In October 2023, digital pirates stole one of the most important research libraries in the world. The hacking group Rhysida severed access to the British Library in a
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The theft is
But library stealing has been a business for centuries, though it has changed significantly with the times. Often, these thefts lead to changes in how we safeguard collections. Take Richard the Lionheart’s 12th century theft of the French crown’s archives, which reminds us that the institutions we know today are deeply rooted in historical struggles for control over archives and libraries.
Richard the Lionheart (Richard I) was the king of England at the end of the 12th century. He was also a famous library thief. At the time, books and documents were extremely important, especially for aristocrats, whose landholdings and other financial arrangements were recorded in charters and other administrative texts.
This may surprise those who imagine the Middle Ages as a time when writing and knowledge were not privileged—but the myth of the so-called “Dark Ages” isn’t at all true. Literary works like romances were read aloud in courts to entertain aristocrats, religious books served as important devotional tools, and administrative books and documents attested to the complex structures of ownership, entitlement, and status that put people like Richard in power.
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Richard, a son of the famed queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, assumed the throne during an era when the map of Europe was constantly being redrawn as individual rulers vied for control over various regions. Christian rulers allied themselves to crusade in the Middle East, in what today we might consider an early form of religious and colonial aggression, but closer to home, infighting was constantly breaking out among Western Europeans. In fact, Richard was on his way home after a long crusade when he was captured and imprisoned by Duke Leopold of Austria.
After paying a ransom so he could finally return to England in 1194, he found out that his brother, John, had tried to steal his throne with the help of Phillip II of France, with whom he himself had previous been allied. Richard was not pleased, and vicious fighting ensued. (If the names sound familiar, these events were the historical backdrop for the famous story of Robin Hood.)
Early in the war, when Richard and Phillip II’s forces clashed at the Battle of Fréteval, Phillip II brought his royal archives with him,
The practice of keeping archives moveable also made Phillip’s documents easier to steal. When Phillip lost the battle, Richard absconded with the French archive and transported the French crown’s documents to the Tower of London.
The war continued afterward, but for the French archive, nothing would ever be the same. Phillip had to start his collection again from scratch. Wary of it falling prey to the same fate, he put an end to the practice of taking the French crown’s documents to war and established the Trésor des chartes, the Treasury of Charters, which soon came to be housed in the cathedral Sainte Chapelle. From then on, the archive stayed put in Paris, where it eventually became the foundational collection for today’s French medieval collections at the Archives Nationales and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
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People have always been stealing libraries, because books and documents have always played a central role in systems of power. And even in the modern era, library thefts have taken place right under our noses. In today’s war zones, records and rare books are
The British Library ransomware attack invites us to remember that our most beloved textual collections are not, and never have been, above the fray of politics, power structures, and capitalism.
One silver lining: library theft also leads to changes in archival practices, as these institutions attempt to stay nimble to the times. The ransomware attack has shown us that our digital texts and digital infrastructure are as frail as paper, papyrus, or parchment,
Katherine Churchill is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia, where she studies medieval literature and the development of archives in medieval England and France.
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