Vatican Library Opens Up

Here's an article from Telegraph on the Vatican Archives. It's very interesting, so long as you ignore the requisite broadsides about the Church during WWII, Dan Brown and the current priest scandal. Disappointing, but it is a British paper, after all.

This is the Vatican secret archive, possibly the most mysterious collection of documents in the world.

Here you can find accounts of the trial of the Knights Templar held at Chinon in August 1308; a threatening note from 1246 in which Ghengis Khan’s grandson demands that Pope Innocent IV travel to Asia to ‘pay service and homage; a letter from Lucretia Borgia to Pope Alexander VI; Papal Bulls excommunicating Martin Luther; correspondence between the Court of Henry VIII and Clement VII; and an exchange of letters between Michelangelo and Paul III.

There are also letters from Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, St Bernadette, Voltaire and Abraham Lincoln.