The New Culture of Archives in Early Modern Spain

Abstract

What sort of progress took place in the archives of Spain from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth century? This is the question which this article seeks to answer by reflecting on the nomenclature assigned to various repositories of documentary memory, from ‘chest of privileges’ to ‘archival chamber’, whilst also focusing on the process of ‘archival consolidation’ which took place in different political and institutional spheres, from the Monarchy to municipal government. With this aim in mind, the article will also review a series of official regulations, beginning with the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, which sought both to rein in the disorder and dispersion of royal documents, and to promote the preservation of municipal and notarial papers. Given that no archive can exist without a basic system of order, this study also seeks to address the different forms of organization and control of documentary memory, emphasizing the diverse systems that were adopted and their purposes. This raises a final question, that of the uses of archives, which ranged from serving the needs of different levels of governance and administration, to the organization of an ever-growing body of information and its simultaneous use in the writing of history, as reflected in the work of diverse chroniclers in a period that was increasingly characterized by the practice of local historiography.