Cheyette, Frederic L. “The ‘Sale’ of Carcassonne to the Counts of Barcelona (1067–1070) and the
Rise of the Trencavels.” Speculum 63(1988):826–64.
d’Alauzier, Louis. “L’héritage des Trencavels.” Annales du Midi 62(1950):181–86.
Dupont, André. “Le vicomte Bernard-Aton IV (1074–1129).” Mémoires de l’Académie de Nîmes,
7th ser., 56(1965–67): 153–77.
Guilaine, Jean, and Daniel Fabre. Histoire de Carcassonne. Toulouse: Privat, 1984.
Rouillan-Castex, Sylvette. “Bernard-Aton Trencavel et les Carcassonnais.” Carcassonne et sa
région: fédération historique du Languedoc méditerranéen et du Roussillon (1970): 147–51.
TRÉSOR DES CHARTES
. According to legend, Philip II Augustus established the Trésor des Chartes as a
repository for crown papers following the loss of important documents during his flight
from Fréteval in 1194. The Trésor’s documented history dates from 1231, when it was
already housed near the Sainte-Chapelle. The archive was under the control of the
chancellor and the chancellery was its primary source of documents. Philip IV created an
office of garde des chartes in 1307. Between 1371 and 1391, Gérard de Montaigu
completed the first inventory, which divided the collection into layettes of charters and
chronological régistres. Not only were state papers, such as treaties and ordonnances,
preserved, but lesser materials like pardons and ennoblements were synopsized (for a fee)
in the registers as well. Supplanted by court and agency archives in the 16th century, the
Trésor virtually ceased acquisitions by 1600. In 1808, it entered the Archives Nationales
as series J and JJ.
Throughout its history, the archive proved an invaluable source of documentation for
royal spokesmen and legists. Gallican theorists drew on it in producing the Somnium
viridarii (a tract known in its French translation as the Songe du vergier) in the 14th
century, and Dupuy and Godefroy used it in extending the doctrine of inalienability to
justify Bourbon conquests in their Traité des droits du roy in the 17th. The riches of the
archive inspired a vital tradition of medieval scholarship highlighted by Dom Mabillon’s
De re diplomatica of 1681. This French archival tradition climaxed with the
establishment of the Archives Nationales after 1789 and the École des Chartes in 1821.
Paul D.Solon
Favier, Jean, ed. Les archives nationales, état général des fonds. Paris: Archives Nationales, 1978,
Vol. 1.
Kelley, Donald R. Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1970.
Laborde, H.François de. “Étude sur la constitution du Trésor des Chartes.” In Layettes du Trésor
des Chartes, ed. Alexandre Teulet. Paris: Plon, 1863–1909, Vol. 5, pp. i-ccxxiv.
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