Private Charters and Documentary Practice in the long 10th century (ca. 870-ca. 1030) 

On the occasion of the publication of the twelfth and final volume of the edition of the ninth century St.-Gall charters, the University of Groningen, the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and the Stiftsarchiv St. Gall have organized a conference in Rome on the changes of documentary practice in the long tenth century in Europe. This conference is a follow-up to an earlier one (Die Privaturkunden der Karolingerzeit) on the continuation and spread of the Roman heritage of documentary-legal administration, taking into account, among other things, the standardizing tendencies of the Carolingian empire. This time we will be dealing with what happened when the different parts of the Carolingian empire started to diverge after 870. The genre of documentation (private charters as opposed to royal charters) is chosen, since these documents were produced at slightly lower, regional levels of society as well. It permits us to observe how people who did not belong to the highest levels of society went about their legal affairs.