Based on its work on the wealth of Maximilian I's documents and records, the SFB-sub-project “Writing Maximilian” dedicates this workshop to one of the most important instruments of late medieval and early modern rule - the work of chanceries, without which the efficient administration of a territory would hardly have been possible. Rather than focusing on the chancery staff themselves, the workshop will explore chancery practices and activities more broadly by going beyond the reign and countries of Maximilian in terms of topic and geography. At what point does a chancery emerge as an institution, and when can it properly be referred to as a chancery? How did the relationship between a ruler and his chancery operate in practice? What tasks did chanceries perform? Can we reconstruct the workflows of the chanceries themselves? What did the day-to-day operations within the chanceries actually entail? What continuities and systematic changes were there? How and in what ways did chanceries continue to influence each other? To what extent can modern DH-methods help historians to adequately record and analyse the dense written material of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period?
The workshop aims to bring together innovative research discussions and classical methodological approaches and to develop new perspectives on the practice of written production and administration in the late Middle Ages and early modern period.
14:00 – 14:15 Introduction (Andreas Zajic, Iris Palenik and Sonja Lessacher)
14:15 – 15:30 SESSION 1 – New Methods and Old Problems in Dealing with Sources (chair: Philipp Laumer)
15:30 – 15:45 Coffee break
15:45 – 17:00 SESSION 2 – Chancery Practices through the Lens of its Personnel(chair: Sonja Lessacher)
17:00 – 17:30 Coffee break
17:30 – 18:30 Keynote lecture / Talking Maximilian
Daniel Luger │ University of Vienna │Archive – Amtsbücher – Algorithmen: Zu Stand und Perspektiven der Kanzlei- und Urkundenforschung im Spätmittelalter im Spiegel digitaler Zugänge
9:00 – 10:15 SESSION 3 – Textual Analysis: Style and Contents of Charters (chair: Iris Palenik)
10:15 – 10:30 Coffee break
10:30 – 11:15 SESSION 4 – Queens and their Chancery Practices(chair: Julia Anna Schön)
11:15 – 12:00 SESSION 5 – Archiving Practices in the 15th/16th Century (chair: Markus Gneiß)
12:00 – 13:15 Lunch │ invitation only
13:15 – 14:30 SESSION 6 – Text Production in Notary Offices (chair: Andrea Singh Bottanová)
14:30 – 15:00 Résumé and Discussion (Iris Palenik)
4–5 November 2025
Hybrid mode:
Vienna, Alte PSK, Georg Coch-Platz 2, 3rd floor, seminar rooms 1 + 2
online via Zoom
If you would like to attend the workshop in person or online, please register by 31 October 2025 by emailing sonja.lessacher(at)oeaw.ac.at. If you wish to attend via Zoom, we will send you the link in time. Please also let us know if you plan to join us for the keynote lecture, as an additional link will be provided for online participants.
