Giving and Taking the Oath
Buchholzer, Laurence
Giving and Taking the Oath - 2014.
73
Among the registers that Medieval German towns have passed down to us, books of oaths (Eidbücher) – gathering the oaths taken by officials, councillors, burghers, or town employees – have been neglected by scientific publications. They have been used for the normative information that they contain, but have seldom been studied as a series, because they have the unfortunate reputation of being stereotypical and purely formal materials. Nevertheless, town chancelleries often felt it necessary to produce several successive Eidbücher. Moreover, on a regional level, this type of book was widespread. Thus, this article endeavours to compare, over time (15th to early 16th centuries) and in various places (towns in the Upper Rhine), oaths collected for use by town secretaries, their substitutes, or clerks. These employees proved to be the people most involved in town oaths, overseeing oath-taking ceremonies and maintaining the oaths that were sworn. While these texts cover similar themes in their oaths, a systematic comparison of the texts reveals an infinite variety of phrasing. Such phrasing provides some clues on the circulation of men and administrative knowledge from one town to the next. Lastly, the generalised use of oaths raises the question of whether or not the commitments made were enforceable. The sometimes conflicting relations between the Council and town secretaries reveal why oaths were considered effective in the eyes of the main protagonists of the late Middle Ages.
Giving and Taking the Oath - 2014.
73
Among the registers that Medieval German towns have passed down to us, books of oaths (Eidbücher) – gathering the oaths taken by officials, councillors, burghers, or town employees – have been neglected by scientific publications. They have been used for the normative information that they contain, but have seldom been studied as a series, because they have the unfortunate reputation of being stereotypical and purely formal materials. Nevertheless, town chancelleries often felt it necessary to produce several successive Eidbücher. Moreover, on a regional level, this type of book was widespread. Thus, this article endeavours to compare, over time (15th to early 16th centuries) and in various places (towns in the Upper Rhine), oaths collected for use by town secretaries, their substitutes, or clerks. These employees proved to be the people most involved in town oaths, overseeing oath-taking ceremonies and maintaining the oaths that were sworn. While these texts cover similar themes in their oaths, a systematic comparison of the texts reveals an infinite variety of phrasing. Such phrasing provides some clues on the circulation of men and administrative knowledge from one town to the next. Lastly, the generalised use of oaths raises the question of whether or not the commitments made were enforceable. The sometimes conflicting relations between the Council and town secretaries reveal why oaths were considered effective in the eyes of the main protagonists of the late Middle Ages.
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