England in the twelfth century was
a society in transition in many ways.
Common law was quickly evolving as a uniquely English concept,
and with the extensions of the Royal Courts begun by Henry II, centralized
law courts began to supplant manorial courts for most major legal transactions. As part of this evolution, these courts began
to keep extensive records. Written
legal documents were not new to England-they
had been common for Royal grants and for ecclesiastical transactions
since before the Conquest; however, it was in the twelfth century that
they began to spread outside the Church and royal courts.
Extant
legal documents that we might use as our models fall into three categories: Individual legal documents, collections of individual
original legal documents, and collections of copied legal documents
(often dating from earlier periods).
Individual
legal documents were often retained by churches, cities, and baronial
and royal households and kept in their archives. A good example of an
extant individual legal document from this period would be this royal
charter dating from 1136:
Collections
of original legal documents began to be more common towards the end
of the century with the rise of "feet of fines."
Records of land transfers would be recorded in triplicate on
the same piece of parchment-one on the left, one on the right, and one
at the bottom. The parchment would then be cut so that each
party would receive a copy, and the bottom-or "foot" of the final concord-or
"fine"-would be kept as a record by the courts.
Charter
collections were also compiled during the twelfth century. In these collections, the various legal documents
of (usually) a religious house, cathedral, or church would be recopied
so that they could be easily bound together in book format. These documents usually lacked seals, but might
be scribed in a more legible script, often with illumination.
Charter of King Edgar, Cartulary of Winchester Priory, BL Add. MS. 15359 f.9 r. 1130-1140
Scripts
Original
legal documents in the 12th century were usually executed
in either a cursive or a chancery script.
Both of these are related to the late Carolingian and early Gothic
scripts currently in use in the 12th century, but included
cursive (the word means "running"; thus, linked together) elements for
ease and speed of writing. These documents were written in Latin and were
heavily abbreviated to save parchment and time.
The
royal charter on the first page of this handout shows a typical 12th
century English chancery script. Note
the many abbreviations-for example, the word "epo" with a squiggle above
it in the first line is the abbreviation for "episcopo" (bishop), and
the many marks that look like the numeral 7 are shorthand for "et" (and). Notice also how basic the layout is-there is
no ornamentation at all, not even on the first line. However, note the size of the huge royal seal.
For
a slightly different type of document, here is a document dating from
1154 written in Italian chancery script:
(source: V. Federici,
La scrittura delle cancellerie italiane secoli XIII-Xvii, pl. 32)
Note
the highly ornamented and wide-spaced script.
If you look closely at the letters, they have the same basic
shapes as an early Italian Gothic script, but with the addition of the
ornamented ascenders. Note the
first line consists of a very ornamental, compressed and elongated majuscule
script.
Here
is a particularly beautiful twelfth-century papal bull from the same
chancery tradition:
(source: Exempla scripturarum, fasc. 3; Acta pontificum,
ed. G. Batelli (Vatican City,
1965, pl. 7, from the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Bull. Gen., 1, 4)
Note
the large capital, the wide spacing, and the graceful ascenders. Since this is a bull (from bulla, the word for
lead seal), this document would have originally had a large attached
lead seal.
Copied
legal documents in charter collections (cartularies) did not usually
use a cursive or chancery script. Instead,
they tended to use more elegant calligraphic hands, sometimes with illumination,
in whatever the prevailing scribal hand of the day was. Thus, the document below, a charter of King
Cnut to Earl Godwine (11th century) from a manuscript dated
1130-1140 is executed in a typical late Caroline/early Gothic script.
(Cartulary of Winchester Priory, BL Add.
MS. 15359 f.40 v., 1130-1140
Note
the large opening line "Christi Omnipotentis" with the illuminated "X",
followed by a second line in majuscule script, and then the main body
of the text. A particularly interesting
portion of this particular document is the section, starting with the
large "O" halfway down the page, in Anglo-Saxon. Also note in this document
the signature area. The document
is signed "Ego CNUT Rex anglorum cum regina
mea Aelfgifu" (note the Anglo-Saxon script for the queen's name) and
is witnessed by an archbishop. Obviously,
none of these are actual signatures.
In fact, most charters of this period were not signed in the
traditional way; usually the person is named at the bottom, but the
seal was considered the authenticating "signature."
General
Principles for Recreating Charters
Layout: More formal charters use white space generously,
with large borders. Ordinary
legal documents often took up all available space on the page. Documents in cartularies used a more traditional
book page layout.
Script: Chancery or cursive script, late Caroline or
early Gothic, or, if using the cartulary model, a transitional Caroline/Gothic
script is appropriate.
Here
are a few examples of English Caroline or transitional scripts from
the 12th century:
Decoration: Ornate first lines using red, blue or green
ink; long or decorated ascenders and/or descenders; some illumination
in the cartulary model.
Signatures: Probably both on the same line, perhaps in a
sentence structure as in King Cnut's charter above (leaving space for
the King and Queen to add their names):
Ego
Edouard Rex Ealdormeris cum Regina mea Genevieve
Seals: Their Majesties Edouard and Genevieve have commissioned
a beautiful double-sided wax seal for use with these documents.
Here is an image of the front of the seal.
There
are several ways of attaching a seal to a document. The seal above is attached by a woven band (tablet
weaving is ideal for this purpose. Another
common way of attaching a seal is with a strip of parchment:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/medieval.documents/pages/4-2-spec-34_i.htm
Silk
braids or fibres were also often used to attach seals:
Simple
twisted seal tag (from a handout by Mistress Emmelyne de Marksbury)
More
complex braided seal tag:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/medieval.documents/pages/2-2-pont-2a_i.htm
Diamond-shaped
seal tag
http://thescriptorium.co.uk/facts/smdoc.jpg
Sources:
The
British Library examples were found at the British Library online illuminated
manuscript collection at
http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/illuminated/
http://www.dur.ac.uk/medieval.documents/documents.htm
(lots of examples of writs, many with seals)
