CALL FOR PAPERS: Administrative accountability in the later Middle Ages: Records, procedures, and their societal impact

Bucharest, 16-17 November 2018

The emergence of new types of financial records, the creation of institutional procedures, and the birth of a bureaucratic corps in a society in which accountability had been largely social and moral represent key developments in the history of the later Middle Ages. The colloquium will explore the multifaceted reality of administrative accountability in Western Europe, c. 1200-1450. Because the renewed interest in the subject makes methodological exchanges all the more timely, the colloquium will provide a venue for testing new approaches to the sources. Special attention will be given to underexplored archival documents, such as the castellany accounts (computi) of late-medieval Savoy, and to topics that have hitherto received less attention, such as the social impact of institutional consolidation. Comparisons with better-known texts, such as the English pipe rolls, are also encouraged.

The colloquium is organised in the frame of the European Research Council Starting Grant no. 638436, ‘Record-keeping, fiscal reform, and the rise of institutional accountability in late-medieval Savoy: a source-oriented approach’ (University of Bucharest)

Proposals for 30-minute papers are invited on topics including:

• the institutional dialogue between the central and local administration
• the impact of administrative and fiscal reform on local communities
• accounting practices and the auditing of financial records
• the cultural underpinnings of medieval accountability
• prosopography: background and career of administrators, from auditing clerks to castellans
• methodological advances, from manuscript studies to sociological frameworks
• the transfer of administrative models across medieval Europe

The colloquium papers, which will collected in an edited volume published with an international academic press, should reflect original, unpublished research. The authors will be given the opportunity to revise their contributions for publication.

Papers can be presented in English or French; if delivered in French, it is the author’s responsibility to have the paper translated into English for publication.

For inquiries, contact Ionut Epurescu-Pascovici or Roberto Biolzi

Proposals of circa 300 words, outlining the source material, methodology, and anticipated findings, should be emailed to Ionut Epurescu-Pascovici by 30 March 2018.

The organisers will provide three nights hotel accommodation and help defray travel expenses.

https://irhunibuc.wordpress.com/medieval-accountability/

Project Description:

This project focuses on an unjustly neglected corpus of sources, the fiscal accounts (computi) of the castellanies, or basic administrative units, of late-medieval Savoy. It deploys a holistic model of analysis that can fully capitalize on the unusually detailed computi in order to illuminate some of the key developments in late-medieval history, from administrative and fiscal reforms and the progress of institutional accountability to the socioeconomic decline and recovery from the late-thirteenth to the late-fourteenth century. More broadly, research into these topics aims to contribute to our understanding of the late-medieval origins of European modernity.

The advances of pragmatic literacy, record-keeping, and auditing practices are analysed with the aid of social scientific theories of practice. By comparing the Savoyard computi with their sources of inspiration, notably the Anglo-Norman pipe rolls, the project aims to highlight the creative adaptation of imported administrative models, thereby contributing to our knowledge of institutional transfers in European history. The project proposes an inclusive frame of analysis in which the computi are read against the evidence from enfeoffment charters, castellany surveys (extente), and the records of direct taxation (subsidia).

The project focuses on a sample of castellanies from the heartland of the Savoyard principality, analysed by the Principal Investigator. Two postdoctoral researchers will study the records of a few other castellanies from outside the bailiwick of Savoy as test cases for the Principal Investigator’s analysis.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: The New History of Archives. Early modern Europe and beyond

International Summer School in Wolfenbüttel, Germany

The New History of Archives. Early modern Europe and beyond
International Summer School / Marbach Weimar Wolfenbüttel Research Association
Herzog August Bibliothek, 2-14 July 2017
Convenor: Randolph C. Head, UC Riverside

Over the past generation, interest in the history of recordkeeping in all periods has exploded, stimulated by the current revolution in digital technologies of making, keeping and using records. European medievalists and early modernists have been reassessing how records came to be created and preserved, the organization of the resulting accumulations, and the changing uses that contemporaries envisioned for stored records of various kinds through the centuries. Closer examination also raises questions about how European recordkeeping differed from that of other civilizations, and whether European conceptions and terminology about archives need to be provincialized in order to enable more fruitful comparative scholarship. Since scholars across the disciplines continue to rely on today’s archives for their research, reassessing the trajectory of archival formation, organization and survival offers the promise of enriching current research in a wide variety of fields.

Over two weeks, the course will focus on three major themes that currently play a major role in research on the history of archives. The first week will consider practices of creating and organizing archival records, with close attention to the material substrates (paper, parchment), and medial forms and productive practices (calligraphy, registration) that gave rise to large accumulations of material in many European repositories. We will also consider the techniques of organization (spatial, material, textual) by which secretaries, registrators, and other users sought to master the challenge of using records in the exercise of power.

In the second week, we will turn to the ways that archival accumulations became, and still are, sites of activity on the part not only of archival staff, but also of historians and other scholars. We will also consider the variety of archival types that have survived from the Middle Ages to the present, and the challenges of ongoing preservation and transmission in the digital age. Finally, we will turn to the particularities of European archiving in contact with and in comparison to practices in other parts of the early modern world, considering both imperial archives outside Europe and the archivalities of the Islamic tradition. Drawing on the rich collections of handbooks and material at the Herzog August Bibliothek as well as in the Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv Wolfenbüttel, the course will give students a richer understanding of the formation of archives, of the meanings that archives had for their contemporaries, and of how they were transformed during their transmission to the modern world.

Mornings will be devoted to presentations and workshops led by senior scholars in the field. Key readings will be circulated in advance. Students will also be invited to present on aspects of their own research as part of the daily seminars. In the afternoons, participants will be able to use the holdings of the Herzog August Bibliothek for their own work and will have opportunities to hold individual or group discussions with those teaching the course. We are also planning a field trip to local archives to gain a richer understanding of the material, organizational and theoretical challenges of reconsidering archival material. There will also be two additional evening lectures by our partners from Marbach and Weimar.

Course tutors:

§ Dr. Megan Williams (History, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
§ Dr. Diego Navarro Bonilla (Biblioteconomía y Documentación, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid)
§ Dr. Markus Friedrich (History, University of Hamburg)
§ Michael Riordan (Archivist of St. John’s College and The Queen’s College, Oxford)
§ Dr. Maria de Lurdes Rosa, (History, Universidade Nova, Lisbon)
§ Dr. Natalie Rothman (History, University of Toronto-Scarborough)

The 2017 International Summer School is part of the programme of the MWW Research Association, founded in 2013 (www.mww-forschung.de/en/) and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Applications:
The call for applications is addressed to masters or doctoral students. The seminars will be conducted in English.

The library offers up to fifteen places for participants and will cover their expenses for accommodation and breakfast. Each participant will receive a subsidy of 200 Euros to cover living costs. Travel expenses are reimbursed in accordance to the flat-rate allowances of the DAAD.

There are no application forms. Applicants should state their reasons for wishing to participate in the course and send a c.v. which describes their academic career and their current research. Please also supply the address of an academic referee who may be contacted to supply a reference if needed. The deadline is 28th February 2017.

International participants, who have a concrete interest in the holdings, may informally apply in their cover letter for a week-long archival research visit following the summer school. If approved, the MWW Research Association will cover the additional accommodation expenses in Wolfenbüttel.

Applications should be submitted, preferably by email, to:  forschung@hab.de

Herzog August Bibliothek, Postfach 13 64, D-38299 Wolfenbüttel, Fax-Nr.: +49 5331- 808 266