Acta Papensia 2002 - A Pápai Református Gyűjtemények Közleményei 2. évfolyam (Pápa, 2002)
1-2. szám - Műhely - Sz. Kristóf Ildikó: A számoktól a (jogi) szövegekig: alfabétizációtörténet, olvasástörténet vagy kommunikációtörténet
Műhely SUMMARY ILDIKÓ SZ. KRISTÓF From Numbers to (Legal) Texts: History of Literacy, History of Reading or History of CommunicationP The article examines the forms of communication implied in legal evidence in 16tll/18th' century Hungary. The author focuses on the procedure of urban and rural jurisdiction as it is represented in local and regional decrees, manuals as well as collections of costumary law. The examination is based on the collection entitled Corpus statutorum Hungáriáé rnunicipialium, on 16rl‘/l 7*-century printed treatises on jurisdiction-indexed in RMK (the short-title catalogue of the so-called Ancient Books Printed Hungary) — as well as on the documents of individual trials (witchcraft trials included.) The author argues that the ordinary practice of law legitimized specific communica- tional practices, and what it legitimized for the inhabitants of 16rh/17rt'-century Hungarian cities and villages was a rather condensed mode of communication and an arbitrary use of its various forms. These sources reveal a remarkable variety of evidence that could have been used in order to authenticate and, subsequently, to prove legal transactions, like selling or pawning goods, making last wills, testifying one’s identity, and so on. Writing and written documents do not at all seem to have gained predominance in concluding transactions; written texts were juxtaposed with or substituted by oral testimony and nonverbal means (such as symbolic objects and gestures). This arbitrary choice of the means of communication was expressed in a particular legal formula, as well: litterali documenti vel humano testimonio i. e. by means of written documents or oral testimony. The author concludes that such a communicational practice cannot be analyzed according to the traditional binary model which opposes literacy/writing to illiteracy/orality. Its interpretation requires a more flexible approach — something like developed by Roger Chartier and the new histoire de la lecture — which itself emphasizes multiple and overlapping forms of communication in early modem culture and points to the importance of their actual uses. Acta Papensia II (2002) 1-2. 29
