The Merovingians by Alexander Callander Murray;

Author:Alexander Callander Murray; [Murray;, Alexander Callander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781032054230
Publisher: TaylorFrancis
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

I

The Merovingian diploma in a broad sense consists of two classes of royal documents. The first class is made up of directives (called praecepta, auctoritates, among other names), embracing orders of all sorts, both general and specific, including grants, privileges and exemptions. The directive was derived ultimately from the late Roman imperial rescript and like it was epistolary in form, addressed to officials even in the case of privileges benefitting individuals and communities.15 The second class is comprised of placita, a modern coinage for royal judicial decisions. Whether the placita were originally provided with general addresses, and therefore were also epistolary in form, is a contested point. Determining what is and what is not a diploma for editorial purposes is by necessity a slightly arbitrary process. The first volume of the new edition, much like that of Pertz, excludes letters in the narrow sense and also the surviving edicts of the Merovingian kings, edited in the old MGH Capitularia edition of Alfred Boretius, though some of these stricto sensu are in the form of royal directives.16 The broad range of directives on the other hand is reflected in the volume of deperdita.

15 The Roman origin of the diploma was demonstrated in Peter Classen’s remarkable dissertion of 1950, reworked under the title “Kaiserrescript und Königsurkunde: Diplomatische Studien zum römisch-germanischen Kontinuitätsproblem,” in Archiv für Diplomatik 1 (1955): 1–87; 2 (1956): 1–115; it was reprinted unchanged, but under the new title Kaiserrescript und Königsurkunde: Diplomatische Studien zum Problem der Kontinuität zwischen Altertum und Mittelalter (Thessalonika, 1977). The larger framework of the study rests on the view that early medieval documents are the product of an encounter between the Roman and Germanic worlds that created a clash with Roman-state administration. This perspective (which was very much in tune with its place and time) regards Germanic content, including the supposed personal and symbolic character of Germanic legal thinking, as filling the Roman form of the diploma. It is not always consistent with Classen’s thorough tracing of the rescript’s evolution or the parallel developments he detects between the west and the east, and in the papacy. There is room for disagreement on particulars, chronology and emphasis.Classen summarized his views of the diploma, amidst much else, in a fine article “Fortleben und Wandel spätrömischen Urkundenwesens im frühen Mittelalter,” in Recht und Schrift im Mittelalter, ed. Peter Classen, Vorträge und Forschungen 23 (Sigmaringen, 1977), pp. 13–54, esp. 47–50, and in a conclusion (pp. 50–52) began to modify his concept of a Germanic legal ideal type. He died in 1980.

16 Capitularia regum Francorum, ed. A. Boretius, MGH Capitularia regum Francorum 1 (1883), pp. 1–23. Of the nine specimens, only nos. 1, 2, 5, 7 (arguably), and 8 survive with address formulae. For the Praeceptio Chlotharii II, see Esder’s edition in n. 37. The earliest surviving directive goes back to the reign of Clovis. His grant of protection to the Aquitanian churches and their dependents during (probably) the Vouillé campaign in 507 takes the usual form of a letter addressed to the bishops of the region.

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