IMC 2024: Sessions
Session 1547: Documenting the Medieval City, I: Identity and Self-Perception
Thursday 4 July 2024, 09:00-10:30
| Sponsor: | Harlaxton Medieval Symposium |
|---|---|
| Organiser: | Richard Asquith, Independent Scholar |
| Moderator/Chair: | Richard Asquith, Independent Scholar |
| Paper 1547-a | Beyond the Chronicle: Writing Urban History with Administrative Records in Late Medieval Germany (Language: English) Index terms: Administration, Archives and Sources and Social History |
| Paper 1547-b | Documenting Hierarchy and Structure in London's Livery Companies: The 1538 'Harness List' (Language: English) Index terms: Administration, Archives and Sources and Social History |
| Paper 1547-b | The Scholar's Path: Commerce and University Life in John of Garland's Paris, 1190-1272 (Language: English) Index terms: Archives and Sources, Education and Social History |
| Abstract | Documentation generated by town governments and inhabitants was a crucial tool in both shaping and reflecting notions of urban identity in the middle ages, over and above the intrinsic practical and administrative functions they possessed. The papers in this panel take three distinct documents produced in towns – the administrative records of Gelnhausen, John of Garland's Dictionarius, and London’s ‘Harness List’ – to examine how they reflect the concerns and ideas of self-perception from the perspectives of both town governors and other groups, in this instance Parisian academics. By deploying a range of documents in this way, the papers will demonstrate the flexibility of urban documentation to express and encapsulate these complex and multifaceted themes, in addition to offering close studies of the individual circumstances of each set of documents and how they can productively be used to enrich our picture of medieval urban life. |