diplomatics

/dip'leuh mat"iks/, n. (used with a sing. v.)

the science of deciphering old official documents, as charters, and of determining their authenticity, age, or the like.

[1785-95; see DIPLOMATIC, -ICS]

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▪ study of documents

Introduction

      the study of documents. The term is derived from the Greek word diploma, meaning “doubled” or “folded.” Besides the documents of legal and administrative import withwhich it is properly concerned, diplomatics also includes the study of other records such as bills, reports, cartularies, registers, and rolls. Diplomatics is therefore a basic and not simply an auxiliary historical science.

      This article deals with the development and practice of diplomatics in the Roman Empire and in Europe. During Roman antiquity (ancient Rome) certain documents containing different sorts of authorizations were engraved on a bronze diptych and then folded and sealed, in order to keep the contents secret—hence the term diploma. Rarely found during the Middle Ages, the word was used by the Renaissance Humanists to denote formal documents of ancient rulers. The interest in and description of such documents came to be called res diplomatica after the famous 17th-century work De Re Diplomatica Libri VI, by Jean Mabillon, a member of the scholarly Benedictine congregation of Saint-Maur. Mabillon's work first made the study of old documents a reputable science.

      The major task of diplomatics is to distinguish between genuine and false documents, and this involves detailed examination of their external and internal features. Diplomatic studies have been applied mainly to Western documents, usually medieval ones, because it requires less specialist training to analyze more recent documents.

History of the study of documents

Medieval and Renaissance work

      The forging (forgery) of documents took place on a vast scale during the earlier Middle Ages, partly because wars and disturbances so frequently upset possession and also because the increasing use of written records made it necessary for those whose title was, in fact, perfectly good in old unwritten “customary” law to give it written substantiation. Thus forgeries, partly intentionally honest, partly dishonest, occurred frequently, despite the fact that the Germanic tribes that settled in western Europe inherited, with other aspects of Roman law, the concept of forgery as a felony, which was soon also reinforced by the church's canon law. This legal concept of forgery was, however, mainly applied to cases concerning property or inheritance; and literary forgeries, such as the famous Donation of Constantine, which purported to be the gift by the Roman emperor Constantine I the Great (died 337) to Pope Sylvester I of spiritual primacy throughout the church and of temporal power in Italy, were not concerned. Serious critical efforts to detect forgery did not begin in the Middle Ages, although obvious forgeries might be challenged in the course of a dispute. As early as the 6th century, the Merovingian king Childebert II declared a charter recording the gift of land from himself to the Bishop of Reims a forgery on the simple ground that the royal official denied the signature on it to be his. Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) tried to establish infallible criteria for the detection of fraudulent papal documents, but knowledge of earlier documentary forms was totally inadequate. In the Renaissance the Humanists began to use philological and technical criteria; on these grounds Lorenzo Valla (Valla, Lorenzo) authoritatively pronounced the Donation of Constantine to be a forgery, though authenticity had already been questioned.

Post-Renaissance scholarship

      Three events in the 17th century forced the development of more sophisticated standards of evaluation. The Thirty Years' War in Germany led to endless legal conflicts, and in France the nobility engaged in a concerted action known as the bella diplomatica (“diplomatic wars”) to assert their ancient privileges against royal absolutism. The decisive impetus, however, came from a much more particularist dispute. Daniel van Papenbroeck, a member of the Jesuit commission known as the Bollandists (Bollandist) (from another member, Jean Bolland), which was charged with the publication of the Acta Sanctorum (“Acts of the Saints,”), finding that some monastic documents he inspected were forgeries, assumed (1675) that this was true of almost all early-medieval documents. Since most of the monasteries with which the documents had been concerned were of the Benedictine Order, the Benedictines resented the suggestion, and Mabillon (Mabillon, Jean) undertook to refute it. In his De Re Diplomatica (1681), Mabillon set out the fundamental principles of the science of verifying documents; Papenbroeck soon afterward acknowledged the correctness of his tenets. Nearly a century later, René-Prosper Tassin and Charles-François Toustain published their six-volume Nouveau traité de diplomatique (1750–65; “New Treatise on Diplomatic”), a work that surpassed Mabillon's only in its greater wealth of material. Another important event in the history of the science of diplomatics was the founding of the École des Chartes (an institute for the training of French archivists) in Paris in 1821. During the next decades important collections of early-medieval French documents were printed in the Recueil des actes by a variety of eminent editors. But the greatest advances were made by German and Austrian scholars, among whom Julius von Ficker investigated the differentiation between actum and datum (that is, between verbal legal procedure and its formal documentation), and Theodor von Sickel (Sickel, Theodor von) defined a basic technique of studying and comparing the script of charters and thus of identifying the individual notaries or scribes. The diplomas of the Carolingian and the German kings and emperors were edited in the series of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, by members of the Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung (Institute of Austrian History Research), established by Sickel in 1854. Meanwhile, the Regesta, comprising short, synoptical condensations of the contents of papal documents down to 1198, published by Philipp Jaffé in 1851, gave a decisive momentum to the study of the papal chancery, while August Potthast covered the period from 1198 to 1304. Prominent scholars in the research of papal records in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century were Michael Tangl, Rudolf von Heckel, and, particularly, Paul Fridolin Kehr. In comparison with the amount of work done in France and Germany, historical scholarship in England long paid relatively little attention to legal, as opposed to literary, records. Although John Mitchell Kemble published his collection of Anglo-Saxon documents, the Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici (1839–48), an extensive study of Anglo-Saxon and Norman legal and administrative documents was delayed until the 20th century. Since then notable contributions have been made by scholars such as Helen Cam, H.W.C. Davis, Vivian Hunter Galbraith, Frank M. Stenton, Dorothy Whitelock, David Charles Douglas, and many others. Christopher Robert Cheney has made important contributions to the research of papal documents. In Italy Luigi Schiaparelli made vital contributions to the study of Lombard documents. From the 19th century, some study of documents has formed part of the medieval-history curriculum in most European universities.

Diplomatic method

Types of documents

      Documents that have been preserved are either originals, drafts, or copies. Originals, of which many survive, are formal documents drawn up on the order of the sender or donor, and they were designated to serve the recipient or beneficiary as evidence of the transaction recorded. Handwritten copies of documents, made either before or after the deed was actually executed (sealed), are not classified as originals. If made before an “original,” they were in fact rough drafts of it; if made afterward, they were copies. The particularly Anglo-Saxon method of chirography, however, gave the possibility of producing several “originals.” By this process two or more specimens of a document were written on the same page of the vellum sheet, and the free space between the texts was filled in with the word chyrographum (“handwriting”) or other words and symbols. Then the sheet was cut irregularly right through these words or symbols; the originals thus separated could later be reassembled, an exact fit being complete proof of authenticity. But to provide documents having the force of “originals,” copies of the original were usually made and formally certified as such, by public notaries, or by high ecclesiastical or secular dignitaries. Copies certified in this way were accorded the same legal value as the originals. In practice, lack of critical judgment on the part of the certifiers often led to the certification of forged records. In documents known as transumpts, which recited earlier documents or charters as part of their text, it often happened that the earlier document was forged, but, being included in the new, it received validation. The original documents and copies considered above were issued at the request of the recipient or beneficiary or of his legal heir. It also happened quite often that the sender or donor wished for various reasons to retain a record of the documents issued by him. The chanceries (record offices) of secular rulers or great ecclesiastics therefore kept copies of outgoing documents in registers, and often of incoming documents, too. The popes (papacy) were among the first to adopt the old Roman practice of keeping registers; although nearly all the earlier ones have been lost, an almost uninterrupted series of papal registers is extant from the pontificate of Innocent III onward. An important group of registers are the rolls (Pipe Rolls) kept by the medieval kings of England; the earliest extant rolls date from the 12th century. The keeping of registers in the chanceries of the French kings began about the year 1200, in Aragon about 1215, in Sicily under the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II (died 1250), and in the German imperial chancery from the early 14th century. Another manner of studying documents is in the formula books of the various chanceries. Notaries drawing up the various forms of medieval documents did not usually compose each new text afresh but, rather, copied from books in which such text formulas had been collected, a practice that can be traced back to Roman procedure. These model texts frequently contained only the legally relevant passages, while the individually applicable parts, such as names, figures, and dates, were either abridged or totally omitted. During the time of the Frankish (Frank) kings, important collections were made, such as the Formulae Marculfi (early 8th century) and the Formulae imperiales (828–832). Significant collections of formulas serving as models for papal documents have been preserved from the 13th century.

Classification of documents

      The documents of the Middle Ages are usually classified under two groups: public documents, which are those of emperors, kings, and popes, and private documents, which comprise all others. Another way of classifying documents is according to whether they are evidentiary or dispositive. The former merely record a valid legal act already executed orally, while the actual issuing of the latter forms in itself the legal act. This distinction, found among Roman documents from the 3rd century AD onward, gradually ceased to exist after the early Middle Ages. After the collapse of the Carolingian empire in the 9th century, private documents lost much of their function and were replaced by simple memorandums about legal acts and the witnesses to them. It was not until the late 11th and early 12th centuries that sealed charters of high secular or ecclesiastical dignitaries were again gradually considered as dispositive. Papal documents can be classified mainly as either letters or privileges, and royal documents can be classified as diplomas or mandates. Privileges and diplomas give evidence of legal transactions designed to be of long duration or even of permanent effect, while mandates and many papal letters contain commands.

Physical appearance of documents

      Documents were written on a variety of material. In antiquity there were documents of stone, metal, wax, papyrus, and, occasionally, of parchment, but only papyrus and parchment (and, very occasionally, wax) were used during the Middle Ages. From the 12th to the 13th centuries, paper also was sometimes available. Papyrus, made from the stem of the papyrus plant, was produced mainly in Egypt; after the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, the import of papyrus to Europe became difficult. The Merovingian kings wrote their documents on papyrus until the second half of the 7th century, and the popes did so until far into the 11th century. North of the Alps papyrus had finally disappeared by the 8th century, when it was replaced by parchment. Parchment was made from animal hides and was thus easier to obtain. In southern Europe it was made mainly from sheep and goat hides; the insides of the skin were thoroughly smoothed and calcined, while the hairy sides were left rougher. In central and northern Europe, parchment was usually made from calves' skins, and both sides of the hides were thoroughly smoothed and calcined. Paper came originally from China. During the 8th century AD, it spread to the Arab world and from thence to Byzantium, where it was manufactured from linen and was used from the 11th to the 13th centuries for imperial documents. After that time ordinary paper was used in the Byzantine Empire. In the West the use of paper, most common at first in southern Italy and Spain, had begun to spread by the beginning of the 12th century. Germany and southern France began to import paper from Spain and Italy in the 13th century, and soon afterward it had reached England by way of Bordeaux. But paper did not altogether replace parchment, which long remained in use, especially for solemn documents. The medium for writing was ink, generally a mixture of oak gall and copper vitriol. Originally black, ink made north of the Alps sometimes shows a reddish-brown hue, while that made in Italy may contain tinges of brown and yellow. Over the centuries most of these colours have lightened as a result of atmospheric conditions. The Byzantine emperors used purple ink for their signatures. This custom was occasionally taken over by the Lombard rulers of Italy and, later, by the Norman kings of Sicily. Another custom of Byzantine origin is the use of gold lettering.

      Throughout the entire Roman Empire, the language used in documents was primarily Latin (Latin language). Greek (Greek language) was also used, and, during the latter part of the 6th century AD, it slowly superseded Latin in the East. From then onward, Greek was the language of Byzantine documents until the end of the Byzantine Empire (1453). In the West, the collapse of the empire and the establishment of barbarian kingdoms led to a vulgarization of Latin, written as well as spoken.

      Latin has always been used for papal documents and for most public and private charters, and it was used for international documents well into post-Renaissance times, until it was superseded by French as the language of diplomacy. In public and private documents, use of the vernacular alongside Latin gradually developed. Apart from its early and unique appearance in the documents of the Anglo-Saxons in England, no vernacular was used in charters before the 12th century. At the Norman Conquest (1066), use of Anglo-Saxon in English documents soon stopped, and no more vernacular was used there until some Norman French was introduced in the 13th century, and Middle English in the 15th century. There was an increasing use of the vernacular in Italian and French documents from the 12th century and in Germany from the 13th; but in medieval times Latin was never outstripped by the vernacular.

      A correct assessment of the hand in which it was written is vital to ascertaining the provenance and authenticity of a document. Thus, the knowledge of paleography, different styles of ancient writing, is a skill essential to diplomatics. The broad basis of such knowledge begins with acquaintance with the general styles of writing (calligraphy) current at particular times and places. This varied with the way the pen was held; whether the writing was cursive or had the letters formed separately; whether it was majuscule, all the letters being contained between a single pair of horizontal lines, or minuscule, with parts of the letters extending above and below the lines. There is a further distinction between what is called book hand and the business, or court, hand at one time used for documents.

      In Europe the Roman capital letters, distinguished as rustic or square, uncial, and Roman majuscule and minuscule cursive, influenced all subsequent writing in the West. The Roman curial style (from the Curia, or papal court), used in the papal chancery until the 12th century, was a derivation of late Roman minuscule cursive. After the disintegration of the Western Empire, the Merovingian (Merovingian script) Franks used a Roman provincial script for their documents. Distinctive forms developed elsewhere, in Visigothic Spain and in Ireland. The Irish script, a half uncial (uncials are rounded letters) and a minuscule script (Carolingian minuscule), spread to Anglo-Saxon England and thence to the European continent. Under the Carolingian rulers, a particularly clear and attractive minuscule book hand (Caroline minuscule) was developed; modifications of this gradually became used in documents and eventually spread also to Italy, England, and Spain. A “Gothic (black letter),” more pointed form of script developed since the 11th century in northern France and soon spread all over Europe, so that writing became more spidery in appearance. In the early years of the Renaissance, Italian scholars such as Poggio (Poggio Bracciolini) and Niccolò Niccoli developed a minuscule based on the Carolingian, and variants of this style were used by the Venetian Aldus Manutius and other pioneers of printing.

      Abbreviations (abbreviation) were used in both documents and books. Again, their particular characteristics would contribute to a correct assessment of the probable date and provenance of a document. Roughly two types were used: the suspension, involving the writing of only the first letter or syllable of a word; and the contraction, used first for Hebrew and Christian sacred names, the writing of only the first and last letter or letters of a word or syllable. The Carolingians sometimes used Tironian notes, a form of shorthand devised by Tiro, a freedman of the Roman orator Cicero.

      From Roman times the two most important methods of validating documents were by appending the signature or the seal of the sender or promulgator. The practice of using seals for this purpose (and not merely to close a document) was carried over from imperial usage and, by the 8th century, was current among the Lombards and other Germanic tribes in western Europe. Until about the 8th century, the signature of the Merovingian ruler or his delegate was also required for the validation of public documents, but thereafter the seal alone, together with the recognition by a high chancery official, was held sufficient, the king's signature dwindling into a monogram or mere stroke (the “stroke of execution”). This change was probably accelerated because many medieval kings could not write. Thus, in England, King John sealed, and did not sign, the Magna Carta.

      Seals were made of wax or of metal; if the latter, they were called bulls (bull, papal) (hence, the use of this term for a certain group of papal documents). The Byzantine emperors used gold seals for their documents; Byzantine officials and ecclesiastics used lead and silver for their bulls. Papal seals were of lead or gold. Wax seals were increasingly used from about the 11th and 12th centuries, and wax was also used for the impression when, later, less formal documents were validated by use of the signet or privy seal. Seals could be two-sided, suspended from the document, or impressed upon it.

Form and content of documents

      Normally, each document was divided into three distinct parts: the introduction (protocol), the main text (context), and the concluding formulas or final protocol. There were various subdivisions, and not all the parts here mentioned are necessarily found in every document. The introduction comprises, first, the invocation (invocatio) of God, either by name or through a symbol such as the cross; second, the superscription (intitulatio), giving the name and title of the sender; and third, the address (inscriptio), naming those to whom the document is directed, usually followed by a formula of greeting (salutatio). The actual text of the document can be divided into a number of parts. The first, known as the arenga, expresses in general terms the motive for the issue of the document. The notification (promulgatio), briefly explaining the legal purpose of the document, is followed by the narratio, or exposition of the particular circumstances involved. In the dispositio the donor or promulgator firmly declares his purpose (“I hereby decree” or “I hereby give”); this clause is the vital core of the document, its legal decree of enactment. There usually followed the sanctio, a threat of punishment should the enactment be violated. The main text concluded with the corroboratio, a statement of the means to be used for validation of the document. The final protocol consisted of subscriptions or lists of names of all those, such as the scribe, who took part in the issue of the document and of witnesses to the enactment. The date and place of issue are given, and the final sentence, the apprecatio, is a short prayer for the realization of the contents of the charter. At the bottom of the document, the signs of validation (the recognition, monogram, seal) were then added.

      The date given on a document might be either that of legal enactment (actum) or that of the issue of the document recording the (already performed) legal enactment (datum). The form in which dates are given in a document is of particular import in determining its provenance and authenticity. A wide variety of practices were followed at different places and times. For instance, days of the month could be given according to the old Roman system of calends, ides, and nones; by continuous counting throughout the month; or by reference to a saint's day. Years might be computed from the presumed time of the creation of the world; by the Roman indiction, a 15-year cycle; by the names of officiating Roman consuls; by regnal years of emperor, king, or pope; or from the birth of Christ. Moreover, there were also a variety of ways to determine when the year began.

Development and characteristics of chanceries

The Roman (ancient Rome) and Byzantine empire

      Rulers, all of whom needed to issue directives and edicts, developed writing offices, or chanceries, in which formal documents were drawn up. The Roman imperial chancery, called the Office of Letters (ab epistulis), was subdivided into a Greek and a Latin department. In the 5th century four letter offices existed, all under the ultimate control of the magister officiorum (“master of offices”): the scrinium epistolarum (“letter office”) handled mainly foreign, legal, and administrative affairs; the scrinium libellorum (“petitions office”) handled petitions and investigations; the scrinium memoriae (“memorandum office”) composed shorter imperial decrees; and the scrinium dispositionum dealt with administration. From the 4th century, a group (schola) of notaries had come into being, some of whom served the emperor as personal secretaries. Two centuries later a special confidential (a secretis) secretary existed. In the Byzantine Empire in the 8th to 9th centuries, the scrinium epistolarum and the scrinium libellorum merged to form a new department under the koiaistor (a high palace official), while the secretaries had all come under the office of the protoasekretis (head of the secretaries). An official called the mystikos handled the emperor's secret correspondence. In preparing edicts or other laws, the koiaistor, after consulting the emperor, made a first draft of the bill, had the official copy drawn up by notaries, and then verified its accuracy before it was validated. From the 9th century onward other high court officials participated in the validation of Byzantine charters.

      The important governmental documents of the late Roman and early Byzantine empires include laws, edicts, decrees (imperial decisions concerning civil and penal law), and rescripts (the emperor's replies to inquiries from corporate and administrative bodies or private persons). In the Byzantine era documents concerning more day-to-day affairs can be grouped under the headings of foreign letters, privileges, and administration. Foreign letters include correspondence with other rulers, treaties (regarded not as an agreement between equals but as an act of grace or privilege granted by the emperor, and made out as such), and letters accrediting imperial ambassadors. The most solemn and splendid form of privilege was the chrysobullos logos, so named because the word logos, meaning the emperor's solemn word, appeared in it three times, picked out in red ink. Written in the carefully embellished chancery script reserved for the emperor's personal documents, the text consists of the usual parts—that is, the invocatio, intitulatio, inscriptio, arenga, narratio, dispositio, sanctio, date, and the subscriptio. It was sealed with the golden bull.

      From about the 12th to the mid-14th century, a simplified form, the chrysobullon sigillion, was used for privileges of lesser importance. It was not signed by the emperor himself but was held to be validated by the insertion, by the emperor, in red ink of the menologema, a statement of month and indiction. It, too, was sealed with a golden bull. The administrative documents of the Byzantine imperial chancery include the prostagma, or horismos, a plain and short document known since the beginning of the 13th century. If directed to a single person, the document starts out with a short address, but, in all other cases, it begins immediately with the narratio, followed by the dispositio. The emperor replaced his signature with the menologema. Unlike the privileges, this document was not rolled up but, instead, was folded, and then closed by means of a wax seal stamped with the imprint of the imperial signet ring.

      In addition to those emanating from the imperial offices, there were other types of documents issued in the Byzantine Empire. These include those issued by despots and imperial officials and, in the ecclesiastical sphere, by patriarchs and bishops. There were also private documents. The documents issued by the despots carried a silver seal, showing their intermediate status between that of imperial documents sealed with the gold seal and that of documents drawn up by imperial officials and sealed with lead bulls. Documents issued by imperial officials were simpler. They lacked the protocol, and the personal signature of the issuing official was written in black ink. The detailed date comprises the menologema. The documents of the Byzantine patriarchs are in many respects analogous to the imperial documents and symbolize the high status of the patriarch of Constantinople. They were, however, sealed with lead bulls. Byzantine private documents are almost exclusively notarial instruments. They are immediately recognizable by the crosses marked at the top of the documents. Used in lieu of the signature, the cross was the mark of the sender and contained his name and official function in one of its angles. The document was either signed by witnesses, or at least the cross preceding their names is autograph. Following that is the signature of the notary. These documents were not usually sealed.

The papal chancery

      Knowledge about early papal documents is scant because no originals survive from before the 9th century, and extant copies of earlier documents are often much abridged. But it is clear that the popes at first imitated the form of the letters of the Roman emperors. The papal protocol consisted only of the superscription and address and the final protocol of the pope's personal “signature”—not a mention of his name but merely a blessing. Toward the end of the 8th century, it became customary in certain documents to mention in the final clauses the name of the scribe responsible for the drawing up of the document; this was given with the date of issue, indicated by month and indiction, immediately following the subject matter of the document. There followed another clause, the great dating formula, datum per manus (“given by the hand of . . .”), naming a high chancery official and giving the date by reference to the regnal years of both emperor and pope. Both were used in documents containing decrees of permanent legal force, which came to be called privileges. Under Pope Leo IX (Leo IX, Saint) (1049–54), the benediction written by the pope was changed into a monogram not written by him, but his signature was now introduced, placed in a round symbol, the rota. By the early 13th century, papal documents had evolved into two distinctive groups: solemn privileges and letters. Solemn privileges can be distinguished by their enlarged letters (elongata) of the first line, by the phrase in perpetuum (“in perpetuity”) at the end of the address, by a threefold amen at the end of the text, by use of the rota, the pope's signature, the monogram, signatures of the cardinals, and by the datum per manus. Among letters, those whose bull was fastened on silken cords (litterae cum serico) brought some benefit to the recipient, while those with bulls fastened on a hempen cord (litterae cum filo canapis) contained either orders or the papal delegation in a dispute.

      The number of solemn privileges began to decline from the mid-13th century, and eventually they were completely discontinued, their function being partly taken over by the litterae cum serico, which became increasingly elaborate in form. A new type of document also developed, the papal bull (bull, papal), distinguishable primarily by its use of formulas such as ad perpetuam rei memoriam (“that the matter may be perpetually known”) in the superscription. Yet another new papal document appeared at the end of the 14th century, the brief (breve), used for the popes' private or even secret correspondence. Written not in the chancery but, instead, by papal secretaries (an office dating from about 1338), the briefs were sealed on wax with the imprint of the papal signet ring.

      The papal chancery of the 4th to the 8th centuries was similar to the late-Roman (ancient Rome) imperial chancery. Its notaries (notarii, scriniarii), organized in a guild (schola), were headed by the primicerius notariorum and the secundicerius notariorum (first and second of notaries) and included the especially important notaries of Rome's seven ecclesiastical regions. But, during the 9th century, the bibliothecarius, the papal librarian, became the most important chancery official; a little later, various important bishops and dignitaries seem to have acted occasionally as datarius (the official named in the datum per manus formula). During the mid-11th century, a phase of German influence led to the temporary employment of notaries from the court of the emperor Henry III, who drew up papal privileges according to imperial formulas. A more important and permanent outcome of German influence was the gradual replacement of the bibliothecarius by a chancellor as the highest chancery official. The chancellor was invariably a cardinal, and in his absence another cardinal acted in his place as vice chancellor. Lesser chancery personnel still included the seven regional notaries; increasing business involved the use of lesser paid scribes in addition to the established notaries. From the late 11th century, a papal chapel, modelled on those of contemporary emperors and kings, developed, and its staff was often employed in chancery tasks.

      From the early 13th century, the vice chancellor became the permanent head of the chancery, the office of chancellor remaining vacant. During that century the vice chancellors were ordinary clerics, who renounced the office if elevated to the cardinalate; thus, the chancery became directly subordinate to the pope himself. Both the numbers and the official standing of the notaries in the chancery, which then functioned entirely separately from the chapel, gradually increased. Higher chancery officials were often distinguished canonists (legal experts), such as Sinibaldo Fieschi (later Pope Innocent IV), Godfrey of Trani, and Richard of Siena. From the beginning of the 14th century, bishops or cardinals filled the office of vice chancellor. During the Great Schism (1378–1417) there were two papal chanceries and two vice chancellors, one in Rome and one in Avignon.

      Under Innocent III the procedure of the papal chancery had changed. Letters concerning matters of import to the papal Curia (de Curia) were drafted by the pope himself or else by a cardinal, the vice chancellor, or a notary. But the majority of the papal documents were elicited by their recipients, who had first to present to a notary the substance of their petition in a form the text of which largely anticipated the wording of the desired document. Professional proctors attached to the Curia assisted in the drafting and were also responsible for the documents during later stages of the procedure. Once a petition was approved, the notaries (notary) or the abbreviatores drafted a suitable document, drawing on a selection of formula books. After a final copy (engrossment) had been made and checked, it was read, if necessary, to the pope or in a special department of the chancery, the Audientia litterarum contradictarum. It was then passed to the Cistercian lay brothers who had charge of the papal bull, sealed, and given to the petitioner, who had had to pay a fee at almost every stage of the proceedings.

      Insufficient research has so far been done on the papal chancery during the 14th and 15th centuries. Whereas formerly, when the vice chancellor was absent, one of the notaries had deputized for him, a new official, the regens cancellariam, was now created to fulfill this function. The number of notaries increased steadily, and, from the 13th century onward, an increasing number of public notaries worked in the papal administration. In order to distinguish between them and the papal notaries proper, the latter became unofficially known as protonotaries. The notaries were now in charge of the letters of justice, while the letters of grace were handled by the abbreviatores. The scribes remained in charge of the engrossments. A computator, aided by several assistants, was responsible for collecting fees.

The royal chanceries of medieval France and Germany

      Of the nations that held power in western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire there, the Ostrogoths, who occupied Italy from the late 5th to the mid-6th century, took over the ancient Roman imperial-chancery system in its entirety. Very little is known about the royal documents of the Lombards (Lombard), their successors in Northern Italy, since not one of them has been preserved in its original form. But Lombard officials in charge of drawing up the documents were still trained in the Roman tradition. As well as referendarii, there were notaries who also acted as scribes. It is very likely that all of them were laymen.

      Until the 12th century two main types of documents, diplomas and mandates, were produced north of the Alps, in the Merovingian, Carolingian, German, and French royal chanceries. Very little is known about the Merovingian royal chancery and its organization. The names of the scribes are never mentioned in the documents, but they were signed by high chancery officials, the referendarii.

      When the Merovingian dynasty was supplanted by the Carolingians, chancery procedure changed drastically. In contrast to the Merovingian kings, the first Carolingian king, Pippin III the Short, was unable either to read or write. He therefore entrusted the responsibility for the correctness of the royal documents to an official of the court. At about the same time, the task of drawing up documents was taken over by those clerics whose original duty had been to look after the most important relic of the royal court, the coat (cappa) of St. Martin of Tours. Collectively named the capella (chapel), these clerks were individually called capellani, chaplains. This close connection between the court chapel and the chancery existed under the later Carolingians and at the German and French and other royal courts, including that of England. Until well into the 12th century, European chanceries were not bureaucratic offices in the modern sense but, rather, in most cases an assemblage of chaplains suited for the task of issuing documents and usually working under a cleric who was not the head of the chapel. Not all chaplains wrote documents, however, and the chapel and chancery thus remained separate institutions. From the reign of the emperor Louis I the Pious (814–840), the heads of the chancery were not personally involved in writing the documents, a task performed by unnamed and unknown scribes. At first the scribes were indiscriminately designated as either notarii or cancellarii (higher, Roman provincial officials of the 5th and 6th centuries, who stood at the barriers, cancelli, of the council rooms), but, by the 9th century, the title of cancellarius was gaining ground and was increasingly applied to the head of the chancery. The 9th century was a period of transition, during which, for a while, the archchaplain, the head of the chapel, became also the head of the clerks who wrote the charters.

      Under the Ottonian dynasty, which came to power in the eastern division of the original Carolingian empire early in the 10th century, the German royal chancery developed the organization that was to characterize it throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages. The heads of the chancery were the archchancellors, but the office was entirely honorary and soon came to be automatically held, as far as Germany was concerned, by whoever was archbishop of Mainz. When the German kings or emperors established administrations in Italy, Italian bishops were at first made archchancellors for Italy, but in 1031 the office was attached to the archbishopric of Cologne. From the 11th century, Burgundian bishops were archchancellors for Burgundy, but, in the second half of the 13th century, the archbishop of Trier took over the office.

      The actual heads of the chancery were the chancellors (chancellor). At first there was a chancellor, as well as an archchancellor, for each separate part of the empire—Germany, Italy, and Burgundy—but from 1118 there was only one chancellor for all three kingdoms. But even the chancellors, all of whom were clerics, were rarely involved in the actual composition and engrossing of documents, being usually engaged, as important advisers to the king or emperor, in much weightier matters. They do seem to have been especially concerned, however, with decisions about the granting of charters, and they supervised the work of the scribes or notaries. From among the ranks of these notaries, a group of protonotaries gradually developed after the mid-12th century, as a result of influence from the chancery of the Norman rulers of Sicily. Often called upon to deputize for the chancellor, the protonotaries, from the late 13th century onward, frequently titled themselves vice chancellors.

      From the 12th century onward, the documents issued by the German royal chancery were divided into various classifications. The diploma, by then usually called a privilege, existed in two categories, the solemn and the simple privilege. A solemn privilege included the invocatio, the signum and recognition line, and a detailed dating or at least one of these three elements, which were entirely lacking in simple privileges. Gradually, simple privileges merged into documents called mandates; it is not always easy to distinguish between them, but, in general, privileges were concerned with rights in perpetuity, while the mandates dealt mainly with matters of only temporary importance. From the early 14th century, mandates were superseded by the use of letters patent and letters close (open or closed letters). Privileges continued to be sealed with a hanging seal; the seal on letters patent was impressed on the document and was used to seal up letters close.

      As the power of the German kings declined during the later Middle Ages, so that of the archchancellors increased, and in the 14th century they attempted to win control of the chancery. But, despite fluctuations in the power struggle, the king retained control of the chancellor, who, by the end of the 15th century, held the title of imperial vice chancellor.

      Under the Carolingians and the first Capetians in France, various bishops and archbishops, especially the archbishops of Reims, held the office of royal chancellor. But at that time the office was merely titular, and, by the end of the 11th century, it disappeared entirely. From the 12th century onward, the title of chancellor became reserved to the head of the chancery. These new chancellors became so powerful that in 1185 King Philip II Augustus left the office vacant, and, during almost the whole of the 13th century, the chancery was administered by subordinate officials. Chancellors, often laymen, were appointed again in the 14th century, however, and the office remained important until 1789. As in other parts of Europe, the French chancellor merely directed the work of the notaries, and it was they who were responsible for drawing up the documents. From 1350 onward, the notaries were called secretaries, and both their numbers and their importance steadily increased. From the 15th century, the tremendous expansion of business occupying the Grande Chancellerie led to the establishment of several subsidiary petites chancelleries, all issuing royal documents sealed with the king's signet. Until the reign of Henry I (1031–60), the old Frankish type of diploma was issued almost exclusively. Then, gradually, charters in the simpler form of letters began to replace the diplomas, and, during the 13th century, the lettres patentes became the common type of document. These lacked the invocatio, the monogram, and the signature of the high dignitaries, and they gave the simple form of dating. From the 14th century, two forms of lettres patentes existed: the charte, which was sealed with a green wax seal hanging on red and green silk cords; and the lettre patente, used mainly for administrative mandates, which was sealed with a yellow wax seal on double and single cord. Besides, lettres closes were used from the 13th century onward.

The English royal chancery

      The English royal documents of the Anglo-Saxon period (before 1066) can be divided into two large groups: the charters (charter), mostly written (writ) in Latin; and the writs, written in Old English. The charters, for the most part concerning grants of land, began with either a verbal or a symbolic invocatio (a cross or the monogram XP for Christ). There was an arenga but no intitulatio. Charters were not sealed, the validation comprising the nonautographed signatures of the king and of ecclesiastic and secular dignitaries. Many of the extant charters of this era are forged or interpolated; the series of those apparently genuine starts shortly after the arrival in Canterbury (669) of the archbishop Theodore, and these show similarities with late-Roman private documents. It therefore seems probable that the Anglo-Saxon charters derive from Italian models brought to England by the Roman missionaries. Most of the charters were apparently written by the recipients. From the 11th century, the charters were gradually superseded by sealed writs, which became the most important type of document in medieval England. At first written in Anglo-Saxon, they were produced in Latin (Latin language) soon after the Norman Conquest. No continental document was anything like them. Written on a narrow strip of parchment, their entire text occupied only a few lines. A symbolic invocatio in the form of a cross was followed by the king's name and the address, which contained a salutation clause. There was no arenga, and the address was followed by a short description of the bequest, if the writ concerned a grant, or a directive, if the writ was a mandate. The Anglo-Saxon writs had no signatures of witnesses and no date, but after 1066 these elements were added. The dating consisted at first only of a mention of the place of issue, days and month being usually given only toward the end of the 12th century. From the very beginning the writs were supplied with a pendant seal as a means of validation. From the reign of Henry II (1154–89), it is possible to distinguish mandate-like writs of the old type and charter writs, which mainly concerned questions of feudal enfeoffments and confirmations of privileges and were usually more carefully executed than the mandate writs. By the early 13th century, the charter writs had developed into a new form of charter. It contained the intitulatio, including all the titles of the king; the general address; the dispositive text, which in most instances was introduced with the expression sciatis (“know that”); and the final clauses, consisting of the names of several witnesses and of the datum per manus clause mentioning the chancellor and giving the date and place of issue. During the final stage of its development, the great seal of green wax, pendant on silk cords, served as the means of validation. The ordinary writs further evolved into the common-law writs (containing orders to persons mentioned by name), the writs of summons, and, particularly, the letters patent (the latter eventually assuming the function of the charter writs, which disappeared at the end of the 13th century) and the letters close. The letters patent were furnished with a general address. Often introduced with the sciatis, the text concerns either limited grants or commissions to royal officials, introduced by the word precipio (“I order”) or a similar expression.

      The dating begins with a series of witnesses and contains the place of issue, day, month, and year of the king's reign. Occasionally the dating is followed by the words “per N.,” which are assumed to designate the household official transmitting to the scribe the royal order to issue the writ. The means of validation was the great seal in white wax, pendant on a single strip of parchment (simple-queue) or on a double strip of parchment or silk (double-queue). The letters close obtained their name from the fact that they were closed by means of the great seal. They contained either commands or information directed to a single individual or to several persons. Characteristic of these letters are the words teste me ipso (“witnessed myself”) introducing the regular dating clause. These types of royal documents remained essentially unchanged throughout the Middle Ages and were imitated by both secular and ecclesiastic English magnates and dignitaries.

      The English royal chancery grew out of the royal household. As on the Continent, it was at first merely a group of royal chaplains, and, until the Norman Conquest, there was no chancellor at their head. The chancellor was the keeper of the seal but usually took no part in the issuing of documents. During the 12th century the number of scribes was still low, between two and eight. At first this “chancery” travelled about with the king, only in the course of the 13th century establishing a permanent location at Westminster. At first English royal documents were not dispositive but merely evidentiary, confirming a previously arranged, orally discharged legal act, and the king's order for issuing the document was given orally. But, from the late 13th century, a royal secretariat came into existence, which was in charge of relaying to the chancellor, by warrant sealed with the privy seal, the royal order for issuing a writ under the great seal. In many ways the secretariat thus became a competitor of the chancery. In addition, during the first half of the 14th century, the Signet Office was established, so called after the small seal (signet). The king's secretary was also the head of this office. All these shifts made the issuing of royal documents increasingly complicated. From the end of the 14th century, the common procedure involved, first, the petitioner submitting a petition to the king. If the king approved of it, his secretary forwarded a warrant carrying the signet to the keeper of the privy seal with the request to send, in his turn, a warrant carrying the privy seal to the chancellor. The chancellor then ordered the issue of the document, which would bear the great seal. So far as the issuing of royal documents is concerned, the fact that the secretariat developed into the secretariat of state is of great significance. The king's secretary (later on, there were two of them) became the centre of the royal administration. It was in his office that the state papers originated, which already under Henry VIII (died 1547) far surpassed in importance the old chancery records. Among the state papers there are in-letters, out-letters, drafts, reports, and schedules. The decline of the rolls (document registers) during the 16th century gave rise to yet another new office, the State Paper Office, headed since 1578 by the clerk of the papers. The second holder of this office, Sir Thomas Wilson, established the division of the state papers into foreign and domestic. As departments of state proliferated during the 18th and 19th centuries, they developed their own archives. In 1838 all the public archives became subject to an official called the master of the rolls.

The chanceries of smaller European nations

      Smaller European nations usually modelled their documents on those of the papacy, the empire, France, or England. The influence of papal letters and privileges can be observed particularly in Aragon, Castile, and Portugal, while German royal diplomas served as models in Bohemia (which was part of the empire), Hungary, and Poland. Because of the close political ties between the two kingdoms, Anglo-Saxon influence can be traced in the seal of the royal Danish (Denmark) documents during the 11th century, but, in the course of the 12th century, royal and princely German documents became the models for Danish as well as Swedish royal documents. Norwegian (Norway) royal documents were modelled on Anglo-Saxon writs, probably as a result of the influence of English missionaries working in Norway from the early 11th century. The Norwegian writs were drawn up in the vernacular. The chancery of the Norman rulers of southern Italy and Sicily was highly developed. Influenced by the form of papal documents, the Norman documents comprise mainly privileges, either formal (with rota, witnesses, and gold bull) or simple (with rota, leaden bull, or wax seal), and mandates. They all have a detailed dateline that includes the name of the chancellor or other high court officials, the number of years since the birth of Christ, the regnal year of the king, and the apprecatio. The mandates are more simply executed. They lack the invocatio and start out with a simple intitulatio and inscriptio that ends with a salutation clause. There is neither arenga nor corroboratio, but there is a command clause in the text. The dating consists only of the place of issue, the day of the month, and the indictio. There is no rota or signature. The seal is of red wax. The head of the royal chancery of the Norman kingdom of Sicily was the chancellor, a layman who was an influential court official. The notaries (notary) who drafted and wrote the documents were also laymen. Because the German Hohenstaufen emperors also ruled in Sicily from 1194 to 1250 (Middle Ages), Norman chancery practice influenced subsequent German documents.

Peter Herde

Additional Reading

Harry Bresslau, Handbuch der Urkundenlehre für Deutschland und Italien, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (1912), vol. 2, pt. 1 (1914), vol. 2, pt. 2, ed. by H.W. Klewitz (1931, all reprinted 1958, with separate index), although somewhat out of date, still the best handbook by far for Germany and Italy; Oswald Redlich, Die Privaturkunden des Mittelalters (1911, reprinted 1967), an excellent work on the private documents of the Middle Ages; Leo Santifaller, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Beschreibstoffe im Mittelalter, pt. 1 (1953), the most up-to-date account of the history of writing materials during the Middle Ages; Franz Dolger and Johannes Karayannopulos, Byzantinische Urkundenlehre die Kaiserurkunden (1968), the only study of the documents of the Byzantine emperors; C.R. Cheney, The Study of the Medieval Papal Chancery (1966), an excellent general survey of modern research; R.L. Poole, Lectures on the History of the Papal Chancery down to the Time of Innocent III (1915), the best book in English on this subject, though now out of date; Peter Herde, Beiträge zum päpstlichen Kanzlei- und Urkundenwesen im 13. Jahrhundert, 2nd ed. (1967); and Audientia litterarum contradictarum, 2 vol. (1970), on papal letters of justice; Wilhelm Erben, Die Kaiser- und Königsurkunden des Mittelalters in Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien (1907, reprinted 1967), an excellent supplement to Bresslau on the imperial and royal documents of the Middle Ages in Germany, France, and Italy; Georges Tessier, Diplomatique royale française (1962), the best and most up-to-date handbook on the royal French diplomatic; Alain de Bouard, Manuel de diplomatique française et pontificale (1929), a handbook on French and papal diplomatic; F.M. Stenton, The Latin Charters of the Anglo-Saxon Period (1955), a good brief survey on research since the 18th century; P.H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters (1968), the most up-to-date annotated list and bibliography; R.C. van Caenegem, Royal Writs in England from the Conquest to Glanvill (1959), the best book on writs; V.H. Galbraith, An Introduction to the Use of the Public Records (1934) and Studies in the Public Records (1948), two works especially useful for the later periods; C.R. Cheney, The Records of Medieval England (1956) and English Bishops' Chanceries 1100–1250 (1950); T.F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, 6 vol. (1920–33), the basic work on the subject, including the chancery; Harry Bresslau, “International Beziehungen im Urkundenwesen des Mittelalters,” Archiv für Urkundenforschung, 6:19–76 (1918), the only survey on international relations in the documentary system of the Middle Ages; Horst Enzensberger, Beiträge zum Kanzlei- und Urkundenwesen der normannischen Herrscher Unteritaliens und Siziliens (1971), the most up-to-date account of the chancery and documents of the Norman rulers in southern Italy and Sicily; H.O. Meisner, Archivalienkunde vom 16. Jahrhundert bis 1918 (1969), the best study of records from the 16th century through 1918 for central Europe, especially Germany; Charles Carter, The Western European Powers, 1500–1700 (1971), a very useful survey on archives and their records. All the cited works have comprehensive bibliographies, with some of them also containing bibliographies of editions and facsimiles of documents. H. Thomas Hickerson, Archives and Manuscripts: An Introduction to Automated Access (1981), discusses specific concern of the contemporary archives business.

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