INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
In any series of guides to the materials for American history in foreign 
archives, the Roman archives deserve a prominent position and early treat¬ 
ment. Two reasons justify this statement. In the first place, although the 
documents in those archives relate primarily to ecclesiastical affairs, yet re¬ 
ligious history constantly deserves the attention of the student of civil as well 
as of ecclesiastical history, and the influence of the Catholic Church and the 
scope of its operations can never be appropriately defined within confessional 
limits. In the second place, of all the great national archives of Europe there 
are none that have been so little exploited for purposes of American history as 
those of Rome and Italy. 
With these considerations in view, Dr. Carl Russell Fish, professor of history 
in the University of Wisconsin, was asked to give his aid to the Department of 
Historical Research as a Research Associate of the Carnegie Institution, and 
to undertake the preparation of the following manual. His work in Italy be¬ 
gan in September, 1908, his labors in Rome in October of that year, and he 
left the country at the beginning of August, 1909. That an exhaustive search 
of all the materials bearing on American history in the vast archives of the 
Roman Church, and in those of Italy, could not be achieved within the period 
of time indicated will, if not obvious beforehand, be plain to anyone who reads 
Professor Fish’s explanations. The plan which he followed, and which is set 
forth on a later page, was adopted as offering the best solution of the problem, 
in what manner he who has at his disposal a single year in a great archive may 
present to the historical students of his own country the greatest amount of 
trustworthy information as to what that archive contains. The book is there¬ 
fore offered as a preliminary chart of a region still largely unexplored, a chart 
on which accordingly large spaces are perforce left blank, but upon which 
many lines have been laid down upon the correctness of whose location the 
traveller may rely. 
J. Franklin Jameson. 
184169 
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