Σύγκριση μεθόδων

	Diplomatics	Palaeographic Dating
Πεδίο	Historiography	Historiography
Οικογένεια	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Έτος προέλευσης	1681	1708
Δημιουργός	Jean Mabillon (De re diplomatica)	Bernard de Montfaucon (Palaeographia Graeca)
Τύπος	qualitative formal-analytic method	qualitative comparative method
Θεμελιώδης πηγή	Guyotjeannin, O., Pycke, J., & Tock, B.-M. (1993). Diplomatique medievale (L'Atelier du medieviste, 2). Brepols. ISBN: 9782503503127	Guyotjeannin, O., Pycke, J., & Tock, B.-M. (1993). Diplomatique medievale (L'Atelier du medieviste, 2). Brepols. ISBN: 9782503503127
Εναλλακτικές ονομασίες	Diplomatic, Diplomatique, Urkundenlehre, Charter Criticism	Palaeography, Paleographic Analysis, Script Dating, Hand Analysis
Συναφείς	4	4
Σύνοψη	Diplomatics is the science that studies the form, structure, and genesis of documents, above all the solemn legal instruments of the Middle Ages such as charters, diplomas, and acts. Founded as a discipline by the Benedictine scholar Jean Mabillon, whose De re diplomatica (1681) answered Jesuit doubts about the authenticity of Merovingian charters, it provides a rigorous procedure for deciding whether a document is genuine and for dating and localizing it. The method rests on the observation that documents produced by a given chancery follow highly regular conventions: a fixed sequence of parts, recurring verbal formulae, standard modes of validation by seal and subscription. By dissecting a document into its constituent elements and comparing each against attested norms, the diplomatist detects forgeries, interpolations, and anachronisms, and pins a document to a place and time. Diplomatics is thus the most formalized branch of external source criticism.	Palaeography is the study of historical handwriting, and palaeographic dating is its application to the problem of assigning a manuscript to a time and place by the character of its script alone. Developed as a discipline by the Maurist scholar Bernard de Montfaucon, who coined the term in his Palaeographia Graeca (1708), and complemented for Latin by the work that grew out of Mabillon's diplomatics, palaeography rests on the fact that scripts evolved continuously and regionally. Letter forms, the system of abbreviations, ligatures, the angle and weight of strokes, and the overall layout of the page all changed over time and differed between scribal centers. A trained palaeographer reads these features as a stylistic signature, comparing an undated hand against securely dated specimens to bracket its probable date and origin. Because so many medieval and ancient sources bear no date, palaeographic dating is an indispensable instrument of external source criticism.