In medieval legal transactions the use of the written word was only one of many ways of conducting business. Important roles were played by the spoken word and by the 'action' of ritual. The relationship between 'rituals' and literacy has been the focus of much recent research. Medieval societies which made extensive use of written instruments in legal transactions have been shown to employ rituals as well. This has led to investigation of the respective functions of written instruments and legal rituals. What is the nature of legal rituals? If they included oral verbalization, how did the spoken words relate to those of the written instruments that played a role in the same legal transactions? Usually, we only have the written documents to answer these questions, and they are often silent about the rituals and oral elements of the transactions they document. Furthermore, the importance attached to written instruments and rituals may not have been the same at all levels of a society, differing, for example, between princely and local courts. The contributors to this volume discuss fifteen cases, ranging from the early Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, and from England to Galician Rus'.
Author(s): Marco Mostert, Paul S. Barnwell (eds.)
Series: Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 22
Publisher: Brepols
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 312
City: Turnhout
Preface vii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction / MARCO MOSTERT 1
Action, Speech and Writing in Early Frankish Legal Proceedings / P. S. BARNWELL 11
Writing Charters as a Public Activity: The Example of the Carolingian Charters of St. Gall / BERNHARD ZELLER 27
Charters as Texts and as Objects in Judicial Actions: The Example of the Carolingian Private Charters of St. Gall / KARL HEIDECKER 39
Between Legal Action and Performance: The 'firmatio' of Charters in the Early Middle Ages / GEORGES DECLERCQ 55
The Privilege in the Public Interaction of the Exercise of Power: Forms of Symbolic Communication Beyond the Text / HAGEN KELLER 75
Rhetoric and Ritual in Late Anglo-Saxon Charters / CHARLES INSLEY 109
Assemblies and the Writing of Administrative Documents in the Central Medieval Kingdom of the Scots / MATTHEW H. HAMMOND 123
Oral Fragments in the Earliest Old Swedish Laws? / STEFAN BRINK 147
Circumstantial Evidence: Danish Charters of the Thirteenth Century / MICHAEL H. GELTING 157
Writing and Political Communication in Italian City Communes / CHRISTOPH DARTMANN 197
Founding a Monastery over Dinner: The Case of Henryków in Silesia (c. 1222-1228) / ANNA ADAMSKA 211
Non-Verbal Acts in Legal Transactions in Medieval Hungary and Its Environs / JÁNOS M. BAK 233
'Super tali re dubia periculosum est iuramentum': Oath-Taking and Dispute Procedures in Fifteenth-Century Galicia / YURIY ZAZULIAK 247
Villains, Merchants and the Written Word: A Document of Highland Outlaws from the Polish-Hungarian Border Area from 1493 / STANISŁAW A. SROKA 267
Making Court Decisions Known in Medieval Holland / MARCO MOSTERT 281
