A fascinating letter signed by 81 English noblemen to Pope Clement V11 in 1530, threatening the Catholic Church and demanding Henry V111 be allowed to divorce Catherine of Aragon, has gone on show for the first time at Rome’s Capitoline Museums.
It is one of 100 priceless documents from the Vatican’s secret archives, an 88-kilometre labyrinth of shelves packed with parchments to and from conquerors and kings spanning 12 centuries, including correspondence with Genghis Khan’s grandson, Wolfgang Mozart and Adolf Hitler.
The one-metre-wide English parchment sent on Henry’s orders and bearing the 81 wax seals and red silk ribbons of Parliament, bishops, abbots and the archbishops of York and Canterbury, had been lost on the shelves and found by chance hidden in a small chest under a wooden chair in 1926.
In it, the noblemen threaten “extreme remedies” against the Catholic Church unless the Pope allowed the divorce so that Henry could wed Anne Boleyn, whom he had fallen in love with in 1526.
“If the Pope is unwilling, we are left to find a remedy elsewhere,” the noblemen said.
“Some remedies are extreme but a sick man seeks relief in any way he can find.”
The angry king, desperately seeking a son, married Anne Boleyn in 1533 and was excommunicated after the Pope called their union invalid.
His dictum led to the formation of the Church of England. Henry ravaged and dispanded monasteries, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland, and seized their assets making himself The Supreme Head of The Church.
The unprecendented exhibition entitled Lux in Arcana – the Vatican Secret Archives Unveiled has been organised to mark the fourth centenary of their foundation.
The English letter takes pride of place alongside an 1887 note from a North American Indian chief, written on a trip of bark and addressing the Pope as the “Grand Master of Prayers”.
And there is even Galileo Galilei’s shaky signature on his retraction of his views on the universe in 1633 after the Vatican put him on trial for heresy. Other treasures include a 1650 letter written on silk and folded inside a stick of bamboo in which Ming empress Wang tells the Pope she had converted to Christianity and documents from trials of the Knights Templar in 1303.
Another rarity is a sad, reflective letter from French queen Marie Antoinette in 1782, shortly before she was executed in the French Revolution in 1789.
And there is also a letter from Mary Queen of Scots written in 1586, a few weeks before her execution for plotting to assassinate Elizabeth 1, in which she declares her allegiance to the “universal” Catholic church.
The exhibition, which is full of letters sent to Rome in the secret code used by papal nuncios since the 14th century, runs until September 9.
Depositions from the trial of the Templars in France.