Adam J. Kosto

Kosto's impressively broad and detailed studies examines around a thousand of the particular type of written agreements known in 11th and 12th century Catalonia as conuenientiae. I don't know enough about the history of that region of Spain to be able to evaluate that aspect of his work, but I was impressed by how he used these documents to address questions of medieval Catalan social and political order, as well as to address wider debates in contemporary medieval studies—the vexed question of fedualism, of the year 1000, of medieval literacy, amongst others. There are some useful models for thinking on display here that I shall have to keep in mind for my own work.

That said, I did find the book at times a frustrating and confusing read. Kosto does not tend to write in a linear/chronological manner, but nor is he writing a thematic history; at times it was extremely difficult to keep a timeline of occurrences in mind. He is also inconsistent in how he defines the very topic of his study—it is at one and the same time a defined diplomatic genre, and the broader category of 'anything that uses the wording hec est conuenientia is one.' The last chapter, on writing and power, was by far the most interesting to me, and I wish it had been expanded on. I really wanted to see Kosto elaborate on the intriguing statement that the tenth century "shift in literacy was not one from memory to written record, but from memory to imagination, from the use of writing to reconstruct the past to the use of writing to construct the future." There is a lot left unanswered here, or unaddressed, but I think Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia is still a remarkable base to start from, and something of a pattern for a regional study that also aspires to a broader significance.… (mehr)