DrakBibliophile wrote:Cite please.
I've heard about too many "conspiracy stories" where "secret" documents held by the Roman Catholic Church "prove" whatever the "secret history" the conspiracy buff wants us to believe.
The existence of the "Archivio Segreto Vaticano" is official, they have documents up to VIIIth century at least and there is a reserved section called Hell where non Catholic faith documents are kept. All that is acknowledged on many Vatican sites including official one.
In particular, they had previously unknown Dominicans documents about Catharism that were released for the 800th anniversay of the beginning of the Albigensian crusade in 2009. Nothing really astonishing, but it was a whole new set of archives about a troubled period where we lack many accounts.
Note that this is not under Inquisition duties, the "Archivio Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei" were only created in XVIth century and are the archives of the tribunal that is the real role of the Inquisition.
Very few researchers had in the past access to the "segretos" if they were not themselves highly placed in the church hierarchy which fueled a lot of myths like the assassins one. Those assassin myths were probably an echo of the very real ones used by Venitian doges to preserve their glassblowing secrets.
Things like the Da Vinci Code with the Catholic Church sending out "hit men" to preserve some secret that the Church knows but nobody else does annoy me.
If you're not talking about that, I apologize.
Dont read J. Ringo princess of Wands series then.
The Mystical SWAT teams are funny