This article reviews the different stages in the structuring of a new field of historical research devoted to cartularies and cartularisation. The heuristic changes occurring in the latter decades of the 20th century led to a redefinition of the relationship between historians and their sources and the emergence of a specific investigation of the social practices of writing. In this context, cartularies gradually became the subject of studies that took into account both their diplomatic and their memorial dimensions. This new approach was nurtured by English-language work on literacy and German work on memoria and Schriftlichkeit.
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Pierre Chastang (2006) studied this question.