Saint Mark of Leon. History of the documentary collection, making and institution of the archive of the Order of Santiago in the Priory of Leon (1170-1872)

Abstract

St. Mark’s Archives in León are the main documentary collection of the Military Order of St. James in the province of León. Saint Mark’s monastery kept for seven centuries (from the 12th to the 19th century) the documentation of the Order belonging to the territories of Extremadura, León and Galicia. This article is a study of those archives considered as a building, as an institution and as a documentary collection. The documents provide information on the making and the location of the archives, as well as about the people who looked after them for those seven centuries. St. Mark’s Archives were inside the convent and evolved simultaneously, influenced by its history and the status it had at each given time. In this article we will study the period before St. Mark’s belonged to the Order, the pre-archival stage (which started in the 12th century) and the archival stage (which was a late stage that did not begin until the 18th century). Thus, this article has a transversal nature covering from the 12th to the 18th century, where the Medieval period is significant because it lays the foundations for the archives – both their making and their documentary collection. Moreover, its main descriptive instrument also belongs to the Medieval period, which is essential too in order to understand the history of these archives until their disentailment.