Análisis bibliográfico y patológico del manuscrito 150 de la BPEB. «Crónica de los últimos condes de Barcelona»

In 2017 the Episcopal Public Library of the Seminary of Barcelona (hereinafter BPEB) commissioned the restoration of one of its handwritten books, Manuscript 150, the copy of Bernat Desclot's Chronicles, one of the four great medieval chronicles of Catalan literature. This Chronicle of the Last Counts of Barcelona, originally written very probably in the second half of the 13th century, tells the story that goes from Ramón Berenguer IV and Petronila de Aragón to Pedro el Grande, who died in 1285; in fact the latter is the main protagonist of much of this Chronicle. The specimen preserved in the BPEB, however, is later, probably written in the fourteenth century, with a later addition of the eighteenth century probably due to a loss of the original leaves. The article consists of two parts; the first analyses, from the bibliographical point of view, the Chronicle and carries out a general historical contextualisation of the work in order to then relate and locate the copies that exist today in different national libraries. This first part also describes the content and the characteristics and bibliographical peculiarities of the copy that is kept by the BPEB. Finally, a brief historical outline is attempted from the time of its arrival at the Library to the present day. It also describes the context of its restoration as well as the obtaining of the necessary funds to be able to carry it out. The second part of the article treats the monograph from a material perspective, makes an organoleptic description and exposes the results of the relevant physical-chemical analyses to determine the nature of materials such as inks or paper. Finally, it sets out the conclusions reached on the basis of the above points and describes the conservation-restoration process that took place in 2017. Las Crónica de los últimos condes de Barcelona is a handwritten book bound in parchment that has a peculiarity: the first nine folios are handwritten on parchment and the second half on paper. This is an interesting book, since centuries of history have modified its original appearance until it became what we are conserving today.