Vatican Archives: An Inventory and Guide to Historical Documents of the Holy See ed. by Francis X. Blouin, Jr. (review)

436HOOK REVIEWS is so often the case in general histories, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are glossed over. Pius IX stands for a whole epoch and is characterized in connection with his reactions to the revolutions of 1848, the Syllabus of Errors, the proclamation of Mary's Immaculate Conception, the decree on papal infallibility , and the pope's assumption of the position of "universal ordinary." The twentieth-cenuiry chapters juxtapose the "Pius Popes," who finally made peace with Italy but retreated behind veils of pseudo-Byzantine ceremonial, withJohn XXIII and his successors, who have tried to accommodate, with mixed success, both the modern world and the ancient traditions of the Roman Church. I have said elsewhere that any understanding of the papacy must come to grips with men, institutions, and ideas. Fuhrmann does a decent job with the first two btit slights the third. If his position is neither critical nor polemical, it is certainly not sympathetic. I do not mean that he fails to approve of the papacy 's actions. I mean, instead, that he does not attempt to view the world as the popes did, or tried to do. In this regard, Eamon Duffy's Saints and Sinners (New Haven, 1997) is a better book, and a much fuller one. Thomas F. X. Noble University ofVirginia Vatican Archives: An Inventory and Guide to Historical Documents of the Holy See. Edited by Francis X. Blouin, Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 588. $150.00.) The Secret Vatican Archives (ASV), an intrinsic component of the Holy See, is not only the oldest but the world's most important archive. Consisting of more than twenty-five miles of shelves stacked with documents, it contains crucial sources for the history of the Church, western civilization and institutions, the modern state, and considerably more. Originally organized to assist the papal curia and the Roman Pontiff in the governance of the Church, it has long transcended the realm of administration to shed light on historical developments since the ninth century. Designated "secret" because the nucleus of the present institution formed part of the Secret Library of Sixtus FV (1471-1484), the term persisted because these archives were deemed private until opened by Leo XIII (1878-1903) in 1881. At present these papers are partially opened through the pontificate of Benedict XV (1914-1922). Precisely what is contained in the 130 rooms and some four acres of the Vatican Palace where the archive has been located since 1612 is not fully known. In fact, though considerable material has been inventoried, vast sections remain a virtual terra incognita. Indeed, there is still debate on the number oifondi found therein, and more so on the number of buste or folders. Although there are over a thousand indict or inventories, they are far from inclusive and their coverage varies. The reader will find a useful "Inventory of Numbered Indici in the Archivio Segreto Index Room" in appendix 3 of the present volume (pp. BOOK REVIEWS437 443-457). Since the documentation collected has arisen from the various offices which produced it, the conceptual framework of the present study is based on the organizational structure of the Holy See or central government of the Roman Catholic Church. The present guide is the result of a project undertaken by archivists and historians affiliated with the University of Michigan, at the request of the prefect of the ASV, to facilitate the use of the papal archives by English-speaking scholars . Utilizing modern computer database technology, it provides information on a standardized format on the available documentation produced by the Holy See. In its pages one finds the printout of the database compiled. The guide follows the bureaucratic structure of the Holy See established by Sixtus V (1 585- 1 590), and provides a sevenfold division: Part I: College of Cardinals; Part II: Papal Court; Part III: Roman Curia (including Congregations, Offices, and Tribunals ); Part IV: Apostolic Nunciatures, Internunciatures, and Delegations (from Albania to Zaire); Part V: Papal States (which includes sections on General Administration and Territory under French Occupation, 1809-1814); Part VI: Permanent Commissions; and finally Part VII: Miscellaneous Official Materials and Separate Collections (which includes the family...