n.a collection of charters, title deeds, grants of privileges, and other documents, especially copies in bound volumesQuynn 1950, 276Occasionally students choose something on which they can work during vacations at home or in archives near their homes, for example the editing of the cartulary of a local monastery or the study of some phase of local history for which extensive original sources are available.Cuttino 1962, 320His “book of patents covered in green” can be identified with Latin MS. 9134 in the Bibliothèque Nationale, which was published by H. Barckhausen as tome 16 (1878) of the Archives Historiques du Département de la Gironde under the title “Chartularium Henrici V. et Henrici VI. regum Angliae.” It was once in Colbert’s library. It is not, however, a cartulary but rather a register begun by the constable of Bordeaux at the beginning of Henry VI’s reign, to keep a record, as they appeared, of important acts affecting the administration of the duchy.McCrank 1993, 257Increasingly formal archival practice, as distinct from librarianship and other scribal enterprises, is especially evident in a monumental transitional document, the great cartulary or letter book, the Liber Feudorum Maior. This arena of experimentation in scribal technology, recordkeeping, and phenomenal growth of public archives beckons exploration.O’Toole 1995, 92These charters (which are preserved in their entirety, not just in the cartulary summaries that are more common elsewhere) also seem to indicate a lack of precise specialization in writing, with literate skills and the making of records dispersed widely in society at large.Delmas 1996, 443The function of evidence is one aspect of the first and longest-associated reason for the retention of archives. This is the function of authenticating documents, of charters and collections of charters, the function which leads to the creation of cartularies.Yax 1998, 59Other early efforts to enhance access to records included the production of cartularies, collections of charters copied into registers. . . . Monasteries, the institutions which had earlier developed the cartulary, were more likely to inventory and identify records than the government.
Notes
The term is medieval in origin and has not had common usage in the United States.
