Department of Medieval Studies of the Central European University The Uses of Pragmatic Literacy in the Medieval Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (from the State Foundation to the End of the Sixteenth Century) Goina Mariana PhD thesis Budapest, August 9, 2009 CEU eTD Collection 1 Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction...........................................................................................................4 1.1 A note on sources..........................................................................................................7 1.2 The language diversity within the Moldavian and Wallachian documents......................9 Chapter 2. Social Changes and Dissemination of the Written Record....................................13 2.1 The first known occurrences of writing produced in the territories of Wallachia and Moldavia...........................................................................................................................13 2.2 The early period of state foundation: The scarcity of documents and their recipients ...15 2.3 Changes in social structure and the multiplication of documents..................................21 2.4. Dissemination of written documents into lower social categories: Writing as a tool in changing and reinforcing social boundaries .......................................................................27 2.5. New practices regulating the ownership of land: fraternal adoption and perfection. Women’s right to land inheritance and its relation to writing.............................................36 Chapter 3. Foreign influence on the dissemination of literary skills in Moldavia and Wallachia: treaties and political letters..................................................................................46 3.1 Moldavian and Wallachian political documents: treaties..............................................47 3.1.1 The Medieval Principality of Moldavia..................................................................48 3.1.2 The Medieval Wallachian Principality...................................................................52 3.2 Moldavian and Wallachian political documents: Letters .............................................56 3.2.1 Written documents as testimonies of political communication: Moldavia. ............56 3.2. 2 Written documents as testimonies of political communication: Wallachia.............58 3.3 The oral exchange of political information. Written documents and their function as a device of support...............................................................................................................61 Chapter 4. Trade and its impact on the development of written culture .................................71 4.1 Commercial privileges and regulations ........................................................................74 4.2 Trade conflicts.............................................................................................................78 4.3 Use of written evidence to request goods for consumption...........................................87 4.4 From the office of the prince to the registers of the merchants .....................................95 Chapter 5. Diversification of documents’ producers: urban, regional and local offices as issuers of documents. The involvement of the clerical milieu in the producing of (pragmatic) documents ..........................................................................................................................104 5.1 Urban writing offices: Communication of the Moldavian and Wallachian urban offices with foreign institutions...................................................................................................105 5.1.1 The Moldavian evidence......................................................................................106 5.1.2 The urban evidence from Wallachia.....................................................................111 5.2 Wallachian and Moldavian urban institutions as producers of land charters ...............113 5.3 Regional institutions and high-ranking state officials: The involvement of Moldavian and Wallachian noblemen in the commissioning and production of documents...............117 5.3.1 The Wallachian evidence.....................................................................................118 5.3.2 The Moldavian Principality. ................................................................................123 CEU eTD Collection 5.4 Land charters commissioned by the Wallachian and Moldavian regional institutions and state dignitaries. ..............................................................................................................127 5.5 Documents produced at village level: Charters attesting rights to landed property......132 5.6 The role of clerical milieu as producer of pragmatic documents.................................136 Chapter 6 Who is writing? Literacy and scribes ..................................................................142 6.1 Early Moldavian and Wallachian chanceries..............................................................142 6.2 Functionaries employed in the prince’s chanceries during the early period: Their career, status, and family relations ..............................................................................................145 2 6.3 The employees of the state chanceries and their practices after the turn of the sixteenth century............................................................................................................................152 6.4 Education of the literate personnel.............................................................................162 6.5 Scribes of the Latin documents who were active in the Moldavian and Wallachian state chanceries .......................................................................................................................167 6.6 The local sphere: The producers of the documents issued at the local level................170 Chapter 7. From the oral customs to the written word. Literacy versus illiteracy and quasi- literacy. Orality...................................................................................................................177 7.1 Land disputes procedures: oral customs as opposed to written documents..................177 7.2 Administrative communication: Written versus oral?.................................................188 7.3 Last wills...................................................................................................................194 Chapter 8. Conclusions.......................................................................................................197 8.1 Land charters as promoters of pragmatic literacy .......................................................197 8.2 Foreign relations and trade: essential factors for the early written culture...................200 8.3 The process of dissemination of written practices ......................................................203 8.4 Who was writing?......................................................................................................205 8.5 Oral culture/Literate culture.......................................................................................206 Bibliography.......................................................................................................................209 CEU eTD Collection 3 Chapter 1. Introduction The aim of my thesis is to reveal and understand processes behind the appearance and dissemination of literacy in the medieval principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. I will focus on the social and cultural factors that contributed to the adoption and use of writing from the appearance of the state until the end of the sixteenth century. The term literacy involves, but it is by no means limited to, the ability to read and/or write.1 Following Simon Franklin, I start from the distinction between technical and cultural literacy. In my approach, I am less concerned with the former (“concerning some level of ability in reading and/or writing”) as with the latter, which “implies some level of familiarity with, and mastery of, cultural activities in which reading and writing are used.” 2 My work concentrates on the appearance and dissemination of written documents, tracing what Michael Clanchy calls “the growth of the literate mentality.” I understand this literate mentality as the societal impact of the cultural literacy, broadly defined as “the sum of social and cultural phenomena associated with the uses of writing.”3 Therefore, by literate mentality I delineate the propensity of people to consider the use of writing for 1On the subject of medieval literacy see Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979); Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Marco Mostert, ed., New Approaches to Medieval Communication (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999); Petra Schulte, Marco Mostert, and Irene van Renswoude, eds., Strategies of Writing: Studies on Text and Trust in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008); Richard Britnell, ed., Pragmatic Literacy, East and West 1200-1300 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1997); Jack Goody, The Interface between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); idem,