Source Genre: Inventories

Inventories were prepared to establish in written form the extent and content of the holdings of a manor or other [feudal] property, its income and [feudal] dues, as well as the specific owner of the property and his responsibilities. This chapter will illustrate specific features of this genre using the example of the so-called "Inventory of the Farm at Staffelsee".

On the manuscript: the inventory for the landholding/farm at Stafelsee is part of a rent-roll of the Bishopric of Augsburg. It was used in the Carolingian period as a model for descriptions of royal and ecclesiastical properties. The inventory is bound into a collection of manuscripts [sometimes also called 'composite manuscript', but mainly when all the texts were written by one hand] along with other sources of the 9th century that is now in the Herzog August Bibliothek at Wolfenbüttel. The state of the holding as described in the inventory is that of the year 801. The beginning of the entry is marked by a rubricated initial. The hand is a Carolingian minuscule of the 9th century. It was written on parchment.