Church & religious · also Foreign institution, Learned body
Archivum Magnum Sacrae Sedis
Also called the Archivum Magnum · the vaults
The archive of the Holy Seat, generally believed to hold the largest surviving body of knowledge from before the Apocalypse, including map vaults. Cardinals, archivists and emissaries decide case by case what may be copied, excerpted, read under watch or kept sealed.
The Holy Seat's archive: a discipline of custody spread through chained galleries, sealed tower rooms, scriptoria, map vaults and relic registers, with access graded by office and subject and keys divided so no custodian can alter the Church's memory alone. The great archive of the Holy Seat, in whose map vaults one of the old sheets of the Five Isles is kept.
Named with it
- Cardinal-Archivist Tommaso della Scala
Ties
At the table
Some texts stay sealed because they touch condemned rites, dangerous relic histories, dynastic claims, demon traffic or arts the Seat thinks better forgotten. Scholars find it maddeningly slow. Exchange is impossible because the Seat wants nothing a hydrographic service has. A British examiner may apply for a career and be granted an afternoon; two clergy have been granted more in this generation and nothing printable came of it. Things there may be read under watch and copied by nobody.