tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671815.post6075695664578839155..comments2024-02-07T03:12:59.031-05:00Comments on Blogenspiel: Charters, did you say?Another Damned Medievalisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05231085915472400163noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671815.post-2451874571958395332009-08-06T05:07:38.507-04:002009-08-06T05:07:38.507-04:00If you've got German cases where this works I&...If you've got German cases where this works I'd be very interested to know about them, actually. My sense with my Catalan ones is that nobles and ecclesiastics will tend to come at the beginning or the end of a list, but the more experience I have with originals the more I come to reckon that this is as much editorial convention as anything. Or, which is slightly more explicable in historical terms, the scribe does the signatures of those who can't write (or aren't there) and then those who can (so, principally the priests and clerics) write their own names, bigger and in rustics, below. So the editors put them last. Fair enough really. But again, have a look at that nun's signatures charter I linked to: the counts are in the middle, and though the scribe put guide signatures down for a few witnesses they didn't actually sign near them. And that's a big assembly. So with my stuff it doesn't work, but if you have Fichtenau or someone saying it does that would be a very interesting comparator...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671815.post-49618562002667785062009-08-05T12:47:29.621-04:002009-08-05T12:47:29.621-04:00Re Simon Keynes as doing something with witness li...Re Simon Keynes as doing something with witness lists showing that order is important ... maybe -- I mean, yes, he does that, but it's not where I got the idea. That's definitely from the German scholarship. Possibly in one of the articles (the Friese one?) in <i>Das Klostergemeindschaft von Fulda</i> but it could also be in one of the other gajillion things I've read over the years. I really need to transcribe my notes one of these days ... wish I had a competent work-study student, but none of ours ever can be trusted to copy notes written in English, let alone foreign languages -- and it's not just my writing!<br /><br />By importance, though, I would argue with Keynes a little -- it's not just to do with rank, although when you see comital and episcopal witnesses, it can be. My own impression, both from the Carolingian Fulda charters and from the nebulous German scholarship, is that it has more to do with importance in terms of the transaction, so first, the donor(s), then their relatives and neighbors, then other people who might have been around or whose interests aren't clear.Another Damned Medievalisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05231085915472400163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671815.post-89419721181479433402009-08-05T10:05:16.473-04:002009-08-05T10:05:16.473-04:00Lastly... Autograph signatures, next: great when y...Lastly... Autograph signatures, next: great when you have them but even in my area, and even with people whom one knows can sign because they do so in other documents, not everyone who could signs themselves. I suspect this may mean they weren't there when the document was signed; but at what stage in proceedings was that? And so on. And everywhere of course there are people who couldn't sign anyway. So these are unanswerable questions I think, at least from silence. Sorry.<br /><br />Lastly, the `real clicker':<br /><br /><i>If something doesn't exist in many cases, does the lack of existence prove that documents were deliberately edited to remove the lists, or does it merely prove that there is a probably lack of evidence? And if we know that there is evidence missing, does it negate our ability to use the evidence we *do* have, as long as we use accepted forms of caveats to frame our conclusions? And where do things like notitia, when there are no supporting documents, fit in?</i><br /><br />Lack of evidence is just difficult. I think, as I say, that witness lists lose relevance really quickly. German-speaking areas are even more problematic; the questions I was asking Hans Hummer the other day about Freising, where nobody ever produces charters in cases rather than witnesses but there are loads of charters, that may therefore be mainly for internal use, are very relevant here. Did your house bring documents to court? Or are they merely inventory? If the latter, maybe they often didn't record witnesses, but there were almost certainly some at some point. If people <strong>do</strong> bring documents to court (and they do at least twice, your pet edition nos 248 & 513, though much more often not, says Hübner via Lay Archives at least) then I'd say that the witnesses would have been worth recording at the time so it may just be later copying practice when they're not there.<br /><br />Phew. How's that? I think that last thing might be the only useful bit, somehow.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671815.post-72132545934869579252009-08-05T10:04:01.232-04:002009-08-05T10:04:01.232-04:00Second half! Oh for heavens' sakes this is too...Second half! Oh for heavens' sakes this is too long by itself. So, three, sorry. Next, it is true that witness lists are often systematically not copied up in cartularies. I would however be, despite our notable colleague's iconoclasm, shocked to the core if they had never been there in the originals. Witnesses die, their relevance is obviously lifetime only (and there's an Elisabeth van Houts paper in <i>Gendering the Middle Ages</i> that covers ways the Franks got round this) so if you're copying up a century and a half later... why bother? But everything we know about these transactions from where originals or full copies <b>are</b> preserved suggests that the gathering of people for the transfer and their record as present was a core part of proceedings. I don't remember Wendy saying this, and I've startled her with the news that Catalan charters often only have three witnesses, or even fewer, so I don't think it can have been her who said it; I didn't spot it being said but maybe that means it wasn't for our period. That said, they may not have witnessed the actual <b>document</b>, so if you think these things are being written up elsewhere this might be one way to tell. But fundamentally, yes, witness lists are important, though exactly why depends on what we think the actual writing of the transaction is achieving and this is an area full of assumption and not much actual knowledge IMO. Places to go for more on this are Wendy's <i>Small Worlds</i>, an article by Ross Balzaretti as follows: "The Politics of Property in Ninth-Century Milan: familial motives and monastic strategies in the village of Inzago" in <i>Mélanges de l'École de France : moyen âge</i> Vol. 111 (Rome 1999), pp. 747-770, and well, me; the first chapter of my thesis has some worked-out examples of why this stuff needs care and <a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~jjarrett/files/3charters.pdf" rel="nofollow">is online here</a> (PDF). Some day this will become the basis of an article but it's not ready yet I'm afraid. The whole more social aspect of transaction is as ever best covered in Rosenwein's <i>Neighbors of St Peter</i> I think but there is more out there that I haven't read yet.<br /><br />More in third...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3671815.post-86564466825617627092009-08-05T10:00:46.777-04:002009-08-05T10:00:46.777-04:00Oh heavens so many things I want to say to this......Oh heavens so many things I want to say to this... And first attempt at the comment breaks Blogger's size limits, so two blocks of it, sorry. First and foremost, I believe you are now in the sort of disquiet in which I started those Leeds sessions :-) There is a kind of agenda paper <a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~jjarrett/files/agenda.html" rel="nofollow">on the web here</a> in which I set that disquiet out to make sure contributors to the book knew what I was getting at. Now I will do my famous impression of someone who knows this stuff rather than someone who still needs to read shedloads on it, as follows.<br /><br />Most importantly, and as discussed at Leeds itself, I think that you are right to think that your project does need to be a digital version of that edition, precisely because as you say people use it, and that will do. But whatever detail you can get in about where the manuscript differs will obviously enhance its value.<br /><br />But don't despair! Manuscripts are not so hard, especially good high Carolingian ones like this. And you already have a transcription/edition so you are well on the way. Are there not points in the analysis of this text where you've wondered, "Does it really say that? This alternate reading would make much more sense?" I'd say, make those your targets and don't sweat the rest too much, at least not for the immediate projects.<br /><br />Next, er, witnesses. The order witnesses appear in is possibly important, but the only person who's been able to do much with this is Simon Keynes for the late Anglo-Saxon material, in his <i>Diplomas of King Aethelred the Unready</i>, where he was able to show rises and falls in status through positions. This only really works because Anglo-Saxon charters are so formal; something that you or I would deal with where people actually signed is a lot less organised on the actual parchment and you have to bear in mind that the order in an edition may be more or less arbitrary as the signatures will not have been in neat rows or lines and will have been all kinds of sizes. Have a look at my <a href="http://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/the-last-angry-nun-in-sant-joan-de-ripoll/" rel="nofollow">signing nuns in this post</a> for an example of what I mean. There are a few royal and noble charters from León where the witnesses are arranged in columns, and it's hard to know what this means but once or twice it is explicitly geographical; the witnesses from one village sign left, another central, the third right. This makes me wonder if other columns may not be individual nobles and their retainers or parties, but there's no work on this yet a far as I know. In little private or local charters like ours, I don't think there's any scope for this sort of work.<br /><br />More in second comment...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com