Top historian urges rethink on Catholic archives split

A leading historian has begged Cardinal Keith O'Brien to reconsider "frankly appalling" plans to relocate two priceless collections of manuscripts, books and letters from the archives of the Catholic Church in Scotland.

 The collections, which are of international significance, are to be relocated to Aberdeen University from their current locations in Edinburgh. Archbishop Mario Conti, president of the Heritage Commission of the Bishops' Conference of Scotland, said the decision would preserve the integrity of the collections, while making them available to scholars, students and researchers in a safe location.

 But Dr Jenny Wormald, chairwoman of the Society for Scottish Medieval and Renaissance Studies and an honorary fellow in history at Edinburgh University, said the scholarly world would be "irrevocably impoverished" by the decision.

 Ms Wormald said no serious academic case for the proposal had been presented and it was "quite impossible to overstate the society's horror" at the plan. In a letter to Cardinal O'Brien, Britain's most senior Catholic, she said: "The idea of dividing the archives up and sending them off to two quite different parts of the country, is frankly appalling. The scholarly world would be irrevocably impoverished."

 The row centres on plans to move the main historical archive, which includes papers dating back to the 12th century as well as letters from Mary Queen of Scots, from Columba House, in Edinburgh, where the Scottish Catholic Archive is located.

Click here to read this article from the Herald Scotland

U.S. National Archives releases videos on Magna Carta project

The U.S. National Archives in Washington D.C. prepares to return its copy of the 1297 Magna Care to public display, they have released a short documentary video, “The Encasement of Magna Carta,” which details its state-of-the-art encasement. The Magna Carta will go back on display on February 17, 2012. The video is part of the ongoing series Inside the Vaults.

The video shows the fascinating behind-the-scenes creation of the case which will display the 715-year-old document for the world’s viewing. The 1297 Magna Carta being encased is one of only four remaining 1297 originals. Magna Carta is said to have influenced early American settlers and been an inspiration for the Constitution of the United States.

This copy of the Magna Carta is on loan to the National Archives from its owner, philanthropist and co-founder of the Carlyle Group, David M. Rubenstein. Mr. Rubenstein underwrote the conservation treatment of the document and the fabrication of its new encasement. The encasement was designed by the National Archives in cooperation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who fabricated the encasement.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Nottinghamshire medieval manorial records now online

The records from over 200 Nottinghamshire manors are now accessible online thanks to Nottinghamshire County Council and the National Archives in the United Kingdom.

The Manorial Documents register was launched earlier this week at an event at Nottinghamshire Archives. The records date back to the fourteenth century.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

British medieval records award special status by UNESCO

Twenty items have been selected from the UK’s libraries, archives and museums to represent the outstanding heritage of the United Kingdom, including several that date back to the Middle Ages. They new items listed in the UK Memory of the World Register include the Cura Pastoralis of Gregory, the Gough Map, Wakefield Court Rolls, Winchester Pipe Rolls and records of The Great Hospital in Norwich.

The international-level register, which features items of global significance, includes items from the UK such as 1215 Magna Carta, the Mappa Mundi and the film The Battle of the Somme. The UK Memory of the World programme is part of UNESCO’s work to promote preservation of and access to the world’s archive holdings and library collections. The UK Register is available at www.unesco.org.uk/ukregister

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Canterbury Cathedral to digitise archives

A unique collaboration between the University of Kent, Canterbury Cathedral Archives and researchers in Rouen has laid the foundations for a new and exciting project through which Canterbury residents and visitors may in the future gain easy access to some of the older and/or more fragile documents held in the Cathedral Archives.

Known as DocExplore, the project aims to develop an interactive system which allows digitised versions of valuable historical documents to be explored via a touch-screen, simulating, as far as possible, the experience of accessing the physical object itself. But users can see much more than the document – they can access translations and transcriptions, read more about the period in which it was written, its contents and who would have used it at the time by using the additional text, image, sound and video resources that are a feature of the system.

DocExplore will also capture the knowledge and expertise of the Archives’ staff by allowing them to easily present any available digitised document.

If the second phase of this EU INTERREG IVA-funded project is agreed, DocExplore will ultimately offer manuscript readers an even wider variety of tools, invaluable for both for the casual visitor with an interest in researching these priceless documents, and for academic historians and literary scholars.

For example, there will be tools to help readers to clarify annotations and to recover sections of the text which are damaged. It will also enable researchers to identify and compare writing samples from different writers and to investigate the nature of the paper on which documents are written.

The system was developed by Dr Richard Guest, Professor Michael Fairhurst and Dr Yiqing Liang from the School of Engineering and Digital Arts (EDA) at the University of Kent; Dr Catherine Richardson from the University’s Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies; Dr Malcolm Mercer and Dr Mark Bateson from Canterbury Cathedral Archives; and a team of researchers from the University of Rouen and the Bibliothéque de Rouen Archives.

Dr Yiqing Liang, the EDA-based researcher developing the system software, said: "The scoping phase of DocExplore began in April 2009. However, on the 17 and 18 March this year, local residents were given the opportunity to preview the ideas underpinning the proposed system at a two-day exhibition of the beautiful seventeenth century Travel Diary of John Bargrave held in the Cathedral’s archives. This exhibition and the feedback we received helped us learn a great deal more about how to build on the basic concept and will be useful for when we move on to the implementation of the ultimate system in the next phase of the project."

Dr Liang was also encouraged to see such a high level of interest in the project from those who visited the exhibition. "Canterbury Cathedral Archives continues a tradition of record-keeping that dates back at least 1300 years," she said. "We are proud and excited to be part of such an important tradition."

Click here to go to the DocExplore website

Click here to go to the Canterbury Cathedral website

Source: University of Kent

Hull History Centre opens its doors

After years of planning and months of moving, the state-of-the-art Hull History Centre opens on Monday, providing historians and researchers with a brand new archive.

The centre will bring together the vast collections held by the Hull City Archives, the Local Studies Library and the University of Hull archives. That's 28,000 boxes of material, plus books and volumes, document bundles, pamphlets, photographs, paintings and maps - enough to cross the Humber Bridge four times if put end to end.

It's all part of a ground-breaking partnership between Hull City Council and the University of Hull, made possible by a generous grant of £7.7m from the Heritage Lottery Fund - the largest that Hull has ever received, or indeed any archive project in the United Kingdom. The total cost of the building was £9.83m.

Preparing for the move has been a huge undertaking for staff with the past six months devoted to stock taking, labelling, packing and cataloguing.

Leading relocation specialist Harrow Green has been contracted to transfer the many unique and historical documents and equipment in what will be a carbon-neutral move. The company has worked on major move programmes for the likes of the BBC, Tate Britain and the National Railway Museum, to name but a few.

The collections will be housed in an atmospherically controlled storage area with 13km of high-spec shelving. Humidity, unsuitable temperatures, light, air-bourne pollutants and acidity all contribute to the deterioration of archival materials, so the temperature is set at a constant of 17°C and 50 to 55 per cent humidity.

Judy Burg, University of Hull archivist, said: "After such a huge amount of planning and preparation, we are delighted to be moving the precious archive collections held by the University into the Hull History Centre. It has taken a lot of hard work and commitment from staff and volunteers, including some of our students, but to see the building finished and our material being moved in is very exciting.

"Now we are all looking forward to the most thrilling moment of all - opening our doors and allowing the public to access the archives from 25 January onwards."

Among the University of Hull students who helped pack and catalogue the precious archives was Zoe Brown, who studied BA (Hons) History and is now studying for an MA in Medieval History. She said the new History Centre will be a great attraction to anyone thinking of studying at Hull.

“Even those students whose subjects may not seem associated with History would greatly benefit as the University archives have a wide range of collections that could enhance many areas of research. The centre itself will be an attraction to potential students as it shows the city is worth investing in and constantly improving. My only regret is that it was not around when I began my degree as it would have greatly aided my studies and encouraged the use of local documents in my work.”

Martin Taylor, city archivist for Hull City Council added: "It was nearly 10 years ago that we first sat down with the university to discuss the possibility of a purpose-built new History Centre, so we are delighted to reach this latest milestone.

"I cannot praise the staff enough for their tireless work and endless enthusiasm over the past year and we are all very excited to see the archives being moved into their new home and watch the building come to life. This building has been designed to help preserve the precious and irreplaceable documents inside it for generations to come. We can't wait to welcome the public in January and thank people for their patience while our archive services have been closed."

Ian Studd, Harrow Green's director of UK business relocations said: "Our experience of previous heritage projects helped us win this important contract and get involved with this inspiring project. The archive material is unique, fragile and vulnerable to handling and changes in environment, so careful handling and careful planning of the entire operation has been crucial. We understand the level of care needed and all Harrow Green vehicles have air-ride suspension to provide maximum protection for goods in transit."

The centre will house important documents including the city's Royal Charter, which dates from 1299, as well as collections of local, regional and national importance relating to the city of Hull and the surrounding areas, Hull's maritime history, political figures and pressure groups, and prominent figures in literature and drama.

Archives of Renaissance Artist Vasari almost sent to Russia

An odd story of the possible sale of the archives of a Renaissance artist to a mysterious Russian oligarch seems to be coming to an end with the Italian government seizing the archive for non payment of inheritance tax.

The sequence of events started in September when the mayor of Arezzo, Giuseppe Fanfani, received a letter from the owners of archival records of Giorgio Vasari, the 16th century Italian painter and architect famous for his history of Renaissance artists. The owners stated that a Russian company had agreed to buy the archives for 150 million euros.

The letter informed him that he could block the sale by matching the price supposedly offered by a Russian company. He was given 90 days to comply. “Madness,” said the mayor. “Where am I going to find €150m? That’s equivalent to five times the annual budget of the Arezzo council.”

As news of the possible sale drew widespread media attention, there were calls for the Italian government to step in and buy the archives, and avoid the possibility that they would be moved to Russia. Others pointed out that the €150 million price was massively over-inflated and suspected something underhanded in the whole affair.

A spokesperson for Italy's Culture Ministry spokesperson Giuseppe Proietti, said that "150 million euros is a preposterous sum of money well above the archives' market value." Milan's former culture chief and prominent art critic Vittorio Sgarbi added that archive was "worth 10 to 15 million euros, not 150 million."

These archives have been held at a museum in Arezzo since 1925, having been loaned to it by Count Luciano Rasponi-Spinelli. The Spinelli family and its descendants have claimed to keep ownership, although the museum believes it is on permanent loan to them.

To add to the intrigue, it was revealed that the Russian firm which had put the bid for the archives was not buying it for themselves, but were working on behalf of an unnamed Russian oligarch who had died in car accident on September 9th, and because of his death the deal was now null and void.  This led to more questions - Italian officials could find no records of any wealthy Russian oligarch who had died in or around that date, nor was their any explanation on why the deal was being brokered by a company that is normally involved in building shopping malls rather than a mainstream art brokerage.

Then, on October 17, the latest owner of the archives, Count Giovanni Festari, also died, leaving his inheritance to his four sons. They continued to pursue their claim to sell the archives, and even hinted that they wanted to get back some three volumes of Vasari's records which are located at a library in Yale University, alleging that they had been stolen decades earlier.

The Italian government has now acted - first by declaring even if the archives were sold, they could not be moved from the country. This was followed by an announcement that their tax collection agency had seized the Vasari archive for non-payment of an inheritance tax.

There has been much speculation that the alleged sale to the Russian oligarch was part of a scheme to trick the Italian government into buying the archives for far more than they were worth.  But it seems for now that Vasari's archives will be staying in Arezzo.

Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574) was born in Arezzo and was an accomplished artist - his paintings can be found in Florence's Duomo and Palazzo Vecchio, while he is also responsible for designing the Palazzo degli Uffizi, which is now the Tuscan city's most important art gallery. He is most well-known for his writings, which include The Lives of the Artists, an encyclopedia of artists biographies from the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

His archives were discovered in 1908 and include 29 volumes of documents, including drawings, sonnets, and 17 letters written by Michaelangelo. They also include Vasari's correspondence with other important Italian figures such as Cosimo de Medici and Amerigo Vespucci.

The city of Arezzo is planning to celebrate the 500th year of Giorgio Vasari's birth
next year.

Book reproduces famous documents from the Vatican Secret Archives

With millions of documents filling almost 53 miles of shelf space, the Vatican Secret Archives obviously still hold some secrets.

Despite the aura of mystery surrounding the archives, the Vatican actually encourages academics to research its holdings and has worked with a Belgian publishing house to bring 105 of the most important, or curious, documents to the public.

The coffee-table book, The Vatican Secret Archives, was published by VdH Books in Dutch, English, French and Italian.

Cardinal Raffaele Farina, the Vatican archivist, wrote in the introduction that he knows popular books and movies love to imply there are deep dark secrets intentionally hidden from public view.

But, as Bishop Sergio Pagano, prefect of the archives, explained, the "secret" in the archives' title comes from the Latin "secretum," meaning "personal" or "private."

In fact, Pope Leo XIII ordered the archives opened to researchers in 1881, and currently 60 to 80 scholars work there each day, poring over the parchments, ledgers, letters and texts.

Of the 105 high-quality reproductions there are 19 of which have never been published before. Among the documents reproduced in this volume are:

• A 13th-century letter from the grandson of Ghengis Khan to Pope Innocent IV includes, in its seal, one of the earliest examples of written Mongolian. In the letter, the Mongol emperor orders the pope to "pay service and homage to us" (an invitation Innocent did not accept).

• One of the many reminders of the papacy's once-great geopolitical role is found in a 1493 bull of Pope Alexander VI, granting Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella dominion over the New World discovered by Columbus the previous year.

• A 1586 letter to Pope Sixtus V from Mary, Queen of Scots, was written a few months before she was beheaded for plotting against her cousin, England's Queen Elizabeth I. Mary asks forgiveness for her sins and warns the pope of treacherous cardinals.

• In a 1550 letter, Michelangelo complains that a long papal conclave has interrupted his work on the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, and he needs money.

Medieval Documents used to pay taxes on Penrhyn Castle

The British Government and the executors of the Penrhyn Castle estate have agreed to exchange the estate's archives in lieu of payment of inheritance taxes. This will allow the public to access a large number of medieval documents dating back to 1288.

The BBC reports that when the current owners took possession of the historical contents of the castle, they were given an inheritance tax bill for almost £290,000. The owners contemplate selling its collection of documents into private hands, but the government ultimately decided to take up the offer themselves.

Penrhyn Castle was built in the thirteenth century in northern Wales, and has seen several reconstructions over the centuries.

The documents, which range from the 13th century parchment to 20th century typed paper, cover a wide range of history. The earliest item in the Penrhyn archive is from 1288 and details the sale of the township of Karnechan, along with all its goods and people.

There are more than 120 similar legal documents dating from the 14th and 15th Centuries, written in Latin on parchment. Later documents illustrate how the castle's 17th century owners were involved in the slave trade in Jamaica.

The archive will now be permanently kept at Bangor University. Einion Wynn-Thomas, one of the university's librarians, said, "Something as important as this to the history of north Wales really needs to remain here, for the benefit of the local people.

"Without this scheme the danger was that the archive would have been sold to a private collector and would have been lost to the public for good.

"Even worse than that, it's possible that it could have been broken up into different lots, destroying the continuity of this phenomenal resource.

"It's such a thrill to handle something written over 700 years ago and, given the age of some of the documents, their condition is amazing.

"It is perfectly possible to take them out and read them but obviously we have to take the greatest care with something so old and valuable, so they're stored in a humidity-controlled case, well away from direct sunlight.

"The value to our understanding of the history of Wales can't really be estimated. They provide one of the most complete documentary pictures of medieval Wales anywhere in the country."