Series 1 > Papal negotiations with Mary Queen of Scots during her reign in Scotland, 1561-1567

INTRODUCTION
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holds the same relation to the Vatican Archives as the British
Museum does to the Record Office. It is a collection of literary
manuscripts, not of national records, yet diplomatic papers
have for various reasons got transferred there which normally
should have found their resting-place in the Archives.
At the time in which we are interested, the diplomatic
papers were not very systematically preserved. Permanent, as
opposed to extraordinary, nuncios and legates had only been
instituted for a few decades, and, as was natural, the organisa¬
tion of the Archives was not efficaciously taken in hand until a
somewhat later period, that is, until the reign of Gregory xm.
(1572 to 1585). The diplomatic correspondence of the
preceding period is, by comparison, not only ill-arranged, but
also deficient. Senor Hinojosa found it so for Spain,1 and
von Sickel says in regard to Germany, ‘ hardly the tenth part
of the despatches from the nuncios during the reign of Pius iv.
are in the Vatican.’2 Yet Spain and Germany are much
better represented in the Archives than any other country.3
The Vatican documents used in this volume are taken
chiefly from the fondi connected (1) with bulls and briefs, and
(2) with nuncios’ despatches.
1. The thirty-five Apostolic Letters, described or printed in
whole or in part, are mostly taken from registers. It must,
however, be remembered that in the sixteenth century the total
number of briefs and bulls sent out from Rome was enormous,
and that by consequence the regular registration of earlier times
was no longer possible. Collections of signed minutes now form
1 R. de Hinojosa, Los despachos de la diplomacia pontificia en Espaila,
Madrid, 1896, i. 119, etc.
2 In the ‘Vorwort’ to S. Steinherz, Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland,
1560-1561, Wien, 1897, 1. vii.
3 Further information on the Vatican Archives will be found in Dr. A. Pieper,
Zur Entstehung der stdndigen Nuntiaturen, Freiburg, 1894, and in the same
author’s Pdpstlichen Legaten . . . seit der Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts.
The two works quoted in the last note are also most helpful. So too are the
other volumes of the Nuntiaturberichte, now in progress of publication.