Écritures normées et professions (Moyen Âge - XVIe siècle)

The concept of “Standard writing” is usually associated with social sciences and management, with reference to professional practices and corporate governance systems (reports, repositories, forms, etc.). Writing norms are conceived as tools for standardization and rationalization, resulting from an interaction, or a negotiation, between two entities, namely: authority, and professional groups responsible for the management and execution of various types of written communication. Norms are never neutral, and rarely stable; indeed, they appear to be in a constant state of change, adapting themselves and evolving, and even sometimes disappearing completely, depending on the pace of economic, political, or social change. How does the concept of “Standard writing” appear in the context of the professional practices and corporate governance systems of ancient times? How do historians approach writing norms and their transmission within societies of the past, linking them to social and political identity issues? We seek to answer these questions by exploring the work of several groups of highly skilled professional writers, namely: scribes, secretaries, public accountants, notaries public or even specialists in military arts. Various writing norms are studied here in order to reconstruct their scope of action, the technical knowledge they imply, their relationship to the different forms of temporal or ecclesiastical power. The link between writing norms and power is analysed within the framework of the geographical area of Medieval Latin, and that of the vernacular romance languages of France, Spain, and Italy, covering Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern Period. This collection of studies seeks to highlight the renewal that characterizes today’s approach by historians to the close relationship that exists between writing norms, power and society on a whole, in the Western World.