Give back The Temple's stuff.
Posted on 01/02/2010 4:42:07 AM PST by NYer
The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years.
High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen before in public, have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives features a papal letter to Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots.
The book documents the Roman Catholic Church’s often hostile dealings with the world of science and the arts, including documents from the heresy trial against Galileo and correspondence exchanged with Erasmus, Voltaire and Mozart. It also reveals the Church’s relations with princes and potentates in countries far beyond its dominion.
In a letter dated 1246 from Grand Khan Guyuk to Pope Innocent IV, Genghis Khan’s grandson demands that the pontiff travel to central Asia in person – with all of his “kings” in tow – to “pay service and homage to us” as an act of “submission”, threatening that otherwise “you shall be our enemy”.
Another formal letter in the archive highlights the papacy’s political role. In 1863 Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, wrote to Pope Pius IX claiming that the civil war raging across America was entirely due to “Northern aggression”.
“We desire no evil to our enemies, nor do we covet any of their possessions; but are only struggling to the end that they shall cease to devastate our land and inflict useless and cruel slaughter upon our people.”
Other letters in the archive are more personal. In a 1550 note, Michelangelo demands payment from the papacy which was three months late, and complains that a papal conclave had interrupted his work on the dome
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
With regard to the Gettysburg Address, I don’t know how “Catholic” the speech is but Lincoln was speaking just 4 months after the draft riots on NYC. The rioters were largely Irish Catholic so it is entirely possible he wanted to convince this constituency that the war had a noble purpose.
The Vatican was the only country to offically recognize the Confederacy as a country. Also, Jeff Davis was Catholic.
Jeff Davis was Catholic??? Fascinating, since Catholics were targeted by the KKK far more than even blacks. But then again, the KKK was the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party.
I looked up that claim since it was so surprising. Not entirely accurate, but the truth is close enough to be very surprising. The Vatican was the only CATHOLIC country to recognize the confederacy. Apparently, Jeff Davis corresponded with the pope and developed a friendship while the pope was in exile during the Garibaldi crisis (!). And, while Jeff Davis wasn’t Catholic during the Civil War, he died one and had already developed a strong affiliation to Catholic pieties.
The stereotypes of the south aren't quite so clearcut as the SPLC would lead one to believe. There were native Catholics and native Jews who supported the Confederacy and suffered no ill treatment, even to the point of being elevated to the highest offices of the land.
Perhaps there was something else at work?
Nah, not possible, all the history books say so. /s
Not strictly true. The Lateran Treaties of 1929 made the Vatican a city-state. But the Pope did have good relations with Jefferson Davis, that is true.
dangus:
As a Louisiana native and citizen, historically, the most Catholic of the Southern States, and having visited Jeff Davis’s final home on the MS Gulf Coast, I don’t think he ever became Catholic, although he embraced a “High Church Anglo-Catholic style Episcopalian faith” and was very sympathetic to Catholicism as it respected hierarchial traditions, family, etc, and say the incontrolled industrial revolutions as something that ultimately would exploit people for profit, if Christian principles were not in place to protect the weak from the powerful.
I think Davis, who was raised in Kentucky, was educated by Dominican Priests at a Catholic bording school. After the Civil War, when he was in exile, his Wife found that the only Church that would educate her kids were Catholic nuns in Savanah, GA, where she was living at the time, as Davis and his family were seen as “disgraced in the South” and most of the Southern aristocrats wanted nothing to do with Davis, as opposed to Robert E. Lee who was seen as the “Southern hero”. I think General James Longstreet, who after the war moved to New Orleans, did convert to Catholicism and it is true that Davis had Catholics and Jews in his cabinet.
As for the KKK, it was not founded until around 1870 by ex Confederate soldiers in response to reconstruction. It’s original targets were indeed Blacks and Northern Reconstructionist, but Catholics soon became a target as well. The KKK was founded more in Central Tennessee by the Confederate Calvery General Bedford Forest and quickly spread in areas of the South with few Catholics as the only areas of the South with any significant Catholic population at that time were in Louisiana and parts of Southern Georgia on the coast near Savanah and maybe Mobile Alabama, which originally was part of French Louisiana before being ceded to the Spaninish in Florida and then eventually being part of Alabama.
dangus:
Perhaps you are correct, I think he may have been received into the Catholic Church just before his death, which I think was around 1890.
I got one word for that
KHANNNNNN
Me too. Fascinating.
Thank you Vlad. Didn't know that.
The Vatican web site has a virtual tour of the catacombs and buried streets under St. Peter's. It is fascinating, and gives one an idea of the age of Christianity, something we don't often think about.
It's one of the oldest traditions we have.
Note: this topic was posted 1/2/2010.Thanks NYer.
Fascinating post. Thank you.
“so it is entirely possible he wanted to convince this constituency that the war had a noble purpose.”
Yes. The riots were set off byi the notion that the war was being fought to free the slaves rather than to keep the Union together.
Apparently lots of New Yorkers thought that fighting to preserve the Union was worth doing, but fighting to free the slaves was not.
Wow, that thread is so old I actually don’t even remember reading it (or posting on it) the first time.
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