Musei Capitolini & the Secret Archives of the Vatican

A few days ago Ketch & I went to Musei Capitolini, the Capitoline Museums. Home to some of those most well-preserved and well-known artifacts of Ancient Rome, it was one of my favorites so far.

Favorites include the broken bits of the colossal statues from Ancient Rome, the collection of ancient gems and coins, the huge statue of Marcus Aurelius on horseback, and of course the Capitoline Wolf, depicting the she-wolf suckling Romulus Remus. Overall, the sculptures and portraits exhibited were some of the most beautiful ones from Ancient Rome that I've ever seen.

Ketch and the she-wolf

Oh you know, just a tablet carved like 2000+ years ago. No biggie. I touched it!

The original Marcus Aurelius sculpture. It's been moved indoors to prevent damage. A copy is now outdoors is Piazza di Campidoglio just outside Musei Capitolini.

Gigantic broken statue bits.

Go!

Such a unique portrait. The colors of this marble KILL me! So good.

Diana

Venus


Drunken old lady. Get it, grrrl.

We ate our home-made lunches on the terrace, soaking in some sun and enjoying the beautiful view of the ruins of the forum and the tiled roofs below.

Also, currently the Musei Capitolini are showing an exhibition called Lux in Arcana: the Vatican Secret Archives Reveals itself. The exhibit features 100 documents, some of which are over 2000 years old. Its the first time the Vatican has made its documents from the Secret Archives open to the public and its in honor of the archive's 400 birthday. (NOTE: None of the pictures posted below were taken by me. The security was very tight so I had to pull some from various other sites.)

Everything was displayed in low, wide cases with the featured document in glass and it's date and an explanation of it's context to it's right. The explanations were actually pretty poorly executed, with the information being presented in a very unclear and disjointed manner. We both found that we had to re-read each one a number of times to figure out what was actually going on.

 The exhibit

We saw a letter from Galileo Galilei, a letter from Marie Antoinette written shortly before she was executed, the official Vatican document proclaiming the excommunication of Martin Luther, letters from Abraham Lincoln & Jefferson Davis to the Pope, ancient books entirely handwritten by monks, a letter from Mary Queen of Scots about her upcoming execution, a letter from an Empress from the Ming Dynasty beautifully written on silk, and so much more. Many documents had intricate wax or gold seals and were stamped with the Papal symbol of the crossed keys. 

There were hand-calligraphed books, scrolls, and letters from 1000+ years ago, with curling filigree, gold leaf, and delicate lines - all utterly breathtaking. There was even a document written in gold ink on purple parchment and a 60-meter scroll written by the Knights Templar. 

The letters from Lincoln and Davis struck me particularly hard. They were both writing to the Pope in response to the Pope making an open plea for peace and an end to the Civil War to American bishops and cardinals. Lincoln's handwriting was beyond elegant, as were his words. He was cordial an expressed a similar desire for peace and an end to the bloodshed. Davis, on the other hand, smugly and brattily basically said he would like Peace, but that mean ol'North wouldn't just leave him be. The two letters displayed together created an intense juxtaposition of the integrity of each man.

GALILEO.

Abraham Lincoln. Holy crap.

The Tiara document. Gold ink on purple parchment.

Intricate wax seal.

We found that the contexts given for each item were presented from shockingly biased viewpoints. Obviously we knew it was an exhibit from the Vatican, but they gave antiquated and extremely prejudiced viewpoints of whatever historical issue was being represented by each document.

For example, with the document of Martin Luther's excommunication, it listed the reasons he was considered a heretic and his excommunication. However, it never stated how misguided or, you know, WRONG, that was of the Vatican/Pope because Luther was a VERY religious person but just had slightly different viewpoints from the Catholic clergy in power.

Also, there was another document from the year 1075, called Dictatus Papae, declaring the 27 most important powers & privileges accorded to Pope Gregory VII as the highest ranking Catholic leader. Pope Gregory VII decided of each of these privileges himself. His document claims that he was actually the most powerful person in the entire world and had the right to nullify or change any decrees or laws made by any other leader (kings, etc), no other leaders could change any laws or decrees made by the Pope, and a whole bunch of other totally insane dictatorial demands. The explanation to the right of the document made no comment on how outrageous this was, not even in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. 

The Pope's power in 27 statements.

And finally and most outrageously, the exhibit featured a small section towards the end with documents from Italy and WWII. The explanations did actually seem to make clear that i Partigiani, or Partisans, were in the right (not Mussolini & the fascists.) However, one of the explanations mentioned a concentration camp in Italy but got defensive immediately and claimed it was actually humane and quite nice and not to worry because no one died there. WTF - you have got to be kidding me!!!!!

(Ketch note: That section was brutally fucked up.  It was all curated in a dramatically lit barred cage and then the papacy patted itself on the back for a job well done by opening its secret archives in 1945 to help people find out the fates of missing persons.  Good job, guys.  I'm sure we'd all love to see a critical writeup of this exhibit from some major intellectuals.)

The items featured in the exhibit were truly treasures, and many of them shouldn't belong to the Vatican at all. The weight of all this history, spanning thousands of years and the histories of Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States should not be in the clutches of one narrow-minded entity, The Vatican. It is more than a bit horrifying to become aware of how vast and unchecked their extreme wealth and power is and has been for thousands of years.