John Mundy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I've never seen a cartulary that had appended seals, only some that had
notarial manual seals. How did they append seals to the book?
Dear Professor Mundy,
quite right, and how on earth you could have misunderstood my turgid,
endlessly convoluted prose is beyond me.
you no doubt know much more about this stuff than i do, so i welcome your
fine-tuning -with a baseball bat, if necessary- my _ad hoc_, autodidactéd
pseudo-knowledge.
since, by their very nature, (manuscript) cartularies are *copies* of
(or: copies of copies of) original charters, it's safe to say that there are
indeed no seals to be found in these books, nor attached to "pancartes" --sort
of "proto-cartularies" consisting of copies of two or more related acts on a
single parchment, which are occasionally found in muniment collections.
(pancartes, it seems to me, were typically made up when there was a dispute
about some property or other and a handy copy of the relevant original deed(s)
of gift was needed;
or, say, when there was a modest priory out in the boonies somewhere and there
was a need for the monk in charge there to have handy copies of the major
original [perhaps foundation] documents concerning the priory,
which originals were usually more safely kept at the mother house.
property could occasionally be horribly sub-infeudated or otherwise
strangulated, and i know of at least one case where several pancartes
were generated concerning a single, much-disputed --albeit remarkably
minor estate.
however, if the magic power of the Written Word itself wasn't sufficient to
make some miserable claimant see the Light, then the Sealed Original might
have to be trotted out in all its glory and Ju-Ju.)
and, we'll leave aside for now the potentially more complex question of the
_vidimus_, an "authentic," later (sometimes much later) copy of an original
charter, which was (i *think*) always sealed, but with the seal of the notary,
_officialis_, or dignitary responsible for making the copy and "under whose
eyes" the original was present (presumably what you mean by "notarial manual
seals"?).
so, when i said:
>the mention of a sealing process as part of the closing apparatus of a
charter, is something you could keep a special eye out for when perusing
printed cartularies; though charters without such formulae *may* have
been sealed as well.
i meant that Margaret Cormack might find vicarious satisfaction on her quest
for information about monastic seals by keeping a heads up/eyes out, not just
for the seals themselves, but also for these closing formulae in the charters
which, at the least, might give her an
indication of when and how common the usage of such seals was within a given
establishment, whether or not the seal --or even the original charter-- itself
survived into modern times.
seems to me that there are basically two types of printed cartularies:
1) ones that are (more or less exact) editions of an extant manuscript
cartulary --a medieval book made up of copies of original charters; and
b) ones that are made up by the modern editor of copies of the original
charters (or copies of the copies, including cartulary copies, early modern
copies, whatever is available).
these latter are sometimes referred to by the French as "cartulaires fictifs,"
i believe, since they are essentially modern reconstructions of works which
either never existed or have been lost.
of course, a really *good* modern edition would draw on -or at least
note- *all* known copies of (as well as references to) the original charters,
preferably (in France at least) using the methodology developed by Maurice
Prou at the beginning of the last century (not a cartulary strictly speaking,
but cf. his edition of the _Acta_ of Philip I and the recent magnificent ed.
those of Louis VI).
this is, alas, very rarely done for charter collections of more humble
provenance (there is a very thorough, unpublished one for the ancient
Benedictine house of Bonneval, between Châteaudun and Chartres, done in the
last century by a remarkably erudite local historian, Albert Sidoisne).
if i recall correctly, Charles Métais' cartulary of L'Eau is mostly of
the second type --based upon the surviving original charters-- though there
may have been an early ms. cartulary for him to use as well --hence the number
of seals which he notes, discusses and illustrates.
so, i should have said:
>[Métais] did pay some attention to the seals of the abbesses and there may be
a few line drawings of those that survived in his introduction to this [his]
[*printed*/"fictif"] cartularly [*edition*].
thanks for the question -i'll try and be more clearer in future; and, in view
of the fact that my own informations are the result of a very
limited experience within a very limited geographic (Chartres diocese)
and chronological (11th-13th cc.) universe, i'd appreciate hearing of
differing practices which learnéd listers may have come across in the
less benighted parts of the globe within their ken.
best to all from here,
christopher
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