Carolingian reform and regional (charter-) writing

The corpus of early medieval charters of the former abbey of St. Gall is unique in many respects. Today the St Gall archives hold more than 800 early medieval charters from the period before 920 AD, it is by far the largest early- medieval archive of original charters north of the Alps. Apart from ca. 30 royal/imperial diplomas, most of the charters are so-called private charters which document all kinds of legal transactions (like the donation and the sale, the exchange and lease of property, as well as legal proceedings like court sessions). The St Gall charters have been examined under various aspects (by historians, historians of law, philologists, diplomatists, paleographers), in most of the cases on the basis of the sound, but now outdated 19th century edition of Hermann Wartmann. Only the St Gall charters of the eighth century are also available in a modern facsimile- edition within the famous series Chartae Latinae Antiquiores. A main objective of the FWF-project "Die Urkunden des Klosters St. Gallen im 9. Jahrhundert" consisted in extending this important work with a facsimile edition of the St Gall charters of the ninth century. Between 2004 and 2007 two new ChLA volumes have been competed (ChLA 100 is already printed, ChLA 101 is forthcoming). They contain the St Gall charters of the period from 800 to 820. This work will now be continued. The three-year project proposed here should lead to the publication of three volumes containing about 150 charters of the period from 821 to 840. Furthermore, and on the basis of the work for the ChLA, all St Gall charters up to the year 840 are going to be edited within a volume of the Chartularium Sangallense. The aim of the project, however, is not simply to edit the ChLA volumes, but also to conduct a number of specific studies to bring new insights into the practice of documentation in Carolingian society and especially into the cultural context of the charters: Most of them date from the time of Emperor Louis the Pious and abbot Gozbert (814/16-837/40). It is a period in which we can observe a strong impulse for reform - and these reforms, or better, their impact on St Gall and Alemannia willbe studied in the course of the project. Taking as a starting point the St Gall charter material, in which we can observe interesting changes on different levels (content, scribe, scripts, texts) in this very period, the project aims to investigate for possible consequences of imperial policy in a regional context. The examination of the charter material will furthermore help to produce valuable insights into the monastic scriptorium of this period and will allow to extend the research on the St Gall manuscript production. Also in this field the influence/performance of Louis` the Pious reform-policy onto/at St Gall and Alemannia will be studied, and so provide a better understanding of how Carolingian reform worked.

A main objective of the project consisted in the extension of the already begun facsimile edition of the St Gall charters of the 9th century within the prestigious series of the Chartae Latinae Antiquiores (ChLA), especially from the period of the Carolingian reforms under Louis the Pious (up to 840). Indeed, within the project more than 200 St Gall charter-documents from the time of Louis the Pious, but also from the time of Louis the German (until 858) were published in four volumes of the ChLA (ChLA 102-105) with extensive diplomatic, palaeographic, chronological and other critical commentary. Furthermore, and partly on the basis of the work for the ChLA, a new full text edition of all St Gall charters from the 720s up to the year 840 was prepared and in large part finished and will be published within the Chartluarium Sangallense in 2013. The aim of the project, however, was not simply to edit the ChLA and Chartularium volumes. The St Gall charter material was taken as a starting point for further research, in which possible consequences of Carolingian (reform- )policy in the regional or local context of Alemannia and St Gall was studied. As also envisaged, especially the fundamental changes in literacy in this very period were investigated, namely the disappearance of the previously relatively rich and interesting documental evidence for local scribes from outside the abbey (normally clerics) outside the St Gall charter scriptorium in the first quarter of the 9th century. Analyzing each case individually, it became clear that this disappearance of non-monastic scribes out of the St Gall charter material, first and foremost, was a direct consequence of profound administrative reforms within the monastic community and, overall, the professionalization of the St Gall scriptorium which progressively produced most of the charters concerning its monastery. In the course of this research the project could reconstruct and analyze the emergence of a St Gall "chancery- conformity" ("Kanzleimäßigkeit") in the course of the early ninth century, which allows a secure division between monastic and non-monastic scribes a possibility that turned out to be of great importance, not only for questions concerning auxiliary sciences in the stricter sense or with regard to Early Medieval literacy, but indeed for the historic interpretation of the St Gall charter material. The exact examination of the monastic charters from the period in question allowed also valuable insights into the development and structure of the St Gall scriptorium and the functioning its book-production, especially in the early 9th century, as a large number of the scribes who wrote charters were also engaged in the (often shared) production of codices in which they can be traced. Exemplary studies concentrated on the central figures of the St Gall scriptorium, namely Winithar and Waldo (still 8th century), but also Wolfcoz and his successors in the time of Louis the Pious and abbot Gozbert up to 840. Results of the project have already been published or will be published in articles, but will also be integrated into the planned and initiated monographic case-study on the Early Medieval private charters of Alemannia (working- title: Die frühmittelalterlichen Privaturkunden Alemanniens. Regionale Urkundenpraxis und ihre sozialen Kontexte).