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The opening of the Vatican archives under Pope Leo XIII (1881 or 1883) set another major project in motion alongside the German nunciature files. Father Heinrich Denifle OP, sub-archivist at the Vatican Secret Archives, recommended to the Görres Society in 1893 to publish the records of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). This proposal was accepted. Like the edition of the nunciature files, it was part of the effort of the historical section of the Görres Society to contrast the dominant Protestant historiography of the Reformation with a Catholic account from the perspective of authentic Roman archival sources.

Here too, the Görres Society as a whole, but in a special way the RIGG, was responsible for organising the exploitation of the archives on the spot. The result was the centennial work of the Trent Edition.

The 19-volume edition appeared under the title Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, actorum, epistularum, tractatuum nova collectio, edidit Societas Goerresiana (Freiburg 1901-2001).

Sebastian Merkle, Umberto Mazzone, Theobald Freudenberger, Stephan Ehses, Alois Postina, Vinzenz Schweitzer, Gottfried Buschbell, Joachim Birkner, Hubert Jedin and most recently Klaus Ganzer participated as editors. The edition of the files has now been completed. The most important researcher of the Council of Trent was Hubert Jedin, who worked at the Campo Santo Teutonico from 1939 to 1943 (cf. H. Jedin, Lebensbericht, Mainz 1988, 3rd ed., 102-115).

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The opening of the Vatican archives to scholarly research under Pope Leo XIII (1881 and 1883), after he had appointed Joseph Hergenröther, professor of church history in Würzburg and honorary president of the Görres Society, as cardinal archivist in Rome in 1879, was one of the triggering moments for the founding of the RIGG (1888) and at the same time gave it wide scope for research. Two major projects were begun, in addition to the edition of the Trent Council records, the edition of the German (Cologne) nunciature reports.

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As early as 1889, the Board of the Görres Society decided to edit the nunciature reports from Germany which were kept in the Vatican Archives. This was ultimately done in consultation with the Royal Prussian Historical Institute in Rome (DHI), which was to deal with the nunciature reports on the Reformation period, and the Austrian Institute, which was to devote itself to the nunciature at the imperial court in Vienna in the post-Tridentine period. The RIGG was now to publish the nunciature reports from the imperial court and the Cologne nunciature 1585-1605 (pontificates of Sixtus V, Urban VII, Gregory XIV, Innocent IX, Clement VIII). The first volume was published in 1895 by Stephan Ehses and Aloys Meister. Already with the second volume in 1899, the enterprise came to a standstill in 1918, but was taken up again in 1963 and redefined. The project now aiming at the publication of the entire "Cologne Nunciature" under the title "Nuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland nebst ergänzenden Aktenstücken. The Cologne Nunciature" has been completed for the time being.

In 2009, Dr. Peter Schmidt (Cologne) published the files of Nuncio Antonio Albergati for the years 1614-1616; the last volume will cover the years 1617-1621. The publication is commissioned by the Görres Society with the participation of the RIGG.

Lit.: F. Rottstock, Studien zu den Nuntiaturberichten aus dem Reich in der zweiten Hälfte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts. Nuntien und Legaten in ihrem Verhältnis zu Kurie, Kaiser und Reichsfürsten, München 1980, 4-10.

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