Finding concordats on and offline

 The scope of concordats

 Europe was where concordats began, but during the Protestant Reformation many of the concordats in Northern Europe were cancelled. For the moment European concordats are concentrated in the traditionally Catholic areas of the south and east. However, they are continually being extended, even to regions with a minuscule Catholic population like Schleswig-Holstein, the German state on the border with Denmark. 

Of the 27 countries of the European Union, 15 are bound to the Holy See by at least one concordat: Germany (at both federal and state levels), Austria, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Luxemburg, Estonia (1998) , Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and even three concordats with the supposedly secular France.

Latin America now has many concordats, despite the widespread cancellation of its earlier ones. [5] In Africa concordats have been concluded with Gabon, the Ivory Coast and the Organisation of African Unity (2000), and there are ongoing concordat negotiations with Ethiopia and Mozambique. [6] 

In the near East, there have been agreements with Israel (1993 and 1997), with the Palestinian Authority (2002). There are also a half dozen diplomatic agreements of various kinds with Islamic States: the 1964 Convention (modus vivendi) with Tunisia, the 1983-84 exchange of diplomatic notes with Morocco, an agreement on bilateral relations with Kazakhstan (1998) and also with Albania (2002). [7] A “memorandum of understanding” (2009) was signed with the League of Arab States which curently has 22 members. [8]

The process of getting a concordat begins with the stablshment of diplomatic relations: at the start of 2010 the Vatican had established ties “with 178 states and counting”. [9] For a recent summary, see the translated article “The sixteen states that haven't answered the summons. And the latest information on ambassadors and nuncios” (Avvenire, 10 January 2010).  

Online concordat collections in the original languages

Multinational

• The concordats of John Paul II, (October 1978 to April 2005) (Concordati di Giovanni Paolo II). A Vatican site. Most concordats are in Italian, with a sprinkling of French, Spanish and Portugese and English. There are 98 concordats here, arranged according to country, from Albania to Venezuela. (Click on the tab for i concordati.)
   
• Concordats and Agreements of the Holy See (1929-1996) (Concordati e Accordi della Santa Sede). This is another collection on the Vatican site, of 59 concordats in reverse chonological order. Here, too most texts are Italian, with a few in French, Spanish and Portugese and English.
   
• A few others are tucked away in the Vatican site, where you can search for the word for concordat in the sections for various languages. The terms to enter, (in the order listed on the Vatican webpage) are Deutsch — Konkordat, English — concordat, Español — concordato, Français — concordat, Italiano — concordato, Portugês — concordata.
   
• The Church Law Society in the Czech Republic. Large collection of concordats (and related documents) in many languages.
   
• Church-state legislation in the European Union has been posted by the University of Rome's Faculty of Law. The index is by country and concordats are scattered among other church-state legislation of each nation. 
   
• Aggiornamenti [Church-state] Agreements. This is a collection from the University of Florence which includes many Italian versions of concordats. 

Individual countries

• Religious freedom legislation for various countries, as well as international agreements, but only a couple of concordats. International Center for Law and Religious Studies, Brigham Young University
   
• Germany: Rechtsquellen zum deutschen Staatskirchenrecht (Legal sources of German state-church jurisprudence). Good private collection of concordat texts in German.

• Germany: Konkordatsurteil by the EKD, the German Lutheran Church. Court judgements on how concordats are to be integrated into German law. All texts in German.

• Spain: Acuerdos con Santa Sede (Accords with the Holy See) A search here for "concordato" yields five concordat texts in Spanish. Excerpts of four concordats are translated into English by the Spanish Ministry of Justice. 
   

Printed concordat collections in the original languages
 

Copies of the concordat texts appear in several hard-to-get Vatican publications:  

• 1950 – 1999
  There is a collection of concordat texts by José Tomás Martín de Agar y Valverde, Raccolta di concordati (1950-1999), which is the index from his book of the same name published in the Vatican City in 2000 (ISBN: 9788820927585) It lists concordats with 35 countries.
   
• 1801 – 2002
  There is also one called Enchiridion dei Concordati. Due secoli di storia dei rapporti Chiesa-Stato from Napoleon to the (still unratified) Czech concordat of July 2002. According to a review, "The compendium, published by the Publisher Dehoninana of Bologna, offers all the Holy See's agreements with the States in the last two centuries. The concordats are presented in the languages they were written in before translation into Italian. The alterations in the concordat texts are also included. For example, the Spanish texts appear between 18 concordats, protocols, conventions, agreements or exchanges of notes."
   
• 1895 –
  More recent concordats can be hard to track, unless you have access to the Acta Apostolica Sedis which publishes official Church documents and legislation about twelve times a year.  It was begun in 1895, under the title of Acta Sanctae Sedis.
   

The originals in the Vatican Secret Archives
 

The original concordat documents are kept in the Vatican Secret Archives beneath the Courtyard of the Pinecone (marked by an “X”). (This was named for its gigantic gilt bronze Roman fountain which has now been moved to the Museum.)

Below this courtyard the Vatican claims to hold every concordat except for the first one, the 1107 Concordat of London. They apparently lost it and don't want to count it, despite the fact that a summary was preserved by the private secretary of the saint who negotiated it. This very first concordat was tossed out by Britain at the time of the Reformation — a precedent they may not wish to emphasise. 
 

It's not only Heaven that's kept under lock and key

This archive has many layers of secrecy:
 

• It is run by a cardinal who, like other cardinals, has sworn to preserve the secrets of the Church
   
• It lacks a complet catalogue, and even “publication of the [partial] indexes, in part or as a whole, is forbidden”. [1] 
   
• Only approved scholars are admitted and even these have to present their research requests in writing in advance, thus, as a cynic remarks, “allowing the librarians ample time to decide between their three options in responding — 1) bring out the requested document, 2) claim the document doesn't exist, or 3) admit the document exists but refuse to give the scholar access to research specific topics”. [2]
   
• All documents are normally sealed for 75 years.
   
• And there is more. A scholar who has worked for years in the Archives asks,

What action is taken by a scriptor, custodian, or prefect when, in the course of his work, he comes across material that is morally or theologically controversial? [...] Such documents may be omitted from the inventories, bound in volumes containing documents of a very different kind, and relegated to some fondo that is closed because of chronological limitation or very seldom consulted. This happened with the personal letters of Pope Borgia to the little clan of his devoted women, and with the original summary of the process of Giordano Bruno, and may have happened many other times that we do not know about. [3]

In 2001 it was found that a key document about the Templars who had been charged with heresy had been “misplaced” in the Archive and surfaced only after 700 years. [4]

In addition to the Secret Archive at the Vatican, Canons 486-490 stipulate that each diocese must have one, too. Only the bishop holds the key to this closely guarded secret archive for “documents of criminal cases in matters of morals”. Once “the accused parties have died or ten years have elapsed from the condemnatory sentence” of a secret Church court these documents “are to be destroyed”. Only a summary and the text of the Church judgement is to be retained — and, of course, these are still to be kept under lock and key. 
 

Notes  

1. Vatican Secret Archives, "Rules for scholars", no. 16. http://asv.vatican.va/en/fond/amm.htm

2. "Secret Archives of the Vatican". http://www.rotten.com/library/religion/secret-archives-vatican/

3. Maria Luisa Ambrosini with Mary Willis, The Secret Archives of the Vatican,  (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1969), p. 303.

4. Philip Pullella, "Knights Templar Win Heresy Reprieve After 700 Years", Reuters, 12 October 2007. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL093422320071012

 5. "The numerous concordats concluded towards the middle of the 19th century with several of the South American republics either have not come into force or have been denounced and replaced by a more or less pacific modus vivendi." 
"19th-century concordats", Volume 6, Page 834 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/COM_COR/CONCORDAT_Lat_concordatum_agree.html

6. [Archbishop] Giovanni Lajolo, "The possible renaissance of a continent", 21 May 2004. http://www.30giorni.it/us/articolo_stampa.asp?id=4003

7. Gianni Cardinale, "Diplomacy between the cross and the crescent", [subtitle: "Almost all the Islamic countries have an apostolic nuncio already. Ten Muslim States, however, are missing from the list. For the moment"], 30 Days, October 2006. http://www.30giorni.it/us/articolo.asp?id=11745

8. "Holy See and League of Arab States Sign Agreement", Zenit, 24 April 2009. http://zenit.org/article-25700?l=english

9. "Holy See Advanced Diplomatic Relations in 2009", Zenit, 11 January 2010. http://www.zenit.org/article-28021?l=english
 

  

(Last updated 31 March 2010)