Pragmatische geletterdheid in de middeleeuwse Meierij

De dorpssecretarie van Oisterwijk tot 1550

Samenvatting

Pragmatic Literacy in the Medieval Meijerij. The Rural Secretariat of Oisterwijk to 1550

This article discusses the use of written sources and the role of pragmatic literacy in the medieval countryside. Very little research has been carried out on this subject, as the sources are much more limited in number and content compared to those in the cities. To circumvent this issue, a body of documents, written from the 13th to 16th centuries in the Brabantine rural centre of Oisterwijk, has been subjected to a palaeographical and diplomatic analysis. The analysis resulted in a list of scribes, a chronological demarcation of their activity as well as its nature. This allowed us to reconstruct the rural secretariat in the village as a continuously evolving institution.

Following its foundation in around 1362, the practices in Oisterwijk were standardised, having been influenced by scribal practices in ’s-Hertogenbosch. During the fifteenth century, the secretariat temporarily attracted multiple additional scribes in times of increased demands for writs. The scribes adapted their skills to cope with the increasingly more specialised labour requested by the secretariat. A similar analysis of the written documents issued by courts surrounding Oisterwijk showed that the Oisterwijk scribes also serviced these courts. During the later Middle Ages, these courts received scribal independence and founded their own writing centres, taking the Oisterwijk secretariat as their model. Through the issuing of charters concerning voluntary jurisdiction, especially the transpor- tation of property, the written word reached every layer of medieval rural society, inciting all social strata to join this evolution and expanding both literacy and bureaucracy.