The Anatomy of Manuscripts: Over 600 Manuscripts

THE ANATOMY OF MANUSCRIPTS

Over 600 manuscripts treated for the Notarial Archives

By Theresa Zammit Lupi

Notary de Agatijs R202 Vol 4 showing severe war damage For those who have never been to the Notarial Archives in St Christopher Street, Valletta, it must be said that prior to the intervention of Dr Joan Abela in 2004, the place was in shambles with little hope for its recovery. After the setting up of NARC (the Notarial Archives Resource Council, later NAF Notarial Archives Foundation), and several years of voluntary work, the Archives began to change radically, both in terms of its upkeep, and its approach to preservation and access for researchers.

One of the fundamental changes that will transform the Notarial Archives into one of its kind, will be the method of storage of the bound manuscripts

In 2013 a steering committee was set up and chaired by Joan Abela who always had a clear vision of how the Archives should be run. In 2014 an application for ERDF funding to rehabilitate the Archives was submitted by the Office of the Chief Notary to Government and accepted the following year. Works started in 2016 and tenders were issued in 2017.

The Archives building in St Christopher Street will now be connected to the abutting building on St Paul Street so that the Archives will be double its original size. The previous archive building will house the main depository, and the new one will be a staff and visitor building where activities happen. It will house a museum, a conservation laboratory, a reading room, offices and social spaces. All areas that will house the collection shall be acclimatised to provide stability to the manuscripts.

One of the fundamental changes that will transform the Notarial Archives into one of its kind, will be the method of storage of the bound manuscripts in the main depository and reading room. For several decades (if not centuries), the manuscripts have been stored vertically on open shelves. The strain and sheer weight of the volumes in this position has caused the textblocks to sag, the sewing to come apart, and damage to be caused to the lower edges of the covers.

From the presence of a title tab which includes the notary’s name and date that is attached to the lower front cover of several of the volumes, we know that the manuscripts were sensibly designed to be stored horizontally. For this reason, a decision has been made to re-shelf and re-house the entire collection horizontally. This ensures no stress on the textblock and binding materials and guarantees safety for the long term storage of the collection.

A major exercise through the ERDF funding has been the treatment of 609 volumes which were tendered for and won by PrevArti Co. Ltd, a private local conservation firm directed by Pierre Bugeja. The manuscripts selected for this tender will eventually be displayed in the reading room once structural works are completed. The idea is to have a large glass acclimatised tower in the reading room in which several volumes will be stored horizontally. The volumes of 15 different notaries, amounting precisely to 609, were selected for this tender and range from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth century.

Having a wide historic range of manuscripts means that a variety of different binding styles could be shown and enjoyed by those visiting or working in the reading room. The different types of parchment and cartonnage bindings that have spines ranging from 2cm to 35cm in thickness, would also serve as a didactic exercise to show the extent of how busy a notary was being kept by the number of contracts bound together in a given

Conservator Elena Verona carefully dismantling one of the de Agatijs volumes

R202 Vol 10A Severe war damage, before and after treatment

year. A year always started on 1 September and ended on the 31 August because that was the administrative year that only changed from January to December under British rule.

The display in the glass tower will also allow visitors to walk around it in order to look at the manuscripts closely and observe the smaller details such as the title tabs, the sewing structure and the patterns of the leather tackets on the spines.

An international team of seven conservators concluded the two-year project at PrevArti in September 2020. Headed by Laura Chignoli, the conservators were Roberta Bove, Alice Ferri, Lucia Medici, Gislene Nuñes, Rebecca Ranieri and Elena Verona. The conservators followed a strict protocol that is also practiced by the Notarial Archives conservation team. In so doing it was ensured that there would be continuity and homogeneity of work practice, methodology and standard. All conservation work was under my supervision, so this enabled the team to follow the Archives’ conservation approach more closely.

The volumes selected for treatment presented a range in complexities. Some simply required two to three hours of work. These included tasks such as the removal of the black marker that was sadly allowed to be used for the reference number on the spines of the volumes some 15 years ago. Mid-

range treatments would include small repairs of corners, the consolidation of corroded inks and the reinforcement of loose sewing structures which would on average be a three- to five-day task.

But other treatments were far more interventive and lengthy and involved as much as 1,200 hours to complete. The 13 volumes of the contracts of Notary Nicolò de Agatijs (1535-1547) took eight months alone to complete. For this there were four full-time conservators. Work on the de Agatijs volumes was extremely time-consuming because of the extent of war damage that the manuscripts had been through. The effect of the blast was so powerful that it penetrated the entire volumes from front to back. This meant that all volumes had to be carefully dismantled so that they could be repaired folio by folio, sewn again and rebound.

A variety of papers were used for repairs, from 3.6gsm to 49gsm and sometimes a lamination of different thicknesses if necessary. The number of conservation papers available are infinite: short or long fibres, shiny, mat, tough, translucent, smooth, laid and wove, and also come in several different shades of white (or rather, cream). Those used for paper repairs are always made in Japan. These are preferred over other papers because the fibres used for making them are sourced from plants that have very long fibres (mainly kozo). When water-cut and frayed, the fibres interlace beautifully with the old Western fibres of the old papers, providing strength and uniformity to the joins of the tears and infills.

The fragments of the leaves of the de Agatijs volumes were so crushed and misplaced, that it took several hours until one folio was flattened and repaired. The so-called orphaned fragments were all kept for future study. This is because their repositioning requires having the knowledge of sixteenth-century Latin palaeography which is far from simple to read. The fragments were attached onto sheets of Japanese tissue which was backed by a sheet of paper onto which the folio numbers were written. They were then inserted into polyethylene sleeves which prevent soiling and allow viewing the fragments without actually handling them. If their location is eventually found, the detachment of the fragment from its tissue support is easy and reversible and may be reattached in its original position without any fear of causing any damage.

The de Agatijs volumes had been rebound in acidic cardboard covers in the early twentieth century. These were removed and replaced with a parchment cover with alum tawed skin tackets which follow a style that is more in keeping with sixteenth-century bindings from the Archives. Calf skins are also very sturdy and the quality that was used was only of conservation grade that ensures stability and longevity to the textblock.

The conservation work on the De Agitijs volumes was one of great reward. The transformation is quite incredible as were the conservators who worked on them. The manuscripts are now legible and easy to handle; they may be studied fully and will also be digitized to minimise their handling.

de Agatijs fragments stored for future study

As conservators we are fortunate that our work allows us to dissect through manuscripts and understand their anatomy

R89 Vol 23 Notary Giuliano Briffa, the spine before and after treatment showing extended leather tackets

One other remarkable set of manuscripts worth mentioning is that of Notary Giuliano Briffa of which there are 25 volumes in the collection. Briffa was active from 1571 to 1596 and was indeed a very busy notary. His volumes are almost all extremely thick, with the thickest being 35cm amounting to over 2,300 folios. This means that there would be about one thousand contracts drawn up in one year – an impressive workload that certainly also meant he had a very busy scribal assistant.

Briffa’s manuscripts have some very intriguing covers, 16 of which have exceptionally long external leather tackets which were used to hold together the individual quires to the cover externally. Having very thick spines, these manuscripts have several tackets making them look quite attractive. These external tackets alternate in position from having two in the first quire, one central one in the second, and again two in the third quire and so forth. Owing to the varied, large and complicated sewing structures of these bindings, there were numerous discussions taking place because a compromise had to be reached between the functional elements of the books which made them structurally sound, and the salvage of their unique codicological features.

Such long leather tackets are unique within the Notarial Archive collection and elsewhere. This has curiously led to question their possible influence and production. Correspondence with conservators and book historians in leading archives and libraries in Malta and abroad to enquire about possible similar examples, has shed no light as to where influences of such long tackets may have been drawn from.

To date, the Briffa volumes remain distinctive and unparalleled. On an island which had just been through a siege, where materials were scarce and where supplies were recycled, it is remarkable and surprising to see how the extended lengths of leather used as tackets were lavishly afforded for such notarial bindings.

As conservators we are fortunate that our work allows us to dissect through manuscripts which allows us to understand their anatomy. Sometimes our patients are in such bad shape that it is easy to see how they are constructed without even using any tools because they are already dismantled. The careful examination, interpretation and treatments carried out on manuscripts is crucial and if untrained one may unknowingly over-treat a volume giving it an altered structure and losing much of its historicity. n

Theresa Zammit Lupi is a freelance book and paper conservator. From 2017-20 she was consultant conservator for the ERDF Rehabilitation Project of the Notarial Archives. Theresa studied conservation in Florence and London and received her doctorate in 2008 from Camberwell College, London, specializing in French Renaissance manuscripts.