Teresa Espejo et. al: Recovering the Notarial register of Torres (Jaén, Spain): study of a 14th-century archive binding

The Torres Notarial Register is the oldest surviving notarial record in the southern territories of the Crown of Castile. It comprises a collection of notes made by the public notary Antón García between 1382 and 1400, which has come down to us unedited as evidence attached to a judicial brief, kept in the archives of the Royal Chancellery in Granada. Its importance lies in the fact that it exists  – as well as its legal significance.

The support of the body of the manuscript comprised different papers, all with the same characteristics as those of Hispano-Arabic papers. The whole register was covered with a re-used bifolio parchment page from a complete missal of the Roman mass, dated to the late 11th century, which had by then fallen into disuse. It had been recycled and adapted to the format of the register and sewn with exterior reinforcements on the spine, so as to bring together the different fragments of paper into the final notebook.

An interdisciplinary research team worked together to study and conserve the document, and out of their work two key aspects have emerged in particular, which will be the subject of the present paper.

Firstly, the particular features of its binding and the results of the codicological study are of particular interest. The study of its structure and materials has provided new data on the processes of making archive documents in the 14th century. It has been proven that the materials used pertained to the period in which it was made, with the different papers used in the support either included as separate leaves or folded into quires. The different annotations were made by hand using quill, reed pen, or brush, in black ink, following the common procedures of the time. Analysis of the different threads used, the content, the structure and sequence of the different quires, the use of different stitching, and the degradation of the parchment over the spine, indicated that the binding was not added as the last stage in the binding process encompassing all of the documents that it now contains. Rather, once it had been completed it was repeatedly stitched and unstitched over the years so as to incorporate new notes and corrections or replace content that was no longer of interest. Analysis of the text layout, the lettering, and the nature and composition of the different inks, also corroborated that the different entries were not written in one single continuous process, and that they were not intended as a set of notarial protocols, as we might understand them today.

Secondly, the interventions made to recover and restore the value of this document are worthy of special mention, particularly in relation to the parchment cover. Its state of conservation, on the one hand, and its historical value, on the other, were the source of much deliberation as regards the correct criteria for its restoration. One option would have been to restore it once again as a cover, but this presented two major drawbacks, namely: the fragility of the parchment in the spine area, with the corresponding risk of deterioration in the medium term; and the loss of part of the information that would be hidden once the cover was in place. The choice between preserving the original elements of the binding or creating new ones was problematic. Ultimately, it was decided that the parchment should be preserved as an independent item. In its place, a facsimile reproduction of the cover was created in paper, in order to recuperate the structure of the binding without altering the appearance of the document from its original concept. Prior to this step, an in-depth study was carried out to examine and compare the characteristics and ageing processes of the possible inks and papers to be used in the facsimile. This ensured that no damage would be caused to the original materials over time.

Authors: Teresa Espejo, Ana Lopez-Montes, Rosario Blanc, University of Granada, Domingo Camillio, University of Murcia.