Two Medieval Occitan Toll Registers from Tarascon by William D. Paden (review)

In the past decade and a half, the American Occitanist William D. Paden has produced a series of publications that have put previously unpublished medieval texts contained in the manuscript collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago in the hands of scholars around the world. He published the first of these critical editions in 2003, an Occitan notarial roll from Asprières, followed by two fragments of an Old French translation of the Apocalypse in 2006, and, now, a medieval toll register from Tarascon, acquired jointly by Northwestern University and the Newberry Library. Along with his recent editions of texts written in Latin ("Bernart Amoros" and Guillelmus) and studies of ritual texts ("Before the Troubadours" and "La Poésie") and prayers ("An Occitan Prayer"), Paden's publication of these manuscripts housed at the Newberry is part of a more general project of publication that seeks to establish a broader frame of reference for understanding the use of Occitan in the Middle Ages and to further contextualize troubadour poetic language as actively participating in the historical, intellectual, social, and cultural reality of the time, rather than being apart from it.

Toll registers served as a guide for toll keepers in medieval cities, a record of tolls to charge, generally on goods and materials. As indicated by its title, Two Medieval Occitan Toll Registers from Tarascon is an edition of two closely connected though distinct vernacular toll registers from Tarascon. The first, ms. T, is contained on ff. 3–17 of the Livre Rouge housed in the Archives municipales of Tarascon (shelf number AA9) and was last edited in 1890 by Édouard Bondurand. The second, ms. N, was acquired by the Newberry Library and Northwestern University in 2011 (ms. 220) and is edited here for the first time. Paul Meyer had established that ms. T was copied down in 1438; Paden and Paul Saenger (Curator Emeritus of Rare Books at the Newberry) determine that ms. N is from the same period. After a breath-taking review of the registers' historical context and linguistic features, Paden argues that the date of composition of T was most likely in the early fourteenth century; N may have been composed either in the late fourteenth century or in the early fifteenth century.

Having firmly established that the two registers may have been composed as much as a century apart from one another, Paden argues that—far from being static, nearly-identical manuscript witnesses of toll registers from Tarascon—these texts represent a vibrant tradition whose authority was constantly adapting itself to the changing circumstances of the time. He is able to demonstrate this thesis through his review of a wealth of Latin documents (such as the investigations of revenues drawn up for Charles I of Anjou in 1252 and those made for Charles II in 1298) that provide a context for interpreting changes from register to register. Paden analyzes well how the procedures of the tollhouse change from place to place (there were multiple toll-houses in Tarascon) and register to register, though the evolution of the collection of tolls in Tarascon is made perhaps clearest in Appendix 5 of the volume, which numerically demonstrates this evolution across nine manuscripts and five toll-houses.

Through a study of the manuscript evidence from the investigations of 1252 all the way to ms. N in the early fifteenth century, Paden is able to draw a number of striking conclusions that have escaped past scholars who were "lulled… into a belief" (46) that these registers were all identical, when, in fact, they show both an awareness of the passage of time and a recognition of change (40). His careful analysis of the manuscript history of the toll registers allows him to advance a number of arguments that challenge long-standing assumptions about the history of Tarascon and of the region. Perhaps the most striking of these corrections is his use of these documents to prove the existence of...