Reconstructing the Medieval Archive: the Monastery of Rendufe through Nineteenth-Century Inventories

This article examines the archive of the Portuguese monastery of Rendufe, with the primary aim of understanding the factors that led to the near-total disappearance of its medieval documentation and determining when this occurred. To this end, we focus on two inventories produced in the early nineteenth century: the first is undated but can be attributed to the initial decades of the century, while the second was compiled in 1834 following the decree of extinction of the religious orders. These two sources provide data that enable us to construct an understanding of what happened to Rendufe’s medieval documents.