The Legal Document in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: Visuality, Materiality, and Performance.

Organized by Carsten Jahnke, SAXO-Institute, University of Copenhagen and Nino Zchomelidse,
Department of History of Art, Johns Hopkins University/SAXO-Institute, University of Copenhagen.

Thursday, May 15, 2025, Room: 23.0.50 (Building 23, Ground Floor, Room 50)

9:30 – 9:40 am Welcome: Casper Sylvest, Chair, SAXO-Institute, University of Copenhagen
9:40 – 10:00 am Introduction – Nino Zchomelidse

Panel 1: Sign – Image – Seal
Chair: Carsten Jahnke

10:00 – 10:30 am Expanding Documentary Discourse for Art History: The Interpictoriality of Charters
Robert A. Maxwell (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University)

10:30 – 11:00 am Aesthetics as a symbolic system of rule - Privilegios rodados in Castile-León
Susanne Wittekind (Department of History of Art, University of Cologne)

11:00 – 11: 30 am COFFEE

11:30 – 12:00 noon The Significance of Royal and Imperial Monograms in Thirteenth-Century Diplomas
of the Holy Roman Empire
Julian Ecker (Department of History, University of Vienna)

12:00 – 12:30 pm Through Thick and Thin: Authenticating Signatures in Medieval Legal Documents from the Islamic East (13th-14th Centuries)
Zahir Bhalloo (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg)

12:30 – 2:00 pm LUNCH

2:00 – 2:30 pm Crystal clear, rhetoric of power in the Carolingian world: the example of royal seals
in rock crystal
Marie-Adélaïde Nielen (Archives Nationales de France)

2:30 – 3:00 pm Veiled Authority: The Materiality and Performative Role of Medieval Seal Bags in
Legal Communication
Corinne Mühlemann (Department of History of Art, University of Bern)

3:00 – 3:30 pm kUk: kunst–URKUNDE–kanzlei / art–CHARTER-chancery.
Martin Roland (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna)

3:30 – 4:00 pm COFFEE

4:00 – 5:30 pm KEYNOTE LECTURE: Charting the living in medieval charters (Northwestern
Europe, 800-1230)
Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak (Department of History, New York University)

Snack/ Apéro

Friday, May 16, 2025

9:30 am – 12:30 pm: Room: 23.0.50 (Building 23, Ground Floor, Room 50)

Panel 2: Copies and Cartularies
Chair: Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, Department of Politics and Society, Aalborg University

9:30 – 10:00 am Emulating royal diplomata: the praxis of copying documents in the Carolingian era
Shigeto Kikuchi (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo)

10:00 – 10:30 am Materiality and Performance in a Byzantine monastic cartulary: The Monastery of
Mount Lembos near Smyrna and its Archive
Alexander Beihammer (Department of History, Notre Dame University)

10:30 – 11:00 am Visual and Visible in Medieval Documents
Jessica Berenbeim (Faculty of English, University of Cambridge)

11:00 – 11:30 am COFFEE

Panel 3: Performance
Chair: Per Seesko-Tønnesen, Rigsarkivet

11:30 – 12:00 noon The charters of Queen Philippa
Sebastian Møller Bak (Diplomatarium Danicum, The Danish Language and
Literature Society)

12:00 – 12:30 pm Two illuminated indulgence letters from Slovenia: art historical commentary and
some thoughts on their performance
Nataša Kavčič (Department of Art History, University of Ljubljana)

12:30 – 2:00 pm LUNCH

2:30 pm – 5 pm: Room 9A.3.01 (Building 9A, Third Floor Floor, Room 01)

Panel 4: Reception and Communication
Chair: Nino Zchomelidse

Poster Presentation: Power and Diplomacy: The Illuminated Charter in France 1160–ca. 1420
Gabriele Bartz (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna)

2:00 – 2:30 pm The charter as medium from Carolingian times to the later Middle Ages
Mark Mersiowsky (Department of History, University of Stuttgart)

2:30 – 3:00 pm The Art of Preserving Legal Evidence: Early Modern Drawings of Medieval Sealed
Charters for the Reichskammergericht
Markus Späth (Department of History of Art, University of Gießen)

3:00 – 3:30 pm COFFEE

3:30 – 4:00 pm Original Documents and Performance between Cultures. The Mongolian Charters to the King of France
Ellen Widder (Department of History, University of Tübingen)

4:00 CONCLUSION with Poster Presentation: How to Discover a Treasure – Systematic
presentation of illuminated charters as a research tool
Martin Roland (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna)