Sources and Methodologies
If the documents have disappeared, how can we find them?
— By analysing the inventories, catalogues, indexes, and other archival tools produced by the institutions over time.
— By paying attention to the back pages of the documents, which contain a wealth of information about the internal organisation of an archive and the way in which a particular institution managed its written memory.
task 1
INSTITUTIONS
The study of the history of the two monasteries to be analysed will enable us to
To get to know these institutions and their long journey from the Middle Ages to the end of the XVIIIth century / beginning of the XIXth century.
— to answer many questions, such as the impact of internal changes and the annexation (in the case of Grijó) to another monastic house on both archives in both archives.
— to clarify the relevance of certain periods of instability for the restructuring of the archive itself or its integration into another monastic archive.
The production of inventories, catalogues and indexes, as well as the changes in the documents, are reflected in expressions such as "nada vale" ("worthless"), which appear on the back of many documents, thus indicating the "death sentences" to which many of them were condemned at the time of their transfer to another institution.
task 2
SOURCES
The aim of this study is to determine, based on these inventories, "tombos de copiadores", administrative books of various types, and of various documents, what documents were preserved in these two monasteries, their typology and quantity, and to make a diachronic comparison between them.
Questions to be asked:
— Is the affiliation to different orders reflected in a certain type of written memory that the monasteries tried to preserve or, on the contrary, does it not show any influence at all?
— What might have been the consequences of the annexation of Grijó in the second half of the XVI century for the medieval written memory, which until then had always been kept in the "original archive" of this institution?
— In the case of Rendufe, what were the consequences of the government of non-resident commendatory abbots on the internal organisation of the monastery itself?
task 3
VIRTUAL ARCHIVES
The project aims at the virtual reconstruction of the archives, gathering all the elements collected in Task 2 (Sources) and creating a platform capable of reconstructing the Grijó and Rendufe archives:
— Linking the documents that still exist to the collections of the National Archives where they are currently kept, reproducing their digital images, summarising and, if necessary, transcribing part of them or a given set.
— Gathering the documents "recovered" from the institutions through the notes and references they contain on the management and organisation methods of the archives to which they belong.
— Describing the documents that no longer exist but of which there is still a written record (in inventories, catalogues, "copiadores"), indicating all the elements and characteristics (internal and external).
The "reconstructed" archives will be made available on a platform to the scientific community and the general public. With the local communities directly linked to the monasteries of Grijó and Rendufe always in mind, other elements such as the bibliography, either existing or to be produced by our team members, and general information about the monasteries that can help contextualise and understand their history and archives will also be available.