Date/Time
Date(s) - 29 Jan 2015
5:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Location
Class of '55 Room, Van Pelt Library
Category(ies) No Categories
Thursday, January 29th, 5:00 PM, Class of ’55 Room, Van Pelt Library, Penn
Adam Kosto, Department of History, Columbia University
“Documenting Safe Conduct in the Middle Ages”
The early history of safe conduct has principally been studied as a question of protection—of merchants, students, ambassadors, soldiers, pilgrims, and other travelers in “foreign” jurisdictions. It is also a question, however, of information: how did officials know that a particular person had been granted safe conduct? Documents of safe conduct—less proto-passports than proto-visas—demonstrate the possibilities and problems of information processing in the premodern world.
This lecture will be sponsored by the Faculty Workshop on Medieval Studies (lecture series)