Livro preto: Cartulário da Sé de Coimbra. Edição crítica, texto integral (review)

Livro preto: Cartulário da Sé de Coimbra. Edição crítica, texto integral. General editors Manuel Augusto Rodrigues and Cónego Avelino de Jesus da Costa. (Coimbra: Arquivo da Universidade de Coimbra. 1999. Pp. ccl, 1505.)

Coimbra was reconquered from the Muslim cosmos in 715, lost again in 987, definitively recovered by Castile in 1064, and for a time served as capital of Portugal. Now the cartulary of its cathedral is elaborately presented in a meticulous but elephantine volume. (Do not attempt to lift this book if you suffer from back problems.) Sponsored by nine institutions, including the University of Coimbra, the Portuguese National Assembly, and state television, and authored by sixteen collaborating scholars, the volume boasts an historical introduction in 127 pages; various appendices; "subsidiaries" (codicology, philology); maps plain, colored, and foldout; a bibliography of 166 pages; many illustrations; a rearrangement of the abstracts by chronology; tables; graphs; a thirty-page calendar; and several exhaustive indices.

The heart of the volume is 663 Latin charters transcribed in some 900 large, glossy pages; supportive materials add some 1,700 pages. Each charter is prefaced by a brief abstract in Portuguese. The Latin, of course, holds medieval surprises. The early centuries are represented understandably by only three documents, the 900's by twenty-four documents, the 1000's by some two hundred, and the 1100's by double that. The 1200's (to 1217) have only four documents, while undated pieces total twenty-one. Thus the bulk of the documentation in this thirteenth-century cartulary derives from the eleventh and especially the twelfth centuries. The Carolingian script is illustrated in eight color plates. The whole production is a critical triumph, sumptuous if minutely overwrought.

Such collections are worth studying as textual objects in themselves and also as a treasure house of random secular and religious details, waiting to be exploited. A rapid survey reveals a plethora of wills, many property transfers, litigation, emancipations, privileges, papal bulls, royal affairs of state, art objects, rentals, councils (including the best and earliest acts of the 1055 Coyanza council), resettlements, agreements, husband and wife teams, notaries, teachers, officials, prelates, artisans, castles, monasteries, exorcists (at least eight), patterns of piety, serfs, librarians, "Saracens," Jews, a trove of toponyms and anthroponyms, a painter, and a cowboy (vaqueiro). This abundance will afford generations of medievalists much instruction and profit. Weighty in every sense, the Livro preto takes its place as a standard resource for historians, Latinists, art students, and of course scholars of Portugal's origins.

Robert I. Burns, S.J.
University of California at Los Angeles

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