User's Guide

All transcriptions of archival documents, even those published on paper, will contain errors and omissions. Transcriptions of archival documents should always be checked against the text of the original files. Transcriptions of documents are thus a starting point for further archival research, and it is in this spirit that we present the document transcriptions found here.

Handwritten early modern texts contain a number of abbreviations that do not translate easily to a typewritten document. We have used the following transcription system:

Except where indicated, line breaks follow those found in the original document.

Early modern European spelling allowed a great deal of freedom, and in these transcriptions we have not modernized spellings or inserted accents. Common spelling variations in early modern Castilian made the letters b,” “u,” and “v,“equivalent, as well as s,” “ç,” and “z.”

Early modern European writing did not always clearly indicate spaces between separate words. These are usually, but not always, divided in these transcriptions.

Items in [brackets] are comments or explanations inserted by the twenty-first-century transcriber.

The carat ^ indicates that the text after the carat is written in a superscript. If two carats are found in the same word, the text between the carats is in superscript, and the text outside the carats is in normal script. A common abbreviation for “que” consisted of the letter “q” followed by a flourish; this has been indicated by writing “q^”

Uncertain transcriptions have been marked with ?question marks?

Pages are normally indicated using a number plus “r” or “v”, indicating whether the text is on the front (recto in Latin) or back (verso in Latin) of the page.