SECRET ARCHIVES OF THE VATICAN

I am breathlessly turning page after page of a book written over thirty-five years ago entitled The Secret Archives of the Vatican by Maria Luisa Ambrosini.

Read the review on this British site for a good soupcon of what lies in store for the curious reader.

The book was written a decade before the accession of John Paul II to the Papacy, a reign which changed world history for the better in just about every way imaginable. [Unless, of course, one was/is rooting for the other side.]

Here is an excerpt from a reviewer:

dozens of wonderful little historical sketches and vignettes: the monks of Western Ireland who cast themselves off into the Atlantic in coracles with a few days' supply of food and water only, and the possibility that the almost unique wheel on an Incan child's toy was the work of one of these; the Emperor Heliogabalus racing an elephant-drawn quadriga on Vatican Hill; the scarlet-edged bindings of Napoleon's L'Infer in the Biblioth?que Nationale; enquiries back home to the let-us-do-your-thinking-for-you office from missionaries to China as to the suitability of a native convert's praying to a crucifix secretly concealed in a shrine; the transfer of the Archives to Paris after Napoleon's Italian victories, and the eventual selling of large quantities of these for cardboard and wrapping paper to Parisian merchants; a fascinating mini-history of Savanarola's Florentine reign (the intolerance and absolute Protestant self-conviction of this are very instructive).

A delightful digression from the dreary drab platitudes of today's Savonarolas, who are just as self-righteous and sanctimonious.