Practice question · Multiple choice
Many medieval monastic forgeries assert rights the house had genuinely held for generations. Why would anyone forge a true claim?
Hints
- Ask what a house does when it has held a mill for two centuries and a new court asks to see the charter.
- The right is real. What is missing?
Show the answer
D. Because courts were beginning to demand written title
Why
Custom stopped being self-evidencing once litigation demanded parchment, so houses manufactured the proof for possessions nobody disputed. The forgery is false as a document and accurate as a claim, and it testifies to the moment when written record displaced living memory as the standard of proof.
Practise Diplomatics and Forgery Detection
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More questions on Diplomatics and Forgery Detection
- A forged document can still record a true claim, and the forgery is itself evidence about the forger.
- Even once identified as an eighth-century forgery, what is the Donation excellent evidence of?
- Put the parts of a formal medieval document in order.
- Which of Valla’s findings condemned the Donation of Constantine?
- Sort each feature: a tell of forgery or normal in a genuine document?