112 REPORTS OF INVESTIGATIONS AND PROJECTS. 



however, has been enabled to make a full report upon its contents. His data 

 have been derived principally from this collection, from the registers of 

 bulls and briefs at the Vatican, and from the correspondence of the papal 

 secretaries of state in the latter archive, particularly the dispatches of the 

 nuncios in Spain, France, Flanders, and other countries. The Vatican and 

 other ecclesiastical libraries of the city, and its many public libraries, were 

 also searched. 



Brief investigations were made in a few other Italian capitals besides 

 Rome. Those inquiries which Mr, Fish on his way to Rome prosecuted in 

 the archives of Turin and Florence, former capitals of the kingdoms of 

 Sardinia and Italy, were mentioned a year ago. From Rome he made a 

 brief expedition to Naples, where the state archive contains not only the 

 archives of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but those of the Farnese fam- 

 ily; one section of the latter is in effect a supplement to the archives of the 

 papal secretary of state in Rome. After leaving Rome he also examined the 

 archives of the Republic of France. 



Upon all this research Professor Fish has submitted a report not yet 

 wholly revised in all respects but complete in substance, which will amount 

 to a volume of considerable size. Its method has been based upon the facts 

 in the case. The total bulk of the American material in the Roman archives 

 is naturally much less than in those of England or Spain, and such as exists 

 is seldom found in collections or series special to the subject, but is dispersed 

 at large. To give merely general descriptions would be of little use ; to ex- 

 amine exhaustively every volume where an American document might lurk 

 was impossible to one having but a year's time. The method employed, in 

 the Vatican archives and elsewhere, was a compromise between the two : to 

 study thoroughly a few volumes of every set which might be supposed to 

 contain anything relating to America, and to enter in the report, in addi- 

 tion to the general description of the whole, the exact findings in these vol- 

 umes, as well negative as positive. 



The data listed are in the main confined to papers relating to the area of 

 the present United States and Canada ; but in view of the close ecclesiastical 

 relations which formerly bound the once-Spanish portions of the United 

 States to Cuba and northern Mexico, the geographical restriction has been 

 wisely relaxed in many cases. Impossible as it is for any one man to ex- 

 plore completely the vast contents of the Roman archives, and largely as the 

 detailed portions of Mr. Fish's report must therefore rest on a selection of 

 specimen volumes, nothing can be more certain than that it will powerfully 

 stimulate American research in this almost virgin field, effectively aid those 

 who attack these and other volumes, and do much to promote a fuller knowl- 

 edge of the history of ecclesiastical, Spanish, and French America, 



The archive-search which Prof. Marion D. Learned, of the University of 

 Pennsylvania, has been conducting for the Department in Germany is of a 



