The Late Middle Ages have received numerous apt characterisations ¬– amongst others ‘age of the explosion of scripturality’. Since the 12th century, urban Western and Central Europe had emerged as a place of a highly productive scripturality of different provenance. To this end, the availability of new writing materials as well as a change in the perception of the benefits of scripturality played an important role. In particular, this enabled the aspiring cities and towns of England, France and the German-speaking regions to face the challenges of self-organisation and administration. Scripturality, as a medium detached from persons and individual memory to store information and to cope with everyday challenges, has been considered a productive field of medieval studies. The international conference on ‘Knowledge Transfer in Serial Sources. Administration, Experience/Everyday Life and Society in Europe’s Late Medieval Towns’ to be held in Kiel aims at reflecting the results of the statistical analyses of the last decades, comparing methods and perspectives as well as discussing future developments. In addition to established approaches, the conference especially wants to cover less popular sectors of the research on serial sources.
The increasing amount and diversity of urban scripturality in the Late Middle Ages is uncontested. In order for the urban organism to function, many scribes were needed who were subject to towns’ and cities’ authorities. The accompanying obligation to justify and to secure one’s actions led to a growth of ‘public scripturality’ resulting in an increased probability of transmission. This applies not only to the customs books of the town gates but also to court proceedings, town and other official books as well as a diverse range of other urban accounting series of various offices and origins. The same were continued throughout the later Middle Ages and took more diverse forms. The fact that these serial sources were delivered to posteriority with no or marginal gaps, proves to be a lucky chance for historians who indirectly benefit from the importance of these partly public, partly private pragmatic records for the medieval and pre-modern urban residents. Simultaneously, the same seriality opens up new possibilities of historiographic analysis. The recent numerous works of statistical nature bear witness to this.
Topic Area 1: Formation of entries
The scheduled conference wants to place the focus on further aspects. While economic and prosopographic questions have been asked and successfully answered, those dealing with the formation of the individual entries have often been left out or only marginally addressed. Nonetheless, especially the formation of the entries constitutes one of the key questions for not only source criticism but also all other forms of the analysis of serial administrative records. The serial scripturality of medieval towns and cities is characterised by having been continually written and handed down independently of the individual scribe over a longer period of time which allows for a diversity of research questions regarding their formation. Proposed contributions could investigate the degree to which entries that show an identifiable concept of entries at the beginning of the series have been maintained, modified or even abandoned by the same or different scribes. What does this imply for the supra-personal functioning of medieval administrative records? Which criteria and formula decide the success or failure of the transmission of scribal expertise? Does the scribe maybe even reflect upon this?
Topic Area 2: Knowledge transfer and change
Other contributions could focus on the form and content of the entries of different scribes/ office holders of a specific type of source. By investigating possible differences, it can be asked why and where the same occur. This leads to several questions e.g. whether specific entries (in accounts) only serve the purpose of justifying their spending or whether they were supposed to transport processual knowledge? This relates to those types of knowledge associated with the respective processes of the creation of the records and thereby touched upon various spheres of medieval society, although mainly their administration into whose dynamics it offers valuable insights. Possible questions could deal with shifts in the scope of the entries, language changes or different formats and how all of these phenomena might be related to the transmission of knowledge or other factors. This additional information and its changes often prove to be fascinating aspects of serial sources and as such have often been the subject of Alltagsgeschichte and social history. However, little light has been shed on the respective constraints and contexts of their formation. Serial sources, on the one hand, offer valuable insights into the vertical transfer of knowledge over time while, on the other hand, their simultaneous appearance in the whole of Europe promises some indication of the horizontal exchange of different bodies of knowledge between contemporary cultures and individuals.
Topic Area 3: Serial law(s)?
A third possible area of topics could be concerned with the relation of norms and their application. In what way are the decisions of a town’s council, chapter or other forms of authority and organisation implemented into the serial sources? Do specifics conflicts about the accounting of the council or the misappropriation of monies by office holders lead to changes in the composition of the entries of serial sources? Vice versa, it should be asked whether the continuation and practices of serial scripturality were included in the business of the council and its subordinate offices. Do we find traces of attempts to steer and shape the informative content of the entries? If so, what were the arguments in favour of or against this?
In addition to the proposed topic areas, contributions and questions dealing with serial sources and the outlined subjects are highly welcomed. This can involve synchronic as well as diachronic comparisons.
We particularly encourage contributions by early career researchers. The conference languages are German and English. The costs for accommodation and transport (train, second-class or equivalent) will be covered. Applications should be made in the form of a 200-word abstract and a short CV. The deadline is the 25.11.2022. It is intended that the results of the conference will be published. Researchers who submit an abstract will receive feedback until early December 2022.
Please send your application to:
mjaecker@histosem.uni-kiel.de
mgrund@histosem.uni-kiel.de