The Secret Archives of the Vatican flow through history like a vast river. Much of the material is fragmentary, some trivial, some obscene; but there is much gold as well. Here are the records of the triumphal progress of Queen Christina into Rome; the trials of Galileo, Pico della Mirandola and Savonarola for heresy; Beatrice Cenci's murder of her father; the rise and fall of the Knights Templar; the Great Schism; and many other diverse people and events. And through it all there is the ordering logic of the Archives: the endless gathering of the written word, from bejeweled psalters to papal laundry lists, from the record of the sale of a fifty-cent indulgence to the Donation of Constantine. By their very nature, the documents in the Secret Archives constitute the living record of an all-too-human institution.