Torre do Tombo - Vinculum Information System Guide

Chronological span

The royal court’s itinerancy and the lack of a fixed royal archive until the fourteenth century meant that the documents issued by—or of interest to—the crown were kept in the monarch’s chancery and in the registries of some of the most important monasteries of the kingdom (Santa Cruz in Coimbra, São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon, and Santa Maria de Alcobaça, among others)¹.

The first unequivocal reference to the Torre do Tombo as a depository in Lisbon castle dates from 1367², although various hypotheses on the establishment of the royal archive in the city of Lisbon point to an earlier period, ranging from the reign of King Dinis to the reign of King Fernando³.

Currently, this institution serves as the National Archive⁴.

Normative documents (main)

Ordenações Manuelinas, with a specific title on the escrivão dos feitos do rei (scribe of the king’s acts), who was obliged to copy into register books the sentences favourable to the king, and the respective originals and copies were to be kept at the Torre do Tombo in “a dedicated cabinet”⁵.
Ordenações Filipinas, once again including the specific title escrivão dos feitos do rei⁶.
Carta régia (royal charter) of 7 August 1621, in which it was determined that all sentences handed down until then and future sentences in favour of the crown would be recorded in the “Livros da Torre do Tombo”⁷;
Warrant on the archives of the Juízo das Capelas da Coroa, dated 23 May 1775, in which it is determined that the sentences of incorporation of chantries into the crown be registered in the aforementioned court and also be registered verbum ad verbum in the Royal Archives⁸;

Competences

General

The Torre do Tombo was created to store royal documents (or those of interest to the crown), namely those of a fiscal nature (tombos, or registers of crown property), normative (regimentos), miscellanea (certificates and letters), and chancery records from the royal chancery²⁵.

From the end of the fourteenth century, the institution began to provide the service of consulting the crown’s documentation, namely in the form of preparing, under the responsibility of its guardas-mores (head record-keepers), of certified copies of the documentation in the institution’s custody²⁶.

There is evidence that the Torre do Tombo incorporated, from the sixteenth century onwards, documents belonging to members of the royal family, royal officials, and other private documentation deposited under the monarch’s authority²⁷. More documents were added in the subsequent centuries (namely in the nineteenth century) with the incorporation of collections from private repositories and those of royal administrative institutions that had been abolished in the meantime²⁸.

On entails

Throughout the history of the royal archives, Portuguese monarchs have ordered the registration and/or conservation of documents relating to entails at the Torre do Tombo, including certificates deposited under royal authority²⁹.

Some of the documentation relating to entails is found in the register books of royal certificates or certificates (diplomas) considered important to the crown, systematically produced by the royal chancery since the reign of King Afonso III and, on the death of the monarch, deposited at the Torre do Tombo³⁰.

In the medieval period, from the fifteenth century onwards, the increase in the amount of documentation to be kept at the Torre do Tombo led to the need to “reform” the chancery registers of previous kings. This led to document selection drives with the aim of producing either revised registers (the so-called “Zurara Reform”) or new registers with authenticated transcriptions (“Leitura Nova”) carried out during the reigns of King Manuel and King João III. Both the first and the second ensured the transcription of documents relating to entails³¹: in the case of the “Zurara Reform”, the prologue of the revised register book of the chancery of King Pedro I refers to the document types transcribed therein for “perpetual memory”, among which were the “morgados”³². Regarding the “Leitura Nova”, the Torre do Tombo’s scribe Cristóvão de Benavente stated, in a report from 1583, that only documents with perpetual validity, such as those of chantry administrations³³, were transcribed into those codices.

Also during the reign of King Manuel, the Torre do Tombo registered the rulings favourable to the crown, in accordance with the Ordenações Manuelinas (which included rulings on chantries and morgadios)³⁴, as well as the register books (tombos) of chantries, confraternities, and hospitals located in the coastal north and centre of the kingdom, ordered to be drawn up by desembargadores “with [the requisite] authority” sent by the monarch³⁵.

In the seventeenth century, the books (tombos) of the crown chantries resulting from the investigation process ordered by Tomé Pinheiro da Veiga and his team³⁶, as well as the sentences relating to the claims on chantries recorded in the register books (Livros de Registo) of the royal archives, the latter organised in 1632 for the registration of decrees, announcements, orders, and sentences in favour of the crown, were to be kept in the royal archives³⁷. In the same century, it is known that the miscellaneous documentation of the Portuguese monarchs was organised in drawers, one of which was called “gaveta dos morgados”, which included documentation on entails belonging to or of interest to the crown. Unlike the other “drawers” that have remained until today, this “gaveta dos morgados” was, at an unknown date, separated into an independent series³⁸ and incorporated in the last century into a collection entitled “Núcleo Antigo”³⁹.

In the nineteenth century, the Torre do Tombo was also the recipient of one of the copies of the entail registers produced within the scope of the Law of 30 July 1860 on the partial abolition of entails⁴⁰.

Institutional organisation and the roles of its agents with regard to entails

Institutional organisation

The Torre do Tombo was overseen by a vedor, later called guarda-mor (head record-keeper), who supervised a group of officials made up of scribes, guarda-menores, porter, and a sweeper, usually a slave⁴³.

The roles of its agents

The Torre do Tombo did not have any official with the specific duty to preserve documents relating to entails, so that the registration of such certificates, by virtue of the legislation in force at the time or the orders of monarchs, was carried out by the scribes attached to the institution⁴⁴.

Relations with other institutions with regard to entails

The Torre do Tombo preserved documents on entails issued by other institutions, such as the Juízo das Capelas da Coroa⁴⁵.

The Desembargo do Paço was responsible, from 1534 onwards, for issuing provisions authorizing the transfer of documentation from the Torre do Tombo⁴⁶.