The vicissitudes of the documentation of the medieval Cistercian monastery of Fitero

Abstract

The article studies the history of the archives of the Cistercian monastery at Fitero (Navarre) in the Middle Ages, comparing the documentation available with references to it in a number of archive inventories of the modern age. A total of 135 mediaeval documents dated after 1210 have been conserved (the year in wich the Cartulary of Fitero was completed), of which 65 are originals and the rest copies of important privileges that were conserved in the monastery´s archives, using later versions in their place when it was necessary to demonstrate the monastery´s rigths. Others were obtained from the 16^th century onwards as a result of claims presented by the monastery in defence of its interest before the courts of law of Navarre, and to a lesser extent those of Spain. The comparison of the documentation with the archive inventories of the 17^th and 18^th centuries has enabled us to determine that the loss of some important original documents had been detected at the time, and great care was taken to preserve the remaining items. From this it can be deduced that the negative effects on the conservation of the documentary patrimony, due to the Desamortización (confiscation of church property) of Mendizábal among other things, became a non-corroborated cliché to a certain extent in the case of the archive at Fitero, which has fortunately conserved most of its mediaeval documentation.