Church's postulates would have to be revised on the fly.
Probably, the works of the Italian mechanic Guidobaldo del Monte also rest in the Vatican cellars. Judging by the surviving excerpts from his papers, he invented the steam boiler at the beginning of the 17th century and worked on the concept of a steam locomotive and a rail track. But the holy fathers considered the introduction of such an invention premature. The Vatican holds over 80,000 maps. Some of them may testify that the Church knew, for example, the existence of America long before Columbus's journey. Isn't that why the great navigator faced such difficulties in preparing his campaign?
Among the documents stored in the Vatican, one can also find a map showing Antarctica free of ice. The map was made in the 16th century, when the Europeans did not yet know about the polar continent, and without the ice cap it is presented very conditionally even now. It is now the Catholic hierarchs who call the persecutions of Galileo and Giordano Bruno sad misunderstandings. And at that time, the Church did everything to prevent the spread of knowledge that could confuse the minds of ordinary people. To silence science, hundreds of thousands of books and scrolls were found in the secret vaults of the Vatican. Over time, collecting all kinds of valuable artifacts became the responsibility of all persons associated with the Catholic Church.
Spy passions
But the Holy See even more appreciated the secrets and secrets of the mighty of this world. What they say in Windsor and Versailles, what the Spanish monarch writes to his Austrian relative, why Lithuania conspired with the Horde and how Moscow will respond to this - for hundreds of years the Vatican tried to keep its finger on the pulse of European (and not only) life. In the papal archives, you can find answers to many questions related to politics, conspiracies, wars. Most likely, it is in the Vatican that documents are kept that shed light on who was behind the most notorious political assassinations - from the Duke de Guise to Henry IV of France.
During the Second World War, the papal throne also did not stay away from big politics. Vatican intelligence Pro Deo ("in the name of God") established surveillance of the leaders of the Axis countries, which significantly brought the end of the war closer.
Ardent anti-communism, to which the Catholic Church slipped after the war, made the Soviet leadership think about introducing its own spies into the Vatican hierarchy. And together with the intelligence of the GDR, this task was solved. The most valuable personnel was the German Markus Wolf, a professional intelligence officer trained in the USSR. Over the course of 25 years of work, he deployed dozens of agents in various Vatican services, who provided invaluable information, thanks to which the Soviet Union effectively resisted Western intelligence and the "eastern politics" of the Catholic Church.
The biggest success of Soviet intelligence in the Vatican was the recruitment of its chief of security, Alois Estermann. Working under the pseudonym Werder, in tandem with his wife, he handed over 700 microfilms to the secret services of the Eastern Bloc, containing copies of documents from the papal archives and up-to-date information. In May 1988, Estermann, his wife and a corporal of a company of Swiss guards were found dead. At first, the investigators decided that they were dealing with a love affair: an elderly colonel found a young wife with a guardsman, after which a shooting drama ensued. But with Estermann's wife, six microfilms were found with recordings of meetings of the papal council, information about the US space program and many other secrets. An investigation by Pro Deo specialists showed that the Estermann couple had worked for the USSR since 1979.
The Soviet secret services were in no hurry to reveal the secrets of the Vatican, which fell into their hands. Moscow preferred to join the intelligence game, but the USSR was inexorably approaching its decline. Soon the country was gone, and its secret agents turned out to be easy prey for Western counterintelligence services. Since then, the secret vaults of the Vatican have not been disturbed anymore.
Magazine: Secret Archives # 6, Boris Sharov