gram, and the practice was kept up for a long time after kings and emperors, like the Ottos, were abundantly able to use the pen. The autograph appears in due time and then the monogram returns in the later middle ages as a form of ornament.

The signature of the chancery official is a legal authentication of the grantor's signature or authority. When the royal signature was only a mark

Witnesses.

Monogram of Charlemagne, anno 794. The king's signature is the cross line within the diamond. Facsimile full size. this recognition was essential, but the office grew in importance until for various reasons of state it became indispensable. In the study of German diplomatics the terms of all known chancery officials have been as far as possible tabulated, so that the fraudulent use of their names may be detected.

The signatures of witnesses are interesting for many reasons. These were regarded in the earlier period as intercessors and indicate who were the influential persons about the court, as may be seen from the use of the word interventu, or consilio. Gradually these names became part of the corroboration, and public documents follow the example of

private papers in calling them witnesses, but the rule is loosely followed and the names may at times be present without the actual signatures.

The document of King Edward, 1061, already cited, contains signatures as follows:

Ego Giso Dei gratia episcopus hanc cartam dictavi + Ego Edwardus rex sigillum imposui + Ego Stigandus Archiepiscopus laudavi + Ego Heremannus episcopus corroboravi + Ego Leofric episcopus affirmavi + Ego Willelmus episcopus consolidavi +

HE

Monogram of Emperor Frederic I (Barbarossa) anno 1156. Facsimile size of the original.

Ego Aegelnothus abbas confirmavi + Ego Aegelvin abbas laudavi + Ego Haroldus dux + Ego Tostig dux + Ego Aelfgar dux + Ego Gyrth dux + Ego Brihtric consilliarius + Ego Aelfgar consilliarius + Ego Aegolin minister + Ego Everwacer minister + Ego Esegar minister + Ego Rotberd minister + Ego Rauf minister + Ego Bondi minister + Ego Eilferth minister + Ego Eadmer minister + Ego Aegelsie minister + Ego Aelfget minister.1

1 Kemble Cod. dipl., IV, 150.

CHAPTER VI

CHRONOLOGY

THE date is the most indispensable single factor in a document, from the historical as well as from the legal point of view. Names and contents may serve to indicate the general period in which the instrument was issued, but something more exact is required to give the proper connections. Diplomatics concerns itself with the forms of words used in the various periods and countries, and calls in the aid of the science of chronology to elucidate the systems of time-reckoning. Two objects, also, may be included in the study of the date. One is to determine from the formula employed whether the document is genuine, since usage differed from period to period and in the various countries. These forms have been classified with even greater care than other portions of the document and have become an important means of identification. The other object is to determine what the real or intended date actually was. This latter problem is by no means the lesser of the two, for the indications are often abbreviated or incomplete, or mistakes in calculations were made by the scribes themselves, or equivocal phrases were used which leave the date in doubt. A knowledge of the systems of time calculation employed in the middle ages is therefore indispensable

in this connection. Not only to the student of diplomatics but also to the general reader of mediæval and modern history is an understanding of chronology of the highest importance, for the chroniclers and biographers make continual use of time expressions which require explanation, and the analogies of modern times would be misleading. For a systematic treatment of chronology the reader must be referred to the standard works on that subject. Space will be given here to only a few of the problems which lie within the larger modern period of history.

The western world has fixed upon a date for the Medieval beginning of the Christian era, yet the earlier cenChronology. turies of that very era were unaware of such a starting-point. It did not occur to anyone to make a calendar dating from the birth of Christ till he had been more than five hundred years in the grave. Emperors had become converted and Christianity had been made the official religion of the Roman empire, yet time was still measured by the calendar of Julius Cæsar, and periods were marked by consulates and reigns as in ancient times. An era dating from Diocletian had come into some use with memories of the Christian martyrs, but until the fall of the empire there was naturally a harking back to Roman institutions. In the century following that political collapse a Christian monk came upon the idea of an era dating from the birth of Jesus Christ, which he computed to have taken place on the twentyfifth of December of the year of Rome, 753. Modern calculations based upon astronomical and other data

Adoption of
Christian Era.

Indiction.

have found this date erroneous, the discrepancy according to different writers being from two to six years too late. This question, however, does not affect the marking of time in history, for the calculation of Dionysius was accepted and modern years are still counted from that point.

The adoption of the Christian era, even after its invention, was painfully slow. No council or decree ordained its use, but merely by the spread of example the year of the incarnation came into use through ecclesiastical channels first in Italy. In France the Christian year appears in private papers in the eighth century and in Germany in the first part of the ninth. In public documents it remained for the later Carolingians to introduce this form of dating somewhere toward the close of the ninth century, and the papacy itself, the chief representative of that religion, did not use the era of its founder till near the close of the tenth century. Both kings and popes had been designating the year of their reigns as sufficient indication of time, with perhaps another foothold in Roman practice. This was the indiction, a recurring period of fifteen years used by the later emperors for purposes of taxation. It was introduced into the calendar by Constantine in 313, and remained in use for a long time afterward.

The indictions were not numbered like the ancient Olympiads, consequently there is nothing in the term by which to establish the year. In dating a document it was customary simply to give the number of the year in the existing indiction, therefore a calculation is necessary to find the Christian year