The Vatican Secret Archives are not, Dan Brown movies to the contrary, very secret. For one, they have their own website, not the best strategy for staying hidden. In this case, secret means private: they are the private archives of the Popes, and by extension, of the Catholic Church itself. What the Secret Archives are is a massive collection of largely unstudied and poorly cataloged objects, literally miles of shelves holding papers and artifacts going back to the beginnings of the Church. For all we know, they may have the holy grail right there, unrecognized, serving as someone’s pencil holder.
In addition to things they don’t know about, the Archives contain things the Church would rather everyone else not know much about. For example, during the three hundred or so years between the crucifixion and the establishment of uniform doctrine at the Council of Nicaea, there were dozens of documents written telling the story of Christ from the view of different believer groups. Though non-canonical, these gospels are nonetheless stored in the Archives. What better place to keep things you don’t want other people looking at?
Periodically, though, there is a renewed interest, as people “discover” these ancient documents again, searching for gems of truth that aren’t in the canonical gospels. Recently, Elaine Pagels made the Gospel of Thomas famous again. And there is a book known as the Gospel of Nicodemus. Alas, those who read it, hoping to discover new insights into the life of Jesus, are disappointed; the book is an obvious and fanciful retelling of someone else’s gospel stories. It creates an entire backstory for Pontius Pilate not supported by any other source. It is in the Gospel of Nicodemus that we are given the name Longinus for the centurion who stabbed Jesus in the side. Longinus: long spear. Just the kind of name one would invent for a story meant to be told and retold to a group of followers.
And yet…
There are innumerable other documents in the Archives, actual letters from actual moments in time, most valuable to historians because they were not written to convince illiterate masses of a certain belief, but simply to convey information from one place to another. Nuggets of truth, hidden in the tailings of history.
A small trove of such documents was found associated with the unfortunate Aulus Vitellius Augustus, who managed to be Emperor of Rome for 8 months and 3 days before being murdered in AD 69. At least some of the documents are the collected papers of his father, Lucius Vitellius, who was governor of Syria around AD 36, and was personally responsible for relieving Pilate of his duties as prefect of Jerusalem. Among those papers is a letter, remarkably preserved, which (translated) begins:
Nicodemus, a justly appointed member of the high council of the Holy Temple of Jersusalem, to the Most Noble Lucius Vitellius, Consul of Rome, Legate of Syria. Greetings and blessings from the Most Holy One be showered on you and your family…
Was this the same Nicodemus who spoke with Jesus long into the night? The same Nicodemus who helped embalm the body of Jesus for burial? We can’t know for sure. But it does appear to be someone who served as a Jewish official. The letter describes several things which would have been of concern to the Jews, including Pilate’s mistreatment of a group of Samaritans, and concerns with the long running saga of Herod and the Nabateans.
But it is the end of the letter that interests us. Nicodemus asks Vitellius to promise safety to a group of friends. And then there is this passage:
In this regard, I ask specifically that you see to the safe passage of a good and close friend of mine, who has committed himself to take our cause to Caesarea in Cappadocia. This friend, a true Roman named Fortis Antony Qunitus, is a former centurion who came to my attention due to his work with the Kristonians, and is known to us simply as Longinus. Should he be fortunate enough to enjoy your hospitality, he has promised to share with you something most rare, a kuruvinda, as my old order called them, possessed with the extraordinary…
The letter ends there, at the bottom of the page. Any pages after that appear to be missing.
Kuruvinda is a Sanskrit word, a transliteration of a word found in the writings of the Magi of Persia. In Tamil, the classical language of India, it becomes corundum.
A corundum, of course, is a ruby.
LHOSAWORLD 