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Nineteenth-century historians were inspired by two overarching principles. First, all historical knowledge had to rest on original authorities, and second, the virtue of completeness warranted the reliability of historical knowledge as it eliminated the biases embedded in a selection of sources. Neither of these ideas was a nineteenth-century invention, but the opening of archives gave a new acuteness to these traditional views. Historians realized that completeness, the idea of gathering every source pertaining to their subject matter, was an elusive goal as they made their way through the sea of hitherto unknown documents dispersed in public and private archives all over Europe. Nevertheless, as the idea of completeness continued to haunt them, they abandoned their studies and launched long journeys from one archive to another.
These archival journeys have left us a wealth of material – letters, diaries, memoirs, official reports, and articles – with minute reports about every imaginable aspect of archives and historical research. The archival accounts are rich with obstacles and misfortunes: they abound with complaints about bureaucratic regulations which either restricted or altogether denied access to archives, about lack of catalogues, inventories and finding aids, limited opening hours, and about the feelings of solitude the long archival pursuits evoked. Furthermore, the accounts attest how the lack of comprehensive information about archives and their holdings meant that historians just had to try their luck and knock on the doors of families, parishes, monasteries, schools, local authorities, and other similar institutions which might hold valuable historical records. But the archive narratives are also moving testimonies of the joys of discovery as the past suddenly emerged in a more complete form in front of a historian’s eyes in some remote archive in some foreign country. Or about the extra mile which some archivists, librarians, and owners of private papers went to accommodate historical research. As the following examples show, the encounters with keepers of historical records could gain almost epic proportions in the nineteenth-century archival lore.
The entanglement of national histories ensured that historical records had moved from one repository to another as boundaries had been drawn and redrawn time and again in the past and, consequently, historians had to travel extensively to gather all the necessary material. Most recently, Napoleon’s dream of one universal archive in Paris had caused havoc in archives in central and southern Europe. French officials had transported hundreds and thousands of bundles of documents from Brussels, Simancas, Vatican, Vienna, and numerous other locations first to Paris and then returned most of them back where they had come from. Hence, when historians began to ransack archives in earnest during the first quarter of the century, many of the repositories were still inventorying and reorganizing their collections after the French intervention. Due to these recent events, archivists tended to be highly protective about their wares and weary about foreign scholars requesting to consult their collections.
This was very much what the German historian Friedrich Bluhme experienced in Italy in 1822. Bluhme was one of the first editors of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica and he was commissioned to Italy to explore the local and regional repositories. He reported about his progress in detail to George Heinrich Pertz in Berlin. When he reached Verona, he was determined to consult the collections held in La Capitolare, known today as the most ancient library still in operation. This was not an easy task. Bluhme told Pertz how he had earlier failed to gain access to La Capitolare because the archivist had maintained that he “did not have the key” to open the door of the archive. Bluhme was not convinced about this explanation at all and this time he had been appealing to the saints not to let the Archivist-Canonicus to once again “spread his robes in front of the bookcases” to protect the manuscripts from the prying eye of a foreign historian.
Missing keys played a central role in numerous archive accounts. Thirty years after Bluhme, the editorial board of Monumenta Germaniae Historica sent another German historian, Ludwig Bethmann, to Italy to search for more unpublished medieval manuscripts. Bethmann reported about his journey from Todi, a small village south of Perugia. The city archives of Todi, Bethmann explained, were hidden in the sacristy of the local church, and could be entered only by first pushing aside the confessional that blocked the door to the archive and then unlocking the hidden door with two separate keys. It took “enormous effort” to induce the official in charge of the archive to come to open the door and to see the trouble to find the second key which had been held by someone who had died. But it was all worth the trouble; when the door was finally opened, Bethmann discovered nine unpublished “Kaiserurkunden” among the other papers held in that archive. This was not the only occasion when Bethmann’s work was slowed down by lost keys. In Civitanova, he discovered an old chest that was locked and seemed to belong to Marquis Ricci von dem Dasein. The Marquis, too, became highly curious about the chest and since he did not have a key to open it, he ordered it to be broken. The chest contained parchments and Bethmann was able to trace the history of the chest to the upheaval which Napoleon’s archival vision had caused in the local archives in Italy. Apparently, the chest had been standing unopened in Civitanova since it had been returned to Italy from France and experienced some damage during its lifecycle. Much of its contents had “turned into dust.”
As the century progressed, the suspicions which many of the keepers of records held towards historians gradually diminished. Consequently, historians could expect substantial help from the archivists as they chased the documentary treasures. The troubles with missing keys, though, continued. In England, Samuel Rawson Gardiner was in Colchester, where the local parish church had some important seventeenth-century Act Books. They were, Gardiner explained in a footnote in The Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I. (1882), under the charge of the registrar who had fallen ill. However, unlike in Bluhme’s case fifty years earlier, no one in Colchester wished to complicate or obstruct historical research. Therefore, Gardiner could thank cordially “the Rev. Sir J. Hawkins, Bart., and F. T. Veley, Esq., for their kind assistance in helping me to see these books at a time when the illness of the late registrar made it difficult for me to procure access to them in the ordinary way.”
It is hard to say how much of the record keepers’ willingness to help historians during the latter half of the century owed to the modernizing tendencies in the archive profession. Despite the archivists’ more accommodating spirit towards historical research, historians continued to experience countless obstacles as archivists balanced between their obligations as protectors of historical secrets and as promoters of historical research. It might be safe to say that especially in the small, rural settings many of the manuscript collections were not professionally maintained and the generosity towards historians derived mainly from the kindness of those who were entrusted to guard the documents. Bethmann’s experiences in Todi capture this informal archival hospitality. According to his letter to Pertz, one day he found his way to a convent of S. Francesco, where the nuns were happy to accommodate his scholarly wishes. He received the manuscripts “one by one through the iron bars” accompanied by lemonade and “sugary treats.”
Sources
Esch, Arnold. “Auf Archivreise: Die deutschen Mediävisten und Italien in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts: aus Italien-Briefen von Mitarbeiter der Monumenta Germaniae Historica vor der Gründung des Historischen Instituts in Rom.“ In Deutsches Ottocento: Die deutsche Wahrnehmung Italiens im Risorgimento, edited by Arnold Esch and Jens Peters, 187–234. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000.
Gardiner, Samuel Rawson. The Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I. London: Longman, 1882.
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Donato, Maria Pia. Les Archives du Monde: Quand Napoléon confisqua l’histoire. Paris : Puf, 2020.
Clio's footnotes 