Vatican Archives: What's The Problem?, The
Before we can understand what's behind today's headlines on the Vatican Archives, we first need to recount the story of how they came to be and how they gradually came to be opened to scholars in the late nineteenth century. Then we can deal with the practical difficulties delaying their further opening today.
Historical Background
There was no systematic arrangement to collect the pope's letters and papers until the pontificate of Innocent III (1198-1216). With the invention of printing in the late fifteenth century, the Pope augmented the existing collection of manuscripts by establishing a library. In his brief but useful book on the Vatican Archives, Owen Chadwick reports that the papal library had almost 4,000 volumes by 1484. Though modest by today's standards, it was then the largest library in Italy.1
During the Sack of Rome by the German troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1527, the library was looted. Lead seals were melted down to make bullets. Parchments were torn up and used as litter for horses. The Pope's papers experienced a somewhat familiar fate almost three centuries later, as we shall see in a moment. When Pope John Paul II visits Germany today, his hosts, groaning under the enormous costs, say it is papal revenge for the damage wrought by their countrymen in the 1527 Sacco di Roma, as it is called south of the Alps.
In 1612 Pope Paul V separated the papal library from the archives. Neither collection was well-ordered, however. There was no catalogue. Access was limited, varying according to the times and the officials in charge. "The creation of a central archive owed nothing to the notion of helping scholars to write history. It was a business transaction intended to make the administration more efficient."2
Between 1810 and 1813 Napoleon had the most of Pope's papers carted off to Paris as part of his grandiose scheme to make the French capital the world-center of learning and culture. The monumental task of organizing and cataloguing had only begun when Napoleon fell from power and Pius VII, Pope from 1800 to 1823, demanded his papers back. When the costs of transport proved more than the available funds, much material was burnt. Parchments were sold by weight to a French grocer for packing purposes. Fragments could still be bought in Parisian shops at the end of the century. Some volumes found their way to the Biliotheque Nationale in Paris, others to Trinity College, Dublin.
About a third of the collection never returned to Rome. Some of the material that did come back suffered water damage: during the crossing of streams for packing cases sent by land: by bilge water in the case of those sent by sea. The archives were disorganized before Napoleon hijacked them. The chaos following their return can easily be imagined. Chadwick writes, "The archives hardly recovered until 1883 or 1890 the order which they possessed before the French confiscated them."3
The writing of what we call today scientific history, based on archival research, began only in the nineteenth century. A number of the pioneers were German Protestants, among them G.H. Pertz, co-founder of the collection Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Starting in 1822, Pertz was permitted to copy or excerpt 1,800 out of 24,000 documents from the papal archives, which touched German history. Though he could not enter the archives himself, material was brought out for his perusal. This research inspired him to write some words that remain relevant today:
There is no better defense of the papacy than to unveil its inward being. If weakness is shown up, you can reckon on a more friendly judgment through historical understanding than if, as often until now, it is all kept secret and men are left to suspect what they will.4
Some four decades later, Pertz's words on the advantages of openness received striking confirmation when the records of Galileo's trial were opened to scholars. The context was the fierce controversy over the conflict between science and religion which erupted following the appearance of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species in 1859.
Authors in both England and France used the condemnation of Galileo as a weapon with which to beat the Church. Chadwick calls some of this literature "dubious as history but powerful as propaganda"5 — a description equally apt for many of the attacks on Pius XII today. The most lurid tales about Galileo's treatment by church officials — including lengthy imprisonment and torture — were widely believed, not just by the historically uninformed public, but by leading scholars throughout Europe.
When the record of Galileo's trial was finally made available to scholars in 1867, it did not support the sensational charges long in circulation. Galileo's imprisonment had lasted exactly twenty-two days, during which he was comfortably treated. He was never tortured, though he was told that he would be led to torture if he did not tell the truth. This threat was an archaic legal formula, but it was not clear that Galileo realized this. The condemnation itself, however, remains scandalous — a judgment which the present Pope has confirmed.
Opening The Archives
The opening of the records of Galileo's trial was a rare exception to the still prevailing practice. The papal archives remained closed until 1883, when they were opened by Pope Leo XIII. The remote cause of his action was the anti-papal campaign of the Italian nationalist, Garibaldi, who lost no opportunity to portray the popes as enemies of Italian freedom and prosperity.
Leo was no historian. But he considered Garibaldi's version of history a travesty. When the Roman Empire collapsed, it was the papacy, which preserved Italy from the worst consequences of the barbarian invasion. In the Middle Ages, Popes had defended Italy against the power of the German emperors. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Popes had defended Italy from Turkish raids, and helped Austria defend all Europe from Turkish conquest. At the beginning of Leo's own century the papacy had defended Italy from Napoleon Bonaparte. Far from being the enemy of Italian liberty, Leo contended, the papacy had been its principal defender, as well as the patron and protector of Italian culture, art, and literature.
It was one thing to assert these things, another to convince liberal skeptics that they were true. To counter what Leo considered the falsification of history by his enemies, therefore, the Pope in 1879 brought to Rome the Wurzburg Church historian, Josef Hergenrother, placed him in charge of the archives, and made him a cardinal. Four years later Leo wrote a public letter to Hergenrother and two other cardinals, both protectors of the Vatican Library, deploring the corruption of history by the Church's enemies. The Church, Leo said, had nothing to fear from true history. This would show how much Italians owed to the papacy. Let scholars work at the sources, prudently, impartially, avoiding rashness in judgment. "The first law of history," Leo wrote in a frequently-quoted sentence, "is not to dare to utter falsehood; the second, not to fear to tell the truth."
From 1883, on the Vatican Archives have been open in principle to qualified scholars. I say "in principle" because there was foot-dragging by officials resentful, like bureaucrats the world over, of outsiders rummaging in "our papers." As with all governmental archives, there has always been a closed period to protect the reputations of people still living. Occasionally there were restrictions about the publication of documents considered too sensitive — a practice, which can be paralleled in other archives. Chadwick gives examples. In 1912 an Italian prime minister justified refusal of access to state papers in his country by saying: "It would not be right to have beautiful legends discredited by historical criticism." And in 1916 the German Foreign Office forbade the publication of the political testament of King Frederick the Great of Prussia, who had died 130 years previously, in 1786.6
The Archives Today7
In terms of the questions being asked about the archives today, the first thing that needs to be said is that there is not just a single "Vatican archive" but a number of different ones. Many documents are in the archives of various Vatican departments (called congregations or dicasteries). The archive of the Inquisition was opened in 1998 and was utilized (critics say in a highly selective and hence misleading manner) by David I. Kertzer for his recent book, The Popes Against the Jews. Of special importance is the archive of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs. Many Vatican documents are located outside the Vatican. Those for the vicariate or diocese of Rome, for instance, are in the Roman State Archives. Some of these archives are open, others not. More material is available for research than is commonly supposed.
What is generally referred to today as "the Vatican Archives" is actually the Archivio Segreto Vaticano. According to Walter Brandmuller, emeritus professor of Church History at the University of Augsburg and now president of the Papal Committee for Historical Scholarship in Rome, this so-called Secret Vatican Archive occupies today seventy-five kilometers of shelf space, or almost forty-seven miles. The documents for the years 1923 to 1958 alone, comprising the pontificates of Popes Pius XI and Pius XII, run to an estimated three million pages.
The papers are in boxes, stored in more or less chronological order. Before they can be made available for scholarly research, each page must be examined, its contents noted, given a number, and stamped. Experience has shown that this is necessary to prevent loss of papers and the introduction of other documents from outside. When this work has been completed, the documents must be bound and catalogued.
To accomplish this monumental task, the Vatican Archives have at present a total staff of 35 people, of whom only 11 are trained archivists. The others are service personnel engaged in administrative tasks, microfilming, restoration, or clerical work. For comparison, Brandmuller reports that the Bavarian State Archives in Munich have a staff of 170 people.8 Those with experience of the United States National Archives in Washington can make their own comparison.
Those who seek to hasten the opening of the Vatican Archives for the pontificate of Pius XII (portions of the archive for the pontificate of Pius XI will be made available in 2003) have an interest in seeing the archival staff enlarged. Urgently necessary as well is enlargement of the physical area available to scholars. For once the cataloguing is complete and the archives are open, the number of visitors is sure to increase. The necessary expansion of personnel and physical facilities will involve major costs. And the Vatican, which has an annual budget only a fraction of that of a major American university, is not in a position to supply the necessary funds without outside help.
This does not mean, however, that we must simply wait years, perhaps a decade or more, until the archives can be open. Brandmuller outlines a plan for historical research, which could fully occupy for a number of years a team of scholars considerably larger than the six-member Catholic-Jewish study group, which broke up in acrimony last year.
The first step is to survey what is already available in print and in secondary literature. This is necessary to avoid time-wasting questions (to say nothing of scholarly embarrassment) about material, which is already available. One example: consider the request of the six-member study group, in the first of its forty-seven questions, for background information about the then-Cardinal Pacelli's role in drafting the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge of March 1937. The material requested has been available in print since the mid-1960s. Once the existing primary and secondary literature has been evaluated, the next step is research in other archives — in the United States, Europe, and Israel, which contain abundant material about the period in question. Brandmuller estimates that, with adequate staff and funding, such a program of research could be completed in five to seven years. By that time he believes that the Vatican Archives will be open for the pontificate of Pius XII.9
No historian is happy to find archives closed. We all know, however, that closure, often for decades, is a fact of life. Prof. Konrad Repgen commented on this situation in an article published on September 27, 2001 in Germany's leading daily newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine:
There are almost as many different closed periods as there are archives. An attempt to achieve uniformity in this matter within the European Union ended in failure. In Germany there is not even any uniformity between the federal archives and those of the individual states. Most European countries close their archive for thirty years — but there are far more exceptions to this rule than most people imagine. And not all documents found in the catalogue of a given archive are equally accessible. Secret police records, for example, are completely off-limits. And when they are included among documents that would normally be accessible, the whole file is unavailable.
The same situation prevails in the United States, despite our Freedom of Information Act. Prof. Gerald Fogarty told a Catholic-Jewish study group meeting in Rome in October 2001: "One week ago I was buried in the OSS files of the National Archives. Every single document that I tried to get, without exception, had been removed for security purposes. Somebody said later, 'Well, you can invoke freedom of information, all you have to do is to describe the document.' There is no finding to tell you. It just says there is a document. It doesn't tell you what it's about. They told me never again to write them."10
Professor Fogarty's experience confirms the absolute necessity of the lengthy work of preparation which I have already described. No archive is usable until its contents have been carefully examined and catalogued.
On February fifteenth of this year the Vatican announced that from 2003 onward scholars would be able to see documents concerning Germany from the pontificate of Pius XI. A St. Louis colleague asked me recently whether this partial opening of the Vatican Archives would end controversy. I told him that, in my view, it would not. If those who have already decided that Pius XII is co-responsible for the Holocaust do not find the smoking gun, which finally convicts him, they will simply claim that the incriminating material has been removed.
This charge has already been made, at least by implication, with regard to the twelve already published volumes of Vatican documents from the World War II period. When they first appeared, my colleague, John Conway, who is by no means uncritical of the Holy See or of Pope Pius XII wrote:
A close study of the many thousands of documents published in these volumes lends but little support to the thesis that ecclesiastical self-preservation was the main motive behind the attitudes of the Vatican diplomats. Rather, the picture that emerges is one of a group of intelligent and conscientious men, seeking to pursue the paths of peace and justice, at a time when those ideals were ruthlessly being rendered irrelevant in a world of total war.11
Implicit in the demand that the originals of these documents be made available is the charge that the four internationally-respected historians responsible for their publication withheld material which might reflect badly upon the Holy See. No more serious charge can be brought against a historian. To date no evidence has been offered to support the charge in this case.
In the article already referred to, Prof. Konrad Repgen calls the twelve volumes of Vatican documents "a very solid scholarly work" in which he has been unable to see any substantial weaknesses. When the volumes were first published, Conway wrote that they were "careful and scholarly . . .[T]he critical apparatus is most skillfully and meticulously put together. Every evidence of scholarly integrity in provided."12 A decade later Conway wrote that the twelve volumes "are a monument of great importance and have withstood the available tests of time with flying colors."13
I should like to close my presentation with an observation and a plea. First the observation. Anyone who has done archival research knows that the researcher is wholly dependent on the archivist. An archivist can withhold material at will, either by keeping its existence secret, or (if the material is already listed in the catalogue) by saying that it is missing or otherwise unavailable. No research is possible without trust.
Moreover, this trust must be mutual. A hostile researcher can easily create an atmosphere, which renders fruitful research impossible. Hence my plea for trust — on both sides. Without such trust we are just wasting our time — engaged not in historical scholarship but in the search for missiles to hurl at our opponents. That is not history. It is politics. Or rather — since politics rightly engaged in is an honorable enterprise — it is polemics.
Notes
1 Owen Chadwick, Catholicism and History: The Opening of the Vatican Archives (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978), 5. Cited hereafter as "Chadwick." A more detailed history of the archives is given in the Introduction to Francis X. Blouin, Vatican Archives: an Inventory and Guide to the Historical Documents of the Holy See (New York: Oxford, 1988).
2 Chadwick, 9.
3 Chadwick, 19.
4 Cited from Chadwick, 23.
5 Chadwick, 43.
6 Chadwick, 133.
7 For assistance in describing the archives today I am indebted to Dr. Thomas Brechenmacher of the Bundeswehr University of Munich.
8 Walter Brandmuller, "Ein neuer Streit um Pius XII. Zum Desaster der katholisch-judischen Historikerkommission", in: Die neue Ordnung 55/5 (Okt. 2001) 371-381, at 377.
9 art. Cit., 379f.
10 Cited from the transcript of the tape-recorded meeting.
11 John S. Conway, "Records and Documents of the Holy See relating to the Second World War," in: Yad Vashem Studies 15 (1983) 327-345, at 333.
12 art. cit. in n. 11, at 331. An example of Conway's fairness and balance is his qualification: "The fact that the primary sources have not been made available to the editors only means that before all the files are opened to public scrutiny not all scholars will be satisfied."
13 John S. Conway, "The Vatican, Germany and the Holocaust," in: Peter C. Kent and John F. Pollard, Papal Diplomacy in the Modern Age (Westport/CT: Praeger, 1994) 105-120, at 106.
© 2002 Robert Moynihan
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