Oldfield has produced a deep reading of documents from Puglia during the Norman-Staufen ascendancy. His work here tends toward metahistory, seeking to understand how documents carried and shaped memories of communities large and small. He was guided by four pursuits:

1. What did document makers want to remember?

2. In particular, what was important for the monarchy governing Puglia

to remember?

3. How were Puglians and agents of the monarchy and papacy co-creators

of historical memory?

4. What is the political significance of the interrelationships reflected

in documentary history?

The range of dates of the study are the birth of the Norman monarchy under Roger II in 1130 and the end of the Norman-Staufen monarchy with the death of Manfred in 1266. What we know of the geography of medieval Puglia, we learn, is only approximate, and its culture was fragmented by a multiplicity of communities. Oldfield gives a useful definition of community which included groupings by institution, occupation, kinship, and locale (3). There are five chapters in the study, the first of which the author dedicates to annalistic writing, chronicles, and histories, the kinds of material we normally think of as historical writing.

His intention in the first chapter is to show how few the works are for Puglia. Bari and Troia were important political and religious centers before the advent of the monarchy and produced some narrative historical writing. Oldfield finds for Bari the Bari Annals, the Annals of Lupus Protospatharius, and the Anonymous Bari Chronicle. He cites for Troia the Troia Chronicle and significant passages about the city in Romuald of Salerno’s Chronicon. The armies of Norman monarchs marched on both cities, besieging Troia in 1133 and destroying Bari in 1156. Local annals and chronicles in these cities disappear after their firmer incorporation into the Kingdom of Sicily. Oldfield here draws the lesson that local memory declined in the monarchy.

Chapter two investigates the evidence of how the monarchy sought to define land ownership and shore up political control in Puglia. The lens is the record of archival searches by royal agents. This is the period in which documents were valorized and took on probative force. Oldfield gives an instructive table of charters which agents submitted for renewal during the reign of Frederick II, who commissioned the gathering of charters in the years 1220 and 1231. In the latter year the royal Constitutions of Melfi mandated the uniformity of script in the production of documents, a measure aimed at furthering their official nature. The sweep of archival material included private as well as public acts, which led to the validation of dowries, wills, and smaller land negotiations.

The third chapter, titled “Iuratus et Interrogatus: Inquest and History,” gathers evidence about royal inquests conducted in Puglia. Oldfield introduces here an important theme in his study--the development and use of the concept of historical distance. He argues that royal documents recalled, organized, and legitimized the knowledge of the past. He offers yet another illustrative table, “Inquests in Puglia (post 1220).” Evidence collected by royal agents most often responded to the question quomodo sciret (“how did one know this?”) and included things said, heard, and written. Beyond citing the discernable reasons for the inquests, Oldfield sifts out the earliest recollections recorded in each. It shows that for the agents of Frederick II, ancient times and ancient men referred to the reigns of the first three Norman kings in the twelfth century. Key historical markers emerge such as feast day payments to churches and abbeys. Here the author previews the topic of historical demarcations which will form a large part of chapter five. Important localities emerge in the records Oldfield examines. So, for example, the translation of the relics of Saint Nicholas to Bari, and the struggle of Troia to retain ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Foggia, its neighbor to the north. The latter case the author examines in detail. In addition to inquests, chapter four considers the function and use of papal letters and also a record of confiscated lands in northern Puglia (Quaternus de Excandenciis Capitanate) and the record of land-based military contributions to the kingdom (Catalogus Baronum). The treatment of the Quaternus occupies eight pages. Near the end of the chapter there is a neat summation of five kinds of knowledge gathered primarily in the inquest records: “knowledge of the past, knowledge of proximity (from local testimony), knowledge spoken, knowledge written, and knowledge thereafter recorded and archived” (125).

Chapter five examines documents related to the papacy, the other large institution in dialogue with local Puglian communities. Papal intervention in Puglia came in surges. The author cites the late Jean-Marie Martin, who counted twenty papal councils in Puglia between ca. 1050 and ca. 1130. In the period under consideration in this book, Oldfield examines papal service in the region and recourse to papal judgments in local disputes. Here one might say that he is giving a micro-history of phenomena that were happening Europe-wide. Documents include papal confirmations and concessions, and contain evidence drawn from past privileges, narratives, and dispute resolutions (139). The author returns to the dispute between Troia and Foggia, already treated in the preceding chapter. In addition, he examines in some detail papal confirmations made to the cathedral of Brindisi.

In the sixth chapter, “Interwoven Periodizations,” the author argues that the work of the royal writers creating a history of “ancient times” of the Norman kings, who were separated from and came before the reign of the Norman-Staufen dynasty, blanketed a whole host of local historical times that are discernable in the documentary evidence. He cites, for example, “married time, parental time, time of relocation of residence” (172) and, further, urban destructions, accessions and deaths of political and religious leaders, access to rights and revenues, civil disturbances, circulation of new money, and the region-wide calls to arms. The chapter argues for a rich fabric of macro and micro eras. To demonstrate the argument, Oldfield gives three illustrative lengthy translations of inquest reports with his analysis.

The author dedicates his conclusion to recapping the major themes of his study of documentary remains from Puglia as they can be seen in the histories of Bari, Troia, and Brindisi, three cities for which he has found the most records. The themes he has traced are the dialogue of royal and papal authorities with local historical actors, the royal use of inquest, and the emergence of periodization.

A major strength of this work is the attention given to secular over annalistic and chronicle sources, which are primarily monastic. The widespread documentary remains show, as Oldfield points out, “a more dispersed and ingrained literacy” (7) that perhaps historians have under-appreciated. Previous scholarship has enabled Oldfield’s deep and wide document reading. Jean-Marie Martin and Graham Loud merit particular mention, as Oldfield gives to them. He makes a good case for what he calls the “momentous power of history” (40), history meant here as the conscious search for and organization of knowledge of past events. This work was not only that of royal and papal officials during times of transition but also of local officials in the new era of the greater valorization of written records. The success of Oldfield’s study of documents is due to his exhaustive and careful reading of them. One can also say that this study is as much or more about how and why history was recorded than about what the records show. The documentation of the past, for Oldfield, was in pursuit of political power. This becomes clear with the terminology the author uses for what the documentarians were doing. So, for example, there was the “mobilization” of memory and the past (112, 114, 148) and the “ambition and capability” to “co-opt local knowledge of the past” (101).

Oldfield’s book is admirable for its strengths of concept, research, and reporting. On several occasions he points out the rare appearance of women as actors (125, 182-183, and 189). One future avenue opened by his study might be a closer look at the admittedly scant evidence of the agency of women in the sources he uses. The cartulary of San Matteo di Sculgola edited by Martin, for example, has a number of instances of women as landowners, albeit accompanied before judges by a male relative (mundoald) and the Catalogus Baronum has numerous instances of widows responsible for sending soldiers. The excellent sources Oldfield has martialed in his study could certainly facilitate such a future investigation.