8 
Introduction 
The papal archives thus preserved are far from complete. In the vicissi¬ 
tudes to which Rome has been exposed in the last five centuries many have 
been destroyed or lost, especially in the sack of the city by the army of 
Charles V. in 1527, and in the troubles of the French Revolution, culminating 
in the transfer of the archives from Rome to Paris in 1810 and 1811, and their 
return in 1815. On the latter occasion some were left in Paris, although by no 
means so considerable a portion, as in the case of the works of art. The occu¬ 
pation of the city of Rome by the Italian government in 1870 did not result in 
depredations bv the soldiery, but many records were hastily transferred and 
lost sight of in the fear of confiscation, and those of the offices of the Camera 
were actually seized and incorporated with the Italian Archivio di Stato. 
Moreover, during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, many 
papal officials merged public with private archives and left both to form one 
of those collections for their heirs, which were so esteemed a distinction of 
princely families. In fact the papers of the state department were regarded 
as private rather than Church property. When such a collection was made 
by a Pope or a cardinal secretary of state, it is likely to contain an appreciable 
portion of the more important records of the period. Such collections usually 
contain documents for twenty years before the elevation of the founder to 
the papacy, as he was sure to have been at least for such a period prominent 
in affairs, and in many cases for a number of years after his death, as other 
members of the family were apt to remain in positions of importance. The 
collection covering the largest period is that of the Barberini, which has 
valuable material for the first three quarters of the seventeenth century. All 
such collections contain vastly more copies than originals, and it will be the 
work of many years and many scholars to tell how far they supplement and 
how far they duplicate the records officially preserved. The most important 
of these collections are: that of the papers of the Medici (Leo X., 1513-1522, 
and Clement VII., 1523-1534), which is in the Archivio di Stato at Florence; 
of the Farnese (Paul III., 1534-1550), which is for the most part in the 
Archivi di Stato at Naples and Parma ; of the Borghese (Paul V., 1605-1621), 
which has been purchased by the Pope and added to the Vatican archives; 
of the Barberini (Urban VIII., 1623-1644), which has also been purchased 
by the Pope and annexed to the Vatican library; and of the Chigi (Alexander 
VII., 1655-1667), which is still in the possession of that family. Less im¬ 
portant but still considerable collections are those of the papers of Saint Carlo 
Borromeo, in the Ambrosian library at Milan; of Pietro Ottobuoni (Alex¬ 
ander VIII., 1689-1691), in the Archivio Vaticano ; and of the Albani (Clem¬ 
ent XI., 1700-1721), of which some are in the Archivio Vaticano, and some 
in the Corsini library. Still in the possession of the respective families are 
those of the Buoncompagni-Ludovisi (Gregory XIII., 1572-1585, and Greg¬ 
ory XV., 1621-1623) ; of the Doria-Pamphili (Innocent X., 1644-1655) ; of 
the Rospigliosi (Clement IX., 1664-1670) ; and of the Odescalchi (Innocent 
XI., 1676-1689). The collections left by cardinals and by minor dignitaries of 
the Church, which contain material necessary to establish a complete schedule 
of the extant records of the Holy See, are too numerous to permit individual 
reference here. It is, of course, obvious that these collections, in addition to 
such archive material, contain much else of great importance. 
Archives of the Orders. The archives of the monastic and other orders 
have, naturally, always been dispersed, but their present plight renders an 
ordered account of them especially difficult. The archives themselves are 
still, for the most part, in the hands of the several organizations. The libraries 
