One big practical reason the archive requires special access is that 1200 year old paper documents are fragile and require special handling to read. If the Vatican allowed everybody to come in and finger through them, they would be easily damaged.
Furthermore, I suspect required travel to Rome has prevented a lot of people from using the archives.
> But they, the people long trained to make use of delicate ancient document, are dismissed as some sort of backwards tribe that are not fit to be labelled "modern scholars".
I don't see anybody here making that claim, and I don't know what it has to do with the Vatican archives.
One big practical reason the archive requires special access is that 1200 year old paper documents are fragile and require special handling to read. If the Vatican allowed everybody to come in and finger through them, they would be easily damaged.
Furthermore, I suspect required travel to Rome has prevented a lot of people from using the archives.
> But they, the people long trained to make use of delicate ancient document, are dismissed as some sort of backwards tribe that are not fit to be labelled "modern scholars".
I don't see anybody here making that claim, and I don't know what it has to do with the Vatican archives.