Corpo Cronológico: documents and research at Torre do Tombo

The Corpo Cronológico, held at Torre do Tombo in Lisbon, is a major source for Portugal’s political, administrative and maritime history and its relations with other territories. UNESCO entered the collection on the Memory of the World Register in 2007. The 2006 nomination identifies 83,212 documents in 525 bundles, chiefly from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Document dates and archival arrangement

The nomination gives 1161–1699. The current Digitarq record instead displays 1137–1699 under production and 1161–1699 under creation. Keep this discrepancy in mind when searching by date: use an individual document’s description to date that item, rather than assigning the collection’s interval to every manuscript.

1756–1764 refers to the arrangement and description undertaken by Manuel da Maia after the 1755 earthquake. It is not when the documents were written. A substantial earlier group entered the archive in 1569, delivered to Damião de Góis by Pedro de Alcáçova Carneiro.

This artificial collection combines records of different provenance in three parts. Neighbouring items in a chronological sequence do not necessarily come from the same institution or administrative process.

Questions the collection can help answer

Letters, instructions, receipts and payment orders provide ways into royal decisions, diplomacy and the movement of people and goods. The holdings concern Atlantic territories, Africa, Asia and Brazil, including warfare, colonial administration and the trafficking of enslaved people.

Read each item with its author, recipient and purpose in mind. An administrative record preserves its producer’s perspective; it cannot alone represent everyone concerned. Comparing correspondence with accounts can help distinguish an instruction from its implementation.

Starting in Digitarq

Open the PT/TT/CC record and follow its parts and subordinate documents. Save the complete reference, including part, bundle and number, together with the title, date and link. Try historical variants of personal and place names too.

The nomination’s 525 bundles are storage units. A bundle, a document, a collection description and an image file cannot be added together as equivalent items.

Consultation and reproduction

Check each document record for images. Digitisation percentages in the nomination describe the situation at that time, rather than current availability. Confirm conditions with the archive before requesting an original or a reproduction.

Compare the collection with the Treaty of Tordesillas or the first circumnavigation: their documentary units and custody histories differ.