Community of the Written Word: The Spread of Notarial Registers in Medieval Provence

Description Extant registers of contracts from medieval Provence number over a million. The scores of medieval contracts bound together in notarial registers bring to mind “modernizing” forces such as commercialization, legalism, and mass communication. While the story of such books in urban centers is well known, what happened when these books of practice reached the rural periphery is less well understood. In a series of comparisons between rural and urban notarial registers, I’ll demonstrate surprising visual, material, and legal differences between these two worlds. This raises a larger question of how notarial registers illustrate how individual communities adapted contracts – and the obligations and trust that attended them – to their own needs and realities. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America, January 29th 2021.

AudiencesGraduates, Professionals, Scholars, Undergraduates

TagsNotarial registers, BSA Annual Meeting, BSA New Scholars Program