Text 2. Classification of documents
Read the text and do the tasks after it.
The documents of the Middle Ages are usually classified under two groups: public documents, which are those of emperors, kings, and popes, and private documents, which comprise all others. Another way of classifying documents is according to whether they are evidentiary or dispositive. The former merely record a valid legal act already executed orally, while the actual issuing of the latter forms in itself the legal act. This distinction, found among Roman documents from the 3rd century A.D. onward, gradually ceased to exist after the early Middle Ages.
After the collapse of the Carolingian empire in the 9th century, private documents lost much of their function and were replaced by simple memorandums about legal acts and the witnesses to them. It was not until the late 11th and early 12th centuries that sealed charters of high secular or ecclesiastical dignitaries were again gradually considered as dispositive. Papal documents can be classified mainly as either letters or privileges, and royal documents can be classified as diplomas or mandates. Privileges and diplomas give evidence of legal transactions designed to be of long duration or even of permanent effect, while mandates and many papal letters contain commands.
1. Answer the questions to the text:
1) Give definitions to public documents and private documents.
2) What`s the difference between evidentiary and dispositive documents?
3) What documents replaced private documents?
4) When and why did private document lose their functions?
5) What was the classification of papal and royal documents?
6) What is the difference between papal and royal documents?
2. Find all the types of documents mentioned in the text and give definitions to them in your own words.