Chapter Writing for aristocrats, writing as aristocrats: notarial strategies and graphic self-representation in the documentation of the elites of the regnum

Overview & Synopsis

Was there, in the Italic kingdom during the early and high Carolingian age, a type of documentation that is identifiable as aristocratic not only by genesis? That is, did there exist, in the charters produced at the request of counts and bishops (these are the “aristocrats” at the center of attention, the upper echelons of an official and ecclesiastical aristocracy defined on the basis of the Königsnähe), peculiar and consciously distinctive graphic-formal solutions and practices of self-representation? Moving into a well-established strand of scholarship, the essay offers some considerations on the forms and functions of written culture as a reflection (and definition, interpretation) of political dynamics and forms of power, particularly investigating moments and degrees of penetration of the new Carolingian minuscule into the highest levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy as an adherence to the Carolingian political program.