QUARE? The Archive of Francisco Manuel de Melo

Abstract

In this paper we will study the Archive of the great 17th century writer, D. Francisco Manuel de Melo (Lisbon 1608 - 1666) according to the principles of Historical Archivistic.

The idea of starting this study came from the intersection of our admiration for the work and Francisco Manuel de Melo with the reading of a remarkable essay by Eric Ketelaar on Rembrandt's Archives - Prologue: Rembrandt's Archives, included in his Archiving people. A social history of Dutch Archives, La Haye, Stichting Archiefpublicaties, 2020, p. 9- 14.

Unlike the case of the famous Dutch painter, of whom no documents remain, from the Francisco Manuel's Archive there is/was a small nucleus of documentation preserved over generations by the descendants of a collateral branch, which was transcribed, published and studied by Edgar Prestage between 1909 and 1914 and which is now in unknown whereabouts.

Our goal is to make a first approximation to what may have been the writer's archive at the time of his death in 1666, the reasons why and the manner in which the documentation was produced, its custodial history, the uses made of the documentation by the his heirs, and the historical, literary, sociological, and knowledgeable importance of the Ancient Regime society in the Hispanic world and in Portugal during the Restoration.

The paper is structured in six chapters:

1 - METHODOLOGY - Our method will consist in the analysis of the published bibliography of Francisco Manuel de Melo from an archival point of view, i.e. studying the author as a producing entity of an Archive according to the guidelines of the Archival Method, as explained by Elio Lodolini, Luciana Duranti and Giovanni Michetti. The main work on Francisco Manuel is the biography - D. Francisco Manuel de Mello: Esboço biographico, Coimbra University Press, 1914, by Edgar Prestage, who was a noted historian, but with the characteristics of his time, i.e. using archives as a reservoir of historical information, as sources. This paper will be the beginning of an approach to this work taking the archive as the object of study, making the social history of the archive, putting into practice the principles of Historical Archivistics as they are defined by Maria de Lurdes Rosa, among many others, in her 2017 articles, 2018 with the collaboration of Rita Nóvoa, and in the doctoral theses she has supervised within the VINCULUM Project, which includes the Invent.Arq Project - Inventories of Family archives, XV-XIX centuries.

2 - BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY - We have established a summary of the biography of D. Francisco Manuel, based on Prestage's fundamental work, complemented with some of the contributions, which have uncovered new information and confirmed or updated known information. This summary introduces the reader to the personality who produced the documentation studied, with factual and chronological accuracy.

3 - D. FRANCISCO MANUEL, DOCUMENTATION PRODUCING ENTITY - Analysis of the main characteristics of the man integrated in his time and social environment, with recourse to a fundamental work on Francisco Manuel, authored by Camões Gouveia, which identifies very accurately, using techniques proper to history, several aspects of his personality that shaped the production and conservation of the documentation, namely the fact that he was a nobleman among noblemen.

4 - THE PHYSICAL AND HUMAN CONTEXT - The fourth chapter is dedicated to a survey of the places where he was born, where he lived, where he was imprisoned and exiled, as well as a possible inventory of the servants who served him during his life and influenced his documentary production.

5 - DESCRIPTION OF THE DOCUMENTATION - The fifth chapter presents a description, and characterization of the writer's documentary production, using tables in the text and in the appendix. In addition to the aforementioned work by Prestage, we will take into account documents located and described by Teófilo Braga, and Joan Estruch Tobella.

6 - CUSTODIAL HISTORY - In this chapter, based on many of the facts established in the previous chapters, we present the research on the history of the Archive of D. Francisco Manuel, using methods proper of History, to extend and develop the so-called Custodial History, which is already carried out by archivists and is foreseen in ISAD (G). We have also used genealogy to establish and identify the successive generations who owned parts of Francisco Manuel's archive, and we summarize the results of our investigations in three family trees.

In it we follow the fate of the documentation from the date of the sudden death of D. Francisco Manuel's in August 1666, up to the present day. It was only possible to follow its path and the purposes for which it was successively used, by its various holders, until the beginning of the 20th century. From that date on, all hypotheses are possible, including the most terrible ones, which was the fate of many other archives in Portugal.

CONCLUSIONS - In this brief but fascinating investigation, we have applied the principles of Historical Archivistics, to study the documentation produced by D. Francisco Manuel de Melo, in the context of his status as a nobleman and in the era of the Ancien Régime. Based on this work, we can present several lines of investigation to achieve a greater knowledge of the Archive of D. Francisco Manuel.

This research shows the great importance of the study of family archives for the understanding of each of the individuals that make them up, giving much greater depth to their actions and making it possible to understand the limitations and qualities of each person inserted in his class and in his time.

The deeper knowledge of what would have been the archives of D. Francisco Manuel de Melo will allow us to increase our knowledge of his literary work and the context in which it was written.

A final negative conclusion, of a general nature, about the Portuguese culture of the last 250 years imposes itself at the conclusion of this work. It is the continued disinterest, laxity and lack of awareness of cultural values, as structuring elements of a free and developed society that characterizes Portugal. From one of the greatest Portuguese writers, who had an adventurous and fascinating life, nothing remains! Everything has disappeared: the houses where he lived, whose exact location is unknown, the graves of his sister, his mother, his grave, his Archive, the originals of most of his literary works! All lost! All destroyed! Quare?