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Graham Barrett

Balliol College

Supervisor: Professor Chris Wickham

Thesis title:
The Function and Conception of the Written Word in Early Medieval Spain: Practicalities and Mentalities, 409-1031

Research Interests

My research interests embrace the society and culture of early medieval Spain, in both the Visigothic and post-Visigothic periods. For my doctorate, I am attempting to study Latin literacy not through an assessment of the number of people who could read or write but rather by an evaluation of the role that the written word played in society, that is, how and why texts were produced and used. To date, I have surveyed the bulk of the approximately 3,500 charters that survive from the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain between the eighth and early eleventh century, and while my conclusions remain preliminary, I would argue for the existence of both a 'textual society' in which written title to property, written evidence, and written law structured the lives of not only the clergy but also the laity - increasingly so as aristocrats developed more sophisticated techniques of lordship - and a 'textual economy' in which written material changed hands surprisingly often and in considerable quantity. I believe, therefore, that an appreciation of the mechanics of this literacy, its practicalities and its mentalities, is a necessary first step to understanding the wider world behind and beyond the text.

Projects and Publications

As a first case-study for my research, I examined the Visigothic slate texts, and have delivered two papers based on this work: 'Latin Literacy in Visigothic Spain: From the Ground Up' at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, May 2009; and  'Literacy in Early Medieval Spain: The Evidence of the Visigothic Slate Texts' at the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean Conference in Exeter, July 2009. I am currently revising my findings for publication in the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies.

Arising out of my work on charters, I am also preparing a study of those concerning adultery, and will be delivering a paper on the subject entitled 'Literacy, law, and libido in early medieval Spain' to the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in May 2010.

I am also very interested in translation, and am currently revising English versions of the Visigothic law code and the Chronicle of Sampiro; a volume of translations of early medieval Italian hagiography on which I collaborated with Dr Nicholas Everett of the University of Toronto is forthcoming.

Finally, I co-convene the seminar series 'Approaches to Medieval Spain' with Robert Portass, and we hope to have another excellent line-up of speakers for Hilary Term 2010.