Charles Davis Mar 20, 2011:

@Jenni Believe it or not, that is precisely what happened. It was an actual chest. They probably didn't all have keys -- normally the most senior figure had the key -- but all of them had to be present when the chest or strongbox was opened. And I have seen cases of a partnership between two institutions in which the box had two locks and the representative of each institution had a different key, so that it was impossible to open the box unless both were present. It was standard practice in many institutions in that period.
"Custody" is perhaps not the right word, since it may give the impression that they physically kept it with them, which is not so. The point is that it was under their protection.
As far as I know, "arcas" in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain normally had just one lock. Documents tend to specify when they had more than one, which was in special cases such as the one I've just cited.

Charles Davis Mar 20, 2011:

The word "arca" is feminine. You say "el arca" for the same reason that you say "el agua". Contrary to what is often supposed, "el" here is not a masculine article but a variant of the feminine article, as explained in the RAE's Diccionario panhispánico de dudas:
"2.1. El artículo femenino la toma obligatoriamente la forma el cuando se antepone a sustantivos femeninos que comienzan por /a/ tónica (gráficamente a- o ha-), con muy pocas excepciones (→ 2.3); así, decimos el águila, el aula o el hacha [...]. Aunque esta forma es idéntica a la del artículo masculino, en realidad se trata, en estos casos, de una variante formal del artículo femenino."
http://buscon.rae.es/dpdI/SrvltConsulta?lema=el

Jenni Lukac (X) Mar 20, 2011:

I used "funds" because three people having physical custody of a single coffer, trunk, whatever, would be extremely difficult. Often these chests had three (there are variations but three seems to have been the magic number) different locks and each custodian would have a key. Theoretically, such chests could only be opened with all three custodians present.

peter jackson (asker) Mar 20, 2011:

It was the singualr form that looked strange to me In singular form it seems more of a concrete noun - the actual container of the funds. The wording seems to me to be very odd, but that could be said for whole pages of the article which is causing me more grief than I first thought!

Barbara Thomas Mar 20, 2011:

This is just a cast of a word that has both masculine and feminine gender (like agua, aguila). A masculine article is used with the singular, but the modifiers are feminine (e.g., "En busca del arca perdida").

Jenni Lukac (X) Mar 20, 2011:

The gender is probably an error, an old usage, or confusion with arcaz or arcón (both of which are masculine): http://www.wordreference.com/definicion/arcón

1. m. aum. de arca.
2. Arca grande y resistente:
pon los libros en el arcón.