§ 1 The use of computers to facilitate and enhance the analysis of
historical sources of all kinds has attracted the interest of specialists for
several decades, with a range of initiatives and approaches that are consistent
with the diversity of the sources themselves. More specifically, medieval
manuscripts have been increasingly, and notably, part of this renewal, and as
information technology is gradually being imposed as the primary means of
accessing the information they contain, they will continue to be so. However,
closer inspection suggests that this process experienced a significant turn at
the end of the 1990s, mainly related to the expansion of the Internet and the
development of text mark-up languages. Until then, the priority had been to
develop desktop tools that would allow researchers to carry out an exhaustive
analysis of a specific source. This changed in the late 1990s, when the spread
of the Internet led to a substantial change in the amount, scope and nature of
digital products. The number of major initiatives aimed at providing global
users with access to large data sets increased exponentially. A constituent
feature of this changing trend was the proliferation of cataloguing systems,
which were designed to make it possible to recover individual items of
information (an archival document, a digital image, a literary text, etc.). The
relative predominance of these initiatives can be partly accounted for by their
high visibility and immediate impact. This resulted in a change in funding
priorities, also caused by the enormous benefits they provide to users.
Nevertheless, most of these systems lacked, or had only very basic, analytical
capabilities.
§ 2 The computer-assisted analysis of medieval sources and manuscripts
has followed different paths, generally inspired by Big Data management and the
concepts of Data Mining and Data Visualisation. This is the case, for example,
in linguistic, lexicographical, diplomatic studies, as well as in some projects
based on prosopography, and in some very promising advances in the field of
palaeography. In parallel, the development of computer-assisted text editing has
been another major trend (for a recent update with abundant references, see Tinti 2015). It is, however, very difficult to
find initiatives that are focused on small-scale and high-intensity analysis of
specific sources, such as those which are the subject of this paper, medieval
cartularies. Research on cartularies has experienced a conceptual and
methodological shift in recent decades, which has involved moving from the
traditional approaches that considered cartularies as mere repositories of
documentation, to now seeing them as cultural objects worthy of study in and of
themselves.[1] There has also
been, at the same time, a vast increase in the number of studies of specific
parts or sets of codices. These initiatives include electronic projects, usually
of a cataloguing or ecdotic nature, or aimed at allowing access to a source
(e.g. CartulR 2006, Becerro Galicano Digital
2013). Nonetheless, there are strikingly few examples of computer
analyses of cartularies and, more significantly, they mostly date back to the
early 1990s, that is, before the Internet boom (McCrank 1992). This is even more striking when considering that
cartularies are an ideal type of source for a computerised approach, given that
their nature as codices (susceptible of being analysed from a merely structural,
formal standpoint) is linked to their content as individual pieces organised by
the cartulary makers. Specialists, of course, are well aware of this and take it
into account in their studies at different levels, including more or less
automated quantitative and statistical analyses of document content
(distribution by chronological periods, document type, type of
grantors/receivers, geographical area, etc.). Nevertheless, the overall study of
the cartulary as a project is usually carried out through manual and intuitive
qualitative analysis.
§ 3 This is precisely the area that our study seeks to focus on. This
short paper outlines some of the components of a broader methodology for the
overall analysis of cartularies that we have been experimenting with at the
Instituto de Historia—of the Spanish National Research Council (known by its
Spanish acronym as CSIC). It is a work in progress, with some aspects being more
developed, and others merely being in their exploratory phase. We want to focus
on two graphical models (which we call the Order/Date Model and the Order/Order
Model) for the visualisation and analysis of the cartulary as a project. These
models are now mature enough to be presented, and it is our hope that, when they
are tested by other researchers, their contributions will refine them beyond the
capabilities of a single research group.
§ 4 The two models we propose are mere logical procedures, independent
from any specific software, which can be applied by anyone on a conventional
desktop computer. Theoretically —in simple cases— they could be applied
manually, but it is more efficient to use a database management system (DBMS)
capable of generating statistical tables or graphs, such as Filemaker™ or
Microsoft Access™. They can also be tested, in the simplest cases, by means of
any spreadsheet programme such as Microsoft Excel™, but this is not recommended,
because the more sophisticated analyses almost always require a relational
structure with multiple tables. The examples presented in this paper have been
drawn from a relational database created in Microsoft Access™, generating
visualisations using the graphics engine that comes with Access itself, although
occasionally the data has been exported to Excel to take advantage of its
greater flexibility in generating graphs. Graphical outputs have been designed
to be deliberately simple, in order to highlight that they are conceptually
operational, above and beyond their potential for visual display.
Cartularies and Diachrony
§ 5 Among medieval and modern codices, cartularies are a special
theoretical case due to the role diachrony plays in both their structure and
content. From a structural point of view, cartularies were often developed over
a long period of time. Even when they are part of an initial single and 'closed'
project, very often they go through successive stages of additions,
continuations, insertions and modifications that result in complex
codices,
both from a codicological and a content point of view.
Applying an archaeological metaphor, it could be said that cartularies are open
to a stratigraphic
type of analysis, that is, one capable
of revealing the successive stages of the production and modification of the
project, whether or not they are reflected in the materiality of the codex. This
diachronic character, which is common to other types of codices (with some
variations), in the case of cartularies is reinforced by the nature of their
contents. Cartularies generally record —in full or abbreviated form— legal
documents which did not originally form a single corpus. They do so according to
one criterion or many criteria for organisation purposes, which could vary
greatly depending on the plan and purpose of each project. A key attribute of
the recorded texts is that they collect legal acts that occupy a specific place
in time (also in space, but in this paper we shall not consider this variable).
For undated documents, a chronology is assigned that depends on well-established
diplomatic methods that are independent from the analysis being undertaken here.
Understanding the cartulary as a project involves seeing it as a strategy. What
treatment is given to individual documents? What elements are discarded and
selected, and how are they organised? What is the logic behind this
organisation? Is there a single project or several? Have there been changes to
an initial plan? The Order/Date Model discussed in the first part of this paper
exploits this diachronic dimension of the contents of the cartulary, in an
attempt to visualise the project behind it and its
afterlife
(Escalona and
Sirantoine 2013).
§ 6 The diachronic character of the cartularies can have an even more
complex aspect in those cases that can be referred to as examples of
multiple cartularisation.
It is not uncommon for an
institution to produce a cartulary over time whose contents overlap to a greater
or lesser extent. Therefore, the same corpus of documents (or its successive
development phases) could be reflected in more than one cartulary. This
inevitably raises the difficult question of the successive uses given to the
same documents, but also to the previous cartularies. Why is the old cartulary
no longer sufficient to meet the present needs? What is it about the new one
that makes it more suitable? What are the differences between them? In the
second part of this paper we present the Order/Order Model, which is
specifically designed to gauge the extent to which two cartularies that record
(either fully or partially) the same diplomatic collection coincide or diverge
in their approach as projects.
§ 7 In order to present these two analytical models, some hypothetical
and actual examples from cartularies have been used. The intention here is not
to analyse these codices in depth, but to show the usefulness of the method and
suggest possibilities for its future expansion. Therefore, many of the specific
issues surrounding the individual codices used have been disregarded, and the
focus instead is on the analysis of cartularies using these two models.
Visualising the structure of a cartulary: The Order/Date Model
§ 8 The Order/Date Model exploits the inherently diachronic character
of cartularies by working from a null hypothesis
: that the
cartulary documents are organised in chronological order. This condition is only
met in very exceptional cases, such as the so-called chronicle
cartularies,
but the null hypothesis is useful to the extent that
by rejecting it, other alternatives can be considered. To visualise the
chronological order of a cartulary two variables are used which give the model
its name:
- Order: the position of each document as it appears in the
cartulary. This is deemed to be a perfect sequential order to be considered
carefully in any real-case analysis. For the purpose of this presentation
and for the sake of clarity, complexities such as the presence of pieces
inserted in the margins have been disregarded.
- Date: the year in which the document is dated (a
chronological resolution greater than one year is rarely required). Again,
in this case the starting point is a theoretical homogeneous set of dated
pieces, leaving aside the problems of undated documents and those to which
dates are to be assigned within a certain range.
§ 9 The Order/Date Model consists in graphically representing the
position of each document on a coordinate axis system based on these two
variables. The horizontal axis (the x-axis) shows the sequential order of the
cartulary from the first to the last document. The vertical axis (the y-axis)
represents the year in which the document is dated. This provides a graphical
representation of each of the documents in the cartulary, which then has to be
interpreted. Attention needs to be given to the graphic patterns
resulting from the image.
Identifying graphic patterns: Chaotic pattern, coherent pattern.
§ 10 Working on the null hypothesis, let us consider the (very
rare) case of a cartulary organised according to the chronological
principle. Fig. 1 shows this possibility using
hypothetical data, which produces a consistently upward line (date values
always increase or remain the same, but never decrease).
Figure 1: Order/Date Model of a hypothetical case organized by chronological
order
§ 11 Conversely, if the cartulary is not in chronological order,
the resulting image will be alternating vertical positions in which no
pattern can be recognised (Fig. 2).
Figure 2: Order/Date Model of a hypothetical case organized by a
non-chronological criterion
§ 12 The disorganised appearance of this second pattern, however,
can only be defined in terms of the scale of representation, as it is common
for groups of documents not to have a strictly chronological order, but to
be grouped within narrower time ranges than the rest of the documentation.
Therefore, when defining patterns, the scale of the visualisation has to be
taken into account, as illustrated eloquently below in the real case of the
Arlanza cartulary.
§ 13 In short, the Order/Date Model produces an image on which it
is necessary to distinguish whether the sequence or parts of it fit one of
two ideal patterns:
- Chaotic pattern: The documents are distributed without a
recognisable time pattern. The initial reading would be that the order
adopted is not chronological, but based on other criteria (donors,
geographical distribution, legal document type) or more often, a
combination of several of them.
- Coherent pattern: This pattern is more difficult to
define, but its recognition is crucial to interpreting the model. It is
a distribution of documents that has a chronological pattern, either
because it follows a temporal order or because, as a whole, it keeps to
a discernible temporal range, even though internally it is not organised
in a strictly chronological order.
§ 14 It is rare for a real case to fully fit one of the two
patterns. More often some sections of the cartulary are found that fit one
or the other, and identifying the turning points is the main objective in
order to understand the diachronic nature of a cartulary as a historical
object. In order to illustrate this more clearly it is necessary to use a
real case: the Cartulary of San Pedro de Arlanza.
The simple Order/Date model: only two variables
§ 15 The first Order/Date Model was designed by Julio Escalona and
Pilar Azcárate and published in 2001 as part of a strategy to analyse this
important Castilian cartulary (Escalona and
Azcarate Aguilar-Amat 2001, Escalona,
Azcárate, and Larrañaga 2002, Azcárate Aguilar-Amat et al.
2006) which disappeared during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
However, data from this cartulary have been partially disseminated through
an edition published about eleven years before its disappearance (Serrano 1925). This edition copied the
documents in chronological order, but it hardly provided other information
than the place that each document occupied in the order of the cartulary. In
this case, correlating the internal data of the documents —mainly the date—
with their position was the only way to explore the structure of the
cartulary. The Order/Date Model produced between 1998 and 2000 —albeit not
yet bearing that name— was surprising, as it revealed an eloquent pattern,
as reflected in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Order/Date Model of the cartulary of San Pedro de Arlanza. (Numbers
‘-2’ and ‘-1’ correspond to thirteenth-century additions in the first
folio that have no numbering in Serrano’s edition)
§ 16 What is immediately noticeable is the contrast between a
chaotic pattern that is dominant at the beginning,
followed, from No. 78 onwards, by a coherent set of documents
confined to a narrow chronological range, between 1130 and 1156. A more
detailed analysis made it possible to define not two, but up to four sets of
documents (Fig. 4).
Figure 4: Order/Date Model of the cartulary of San Pedro de Arlanza. The
boxes indicate Blocks A and B
- Document Set A shows a very irregular pattern, with strong variations
in the dates. This is the typical pattern for a cartulary that is not
organised in chronological order, with the highest dates pointing to
1119 as a date post quem for its
composition.
- In contrast, Document Set B represents a completely different
strategy, because without having a strict chronological order, its
components are restricted, as noted, to a more coherent time range, from
1130 to 1156. The pattern of Document Set B can be described as an
addition made after the initial production stage of the cartulary was
completed, which was merely intended to update it by incorporating
documents obtained after that period.
- Document Set C returns to a chaotic pattern, with the added complexity
that it includes two undated pieces which, in this case, appear
conventionally represented on the X axis.
- Finally, Document Set D corresponds to four significantly later
additions that were incorporated at the beginning and at the end of the
cartulary.
§ 17 Thus, the Order/Date graph enables the history of this lost
cartulary to be interpreted. The initial project was perhaps conceived in
the period 1120-1130, and is recognised by its chaotic
chronological pattern (Document Set A). This initial cartulary was continued
sometime after 1156, with the addition of a number of documents belonging to
a very narrow time span (Document Set B). Later various heterogeneous parts
were added (Document Set C), and finally a few additions were incorporated
in the thirteenth century, at the beginning and at the end (Document Set D).
In the next section it will be seen that it is possible to be more precise
about the details of the Arlanza cartulary, but for
now suffice it to note that the simple Order / Date Model allowed for the
generation of some hypotheses about the cartularisation project, and what is
important for this paper, the defining of the two basic graphical patterns,
coherent and chaotic patterns.
The complex Order/Date Model: adding more variables
§ 18 The core of the Arlanza cartulary
features a chaotic chronological pattern. This makes it possible to
distinguish it from the later stage, but it is not in itself a very powerful
analysis tool. However, the fact that the pattern is chaotic does not mean
its analysis has to be discarded. It is possible to set up and test
alternative hypotheses by adding supplementary variables to the two basic
ones (order and date), and to explore whether there are conceptual groupings
independent from the chronological order. In the case of Arlanza, if a third variable is added, such as the grantor of
the documents, the underlying strategies can be interpreted further. In Figure 5, the Order/Date Model for Document Set
A and Document Set B (as defined in Fig. 4)
distinguishes the documents issued by the Kings of León and the Counts of
Castile from the rest.
Figure 5: Order/Date Model of the cartulary of San Pedro de Arlanza. Blocks A
and B symbolized by author
§ 19 It is immediately apparent that Document Set B shows a very
high proportion of royal documents, suggesting that this not only consisted
of the addition of pieces from the 1130 to 1156 range, but that the
documents had been selected in such a way as to give preference to royal
charters. Document Set A also indicates an internal division. The charters
granted by royalty and counts do not form a continuum at the beginning of
the codex, but they do appear in a much higher proportion in the first
thirty texts than in the remainder. This suggests that the original
cartulary project was organised by blocks of ownership, which often
originated from donations by counts or royalty; hence these pieces appear
concentrated, but without continuity. The rest of Document Set A contains
more varied documentation, with a high proportion of private documents.
§ 20 So far we have used this case as an illustration because it is
a fairly simple one, but the true potential of the method lies in applying
it to complex cartularies, as they are difficult to visualise in a
comprehensive manner. As far as complexity goes, one could hardly find a
more complex case in the Iberian Peninsula than the so-called Becerro Gótico de Valpuesta. This is a factitious
codex that brings together various fragments created at different points in
time over the eleventh and twelfth centuries, each with its own page layout,
calligraphy, content, etc., which never made up a single project, but were
bound together some time before 1236. For the purposes of this paper, it has
the major advantage of having recently undergone a splendid edition that
includes a facsimile reproduction of the codex and a comprehensive study of
its codicological, palaeographic and diplomatic aspects (Ruiz Asencio, Ruiz Albi, and Herrero Jiménez
2010). Therefore, without providing any further details about the
codex, it shall be used as an example to show how, the richer the
information available, the more analytically powerful the Order/Date Model
is. Figs. 6 and 7
display the Order/Date Model of the Becerro Gótico de
Valpuesta, first in its simplest form, using order and date as
sole variables, and then with the addition of a third variable.
Figure 6: Order/Date Model of the Becerro Gótico de Valpuesta
§ 21 Its heterogeneous appearance is immediately striking, with an
alternation between very contrasting sections: some show the pattern we have
called chaotic, while others, as in Document Set B of Arlanza, have a coherent pattern: the documents —not
necessarily in chronological order— cover a short time range. But in the
case of Valpuesta, the available information allows
the incorporation of more variables and further analysis. For example, the
graph can be coded on the basis of the codicological structure, with a
different colour marking each quire (Fig.
7).
Figure 7: Order/Date Model of the Becerro Gótico de Valpuesta symbolized by
quires
§ 22 By doing this it becomes obvious that there is a high
correlation between the changes in the pattern indicated above and the
codicological structure, which, given that it is a factitious codex, leads
to the interpretation that there were separate production stages or
subsequent alterations to the codicological structure.
§ 23 It is still possible to generate a more complex image by
considering that the quires are a sequential variable, which can therefore
be represented on the x-axis, leaving space for the addition of one more
variable, in this case, script type (Fig.
8).
Figure 8: Order/Date Model of the Becerro Gótico de Valpuesta symbolized by
writing type (C = Caroline; V = Visigothic)
§ 24 The x-axis now shows a double grouping: on the one hand, by
the order of documents and by quires, and on the other, by the two main
script types in the codex. The editors of the cartulary identified a total
of thirty-two different types of hand-writing, the graphical representation
of which allows for further details to be identified. However, for the sake
of clarity, in this graph we simply distinguish between Visigothic and
Caroline scripts. The graph eloquently displays how the blocks of Caroline
script tend to form compact units embedded among others in Visigothic
script, and how this usually coincides with codicological units (quires 5-7,
quire 11), confirming their status of independent blocks bound in between
older fragments. Moving further, the Order/Date Model also reveals that two
of the fragments in Visigothic script (quires 1-4, quire 13) adopt the
chaotic pattern, typical of a non-chronological order and
would indicate that it is a typical
cartulary. This
does not happen in quire 8, which, with the exception of a piece at the
beginning, follows a coherent pattern (narrow chronological range),
indicating an addition to the set formed by quires 1-4. This is not the case
for quire 14 either. It is a monographic dossier on the monastery of San Pedro de Buezo which constitutes a special case,
as it only contains documents from 950, with a folio inserted in between
containing several texts in Caroline script (Ruiz
Asencio, Ruiz Albi, and Herrero Jiménez 2010, p. 54). In contrast,
the blocks in Caroline script clearly adopt the coherent pattern. This
indicates a significant divergence from the plan. The two main blocks in
Visigothic script correspond to typical
cartularies (in
fact it has been suggested, and with good reason, that the Becerro Gótico de Valpuesta contains fragments of two
originally separate cartularies in Visigothic script: (Ruiz Asencio, Ruiz Albi, and Herrero Jiménez
2010, p. 58-60), while the Caroline script blocks formed either
loose dossiers, or later additions to one or other of the blocks in
Visigothic script.
§ 25 The cases presented so far have been selected to gradually
illustrate the basic possibilities of application of the Order/Date Model.
The potential (and the analytical difficulties) increase significantly with
more complex cartularies, as in the example of Valpuesta. We have only shown a few basic features in order to
demonstrate how the method can produce very intuitive visualisations, in
this case from a study which involved a very thorough analysis previously
carried out by the editors. It also enables further analysis by adding
variables and producing ad hoc graphs to examine specific
aspects. Nevertheless, this is not the purpose of the study being discussed
here, and it would make it excessively long. It would be appropriate,
however, to provide some details about the potential application of the
Order/Date Model to the analysis of complex cartularies such as the Becerro Gótico de Cardeña, the main Castilian
cartulary prior to the twelfth century (Serrano
1910, Martínez Díez 1998,
Fernández Flórez 2014). It is a
cartulary of great formal quality and size, containing 373 texts distributed
in 99 folios, with an arrangement that, in general, favours clusters by
units owned by the monastery. The Order/Date Model allows this complexity to
be comprehensively visualised (Fig. 9), but
also the analysis of specific components to be shown (Fig. 10), and such complexity to be
deconstructed in a multi-scalar way, zooming in on specific sections (Fig. 11).
Figure 9: Order/Date Model of the Becerro Gótico de Cardeña
§ 26 The sequence, as visualized through the simple graph version
(Fig. 9) is really hard to interpret
because of information density. However, several patterns are immediately
apparent, and in general, it is easy to perceive that the bulk of documents
in the Cardeña collection were issued either in the mid-tenth or in the
second third of the eleventh centuries, with a much thinner representation
in between. This, however, is not much to say. The overall visual impression
is too chaotic to handle.
Figure 10: Order/Date Model of the Becerro Gótico de Cardeña symbolized by
subject. The number of identified subjects (based upon the rubrications
that accompany each entry) is 98. The resulting pattern is very hard to
interpret integrally, but the graph is suitable to orientate further
analysis (see Fig. 11)
§ 27 In the case of Cardeña, we can count on the additional aid of
document titles, since almost every piece included in the cartulary has one
that identifies the main theme by which they were classified. By adding that
information as our third variable, we can display the location of documents
with the same tag across the Cardeña cartulary. Fig.
10 yields a very eloquent –even if at first sight puzzling–
picture. There are evident clusters of documents with the same tag (sharing
the same symbol). Vertical or almost vertical lines linking adjacent dots
(as in the first two clusters at the top left) mean that the documents refer
to the same topic (or place) while their dates may vary notably. However, in
most cases there are also outliers (represented by long coloured horizontal
or diagonal lines). This is the case of the second cluster on the left
(brown colour), which is placed at the beginning of the book, but has one
outlier in the middle and two more at the end. Thus, Cardeña's apparently
unreadable pattern does have a meaning: the Cardeña cartulary makers might
have identified all pieces with a tag, but their sorting is anything but
watertight, which may be interpreted in a number of ways, including the
hypothetical re-working of a previous cartulary.
Figure 11: Order/Date Model of the Becerro Gótico de Cardeña showing one
specific subject against all others
§ 28 The efficiency of the Order-Date model in studying a complex
cartulary like Cardeña's can be further exploited by filtering the data to
represent single cases (or small groups thereof). Fig. 11 shows the general graph with the superimposition of
charters under the tag Burgos.
The image clearly
illustrates the aforesaid overall impression: pieces tend to cluster in one
specific section, but have outliers, especially at the final leaves of the
codex. A case-by-case analysis may confirm whether this apparent
inconsistency repeats itself throughout the collection or is limited to
specific tags or periods.
Comparing cartularies: The Order/Order Model
§ 29 The second method we propose is aimed to facilitate comparison
between two cartularies which contain at least a significant block of
documentation in common.[2] This mainly occurs when an institution produces more
than one cartulary throughout its history, a situation whose individual causes
and characteristics are subject to much variability. There are second
generation
cartularies which merely served to update and enhance
an older one that was considered to be obsolete; but new cartularies could also
be produced for use in specific operations or with a selective theme (using, for
example, only royal, or papal documents). When two cartularies exist that,
either totally or partially, include the same documentation, they can be
compared by asking a basic question: to what extent does the second cartulary
replicate the structure of the first? In this case, the null hypothesis to be
verified would be whether the second cartulary closely follows in the footsteps
of the first. To do so, we propose a method of graphical representation we call
Order/Order Model. The reason for this name is that it compares the order of the
documents in each of the codices on two axes.
§ 30 When building the Order/Order Model, the starting point is a
matrix organised on the basis of the documentary pieces copied in each of the
two cartularies to be compared. To that first column should be added two others
that record the position of each text in cartulary A and cartulary B. These are
sets of three values in which the document number identifies the individual
piece, while the other two (position in A, position in B) function as a pair of
coordinates for graphical representation. From this matrix a graph is generated
in which the x-axis represents the order of positions in cartulary A and the
y-axis represents the order of positions in cartulary B. When a document appears
in only one of the two cartularies, its position value in the other one will be
0, and therefore it will be represented on the relevant axis.
§ 31 How is an Order/Order Model read? The Model starts from a simple
principle: a cartulary is based on the structure of an older one, to the extent
that its documents are copied in the same order that they had in the older one.
The purpose is to assess to what extent there is a correlation in the order of
the documents in both cartularies. A correlation exists when an increase of one
unit in the position of the documents in cartulary A results in an equal
increase in cartulary B. When this happens, a straight line is generated whose
slope is 1 (45 degrees). Fig. 12 shows an
(improbable) ideal case of perfect correlation: the documents occupy exactly the
same position in A and B, and hence the second is an exact copy of the first (in
structure, not necessarily in the details of the texts).
Figure 12: Order/Order Model of a hypothetical case of total correlation between
two cartularies (cartulary B is a perfect copy of cartulary A)
§ 32 But in practice correlations are not perfect, and to interpret the
model it is important to realise that what matters are not the absolute
positions, but the relative increases in the order of the documents. In another
ideal, but less homogeneous example (Fig. 13), a
more complex sequence is shown: cartulary B omits the first four documents that
appear in A (shown as 0 on the x-axis), and then matches documents 5-16 in the
same order and position as in cartulary A, with the exception of no. 15, which
it omits (again as 0). Finally, the documents that occupy positions 17-20 in
cartulary A appear at the beginning in cartulary B.
Figure 13: Order/Order model of a hypothetical case of partial correlation between
two cartularies (cartulary B replicates cartulary A with several
modifications)
A high correlation case: the cartularies of Santa María de
Valpuesta
§ 33 As in the previous section, the Order/Order Model can be
applied to real cases. To demonstrate this the two cartularies known as
Becerro Gótico (Gót
) and
Becerro Galicano de Santa María de Valpuesta
(Gal
) (Fig. 14) will
be used. The older one (Gót) is a very heterogeneous factitious codex
composed between the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Ruiz Asencio, Ruiz Albi, and Herrero Jiménez
2010). The more modern one (Gal) is a very homogeneous codex,
dating from 1236, whose colophon explicitly states that it is a copy of the
Gótico, which it aimed to
renew
(Ruiz de
Loizaga 1995).
Figure 14: Simple Order/Order Model of the Cartularies of Valpuesta
§ 34 On a first approach the graph shows a very high correlation,
marked by the dominant diagonal line. The anomalies consist mostly of
documents contained in only one of the two and in some elements that appear
in a different position. The Gót documents omitted in Gal are represented as
0 on the x-axis. The only three cases of documents added to Gal that were
not in Gót are represented as 0 on the y-axis. The documents that are
located at different points in the two cartularies are shown as points that
do not follow the general trend of the straight line with slope 1. Without
going into specifics (a question remaining for another study), the
Order/Order Model clearly reflects how Gal closely follows the organisation
of Gót, as well as making it possible to visualise the points at which there
is no correlation, in order to focus the analysis on them by incorporating
other issues such as codicology or text content.
Two different projects: the cartularies of San Miguel de Villamayor de
Treviño
§ 35 The Premonstratensian monastery of Treviño has two cartularies
from very distant dates: the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries for the
first, to be referred to as Cartulary, and 1676 for
the second, to be referred to as Becerro.[3] From a total of 231 identified documents,
both codices have 122 (53%) in common, which is a sufficient overlap for
analysis. As in the case of Valpuesta, it is not
possible in this paper to make a detailed presentation of these codices, the
problems entailed in their study, and their vast formal richness and
content. The scope of this section will be limited to a comparison of their
respective structures by using the Order/Order Model. Treviño's case is
particularly eloquent in this regard because in the prologue of the 1676
Becerro there is a statement which reveals its
internal logic, and that logic is not the same as that in the medieval
Cartulary.[4] To probe this organising principle different symbols
have been used to represent document types. As these are different cartulary
projects, one would expect there to be a complete mismatch between the two
codices, but the Order/Order Model shows that this is not the case (Fig. 15).
Figure 15: Complex Order/Order Model of the Cartulary and the Becerro de San
Miguel de Treviño symbolized by content type
§ 36 Firstly, the above-mentioned 53% overlap is shown in the large
number of documents represented as 0 on the two axes: those on the
horizontal axis are the texts that are not included in the medieval Cartulary, but are included in the seventeenth-century
Becerro; those on the vertical axis are pieces
from the Cartulary that were not included in the
Becerro. Secondly, in the part where the two
coincide, five distinct blocks can be seen:
- By reading from left to right, there is indication that for documents
2 to 20 the Becerro followed its own plan: when
documents were copied that were already in the Cartulary, the result is a totally chaotic pattern in which
a clear trend cannot be established; when moving to the right, the
documents are sometimes higher and others lower on the y-axis.
Initially, and without excluding ulterior corrections, this image could
be interpreted as an indication that the author of the Becerro may have elaborated this part from the
documentation of the archive, or may have used the Cartulary, but in either case, ignored its organisation. It
is important to note here that if the whole of the work had been
independent, the entire sequence should be equally chaotic, but, as we
shall see, this is not the case.
- A different pattern can be seen between documents 20 to 40: all
documents that are copies of those in the Becerro appear in the same sequential order as in the
Cartulary, whether or not they are
consecutive. From left to right, each document is always displayed with
a higher value of y than before, although there are intermittent values.
This is extremely revealing, because it indicates that while in Block A,
the author of the Becerro was keen to present
his own plan, in this new Block (the chapter on Donations from
Benefactors) some pieces were extracted from the Cartulary that matched the desired typology (donations)
while the rest were disregarded, but always in a forward
progression.
- From documents numbers 40 to 75 there is a new change to the plan. Now
the Becerro copies later documentation,
obtained by the monastery after composing the Cartulary, which therefore had not been incorporated into
it. This is why they appear on the x-axis, with the exception of some
sporadic documents that were in the Cartulary,
of which the author of the Becerro probably was
not aware and therefore he included them on the basis of the original
records. Similarly, while the donation and confirmation types
predominate, three documents of different types are interspersed within
this block, perhaps because the author felt that this typology could be
homogenised, as is also the case for the sales and purchases.
- From document 75 onwards the Becerro follows
the Cartulary closely. It ignores some
documents, but the upward trend of the line leaves no room for doubt: it
is based on the Cartulary. In this case, when
using codes on the graph based on document types, the decisions made by
the author of the Becerro's can be better
understood. The sale and purchase and documents were not reorganised,
but taken directly from the Cartulary.
- The last block corresponds to later typologies (property rights and
censuses) that did not exist at the time when the Cartulary was composed and, therefore, appear on the
x-axis.
§ 37 An additional element to consider is
that the author of the Becerro is not interested in
certain types of documents, such as surveys, which occupy an important part
of the Cartulary, but are systematically excluded
from the Becerro, and so they appear on the y-axis
of the graph. Ultimately, the Order/Order Model shows that the author of the
1676 Becerro made a complex use of the medieval
Cartulary. He disregarded its content to
articulate his own discourse at the start but followed it closely when a
rearrangement of the original material was not necessary. The capability for
the Order/Order Model to combine the relative positions of the documents in
both codices with the symbols of their qualitative elements is revealed as a
powerful tool for visualising relationships that are otherwise difficult to
identify and to test.
Conclusions
§ 38 In this paper two graphical methods of analysing cartularies have
been presented. The first, the Order/Date Model, allows for the whole structure
of a cartulary to be visualised and analysed; in addition, it makes it possible
to focus on some sections of a cartulary, based on a two-dimensional
representation (order/date of the documents) to which other variables can be
added for a more sophisticated analysis. Some avenues have also been shown for
the interpretation of the results, based on the identification of two basic
patterns: a chaotic pattern, typical of cartularies that are not
organised chronologically, and a coherent pattern, which shows
either a chronological order, or a concentration of items within a limited time
range. The examples discussed illustrate both situations and the various
interpretations that may arise when they are identified in real cases, such as
those of Arlanza and Valpuesta.
§ 39 Another method has also been presented, the Order/Order Model, to
compare cartularies with sufficiently overlapping contents. As in the previous
case, it is based on a two-dimensional graph generated from the position values
of each document in the two cartularies being compared, to which a third
variable could be added for further analysis. This model indicates to what
extent one cartulary reproduces the order of a previous one, and facilitates the
visualisation of the points of alignment/misalignment. The examples used
illustrated how powerful the method can be. The cartularies of Valpuesta followed a very coherent pattern, while those of Treviño
showed a much richer and complex scenario where the different strategies used by
the author of the seventeenth Becerro (when handling
the medieval Cartulary) can be seen.
§ 40 The methods presented here are only two of several ways to
approach the study of cartularies by the generation of two-dimensional graphs.
Our group has experimented with other options to effectively probe specific
aspects of cartularies, such as iconography, codicological structure, format and
page layout, additions in different hand-writing, and the analysis of insertions
and alterations. These questions will form the subject matter of future papers.
One of the most promising areas is the ability to analyse cartularies whose
original codicological structure has been altered in order to generate
reconstruction hypotheses. Similarly, the integration of the data into a
Geographic Information System allows for the application of spatial analysis
techniques to explore the organisation of a cartulary by geographical area. All
these aspects are already being used and studied by our research group.
§ 41 Since the principles of the method rest on logical processes
independent from any particular system, in theory they could be implemented
manually. However, implementation on a computer system is essential to optimise
efforts and achieve a sufficiently sophisticated analysis. A database management
system associated with a graphics engine are the minimum tools necessary for
this to work successfully. However, our work is aimed at integrating these
procedures in a specific piece of software to analyse cartularies, which will
require not only more developed visualisation capabilities than those presented
here, but also routines for the automatic recognition of patterns that to date
have only been recognised visually. The same applies to the identification of
point discontinuities or changing trends that may seem obvious in the simpler
graphs, but are much less clear in large and complex codices. It must be
stressed that the potential ability to visualise the entire codex in a single
image is a much more powerful tool than one based on tables or text
descriptions.
§ 42 Finally, we would like to encourage the scientific community to
make their contributions to test and refine these methods, not only for research
purposes but also for teaching and public outreach purposes. It is our hope that
some of them, such as the Order/Date Model in the near future, may lead to
standards generally applicable to the study and edition of this type of
historical sources.
Notes
Acknowledgements
This study was conducted with the support of the
research projects of the Spanish National R & D Plan ref.
HAR2013-47889-C3-2-P, led by Julio Escalona and ref. HAR2012-34756, led by
Cristina Jular Pérez-Alfaro, respectively. Some preliminary aspects of this
research were presented at the international conference entitled Cartularies in Medieval Europe: Texts and Contexts,
held in Lisbon, Portugal, on 11-12 June, 2015 and the PraME Séminaire
(Séminaire Pratiques médiévales de l'écrit) at
the University of Namur, Belgium, on 3 December, 2015. The authors wish to
acknowledge the criticisms and comments received from those present at these
events. The draft was read by Francesca Tinti and we particularly appreciate
the suggestions received from her. In the early stages of research, we
benefitted from the comments and insights provided by Carmen Escalona
Noguero, whom we heartedly thank. Finally we want to acknowledge the very
helpful criticism received from Digital
Medievalist's two anonymous readers, who have helped us greatly in
defining the final version of the text. Any errors, however, are the sole
responsibility of the authors.
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