Name in print V, VI & VII!

Just before I leave 2010, there was one more small thing that needs recording…

Three late 2010 publications featuring yours truly

On the left, in the blue cloth, ladies and gentlemen, the current issue of Archiv für Diplomatik, featuring, I’m very happy to say, an article by myself on a certain archbishop of Catalonia, who most likely wasn’t ever actually an archbishop. Arguing this, which is a variation of the Dirk Gently inversion of Sherlock Holmes’s dictum (i. e., in this case there seems to be unimpeachable evidence, but what it asserts is just so improbable that the evidence must be questioned), however, ultimately means suggesting that maybe about a third to a half of the ninth-to-eleventh-century documents we have issued by the popes may not actually have been officially issued by them. I suppose this might ruffle a few feathers but I don’t think there’s any getting away from it and I’m not the only person saying it. For the others, you should see the paper.¹ I have offprints spare.

1st page of Jarrett, "Archbishop Ató"

Then, on the right, in the tasteful grey card covers, a long-delayed issue of Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar, published by Queen Mary University of London, collecting the papers of a conference at which I presented that you may remember me blogging about. A variety of misfortunes have beset this publication but it is now out, under the title Early Medieval Spain: a symposium and featuring Jinty Nelson, Wendy Davies, Ralph Penny, Andrew Fear (twice) and, towards the back, me, giving the paper that was all that could be got out of my original idea for my thesis, one of the pieces of writing I’ve done I’m most pleased with describing the little we can see of the local societies on the Catalan frontier before they are incorporated into the wider polity of counties and bishoprics and castle terms and so on.² It is good fun, includes a lame pun for Anglo-Saxonists, and it’s called “Centurions, Alcalas and Christiani perversi“, what is not to like? I am very pleased to have it out there. No offprints, sorry, but it’s not expensive.

First page of Jarrett, "Centurions, Alcalas and Christiani Perversi"

And then lastly, that’s how the thesis didn’t come out, here (in the centre in sophisticated white hardback) is how it did.³

My own copy of my book, Rulers and Ruled in Frontier Catalonia, 880-1010: pathways of power

This is not actually exactly the thesis (which of course you can download here anyway). The preliminary whining about charters from the thesis is gone, and though several chapters remain substantially as they were, it adds new work on a couple of places and one particular viscount, sharpens up my treatment of Borrell II, including a deep analysis of a trial of a moneyer for passing false coin; it eliminates a bucketload of embarrassing mistakes (though I’m sure more remain), and of course, it is just three years more up to date than the thesis, with consequent added value. I have no more free copies of this: I kept one, one went to my mum and others to those who have helped me for longest or from furthest, especially those who had no institutional reason to do so. I have however, somewhat to my surprise, found myself recommending it to people I think it would actually help with their stuff, so I suppose I think it all has merit. Just as well really! And it is, well, not cheap, but available, as they say, from all good bookshops, so you can judge for yourself if you like! So hurrah! I’m really quite pleased about this.

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Grim statistics:

• “Archbishop Ató”, first drafted 2003! and presented then and again 2006, but first submitted, March last year. (Yes, I know. But I’m getting better.) Five drafts. Time from first submission to print therefore just under ten months! I could draw a moral but it involves national stereotypes so I won’t.
• Rulers and Ruled, first drafted in some sense 2005, revised 2006, and then really thoroughly revised 2006-2007. First submission, March 2007. Time to print therefore three years nine months. I figured it was worth holding on because of the imprint, but also it must be said that now it exists my publishers are doing a sterling job promoting it.
• Lastly “Centurions”, first drafted late 2007 for a conference in Exeter, lightly revised for its reappearance at Queen Mary, submitted March 2008; stolidly withheld from a journal that were hunting it for 2009 publication because of prior promise; eventual time first submission to print, two years nine months.

My mean time first submission to print now therefore 28 months, removing the two outliers more like 24 months. How a young scholar is supposed to make any ground without wrecking the progress of his or her Ph.D. in this kind of environment I don’t know. But, there it is, I’ve done it, and I must now update my webpages…

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1. J. Jarrett, “Archbishop Ató of Osona: false metropolitans on the Marca Hispanica” in Archiv für Diplomatik Vol. 56 (München 2010), pp. 1-41.

2. Idem, “Centurions, Alcalas and Christiani perversi: Organisation of Society in the pre-Catalan ‘Terra de Ningú'” in †A. Deyermond & M. Ryan (edd.), Early Medieval Spain: a symposium, Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar 63 (London 2010), pp. 97-127.

3. Jarrett, Rulers and Ruled in Frontier Catalonia, 880-1010: pathways of power, Studies in History (London 2010).