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Webster's Dictionary

(1): (n.) The place in which public records or historic documents are kept.

(2): (n.) Public records or documents preserved as evidence of facts; as, the archives of a country or family.

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

was the title of a record which was kept in the early African churches, by which bishops might prove the time of their ordination an important consideration, inasmuch as the oldest bishop, by the rules of these churches, was regarded as chief bishop or metropolitan. One record was kept in the primate's church, and another in the metropolis of the province.