Whatever you say, and the Catholic clergy have something to "remember with a kind word" writer Dan Brown. Well, when else, how, not after the release of his famous novels, everyone, from small to large, woke up interest in secrets, riddles, conspiracies, mystifications, lost symbols, secrets and codes associated with the Vatican?
And it's not at all surprising that the world community rushed to the world's largest repository of mysteries-the Vatican Secret Archive-to look for answers to all curious questions!
Its history, by the way, is calculated since 1610, that is, more than 400 years. It is known that Pope Paul V separated him from the Vatican Library, and since that time the archive has become "secret" and limited to visit.
You will not believe it, but the most important historical documents from the Middle Ages to the present are reliably stored on racks with a total length exceeding 85 km. Well and the most interesting - on 40 km from them the largest meeting in the world of the occult literature has settled down!
The Vatican secret archive is periodically opened, as far as possible, and declassified in stages. This was first done in 1881, and for the last time in 2006. Did the writings of Brown bring the holy fathers to despair and another chance how to meet them, they did not have?
But we are only in favor of such strife, because right now we can see firsthand what we read in the pages of history books, only our imagination could guess ...
Custodian of the archive Sergio Pagano assures that no country has escaped the Vatican's attention and on the shelves of the largest repository of secrets the documentary history "from Old Europe and Asia and from the discovery of America to the Second World War" rests.
Have you ever imagined that you will someday see a page from the interrogation record of Galileo Galilei with his handwritten signature? And this document has been preserved since 1638!
The brilliant and tragic fate of the most famous Queen of France - Marie Antoinette will always impress history lovers and terrify her descendants. Carefree childhood in the family of the father, the emperor of Austria, marriage at age 15 with the heir of Louis XV, entry to the French throne at 19, turbulent youth amid the luxury of Versailles and ... a terrible death on the guillotine. More of these historical facts will not seem to you simply bookish - before you is the death note of Marie Antoinette, written before the execution, in 1793.
Do you want to know how the verdict of the Inquisition looked like on paper? Well, here is a written statement of guilt to astronomer Giordano Bruno in 1660.
One of the most interesting documents is a parchment scroll, sealed with eighty seals! You will not believe, but it was precisely so much "desperation and impatience" that the English King Henry VIII invested in a letter to Pope Clement VII when he applied to divorce him with Catherine of Aragon, for an early wedding with Anna Boleyn. By the way, in the letter Henry VIII even hinted that in case of an unsatisfactory answer, he is ready to go to "extreme measures" ...
Prepare - in this parchment roll for 60 meters 321 indications and a report on the trial of the Templars, 1311, are kept.
Have you ever imagined how the bull of the head of the Catholic Church might look like? Well, then take a look at the golden bull of Pope Clement VII on the occasion of the coronation of Charles V.
The curator of the archive did not underestimate the importance of the Holy See, mentioning that no country was left without attention ... By the way, on the shelves you can find a letter addressed to the Vatican from the leader of the Canadian Ojibwa tribe in 1887 with gratitude for the missionary sent. But on this purple parchment, embossed in gold, lists all the gifts of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Otto I of the church in 950.
Even the Caliph of Morocco Abu Hafsa Umar al-Murtada counted on the support of Pope Innocent IV when he wrote to him asking him to appoint a new bishop in 1250!
Now you can safely say that you saw the handwriting of Mary Stuart - in front of you a fragment of the letter of the French queen Pope Sixtus V in 1585!
And another amazing manuscript - Letter to Pope Innocent X, written on silk by the most Chinese princess!
Are all the fateful moments of our history gathered in one place? Look - this is a fragment of parchment with the text of a written renunciation of the throne of the Swedish king Christian!
On each document of 35 thousand volumes of the Vatican's secret archive a stamp "Archivio Segreto Vaticano" is stamped, and therefore shhh and what anyone has seen!