Des clercs qui se mesleront de faire lettres et obligations

Abstract

During the late Middle Ages, the organisation of voluntary jurisdiction in the customary regions of the Southern Low Countries was strongly determined by local developments. While it thrived in the major bishoprics of Liège and Tournai as well as in the commercial centers of Flanders and Brabant, historiography long assumed that the notary public failed to integrate into society in the rural county of Hainaut. Competition with the more dominant aldermen and comital vassals or hommes de fief supposedly prevented notaries from institutionalising their role as private legal intermediaries. Yet, the long-held top-down perspective disregarded interactions between, and the mutual competition among these different ‘agents’, thus creating a unilateral view that emphasised the importance of existing or indigenous alternatives. This contribution aims to better comprehend the organisation of late-medieval voluntary jurisdiction in Hainaut, taking the co-existence of public notaries and hommes de fief into consideration. From a bottom-up approach, relying on contemporary documentary writing practices, it will demonstrate how they both employed pragmatic literacy to gain authority, claim fides publica, and consolidate their own institutional position as such. This paradigm shift offers a framework that nuances previous insights regarding the reception of and developments within the notarial office in late-medieval Hainaut.