This book derives from a doctoral dissertation defended in 2017 at Paris 1—Panthéon Sorbonne. It responds to a gap in current scholarship: the earliest surviving “cartularies” have received far less attention than the richer and more elaborate exemplars produced after the eleventh century. Claire de Cazanove Hannecart’s study situates cartularization within the broader history of early medieval written culture. Its central argument is that, building on the archival reorganization that had been undertaken from the seventh century onwards to meet administrative, judicial, and memorial needs, eight institutions in early ninth-century Raetia and Bavaria adopted a new solution: the compilation of acts into coherent codices. This practice generated a new framework that filtered and reframed the archival record. Because the original documents have not survived, the cartularies themselves constitute the primary evidence for understanding this development. Cazanove Hannecart’s enquiry is guided by a double question: Why did cartularies emerge only in certain centers? and What specific needs were met by this new documentary form that existing archival practices could not satisfy?
The first three chapters are devoted to corpus, context, and networks. Chapter 1 (“Les premiers cartulaires,” 19-64) describes in Cazanove Hannecart’s corpus and briefly reviews our knowledge concerning the origins of cartularization. Chapter 2 (“Mise en contexte,” 65-96) examines the documentary background in order to determine whether the region between Bavaria and Raetia possessed specific features that might explain the emergence of the first cartularies. Chapter 3 (“La première cartularisation en réseau,” 97-145) reconstructs the chronology and traces the transfer of skills between Bavarian monasteries, noting patterns of emulation but also the limits of diffusion among closely connected institutions.
The remaining chapters analyze the functions, uses, and materiality of these compilations. Chapter 4 (“Le moment-cartulaire,”147-195) studies the institutional challenges that prompted the reorganization of archives and the identity-building purposes of each community. Chapter 5 (“Administrer par les cartulaires?”, 197-244) investigates their administrative role and distinguishes them from other managerial instruments. Chapter 6 (“La fabrique du cartulaire,” 245-280) examines the contingencies shaping the archives and the material and visual organization of the diplomatic corpus.
A major strength of the work lies in its method and in the careful delimitation of its corpus. From the introductory chapters one may extract three methodological commitments that underpin the study. First, Cazanove Hannecart’s analysis rests exclusively on original manuscripts, on the grounds that only this evidence permits the reconstruction of the decision-making processes behind compilation. Secondly, she treats each cartulary as a locally produced artifact, whose structure and internal logic must be explained within its institutional context rather than through the projection of later general models. Thirdly, her discussion moves deliberately across several scales of observation—imperial, regional, and monastic—reflecting her view that the causes of cartularization were not uniform and can be understood only through a multiscalar analysis.
Regarding the corpus, Cazanove Hannecart concentrates on compilations produced between the late eighth century and the early decades of the tenth, east of the Rhine, and preserved in their original form. The enquiry is therefore restricted to eight extant compilations: seven from Freising, Passau, Regensburg, Mondsee, Fulda, Wissembourg and Werden, and a fragment from Chur/Raetia. Comparison with other contemporary products from the same scriptoria (loose originals, internal registers) makes it possible to assess scribal competences, writing models, selection practices, and organizational logics, thereby reconstructing both local documentary cultures and the circulation of models between centers.
One of the first of the book’s significant contributions is its clarification of terminology. Since the late twentieth century, the study of cartularies has been reshaped by approaches centered on the social uses of writing. Cazanove Hannecart aligns herself with this tradition, particularly with the influence of Michael Clanchy and, in the German-speaking world, the research programs coordinated by Hagen Keller, which shaped the notion of Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit. The French reception of these categories—marked by terminological tensions (littératie, scripturalité, écriture pragmatique)—constitutes an essential element for understanding the book’s methodological framework: it seeks to reconcile divergent terminologies and approaches, offering an analysis capable of moving across historiographical traditions that have often communicated poorly.
Cazanove Hannecart shows that, in this period, compilations labeled libri traditionum, Traditionsbücher, or Urkundenbücher do not differ materially or diplomatically from cartularies. Definitions favored by Patrick Geary or Georges Declercq—centered on the presence of notitiae or distinctions between narrative format and integral copy—prove inadequate, since most early Bavarian compilations transcribe complete charters. Cazanove Hannecart further demonstrates that the tendency of German editors to label sources as Traditionsbücher stems largely from local medieval terminology (traditiones) rather than from structural difference. The proposal to abandon these categories for the ninth century is convincing: all the compilations correspond to the international diplomatic definition of a cartulary, an organized transcription of acts, thus allowing the shared adoption of stable definitions (notably those of the Vocabulaire international de la diplomatique and Diplomatique médiévale).
Against this terminological and methodological background, the study’s originality becomes even clearer when set against the four historiographical traditions from which it evidently departs. Cazanove Hannecart accepts Geary’s position on the importance of pragmatic memory and the interpretive gesture inherent in transcription, but rejects models that place memory at the center of explanation. Against Declercq, she challenges the primacy of diplomatic evolution—particularly the transition from notitia to charter—demonstrating that, in this period, boundaries between forms were far less decisive than codicological organization and the sequencing of acts. While agreeing with Clanchy that “pragmatic literacy” has deep roots in the Early Middle Ages, she also distances herself from anthropological binaries between orality and writing; and although indebted to Hagen Keller and the SFB 231 program, she moves beyond the abstract category of Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit.
A central question of the book concerns the selective emergence of cartularies: why did they appear almost exclusively in eastern Francia and only in a small number of centers? Nineteenth-century editors had already noted a disparity between the western and eastern Frankish realms, but the question has been explicitly formulated only since 1991 and the Paris roundtable on cartularies, published in O. Guyotjeannin, L. Morelle, and M. Parisse (eds), Les cartulaires. Actes de la table ronde organisée par l’École nationale des chartes et le GDR 121 du CNRS (Paris, 5-7 décembre 1991) (Paris, 1993). Cazanove Hannecart argues that the general explanations—the reform of 817; royal concern for patrimonial management (Metz); changes in property regimes under Louis the Pious (Goffart, Geary); the diplomatic transition from charter to notitia (Declercq); local territorial conflicts (Müstair); administrative reorganization (Lohrmann)—provide context but are inadequate. She consciously dismantles these broad narratives, showing that the emergence of cartularies resulted not from imperial reforms, fiscal pressures, or large-scale economic dynamics but from local decisions embedded in specific practices of writing and documentary management. Her thesis is that these earlier hypotheses failed to satisfy because they relied on factors too general to account for the selective appearance of cartularies. These scenarios illuminate the background, but they do not explain why only eight centers compiled cartularies, whereas others—such as Saint Gall—preserved original acts without creating a collection. Here, the “new diplomatics” and “archaeology of the text” provide the key: for Cazanove Hannecart, it is the concrete structure of the manuscript—order of acts, modes of classification, choices of selection, intervention of the cartularist(s), and the relationship between original and copy—that reveals the motives for writing—a point she demonstrates convincingly.
In fact, Cazanove Hannecart highlights the emergence of a consistent “norme scripturale” in the Bavarian and Rhaetian material. Across the eight compilations, the acts are copied in structured quires, with regular quire construction, stable ruling patterns, and recurring devices for internal organization such as tables, rubrics, and, in some cases, numbering, pointing to a shared conception of how a cartulary ought to be constructed. She emphasizes that these cartularies present common features “both in their material form and in their content,” systematically excluding any text that is not a diplomatic act. Although Cazanove Hannecart refrains from attributing this coherence to a single copying center, she notes that the material and graphic homogeneity of these codices attests to closely related practices across the eight centers and constitutes a stable technical profile characteristic of early ninth-century cartularization. She accounts for this consistency not by invoking a single model or an overarching program, but through two verifiable factors. First, she reconstructs two phases of transfer of scribal skills and organizational techniques within the Bavarian network: an initial phase centered on Regensburg (800-840) and a subsequent one centered on Fulda (840-860). These “transferts de compétences” and the circulation of models explain common practices in quire construction, mise-en-page, and the sequencing of acts. Secondly, Cazanove Hannecart stresses that the monasteries of eastern Francia shared long-established documentary habits, which resulted in similar decisions concerning layout and the systematic exclusion of non-diplomatic material.
Cazanove Hannecart also draws attention to the close temporal relationship between the production of certain cartularies and moments of institutional reorganization, especially in episcopal contexts such as Freising. She documents how the cartularization coincides with substantial architectural and spatial interventions on the Domberg: the expansion or rebuilding of churches, the consolidation of the episcopal complex, and the redefinition of the area as an exclusively episcopal space. Cazanove Hannecart presents these processes as part of the broader historical context in which the ninth-century episcopate operated, noting their chronological proximity to the compilation of the cartulary—even if she does not explicitly propose a direct link, for instance, between architectural investment and documentary production.
Within this wider context, Cazanove Hannecart also shows that cartularies could serve not only memorial purposes but also administrative functions distinct from inventories or censiers, providing authoritative syntheses of patrimonial information at moments of institutional tension or redefinition. Their material and visual organization corresponded to institutional needs, and the ordering of documents contributed to processes of memorialization within each community. The chronological and geographical dimensions of these processes are examined in detail in the discussion of the networks linking Bavarian monasteries around Regensburg and Fulda. This network-based approach illuminates patterns of influence and emulation while also revealing their limits: even institutions in contact with one another did not adopt a uniform approach to cartularization.
A further dimension of the same problem becomes visible when we consider the “non-cases,” that is, institutions whose archives and documentary cultures were equally robust but did not produce cartularies. Cazanove Hannecart rightly observes that centers such as Saint Gall, Reichenau, or Salzburg, despite dense documentary networks and well-structured archives, never produced cartularies, but her treatment remains essentially negative: she merely notes the phenomenon without offering an explanation for it. The consequence is that the explanatory model remains asymmetrical. We learn in considerable detail why eight centers chose to compile cartularies, yet we lack a corresponding framework for understanding why other, structurally comparable institutions maintained originals without ever transferring them to codex form. This gap exposes the limits of an approach that privileges material analysis over sociological modeling: without a theory of non-adoption—whether grounded in institutional culture, archival ideology, or internal administrative logics—the broader dynamics of early medieval documentary practice remain only partially illuminated.
Another aspect that merits critical reflection is the author’s pronounced methodological caution. Cazanove Hannecart’s refusal to project later categories onto ninth-century evidence is both admirable and necessary, yet it occasionally results in an interpretive reticence that sits uneasily with the strength of the patterns she herself uncovers. The consistent codicological profile of the cartularies she examines emerges with clarity, yet she refrains from drawing broader inferences about the institutional expectations or documentary norms that such regularity might imply. Similarly, as in the case of Freising discussed above, the near-synchronous occurrence of documentary reorganization and architectural consolidation is carefully documented but not explored even with a tentative hypothesis. This restraint is methodologically sound, but it prevents the discussion from engaging with interpretive possibilities that the evidence would legitimately sustain.
A third point of critique concerns the articulation between the different analytical scales that structure the book. Cazanove Hannecart works with clarity at the micro-level of codicological analysis and at the meso-level of regional networks, and she situates both within broader historiographical debates on pragmatic literacy. Yet the relationship between these levels remains deliberately vague, and the book does not always pursue the implications that might connect them more directly. The discussion of regional documentary habits outlines recurring patterns, but it stops short of explaining precisely how local practices coalesced into shared norms, or how such norms could coexist with divergent institutional responses. Likewise, the broader reflections on writing and memory provide a valuable intellectual frame, even if they are not fully integrated into the explanation of why cartularization emerged only in certain centers. A more explicit linkage between micro-analysis, regional dynamics, and wider cultural frameworks might have strengthened the overall coherence, but the restraint is consistent with the author’s methodological decisions.
Taken together, though, the various strands of the argument point to a coherent conclusion: the earliest cartularies are best explained by integrating codicological evidence with the specific institutional conditions in which they arose. By eliminating macro-historical determinisms and showing that the decisive factors lie in the materiality of the books themselves—their structure, sequencing, and modes of compilation—Cazanove Hannecart reframes the early Bavarian-Raetian cartularies from the ninth and early tenth centuries not as embryonic forms but as deliberate, innovative products that shaped later documentary organization, integrating them into the broader European history of pragmatic writing and institutional memory. Far from diminishing the book, the tensions I have noted underscore its methodological precision and open a productive field for future inquiry.