The Vatican Has 53 Miles of Hidden History and the World Deserves to See It

 The Vatican sits on one of the largest private collections of historical documents in the world.

Fifty three miles of shelving. Thirty five thousand volumes of catalogues. Documents going back twelve centuries. Letters from kings and queens. Records of trials that changed the world. Correspondence between popes and the most powerful leaders in human history.

And most ordinary people will never get to see any of it.

What Is Actually in There

Let me clear something up first. The old name, Vatican Secret Archive, was not as sinister as it sounds. The word secret came from the Latin word secretum which means personal or private, not confidential in the way we use the word today.

Pope Francis even changed the official name in 2019 to the Vatican Apostolic Archive to clear up that confusion.

But here is the thing. Parts of it really are restricted. And those restricted parts contain history that belongs to all of us.

Everything dated after 1958 remains classified, as well as private records of church figures after 1922. Scholars can apply to access older documents but even then access is controlled, limited, and granted only to credentialed researchers with specific purposes.

What Has Already Been Found

When researchers have gotten access the discoveries have been significant.

A Vatican researcher found a document in 2001 that had been misfiled for 700 years. It was the Chinon Parchment, the official record of the papal investigation into the Knights Templar in 1308. It revealed that Pope Clement V had secretly absolved the Templar leaders including Grand Master Jacques de Molay of heresy before they were publicly burned at the stake. The Church let innocent men die while privately knowing they were not guilty.

The archive also holds documents showing what the Church knew about Nazi Germany and when. Pope Francis ordered the documents of Pope Pius XII's pontificate opened ahead of schedule in 2020 so scholars could finally have the full picture of the wartime papacy. What researchers found was not flattering. The Vatican's own records document the Church's relationship with Nazi Germany in ways that the institution has never fully acknowledged publicly.

Historical research suggests Vatican linked travel documents helped Nazi fugitives escape postwar Europe to South America. Documents from the archive have helped researchers trace those connections.

What Is Still Sealed

The archives of the Jesuit order which contain crucial documents on Vatican and Fascist relations are separate and not fully open. The archives of the Vicariate of Rome which hold records of the Church's day to day actions during the Nazi occupation are notoriously difficult to access. Key files on the Mortara case remain sealed to researchers, a 160 year old wound that the Church still refuses to fully expose.

The Mortara case involved a Jewish child who was secretly baptized by a Catholic servant and then taken from his family by papal authorities in 1858 because Church law said a baptized child could not be raised by non Christians. Despite international outrage the Pope refused to return the boy. The full Church record of that case is still sealed.

Why This Matters

History does not belong to institutions. History belongs to everyone.

The Vatican has been one of the most powerful forces in human civilization for twelve centuries. Its decisions shaped wars, borders, the lives of billions of people, and the course of entire nations. The records of those decisions are not the Church's private property to keep locked away from the people whose ancestors lived with the consequences.

When history is hidden by the people who made it you can be sure there is a reason. And that reason is almost never flattering.

The Vatican should open everything. Not just the parts that make the Church look good. All of it. The full record. The complete history.

The world is old enough to handle the truth.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

AI Is Already Being Trained on History That Left Certain People Out and That Is a Problem

 Right now artificial intelligence systems are being trained on massive amounts of historical text.

Books. Newspapers. Legal documents. Government records. Academic papers. Websites. Everything that has been digitized and made available is potentially feeding into AI systems that will shape how future generations access information and understand the world.

That sounds like a good thing. And in many ways it is.

But there is a serious problem buried inside it.

The historical record that AI is learning from has all the same biases and gaps that the historical record has always had. It was produced mostly by educated people with access to publishing and record keeping systems. It reflects the perspectives of the powerful more than the powerless. It contains the voices of wealthy people and institutions far more than the voices of poor people and ordinary workers.

When AI learns from that record it learns those biases too.

What This Looks Like in Practice

AI systems trained on historical text tend to associate certain kinds of language and certain kinds of people with certain outcomes. If the historical record mostly contains stories about wealthy white men making decisions and achieving things, the AI learns patterns that reflect that. It does not know that the record was incomplete. It just learns what the record says.

This has already produced documented problems. AI hiring tools that discriminated against certain demographic groups because the historical hiring data they were trained on reflected historical discrimination. AI image generators that produce stereotyped or unrepresentative images of certain groups because the images they were trained on were not representative. AI language models that handle some dialects and languages better than others because the text they were trained on was not equally distributed.

These are not just technical problems. They are historical problems built into technical systems.

What Needs to Happen

The historical record that AI learns from needs to be expanded. That means digitizing and including more documents, more voices and more perspectives that have historically been underrepresented.

Oral histories need to be transcribed and made available. Documents from underrepresented communities need to be digitized and included. The perspectives of working people, poor people, women and minority communities need to be part of what AI systems learn from.

This is not just about fairness in the abstract. It is about building AI systems that actually understand the full range of human experience. A system that only knows part of the story will only be able to reason about part of the world.

What You Can Do Right Now

Every document, photograph, oral history recording, or personal account that you digitize and make publicly available is potential training data for future AI systems. Your contribution to the historical record is a contribution to what AI will learn.

Publishing your own story on a blog or website. Uploading documents to archive.org. Contributing photographs to public archives. All of these actions expand the record that AI will learn from.

The future of AI is being shaped right now by decisions about what gets preserved and digitized. Ordinary people can be part of making those decisions go in the right direction.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

Church Records Are Some of the Most Valuable Historical Documents Nobody Talks About

 Before the United States government required birth certificates, before county courthouses kept systematic records of marriages and deaths, before any of the civil record keeping systems we rely on today existed, churches were keeping records.

Baptism registries. Marriage books. Death records. Membership rolls. Burial registers. Account books. Meeting minutes.

For hundreds of years in communities all across this country and going back much further in Europe, the church was where the record of ordinary life got kept. And a remarkable amount of that record still exists.

What Church Records Contain

A baptism record will give you a child's name, date of baptism, and often the names of both parents and godparents. For genealogists trying to trace a family back before civil registration began this is often the only record that a person existed at all.

Marriage records contain names of both parties, often the names of witnesses who were frequently family members, and sometimes the names of parents. They place people in a specific community at a specific time.

Death and burial records give dates and often causes of death. In some traditions they give ages, which allows birth dates to be estimated even when no birth record exists.

Membership rolls list everyone who was part of a congregation over time. For communities where many people were part of the same church these rolls can serve as a census of the community going back generations.

Where These Records Are Now

Some old church records are still in the possession of the congregation that created them. If the church is still active, a polite inquiry to the pastor or church secretary can sometimes get you access.

Many old records have been donated to or deposited with local historical societies, county libraries or state archives. Some have been microfilmed and are available through the Family History Library operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has one of the largest collections of genealogical records in the world and makes much of it available free online at FamilySearch.org.

Some denominations have centralized archives where historical records from congregations across the country are preserved. The Catholic Church, various Protestant denominations and other religious traditions each have their own archival systems.

What You Can Do

If you are doing family history research, identify the churches your ancestors were likely members of and search for their records. FamilySearch.org is a good starting point and is completely free.

If you belong to a church with old records, advocate for their preservation. Records stored in a church basement can be damaged by floods, fire or simple deterioration. Getting them scanned and deposited with a library or archive is the safest way to ensure they survive.

If you know of an old church building that has been abandoned or converted to another use, try to find out what happened to its records. Sometimes they were saved. Sometimes they are still sitting somewhere in need of attention.

These records are older than the country in many cases. They have lasted this long. With a little effort they can last much longer.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

Why Old Buildings Matter and What We Lose Forever When They Get Torn Down

 There is a house in your town or your neighborhood that is old enough to have stories.

Maybe it was built in the 1800s. Maybe it was the first commercial building on a street. Maybe it was a church that served a community for a hundred years before the congregation moved away. Maybe it is just an ordinary house that has been standing since before anyone alive today was born.

That building is a physical historical document. And it is probably in danger.

What Buildings Carry That Nothing Else Does

An old building tells you things that no written record can fully capture.

It tells you about the technology and materials available when it was built. The craftsmanship of the people who constructed it. The economic conditions of the people who commissioned it. The way people understood space and light and function in that era.

It tells you about how a place changed over time through the layers of renovation and adaptation that got added to it over the decades. The doorway that was added. The room that was divided. The facade that was updated to look modern and then became old itself.

It carries in its walls and floors and foundations the physical evidence of every person who ever lived or worked or worshipped or gathered inside it.

Once it is gone none of that can be recovered. Not from photographs. Not from architectural drawings. Not from any written description. The physical thing itself is gone.

Why Buildings Keep Getting Demolished

Old buildings cost money to maintain. They often do not meet modern building codes without expensive renovation. They sit on land that developers want for new construction that will generate more revenue.

Local governments often approve demolition permits for historic structures without requiring documentation. Owners who want to demolish a building for development sometimes move faster than preservation advocates can organize a response.

In poor communities especially, historic buildings get demolished routinely with minimal public attention or opposition.

What You Can Do Before a Building Is Gone

Photograph every old building in your area that looks like it might be at risk. Exterior and interior if you can get access. Document the details that make it significant. The architectural features. The age. Any history you know about who built it or lived in it.

Upload those photographs to archive.org or to the Library of Congress Built in America collection which accepts photographs of historic structures.

If a building in your area is threatened with demolition, contact your local historic preservation commission. Most cities and counties have one. They do not always have the power to stop demolitions but they can sometimes slow the process long enough for alternatives to be found.

At minimum, document it fully before it is gone. A building that has been thoroughly photographed and described has left something behind even if the physical structure is lost.

An old building is not just a building. It is a container for everything that happened inside it. Treat it that way.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

The Old People in Your Town Are Walking History Books and They Are Running Out of Time

 There is an old man in your town or your neighborhood or your family who remembers things that no book records.

He remembers what the main street looked like sixty years ago. What businesses were there and who ran them. Which buildings got torn down and what replaced them. Which families were prominent and which ones struggled. What the big events were that shaped the community and how people felt about them at the time.

She remembers what it was like to be a young woman in this country before certain rights existed. What work was available to her and what was closed off. What she had to do to raise her kids. What the hardest years felt like from the inside.

They remember names. Faces. Stories. Details about how life actually worked that never made it into any official record.

And when they die all of that goes with them.

This Is the Most Urgent Preservation Problem There Is

Books can be reprinted. Photographs can be scanned from originals. Documents can be digitized. But once a person who carries living memory of a time and place is gone there is no recovery. No second chance. No way to go back and ask the questions you forgot to ask.

Every day that passes without someone recording these stories is a day of irreplaceable history lost.

How to Do an Oral History Interview

You do not need professional equipment or formal training. You need a phone with a voice recording app and a list of questions.

Start with basic biographical information. Where were you born. What were your parents like. Where did you grow up. What was your neighborhood like when you were young.

Move into specific memories. What do you remember about this town when you were a kid. What did you do for work. What were the big events that happened in your lifetime that you remember most clearly.

Ask about the community specifically. Who were the important people in this community when you were young. What businesses were here. What has changed the most. What do you wish young people knew about how things used to be.

Let them talk. The best oral history interviews follow the person's memory rather than sticking rigidly to a script.

Record the whole thing. Let them know you are recording. Save the file somewhere it will not get lost. And if possible transcribe it or have it transcribed so the information is searchable.

Where to Put What You Collect

StoryCorps at storycorps.org accepts oral history recordings and deposits them in the Library of Congress. Your recording could become part of the permanent national historical record.

Your local library's local history collection will often accept transcripts and recordings from community oral history projects.

Archive.org accepts audio uploads and preserves them permanently for free.

You can also publish excerpts or summaries on a blog with the person's permission. Making the knowledge public is what transforms a personal recording into a historical document.

Pick up the phone today. Call the oldest person you know. Tell them you want to hear their stories. You are running out of time and so are they.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.