On March 24, 1944, following the partisan action the day before at via Rasella, which had left 33 casualties from the SS Polizeiregiment “Bozen”, German occupation forces organized a ruthless reprisal against the civilian population: ten Italians had to be executed every German who had been killed.
From the Regina Coeli prison and from the Fascist jail at Via Tasso, 330 prisoners were collected: anti-fascists, partisans, Jews, common convicts, passers-by who had been captured during the searches that followed the attack. As he rushed to draw up a list of convicts, major Herbert Kappler (who had conducted a search at the Roman ghetto the year before), added five more people to his list, thus increasing the total to 335.
The place where revenge was to take place was picked out in the outskirts of Rome: just over a kilometre from the Quo Vadis church, close to the St. Callixtus catacombs, where Via Ardeatina meets Via delle Sette Chiese, is an old sandstone quarry: the Fosse Ardeatine.
That very afternoon, on board various military cars and vans, those who had been sentenced were brought to the place of their martyrdom. With their hands tied behind their backs they were pushed or dragged into the tunnels that could be accessed by two 4-meter-wide holes. This was what followed, according to the trial proceedings: “five German soldiers took five victims into custody, made them enter the cave, which was scarcely illuminated by torches held by other soldiers who were standing at a distance from each other: they accompanied them until the end and made them turn in another cave, laid out horizontally; there, they made the victims kneel down and each one shot the victim he was taking care of”. Further details were given by Kappler himself: “I said […] that because there was no time, each victim was to be shot once in the cerebellum from a close distance, in order to make the shot certain, but without touching the nape with the gun”. Thus, five at the time, up to the final count: 335. The shooting ended at 7 PM. It was time to conceal the evidence.
With two explosive charges, one at 8 PM, the other at 9 PM (others followed during the next days), access to the cave was prevented. However, the following day, the smell was already so strong that the Nazis decided to set off more mines. At 11:45 on Sunday, March 26, Nicola Cammarota, a Salesian priest, imparted an absolution. On March 30, thirteen priests travelled to the quarry. They understood the extent of the tragedy. Some ran to the Vatican. They informed monsignor Montini, substitute secretary of State. On April 3, Luigi Pedussia, from the Salesian headquarters, sent him a memorandum of the events featuring gruesome details: “there is a pile of corpses: six can be seen clearly […]; behind them is the tunnel, full of other corpses in painful stance”; and furthermore “one was a refined tall man, with black moustache and gold-framed glasses”. “A youngster […] reveals three fingers whose flesh has been stripped off in earlier torture […]. Another has dug his nails in the chest of his comrade, who has fallen beneath him, as if he was trying to get up for the last time”.

In August 1308 nearly a year had passed since the French Templars, without Clement V’s knowledge, had been arrested
by command of king Philip the Fair.
Accusations against the Order were serious: heresy, sodomy, idolatry. The Templars, questioned by the French inquisitors (and undoubtedly tortured) admitted the crimes they were charged with. Then, grand master Jacques de Molay publicly recanted the testimony in which he had stated he renounced Jesus Christ and spat on the Cross. Therefore Clement V, the only one who could judge a religious order, suspended the French Inquisition’s powers annulling its requests. But the king’s men charged once again by openly accusing the pope of wanting to favor the Templars.
After unceasing requests from his legates the Pope, who was at Poitiers, was able to question 72 Knights who were subsequently discharged in a public consistory on July 2nd, 1308. But Philip denied the pope a chance to meet the grand master and the four most powerful dignitaries of the Order: in his view the five men, tired and ill, would have not been able to withstand the few miles separating them from the pope and, for that reason, they had been “accommodated” by the king’s men at Chinon castle! Thus, between August 17th and 20th, 1308, Clement V sent three cardinals charged with the task of questioning the grand master and the others: Hugues de Perraud, visitor of the Order, Raymbaud de Caron and Geoffrey de Charny, preceptors of Outremer and Normandy, Geoffrey de Gonneville, preceptor of Poitou and Aquitaine. Once they had confessed their crimes, the five men were granted a sacramental absolution and were reinstated in the Christian communion. From that moment onwards, only the pope could question them, binding them to their testimony;
as a matter of fact, recanting would have made them relapsi, that is those who have repeated the crimes they had committed before being discharged. And the punishment for the relapsi was death by burning at the stake.

Between December 27 and 31, 1494, the French troops invaded Rome in the train of Charles VIII, who was determined to defeat Alexander VI, who stood in the way of his projects for conquering the Kingdom of Naples. Fearing the worst, on January 7, 1495, the pope took refuge with a small group of cardinals in the Castel S. Angelo fortress through the “Passetto di Borgo”, a long indoor corridor that still connects the Vatican City State with Castel S. Angelo. Alexander VI had had all the curia’s valuables relocated to the fortress, together with its most important documents: among them was certainly a large paper bifolium containing the nomenclator for the pope’s correspondence with the apostolic nuncio to Spain, don Francesco Desprats. Since then, this essential working tool for deciphering and drafting encrypted diplomatic dispatches remained at the Castel S. Angelo Archive and eventually reached the Vatican Secret Archives at the end of the 1700s.

The nomenclator contains various cryptographic systems: two different substitution enciphering alphabets, together with a third substitution option for vowels alone; a grid laid out on three text lines containing verbs, pronouns and articles with their substitution symbols: for example a letter of the Greek alphabet, lambda (λ), for the words “being silent”; a backward “c” (ɔ) for the word “riding”; finally, on three columns, a series of words and phrases (probably the most recurring, the most “delicate”, the most “secret”) swapped with names on the first column and by syllables on the second and third columns; thus, 23 substitutes the word “pappa” (pope), 46 “facto d’arme” (armed clash), “cc” means “the pope’s daughter”, “gu” “the pope’s children”, “nu” “Florentines”, “no” “Venetians” and so forth. The utter secrecy of codebooks, which were often destroyed not to preserve any trace and periodically renewed, still prevents us from correctly interpreting some dispatches, which are destined to remain forever secret.

On January 7^th, 1844, just over ten years before the bull Ineffabilis Deus, near Lourdes, Marie-Bernarde Soubirous was born. Young Bernadette was just over fourteen years old when, on February 11^th, 1858, at the grotto of Massabielle, she saw “a small young lady” dressed in white, with a blue sash around her waist, a golden rose on each foot and a rosary in her hand, who asked her to return to the same place every day for two weeks.
In subsequent apparitions the “Beautiful Lady” called for prayer and penance. However, she did not disclose her identity until March 25^th; having appeared to the shepherdess, she addresses her by saying “Que soy era immaculada concepciou” (I am the Immaculate Conception). Bernadette was bewildered; little did she know that the expression signified a dogma of faith defined a few years earlier: it would be up to abbot Peyramale, not without profound turmoil, to explain the meaning of the expression she could barely understand.

Meeting the Virgin left a mark on the young lady; in July 1866 she entered the monastery of Saint-Gildard at Nevers in order to escape, as she herself states, the morbid attention the people paid to her since she began having the visions. During the 13-year period at the convent she carried out her tasks with generous commitment, driven by the desire to live each moment of her life in love. As her already poor health got progressively worse, on December 17^th, 1876, Bernadette wrote a letter to Pius IX: in defining herself as a “little Zouave of Your Holiness, armed with prayer and sacrifice”, she hopes for the pontiff “that from Heaven the Holy Virgin cast her maternal eye on You, most Holy Father, because you have proclaimed her Immaculate”.

With the bull Faciens misericordiam of August 1308, after he had annulled all former inquiries conducted by the French Inquisition against the Templars (who had been arrested by command of the French king Philip the Fair), Clement V took the trial against the Order into his own hands. His apostolic commissioners would launch inquiries against the Temple in all Christian realms, whereas diocesan inquiries officiated by local bishops would investigate each Knight. The subsequent Council of Vienne (1311-1312) would sift the results from the commissioners’ inquests thus deciding about the Order’s fate, while provincial councils headed by the bishops would consider each Knight’s case. The pope eventually reserved for himself the right to judge the Grand Master and the Temple’s other four dignitaries. Besides, his tactic was not new.

Since the day of the arrest of the French Templars (October 13^th, 1307), Clement V had tried every possible means to contain the king’s aims: by pre-emptively having the Temple Knights arrested, wherever they might be, thus taking them from secular authorities (November 22^nd, 1307); moreover, by annulling all proceedings carried out by the French Inquisition and the king’s men, who had barbarously tortured the Templars forcing them to confess (or, rather, to accept accusations made against them); and eventually by discharging seventy-two Knights and the four high dignitaries. But now, could he be able to ascertain the truth, thus avoiding all interference in the trial? In other words, even by acting judiciously, would he have been able to avoid the Order’s conviction, a sentence that the French king wanted at all costs? From the Temple’s suppression, Philip would have gathered nothing but advantages: the large debt he had contracted with the Templars, bankers to the French Crown, would have been wiped out; after he had unveiled its wickedness, he would have eventually succeeded in craftily confiscating the wealth from the rich and powerful Order, which in the meantime had become corrupt and heretical. Wasn’t Philip, the heir of a millennial tradition, “the anointed one”, the monarch by divine right? Therefore, it was up to him, the new champion of religious orthodoxy, to personally defend and vouch for the Gallican Church’s freedom even against the Church of Rome and the Templars themselves, who were but a mere financial branch of the said Church. A kind of power that Philip, within his reign, would not and could not grant anyone but himself. The trial formally started on November 22^nd, 1309, but the papal commissioners only started working non-stop and constantly in March 1310, thus perfecting the accusations: 127 articles drafted to ascertain the Order’s responsibility. In the city, the Templars who were ready to testify were about 600, detained in prisons, abbeys and private homes! Everyone wanted to defend the Order. Everyone but the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, who stated that he wanted to testify in the presence of the pope alone, even though the trial was meant to judge the Order altogether and he himself was not accused, but just a mere witness.

But the Grand Master had his good reasons: he had been warned by the king’s men not to contradict himself. After having admitted his guilt and having abjured his crimes at Chinon, in August 1308, Molay had been discharged and reinstated in the Christian communion. At that point, he could not recant: that would have made him a relapsus, someone who had fallen into heresy once again. And the relapsi were usually burnt at the stake. In spite of the Grand Master’s defection, the Templar’s defense became increasingly stronger; all witnesses spoke in favor of the Order. And at that point, the king intervened by masterfully boycotting the proceedings. By drawing in bad faith from the information gathered at two different inquiries, the diocesan one at Sens and the general trial against the Order, on May 11^th, 1310, Archbishop Philippe de Marigny, brother of Enguerard, one of Philip’s most trusted men and a member of his council, summoned the provincial council of his diocese, Paris, thus condemning fifty-four Templars who were in his jurisdiction. The verdict? Relapsi, since
at the diocesan inquiry they had confirmed the confessions they had made following the arrest in 1307, even though they had recanted in front of the papal commissioners. After the fifty-four were burnt, the other Templars, terrified and bewildered, threw in the sponge: between November and June 1311, nearly one-third out of the six-hundred Knights spontaneously appeared before the judges, only to confirm what they had stated in previous testimonies. Recanting meant dying. Those two-hundred excruciating testimonies, given while fearing both contradiction and the frustrating desire to defend the Order, are contained in the parchment roll’s nearly 60 linear meters.

“The feelings of those who share my sorrow, my dear brother-in-law, are the only consolation I can receive in this sad circumstance. Please receive my wishes for the new year and reassurance of my sincere devotion, that I am, my dearest brother-in-law, your affectionate sister-in-law and cousin Marie Antoinette”. A note with no date, just over ten lines in French, written in a clear and tidy script on a small sheet of paper, signed by the last queen of France. The contents of this dispirited message that bears no official character suggest it may have been written during one of the gloomiest periods in Marie Antoinette’s existence: between December 1792 and January 1793, just after the revolutionary tribunal’s death sentence against her husband Louis XVI, desacralized as “Citoyen Louis Capet”, and just before his execution on January 19, 1793. Marie Antoinette was held prisoner with all the royal family at the Tour du Temple, an ancient fortress built by the knights Templar in the 13^th century. Anxious over her husband’s dire fate and certainly foreseeing her own death, the queen wrote this message to an unknown recipient, possibly Louis XVI’s brother, Charles Philippe, count of Artois and future king Charles X of France. Ten months after this note’s supposed date, Marie Antoinette’s curse fate unfolded: early on October 16, 1793, she was taken to the guillotine on a squalid barrow. She was rigid and feverish, with bloodshot eyes and grossly cut white hair sticking out from her bonnet. As she mounted the scaffold, she committed herself to the executioner. At 12:15 the severed head of the last queen of France was shown to the crowd, that yelled “Long live the Republic!”.

Antecedents: the indulgence scandal

In 1514 Albert of Hohenzollern, archbishop of Magdeburg and apostolic administrator of the Halberstadt diocese, is granted by Rome the wealthy bishopric of Mainz, therefore reaching an unprecedented gathering of ecclesiastical benefices. In order to obtain the said provision, Albert had paid the Apostolic Camera 29,000 ducats. A considerable amount provided by the powerful Fugger bankers. The escamotage which would allow him to repay his debt is suggested by some at the papal Curia: Alberto would preach indulgences in his dioceses and would retain a small percentage of the profit, sending the rest to Rome for the newly-created Fabric of Saint Peter.

Preaching was left to the care of Johan Tetzel, who began operating in the Brandeburgh territory in spring 1517, stimulating the faithful’s generosity with a contemporary jingle: “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings / a soul from Purgatory springs” (Sobald das Geld in Kasten klingt, die Seele aus dem Fegfeuer springt). Other occasions for the lucre of alms were offered at Wittemberg, where it was possible to visit elector Frederick of Saxony’s collection of relics every second Sunday after Easter, or during All Saints, when the duly confessed faithful could reach plenary indulgence from Assisi’s Porziuncola for an amount of money.

At the peak of the preachers’ and devout’s fervour, Luther, outraged by the forgiveness of sins in exchange for an offering, could hold his disdain any longer. On the side door of the Wittemberg castle’s chapel he hung 95 theses introduced by a warning of the following tenure: “Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittemberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, master of arts and of Sacred Theology, lecturer in ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen”. The 95 theses were now a reality. The clash with Rome began.

The clash with Rome: burn Luther’s books!

«My die is cast: I despise alike Roman fury and Roman favour!». With these words, on July 10th, 1520, in a letter to his friend Georg Burckhardt (also known as Spalatin), the Augustinian monk Martin Luther commented the definitive break with Rome and pope Leo X. The bull Exsurge domine, that had ordered him to withdraw his 95 theses, had already been published on June 15th, and had been sent to Germany. The papal document took a long time to prepare. Even though he had already been judged in Rome for alleged heresy in June 1518, the trial was subsequently suspended for political reasons: at the death of emperor Maximilian I, the pope did not want to jeopardise the chances of his candidate, Charles of Habsburg; in order not to upset Frederick of Saxony, Luther’s great patron who was also one of the seven German princes who had the right to vote for a new emperor, the pope temporarily dismissed the “Luther issue”.

However, once Charles V had been elected (June 1519), the problem swiftly returned among the pontiff’s priorities. The commission who had been put in charge of examining the issue was made up by the pope himself, cardinals Benedetto Accolti and Giulio de’ Medici (who was to become Clement V) and Johann Eck. The latter will deem 41 out of 95 of Luther’s propositions as heretical.
The bull was drafted by cardinal Accolti, but it was up to Eck to present the pope with the finished text. The encounter between the two happened at the pope’s hunting lodge, near Magliana, where Leo X was busy cultivating his passion for parties and hunting. The document started with a lengthy preamble - technically called arenga - interwoven with admirable Biblical citations, in order to emphasise the harshness of the damage inflicted by Luther to the Church of Christ. Following were the 41 propositions deemed as heretical. Subsequently was the dispositio, that being the document’s defining part (divided into three sections), in which the pope clarified his will: condemning the monk’s errors pertaining to the faith; ordering to burn his writings; granting him a peremptory 60 day deadline to recant his statements, at the end of which he would be excommunicated.

The bull was examined in 4 consistories, the pope’s plenary assemblies with the Sacred College of Cardinals; one of them even lasted eight hours! Once on German soil, the document was not granted the welcome Rome had hoped for: in Leipzig, it was covered in mud and torn; in Erfurt, theology students, after having shredded it, threw it in the Gera river; many other German cities greeted it in the same manner. In the meantime, the pope summoned Girolamo Aleandro, apostolic nuncio to the emperor, and Johann Eck, as the document’s apostolic executors, so that the bull’s rulings may be obeyed to in all of the empire’s territories. Between 21st and 29th september 1520, Eck personally had the document displayed in three German cities: Meissen, Merseburg, Brandeburg. From then on, the 60-day countdown to Luther’s withdrawal had officially begun.

Luther excommunicated

Many German catholic bishops tried to postpone the bull’s enforcement. Many other German clerics backed Luther, too. The situation was extremely delicate. The papal nuncio, Aleandro, got to Germany with precise instructions: persuading the emperor and his entourage to capture Luther and send him into exile to Rome, once the deadline in Exsurge Domine had expired, by also prosecuting his followers and whoever published his writings.

However, once again, Frederick of Saxony intervened. On november 6, 1520, he appealed to German law, which stated the impossibility of condemning a German citizen without a just trial. Initially, even Charles V seemed to be backing Luther, by granting him the privilege of appearing at the imperial assembly in Worms, which had been scheduled for January 1521. Papal nuncio Aleandro protested by declaring pontifical power as superior to all forms of guarantees by German law. However, the news brought by Johann Eck about the deadline soon expiring, and that the excommunication decree against Luther was to be published soon (it will be on January 3rd, 1521), forced the emperor to withdraw from his decision: the monk would soon be subject to the harshest ecclesiastical penance, and the places he would visit would be struck by interdiction; moreover, persons who are to communicate with him, would automatically be excommunicated. Therefore, on December 17th, Charles V authorised Frederick of Saxony to take Luther to Worms in order to make him recant.

The following year, on January 3rd, with the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, the pope excommunicated Martin Luther. On the same day, special faculties were granted to Albert, bishop of Mainz, appointed as inquisitor for Germany, and to the nuncios Caracciolo, Aleandro and Eck, to whom the pontiff offered a special faculty of prosecuting all Lutherans, whatever their condition might be, and of bringing all penitents to the ecclesiastical communion. The text of the bulla is transcribed in the Medici pope’s register, just after that of the Exsurge Domine. After a specifically juridical arenga, where little space is left to biblical texts, the pope summarises the document’s rulings, to the point where he casts the harshest ecclesiastical penance against Luther and his followers, reserving for himself a prospective absolution of the monk, and ordering all ecclesiastical authorities to fight the Lutheran heresy in defence of the Catholic faith.

They used to wear leather moccasins, stitched and curled at the front. It might have been from such shoes that one of the largest groups of native Americans derived its name: the Ojibwa (from ojiib wabwe), a term meaning curled.
Other traditions link the name with a peculiar pictographic alphabet used to preserve the memory of factual events, but also of visions and dreams (ozhibii’iwe); others think that the tribe’s name was linked to their specific language (ojiib we). Whichever the origin of their name, they preferred to refer to themselves as Anishinabag, which probably means ‘the first men’. The myth of their foundation and their “theology” derived from the same self-consciousness. It had been God who created them, by spreading them on Earth and thus making them the ancestors of all north-American Indian tribes.

Coming from the East, they arrived in Canadian territory through the great lakes, settling not far from Sault Saint Marie, on the southern bank of Lake Superior. At the end of the XVIII century, also thanks to aid from the French, they became undisputed masters of the whole of present-day Michigan, from the southern border of Wisconsin and Minnesota, comprising the Red River region, to the Turtle Mountains in North Dakota.
They primarily survived with fishing and hunting, periodically devoting themselves to harvesting cranberries and producing maple honey. They lived in very peculiar tents - the so-called wigwams - built by bending wooden shafts in a bow-like shape and covering them with bark and animal skins.

The natives first came into contact with the Europeans just after Columbus’ journey, roughly at the end of XV sec. However, it was only during the 17th century that a nucleus of Jesuit missionaries began their evangelisation and, in some cases, humanitarian enterprise, thanks to alliances between the French settlers and Canadian tribes. Missionaries acted as a restraint against merchants and hunters, their habit-corrupting influence and the transmission of illnesses that were lethal for the population.

Relationships between Indians and Europeans were obviously not always tolerant, mainly when local populations were unscrupulously exploited by the English and the French for their geo-political interests. Generated by European national conflicts, the so-called Intercolonial Wars of 1689-1763 saw the battle between France and England, with the Indian tribes often lined up on opposing fronts. However, success for the English, who were able to control the Canadian territory with the Treaty of Paris of 1763, was not enough to guarantee lasting peace, which eventually triumphed only a century later, in 1867 when modern Canada was born with the British North America Act.

The new political situation obviously caused new possibilities for an action by the Catholic Church.
On July 11, 1882, the Apostolic Vicarage of Pontiac was founded; a few years later, in 1887, Pierre Pilsémont, chief of the Ojibwa Indians tribe (also known as Chippewa), wrote to Leo XIII calling him “Grand Master of Prayers, who makes functions of Jesus”, thanking him for having sent his tribe a “guardian of Prayer”, the first apostolic vicar of Pontiac Narcisse Zéphirin Lorrain. The letter, in the Indian language but written in Western script, is on birch bark and dates to “There where the Great Grasses are [Grassy Lake], in the month of the flowers [may]”.
It is a very peculiar document, written on an unusual and very fragile material.

On June 1^st, 1848, Pius IX appointed a special commission made up of twenty theologians in charge of presenting the pontiff with their views regarding the opportunity to define the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The votes submitted to the pope were largely favourable. The same issue was presented to the congregation of cardinals appointed by the pope on December 6^th. The cardinals proved to be well disposed towards the definition, even though they called for permission to be asked to the episcopate by means of an encyclical. On February 2^nd, 1849, Pius IX issued a document (Ubi primum) in which he asked the bishops to inform him about how the clergy and people in the various dioceses felt about defining the Immaculate Conception: out of 603 replies, 564 gave a positive response regarding the proclamation of the dogma. Roughly fifty bishops were split between abstainers, those who were firmly opposed and those who backed an indirect definition: the latter view was also welcomed by Gioacchino Pecci, bishop of Perugia and future successor of Pius IX by the name of Leo XIII.

In 1850 the theological commission drafted the first project for a dogmatic constitution: however, late in 1851, the pontiff incubated a new layout for the bull, in which he hoped to join the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception dogma with the condemnation of modern errors. Thus, in 1852, he appointed a special commission in charge of examining a constitution project that pursued such aim. However, after eighteen months at work, the commission had only been able to examine the parts regarding dogma, thus drafting a layout that did not meet with Pius IX’s favour. As he had decided to issue the bull within the year, on March 22^nd, 1854, the pope appointed an advisory congregation of cardinals, which drafted six other layouts for the document that underwent further discussion. The text was widely criticized, since it seemed to resemble a theological treatise rather than an act of supreme magisterium; therefore, changes were made to the whole document, which now began with the words Ineffabilis Deus. On November 20^th, 1854, roughly one hundred bishops had reached Rome from various countries. Until November 24^th, long sessions were held between cardinals and bishops, which resulted in various observations to the bull’s text. However, Pius IX wished that the episcopate’s opinions only regarded formals aspects, without intervening on the drafted text. In the secret consistory of December 1^st, 1854, the observations by the cardinals were examined and various changes were made to the papal document. Having taken the matter into his own hands, the pope ordered msgr. Luca Pacifici, secretary of briefs, to draft the bull’s final text and to submit it the pope alone.

The document’s complexity prevented it from being ready by December 8^th; thus, for the same date only the part regarding the final decree that sanctioned the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary was prepared. During the grand liturgical celebration at Saint Peter’s, in the presence of nearly two hundred prelates and of a flocking assembly of faithful, Pius IX read the bull’s text often stopping in profound emotion. At the end of December, the whole document was ready; it was translated in numerous languages and subsequently conveyed to the episcopate. The proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception ratified the immunity of Mary’s person since the first instant of her conception from original sin, in virtue of the merits of Christ. Apart from increasing a devotion for the Virgin among believers, the document was a decisive step towards the definition of papal infallibility: as a matter of fact, even though he had consulted bishops and cardinals in preparing the bull, Pius IX made no mention of their consent in the dogma’s definition. The papal act thus represented an initiative coming from the pope: in gathering the faithful’s spontaneous adhesion, it seemed to demonstrate the Church’s sovereign authority in doctrine and the infallibility of Christ’s vicar on Earth. The very outline the pontiff wanted to give the document is significant: it highlighted the persuasion that at the time the Church had regarding the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, whereas the doctrine from the Fathers, the data from tradition and the interventions from previous pontiffs were conglobated in the general outline: thus, Pius IX asserted the importance of the Holy See’s and the hierarchy’s current magisterium backed by the sensus fidelium.

It was the year 1530. For months the matrimonial case of Henry VIII of England versus Catherine of Aragon had been pending in the hands of pope Clement VII. The king, obsessed more than ever by what he called his “Secret Matter,” wanted to obtain at all costs the pope’s annulment of his first marriage so that he could marry the young Anne Boleyn and hopefully sire the longed-for heir to the throne. It was thus necessary to step up the pressure on the pope. On June 12th, Henry summoned a number of his supporters to court, mostly members of the House of Lords, and asked them to write to Clement VII, urging him to adjudicate the king’s suit by granting him an annulment. A draft of the proposed letter was read out to the meeting, but some of the attendees criticized its overly aggressive tones; it suggested that a council might be summoned to act against the pope if he did not grant Henry’s wish.

After a few days’ adjournment - perhaps the time needed to redraft the letter - the meeting sat again on June 16th, the Sunday of Corpus Christi. This time, though, Henry took a shrewder approach. To avoid the risk of further delay, he spoke separately to each member. It was impossible to resist his vehement arguments; that day, the letter received a good number of the signatures Henry sought. But the king wasn’t satisfied; the document had to be signed and sealed even by the men who hadn’t been able to come to court. The absentees were reached at their homes by royal commissioners dispatched to every corner of the kingdom. For example, during the night of June 16^th the conspicuous parchment was presented to cardinal Thomas Wolsey at his house at Esher; Wolsey signed it in the space reserved for archbishops and pressed his seal into the wax with which the royal messengers had already filled the tin skippet assigned to him.

The document, bearing all its signatures and seals, was dated and dispatched a month later. The signers included nearly 70% of the members of the House of Lords: all of the kingdom’s dukes, marquesses and earls, most of the barons and the abbots in charge of the major abbeys. None of the signers could have imagined the fate that would befall some of them a few years later. George Boleyn, viscount of Rochford and brother of the future Queen Anne, was executed with her for high treason, aggravated by the further charge of having committed incest with his sister. Richard Whiting, abbot of Glastonbury, was hanged, drawn and quartered for refusing to turn the abbey and its property over to the Crown. Abbot Hugh Cook of Reading was hung as a traitor in his own abbey, his body left to rot on the gallows. Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, and Henry Pole, Baron Montague, wholehearted opponents of the “Anglican Schism,” were beheaded for having taken part in a conspiracy against the king.
The document has been called “the most impressive one ever circulated by the Tudors.” Its 83 signatures embody the stories of the protagonists and the victims of some of the bloodiest decades in English history.

Imperial wardship on the pope’s sovereignty

On February 2nd, 962, Otto I of Saxony was crowned emperor in Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica by pope John XII, after the imperial throne had been vacant for nearly sixty years: the last emperor to be crowned by a pope had been Louis III of Provence in 901. As he rode to Italy for the third time in 961, Otto eventually succeeded in obtaining the crown in exchange for his armed intervention in favor of the pope, who had witnessed an attack on the territories of the Roman Church, the newly-born Papal State, by Berengar of Ivrea, king of Italy. In exchange for the Crown, the Saxon would have guaranteed the pope’s safety and autonomy.

Nearly ten days after the imperial coronation (February 13th), in conjunction with a synod that was to examine various matters, Otto issued the Privilegium Ottonianum. The specimen in our possession is particularly solemn, with features recalling the taste and manufacture of Carolingian luxury codices: an extremely elegant caroline minuscule script written in gold on purple vellum! As it was certainly meant to be exhibited during the day’s public ceremonies, the Privilegium confirmed previous donations by Pepin the Short and Charlemagne to the Apostolic See; moreover, it granted John XII and his successors perpetual dominion over most of the Italian peninsula, thus allowing physical unification of the Papal possessions from Veneto to Campania; in conclusion, it stated the commitment by Otto and his successors to stand by their word, and the duty to defend the pontiff from any attack or aggression.

However, the emperor reserved the highest sovereignty on all territories granted to the pope for himself, by recalling Lothar’s Constitution of 824, a collection of rules regulating relationships between the Empire and the Papacy that sanctioned, among other things, imperial ratification on papal elections and an oath of allegiance to the emperor by the newly-elected pontiff. A series of extremely binding conditions that kept the pope in a state of extreme subjection towards the emperor. How could John XII willingly accept those oppressive conditions? He, who apart from being a pope, was also “prince and senator of all Romans”? Was he not the son of Alberic II of Spoleto? For over twenty years, his father had wisely ruled Rome by controlling the election of many popes and by openly facing Otto himself, as the latter had unsuccessfully started negotiations with Rome for the imperial crown in 951…

John XII betrayed the agreement with the emperor. He joined Adalbert, Berengar of Ivrea’s son, and tried to discredit Otto by every possible means, encouraging other sovereigns to make war on him. As he learned the pope’s intentions (the pope was also guilty of leading a debauched life that didn’t suit his role as the spiritual head of the Church), Otto summoned a synod at Rome in 963, had the pontiff deposed due to unworthiness and forced the election of Leo VIII. However, the struggle was to continue with excommunications, reciprocal perjury and treason accusations and the election of antipopes until John XII’s death.
Some scholars believe that the Privilegium, in its first drafting, did not contain the heavy commitments binding the pope to the emperor, and that those oppressive clauses had been added by Otto’s entourage following the deposition of John XII, in order to secure the election of a pope that would be appreciated by the emperor.

On October 12th, 1492, after sixty-nine days at sea, Christopher Columbus cast the anchor of his caravel, the Santa Maria, near the isle of Guanahani (subsequently named San Salvador). Although he wanted to reach Cathay and Jipangu (modern-day China and Japan) by sea through a new and unexplored way, the unwitting sailor gave the New World to Spain and Europe. The discovery of America would indeed mark the irruption into history of a new humanity (but also of a new Christendom), thus facing Europe with different men and cultures and the issue of “Others”; in a word, the Middle Ages were left behind in a move towards modernity.

Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa in 1451. An excellent seafarer, he had settled in Portugal; passionate about explorations, he studied a quicker way to reach Jipangu and other unknown lands by sea. Around 1484 he had suggested his plan to the king of Portugal; as the sovereign refused, Columbus turned to the monarchs of Castile and Aragon. The first rejection by the Spanish kings in 1487 did not discourage Columbus who, a few years later, in the heat of the Christian war to recapture Spain, was able to agree with the royals upon the funding of the enterprise. It was the spring of 1492. That same year, on August 3rd, Columbus set sail from Palos bound for the West with three vessels: «Niña», «Pinta» and «Santa Maria». After a stop at the Canaries, on September 8th the small fleet began crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

Following Columbus’ return to Europe in March 1493, urged by the Spanish sovereigns who feared territorial claims by king John II of Portugal, pope Alexander VI (Spaniard Rodrigo de Borja) issued a series of documents, among which the most important is the bull Inter cetera of May 4th, 1493. The document is contained in the Vatican Secret Archives’ Registro Vaticano 777. Even though it was written, posted and registered at the end of June 1493, Inter cetera (which appears in two draftings) was dated backwards, in its final version, to May 4th. With the document, also known as “partition bull”, because of the apostolic authority over the Western lands of the former Roman Empire that he wielded as provided by the forged Donation of Constantine, the pope granted to the Spanish royals possession of all islands and lands, recently discovered or to be discovered in the future, west of a pole-to-pole line ideally drawn 100 leagues from the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands.
By this charter, the pontiff defined Spain and Portugal’s maritime and colonial dominion. Furthermore, the pope requested the sovereigns to swiftly provide for Catholic missionaries, who were sent to convert indigenous populations to the true faith in Christ: thus, a partition and a missionary bull that would have many repercussions in years to come.

Among other things, the papal document contains an explicit reference to the mission carried out by Christopher Columbus (called Cristoforus Colon in the bull), “man assuredly worthy and of the highest recommendations and fitted for so great an undertaking”, as he was commissioned by the Spanish sovereigns to “make quest for these remote and unknown mainlands and islands, where hitherto no one had sailed, not without the greatest hardships and dangers”.

The treaty of Tordesillas (1494) between the Spanish and Portuguese kings would move the boundaries of the respective areas of influence to 370 miles from the ideal line drawn by the pope.

In 1650, when Christine of Sweden (1626-1689) was crowned queen of her country, she felt entitled to do whatever she liked with her life and property, and began to implement - cautiously but with conviction - her plan to leave the realm and the court. By retiring to “private life”, she would be better able to cultivate her cultural interests and the learned associations she had promoted in Sweden. These were the circles in which she came to her decision to convert to Catholicism, a decision that led four years later to her formal abdication of the throne.
Christine left the kingdom to her cousin Charles Gustave (who became Charles X of Sweden), despite opposition from the Senate. On June 1, 1654, she had her deed of abdication drawn up at the castle of Uppsala; the most solemn copy is preserved in the Vatican Secret Archives. In this document she assured herself a future standard of living in keeping with her rank, and received territories in Sweden and Pomerania, including the islands of Öland, Gotlkand and Ösel (today the latter is part of Estonia).
On October 10, 1655, after pope Alexander VII had learned that the former queen of Sweden was willing to profess her new faith publicly, he informed her that Lukas Holste, a famous humanist who was the Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library, would be travelling to Innsbruck to meet her and receive her abjuration of Protestantism and her acceptance of Catholicism.
A month later, on November 3, after Christine had professed her new faith, she was at last able to start for Rome. She arrived there on December 23, and entered the city through Porta del Popolo, which had been majestically adorned to welcome her. After a stay in the Vatican palaces (specifically the Tower of the Winds, today part of the spaces occupied by the Secret Archives), she moved first to Palazzo Farnese, then to a mansion on Via della Lungara. Here she installed her library and her collection of paintings, and opened her Roman salon to artists, philosophers and scientists. Upon her death, on April 19, 1689, her library and documents, among them her deed of abdication, were acquired by the Vatican.
Christine’s solemn deed of abdication, now in the Vatican Secret Archives, is the most elaborate of all the documents related to that event. It consists of two sheets of parchment folded in two and joined by a cord of braided yellow and blue silk threads (yellow and blue being the colours of the royal Swedish flag). The cord emerges from the document at ten points, forming eighteen braids to which are attached 307 wooden skippets intended to house the signers’ wax seals. (Sixty-five skippets are empty, and seem never to have held any seal; another 242 contain red wax but only 129 of them were impressed) The other copy of the deed of abdication, not perfectly identical to the one at the Vatican, and bearing only the queen’s seal, is preserved at the Swedish National Archives in Stockholm.

The most significant event in Innocent IV’s pontificate is the Council of Lyons (26th June - 17th July 1245), summoned from January 3rd, 1245, in order to confront various problems, amongst which the aid to the Holy Land, which the preceding year had fallen into the hands of the Turks, who fought on behalf of the Sultan of Egypt, and the reconciliation of emperor Frederick II with the Church.

Only a few months earlier, on April 13th, 1245, the pope renewed Gregory IX’s excommunication of Frederick II, only to annul his decision the following month, when Frederick had stated he was to fight in the Holy Land for three years. Initially, both parties sought an agreement which would end the oppressive friction between papacy and empire. As soon as he was elected (25th June 1243), Innocent IV had entered negotiations in order to settle the issue, and Frederick had seemed positively inclined to ending a fight which was weakening the strength of both parties. However, the matter of Lombardy still remained unresolved. The northern Italian territories were formally under imperial power; the plead for autonomy from the Lombards and their glorious communal tradition, which had allowed them to challenge and even overcome Frederick I Barbarossa, Frederick’s grandfather, were joined by constant concern from the Pope, who did not want the Church State to be surrounded by imperial land.

Subsequently, matters had increasingly precipitated, even though both parties had shown slight detente. The Viterbo revolt, ordered in September 1243 by cardinal Raniero Capocci, Frederick’s worst enemy, started a process which ended all hopes for pacification. The cardinal made every effort to avoid peace with the emperor, mainly by organising the distribution of pamphlets that already spoke of deposition. The pope, on the other hand, stood by. He knew about Capocci’s enterprise, but he had also endowed one of his delegates with the power to annul the emperor’s excommunication.

After many ups and downs, amongst which one must remember a missed clarifying encounter at Narni between Frederick and Innocent and the pope’s subsequent flight to Genova and Lyons, a council was summoned in the same French city, de facto in the power of the French king. Frederick was not able to stop the council like he had previously done under Gregory IX (1241), when he intercepted the cardinals going to Rome at sea and had arrested them; this time, threatening German and Sicilian clerics was not enough.

Once the council had begun, the pope declared that the conflict with the emperor represented the chief cause for his sufferings, much more than corruption, the situation in the Holy Land, the schism with the Greek Church and other grave issues. In the deposition decree, the bull Ad Apostolice dignitatis, issued on July 17th, 1245, to the council fathers’ astonishment, Innocent IV formally deprived the emperor of his imperial dignity. Frederick, amongst his various crimes, had set himself outside God’s design, which put the pope at the summit of the Church and human society as Christ’s vicar. Frederick, as well as being considered as a perjurer, sacrilegious, breacher of peace, was therefore also a heretic. To this and other so-called traditional accusations featured in the direct clash between papacy and empire, we can link a new concept aimed at redefining the relationship between the pope and the emperor: the latter and his empire are now dependent on the papacy, and moreover on the pope in person, the Vicar of Christ on earth.

A letter from the artist to the bishop of Cesena

In 1547, when pope Paul III appointed Michelangelo superintendent of the Fabbrica (the construction) of St. Peter’s, replacing Antonio da Sangallo, the artist could surely not have imagined that he would soon be bereft of his powerful patron and protector. The Farnese pope died on November 10, 1549. Twelve days later, pending the election of a new pope, the committee responsible for overseeing the Fabbrica issued a decree whereby the work at St. Peter’s was to be halted, and the construction site and materials were to be confiscated and locked up.

This obviously implied halting the payment of wages due to all the craftsmen, carpenters and masons who were working on the project.
Michelangelo, suddenly finding himself in very straitened circumstances, and also worried about the fate of his collaborators, was forced to seek help from his patrons and friends. One of the people he turned to was Cristoforo Spiriti, bishop of Cesena and future patriarch of Jerusalem.

In a short letter, Michelangelo told Spiriti that his workers had stayed at the Fabbrica “to guard it and defend the construction materials and other things like soldiers, at the peril of their lives,” but since he could not pay them himself, he feared the situation might lead to “damage amounting to thousands of scudi” and would probably cause a “scandal.”
A solution was found after Julius III was elected to the papal throne, on February 7, 1550. On March 13^th, the head of the Fabbrica ordered the keys to the site to be returned to Michelangelo, and so they were.

Mary Stuart’s last letter to pope Sixtus V

From the very first day that she donned the crown of England, in 1558, Elizabeth saw her cousin Mary Stuart - the woman who was dubbed by the English court the “monstrous Scottish dragon” - as a dangerous rival. As the queen of Scotland, the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister and a faithful follower of the Church of Rome, Mary was indeed a threat to the queen of England, who subscribed wholeheartedly in Protestant teachings and was considered by the English Catholics to be the “bastard” daughter of Henry VIII and his “concubine” Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth had only to await the right moment to thwart the threat.

A chance came in 1568, when a revolt by the Scottish lords forced Mary to flee her kingdom. In that dramatic circumstance, Elizabeth offered Mary comfort and protection. But as soon as the “Scottish woman” reached Carlisle, in northwest England, Elizabeth had her arrested under a pretext. This was the beginning of the eighteen long years of Mary’s detention, which she spent in six different places, not always comfortable ones: Bolton, Tutbury, Wingfield Manor, Chatsworth, Chartley Hall and finally Fotheringhay. Here, at the end of a trial in which she was charged with high treason for complicity in Anthony Babington’s plot to kill Queen Elizabeth, Mary was found guilty and ordered to prepare herself to die.

The exiled queen of Scots was told the verdict and the sentence on November 23, 1586, and that same day she decided to write to pope Sixtus V to inform him of her inexorable fate. “Now, Holy Father,” she wrote (in French), “it hath pleased God to allow, because of my sins and those of the people of this unfortunate island, that after twenty years of imprisonment, I (sole descendant of the house of England and Scotland to profess this faith) be shut up in a narrow prison and finally condemned, by the States and the heretical assembly of this country, to die.” In this long letter, the queen then described her sufferings, professed her Catholic faith again, and recommended her soul to God.

More than two months went by before Mary came to her tragic end. Elizabeth hesitated at length before signing the order of execution; never before had a sovereign “anointed by God” been sent to the scaffold. At last Elizabeth ended the delay and signed the decree. On February 8, 1587, Mary stepped courageously up to the block. The axe had to fall repeatedly on her neck before the executioner could display her severed head to the crowd.

Mary Stuart’s death did not mark the end of her dynasty. Her son, James VI of Scotland, took up her legacy and, as James I of England, accomplished the eternal dream of that country’s rulers: to unite England and Scotland under a single sceptre. And the motto that Mary had embroidered on her garments during the long years of prison - En ma fin gît mon commencement, “In my end lies my beginning” - was accomplished, to the letter.

In 1644 the city of Beijing fell into the hands of invaders coming from Manchuria, who had been marching towards China for years. The troops of khan Dorgon, lord of the Manchurians, raided the Forbidden City, the imperial palace! Chinese emperor Chongzen, of the Ming dynasty, did not want to surrender to the enemy. He committed suicide. Dorgon proclaimed his nephew as the new emperor of China by the name of Shunzhi, hence commencing the Qing dynasty, who held power until 1912.

Surviving representatives of the Ming dynasty fled north. They settled in Nanjing, where they were able to reorganise their court. Thanks to the support by numerous local governors, who viewed the Manchurians as barbarian invaders, they tried to stop the unrelenting progress of the enemies, who were determined to conquer the whole of China. However, the Southern Mings’ empire would have a short life-span. The last emperor, Yongli, would be forced to move south and settle in Guangzhu.
At this new see, empress Wang, Yongli’s foster-mother, converted to Christianity thanks to the preaching of various Jesuit fathers, amongst which Michele Boym. The empress’ prestige opened the court to the new religion: Wang, as a catholic, took up the name of Helena, as a homage to Constantine the Great’s mother (306-339 A.D.); likewise her son Yongli, having embraced the Christian faith, took up the name of Constantine, the first Roman and Christian emperor in history.

In the complex historical context in which the Ming dynasty’s successors were dwelling, Helena found some kind of providential divine intervention in her conversion, providential for China and for the future of the dynasty itself. In her mind, with the baptism of her son and her court, the way to the future conversion of the whole of China would be paved and, just as the Roman Constantine, the new Chinese emperor would succeed over his “pagan” enemies, thus restoring the Ming empire’s unity and greatness. Moreover, the adherence to the Roman Church could represent a worthy argument in the hope for support from European Catholic realms in the war against Manchurian invaders.

With such expectations, the widow-empress Helena wrote to Innocent X in 1650, informing the pope about her conversion and that of her son, emperor Yongli-Constantine. However, the imperial message, dated to the Fourth Year, the Tenth Moon and the Eleventh Day of Yongli’s reign (November 4th, 1650), would only get to Rome at the end of 1655, in the hands of father Boym. It was preserved in a gold-laced bamboo tube with black ink decorations on a golden background sketching the dragon, the empire’s emblem.
The addressee was written in Chinese, with cinnabar ink: “To Innocent, most holy Pontiff of the Catholic religion, vicar of Jesus Christ and Holy Father”. The letter was itself decorated in its laced edges with the same dragon theme, and corroborated with the traditional Chinese cinnabar seal, the so-called chop.

Once he had received the letter, Alexander VII - who in the meantime had succeeded Innocent X - expressed his satisfaction at such a great event and sent his blessing to the sovereigns (the papal reply to the letter is preserved in the Vatican Secret Archive, Epistolae ad Principes, Reg. 60, f. 303r).

“The angel with the plaque from the Cross (INRI) and the angel with the crown of thorns, two statues sculpted by master Bernini, are too beautiful to be exposed to the weather and cannot be located on Sant’Angelo Bridge.” The account is from Domenico Bernini, Gian Lorenzo’s son, who recounted that Pope Clement IX Rospigliosi had thus decided. “He did not want such beautiful works of art to remain exposed to the ravages of time, and has ordered two copies be made, in order to have them placed on the bridge in their stead.” The two statues were to be sent to Pistoia, the birthplace of pope Clement. For the bridge, two copies of the masterpieces carved by the students of the artist’s workshop would suffice.

Bernini had designed the scenic panorama for Ponte Sant’Angelo during the reign of pope Alexander VII, who was succeeded in June 1667 by Giulio Rospigliosi, an old friend of the artist. The new Pope Clement IX was a poet, playwright and appreciative to the arts. He also welcomed his predecessor’s project because of the friendship that bound him to the sculptor for over thirty years. In fact, many years before, in 1634, Bernini had designed scenery for a play of the then monsignor Rospigliosi. Sant’Alessio was staged for the opening of the theatre in the Barberini Palace at the Four Fountains.

For the Ponte S. Angelo Bernini envisioned a marble setting within the city, with included the river, the fortress, the bridge, Michelangelo’s dome and the green hills of the Vatican. The title of the representation was Via Crucis, designating a journey of purification to the Vatican Basilica, the centre of Christendom. Each angel was assigned a symbol of the Passion of Jesus: the column, the nails, the cross and others. Initially, the project was to include eight statues, but Bernini later reconsidered. In April 1668 he increased the number of angels to ten, for the structure of the bridge required it. At the time, the Via Crucis was an object of study and the popes encouraged its diffusion, but the number and choice of the events of Christ’s Passion were not precisely defined. Only towards the middle of following century did pope Benedict XIV set the number of “stations” at 14, the number which they have remained until today .The master then constructed two piers with buttresses (which would be demolished at the end of the 1800’s) and replaced the rails with travertine banisters and gratings, to allow visitors to see the water and to give a new scenographic fluidity to the “theatre” of the Sant’Angelo Bridge. Pope Clement IX would not see these changes completed, as he died on December 9, 1669. The following day Bernini issued a note for payment countersigned by the Master of the Sacred Apostolic Palaces, Bernardino Rocci, and sent it to the accountant of the papal Palace. Another note of payment followed for the merchant Giovanni Battista Marcone, who had transported to Rome the two marble stones needed to make copies of the two angels.

After having entrusted the sculpture of the angel with the crown of thorns to his pupil Paolo Naldini, Bernini went back to work. Perhaps in homage to the late pope who had so admired his chisel work, perhaps to sign with his hands the marble setting which had been envisioned, designed and followed by the pope from beginning to end, he sculpted the angel a second time; this time with the plaque of the cross.

Between October and November 1671 the two copies were placed on the bridge: the scenography was finished. Meanwhile, the first two statues of angels that Bernini had carved, and which the pope had wanted for himself, had not left Rome. Following the pope’s death, they remained at the Rospigliosi Palace. In 1729 Prospero Bernini, Gian Lorenzo’s nephew and the son of Paul, might have bought them and they were donated to the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte, located near Bernini Palace, where, every morning for about forty years, the master had heard Mass before heading to work. To date, those angels are still there.

Burning faith, mystical tension towards Jesus, incorruptible will-power, innate sense of justice. The extraordinary character of Ildebrando di Soana, elected pope on April 22, 1073 as Gregory VII, the last pope to have his election confirmed by a German emperor. But Gregory would have soon amended what he certainly saw as a humiliation: the same emperor, Henry IV, would humiliate himself in front of him outside the castle at Canossa, waiting for three days and three night for pope Gregory to annul his excommunication.

The incident would mark the first step towards the Church’s freeing (libertas Ecclesiae) from imperial power, and towards the claim for the papacy’s prerogatives, amongst which Gregory VII strongly demanded the right to appoint the Church’s hierarchies: the investiture controversy between the papacy and the empire for the appointment of bishops and abbots would eventually resolve with a victory for the Church (Concordat of Worms, 1122). However, it was thanks to Gregory VII that the emancipation process from lay power started.

In 27 statements, collected under the title of Dictatus papae, pope Gregory, architect of the great reformation of the Church which still carries his name (the so-called “Gregorian reform”), summarised the fundamental principles of papal supremacy over all other earthly power, be it lay or spiritual. Written in 1075, the propositions are inserted in the original register from Gregory’s Chancery (Vatican Register n. 2, ff. 80v-81r, in the Vatican Secret Archives) and were dictated by the pope himself: it is in this very meaning that the word dictatus must be seen.

Nearly all statements (24 out of 27) are concerned with the pope’s persona and his prerogatives, with newly formulated precepts which contradict the Church’s normative customs, by asserting the pope’s supremacy over bishops, who had been jealous of the liberties they had enjoyed until then and who were now punished if they disobeyed.
The dictatus starts with the principle of Rome’s primacy: «The Church was founded by God and by God alone» (n.1),
a statement from which all of the pope’s sovereign prerogatives derive. «Only he can be considered as universal» (n.2); «only the pope can use imperial insignia» (n.8); «only he can issue laws, found congregations or abbeys, dismember or unite dioceses» (n.7); «of the pope alone shall princes kiss the feet» (n.9); «he himself must be judged by no one» (n.19).
However, the harshest claim, which overturns relations between popes and emperors - which had consolidated until Gregory’s election - is proposition n.12: «Quod illi liceat imperatores deponere»; in fact it means «it may be permitted to him - to the pope - to depose emperors». Following such assertion is the pope’s power to absolve subjects from fealty to the emperor (n.27).

Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa on February 15, 1564, studied physics and mathematics, though his father, Vincenzo, had wished him to study medicine. Very soon he was captivated by the study of nature and its phenomena, fixing his gaze on earthly things, then raising it to the heavens, seeking to discover the law on which the cosmos rests: the architecture of almighty God, as he, being a good Catholic, believed.
He started teaching mathematics at the University of Pisa in 1588, then transferred to Padua in 1592; he was warmly welcomed there by the Venetian Senate. In 1604 he observed with naked eye the appearance of a supernova. Two years later, he perfected the telescope (invented in Holland), the better to scrutinize the orbits of the heavenly bodies. In 1609, he aimed his telescope at the moon and observed its craters. In January of the next year, he discovered several small, luminous “stars” near Jupiter, and named them the “Medici planets,” in honour of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, liberal patrons of the arts and sciences whose service he hoped to enter. That same year, he resigned from his chair in Padua and moved to Florence with the title of “Primary Mathematician and Philosopher” to the Grand Duke.
But for Galileo, the Florence of the learned turned out to be full of perils, especially from clergymen who opposed the Copernican theories of astronomy advocated in Galileo’s recently published book Sidereus Nuncius (“The Sidereal Messenger”). In 1611, anti-Galileo pamphlets began to circulate in Florence, and a group of Dominican fathers at Santa Maria Novella (including Raffaello Delle Colombe, Tommaso Caccini and Nicolò Lorini) began to preach against his ideas; they also dispatched messages to Rome, accusing him of heterodoxy.

After some hesitation, the pope, Paul V, arranged for the scientist - who in the meantime had been elected to the Lincei Academy - to be summoned to appear before the powerful cardinal and theologian Roberto Bellarmino. On February 26, 1616, Bellarmino formally enjoined Galileo not to advocate, defend or teach (by neither the spoken nor the written word) the Copernican theory of the universe, which the Catholic Church had condemned as contrary to the Holy Scriptures and their divine inspiration.
Returning to Florence in June of 1616, Galileo continued his studies of astronomy, coming into conflict with certain Roman churchmen, including Francesco Ingoli, an opponent of Copernicus, and the Jesuit father Orazio Grassi, who in 1619 published a book called Libra astronomica (“The Astronomical Balance”) in reply to Galileo’s Discourse on the Comets. As the polemics flared, Galileo rebutted Grassi with Il Saggiatore (“The Assayer”), which he published in Rome in 1623.
The next year, 1624, Galileo returned to Rome, arriving on the first of April. He was confident that his old friend Maffeo Barberini, now pope Urban VIII, could understand his scientific ideas and would perhaps defend him. But Galileo’s journey to Rome was not only in vain; it actually worsened his situation, because both he and the Church stiffened their respective positions. It may be that Galileo had forgotten too soon the injunction imparted in 1616 by cardinal Bellarmino, who was a member of the Inquisition.
Back in Florence, Galileo began to write his Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems, which he published in Florence in February of 1632. This was the work that was to provoke his indictment for alleged heresy in early 1633, which forced him to stand trial before the Inquisition Tribunal. Urban VIII had read parts of the Dialogue and recognized in it an open or indeed heated defence of the Copernican system. Believing that the expedients used by Galileo to obtain the Church’s imprimatur were a subterfuge, on September 25, 1632, the pope summoned the scientist to Rome to defend himself against the charges that were accumulating against him: first and foremost, that despite the injunction imparted by Bellarmino in 1616, he had written openly in defence of the Copernican system, which was contrary to the Scriptures.

Galileo was ill at the time and was able to reach Rome only on February 13, 1633. He stayed at Villa Medici as the guest of the Florentine ambassador, Francesco Niccolini. The ambassador and other friends of Galileo’s, including clergymen, tried to soften the pope’s wrath, but in vain. Galileo was subjected to four interrogations before the Inquisition Tribunal, on April 12th and 30th and on June 10th and 21st. He had to recount his experiences, justify his publication of the Dialogue and his failure to obey Bellarmino’s injunction, and clarify “for the sake of the truth” whether he believed Copernicus’s opinions and thought them true.
Galileo defended himself as well as he could, under the circumstances, often invoking the excuses of age (he was then around 70) and forgetfulness, but he was not believed. He was found guilty and under strong suspicion of heresy. Accordingly, the court ordered him to recant his opinions, accept Church doctrine and perform “salutary penances.” The guilty verdict was announced by the Inquisition cardinals in the capitular hall of the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. After addressing a few words to the judges, Galileo - holding a lighted candle in his left hand and touching the Scriptures with his right - knelt and pronounced his abjuration, thus accepting the verdict against him.

In January 1554 prince Philip, son of the Emperor Charles V and Infante of Spain, was named king of Sicily. As the new sovereign of that kingdom he was to send a required oath of fealty to pope Julius III. Sicily, in fact, had been a vassal state of the Holy See since 1059 when, with the Concordat of Melfi of August 23 of that distant year, Robert Guiscard was recognized as a vassal of pope Nicholas II. Nevertheless, the transmission of such a document was blocked by events. When Julius III died on March 23, 1555, he was succeeded by Marcellus II, who himself died on May 1 of the same year. Eventually, pope Paul IV (Carafa) was elected on May 23, 1555. Mindful of his obligations to previous pontiffs, Philip sent the required oath to the new pope, which he certified by affixing a golden seal weighing 800 grams. The seal was precious, majestic and engraved with the finest quality. It is a fine addition to the Vatican Secret Archives’ valuable collection of golden seals, which is considered among the world’s most important.
The seal of Philip of Spain, which has been perfectly preserved, shows interesting technological characteristics in its construction. Differing from other golden seals, which are impressed by a matrix, this one appears to have been manufactured by casting, with adjustments made after pouring gold into the mold. A special technique was used called “lost wax casting”. One can appreciate the technical and artistic attention to detail even in the texture of the supporting ribbons, which were made with intertwined gold threads and end in two gold tassels. From an iconographic point of view, the effort made to represent the power of the prince of Spain is evident in the refined art of sixteenth-century engraving. On the seal’s obverse side (recto), the person is depicted in an attitude of majesty, sitting on the throne with a sumptuous canopy with chimera-like armrests. The rear of the throne is covered with a damask drape. Philip, his face characterized by details from the time’s typical portraiture, has the crown on his head, is wearing armor covered with an ample cloak, and bears the sword in his left hand. At the bottom, at his feet, is placed a helmet with the visor closed. The other hand is resting on the great shield of Spain surmounted by a crown and showing the typical heraldic quarterings of the arms of Castile and León, Granada, Aragon, Jerusalem, ancient Hungary, Sicily, Austria, Burgundy, Brabant, Flanders and Tyrol.
The reverse side (verso) presents the same elegance in engraving. It depicts an equestrian scene, where Philip II is depicted in armor, a crowned helmet with the visor up, riding a galloping horse on a saddlecloth while wielding a sword. Here, as in the other side of the seal, there are two heraldic insignia: to the left of the horse another shield of Spain is decorated with the Order of the Golden Fleece. To the right, a coat of arms is shown surmounted by a crown and divided into four parts, with the emblems of France and England, and encircled by the Order of the Garter.
The inscriptions which appear on the two sides of the seal are engraved in a simple and elegant way and enumerate the various titles of the subject. On the recto, preceded by a cross, the inscription reads: PHILIPPUS DEI GRATIA ANGLIAE FRANCIAE CITERIORIS SICILIAE HIERUSALEM ET REX (Philip, by the grace of God, king of England, France, Upper Sicily and Jerusalem). The writing continues on the verso side, preceded by a small shield with a little eagle: PRINCEPS HISPANIARUM ET ULT(erioris) SICILI(ae) ARCIDUX AUSTRIAE DUX BURGUNDIAE MEDIOLANI ET (prince of Spain and of Sicily and of Outer Sicily, archduke of Austria, duke of Burgundy and Milan).

“Who am I to take on such great weight, such great power? I am not able to save myself, how could I save the whole world?”. As recounted by his biographer, with these words, which seemed to foreshadow what Dante would have defined as “grand refusal” in the third canto of the Divine Comedy’s Inferno, Pietro da Morrone, the future Celestine V, reacted to the news of his election to the papacy, which had been perfected following a long and hard - fought conclave, summoned and often interrupted.

The choice of the pious hermit came after 27 months of vacancy for the Holy See, when the eleven cardinal electors, who had met at Perugia, eventually succeeded in settling their irreconcilable arguments to unanimously converge upon eighty-year-old Peter, whose fame of sanctity had already crossed the mountains in Abruzzo to silently echo both in the Roman Curia and in the courts of European sovereigns. Among them, Charles II of Anjou seems to have played a vital role in inciting the cardinals to elect a successor for Peter’s throne, interested as he was in regaining Sicily from the Aragonese, which he had lost at the Sicilian Vespers in 1281 and which was only to return into his possession thanks to mediations from the pope of Rome, the isle’s nominal sovereign.

The letter sent by Pietro before his election to cardinal Latino Malabranca, dean of the Sacred College, in order to incite more honest behaviour on the cardinals’ part, and the subsequent vision of cardinal Latino himself, full of bleak omens, had allowed to overcome personal ambition, doctrinal arguments between the Franciscans and the Dominicans and the everlasting rivalry (even inside the conclave) between the Colonnas and the Orsinis. The cardinals’ growing concern for stability in the Church and the State and the prospect of a short papacy had played their part, too. The letter with news of the election (bearing eleven red - wax seals, one for each cardinal elector) was delivered to the newly appointed pontiff by four cardinals and two notaries; as they clambered upon mount Morrone, they were welcomed by a holy man, his limbs and clothes worn out, his eyes hollow and swollen from crying, unshaven and bleary - eyed. The angelic pope humbly knelt in front of his guests.