The Court Book of Mende and the Secular Lordship of the Bishop : Recollecting the Past in Thirteenth-Century Gévaudan

Mende is a diocese in south-central France where, in the 1260s, scribes of Bishop Odilon de Mercoeur created an extensive court book or register of litigated cases. Their intention was to develop an archive for the use of the chancery as well as to preserve the __causae__ of the episcopal court. These records would later be used by Guillaume Durand the Younger to construct a version of the past which verified episcopal secular lordship and sovereignty in response to mounting intrusion by the king of France. For all of its importance to the history of religion in France, the court book of Mende has received little attention by historians and medieval scholars. In this study, Jan K. Bulman examines the interrelationships between the written records of the ecclesiastical court, the preservation of historical memory, and the defense of episcopal seigneurial rights. Bulman shows how the bishops of Mende followed a singular strategy to defend against loss of autonomy, one that was unique in its reliance on archival records, ancient charters, and narrative hagiography. Richly presented and comprehensively researched, this will be an indispensable work for scholars of religion and the history of medieval France. "Mende is a diocese in south-central France where, in the 1260s, scribes of Bishop Odilon de Mercoeur created an extensive court book or register of litigated cases. Their intention was to develop an archive for the use of the chancery as well as to preserve the causae of the episcopal court. These records would later be used by Guillaume Durand the Younger to construct a version of the past which verified episcopal secular lordship and sovereignty in response to mounting intrusion by the king of France." "For all of its importance to the history of religion in France, the court book of Mende has received little attention from historians and medieval scholars. In this study, Jan K. Bulman examines the interrelationships between the written records of the ecclesiastical court, the preservation of historical memory, and the defense of episcopal seigneurial rights. Bulman shows how the bishops of Mende followed a singular strategy to defend against loss of autonomy, one that was unique in its reliance on archival records, ancient charters, and narrative hagiography. Richly presented and comprehensively researched, this will be an indispensable work for scholars of religion and the history of medieval France."--BOOK JACKET MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Abbreviations 12 List of the Bishops of Mende 14 Map of the Gévaudan 15 Introduction 18 1 The Gévaudan to about 1200: Laying the Foundations of Remembrance 29 2 The Course of Secular Lordship 43 3 The Court Book and the Bishop’s Court 58 4 The Mémoire relatif au paréage and Historical Memory 85 Conclusion 106 Notes 112 Glossary 170 Bibliography 174 Index 188 Control of written records was essential to sustaining memory, and the bishop [of Mende] demonstrated his lordship by organizing and managing the information that documented his hegemony. Public authority lay in the episcopal archives. Control over the information in archives, the gathering, unifying, and classifying of information into a single corpus or system, rested with the social and political authority ... The organization of archives had the effect of institutionalizing authority and law in written documentation. Therefore, the court book and the other books, which no doubt existed, pinpointed the locus of power and authority Jan K. Bulman. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [159]-171) And Index.