Copy book

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Copiarium monasterii Huysburg

A Kopialbuch also Copeibuch , Kopiar , cartulary or cartulary (of lat. Copiarium or cartularium ) is a source , the texts of documents from the Middle Ages and the early modern in transcripts contains.

Origin and purpose

A copy book was made by the recipient of the certificate in order to prevent damage (for example through frequent use) to the valuable originals. In addition, copy books should enable a quick and precise overview of legal titles and property titles , which simplified administrative work. Last but not least, a copy book was also used to prevent the loss of important property titles (e.g. through fire or the effects of war). That is why cartridges were often notarized.

As early as the early Middle Ages , monasteries made copies of their documents. This makes them an excellent source for early medieval private documents , which, apart from the archives of the St. Gallen monastery , which did not have any early medieval copial books, have hardly survived in the original.

In the late medieval and early modern administration of archives, copy books were a means of providing members of the own administration and any other users of the archive with an orderly overview of the existing holdings. The documents were arranged in the books, mostly according to their subject, entered with their text and often already provided with registers.

The form of the entry in a copy book is similar to the method used in the creation of regesta , in which only the legally relevant part of the document is recorded while other parts of the document, such as B. the entry protocol with the Arenga can be omitted.

Related genres of sources

Related to the copy books are the traditional books in which legal acts (mostly transfers of ownership) are recorded, which are often not otherwise written down.

Copy books as subsequently created collections of documents of individual holdings are something different from registers in which incoming or outgoing documents are entered (incoming and outgoing directories).

Source criticism

From the point of view of source criticism, copy books are often a substitute for copies that have meanwhile been lost (originals). On the one hand, they no longer permit an examination of external authenticity criteria, but on the other hand they are also subject to copying errors. Since they were produced for our own archive use, there is no need to assume or suspect an intention to forgery from the outset.

literature

  • Otto Meyer, Renate Klauser (eds.): Clavis mediaevalis. Small dictionary of medieval research . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1962, p. 139.

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