The Memory of Past Acts

Picturing Presence, Loss, and History in Illuminated Cartularies, c. 1050-c. 1220

Maxwell, Robert A.

Medieval cartularies were produced with varying aims: managing lands, defending rights, memorializing benefactors, and preserving and organizing old records. As much as these complex editorial and scribal projects tell textual histories of their institutions, the imagery that sometimes accompanies the transcriptions gestures toward the story of the cartularies’ own making. Drawing on sources from Spain, Germany, Italy, and France, The Memory of Past Acts examines the production of illuminated cartularies from c. 1050 to c. 1220, and the ways in which they transform archive into history.