SECOND EDITION m€bl€Val StUbl€S ~ An Introduction ~ Edited by JAMES M. POWELL SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright e 1992 by SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY PRESS Syracuse, New York 13244·5160 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Second Edition 1992 os 09 10 II 12 109876543 The paper used in this pub1icalion meets the minimum requirements of American Nalional Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Prinled Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48·1984. <§- Ubrary of Congress Cataloging·in-PubliClUon Dala Medieval studies: an inlroduction / edited by James M. Powell. - 2nd cd. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8156-2555-3. - ISBN 0-8156-2556-1 (pbk.) 1. Middle Ages- Historiography. I. Powell. James M. D1I6.M4 1992 940.l'072-dc20 91 .31160 Manu/acluf'Pd in the Uniled Stales 0/ America Contents Illustrations ix Preface xi Preface to the First Edition xiii Contributors xv I. Latin Paleography JAMES J. JOHN 3 2. Diplomatics LEONARD E. BOYLE 3. Numismatics PHILIP GRIERSON 114 4. Archaeology DAVID WHITEHOUSE 5. Prosopography GEORGE BEECH 6. Computer-assisted Analysis of the Statistical Documents of Medieval Society DAVID HERLIHY viii CONTENTS 7. Medieval Chronology: Theory and Practice R. DEAN WARE 252 8. Medieval English Literature PAUL THEINER 278 9. Latin Philosophies of the Middle Ages EDWARD A. SYNAN 314 10. Medieval Law KENNETH PENNINGTON 333 II. Medieval Science and Natural Philosophy EDWARD GRANT 353 12. Tradition and Innovation in Medieval Art WAYNE DYNES 376 13. Medieval Music in Perspective THEODORE KARP 401 Index 433 Illustrations CHART Chart to Illustrate the Patterns of Chronological Devices 253 FIGURES 1.1. Rustic capital. Probably Italy. Ca. A.O. 400. I I 1.2. Square capital. Rome. A.D. 112-13. !2 1.3. Uncial. Luxeuil, France. A.D. 669. 13 1.4. Half-uncial. Verona. A.D. 517. 14 1.5. Later Roman cursive. Egypt. A.D. 317-24. 15 1.6. Insular round. England. Mid 8th cent. 17 1.7. Insular cursive minuscule. Probably Germany. Early 9th cent. 18 1.8. Visigothic minuscule. Spain. A.D. 926. 20 1.9. Beneventan minuscule. South Italy. Ca. A.D. 1100. 22 I. 10. Merovingian cursive. Nogent-sur-Marne, France. A.D. 692. 23 I. I I. Luxeuil minuscule. France, probably Luxeuil. Early 8th cent. 24 I. I 2. Caroline minuscule. Tours. Early 9th cent. 27 1.13. Early Gothic textual. Liege. A.D. 1182. 30 1.14. Formal Gothic textual. Flanders, probably the Ghent-Bruges school. Early 16th cent. 3 I ;x X ILLUSTRATIONS 1.15. Gothic textual Parisian script. Probably Paris. A.D. 1293. 33 1.16. Round Gothic textual Bolognese script. Probably Bologna. Ca. A.D. 1300. 33 1.17. Gothic textual (line 3) and current cursive (lines 1-2, 4-8). Germany. 14th cent. 35 1.18. Gothic cursive (mixed Anglicana and secretary). England. 15th cent. 36 1.19. Formal Gothic cursive (almost Burgundian). Clairvaux, France. A.D. 1485. 37 1.20. Formal Gothic hybrid. Probably Flanders. A.D. 1528. 38 1.21. Humanistic round. Italy. A.D. 1456. 39 1.22. Humanistic cursive. Italy. Ca. A.D. 1500. 4' Numismatics PHILIP GRIERSON UMISMATICS differs rrom other auxiliary sciences or history in several respects. In the first place. it is concerned with a par­ ticular type or archeological object and not basically. as are paleography. diplomatics. and indirectly sigillography. with written docu­ ments. though when these are available they greatly simpliry the numis­ matist's task. Second. the objects with which it is concerned are or great interest to collectors. Many or them are consequently in private possession and not. like manuscripts and archival material. ror the most part in pub­ lic depositories. Their study and consultation can. thererore. orten present problems. Third. arising out or this last. much numismatic research is car­ ried on by persons whom the historian tends to regard as amateurs. Orten they have had little or no training in how to evaluate evidence or handle documents. and they lack an understanding or the background to the coin­ ages with which they deal. As collectors they are tempted to exaggerate the value or their possessions. and. even when not collectors. they may attach undue importance to their observations and discoveries. They ror­ get that minting and its organization rorm relatively minor activities or governments. and that the precise mint or a coin or its exact date is not always or much historical consequence. Medieval numismatics started as a poor relation or classical numis­ matics. partly because scholars in the sixteenth century were less interested in the history or the Middle Ages than in that or Greece and Rome. partly because medieval coins tend to be intrinsically less beautirul than classical "4 NUMISMATICS 115 ones and thus less attractive to collectors. They are occasionally illustrated in numismatic works of the sixteenth century, but usually in a quite gro­ tesque fashion. The head of SI. Paul on a coin of Miinster, for example, will be transformed into one of Charlemagne by the simple process of changing the inscription surrounding it from Scs Paulus to Carolus Mag­ nus. Even a hundred years later, the only completely useless pages in the Familiae Byzantinae (1680) of the great Ducange are those dealing with coins, a high proportion of which are wrongly identified, to say nothing of being enlarged to the same uniform diameter and having their designs reproduced in the conventional idiom of the day. Virtually the only seven­ teenth-century work on medieval numismatics which the scholar still regularly consults is Fran~ois Leblanc's Traite historique des monnoyes de France, first published in 1690. It owes its usefulness to its frequent reli­ ance on mint documents and not to its coin illustrations and descriptions, which are little if at all superior to those of Ducange. Substantial advances were made in many countries in the eighteenth century, notably in Italy, where a long series of monographs on the coin­ ages of separate states and cities was collected in the six volumes of Fi­ lippo Argelati's De monetis ltaliae variorum iIIustrium dissertationes (Milan, 1750-59) and its five-volume continuation, G. A. Zanetti's Nuova raccolta delle monete e zecche d'/talia (Bologna, 1775-89). Both are publi­ cations which the modern scholar still regularly consults, although, as in the case of Leblanc, mainly for the written documents which they use or reproduce. The same is largely true of Rogers Ruding's Annals oj the CoinageoJGreat Britain (London, 1816; 3d ed., 1840), although its plates are of much higher quality than those in Argelati and Zanetti and often faithful enough to allow identifications with specimens in collections today. A great step forward was made with the appearance of Joachim Lele­ wei's Numismatique du moyen-lige, consideree sous Ie rapport de type (Paris, 1836), the three volumes of which were accompanied by an Atlas illustrating nearly 1,000 coins or significant details of their designs, all meticulously drawn by the author. It was the first comprehensive work on medieval coinage ever published. Although its details are now out of date, and its use of written records inadequate even by the standards of the time, it is a work whose pages can still be studied with profit, for the great Pol­ ish scholar was one of the first to see the need for studying the paleogra­ phy of coin inscriptions and to divine and illustrate the process by which types and monograms are transformed in the process of repeated copying. The year 1836 was indeed an annus mirabilis in the history of numismatics, for it also saw the publication at Metz of Felicien de Saulcy's Essai de classificotion des suites monetaires byzontines, the earliest monograph on 116 PHILIP ORIERSON Byzantine coinage; the formation of the Numismatic Society of London, later the Royal Numismatic Society, and the first issue of its journal, later the Numismatic Chronicle; the foundation of the Revue de la numisma­ tiquefranraise, later the Revue numismatique; and the publication at Leip­ zig of the first issue of the Bliiller fiir Miinzkunde of Hermann Grote, one of the greatest and most prolific of German scholars in the field of medie­ val numismatics. The next decade saw the founding of further societies and journals, notably Bernhard Koehne's Zeilschrift fur Miinz-, Siegel-, und Wappen­ kunde at Berlin and the Revue de la numismatique beige (later the Revue beige de numismatique) at Tirlemont (later at Brussels), and the publica­ tion of monographs of solid worth. F. de Saulcy's Recherches sur les mon­ naies des ducs heridilaires de Lorraine and Domenico Promis's Monete dei Reali di Savoia, still standard works, were both published in 1841, in Metz and Thrin, respectively. The remainder of the century was a period of intense numismatic activity. Thousands of new coin types were pub­ lished and classified, and monographs were produced on virtually all the mints and coinages, even the most obscure, of medieval and modern Eu­ rope. Photographic illustration came into general use in the 1880s, supple­ menting or replacing the line drawings which, up to then, had been in general use and had indeed attained a remarkable degree of perfection. Descrip­ tive numismatics in the medieval field reached its climax in a great work of synthesis, Arthur Engel and Raymond Serrure's 1hlile de numismatique du moyen age (3 vols., Paris, 1891-1905), written jointly by a distinguished amateur and a scholar-dealer who died at the age of thirty-six after a pro­ digious numismatic output of the highest quality. Even today, a hundred years after the publication of its first volume, "Engel and Serrure" remains the standard Historia Numorum of the Middle Ages.