Trésor des Chartes

The Trésor des chartes ("Charters treasury", Latin: Thesaurus chartarum et privilegiorum domini regis) are the ancient archives of the French crown.

[1] At the end of the reign of Saint Louis, the archives and, from around 1300, the registers of the Chancery were stored on the third floor of a Gothic building built on the side of the Sainte-Chapelle, in the Capetian royal palace compound on the Île de la Cité, above the sacristy of the Sainte-Chapelle, which occupied the 1st and 2nd floors of that building and contained the "treasure" of the Passion relics and some jewels.

It was consequently called the Trésor des chartes, the "Charters treasury", in Latin Thesaurus chartarum et privilegiorum domini regis.

In 1615, Pierre Dupuy was commissioned by Mathieu Molé, first president of the parlement of Paris, to draw up an inventory of the documents of the Trésor des chartes.

His manuscript inventory is preserved in the original and in copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and transcriptions are in the national archives in Paris, at the record office in London, and elsewhere.