Thermal and spectroscopic investigation of Romanian historical documents from the nineteenth and twentieth century

In 1958, at the end of the restoration and at re-consecration of St. Elijah Church in Pitesti (Romania), in an improvised archive, were discovered some historical documents (testaments, petitions, notices, etc.) going back to 1841. With the occasion of the re-consecration, another document was signed by the priests involved. All these documents were gathered together and transmitted from one priest to another, as the documents were considered valuable, presenting the habits of past generations and events of local historical importance. The present paper describes the characterization of eight paper documents selected from this collection, performed by thermal analysis, together with optical microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry, energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction as well as by the evaluation of the degree of polymerization and the colour change. The results revealed the type of fillers used (different from one sample to another); also, one of the samples presents a much higher content of lignin and hemicelluloses than the other samples. Thus, the conclusion that could be reached is that although all the documents originated from the same geographical area, the papers on which they are written have very different origin, in terms of composition and fillers used.