Beneath the Great Courtyard of the Belvedere in Vatican City lies the Secret Vatican Archive. Though no official index or inventory of its contents exists for public inspection, its collection runs through some 25 miles of shelving and contains not only all of the Catholic Church’s official records, but thousands of documents pertaining to important events in world history as well - including English monarch Henry VIII’s petition for a marriage annulment from Pope Clement VII.

Formally established as a distinct entity apart from the neighboring Vatican Library in 1621, the Archives’ “Secret” title is predicated upon the fact it truly was a covert operation, until it was opened to secular academics in 1881. At the time, Pope Leo XIII justified the decision by stating, “The Church needs nothing but the truth.”

Since that time, the Archive’s overseers have granted scholars access to their collection on an application-only basis; on average, only two hundred historians from outside of the Catholic hierarchy are permitted entrance each year. Among the records that those select few have inspected are accounts of the goings-on behind the canonization of saints, architectural schematics for Vatican City’s buildings, chapels and infrastructure, transcripts and evidence from the trials of Galileo and the Knights Templar and papal reports, correspondence and diaries.

The Archive’s earliest known document dates from 471 AD. It is an Act of Donation from Junius Bassus, the Roman consul of Tivoli and a Catholic-converted Goth, who bequeathed the majority of his property to the Church before retiring to the countryside. When the document was copied in the 12th century, it could still be read and handled. The original has since disintegrated, but remains in possession of the Archive.

The wide-ranging subject matter and depth of the Vatican’s closely guarded collection has made it ripe for conquest by would-be conquerors. In 1810, during Napoleon’s occupation of Rome, the Emperor annexed the Archives in his bid to create a world library and had its contents packaged and shipped to Paris by wagon. After his fall in 1814, it was immediately recalled to Rome – but only after many “unimportant” pieces of parchment were sold off to French paper manufactures in bulk. One story tells of the Archive’s former prefect visiting Paris to oversee its restoration, only to discover that a seven hundred-volume registry of papal bulls had been distributed as wrapping paper to butcher shops throughout the city.

Today, the number of documents released from the Archive grows with each passing decade. Most recently, Pope Benedict XVI approved the release of all documents through 1939. Echoing his predecessor’s call for “nothing but the truth,” Benedict XVI cited the “unjust and thoughtless speculation” concerning the Church’s supposed complicity with Nazi Germany in the years prior to World War II – an issue that remains contentious to this day.

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