Spurium
A spurium (from the Latin spurius - illegitimate child) is a false (false) or falsified (false) certificate in the doctrine of documents .
The term is primarily used for medieval documents. Spuria are documents that have not been created and signed by the exhibitor or whose content has been subsequently changed by another writer. In some cases, the designation is also used for other literary texts whose origin from the named author is doubtful.
The interest in Spuria initially arose from a rather legal need. A document classified as fake was unsuitable as evidence. Today the document doctrine also deals with the motives of the forger and the purpose of forgery. This made the Spurium itself a source of knowledge. For this reason, Spuria are mostly issued together with the real certificates of an exhibitor.
Although forging or defying a document was threatened with draconian penalties as early as the Middle Ages, whole series were made by Spuria. Up to 15% of the royal documents are considered forgeries, among the Merovingians it is even said to be up to 50%. The background could have been, on the one hand, a concept of truth that differs from today's understanding and, associated with it, a different understanding of law. In the opinion of many forgers, it seems to have been legitimate to falsify a higher truth, for example by certifying an existing right or writing down a right that was regarded as ancestral or God-given.
Web links
References to falsifications, compiled by Horst Enzensberger (as of April 27, 2015)
Remarks
- ^ Carlrichard Brühl : The honorable forger. On the fakes of the monastery of S. Pietro in Ciel d'Oro in Pavia. In: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages . Vol. 35 (1979), pp. 209-218, here p. 209. ( digitized version )
- ^ Hans-Werner Goetz : Proseminar Geschichte: Mittelalter. 4th, updated and expanded edition. Ulmer, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-8252-4066-0 , p. 310.