Why Copy Out Every Deed You Own? Because the Originals Kept Burning
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Medieval monasteries and estates copied their title documents into a single bound volume, and those volumes now preserve thousands of texts whose originals are long gone.
What the volume contains
The book is a systematic copy of the charters, grants, privileges and agreements by which an institution held its property and its rights. Documents are transcribed one after another, sometimes in full and sometimes abbreviated, arranged by the estate they concern or by the donor or by date. A large abbey might fill several volumes. The originals, single sheets of parchment with seals attached, were kept separately in a chest, and the copy existed so that the contents could be consulted without unrolling and handling every one.
Why they were made
Several pressures pushed institutions to compile them:
- •Fire, damp and rodents destroyed loose parchment steadily
- •Seals broke off, which weakened a document's legal force
- •Disputes over land required producing evidence quickly
- •A bound volume could be searched, a chest of sheets could not
- •Compiling one forced an audit of what was actually held
- •A new abbot frequently ordered one to establish what he had
Why historians treat them carefully
These volumes are indispensable sources and they are not neutral ones, which is the first thing a student of them learns. The compiler chose what to include and omitted documents that were inconvenient, expired or embarrassing. Texts were quietly improved, with vague boundaries made definite and disputed rights stated as settled. Some volumes contain documents that are outright forgeries, produced to support a claim the institution believed was just but could not prove. Because the original is usually lost, there is frequently no way to check, so the standard approach is to read them alongside every independent source available.
The related books
Institutions kept several kinds of administrative volume and telling them apart matters when reading a catalogue. A register records outgoing documents as they are issued, in date order, which makes it a diary of administration rather than a statement of holdings. A survey or terrier lists land and tenants with obligations and rents, describing the present rather than reciting past grants. A custumal sets out local customary law and practice. A chronicle narrates events, frequently with charters quoted inside it. The volume here is distinct in being organised around title, since its purpose is to prove that things are owned.
What survives in them
The value of these volumes to historians is enormous precisely because the originals did not survive. Large numbers of early medieval documents exist only as copies in a later book, including the earliest records of land tenure, of the boundaries of estates and of the obligations owed by tenants. Place names, personal names and field names appear in them by the thousand and underpin much of what is known about early settlement and language. Monastic dissolution, revolution and war destroyed archives across Europe, and where a compiled volume was taken elsewhere or copied again, it is all that remains.
The takeaway
Copying an institution's charters into a bound volume protected the contents against fire and broken seals and made them searchable, and compiling one forced an audit of what was held. The compilers chose what to include and quietly improved vague texts, and some volumes contain deliberate forgeries. Since the originals are usually lost, these copies are all that survives of thousands of documents.