Vatican City and Alton, Illinois - February–August 2023
What follows is a recovered email correspondence between Teodor Maren and Dr. Mara Leclerc of the Vatican Apostolic Archive, conducted between February and August of 2023.
The correspondence was found on Teodor Maren's laptop computer, which was among the effects transferred to his grandson after his death. It is reproduced here in full, with the permission of Dr. Leclerc, who has reviewed this chapter and confirmed its accuracy.
Dr. Leclerc has also provided the framing note for this chapter, which I - Teodor - requested specifically. The record should introduce her in her own voice.
- T.M., written August 2023, three weeks before his death
I found the reference in a catalog entry from the Arxiu Diocesà de Barcelona, in a collection transferred to the Vatican Archive in 2019 as part of a broader consolidation of Iberian diocesan materials. The collection was largely administrative - the usual debris of centuries of ecclesiastical governance - but one catalog entry described a set of documents using a phrase I had not seen before in a catalog context: notation system of uncertain provenance, possibly pre-compositional. The phrase was unusual enough that I noted it.
I had seen that phrase once before, in a footnote in a paper published in 2019 by a historian of medieval ideas named Joshua Maren. The footnote described marginalia in a thirteenth-century Franciscan commentary using identical language. I had noted it at the time and not followed up, as the paper was peripheral to what I was then working on.
When I encountered the catalog entry, I followed up. My search for the notation system led me, through a series of archival connections I will not detail here as they are documented elsewhere in the record, to a name: Teodor Maren. I contacted him in February of 2023.
I did not know what I was going to find. I was not prepared for what I found.
- Dr. Mara Leclerc, Vatican Apostolic Archive, September 2023
February 14, 2023 From: Mara Leclerc (m.leclerc@archivaticano.va) To: Teodor Maren (tmaren@gmail.com) Subject: Inquiry - notation system, Barcelona collection
Dear Mr. Maren,
I am a senior researcher at the Vatican Apostolic Archive, currently working with a recently transferred collection from the Arxiu Diocesà de Barcelona. One catalog entry in this collection describes a notation system that matches, in its general characteristics, a system I have encountered in other archival contexts and which I am attempting to document more fully.
In the course of this research I came across a reference to your name in connection with materials held at a private address in Alton, Illinois. I recognize that this is an unusual way to make contact, and I apologize for the intrusion. If you are able to confirm whether you have relevant materials and whether you would be willing to correspond, I would be grateful.
With respect, Mara Leclerc Senior Researcher, Department of Medieval and Early Modern Documents Vatican Apostolic Archive
February 19, 2023 From: Teodor Maren To: Mara Leclerc Subject: Re: Inquiry - notation system, Barcelona collection
Dr. Leclerc,
I have been waiting for this email for approximately forty years. I had begun to think it would not arrive in my lifetime.
I am eighty-three years old and in reasonable health, but I am aware that reasonable health at eighty-three is a temporary condition. I would prefer, if you are willing, to correspond with some urgency.
Yes, I have relevant materials. Yes, I am willing to correspond. I would ask that our correspondence remain private for the time being - not permanently, but until I have been able to make certain arrangements.
I should tell you at the outset that what I have to share is likely to be larger than you are expecting.
With gratitude, Teodor Maren
March 3, 2023 From: Mara Leclerc To: Teodor Maren Subject: Re: Inquiry - notation system, Barcelona collection
Dear Mr. Maren,
Thank you for your reply. I will admit that your opening sentence required me to read your email several times before I could respond to it.
I am willing to correspond with urgency and I am willing to keep the correspondence private. I would be grateful if you could begin by describing, at whatever level of detail you are comfortable with, what you understand the notation system to represent. My own understanding is limited - I have identified the system in eleven documents across six archives, spanning from the eleventh to the twentieth century, and I have established that the system is consistent and deliberate, but I have not been able to determine what it is encoding or for whom.
I am, as you can perhaps tell, someone who prefers to have things in order before proceeding. I recognize that this may not be possible here.
With respect and considerable curiosity, Mara Leclerc
March 12, 2023 From: Teodor Maren To: Mara Leclerc Subject: Re: Inquiry - notation system, Barcelona collection
Dr. Leclerc,
The notation system is a custody marker. It identifies materials that belong to a specific chain of transmission - a record of what was once the visible ordering of sacred and secular authority together, and of what has been preserved of that ordering since its dismantling began in the fourteenth century.
The system was designed to be legible only to those who had been taught to read it. The fact that you have identified it without that teaching suggests either that you are more perceptive than the designers anticipated, or that the time has come for the record to be more visible. I believe it is the latter, though I acknowledge I may be wrong.
I am going to share the record with you in stages, as quickly as I am able. I ask only that you be patient with an old man's pace.
I should also tell you something else. There is someone who will come after me - someone who does not yet know that he is coming, who has been trained without knowing he was being trained, who will need what you know and who has something you need. I do not know exactly when he will appear. I believe it will be soon. When he does, I hope you will be patient with him as well.
He is a good reader. He is not yet sure what he believes.
With gratitude and something that might be relief, Teodor Maren
August 7, 2023 From: Mara Leclerc To: Teodor Maren Subject: Re: ongoing correspondence
Dear Teodor,
I have spent five months with what you have shared and I find myself, for perhaps the first time in my professional life, genuinely uncertain about the boundary between my work and my life. You warned me this might happen. I did not fully believe you.
I have a question I have been holding for several months and which I now feel I need to ask: when will this person appear?
With affection and impatience, Mara
August 14, 2023 From: Teodor Maren To: Mara Leclerc Subject: Re: ongoing correspondence
Dear Mara,
Soon, I think. He doesn't know it yet.
Thank you for everything.
Teodor
This was the last email Teodor Maren sent. He died on September 6, 2023, at his home in Alton, Illinois. He was eighty-three years old.
I did not know he had died until three months later, when I received a letter - paper, handwritten, sent by post - from a priest named Ambrose Calloway in St. Louis, who told me that Teodor had died and that the person he had described was beginning to find his way and that I should be patient.
I am trying.
- M.L., Vatican Apostolic Archive, January 2024