Volume 26, Number 9 · May 31, 1979
The Papal Papers
By Hugh Trevor-Roper
Catholicism and History: The Opening of the Vatican Archives
by Owen Chadwick
Cambridge University Press, 174 pp., $13.95
The professional historiography of modern times begins in the nineteenth century, for it was only then that the central archives of European governments were opened to historians. Before 1800 modern historians had occasionally made licensed raids into national archives, but usually they had to be content with private or corporate papers which had been published, or made available, by the owners, or had leaked through the salesrooms. The national archives were generally closed, and the few historians who penetrated them found them in deterrent disorder. It was not until after the Napoleonic Wars that archives of state were generally opened; and they were opened, in part, as a result of those wars. After 1815, the ancien régime seemed very ancient, and its secrets of state no longer seemed to need the old protection.
Review, 3036 words
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