Legal Practice and the Written Word in the Early Middle Ages: Frankish Formulae, c.500-1000, by Alice Rio
Marios Costambeys
Historians have generally attached the term ‘formulae’ to often anonymised legal documents which were intended be used as models by charter scribes. In an exemplary piece of historical analysis, Alice Rio shows that a limited definition this kind is unsatisfactory and formulae been poorly served their modern editors, but that, if treated properly, they can enormous value for social history early medieval Europe. For Latin texts formulae, we are mostly still reliant on edition Karl Zeumer (Formulae Merovingici et Karolini Aevi, MGH Leges V [1886]), who sought reconstruct what he saw original collections formulae—formularies—that thought had jumbled late eighth- ninth-century copyists produced surviving formula manuscripts. has already helped us get beyond with her extensively annotated translation ‘Formularies’ Angers Marculf (2008), present book in some ways companion. Part I pinpoints deficiencies Zeumer's approach much work undertaken them hitherto (relatively little, last eighty years). She ‘legal document’ genre was not discrete, overlapped others, especially ‘letter’, anonymising document did always make it model, any more than retained names dates prevented from acting exemplar. As result, hard identify formulae. Scribes label distinct name referred same word normally charters, cartae, tended added without separate identification into laws, capitularies, letters various other texts.
The English Historical Review