Les actes diplomatiques, instrument d’analyse des réseaux épiscopaux dans le monde franc (viie-milieu xie siècle)

Abstract

Early medieval bishops were undoubtedly powerful men, inserted in networks of power. Because of the characteristics of medieval sources, it’s difficult to reconstruct these links tied by bishops. This research is based on lists of subscribers contained in the charters of the databases of ARTEM and CBMA. Its aim is to demonstrate the historical and methodological contribution of this corpus for building a network analysis. The aim is to question the difficulties posed by the documentation, but also the potentialities of such an approach to understand the logics that guided the actions of the bishops.This work uses social network analysis to explore a known documentation in a new way. This approach offers an opportunity to understand the characteristics of medieval charters and the patterns of bishops. It also demonstrates the richness of collaboration between history and applied mathematics for reconstructing and analysing networks.