Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/446

 438 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July originals that subsequent negligence and revolutions have combined to destroy. It required a rare combination of scholarship, judgement, and patience to build up out of such materials so solid and informing a volume as that which lies before us. But M. Poupardin has not only given us an excellent text of his charters, but a most careful account of the pro- venance of each record and all the necessary annotations to elucidate the obscurest of texts. So dark is the ground covered that many of the names of the places whence charters were issued, or to which allusion is made in their text, are quite unidentifiable even by the minute knowledge of the old Burgundian realm which M. Poupardin possesses. Nevertheless, M. Poupardin has not only carried through his work successfully, but has in his elaborate introduction put together an excellent account of the diplomatic of his charters, including a description of the ' chancery ' and secretarial methods of the Provencal kingdom that is a very substantial and novel contribution to historical knowledge. He has in particular made excellent use of the few original charters and of the still fewer sealed charters of Provencal- kings that still survive. Some well-executed fac- similes of monograms and seals help us to appreciate and to test his results. It would have been still better if M. Poupardin had been able to add to these illustrations two or three photographs of characteristic sealed documents in their entirety. But in these days of dear printing we cannot complain of what we have not got, but must rather be thankful for the goodly store which M. Poupardin has provided for us. The student of English diplomatic will be struck with the contrasts which these Provencal charters present with corresponding documents issued in our own country. In a period when the West-Saxon monarchy was but slowly developing into the single English state, he will find that it is a rare exception for documents to be authenticated by the signa of witnesses, and the normal thing for them to be drawn up in a more or less organized secretarial office and to be issued by a chancellor or chief notary or a subordinate notary acting in his behalf. He will find, too, a con- tinuity of method of redaction which testifies not so much to a continuity of administrative tradition in the royal court as to the influence which the church of Vienne possessed over the administration of the kingdom of Provence throughout this period. The archbishops of Vienne were ex officio chancellors or archchancellors of the Provencal monarchs. They were too great men to act often on their own account, and most charters were ' recognized ' and drawn up by a notary acting in their behalf. These notaries were clearly clerics, and connected, one suspects, with the household of the archiepiscopal chancellor, who is himself not seldom described by the king as ' sacri palatii nostri summus notariorum '. In some ways, however, these eighth- and ninth-century charters are in advance of English charters of a much later date, notably in the general use of the seal. This seal, an antique gem of the ' signet ' type, surrounded by a metal inscribed ring, was of course of ' one piece ', and its impression stamped on to the body of the document. It is not normally called a seal ; its use is described almost invariably as ' annuli nostri impressione ', and there is the further authentication or signature by the royal monogram, 1 monogrammate proprii nominis nostri subter firmavimus ' or ' manu