Thank you!

Thank you! 💚

Even fakes can be precious. They tell us not just what people wanted to believe, but when and why those beliefs mattered.

If you'd like to access these notes, I've uploaded them here zenodo.org/records/1530...

👍

Which means: when the forgery was made, the monastery was right in the middle of a major cultural, liturgical and graphic transition—and the script still shows signs of resistance to change.

After a close comparative study of 28 Visigothic-script documents from the Oña archive, I was able to demonstrate—with solid evidence—that this charter was almost certainly produced in the late 1090s.

The aim: to provide an approximate production date for the charter dated 30 June 1023 (BNP, coll. de Bourgogne, vol. 77, no. 90), in which Sancho the Great reforms monastic life at San Salvador de Oña according to Cluniac custom.

To answer my colleague’s question, I spent the last few days analysing every document in the same archival collection, including the one that sparked the consultation.

So even if the document is diplomatically ‘false’, it might still tell us a great deal—particularly if we focus on its material features.

We’re talking about a crucial period: the transition from the Hispanic to the Roman liturgy, a shift from local to international politics, and a major script change—from Visigothic to Caroline minuscule (see the per abbr.)

Why does that matter? Because forging a document in 1033 is very different from doing it in, say, 1090—especially at such a pivotal moment in Iberian history. 😱

The framing of palaeography as a challenge to be overcome rather than a useful skill and a joyful exercise is concerning and devalues both this critical ability and of historical research work generally.