Memory and truth: the strange case of the witness enquiries of 1216 in the Braga-Toledo dispute

Abstract

This article deals with the construction of memory and the manipulation of truth in a group of witness enquiries written in Portugal in 1216. They were compiled in order to be sent to Rome as part of the dossier that the Church of Braga was to present at the papal curia to defend itself against Toledo's accusations in relation to the issue of the Spanish primacy. This specific purpose constrained the statements of all the 195 witnesses who testified and whose words were to lend authority to the Braga version of events. Close study of these enquiries offers us both unusual insight into the practical management of complicated religious issues, and also greater understanding of the juridical value of oral testimonies in these years, in Portugal as elsewhere.

Bad Cases and Worse Lawyers: Patterns of Legal Expertise in Medieval Portuguese Court Records, c. 1200–1400

“…22 Proctors had to be retained to represent the parties at the curia or before the judges delegate appointed to hear and determine the case (see, inter alia, Linehan, 1979 andSchwarz, 2016), and their salaries must be paid out promptly, lest they deliberately obstruct proceedings at their end in retaliation, which is precisely what happened in 1338 to the abbess of Santa Clara of Coimbra and her proctor at the audientia litterarum contradictarum in Avignon. 23 But it is ultimately thanks to the clerical bustle-the procuring of copies of court proceedings, the copying out of title deeds and witness depositions, the safekeeping of papal rescripts relevant to a case-that was sparked off by petitions made directly to the papal curia or by the decision to appeal to it against a sentence from a lower judge that a great deal of the extant records of legal practice from Portuguese ecclesiastical courts in the 13th and 14th centuries was preserved (see, for example, Branco, 2006 and2018;Vitória, 2016).…”