cartulary 155important Latin classics. Most of the Latin classical litera-
ture and writings of the fathers of the late antique church
that have been preserved were in the form of manuscripts
from this era.
See alsoALCUIN OF YORK;CAPITULARY;CHARLES I
THEBALD;EINHARD;FULDA,ABBEY OF;JOHNSCOTTUS
ERIUGENA;LOUISI THEPIOUS;PALEOGRAPHY;PAUL THE
DEACON.
Further reading:John J. Contreni, “The Carolingian
Renaissance: Education and Literary Culture,” in The
New Cambridge Medieval History,Vol. 2, c. 700–c. 900,ed.
Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1995), 709–757; Peter Godman, ed. Poetry of
the Carolingian Renaissance(London: Duckworth, 1985);
Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written
Wo rd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
Rosamond McKitterick, ed., Carolingian Culture(Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Rosamond
McKitterick, The Frankish Kings and Culture in the Early
Middle Ages(Aldershot: Variorum, 1995); Walter Ull-
mann, The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of King-
ship(London: Methuen, 1969).
Carthusian order Founded by Saint BRUNO,the
Carthusian order was actually organized under Guigo I
(1083–1136), after the writing of the Customs of
Chartreuse.This amounted to a rule and was adopted by
several communities of hermits in the Alps and the Jura
Mountains near Grenoble in present-day France. In 1140,
the legislative and judicial authority of the new order was
put under the authority of the prior of the Grande
Chartreuse, the original foundation.
Such a solitary life, the testing for a fervent and true
vocation, and the small numbers that limited each Char-
terhouse to 12 monks and 16 lay brothers precluded
quick and easy expansion. At the beginning of the 13th
century, there were only 40 Charterhouses. They were sit-
uated in isolated, mountainous, forested, and deserted
places, perfect for the life of solitude, austerity, and con-
templation envisioned by Bruno.
Every Charterhouse has an inner domain whose
exclusive occupants were the monks, bound to remain
inside it. This was the monastery proper with the monks’
individual cells on a CLOISTERsurrounded by a church, a
refectory, and a chapter house. Within its precincts, the
monks were free of other concerns, cared for by the
brothers who did the work necessary to support the com-
munity. These brothers were religious and obliged to
maintain a spiritual life of their own.
EXPANSION AND WOMEN’S COMMUNITIESThe order finally grew rapidly in the 14th century. Char-
terhouses were founded all over western Europe. The
actual numbers of monks remained small, however, since
the rigorous life of solitude and prayer was not easy. The
first community for women was at Prébayon in
PROVENCE. The nuns’ day was also divided among prayer,
meditation, and work for some, with solitude kept as
strict as ever. Likewise, the lay sisters and oblates were
charged with material support of the order. The relations
of the women’s houses with the male houses posed prob-
lems, since the male Carthusians were reluctant to have
much contact with the nuns’ necessary spiritual direction.
The order has continued to exist to this day and has
boasted that it never needed a reform movement.
Further reading:Dennis D. Martin, ed., Carthusian
Spirituality: The Writings of Hugh of Balma and Guigo de
Ponte(New York: Paulist Press, 1997); Gordon Mursell,
The Theology of the Carthusian Life in the Writings of St.
Bruno and Guigo(Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und
Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1988); E. Margaret
Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England(New York:
Macmillan, 1930).cartography SeeGEOGRAPHY AND CARTOGRAPHY; MAPS.cartulary (chartulary)A cartulary was a collection of
copies of documents or CHARTERS, compiled in the form
of a volume or sometimes a roll on the initiative of one
of the principal actors in the documents. They were
intended to preserve a mass of documents and made
them more convenient to access. They were manuscript
books in which institutions or individuals registered the
transactions they were parties to and still valued.
Cartularies first appeared in the ninth and 10th cen-
turies and consisted mainly of transcriptions of important
documents involving donations or purchases. Their com-
pilation grew and was fed by a desire for detail and
exhaustiveness, along with the legitimacy conferred on
their evidence by a new and growing respect for the writ-
ten record. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the practice
spread to secular ecclesiastical institutions, the new
urban communes, and lay princes anxious about their
property and privileges.
New legal sensitivities and requirements that devel-
oped in the 13th century reckoned the cartulary, as a col-
lection of copies, lower in value than the original titles.
Display or deluxe cartularies were still used for authen-
tification of copies by notaries or scribes. They could,
under specific circumstances, still be deployed as evi-
dence in legal disputes.
See also ARCHIVES AND ARCHIVAL INSTITUTIONS;
FORGERY; NOTARIES AND THE NOTARIAL ART.
Further reading:Paolo Brezzi and Egmont Lee, eds.,
Sources of Social History; Private Acts of the Late Middle
Ages(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1984); Godfrey R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great
Britain: A Short Catalogue(London: Longmans, Green,
1958); John H. Pryor, Business Contracts of Medieval
Provence: Selected Notulae from the Cartulary of Giraud