Date sent: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 12:47:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Belle S. Tuten" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: popes and bulls
Send reply to: [log in to unmask]
Here's a question for all you papal experts. I've been looking at some
monastic documents for a convent, some of which are papal bulls confirming
the nuns' possessions in different places. I've noticed that several of
them are almost identical, and it made me wonder: who usually wrote them?
Did the monasteries themselves submit the texts to the chancery, or would
the chancery just write one and use it over and over again?
Suggestions on where to look to figure this out?
Belle Tuten
Emory University
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The bibliography on diplomatic, especially papal diplomatic, is absolutely
enormous, but you could start with the following:
H. Bresslau, Handbuch der Urkundenlehre fuer Deutschland und Italien, 2 vols.,
2nd ed., Leipzig and Berlin, 1912-1931 (plus index volume, ed. by H. Schulze,
Berlin 1960)
P. Herde, Beitraege zum paepstlichen Kanzlei- und Urkundenwesen im dreizehnten
Jahrhundert, 2nd ed. (Kallmunz, 1967)
and, now very old and out-of-date, but not completely past its sell-by-date and
a very lucid introduction to beginners:
R.L. Poole, Lectures on the History of the Papal Chancery (Cambridge, 1915)
A very frequent practice, especially in the 12th and 13th centuries, was for
monasteries to take old bulls to the Curia to provide the bulk of the text for
the new ones. It was normal for beneficiaries in all periods to make a schedule
of the items they wanted to have included in the charter and not uncommon for
them to draft the charter, though this would have to be
checked by papal notaries (by the 13th c this was done in several stages, each
of which cost the beneficiary a certain amount of money). There is a recent
book by Hans-Henning Kortuem on how beneficiaries in the 10th-11th centuries
drafted quite a lot of their texts themselves.
The question of papal registers is immensely complicated, but also obviously of
relevance to this question. Get hold of Bresslau and see what he says.
Best wishes
Julia Barrow
University of Nottingham
UK
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