The Virtual return of a Spanish Manuscript

The online English language edition of El País  has an interesting article about the identification of an important early eleventh century charter, the Will of Count Gundesindo, from the Castilian monastery of San Salvador de Oña, in the province of Burgos. The charter incorporated earlier texts from thr ninth century about the family and monastic endowments. With the dispersal of the monastic library and archive after the confiscation of Church property in 1835, the original Will, which was only recorded in imperfect copies, was identified in an archive in Russia in the 1980s. Now a virtual copy of the document has been given to Spanish archives in Cantabria. 

The story is very much an historical detective story and illustrates the folly of what happened in the nineteenth century and the failure then to preserve the country’s heritage. It also shows the value, tempered by tragedy, of modern scholarly persistence.

The article can be seen at Russia gives Spain digital copy of a valuable medieval manuscript stolen in 1835