An interdisciplinary study of the Mortuary rolls (7th century-1536) – TITULI

The TITULI project aims to study a little-known source from the Middle Ages: the mortuary rolls. These scrolls contained death notices that monks and canons circulated throughout Europe to inform their fellow monks of the death of one of their number and to request prayers for the deceased. These documents consisted of a letter of departure (encyclical), entrusted to the bearer of the scroll, to which were attached, at each stage of the journey, titles (tituli) honouring the memory of the deceased and promising prayers. The 471 scrolls of the dead dating from before 1536 and preserved today have been published in 5 volumes by Jean Dufour (Dufour, 2005-2013). The mortuary rolls, by virtue of their progressive writing as they travelled, are exceptional documents for studying the phenomena of circulation in the medieval world of Latinity, both in terms of people - the rotuliger or scroll bearer - and objects - the scroll and the materials needed to produce it - but also in terms of writing models - (palaeo)graphic and textual - attesting to cultural and institutional proximities. The project has three main aims: 1) to contribute to a history of circulation and movement in medieval Europe, which, through the study of networks, could lead to a better connection between scriptural, liturgical and cultural developments observed on a local scale 2) to contribute, on the basis of the case of the mortuary rolls, to the study of the use and resilience of terrestrial communication networks 3) to complement the study of ecclesiastical networks in the medieval period by modelling the movements of scroll carriers.