Retaining

This chapter ‘follows the parchment’. When a charter was drawn up, the beneficiary received both that record of transaction and prior written titles of that property; repeated over time, this process formed and combined archives. If we start at its first stage, the initial handover, we see signs that parties of all types, institutions and individuals, clergy and laity, maintained and curated archives. The dorsal notes on the reverse side of numerous originals, summarising key details to facilitate identification and consultation, point to organisational habits and awareness of a need for access common to all levels of society. Charters were not written and then forgotten, or husbanded by the powerful; they were kept at the ready for use as needed. References in documents from the ninth and tenth centuries also imply efforts at storage with greater security or in more accessible order by preparing copies and compiling extracts, leading to the confection of the oldest surviving Iberian cartularies in the later eleventh century. These advanced expressions of medieval archiving were created by the agents of churches and monasteries, who had realised how to use the written word to shape the contours of historical memory and organise the management of property.

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