Periodic Reporting for period 4 - PeopleAndWriting (The Secret Life of Writing: People, Script and Ideas in the Iberian Peninsula (c. 900-1200))
Reporting period: 2024-08-01 to 2025-07-31
PeopleAndWriting set out to uncover how ordinary people in rural north-western Iberia (c. 900–1200) engaged with the written word: who wrote documents, who signed them, who kept them, and why this mattered. Writing is more than administration; it helps build trust, preserve memory, and shape identities. Understanding its everyday use among non-elites enriches our view of medieval society and opens up a large part of Europe’s cultural heritage to scholars, teachers, and the wider public.
We aimed to (1) assemble and organise the surviving sources; (2) develop a clear, people-centred method that combines History, Palaeography, and Diplomatic; and (3) analyse the roles of scribes, signers, and readers to show how writing practices shaped communities.
We aimed to (1) assemble and organise the surviving sources; (2) develop a clear, people-centred method that combines History, Palaeography, and Diplomatic; and (3) analyse the roles of scribes, signers, and readers to show how writing practices shaped communities.
We compiled and reviewed over 7,500 manuscript testimonies (charters, diplomatic codices and fragments). Two major, open resources were delivered via the project website: (1) a full catalogue of medieval sources for Galicia and (2) a detailed list of private-lay documents for Entre-Minho-e-Douro (northern Portugal). No complete catalogue existed previously for either territory.
We defined a new integrated method (History + Palaeography + Diplomatics) that allows deeper, more comparable analysis of charter writing, especially for the early centuries (900s–1000s). Applying this method led to our key finding: to our knowledge, the first largely peasant corpus, by and for lay rural communities, preserved for the early-central Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula. This supports a richer picture of pragmatic literacy, showing that reading and writing among rural priests and laypeople were more widespread and socially meaningful than previously assumed.
Dissemination and knowledge transfer were central throughout: almost thirty peer-reviewed publications and edited volumes; more than fifty international seminars, workshops and conferences; and open resources for education and outreach. Public engagement included blog posts, the educational videogame Scribe of Ages, and activities such as: I Taller de Caligrafía Medieval: iniciación a la escritura visigótica redonda (2022), II Taller de Caligrafía Medieval: iniciación a la escritura carolina (2024), Carolingian Calligraphy workshop (Durham, 2025), the exhibition Adulterio, robo, siervos y pagos en especie: la vida secreta de la escritura… (Nov 2023-Jan 2024), Reflejos del Libro Medieval. Iluminación y Caligrafía en el siglo XXI (May 2025), open talks (e.g. European Researchers’ Night), and media (radio, press and TV).
We defined a new integrated method (History + Palaeography + Diplomatics) that allows deeper, more comparable analysis of charter writing, especially for the early centuries (900s–1000s). Applying this method led to our key finding: to our knowledge, the first largely peasant corpus, by and for lay rural communities, preserved for the early-central Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula. This supports a richer picture of pragmatic literacy, showing that reading and writing among rural priests and laypeople were more widespread and socially meaningful than previously assumed.
Dissemination and knowledge transfer were central throughout: almost thirty peer-reviewed publications and edited volumes; more than fifty international seminars, workshops and conferences; and open resources for education and outreach. Public engagement included blog posts, the educational videogame Scribe of Ages, and activities such as: I Taller de Caligrafía Medieval: iniciación a la escritura visigótica redonda (2022), II Taller de Caligrafía Medieval: iniciación a la escritura carolina (2024), Carolingian Calligraphy workshop (Durham, 2025), the exhibition Adulterio, robo, siervos y pagos en especie: la vida secreta de la escritura… (Nov 2023-Jan 2024), Reflejos del Libro Medieval. Iluminación y Caligrafía en el siglo XXI (May 2025), open talks (e.g. European Researchers’ Night), and media (radio, press and TV).
The project went beyond the state of the art by shifting focus from texts to people, creating the first comprehensive online catalogue for Galicia, introducing a robust, replicable method, and evidencing pragmatic literacy in rural settings. Its legacy is a set of open resources, methods and tools, including geospatial layers (GIS) that map the geography of writing, that will continue to support research, teaching and public engagement.