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IMC 2007: Sessions

Session 1311: Charters and Elites in 12th-Century Normandy and Anjou

Wednesday 11 July 2007, 16.30-18.00

Moderator/Chair:Anna Adamska, Onderzoekinstituut voor Geschiedenis en Kunstgeschiedenis, Universiteit Utrecht
Paper 1311-aPractice of Diplomatic Writing in Late 12th-Century Normandy: The Case of the Abbey Saint-Etienne de Caen
(Language: English)
Tamiko Fujimoto, Centre de Recherches Archéologiques et Historiques Médiévales, Université de Caen Basse-Normandie / Centre Michel de Boüard - CRAHAM (UMR 6273 (CNRS/UCBN))
Index terms: Archives and Sources, Charters and Diplomatics, Ecclesiastical History, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 1311-cThe Burgesses of Angers, 11th-12th Centuries: Political and Social Integration
(Language: Français)
Bruno Lemesle, Université d'Angers
Index terms: Economics - Urban, Genealogy and Prosopography, Historiography - Medieval, Social History
Abstract

Paper a: The studies on the activity of writing in the Middle Ages have seen remarkable progress in recent years. This paper will discuss the practices of diplomatic writing engaged by a late 12th-Century scribe of the Abbey of Saint-Etienne de Caen in Normandy. The abbey made its first cartulary in the course of the 12th Century. Some codicological and paleographical researches on manuscripts, not only of the cartulary but also of its surrounding documents, tell us that this scribe completed the final stage of cartulary making while he worked busily at managing other diplomatical writing at that time. These observations will give us an interesting example of the practice of writing in a Norman abbey in the late 12th Century.

Paper b: According to the common opinion the Conquest of England of 1066 had a great influence on the development of medieval French writing traditions (scripta). After years of Norman expansion into the British Isles, Norman and Anglo-Norman scripta are expected to develop the similar writing principles. But their scriptoria created different and specific types of written French. Here are the questions to answer: to what expense Norman writing centers (Rouen, Caen, Mont-St-Michel, etc.) influenced Anglo-Norman scriptoria? Or they never did? Have Norman writing centres ever had their own model scriptorium? Was it Norman? French? Anglo-Norman? Or it is just a phantom?
Paper c: I propose to study a group of burgesses of Angers in the 11th and the beginning of the 12th century. I will attempt to evaluate the origins of their wealth, the nature and the size of their possessions in Angers (France) and in the neighbourhoods of the city, their matrimonial alliances and their progressive inclusion in the category of the Knighthood. It will be shown that their destiny is related to that of the counts of Anjou, ancestors of the Plantagenêt, and that their behaviour does not differ appreciably from that of the aristocracy which they are becoming to integrate.