Description

This present collective volume is the outcome of a conference that dealt with papal deeds not regarding their content or as legal documents, but on the one hand as real object with all the connecting problems of protection and conservation, on the other about its formal appearance, that “entirety of forms and gestures which frame the legal act‟. Archives and historiography, both face the task of preserving and better understanding of the valuable cultural assets of historical written sources, from which we could benefit intellectually as well as culturally, because the Middle Ages form a key-epoch for the understanding of fundamental cultural and mental structures of our societies.

Several articles throw light on the papal deed as real object presenting and discussing problems and modern solutions of preserving and protecting medieval records nowadays. Other articles present different projects of digitising. Such projects provide the material to many users and therefore serve the preservation of the originals, too. The last and biggest part of the book deals with the outward appearance of papal deeds. The authors focus on e.g. the design of early-medieval papal deeds, the importance of the pope’s signature, and the development of the litterae.

2011, 381 pages, hardcover, index, 17 x 24 cm;
ISBN: 978-3-938533-27-7