The Registers of Archbishop John Pecham and his Notary, John of Beccles

Some Unnoticed Evidence

Datos Bibliográficos

ID10085533
AutoresR C Finucane (Georgia Southern University, autor de correspondencia)
Año1987
Volumen38
Número3
Páginas406-436
Fecha de publicación1987-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of Ecclesiastical History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-0469 • E-ISSN: 1469-7637
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0022046900024982
OpenAlexW1988939056
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas9

The earliest extant Canterbury register is an artifact of the scribes and notaries, clerici and magistri working within the household of Archbishop John Pecham (1279-92). Of the numerous members of Pecham's familia , John of Bologna, trained in the Italian notarial arts and the cursus , was of great influence in this regard. He accompanied the new scholar-archbishop who left Rome in June 1279 to take up the most important and exacting ecclesiastical office in England. After Pecham's day, as C. R. Cheney has amply demonstrated, the use of notaries public in English episcopal chanceries was commonplace: the example of the archbishop's employment of notaries, no doubt encouraged and guided by John of Bologna, must be seen as a prime cause of this. Appropriately, John's Summa Notarie , a manual for fledgling notaries in England — ‘where they are unacquainted with the notarial art’ — was dedicated to Pecham. The conceptualisation, composition and even custody of Pecham's register must be seen within this framework. The subsequent rationalisation and retention of Canterbury records of all kinds including registers, though not exclusively attributable to John of Bologna and Pecham's notaries, was probably strongly influenced by them. For this reason, all that can be learned about Pecham's register and record-keeping among his staff is of significance — certainly to historians of what Robert Brentano has called ‘the written Church’

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