ABSTRACT
A review of the new MGH edition of the diplomas of the Merovingian kings, with an eye to the implications of the edition on current problems of charter study. Among the topics considered are a background to the old Pertz edition; classifications of royal documents and their relation to the corpus of the new edition; the role of St-Denis in defining the corpus; the alleged effect of late sixth-century civil wars on public administration; registration before the curia (allegatio, insinuatio); place of the charters in administrative practice; ordering the charters; spurious and genuine charters and specimens in-between; a tentative forgery timeline; summaries, ‘fictitious trial’ and the placita; immunity, taxation and a letter of Gregory the Great (IX 216); and handling the deperdita.
