Select to preserve: the construction of memory in ecclesiastical archives between history and practice

Abstract

Even if the memory is selective, reading the past gives new meaning to the present connected with the threads of time, reflected by the lights and shadows of the past and projected into the future. The documentation must be cultivated and preserved beforehand; otherwise there is a weak memory with difficulties and risks, in which the loss of tradition is a near danger. In the context of great cultural changes, the preservation of memory, already complicated on its behalf, may be even more difficult, given the lack of organic works designed to illustrate the set of political, administrative, judicial, ecclesiastical, economic and financial institutions in the specific vision of the relationship between the history and functions of the institutions on the one hand, and the production of writings on the other. Awareness of the preservation of one’s memory was a long process in the history of the Church and perhaps not yet concluded. The article, after a historical excursus of the provisions relating to the construction of ecclesiastical archives and the legislation on the conservation of the acts, focuses attention on selection and waste, trying to highlight the crucial passages and changes that have occurred in the various centuries until today.