Papyrus economies and the practicalities of early medieval papal documents

Abstract

The medium of papyrus – a ubiquitous, state-sponsored product in the Roman world – was transformed by the Empire’s loss of Egypt in the 630s–40s into a comparatively rare, high-status good in the early medieval northern Mediterranean (though not in the caliphate, where it continued to have more or less the same value and associations as it had in the Roman period). The significance of papyrus transformed, as its economic value outside the Islamicate world changed from a relatively easily obtainable, state-sponsored bulk product to a commodity only available at a few well-connected, wealthy centres: (probably) Constantinople and certainly Rome. The papacy continued to use this now precious commodity for its written communications. This was a crucial strategy in projecting its unique claims to authority across Latin Europe through the changing world of the late seventh to early eleventh centuries.