Letter confirming the ownership by the cathedral of Chartres of churches in the diocese of Lisieux, and their rights, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [France (Lisieux?), mid-12th century (certainly between 1141 and 1181)].

Arnulf (d. 1183), bishop of Lisieux (1141–81)
Letter confirming the ownership by the cathedral of Chartres of churches in the diocese of Lisieux, and their rights, in Latin, manuscript on vellum [France (Lisieux?), mid-12th century (certainly between 1141 and 1181)].
An early document, elegantly written with ‘papal knot’ abbreviation-marks.

c.315 × 140mm. The lowest 20mm originally folded up and with slits for a seal tag, 30 lines written in an elegant documentary hand, using the ‘papal knot’ abbreviation-mark (some folds and wear, but generally fine).

Provenance:
(1) Endorsed by several hands of the 12th to the 19th centuries, one of the earliest being ‘de ecclesiis quas possidet ecclesia Carnotensis in episcopatu Lexoviensi’.
(2) Maggs Bros., with their pencilled acquisition note dated 26 September 1960.
(3) Colker MS 172; acquired in 1970 from Maggs.

This document is not published in the edition of Arnulf's letters by Frank Barlow (London, 1939), but is edited from a manuscript at the BnF: Eugène de Lépinois et Lucien Merlet, Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Chartres (Chartres, 1862), http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/cartulaires/Chartres-N-D/0052.

The churches mentioned are St Germain ‘de bona villa’ (Bonneville-sur-Touques), St Taurin ‘de anglica villa’ (Englesqueville-la-Percée), St Martin ‘de Runcevilla’ (Roncheville), St Julien ‘super Carlonam’ (sur Calonne), St Pierre ‘de Altaribus’ (Les Authieux-sur-Calonne), and the chapel of St Nicolas in the same town.

The editor of the text emphasises that the distinction between goods of secular origin given to the Church, and goods of ecclesiastical origin restored to the Church, is rarely established so clearly as in this privilege.

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