Saturday, January 2, 2010

Vatican Admits It Maintains Secret Archives Dating Back to Over 1,000 Years

A 13th-century letter from Genghis Khan's grandson demanding homage from the pope is among a collection of documents from the Vatican's Secret Archives that has been published for the first time, according to the Telegraph website in the United Kingdom.

High-quality reproductions of 105 documents -- 19 of which have never been seen before in public -- have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives -- with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years -- features a papal letter to Adolph Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots.

The book documents the Roman Catholic Church's often hostile dealings with the world of science and the arts, including documents from the heresy trial against Galileo, and correspondence exchanged with Erasmus, Voltaire, and Mozart.

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