Diplomatics
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.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Guyotjeannin, O., Pycke, J., & Tock, B.-M. (1993). Diplomatique medievale (L'Atelier du medieviste, 2). Brepols. · ISBN 9782503503127
- Howell, M., & Prevenier, W. (2001). From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. Cornell University Press. · ISBN 9780801485602
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.