Średniowieczny dokument książęcy jako medium społecznej komunikacji na peryferiach łacińskiej Europy
Medieval Ducal Charters as a Means of Social Communication on the Peripheries of Latin Europe

Summary/Abstract: In his book published in 2019, Sébastien Rossignol has inquired into medieval ducal charters issued in Silesia, Western Pomerania and Eastern Pomerania as a means of communication between the rulers and the ruled in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The purpose of this discussion article is to assess the scholarly value of Rossignol’s publication and to engage in a discussion of his proposed research strategy. The very subject of the reviewed book is noteworthy, as it goes beyond the issues concerning the functioning of ducal chanceries and the charters they produced that researchers have taken up so far. Rossignol proposes to look at medieval charters issued by the Silesian and Pomeranian dukes in the context of how they functioned in the system of communication in medieval society. Thus, the subsequent chapters of his book analyse how the intitulation and the preamble influenced the recipients of the charter, as well as the visual rhetoric of medieval charters issued by the dukes of Silesia, Western and Eastern Pomerania. It is also worth noting that the comparative approach used by the author to present the analysed issues required him to select territories at a similar level of social, economic and political development and with a similar state of research on medieval diplomatics. However, this selection raises a number of questions due to the inclusion of Eastern Pomerania, which stands apart from the other two regions in this context, and due to the insufficient state of research on the visual rhetoric of charters issued in Silesia and Pomerania during the medieval period.

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