SPECIAL PROVISIONS OF THE HOLY SEE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHIVES
Ecclesiastical archives, insofar as they contain writings of historical interest, are by their nature inalienable, being considered among the «bona praetiosa» cited in the Code of Canon Law (can. 1497, § 2; 1532, § 1).
Among the measures adopted by the Holy See in recent decades for the preservation of ecclesiastical archives, a series of letters sent by the Cardinal Secretary of State to the Ordinaries of Italy deserves mention. In a first letter dated 30 September 1902, instructions were given for the compilation of inventories and a «Form of regulations for the custody and use of archives and ecclesiastical libraries» was sent; in another dated 12 December 1907, the establishment in each diocese of a permanent commission for monuments and documents was ordered, with the task of drawing up first of all «a simple but accurate catalogue of the documents». Again on 15 April 1923, compliance with the previous letters was reiterated, announcing the establishment at the Vatican Apostolic Archive of a course in archival science specifically for the clergy, which began in January of the following year.
In response to these provisions, many of the major ecclesiastical archives in Italy were reorganized according to modern and scientific principles; in some chapters, the office of canon-archivist was established to be entrusted to a competent person.
But the protection of minor and recent archives also presents itself as an important requirement of modern times: particularly in Italy, where the archives law of 22 December 1939 subjects all archives of historical interest, public and private, to state supervision, with the exception of ecclesiastical ones.
Therefore, by express mandate of the Holy Father, Cardinal G. Mercati, Archivist of the Holy Roman Church, in a letter dated 1 November 1942 (AAS, 34 [1942], pp. 384-89), requested the Ordinaries of Italy to provide precise information on the existence and content of the individual archives under their jurisdiction, whether capitular, parochial, or belonging to any other entity: to facilitate the work, extensive pre-prepared forms were sent. Thus, for the first time, a census of the ecclesiastical archives of Italy was carried out, along with the collection of their summary inventories, which were preserved at the Vatican Apostolic Archive.
It should also be noted that during the Second World War, in the period 1943-45, the Holy See intervened with the Italian civil authorities, as well as with the German and Allied military occupation authorities, for the protection of archives entrusted to its direct jurisdiction under the terms of the Concordat (cf. Final Report on Archives, published by the Allied Commission, Sub-Commission for Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives, Rome 1946); following an investigation conducted in September 1945, it was found that 779 ecclesiastical archives had been destroyed or damaged as a result of war, including 53 episcopal or archiepiscopal ones (see the report by G. Battelli, in Riv. di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, 1 [1947], pp. 113-16 and 306-308). Giulio Battelli
III. HISTORY OF ARCHIVES
The origins of archives date back to a very remote period. The Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chaldeans certainly had archives, as evidenced by the cuneiform inscriptions discovered in the mid-19th century among the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh, which have preserved testimonies of the activities of those kings, and the clay tablets found at el-Amarna in Egypt. The Bible also preserves the memory of Babylonian archives in the book of Ezra (5:17 and 6:1-2). Moreover, from the Bible (Ezra 2:62; 1 Chron. 9:1 and 2 Chron. 34:30) we learn that the Israelites kept in the Temple the acts of greater solemnity.
More numerous and certain information, however, is available regarding Greek and Roman archives, as well as their systematic organization.
From the earliest age of its history, Greece took care to preserve the documents of its public and private life; but only later did organized preservation begin, centered in Athens and extending to many Greek cities, serving as a model for future institutions, including Roman ones. In Athens, the first deposit of state documents was the Areopagus, where they are found already in the time of Solon, entrusted to the custody of one of the seven νομοφύλακες. From the Areopagus, they were later transferred to the Bouleuterion and then to the temple of Cybele, the famous Metroon. The superintendent was the Πρότατος ἐπιστάτης, under whom, in hierarchical order, were the γραμματεύς τῆς Βουλῆς, the ὑπογραμματεύς, and ἡ δημόσια.
Among the Romans, the temples of Juno, Ceres, Saturn, and other deities were the first repositories of public acts, however relevant to the State, under the custody of the priests themselves and the magistrates, who were initially the censors, then the quaestors, and later the prefects. However, the first public building, and the only one thereafter, specifically intended to house the documents of the Roman State, was the Tabularium, built by the consul Quintus Lutatius Catulus in 78 BC on the Capitoline, facing the Forum on one side and the Campus Martius on the other, entrusted to the care of the magister census, who employed tabularii, adiutores tabularii, and apparitores for various services. The material deposited and preserved here, organized chronologically and by subject, was frequently consulted by scholars, as attested by Tacitus (Dial. 39) and Cicero (Pro Milone, 27). Not only in Rome but also in the provinces of the empire did flourishing archives arise, though under the different name of Gesta municipalia; and Constantinople itself had its own archive when the empire was divided into East and West. However, the wise organization of archives, as established by Rome, soon declined in the centuries following the fall of the empire, especially due to the progressive disintegration of imperial administration under the pressure of barbarian invasions and their consequences.
Thus, the glorious tradition of archival repositories, so honored in classical antiquity, faded away, and apart from the archive founded in Aachen by Charlemagne, we have almost no other record of collections of documents in all the states that arose from the ruins of the Roman Empire.
The credit for having saved from dispersal a large part of the documents prior to the 11th century belongs to ecclesiastical archives (first among them the archive of the Roman Church), the only ones that maintained, amid such dissolution of times and institutions, their historical continuity. The dominant reasons that favored the preservation of such material, precious for the purposes of universal culture, were first the care that the Church itself always took in safeguarding all documentation that could in any way concern it, and second the respect with which sacred places were always regarded.
However, it is necessary to reach the mid-4th century to have reliable information about the official archive of the Holy See, whose origins certainly predate the Peace of Constantine. We know, in fact, that Pope Julius I (341-52) ordered the collection and preservation of all acts concerning donations and legacies made to the Church (cf. Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne, I, p. 205); while the first location of the archive of the Popes was established by Damasus I (366-84) in the basilica of St. Lawrence (later called in Damaso in his honor), as can be inferred from the inscription carved on one of the architraves: «Archibis, fateor, volui nova condere tecta» (A. Ferrara, Epigrammata Damasiana, Vatican City 1942, no. 57, p. 210). It remained there until around the mid-7th century, when it was transferred to the Lateran Palace.
BIBL.:
G. Battelli, L’archivio della S. Sede, in Miscellanea Francesco Ehrle, V, Roma 1924, pp. 1-30;
G. Battelli, Gli archivi ecclesiastici d’Italia, in Riv. di Arch. e Bibl. ital., 17 (1939), pp. 1-16;
G. Cencetti, Archivi ecclesiastici e archivistica ecclesiastica, in Riv. di Arch. e Bibl. ital., 18 (1940), pp. 1-16;
G. Cencetti, Archivi ecclesiastici e archivistica ecclesiastica, in Arch. stor. ital., 102 (1944), pp. 1-24;
G. Cencetti, Archivi ecclesiastici e archivistica ecclesiastica, in Arch. stor. ital., 103 (1945), pp. 1-24.
Contemporaneously with this Lateran archive, another repository was established at the Confession of St Peter’s Basilica, where important documents were carefully preserved, including the *cautio* given by Archbishop Felix of Ravenna, the donations of Pepin and Charlemagne, and the *pactum* of Otto I. A third archive arose around 1083 on the slopes of the Palatine, near the Arch of Titus, in the so-called *Turris chartularia*, which collected especially documents relating to the administration of the property of the Holy See and the registers of income and expenditure (cf. E. Casanova, p. 307).
It is also necessary to give due prominence to monastic archives, which have preserved precious collections of parchments, cartularies and codices. Although these collections are almost exclusively concerned with the economic life of the various monasteries—consisting mainly of contracts of various kinds—they have the merit of documenting the monasteries’ economic activity and prosperity and the order prevailing in their administration. Among many others, we may mention the archives of the abbeys of Monte Cassino, Subiaco, Farfa, San Salvatore on Monte Amiata, and countless other Italian and foreign monastic centres.
The history of archives begins to brighten from the 11th century onwards, when the communal phenomenon developed, especially in Italy. The changed living conditions of Italian cities, brought about by the revival of trade, the restored administrative and judicial autonomy of urban centres, the formation of guilds, and the rapid and progressive demographic growth, all entered into the great transformation of medieval society, from which there emerged those nuclei that, growing in size, gradually freed themselves from central authority to create their own independence. Consequently, new needs and requirements arose in the fields of politics, law, economics and finance. All these new forces now felt the need for documentation that would give validity to every act and every constitution, and safeguard every interest. Hence the multiplication of charters, instruments and registers in which the activity of each institution was recorded; hence also the care taken for the collection and preservation of documents, which we already find distinguished by office and by subject, chronologically, albeit in a rudimentary order, and the provisions issued by one or another commune to guarantee their integrity. And since, unlike the French, English and German communes, which remained purely civic bodies, the Italian commune presented itself as a true territorial state, it may be affirmed that its archive was a genuine state archive, above all because the material preserved in it did not represent merely the interest of the individual but involved the rights of the entire community. Similarly, in southern Italy, archives of the Swabian and Angevin kings were organised, as demonstrated by the studies of E. Sthamer and B. Capasso.
The period of the Italian communes was therefore of particular importance for the history of archives, so much so that it is not rash to claim that communal archives contained the germ of modern archives.
Nevertheless, this development, which might have continued even after the commune was replaced by the signoria in the 14th and subsequently in the 15th centuries, suffered a setback because of political strife, although there were also, even in this period, measures intended to regulate the life of archives, such as those enacted at various times by the communes of Florence and Siena and in 1325 by the commune of Bologna, and the ordinances issued in the kingdom of Naples by Sancia of Majorca in 1338 and by Joanna of Anjou in 1347 and 1354. In any case, the rise in Italy of the signorie and then of the principalities, and the consolidation of the great European monarchies, marked a revival for archives, now entirely subservient to the politics and interests of the lord or sovereign, as shown by the titles of royal, ducal, etc., attached to the common designation.
From that time there began the slow but progressive process of concentration of archives, which found its logical counterpart in the centralising tendency assumed by the state and which gradually led to the foundation of general archives. The first attempt of this kind was made at Innsbruck in 1506 by Maximilian I of Habsburg, followed later by Ferdinand I, although it was necessary to wait until the reign of Maria Theresa to find most of the documents concerning the empire gathered together in the *Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv*, which she herself founded in Vienna in 1749. Far more decisive was the centralising action carried out in Spain by Charles V, who in 1543 made the castle of Simancas the *Archivo de la Corona de Castilla*; this action was pursued with greater vigour by his son Philip II, who employed the historian Jerónimo Zurita for the reception and organisation of state documents, and also by Philip IV, who issued the regulation of 1633.
Through a series of unsuccessful attempts made by Sixtus IV (1471–84) and Sixtus V (1585–90) to unite the various papal archives into a single organic whole, the Church too finally succeeded in concentrating most of its documents in the Vatican through the work of Paul V, who in 1612 founded the present Vatican Secret Archive, entrusting its custody to Baldassare Ansidei.
Similar attempts were made elsewhere, more or less successfully, as for example in France by Richelieu, Fouquet and Colbert, and in England by Queen Elizabeth, who in 1578 established the *State Papers Office*.
In conclusion, and in keeping with the broad organisational movement gradually taking place within individual states, a literature on archives arose in the 17th century, which, beginning with Niccolò Giussani’s *Methodus archivorum sive modus eadem texendi ac disponendi* (Milan 1648), admirably opened the field to all future discussions, among which a prominent place was held in the following century by the debate on whether to employ, in the classification of documents, a subject-based or a chronological system, both advocated respectively by the French archivists P. C. Le Moine and J. C. Chevrières.
Another advance in the field of archival organisation was made during the French Revolution, when the Convention, by the law of 7 Messidor, Year II (25 June 1794), granted public access to archives.
The 19th and 20th centuries offer a whole series of measures taken in favour of archives by various states, as well as the impulse given by them to the publication of inventories, so as to reveal to the wider world of scholars, with the obvious utility, the treasures of information that every archive can contain.
Today the study of problems relating to archives is not confined within national boundaries but assumes an international character of collaboration; for this purpose the *Institut International de Coopération Intellectuelle* (I.I.C.I.) functions, to which is owed the *International des Archives*, and the *Commission des Archives*, established by the *Comité International des Sciences Historiques*. Vedi CLASSIFICAZIONE, SISTEMI di.