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Dear Palaeographers, I'm reaching out to ask how you precisely measure aspects such as the speed of strokes, the grade of a graphic sample, and the extent of a scribe's graphic training in an objective manner. Asking for a friend.   Before the global disruption caused by COVID-19, I embarked... read more →

Muchos de vosotros estaréis al tanto de que, desde mediados de noviembre del año 2023 hasta la vuelta de las vacaciones académicas de navidad, a inicios de este año 2024, la facultad de Geografía e Historia de la Universidad de Salamanca ha dado cobijo a unos invitados muy especiales. Un... read more →

La primera semana del pasado mes de julio se celebró una nueva edición del International Medieval Congress de Leeds, donde tuve la ocasión de hablar sobre algunos de los avances en la investigación que estoy llevando a cabo en mi tesis doctoral, centrada en la relación entre la escritura y... read more →

Moreira, maço 2, doc. 13r (1033) On November 22, 1033, a donation was formalised whereby Vistregia donated Guterre Trutesendes and his wife Ermentro two villae in the area of Vila do Conde, north of the monastery of Moreira. The context for this document is not entirely clear, but the text... read more →

We already have talked about the importance of writing in the daily life of peasants, local communities and non-elite individuals in general. As you may have observed, the contexts in which it can be highlighted are very rich; some of them talk about conflicts, although we are yet to consider... read more →

Hi there! People+Writing together with Project Esmicro will be at the IMC Leeds 2023 next week. You'll find us in the following sessions: See you there 🙂

In recent years, there has been a general reassessment of the figure of the early medieval priest in Europe. The studies published recently are numerous and research teams are devoted entirely to their study. In our previous two posts we discussed various cases, because northwestern Iberia was not an exception. The... read more →

If you had no prior contact with local churches and just read our previous post, you may have realised what the problem in dealing with priests is. But, let me tell you, it is even worse (!) for, besides having priests, we also have monks, and they also come in a... read more →

Over the last few months we have been polishing up the new interdisciplinary methodology we have designed for achieving the main objectives set for the project, and have begun working on its second phase: the holistic interpretation of all the data collected. As a result of working together with Dani and Fran, merging history,... read more →

Mi nombre es Joan Beltran, nací en Pollença (Mallorca) en 1999. Estudié el grado de Historia en la Universitat de València, aunque realicé un curso académico en la University of Leicester dentro del programa Erasmus+. Fue allí, en las clases de la profesora Joanna E. Story, donde descubrí el apasionante campo de... read more →

Mi nombre es Pablo de la Pinta y nací en Madrid hace 26 años, pero desde que era muy pequeño me he criado y vivido en la capital berciana de Ponferrada, por lo que considero la región de El Bierzo como mi verdadero hogar. Llevó más de siete años viviendo en Salamanca,... read more →

Mi nombre es Alejandro Pombo (Pontevedra, 1998). Al comenzar la carrera en Historia en la Universidad de Salamanca me atrajo muy pronto la sociedad medieval. Esta atracción fue creciendo cuanto más iba ampliando los estudios, y cuando entré en contacto por primera vez con la paleografía descubrí todo un mundo. Poder leer y apreciar lo... read more →

In some of our latest posts, we visited the valley of the Chamoso river – in the current province of Lugo –. We were taken aback by the experiences that have survived in the written record. They have a lot to tell us, from trials full of nuances to the complex strategies... read more →

This month’s diploma does not present one, but two documents. Copied in 1093 by the same scribe, their dates suggest a separation of nearly a year between them. In the earliest, and longest, of them (let’s call it A for the sake of clarity) Gundesindo Cendóniz alongside his five siblings (Daniel, Vimara, Arias,... read more →

In our last post we worked with a charter that belongs to a rural area in the outskirts of the city of Lugo, Chamoso. As we mentioned when introducing this series of posts, from the corpus of the project we grouped private, lay, documents linked to the same area so we can ponder on the... read more →

This month we have selected what could be our first, proper peasant document in this series of posts. There are no counts, no judges, no ‘boni homines’ (well, so far as we can tell). In fact, there is not even money involved. This month’s charter records a sale between two groups of individuals exchanging... read more →

The University of Salamanca invites application for two 3-years PhD Students positions to obtain a PhD degree in Medieval History, starting in August 2022. The positions are part of the project “PEOPLEANDWRITING: The Secret Life of Writing: People, Script and Ideas in the Iberian Peninsula” under the European Union’s Horizon... read more →

This month we are back in Chamoso to share with you another very interesting diploma from those selected for the project. This one informs us about how relatives interacted, how properties were transferred from one generation to the next, about the relations between peasants and those higher up in society and about the territorial identity of Chamoso. And all that in less... read more →

This month we want to share with you one of the charters selected for the project, and (spoiler alert!) it happens to be quite an entertaining one. Keep reading! Once we settled the matter of what we understand as a lay (peasant) charter and, thus, began to select charters of interest to the... read more →

In our last post we shared the basics behind the project People+Writing, the main aim and the big question we would like to answer are determined to answer (big expectations!): what did writing mean for lay communities and how did it model their daily life? In that post, Fran wrote about the corpus of lay documents we... read more →

Welcome to People+Writing! This is the ERC-funded project masterminded by Ainoa Castro (PI) and undertaken with the support of Fran Álvarez (Paleography and Diplomatics) and Daniel Justo (Social History). We are based at the 16th-century college housing the Faculty of Geography and History at the Universidad de Salamanca. In this blog we will be sharing monthly snippets of the research we are conducting... read more →

In the last #ERCproject update, I wrote about the project’s first output: a comprehensive database of medieval Galician charters. I discussed from where the idea to do it came from, how it began, is being developed, and the information you will eventually find on it once it goes open. I also... read more →

In the last #ERCproject update, I wrote about the project’s first output: a comprehensive database of medieval Galician charters. I discussed from where the idea to do it came from, how it began, developed, and the information you will eventually find on it once it goes open. I also shared some... read more →

This post is dedicated to all of those who read the last one and wanted to know more. Thank you for your support. In the last #ERCproject update, I wrote about the project’s first output: a comprehensive database of medieval Galician charters. I discussed from where the idea to do it came... read more →

This post is dedicated to all of those who read the last one and wanted to know more. Thank you for your support. In the last #ERCproject update, I wrote about the project’s first output: a comprehensive database of medieval Galician charters. I discussed from where the idea to do it... read more →

This post is dedicated to all of those who read the last one and wanted to know more. Thank you for your support. In the last #ERCproject update, I wrote about the project’s first output: a comprehensive database of medieval Galician charters. I discussed from where the idea to do it... read more →

Have you ever wondered how many medieval documents (between 900 and 1200) from Galicia have been preserved? Wonder no more. We have the answer. In one of the last #ERCproject updates, I wrote about how the global pandemic (still feels odd, right?) had affected the project. I mentioned that, since we... read more →