Tag: Manuscripts

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Working in the Archives – The Rijksarchief te Gent

RA Gent, K56, Klooster de Filledieusen

This post contributes to our ongoing special series, “Working in the Archives.” Previously, our bloggers have explained the archival procedures in Morocco and in France. Today, I will discuss some strategies and tips to make a trip to the The Rijksarchief te Gent in Belgium a productive one.  

The State Archives in Gent is one of the major depositories of medieval manuscripts in Belgium. I resided and researched in Gent for nine months and hope this blog will help scholars who are traveling to Gent, to the Rijksarchief, to complete research in a short amount of time and with limited knowledge of the city.

Below, I will discuss the practical knowledge needed to make an archive visit productive: how to get to the Rijksarchief from the train station (Station Gent-Sint-Pieters), what is needed to access the archive, how to search for material, how to request that material, and how long the material takes to arrive. Additionally, I will mention some quality of life information- a good place for lunch, for coffee, and for dinner and a drink after a long day in the archive.

How to Get There- Bagattenstraat 43, 9000 Gent

The train to Gent from Brussels Airport (BRU) takes either an hour or an hour and a half, depending on the available trains at the airport when you land. One can take any train going to Brussels Central and switch trains there to arrive faster. Train travel in Brussels is quite easy, with train times and destinations presented in Flemish, French, and English (most of the time, but not always). Upon arriving in Gent-Sint-Pieter’s, there are three easy ways to get to the Rijksarchief- tram, taxi, or by foot.  Taking a taxi in Gent is a bit pricey, so if one is on a budget, taking the tram or walking is the better option.

There is a tram that runs regularly from the front of Sint-Pieter’s Station. It is on the Red Line (1) that goes straight into the city center. The stop on the Red Line next to the Rijksarchief is called Verlorenkost. The stop is one street before Bagattenstraat, the street on which the archive is located.

To walk from the train station, one will want to follow the same path as the tram: first, take Konigen Elisabethlaan away from the station; after about a quarter of a mile, bear to the left onto Kortrijkseestenweg; remain on this street through a major intersection. The street changes in name to Kortrijksepoortstraat; continue on this street until you reach Bagattenstraat on the right, and the archive is the third building on the left. It is a large white building.

What You Need to Access the Archive

To access the material in the archive, one needs a research card (Lezerskaart). One can spend 5 euros for a weeklong visitor’s research card, or one can spend 20 euros for a yearlong card. You must show your personal reader’s card at every visit. It can be purchased on-site: the annual card gives access to all the reading rooms of the State Archives of Belgium. If one has a student card from the University of Gent, the card is half price.

How to Search For Material

RA Gent K54, Grauwe Zusters bij Sint-Jans
RA Gent K52, Klooster van Arme Klaren

One can search the Rijksarchief online at arch.be/. However, many of the inventories of the collections held in the archive are not online, and can only be consulted in-person. The inventories are shelved on the second floor in the reading room.

To fully understand what the inventories and search tools say, one needs to have some grasp of Dutch. Most of the finding tools are only in Dutch, although one can ask the staff for clarifications and assistance. At minimum, bring a Dutch dictionary, as there is no Wi-Fi at the archive to look up words and phrases online.

How to Request Material and its Arrival Time

To request a manuscript, one can email the archive a day before to have the material ready in the morning. Otherwise, you must request them in person. The manuscripts are brought to the reading room on the top of every hour, so plan your time accordingly.

Quality of Life

In terms of walkability, Gent is a very manageable city. While it only takes about 15 minutes to walk to the city center from the Rijksarchief, there are nearby cafes and restaurants that are of excellent quality and affordable. My favorite spot near the archive is Vooruit- a restaurant at the other end of Bagattenstraat. It has good food at a good price, with a daily special every day. Vooruit also has excellent coffee. For an afterwork drink or game of pool, turn right out of the archive and go two buildings down to Kaptein Kravate.

Sean Sapp
University of Notre Dame

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Working in the Archives – Navigating Archival Research in Central Europe

Chapter 58 of the Rule of St. Benedict describes a postulant requesting entrance into the religious life:

“Anyone on first coming to the religious life should not find the entrance made easy, but as the apostle says, “Test the spirits to see if they are of God.” If, however, the newcomer continues to knock at the door, and for four or five days shows a patient bearing,…He shall then be allowed to enter…”[1]

The process of archival research was once described to me in such terms by a seasoned medieval scholar, and I haven’t forgotten the analogy. Planning archival visits often involves persistence and patience, but the experience can be rewarding and the time spent in research worthwhile. Utilizing digital resources in conjunction with archival visits can help make the best use of precious time and research funding. Here are my tips for successfully navigating research in Central Europe:

1. Be aware of digital resources that will make your research and archive visit easier. Monasterium.net  is a virtual archive of digitized monastic charter documents from archives throughout Central Europe. The “Find” option allows you to search by archival location, while the “Search” tool allows you to pull up documents by keywords like monastery name.  A second valuable digital resource is Prague-based manuscriptorium.com. Sign up for free as a user. Search through the database for manuscripts and organize your favorites in research folders of your creation. Manuscript entries vary from basic catalog description to full digital facsimiles. Check the site for participating libraries, as the database continues to expand to other areas in Europe.

Missale monasterii Chotěšoviensis, XIV C.3 Národní knihovna České republiky, Prague, fol. 6r. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

2. Be prepared to communicate in languages other than English. Regardless of whether or not you used it to arrange your visit, security personnel and archivists on site don’t always know English. Have a list of your requested documents handy and the correspondence granting you access printed off to streamline your processing time. And don’t forget your passport!

3. Do not count on the use of a camera or printer. If photos are not allowed, request that the archive provide images for you (you will likely pay a fee). Among the archives I found most photo-friendly were the Moravian Provincial Archives in Brno (Moravský Zemský Archiv) and the Czech National Archives in Prague (Národní Archiv)–I faced no photo restrictions at these sites. The Austrian National Library (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) will allow printing of microfilm documents and some photography of sources depending on the items you are consulting.

Czech National Archives, Prague. Photo Credit: Lisa Scott

4. Getting around Central Europe is relatively easy with pre-planning. Trains and buses are inexpensive and will get you reliably from A to B. For busing between cities I recommend Student Agency, which travels all over Central and Eastern Europe.

5. I’ve had the privilege of visiting several outstanding archives and research libraries around Central Europe; I will recommend one in particular. The Moravian Provincial Archives in Brno is a modern and active location. The atmosphere is airy, well-lit, and professional, and the archivists on duty are extremely helpful. I had no problems arranging my visits in advance, and archivists communicate in German if you do not have sufficient Czech. Local transport can be a bit daunting as the archive is out of the city center, but it is doable. Acquire a city bus ticket at any of the yellow kiosks (Select one 60-minute ticket for 2 “Zones”. This includes a free transfer. Don’t forget to validate your ticket once you enter the bus.). From the main train station, you’ll get to the archives in about 30 minutes. Google Maps is equipped with adequate route planning capabilities; there are several bus lines available.

6. Be aware of your resources back home. Despite making multiple attempts to do so, I was unable to see a few manuscripts pertaining to my dissertation housed in a rural Austrian monastery. Upon returning to the U.S., however, I was able to access microfilm copies of the manuscripts in question at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in St. Joseph, MN. The large-scale effort to photograph manuscripts housed in European libraries began in Austria in 1965 and continues to this day. The newly-renovated Austria/Germany Study Center is a lovely facility, and the staff is eager to work with scholars pursuing research on manuscripts in the collection.

Amy Nelson
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Notre Dame

[1] Benedict of Nursia, The Rule: from The Rule of Saint Benedict, trans. Cardinal Gasquet (London, 1909), Ch. 58.

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Working in the Archives – Comments on Les Archives départementales du Nord

*This post contributes to the ongoing efforts of the medieval graduate students to offer insight and advice regarding the archives in which they have conducted research. For the first post, see Andrea Castonguay’s post on the Royal Archive in Morocco: http://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-studies/2017/02/24/research-at-the-bibliotheque-nationale-du-royaume-du-maroc/.

Les Archives Départmentales du Nord

Les Archives Déprtmentales du Nord (ADN) is one of the major state archives of France. The archive is located in Lille, in the northeastern part of France, right next to the Belgian border. ADN houses many of the most important administrative and economic documents of late medieval Burgundy.

Below, I will elaborate on my experience working in the ADN, offering some practical knowledge needed to make an archival visit productive. I will briefly discuss how to get to the Archives du Nord from Paris and Brussels, and then how to get to the archive proper using the metro system in Lille itself. Additionally, I will explain what is needed to access the archive, how to search for material, how to request that material, and how long the material takes to arrive.

How to Get There

There are two ways to get to Lille from the major travel hubs in France and Belgium, Paris and Brussels. In France, there is a direct train from the Paris Nord station to station Lille Europe. A one way ticket costs around 30 euro depending on the time of year in which you choose to travel. In Belgium, there is an indirect train from Brussels Central to Gare de Lille Flandres, with a switch in Tournai. If you are commuting from the Flemish part of Belgium, you will need to switch trains in Kortrijk/Courtrai. There are bus options for both, but if you are commuting daily to Lille from one of these centralized locations, they are prohibitively long in duration to be worth the euros saved.

Once arriving in Lille, your train will take you to either Lille Europe or Gare de Lille Flandres. Both train stations have metro stops on red line below the stations themselves. Lille Flandres also has a stop on the yellow line, which is a slightly faster trip to the archive. If you are going on the red line, go from Lille Europe or Lille Flandres to the stop Porte des Postes or Montebello. At either stop, the archive is less than a ten minute walk from the station. If you take the yellow line from Lille Flandres, get off at the Porte des Postes stop. At any metro stop in Lille, you can purchase a one-way metro card with two charges for 3.60 euro, or an all-day metro card for 5 euro. For your first few trips, I would suggest going with the all-day pass so that you can return to the city center for a nice lunch. The archive resides on the Rue Saint-Bernard.

How to access the archive, Requesting Manuscripts

As with many other archives in Europe, you must present your passport at your first visit to the archive so that you can get a Carte de Lecteur.  The important part of the archival research card is the Reading Number- it is this number that is required to request manuscripts to view.

You can request manuscripts by emailing the archive at archive@lenord.fr, or going in person. In my experience, Les Archives du Nord are a very prompt archive in bringing requested material. They do not fill manuscript requests once per hour as many archives do in Belgium. It takes around fifteen to twenty minutes for the requested manuscripts to arrive. If you email them beforehand, they will have already pulled all of your manuscripts for the day. In terms of manuscript limits, you may only access twelve manuscripts per day. However, you can put in requests for larger amounts of manuscripts for each day of the week and they will oblige you, as long as your desired documents are not requested by another patron.

To search for manuscripts, you can use the online search engine on the Archives’ website, or the printed inventories at the archive. In my experience, the printed inventories are quicker to use, but it is of course dependent upon personal preference or particular material. If you are planning to look at Burgundian economic sources, looking first at the Les sources de l’histoire économique et sociale du Moyen Age. 2 : Les états de la Maison de Bourgogne edited by Robert-Henri Bautier, Janine Sornay, and Francoise Muret is a must. While Les sources includes economic sources from multiple archives, its regional and chronological listings of sources included in the ADN are immensely helpful.

As an important aside, the archive does not have Wi-Fi. The only internet access allowed in the archive is through their computers on the second floor. Furthermore, these computers can only access the archive’s online database, so you will be without internet while there unless you have data on your phone.

Quality of Life

Unfortunately, there are not many cafes near the ADN- many of the nicer cafes and restaurants are on the north side of the city, near the train stations of Lille Europe and Lille Flandres. You can get a nice lunch and drink at one of the breweries outside of Lille Flandres, or walk about half a mile to the town square to enjoy some of the nicest views in Lille.

What I have found to be the most effective is to bring a lunch to the archive- they have a coffee machine and a vending machine, but nothing more. If you finish your work early for the day, I recommend going early to catch your train and grabbing a bite to eat around the stations.  

Sean Sapp
University of Notre Dame