Writing and Communication in the Visigothic Kingdom

The Liber Iudiciorum recognised written agreements and regulated forged documents. Inscribed slates from inland Iberia record transactions, quantities and exercises, while letters carried messages between churchmen and the royal court. Stone inscriptions attached names and dates to gifts, buildings and burials. Scribes and readers supplied these records to people who could also use them through intermediaries.

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Writing could make a transaction or decision available after the people concerned had left the room. The law code addresses written agreements, witnesses, signatures and contested documents. A record’s authority depended on recognised procedures and people able to establish that it represented a valid act.

A judge could compare documents, hear witnesses and investigate an allegation of forgery. Drafting and reading a record supplied usable evidence for parties who lacked written skills themselves.

Why people wrote on slate

Slate offered a hard surface that could be incised and used for records without preparing parchment. Most surviving examples are concentrated in parts of the central and western peninsula, especially around the Sistema Central. The distribution reflects a regional practice and opportunities for preservation, not a map of all writing in the kingdom.

Textual slates preserve property transactions and records of people and quantities. Other fragments contain religious passages or writing exercises. Incised words and figures served record-keeping as well as instruction.

Numbers, lists and keeping track of obligations

Putting names beside quantities made a record that could be consulted when distributing goods or checking an obligation. These lists retained information beyond the immediate transaction. Nerea Fernández Cadenas proposes that some slates bearing only numerical signs used a notation distinct from Roman numerals in textual records. Their precise functions remain uncertain; the study considers personal memory aids among the possibilities.

Messages between courts, churches and other communities

Royal orders and news of military events had to reach people at a distance. Wamba’s campaign narrative describes information moving between the king and the northeastern rebellion, while councils required representatives to communicate decisions to their churches. Letters linked learned churchmen and could accompany the movement of books or requests.

Messengers travelled along roads and through mountain approaches. On arrival, a message could be read aloud and explained to listeners.

Inscriptions and communication in public places

A durable inscription could identify a donor, commemorate a building or record the dead. Its audience differed from that of a private account. A name and date cut into stone attached a claim to a particular object or place, even when many viewers depended on someone else to read it.

The inscribed funerary slabs from the early Christian basilica at Mértola illustrate the use of writing in commemoration. Some material at the site was reused, including a much older slab bearing Southwest Script. That older inscription belongs to a different writing tradition and is not an example of Visigothic Latin.

Readers, scribes and people who listened

Clergy, officials and people managing property had reasons to acquire written skills, but skill was not necessarily all-or-nothing. Making a list, reading a liturgical text and composing an elaborate Latin work were different accomplishments. A community could also use a record through a literate intermediary. Monastic reading at meals transmitted a text from one reader to the assembled listeners.

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