An intriguing collection of documents have gone on display at the Capitoline Museum in Rome.

• One hundred documents from the Vatican Secret Archive are to be on display to the public for the first time ever, to celebrate 400 years of the establishment of the Secret Archive.
• The archives contain documents and artefacts from the C8th to the C20th. The word ‘secret’ does not denote an archive that is covert or clandestine but that it is personal to the incumbent Pope and is stored on 85km of shelving.

Amongst these fascinating documents is a large parchment letter with over eighty pendant seals, sent from the English parliament to the Pope, urging him to annul the marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon, to allow him to marry Ann Boleyn.

Another is a report on the trial of Galileo Galilei who stood trial having been condemned by the Inquisition for saying he believed that the Earth went around the Sun. His signature is on the document.

You can do your own search of the Vatican Secret Archives, just click on the link, the exhibition continues until September

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