Diplomatics (in American English, and in most anglophone countries), or Diplomatic (in British English), is the study that revolves around documentation. It is a study that focuses on the analysis of document creation, its inner constitutions and form, the means of transmitting information, and the relationship documented facts have with their creator. In diplomatic terms, a Document is information that is transmitted by the rules of representation, themselves the evidences of the intention of conveying information. [1]
The discipline of Diplomatics originally evolved as a tool for studying the charters and diplomas issued by royal and papal chanceries. Over time, however, it was appreciated that many of the same underlying principles could be applied to other types of official document and legal instrument; to non-official documents such as private letters; and, most recently, to the metadata of electronic records.
Diplomatics is an auxiliary science of history.
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Webster's Dictionary (1828) defines diplomatics as the "science of diplomas, or of ancient writings, literary and public documents, letters, decrees, charters, codicils, etc., which has for its object to decipher old writings, to ascertain their authenticity, their date, signatures, etc." [2] More recently, Peter Beal has defined the discipline as "the science or study of documents and records, including their forms, language, script and meaning. It involves knowledge of such matters as the established wording and procedures of particular kinds of document, the deciphering of writing, and document analysis and authentication."[3]
Despite the verbal similarity, this science has nothing to do with diplomacy. Both names are derived, by separate linguistic development, from the word "diploma" which originally refers to a folded piece of writing material - and thus, both to the materials studied by Diplomatics and to accreditation papers carried by diplomats. The word diplomatics was effectively coined by the Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon, who in 1681 published his six volume treatise De re diplomatica (Latin: roughly, "The Study of Documents"). From there, the word entered the French language as diplomatique, and then English as diplomatic or diplomatics.
Diplomatics has been often confused with palaeography, but the two studies are really quite different.[4] Properly speaking, diplomatics is concerned only with analysing the linguistic elements of a document. It is, however, closely associated with several parallel disciplines, including palaeography, sigillography, codicology, and provenance studies, all of which are concerned with a document's physical characteristics and history, and which will often be carried out in conjunction with a diplomatic analysis. The term diplomatics is therefore sometimes used in a slightly wider sense, to encompass some of these other areas (as it was in Mabillon's original work, and as is implied in the definitions by Webster and Beal quoted above).
Christopher Brooke, a distinguished teacher of diplomatics, referred to the reputation of the discipline in 1970 as that of "a formidable and dismal science ... a kind of game played by a few scholars, most of them medievalists, harmless so long as it does not dominate or obscure historical enquiry; or, perhaps, most commonly of all, an aid to understanding of considerable use to scholars and research students if only they had time to spare from more serious pursuits".[5]
During the Medieval period, the authenticity of a document was not intrinsically tied to the creation of it. It was thought that authenticity was derived from its place of preservation and storage, such as in temples, public offices, archives, etc. Certain people discovered this loophole and began benefitting from it. They would create forgeries and give them to places of authority, thereby establishing authenticity on a counterfeit. Therefore, Diplomatics came about from a need to critically analyze forgeries.[6]
Diplomatics became important during the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.[7] The emergence of diplomatics as a recognisably distinct sub-discipline, however, is generally dated to the publication of Mabillon's De re diplomatica in 1681. Mabillon began studying old documents with a view towards establishing their authenticity or falsity as a result of his investigations into doubts that had been raised as to the authenticity of Merovingian documents from the Abbey of Saint-Denis by the Jesuit Daniel van Papenbroek. During the Middle Ages, the production of spurious charters and other documents was common, either to provide written documentation of existing rights or to bolster the plausibility of claimed rights. After Mabillon's work, a livelier awareness of the potential for forged or spurious documents became much more important, both for students of history and of law.
Although Mabillon is still widely seen as the "father" of diplomatics, a more important milestone in the formation of the techniques which make up the modern science was René-Prosper Tassin and Charles-François Toustain's Nouveau traité de diplomatique, published in 6 volumes in 1750–65. The most significant English-language work was Thomas Madox's Formulare Anglicanum (1702); but in general the subject was always studied more intensively by continental scholars than by those in Britain.[8]
Some famous cases involving diplomatics issues include:
The study of diplomatics is important for history, to determine whether alleged historical documents are in fact true or forgeries. For the same reason, diplomatics occasionally comes into play in law. Diplomatics in intrinsically tied to the medieval period, however, some of the original theories can be adapted and applied to contemporary Archival science, with some difficulties as Luciana Duranti describes in her article, New Uses for an Old Science.[9][10]
A diplomatic edition is an edition (in print or online) of an historic manuscript text that seeks to reproduce as accurately as possible in typography all significant features of the manuscript original, including spelling and punctuation, abbreviations, deletions, insertions, and other alterations. Similarly, diplomatic transcription attempts to represent by means of a system of editorial signs all features of a manuscript original.[11] The term semi-diplomatic is used for an edition or transcription that seeks to reproduce only some of these features of the original.
A diplomatic edition is to be distinguished both from a facsimile edition, which, in the modern era, normally employs photographic or digital images; and from a type facsimile, which seeks to reproduce the appearance of the original through the use of a special typographic font.