Archive-Library of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

The Archive-Library of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is the institution that preserves the documentary and bibliographic heritage of the Chapter and Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, comprising books and documents from the Middle Ages until today; one of the main centers of the world for research on St. James.

The Archive-Library, which offers reference and documentation services, is currently located in the cloister of the Cathedral.

History of the Archive and medieval documentation
The origin of the Archive of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is located in the medieval treasury and in the archival and documental organizations that were developed by archbishops Diego Gelmírez, during the first half of the 12th century, and Berenguel de Landoira, in the first half of the 14th. Since the moment of the inventio, or discovery of the apostolic building, in the 9th century, the enormous political and socioeconomic development of the new ecclesiastical institution that looked after the place made necessary the conservation, in order to justify its rights, of all kinds of documentation: royal, pontifical, ecclesiastic and civilian; a documentation integrated, together with existing books and codices, in the Treasury.

As time passed, there was conformed a documentary mass integrated by documentation in cartularies, single documents, and later documents of the modern and contemporary period. The first bishop and archbishop of the see, Diego Gelmírez, towards the first third of the 12th century, was the first one who developed an archival order minimally of the set, with a selection of documentation, an organization and the copy in new supports, giving place to codex such as the Tumbo A (12th-13th centuries) in his earlier phase, cartulary with the royal documentation of the 9th-13th centuries and with a miniature gallery of kings, queens and princesses of Castile-Leon. In this century is also produced the Codex Calixtinus, the medieval Jacobean history strongpoint.

Two centuries later the archbishop Berenguel of Landoira, after an urban revolt in Santiago, developed a second work of rearrangement, upon the same base of selection, ordainment, documentation organization and copy to new supports. Thus, were produced the Tumbo B and C, with royal documentation, pontifical, ecclesiastic and civilian.