The Legal Document in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: Visuality, Materiality, and Performance
The conference seeks to highlight and explore the visuality, material properties, and performative aspects of legal documents and their role in legal communication across regional and cultural borders and within a broadly conceived time frame from antiquity to ca. 1500. What is the role of eye-catching seal attachments, complex graphic signs, artfully written calligraphy, and ritual acts of conveyance for the authenticity of legal charters? Can we recognize common factors in the conceptual thinking about legal documents and their corroboration across different cultural, religious, and temporal divides? How is the carefully designed visuality and materiality of a charter transferred into an officially approved copy?
In sixteen papers and two posters, experts from Europe, the USA, and Asia discuss medieval and early modern legal documents from a wide range of approaches and across different disciplines.
Keynote lecture
Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, Department of History, New York University, will give the keynote lecture “Charting the living in medieval charters (Northwestern Europe, 800-1230)” on 15 May, 16:00, auditorium 23.0.50
Participants
- Gabriele Bartz
- Zahir Bhalloo
- Alexander Beihammer
- Jessica Berenbeim
- Julian Ecker
- Nataša Kavčič
- Shigeto Kikushi
- Robert Maxwell
- Mark Mersiowsky
- Sebastian Møller-Bak
- Corinne Mühlemann
- Marie-Adélaïde Nielen
- Martin Roland
- Markus Späth
- Ellen Widder
- Susanne Wittekind
Programme
Room: 23.0.50
| 9:30 – 9:40 | Welcome: Casper Sylvest, Chair, SAXO-Institute, University of Copenhagen |
| 9:40 – 10:00 | Introduction – Nino Zchomelidse |
| Panel 1: Sign – Image – Seal | |
| Chair: Carsten Jahnke | |
| 10:00 – 10:30 | Expanding Documentary Discourse for Art History: The Interpictoriality of Charters Robert A. Maxwell (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Aesthetics as a symbolic system of rule - Privilegios rodados in Castile-León Susanne Wittekind (Department of History of Art, University of Cologne) |
| 11:00 – 11: 30 | Coffee |
| 11:30 – 12:00 | The Significance of Royal and Imperial Monograms in Thirteenth-Century Diplomas of the Holy Roman Empire Julian Ecker (Department of History, University of Vienna) |
| 12:00 – 12:30 | Through Thick and Thin: Authenticating Signatures in Medieval Legal Documents from the Islamic East (13th-14th Centuries) Zahir Bhalloo (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg) |
| 12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch |
| Chair: Nino Zchomelidse | |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | Crystal clear, rhetoric of power in the Carolingian world: the example of royal seals in rock crystal Marie-Adélaïde Nielen (Archives Nationales de France) |
| 14:30 – 15:00 | Veiled Authority: The Materiality and Performative Role of Medieval Seal Bags in Legal Communication Corinne Mühlemann (Department of History of Art, University of Bern) |
| 15:00 – 15:30 | kUk: kunst–URKUNDE–kanzlei / art–CHARTER-chancery. Martin Roland (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna) |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | Coffee |
| 16:00 – 16:30 | Keynote lecture: Charting the living in medieval charters (Northwestern Europe, 800-1230) Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak (Department of History, New York University) |
| Snack/ Apéro | |
9:30 – 12:30: room: 23.0.50
| Panel 2: Copies and Cartularies | |
| Chair: Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt,Department of Politics and Society, Aalborg University | |
| 9:30 – 10:00 | Emulating royal diplomata: the praxis of copying documents in the Carolingian era Shigeto Kikuchi (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo) |
| 10:00 – 10:30 | Materiality and Performance in a Byzantine monastic cartulary: The Monastery of Mount Lembos near Smyrna and its Archive Alexander Beihammer (Department of History, Notre Dame University) |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Visual and Visible in Medieval Documents Jessica Berenbeim (Faculty of English, University of Cambridge) |
| 11:00 – 11:30 | Coffee |
| Panel 3: Performance | |
| Chair: Per Seesko-Tønnesen, Rigsarkivet | |
| 11:30 – 12:00 | The charters of Queen Philippa Sebastian Møller Bak (Diplomatarium Danicum, The Danish Language and Literature Society) |
| 12:00 – 12:30 | Two illuminated indulgence letters from Slovenia: art historical commentary and some thoughts on their performance Nataša Kavčič (Department of Art History, University of Ljubljana) |
| 12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch |
14:30 – 17:00: Room 9A.3.01
| Panel 4: Reception and Communication | |
| Chair: Nino Zchomelidse | |
| Poster Presentation: | Power and Diplomacy: The Illuminated Charter in France 1160–ca. 1420 Gabriele Bartz (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna) |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | The charter as medium from Carolingian times to the later Middle Ages Mark Mersiowsky (Department of History, University of Stuttgart) |
| 14:30 – 15:00 | The Art of Preserving Legal Evidence: Early Modern Drawings of Medieval Sealed Charters for the Reichskammergericht Markus Späth (Department of History of Art, University of Gießen) |
| 15:00 – 15:30 | Coffee |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | Original Documents and Performance between Cultures. The Mongolian Charters to the King of France Ellen Widder (Department of History, University of Tübingen) |
| 16:00 | Conclusion with Poster Presentation: How to Discover a Treasure – Systematic presentation of illuminated charters as a research tool Martin Roland (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna) |
| 19:00 | Dinner (for speakers and PhD students), Restaurant “Maven”, Nikolaj Plads 10, 1067 Copenhagen K |
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