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And this is relevant to the fact that the Vatican has opened its library to the public, because??
Actually it's not really open to the public, it's open to scholars and not like us scum.
What's your reliable source for your accusation?Ziggy said:
I understand that in the catacombs under the Catholic church there are tunnels that run miles with all kinds of literature they won't share with the world...
Kind of like the Pharisees who kept the keys of the kingdom from the people.
SMH...
You need more than what I already supplied?
i am sorry that you cannot SEE
Nothing about your post has ANYTHING to do with the catacombs or that the catacombs have literature that the RCC is keeping from the world.You need more than what I already supplied?
I will do the homework.
You won't read it anyways.. but here is what I found in less than 5 minutes. In part, I didn't copy paste the entire entry but you can read it for yourseldf
Holdings
The Vatican Apostolic Archive has been estimated to contain 85 kilometres (53 mi) of shelving, with 35,000 volumes in the selective catalogue alone.[27]
Complete archives of letters written by the popes, known as the papal registers, are available beginning with the papacy of Pope Innocent III (r. 1198–1216). A few registers of earlier popes also survive, including Pope John VIII (r. 872–882) and Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–1085).[28] There is little other documentation of the papacy before the 13th century.[citation needed]
Notable documents include Henry VIII of England's request for a marriage annulment, a handwritten transcript of the trial of Galileo for heresy, and letters from Michelangelo complaining he had not been paid for work on the Sistine Chapel.[9]
To mark the 400th anniversary of the Vatican Archives, 100 documents dating from the 8th to the 20th century were put on display from February to September 2012 in the "Lux in arcana – The Vatican Secret Archives reveals itself" exhibition held at the Capitoline Museums in Rome. They included the 1521 papal bull of excommunication of Martin Luther and a letter from Mary, Queen of Scots, written while awaiting her execution.[29]
The archive also supports its own photographic and conservation studios.[30]
Access policy[edit]
The Vatican Secret Archives (2015).
The entrance to the Archive, adjacent to the Vatican Library, is through the Porta di Santa Anna in via di Porta Angelica (Rione of Borgo). In 1980, following modern renovations, new underground storage space was added. [31]
With limited exceptions, materials dated after 1939 were unavailable to researchers until 2 March 2020, when material from the tenure of Pope Pius XII (1939—1958) were opened for public access.
- Distinguished and qualified scholars from institutions of higher education pursuing scientific research with an adequate knowledge of archival research may apply for an entry card.
- Select scholars need an introductory letter from either a recognized institute of research or a suitably qualified person in their field of historical research.
- Applicants need to provide their personal data (name, address, etc.), as well as the purpose of their research.
- Only paper, pencil and computer laptops are permitted. No ink, pens, or any digital camera photography are allowed inside.
- Only five requested articles can be taken at a time, and only sixty academicians per day are allowed inside.[32]
An entire section of the distinguished archives relating to the personal affairs of Cardinalship from 1922 onwards cannot be accessed.[8][9][33]
Vatican Apostolic Archive - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
The Hummingbird and the Squirrel
And yet, nothing in this article provides that there were "all kinds of literature they won't share with the world..." EVER discovered in ANY of the Roman catacombs.History is amazing. It's a lot to take in...
Exploring the history of catacombs
24th February 2022, 06:24 EST
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By Suemedha SoodFeatures correspondent
Catacombs of Paris
Beneath the city streets that travellers walk on each day, dark labyrinths of underground tunnels transport travellers to a time when millions of people were buried underground.
Beneath the city streets that travellers walk on each day, dark labyrinths of underground catacombs are passageways to the past, to a time when the ghostly tunnels served as burial grounds for millions of people.
The catacombs of Rome, which date back to the 1st Century and were among the first ever built, were constructed as underground tombs, first by Jewish communities and then by Christian communities. There are only six known Jewish catacombs and around 40 or more Christian catacombs.
In Ancient Rome, it was not permitted for bodies to be buried within the city walls. So while pagans cremated their dead, Christians, who were not legally allowed to practice their religion, turned to underground cemeteries, built beneath land owned by the city’s few rich Christian families. The Jewish population was already implementing this practice when Christians began doing so around the 2nd Century.
The use of catacombs in Rome expanded during the 2nd and 3rd Centuries, as the illegal religion of Christianity grew in popularity. Some areas of the tunnels even became shrines for martyrs buried there. But after Christianity was legalized in 313 AD, funerals moved above ground, and by the 5th Century, the use of catacombs as grave sites dwindled, though they were still revered as sacred sites where pilgrims would come to worship.
The Rome catacombs then fell victim to pillaging by Germanic invaders around the early 9th Century. As a result, relics of Christian martyrs and saints were moved from the catacombs to churches in the city centre. Eventually, the underground burial tunnels were abandoned altogether – only to be rediscovered via excavations in the 1600s.
Today, travellers from all over the world visit Rome to explore its 600km network of catacombs, spread out over five storeys underground near the Park of the Tombs of Via Latina. Dedicated to Christian saints, they are adorned with some of the earliest Christian artwork in the world, dating back to the 2nd Century, featuring paintings on the tunnel walls that depict ancient life. Sacred catacombs open to the public include the Catacombs of Priscilla (Via Salaria, 430), the Catacombs of St Callixtus (Via Appia Antica, 110-126) and the Catacombs of St Agnes (Via Nomentana, 349). The Vatican provides details on how to visit these and other holy burial sites. A few Jewish catacombs, including the catacombs on the Vigna Randanini and those in the Villa Torlonia, are also open to the public -- though some by appointment.
Centuries later in Paris, catacombs emerged as a creative and discreet solution to a dire public health problem. In the late 1700s, mass graves in the Les Halles district, such as those in the now closed Saints Innocents Cemetery, were overcrowded with improperly disposed of bodies , creating unsanitary conditions that led to the spread of disease. Saint Innocents was shut down, and in 1786 the Paris police moved all the remains buried in the cemetery to an underground network of ancient limestone quarries – the now infamous Catacombs of Paris, located south of the former city gate near Place Denfert-Rochereau.
The eerie tunnels -- a significant portion of which is open to the public as a museum -- took on other uses over the course of history. During World War II, for instance, some sections became hideouts for French Resistance fighters, while other areas were converted by German soldiers into bunkers. Today, Paris’s nearly 300km of catacombs lie 30m under the ground’s surface and still house the remains of around six million people.
The world’s longest network of underground tunnels, extending more than 2,400km, can be found in Odessa, Ukraine, where the catacombs were formed around the 1830s as a result of limestone mining. As in Paris, the tunnels were used as bunkers and hideouts by soldiers during World War II, and a portion of the catacombs is open to the public via the Museum of Partisan Glory.
The catacombs of Malta are designated as a World Heritage Site for their role in Paleochristian history. Carved from the rock underneath the city of Rabat, likely beginning around the 3rd Century, the tunnels show how rural family burials took place among Christian, Jewish and Pagan communities. The complex network of passageways provided graves for 1,000 people and extended over about 5,700sqkm. Heritage Malta provides information on visiting St Paul’s Catacombs located near St Paul’s Church and Grotto.
In Alexandria, Egypt, the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa were originally built for just one rich family around the 2nd Century, but eventually housed more 300 mummies. Open to the public, the three-story tomb about 30m under the ground, features elaborate carvings illustrating scenes from Egyptian mythology, including one relief depicting the jackal-headed god, Anubis.
"Conditions improved greatly for Rome’s Jews when Julius Caesar came to power. He granted official recognition to Judaism as a legal religion, a policy followed by his successor, Caesar Augustus. So close did the Jews hold Caesar in their hearts that when he fell to the knives of Brutus and his co-conspirators they mourned his death in their week-long ancient rite of shivah."More History:
4. The Jews have lived a long time in Rome and were the first to construct catacombs there. You mentioned how Julius Caesar recognized Judaism and that in Augustus’ reign eleven synagogues flourished. You mentioned that in Paul’s letter to the Romans, “Paul greets twenty four Jews, eighteen with Greek names, four with names in Latin, two in Hebrew.” Is it known how and when the Jews first arrived?
The Jewish community in Rome today is known to be the oldest such community in Europe. Thanks to the historian Josephus, we know that in 161 B.C. Judah Maccabee, the heroic Jewish warrior-statesman, sent a delegation to the Senate there in the hope of negotiating an alliance with Rome. It is thought that some of the diplomats stayed on and from them a small Jewish population took root on the banks of the Tiber.
An epitaph, in Greek, from a Jewish catacomb.
The following two decades must have seen another influx of Jewish migrants – probably from Alexandria – for by 139 B.C. they were causing quite a stir. Valerius Maximus, one of the least known classical Roman writers, tells of a general expulsion of the Jews in that year. The praetor Hispanus issued a decree banning them from Rome and from all of Italy, charging them with “aggressive proselytizing,” thereby undermining public worship of the pagan dieties. Apparently the ban by Hispanus was of short duration, for by the turn of the century Jews constituted ten percent of the city’s teeming population. By now, there were immigrants from the major Jewish centers of Asia Minor, the Land of Israel, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Greece.
In Jewish catacombs of that period, there are gravestones attesting to this diaspora. One mentions a Jew from Catania in Sicily, which was part of the Hellenization of southern Italy, or Magna Graecia. Another inscription honors a Jew from Numidia. A third mentions one from Rhodes.
Conditions improved greatly for Rome’s Jews when Julius Caesar came to power. He granted official recognition to Judaism as a legal religion, a policy followed by his successor, Caesar Augustus. So close did the Jews hold Caesar in their hearts that when he fell to the knives of Brutus and his co-conspirators they mourned his death in their week-long ancient rite of shivah.
