Charters in Rolls : The Role of ‘Roll-Cartularies’ in Monastic Networks (France, 11th-15th centuries) – ROTULUS

Cartularies have drawn the attention of medievalists and are recognized as a privileged means of approaching the institutional history of ecclesiastical structures. However, among these collections, those that are transcribed on rolls are still insufficiently documented and very little studied. Why, in some cases, scrolls have been chosen to copy charters in the Middle Ages? Thus, our study stems from the examination of the articulation between a specific material form and functional typologies.
An exhaustive inventory of the "cartulary-rolls" preserved in France will be carried out, leading to the online publication of an inventory-database (with the possibility of cross-interrogation within the CartulR database, on the Telma platform). Conducted by a team of 13 researchers, the inventory will require important collecting missions (concerning about 50 conservation institutions). The data from the Rotulus inventory will use the tools produced within the Cosme project (dir. P. Bertrand) in parallel with Biblissima (dir. A.-M. Turcan-Verkerk), in order to predict its interoperability with other corpora or directories (correspondence of names of places, indexed persons and institutions, presentation of inventory numbers...).
A first identification process made it possible to define groups and to sketch several initial hypotheses. Many of these scrolls were made in the monastic environment, often in order to collect the documents of a dépendance (priory). They served as means of transmission of information to meet the challenges of a progressive structuration of institutions into networks (between the middle of the 11th and the middle of the 13th centuries). This observation invites us to focus on a segment of the corpus which would enable us to understand the mechanisms of adaptation of monastic structures that could be related to the "monastic seizure of power in the field of writing" (O. Guyotjeannin). The monastic cartulary-rolls (11th-13th centuries) will be the object of a critical edition (about 70 manuscripts containing between 1300 and 1500 documentary units). This analysis will make it possible to place the rolls in their archival context (the documentary tradition), useful to understand the objectives of their writers. The edition will be a multimodal one: an online version using XML-TEI by way of the e-cartae tool (designed by G. Combalbert and the Digital Document Center in Caen) and, on the other hand, a paper version.
The collected data will be the subject of a regular exploration highlighted by three scientific meetings. A first investigation will concern the definition of the "cartulary-roll" documentary type (formal and diplomatic typologies). A second approach will target functional typologies in order to understand the motivations for the use of the roll (on the one hand according to the types of sponsors, center / dependence, male / female monastery and on the other hand as writing of conflict). The synthesis of these investigations, as well as that of a double approach of rolls, according to space and as objects in movement, that will have been conducted beforehand, will be formulated in the final conference.
Little known, but spontaneously arousing the public's curiosity, the rolls will be the focus of a valorization operation via a mobile exhibition that could be hosted in particular in institutions of conservation where documents can be exhibited. On the duration of the project, a research bulletin will regularly disseminate news on the progress of the project. The project will reside on the strong tradition of medieval diplomatic studies in Nancy and on the collaboration with the conservation structures as well as with colleagues from several universities and the IRHT (CNRS). It will be supported by the Consortium Cosme (certified by the TGIR Huma-Num) and sustained by a scientific committee.