Old Media Put to New Uses: Legal Form Books in Carolingian Europe
Warren Brown
In the Carolingian period (ca. 750–900), scribes in churches and monasteries from across Frankish Europe assembled copied a large number of documentary formularies: collections model documents for recording legal transactions. Their efforts most likely reflect new emphasis on written documentation by successive regimes concomitant institutionalisation practices monasteries. The formula are remarkably similar kinds they contain. similarity stems part fact that formulas travelled. Complete collections, or bits pieces moved one place to another, often over very long distances. They were either reproduced intact, partially; reshuffled, modified, combined with other incorporated into collections. formulas’ spread both reflected helped forge set common assumptions about situations which might be necessary proper ways record such writing. At same time, individual adapted, altered, manuscripts let us see local assembling meet their own particular idiosyncratic needs interests. surviving formularies therefore not only culture but also document producers consumers responded it.
The Medieval globe|Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University)