The Archive of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, commonly referred to as the Archive of the Inquisition (or more fully the Archive of the Inquisition and Index), contains the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

's documents dealing with

doctrinal Doctrine (from , meaning 'teaching, instruction') is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief system. The etymolog ...

and

theological Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of an ...

issues related to church teaching. It also contains information on political trials that were carried out when the

papacy The pope is the bishop of Rome and the Head of the Church#Catholic Church, visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or sovereign pontiff. From the 8th century until 1870, the po ...

had temporal power over the

Papal States The Papal States ( ; ; ), officially the State of the Church, were a conglomeration of territories on the Italian peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the pope from 756 to 1870. They were among the major states of Italy from the 8th c ...

Origins

According to most sources, the

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

that is now the archive of the

Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) is a department of the Roman Curia in charge of the religious discipline of the Catholic Church. The Dicastery is the oldest among the departments of the Roman Curia. Its seat is the Palace of t ...

was founded in the sixteenth century – most likely in 1542 when

Pope Paul III Pope Paul III (; ; born Alessandro Farnese; 29 February 1468 – 10 November 1549) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 13 October 1534 to his death, in November 1549. He came to the papal throne in an era follo ...

first established the

Roman Inquisition The Roman Inquisition, formally , was a system of partisan tribunals developed by the Holy See of the Catholic Church, during the second half of the 16th century, responsible for prosecuting individuals accused of a wide array of crimes according ...

as a central body for Church doctrine at the beginning of the

Counter-Reformation The Counter-Reformation (), also sometimes called the Catholic Revival, was the period of Catholic resurgence that was initiated in response to, and as an alternative to or from similar insights as, the Protestant Reformations at the time. It w ...

. The

Index of Forbidden Books The (English: ''Index of Forbidden Books'') was a changing list of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality by the Sacred Congregation of the Index (a former dicastery of the Roman Curia); Catholics were forbidden to print o ...

was founded in 1571. Before this, there was no centralised means for collecting Inquisition papers, and it is generally believed that all or almost all important documents have been lost or even deliberately destroyed. Most of the documents dating from these early years have been lost due to the French Revolution and the resultant pillage of

Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...

, which it is believed caused as many as two thousand documents to be lost before the archive was returned to Rome. Those remaining, however, have considerable value covering such questions as what role the Church played in the seventeenth century

witch-hunt A witch hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or Incantation, incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the ...

Development

After the archive of the Inquisition was returned to Rome in 1815, it expanded a great deal. Although the actual number of documents housed in the present archive of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is not known because documents dated after

Pope Leo XIII Pope Leo XIII (; born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci; 2March 181020July 1903) was head of the Catholic Church from 20 February 1878 until his death in July 1903. He had the fourth-longest reign of any pope, behind those of Peter the Ap ...

's death, in 1903, are still closed to researchers, there are known to be 4,500 documents available to scholars up to that point. Over the years, there have been numerous important documents placed by various Popes in this archive. Probably the best known case is the 1944 and 1957 revelations by Fatima seer Lúcia dos Santos, but there exist numerous other documents of this type placed in the archives whose content was partially known before being placed there. Although little precise information is known, there can be not the least doubt that a great many individual cases concerning doctrinal orthodoxy are dealt with very thoroughly in the archives of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, simply because many theologians investigated by it have published some of the information within their own writings.

Opening

Because hostility towards liberalism and socialism was so strong and the documents dealing with them considered very sensitive, at the time the papal files in the Vatican Secret Archives were opened by

Leo XIII Pope Leo XIII (; born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci; 2March 181020July 1903) was head of the Catholic Church from 20 February 1878 until his death in July 1903. He had the fourth-longest reign of any pope, behind those of Peter the A ...

in 1879, that same Pope refused to allow any access to the archives either of the Inquisition or the Index of Forbidden Books. Even the pro-Papal historian Ludwig von Pastor could not use the Inquisition archive in writing his massive ''History of the Popes since the End of the Middle Ages''. The first known case of a scholar gaining access to the Inquisition archive was ironically the fiercely anti-clerical scholar Luigi Firpo, who used his close connections with

Maurilio Fossati Maurilio Fossati, O.SS.G.C.N., (24 May 1876 – 30 March 1965) was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Turin from 1930 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1933. Biography Born in Ar ...

(long-serving Archbishop of

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

) to study the trial of

Giordano Bruno Giordano Bruno ( , ; ; born Filippo Bruno; January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian philosopher, poet, alchemist, astrologer, cosmological theorist, and esotericist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which concep ...

. In 1979, a request was made to

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005. In his you ...

by historian

Carlo Ginzburg Carlo Ginzburg (; born 15 April 1939) is an Italian historian and a proponent of the field of microhistory. He is best known for ''Il formaggio e i vermi'' (1976, English title: '' The Cheese and the Worms''), which examined the beliefs of an I ...

, an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

from Jewish background, to open the Inquisition Archives. By 1991 a limited group of scholars were already allowed access to review the material in the archives. On 22 January 1998 the Vatican opened all Inquisition archives up to the death of Leo XIII. At first, there was space for only twelve scholars within the archives, but this has been increased as demand for the use of the material has increased.

Pope Benedict XVI Pope BenedictXVI (born Joseph Alois Ratzinger; 16 April 1927 – 31 December 2022) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as p ...

, formerly head of the office, described Ginzburg's letter as instrumental in the Vatican's decision to open these archives. The fact that – whereas other open Vatican archives are now open up to the death of

Pope Pius XI Pope Pius XI (; born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, ; 31 May 1857 – 10 February 1939) was head of the Catholic Church from 6 February 1922 until his death in February 1939. He was also the first sovereign of the Vatican City State u ...

– documents dated from the

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

crisis under

Pope Pius X Pope Pius X (; born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto; 2 June 1835 – 20 August 1914) was head of the Catholic Church from 4 August 1903 to his death in August 1914. Pius X is known for vigorously opposing Modernism in the Catholic Church, modern ...

have not been made available has been criticised by many liberal scholars (

Hans Küng Hans Küng (; 19 March 1928 – 6 April 2021) was a Swiss Catholic priest, theologian, and author. From 1995 he was president of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Stiftung Weltethos). Küng was ordained a priest in 1954, joined the faculty ...

, John Cornwell). Since 1998 the Vatican has failed to issue any document stating either that post-1903 material will never be released (presumably to protect doctrinal orthodoxy) or that it may in the future open post-1903 Inquisition archives.

References

External links

Vatican to computerize archives from the Holy Office, Inquisition
@ Catholic World News, Dec.5, 2002.
Palazzo del Sant'Uffizio: The Opening of the Roman Inquisition's Central Archive
by Anne Jacobson Schutte, Perspectives Online, Published by the American Historical Association, May 1999 {{DEFAULTSORT:Archive of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Archives in Vatican City Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith

Origins

Development

Opening

See also

References

External links