Bureaucracy and Document Culture in the Fourteenth Century

Sponsoring Organization(s)

14th Century Society

Organizer Name

Maya Soifer Irish

Organizer Affiliation

Rice Univ.

Presider Name

Randall Todd Pippenger

Presider Affiliation

Princeton Univ.

Paper Title 1

News and Information: Urban Government Tools against Crisis

Presenter 1 Name

Adam Franklin-Lyons

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Marlboro College

Paper Title 2

Robbery and the Robbere

Presenter 2 Name

Elise Wang

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Duke Univ.

Paper Title 3

Jurisdiction in the Desert: Protection Grants, Inquests and State-Building in the Fourteenth-Century Dauphiné

Presenter 3 Name

Hollis Shaul

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Princeton Univ.

Start Date

9-5-2019 1:30 PM

Session Location

Bernhard Brown & Gold Room

Description

As Joseph Strayer famously wrote, the crises of the fourteenth century “discouraged the normal development of the apparatus of state.” Regardless of where one sees the fourteenth century as a period of stagnation or of innovation in administrative practice, bureaucracy and the document culture that sustained it undoubtedly persisted in the “age of adversity” across Europe. What did it mean to be a bureaucrat in the fourteenth century? What can administration tell us about fourteenth-century kingship and governance? What can fourteenth-century records tell us about the role of texts and book culture in shaping government and the experience of the governed? This panel seeks to bring together the artistic, material and administrative aspects of fourteenth-century document culture in order to stimulate discussion about what it meant to read, write, administer and rule in the later Middle Ages. Maya Soifer Irish