Charters, Languages, and Communication: Recent Work on Early Medieval Literacy

Rosamond McKitterick

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Chapter 2 Charters, Languages, and Communication: Recent Work on Early Medieval Literacy

In: The Languages of Early Medieval Charters

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Rosamond McKitterick

Rosamond McKitterick
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 22–67

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004432338_003

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Abstract

A spate of studies over the past thirty years has demolished the former assumption that the early Middle Ages was an age of ‘orality’ in which the abilities to read and write were restricted to a small clerical elite. This research has highlighted the enormous diversity of deployments and manifestations of literacy, and the extent to which lay people and clerics shared a common documentary culture in a multilingual world, with many different local realities, in which oral communication also continued to play a significant role. This chapter therefore situates the present volume in the broader context of historiography concerning literacy, language, and communication. It considers the evidential base of past and current studies of charters and literacy, and highlights the pioneering contributions made, for example, by the Settimane of the Centro italiano de studi sull’alto medioevo in Spoleto. It offers a critical reflection on new interpretations over the past thirty years in which books, documents, and scripts were all considered as different aspects of the same historical problem. Themes such as language, the learning of writing skills, writing as visual symbol, musical notation, and the evidence of inscriptions and of glossaries are addressed. The history of literacy in Europe is not one of unbroken continuity from the Roman world to that of early medieval Europe. This chapter suggests that it is instead a variegated landscape of continuities and disruptions, transformations, creativity, adoption, and adaptation, with new forms of commemoration and record created, not least the charters that recorded the past, were destined for both present concerns and future record, and preserve precious remnants of language use and evolution.

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The Languages of Early Medieval Charters

Latin, Germanic Vernaculars, and the Written Word

Series: Brill's Series on the Early Middle Ages, Volume: 27

Cover The Languages of Early Medieval Charters

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004432338

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 16 Nov 2020

Subjects
- History
- Languages and Linguistics
  - Historical and Comparative Linguistics & Linguistic Typology
  - Multilingualism & Language Contact

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Chapter 2 Charters, Languages, and Communication: Recent Work on Early Medieval Literacy

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The Languages of Early Medieval Charters

Latin, Germanic Vernaculars, and the Written Word

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