Translated with an introduction and notes by Alice Rio.
This book offers the first full English translation of two major sources for the Merovingian kingdoms: the formularies of Angers and Marculf (sixth and seventh centuries). These collections of model legal documents, compiled by scribes as an aid to the composition of future documents, constitute an important source of evidence on government, legal practice and social life during the Merovingian period, both at the local level (for Angers) and at the level of the kingdom's elite and the entourage of the king (for Marculf). They illuminate aspects of life which would often have been considered too trivial to be worth mentioning in narrative sources, and can include instructions dealing with subjects as diverse as appointing a bishop, making a gift, borrowing money, divorcing, selling an infant child, confiscating property from a rebel, writing Christmas greetings, and settling disputes over murders, thefts or kidnappings. As well as presenting the translations, the introduction also gives a brief outline of the characteristics of this type of source as a whole, with the aim of putting these texts into perspective and providing a methodological handle for them.
Author(s): Marculf, Alice Rio (transl.)
Series: Translated Texts for Historians, 46
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: VIII+310
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
The scope of this book 1
The scope of formulae 4
The problem with formulae 6
Authorship and audience: what the manuscript evidence can tell us 8
The language of formulae 17
Formulae and the written word 22
Formulae and surviving documents 25
Dating formulae: original collections vs. manuscript tradition 28
Local context and diffusion 33
To conclude 34
A note on this translation 36
Part One: The Formulary of Angers 37
Introduction 38
Translation 47
Part Two: The Formulary of Marculf 103
Introduction 104
The scope of the collection 105
Date and place of origin 107
Marculf and Landeric 107
Dating the collection 110
Marculf and St Denis 113
A note on the printed editions 117
Translation 124
Book One 127
Book Two 177
Supplement 230
Additamenta: additional texts from the manuscripts of Marculf 235
a, b, c: three more texts from the manuscripts of Marculf 240
Appendix 1: The original date of the Angers collection: the state of the question 248
Appendix 2: The 'gesta municipalia' 255
Appendix 3: The Marculf collection: manuscripts and editions 259
The manuscript tradition 259
Editions of Marculf and the hierarchy of manuscripts 265
Map 280
Glossary 281
Bibliography 288
Index 304
