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The original Latin 'secretum,' far from meaning “hidden,” simply means “set apart.”
It is rather hard to say where the word “Vatican” originally came from. Sure, it is the name of one of Rome’s seven hills, all located on the east margin of the river Tiber, within the city walls. But there are several different beliefs regarding how the Colle Vaticano— literally, the “Vatican Hill” — got its name.
As early as in the first century, the noted Roman rhetorician and philosopher Marcus Terentius Varro claimed the word derived from a local tutelar deity that was believed to provide infants with the capacity to speak. The deity, named “Vaticanus,” would “preside over the principles of the human voice; for infants, as soon as they are born, make the sound which forms the first syllable in Vaticanus, and are therefore said vagire (to cry) which word expresses the noise which an infant first makes.” St. Augustine, familiar as he was with Varro’s work, indeed mentions this deity three times in his City of God, and explicitly refers to this widespread Roman belief. (Cf. Augustine, City of God, 4, 8). However, it is more likely the word derives from the name of an ancient Etruscan settlement, possibly called Vatica or Vaticum. But no trace of it has been discovered.
Continued below.
3 Vatican “secrets” that are not secret at all
It is rather hard to say where the word “Vatican” originally came from. Sure, it is the name of one of Rome’s seven hills, all located on the east margin of the river Tiber, within the city walls. But there are several different beliefs regarding how the Colle Vaticano— literally, the “Vatican Hill” — got its name.
As early as in the first century, the noted Roman rhetorician and philosopher Marcus Terentius Varro claimed the word derived from a local tutelar deity that was believed to provide infants with the capacity to speak. The deity, named “Vaticanus,” would “preside over the principles of the human voice; for infants, as soon as they are born, make the sound which forms the first syllable in Vaticanus, and are therefore said vagire (to cry) which word expresses the noise which an infant first makes.” St. Augustine, familiar as he was with Varro’s work, indeed mentions this deity three times in his City of God, and explicitly refers to this widespread Roman belief. (Cf. Augustine, City of God, 4, 8). However, it is more likely the word derives from the name of an ancient Etruscan settlement, possibly called Vatica or Vaticum. But no trace of it has been discovered.
Continued below.
3 Vatican “secrets” that are not secret at all
