Book contents
- Beyond the Monastery Walls
- Beyond the Monastery Walls
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I The Gate
- Part II The Laity
- 4 Laypeople and Documents
- 5 Laypeople and Property
- 6 Family
- 7 Conflict and Justice
- 8 Power, Personal Relationships, and Letters
- 9 Freedom and Unfreedom
- 10 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Manuscript Index
- Main Index
10 - Conclusions
from Part II - The Laity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 December 2022
- Beyond the Monastery Walls
- Beyond the Monastery Walls
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I The Gate
- Part II The Laity
- 4 Laypeople and Documents
- 5 Laypeople and Property
- 6 Family
- 7 Conflict and Justice
- 8 Power, Personal Relationships, and Letters
- 9 Freedom and Unfreedom
- 10 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Manuscript Index
- Main Index
Summary
This chapter pulls together the previous chapters’ conclusions about the early medieval laity. It then asks why new, Carolingian-style formula collections stopped being made in the course of the tenth century. After surveying possible answers offered by the scholarship, it suggests – while acknowledging that we will likely never know for certain – another, namely that they continued to be produced as long as scribes wanted to write their documents and letters like others were writing theirs, for a clientele whose interests could span very long distances. As the Carolingian world disintegrated in the later ninth and tenth centuries, this became less important. The chapter closes with the history of the manuscript Paris, BNF, ms. lat. 2123, as it disappears from view, surfaces in the early modern period, arrives at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and ends up in the hands of Karl Zeumer as he edited the formulas for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the MGH edition, the impact that Zeumer’s editorial methods had on the formula texts and their images of the laity, and the resulting dangers of treating this edition, rather than the surviving manuscripts, as a primary source.
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- Beyond the Monastery WallsLay Men and Women in Early Medieval Legal Formularies, pp. 321 - 355Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022