History in Documents and a Document in History
Шрифт:
4) Dog owners must by law e___________ their pet wears a collar and tag with their name and address on it.
5) The word magazine d____________s from an Arabic word meaning a storehouse, a place where goods are laid up.
6) The exotic creature, which ______________ from central and South America, is probably an escaped pet.
7) Interviews were ______________ by the researcher who carried out the interview.
8) He is diplomatic and cautious in his ____________ to sticky situations.
9) From the moon, Earth a____________s as a bright blue-and-white object in the black sky.
10) She spends time on e___________ing her image with fitness routines and new styles.
7. Make the summary of the text.
Revision I.
Check yourself. Remember the following words and phrases:
Module II. Early documents
Text 1. Types of documents
Read the text and do the tasks after it.
Documents that have been preserved are originals, drafts, or copies. Originals are formal documents drawn up on the order of the sender or donor, and they were designated to serve the recipient or beneficiary as evidence of the transaction recorded. Handwritten copies of documents, made either before or after the deed was actually executed (sealed), are not classified as originals. If made before an “original,” they were rough drafts of it; if made afterward, they were copies.
The particularly Anglo-Saxon method of chirography gave the possibility of producing several “originals.” By this process two or more specimens of a document were written on the same page of the vellum sheet, and the free space between the texts was filled in with the word chyrographum (“handwriting”) or other words and symbols. Then the sheet was cut irregularly right through these words or symbols. The originals thus separated could later be reassembled. An exact fit was complete proof of authenticity.
But to provide documents having the force of “originals,” copies of the original were usually made and formally certified, by public notaries, or by high ecclesiastical or secular dignitaries. Copies certified in this way were accorded the same legal value as the originals. In practice, lack of critical judgment on the part of the certifiers often led to the certification of forged records. In documents known as transumpts, which recited earlier documents or charters as part of their text, it often happened that the earlier document was forged, but, being included in the new, it received validation.
The original documents and copies considered above were issued at the request of the recipient or beneficiary or of his legal heir. It also happened quite often that the sender or donor wished for various reasons to retain a record of the documents issued by him. The chanceries (record offices) of secular rulers or great ecclesiastics therefore kept copies of outgoing documents in registers, and often of incoming documents, too. The popes were among the first to adopt the old Roman practice of keeping registers; although nearly all the earlier ones have been lost, an almost uninterrupted series of papal registers is extant from the pontificate of Innocent III onward.
An important group of registers are the rolls kept by the medieval kings of England; the earliest extant rolls date from the 12th century. The keeping of registers in the chanceries of the French kings began about the year 1200, in Aragon about 1215, in Sicily under the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II (died 1250), and in the German imperial chancery from the early 14th century.
Another manner of studying documents is in the formula books of the various chanceries. Notaries drawing up the various forms of medieval documents did not usually compose each new text afresh but, rather, copied from books in which such text formulas had been collected, a practice that can be traced back to Roman procedure. These model texts frequently contained only the legally relevant passages, while the individually applicable parts, such as names, figures, and dates, were either abridged or totally omitted. During the time of the Frankish kings, important collections were made, such as the Formulae Marculfi (early 8th century) and the Formulae imperiales (828–832). Significant collections of formulas serving as models for papal documents have been preserved from the 13th century.
(Abridged from the original texts provided by Britannica Encyclopedia)
1. Answer the questions:
1) What documents are original?
2) What are drafts?
3) What are copies?
4) How could people create several originals?
5) How did the method of chirography work?
6) What was the method of chirography used for?
7) How can a document get the force of the original?
8) What led to the certification of forged documents?
9) Under what circumstances forged documents could receive validation?
10) What were registers used for?
11) What are the examples of registers?
12) What did the formula books contain?
2. Match the words to their definitions:
3. Fill in the correct word from the list below. Then, use the collocations to make your own sentences:
incoming, formula, forged, proof, validation, dignitaries, keeping, imperial
1) …………………. register
2) …………………. chancery
3) …………………… records
4) to receive …………………
5) ………………… documents
6) …………………. books
7) …………………. of authenticity
8) secular …………………….
Text 2. Classification of documents
Read the text and do the tasks after it.