"Any presentation of a theme of Mainz's older history, including the history of the numerous monasteries and foundations of the city, of the archbishops and their ecclesiastical and secular activities and politics, is a difficult undertaking, if it is to be earnestly worked up from the sources. How troublesome it is, to have to work with such widely-scattered materials!" --Ludwig Falck, venerable historian of Mainz
On discovering the above complaint in one of Falck's many articles, I copied it out instantly. I may yet copy it out longhand and carry it from workspace to workspace as a sort of talisman, encouraging me with the reminder that challenges I face are not necessarily the result of a lack of experience or intelligent judgment on my part. For indeed, Mainz's archival holdings are unusually scattered and depleted, despite the city's well-attested medieval prosperity. (An advantage to this is that, while Mainz was super-important in the Middle Ages, it hasn't been studied as much as most cities of comparable or even inferior size and influence. This makes a great line when pitching my project to funding committees.) Many of the depletions I knew about before coming here; some came as a surprise. Early on, I protested. "But I did consult printed articles on the archives, and the reference work with lists of all your holdings!" I lamented to one of the diocesan archivists. "That's as may be," he answered, "but unfortunately, you have made an entirely false picture to yourself of what is here." Over the course of subsequent months, I have become more resigned… but this resignation (with which I imagine many, if not most medievalists are familiar) is anything but passive. Rather, I am finding that it requires both tenacity and scholarly imagination.
"Scholarly imagination" admittedly sounds like a euphemism for making things up. I like to think of it, though, as the capacity for seeing all the documents, but seeing them slant, as it were; a persistent creativity in arranging and rearranging all relevant data. I'm also trying to keep an open mind as to what constitutes relevant data. A great deal of what I've been reading and transcribing over the past few weeks has nothing directly to do with hospitals… but it does tell me about the preoccupations of the ecclesiastical courts which were responsible for presiding over the hospitals' legal proceedings. I now have concrete evidence, for instance, that synodal and conciliar legislation was repeatedly cited in the judgments of the court. That's still far from a direct link between that legislation and the fate of my hospitals, but at least I know that these prescriptive texts were known in the public fora of Mainz, and used to support practical decisions.
In addition to practicing the art of supported speculation and the science of reading heavily-abbreviated Latin, it appears that my study of Mainz will also require more travel than my weekly jaunts to Darmstadt, where many records are housed. In addition to this conveniently proximate city and neighboring Wiesbaden, Mainz's medieval records have ended up in Würzburg, which I knew, but also in Marburg, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Koblenz, Vienna… and, as Falck sums it up, "many other state, communal, ecclesiastical and private archives in and outside Germany." Not all of these records, of course, will be relevant to my study. But finding out which of them are relevant may involve further adventures. Officially, there's nothing in Vienna that I need, but I was recently told by a diocesan archivist (not the pessimist of the first paragraph) that I should go look, because of the way that archiepiscopal records had been stored in a cellar in 1802. Who knew!
So now, dear readers, you know a bit more about all the excitement (ha) involving Really Old Manuscripts which occupies most of my time. The city is decorated for Advent, though, so there will be another post with pictures in the near future.
"Scholarly imagination" admittedly sounds like a euphemism for making things up. I like to think of it, though, as the capacity for seeing all the documents, but seeing them slant, as it were; a persistent creativity in arranging and rearranging all relevant data. I'm also trying to keep an open mind as to what constitutes relevant data. A great deal of what I've been reading and transcribing over the past few weeks has nothing directly to do with hospitals… but it does tell me about the preoccupations of the ecclesiastical courts which were responsible for presiding over the hospitals' legal proceedings. I now have concrete evidence, for instance, that synodal and conciliar legislation was repeatedly cited in the judgments of the court. That's still far from a direct link between that legislation and the fate of my hospitals, but at least I know that these prescriptive texts were known in the public fora of Mainz, and used to support practical decisions.
In addition to practicing the art of supported speculation and the science of reading heavily-abbreviated Latin, it appears that my study of Mainz will also require more travel than my weekly jaunts to Darmstadt, where many records are housed. In addition to this conveniently proximate city and neighboring Wiesbaden, Mainz's medieval records have ended up in Würzburg, which I knew, but also in Marburg, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Koblenz, Vienna… and, as Falck sums it up, "many other state, communal, ecclesiastical and private archives in and outside Germany." Not all of these records, of course, will be relevant to my study. But finding out which of them are relevant may involve further adventures. Officially, there's nothing in Vienna that I need, but I was recently told by a diocesan archivist (not the pessimist of the first paragraph) that I should go look, because of the way that archiepiscopal records had been stored in a cellar in 1802. Who knew!
So now, dear readers, you know a bit more about all the excitement (ha) involving Really Old Manuscripts which occupies most of my time. The city is decorated for Advent, though, so there will be another post with pictures in the near future.
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