Notarial Registers Research Articles

The Problem of Assessing Whether Information is Placed in Notarial Registers in Good Faith

The Problem of Assessing Whether Information is Placed in Notarial Registers in Good Faith

Credit practices and networks in the medieval Italian city: the memoriale of Dr Iacopo di Coluccino of Lucca

ABSTRACT A memoriale, or memorandum book, kept by the Lucchese doctor, Iacopo di Coluccino (1373–1416), offers insight into informal credit practices of wealthy citizens and credit networks among ordinary people in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy, in ways not evident from studies of moneylenders’ books, notarial registers or court records. Maestro Iacopo provided small amounts of credit as cash, goods or sales on credit without taking collateral or, in many cases, relying on notaries. This was possible because his credit network was confined to acquaintances and tenants, and because loans to the latter who faced difficulty had a co-operative nature. He sometimes brought legal proceedings against solvent clients to enforce debt collection. His credit network co-existed and overlapped with those of other wealthy citizens, local banks and pawnshops, and through his clients’ borrowing practices, he was deeply and extensively implicated in the urban and rural economy.

Handwritten Text Recognition for notarial registers (15th-16th centuries): an experiment

Handwritten Text Recognition for notarial registers (15th-16th centuries): an experiment

The position of women in Corfu as demonstrated in the notarial registers during the last century of the Venetian period

The economic changes that took place in Europe, along with other factors such as the reduction of the male population due to war conflicts, created the right conditions for the emergence of women's activity. The position of women, although still subject to certain restrictions, improved considerably. Women are now presented as self-reliant in numerous contracts of an economic nature. Apart from this, they gradually seem to carry out other types of activities, such as artistic activities, engaging in charity, and intellectual cultivation.

El notariado en el Mediterráneo Occidental medieval: a propósito de un proyecto de investigación

This article presents a research project that studies the figure of the medieval notary and his activity in Western Mediterranean societies. In order to justify the development of this project, the article begins with a state of the the historiography concerning the notarial institution. In this way, the results of the research are included in the context of one of the tendencies of contemporary diplomacy: the history of the notarial institution. The text focuses on the main points of aention of the project, which is centred on the urban environment of the Crown of Aragon, within a broad chronological framework in order to analyse the evolution of this institution from its beginnings in the 13th century to its definitive establishment in the 15th century. In this framework, relations are established between the notary in these territories and others that are part of the area of influence of Roman law, delimiting it in the Western Mediterranean (Iberian Peninsula, Italica and the islands of Sardinia, the Balearic Islands and Sicily). The study of the notarial institution is approached from four main areas: writing, institutions, society and economy, in order to obtain a complete vision. It is therefore necessary to study the notaries’ handwriting and writing practices, including the circulation of notarial documents and notarial literature and their conservation. For this purpose, it is necess- ary to investigate notarial activity in a selection of public notaries’ offices in urban areas, and this will be done by analysing a selection of notarial registers. As far as institutions are concerned, the aim is to study notarial activity in a number of current organisations, what notarial practice is like in these offices and what documents are generated. Finally, a study is undertaken of the notary’s involvement in medieval society and economic life, his role as intermediary, as arbiter, as guarantor of public faith and, on occasions, as builder of the memory and identity of cities.

Compositio: Horizons of Truth in the Decameron, the Notarial Register, and Civic Peace Pacts

This article proposes a new reading of Boccaccio’s Decameron that highlights how the text shares the form and outlook of two central elements of contemporary documentary culture: the notarial register and the civic peace pact. By privileging a comparison to the law as practiced rather than as theorized, this reading complicates the generic divisions between documentary culture and early Italian literature. The form, textual horizon, and even the author’s own literary biography invite us to understand compositio in both law and literature as fundamentally oriented toward the future, toward the truth on the horizon, rather than mired in deliberations on the past. Boccaccio himself exploits legal frames in several of his tales to accent the generative potential inherent to realist literature and therefore to the civic horizon as well.

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La coexistence au village dans un demi-siècle de tensions confessionnelles : Vallabrix (Uzège), 1681-1728

In the parish of Vallabrix, in Uzège, a young prior took office in 1706 at the end of the Camisard troubles, succeeding his uncle. He wrote a few pages describing the parish, but also testifying to his convictions and concerns. The study of parish registers, extended to neighboring parishes, allows us to understand how the populations of the region were affected by the troubles. The analysis of the notarial registers of the village between 1685 and the death of the prior in 1728 allows us to sketch the portrait of a community where a Protestant minority existed. The focus is on the behavior of successive priors, on the antagonisms that could exist within the community, and on the easing of tensions in the first decades of the 18th century.

The assertion of fundamental principles relating to civil law notaries in the 21st century with special focus on Hungary

In our present paper, we tried to introduce the principles of notaries through the Hungarian notary's glasses. We did this through the challenges of the 21st century. Prior to the detailed description of the principles, we introduced the position of the Hungarian notary, where we also discussed the provisions of the Hungarian Constitution. Subsequently, more important legislation on Hungarian notary was mentioned and we discussed the diverse notarial procedures. In this connection, it is important to note that not only the notarial deeds are found in the Hungarian notary's procedures, but also the keeping of notarial registers. The paper deals with the responsibility of notary, the notary's and advertising relationships, the emergence of electronization and digitization. The paper presents the most important principles of notaries, including the principle of independence, impartiality and public authenticity.

Between two cities: Jewish women and exogamous marriage in medieval Catalonia

ABSTRACT In the marriage strategies of medieval Catalan Jews, the economic security of women came second to the economic goals of families. Exogamous marriages – marriages between the Jewish communities of two different cities – exacerbated the vulnerability of Jewish wives, widows and divorcées, due in large part to restrictions on women’s travel. Women who moved in order to marry experienced greater difficulty in managing financial resources and lost access to kinship networks. When women married men from other cities, at best they found themselves unable to take advantage of the connections created by their marriages. At worst, they risked financial loss if their husbands absconded to other cities with their dowries. Five case studies drawn from thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Catalan notarial registers reveal some of the ways in which exogamous marriages disadvantaged Jewish women. The extreme case of exogamy delineates the boundaries of possibility for Jewish women in the medieval Western Mediterranean.

Les importations de bois de Brésil en Normandie dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle

La découverte de nouveaux documents issus d’archives judiciaires permet de mieux appréhender l’organisation des voyages des ports normands vers le Brésil. Les départs avaient généralement lieu à l’automne ou au début de l’hiver, les retours s’effectuant durant l’été. Pour réduire les risques et échapper auxflottes portugaises, les navires voyageaient en convois, souvent de trois à cinq navires dont les caractéristiques peuvent être présentées grâce à plusieurs contrats de construction conservés dans des registres notariés. La mise en oeuvre de ces expéditions nécessitait d’importants capitaux rassemblés par desmarchands rouennais. Parmi eux, figurent plusieurs familles d’origine espagnole de niveau international qui pouvaient parfois s’associer avec des investisseurs de Paris, de Lyon, ou de Champagne. Les quantités de bois‑brésil rapportées en Normandie étaient considérables. Une partie de ces marchandises fut très tôt réexpédiée à Paris, la Rochelle et jusqu’à Anvers, Rouen étant alors un entrepôt international de tout premier ordre. Le bois‑brésilétait utilisé comme produit tinctorial mais aussi dans l’architecture, notamment au château de Fontainebleau (demeure favorite de François Ier), ainsi que dans la fabrication de meubles ou de petits objets de luxe. Ces sources nouvelles montrent enfin que les expéditions des frères Verrazzano n’ont pas ouvert la route du Brésil aux marchands français, mais que ces échanges ont commencé beaucoup plus tôt, même si une accélération de ce trafic est probable au cours de la décennie 1520.

Mother and Sons, Inc.: Martha de Cabanis in Medieval Montpellier by Kathryn L. Reyerson

Reviewed by: Mother and Sons, Inc.: Martha de Cabanis in Medieval Montpellier by Kathryn L. Reyerson Jennifer Lord Reyerson, Kathryn L., Mother and Sons, Inc.: Martha de Cabanis in Medieval Montpellier (The Middle Ages Series), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018; cloth; pp. 264; 9 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US $65.00, £54.00; ISBN 9780812249613. This book will be of great interest to scholars interested in practical evidence for women's exercise of agency in the late Middle Ages, and for how women negotiated the limitations placed on them. It is also an illuminating example of how relatively technical primary sources can be synthesized to create a case study of a particular social and economic setting, that of an 'urban merchant family of the 1330s and 1340s' (p. 7). Martha de Cabanis (c. 1295/1300–c. 1348) belonged by birth and marriage to Montpellier's mercantile elite. The early and unexpected death in 1326 of her husband, a mercer, left her with three young sons to provide for and a business to manage. It is precisely because of this that Martha left a much greater documentary trace than would otherwise be expected, with several hundred Cabanis contracts from 1336 to 1342 contained in a single notarial register. In Mother and Sons, Inc., Kathryn Reyerson draws on those records to reconstruct Martha's business and real estate transactions on her sons' behalf as their guardian and eventual business partner, as well as on her own account. As such, this book functions as a companion volume to Reyerson's Women's Networks in Medieval France: Gender [End Page 239] and Community in Montpellier 1300–1350 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), which looked at the life and business dealings of Agnes de Bossones, a contemporary of Martha de Cabanis. Reyerson has specialized in the social and economic history of Mediterranean France in the late Middle Ages, usually taking a localized and particular focus, such as trade, or banking. In Mother and Sons, Inc. she uses Martha's case to consider how far gender constrained women as economic and legal actors but also how women could be mobilized in families' interests. Chapter 1 sets the scene for Martha's life, with an overview of fourteenth-century Montpellier's political situation, layout, population, trade, and economic resources. Chapter 2 deals with Martha's family background and with the kind of childhood, education, and marriage arrangements she was likely to have had. Chapter 3 introduces Martha's husband's family and uses that context to explore how, in the absence of genealogical information, a family's history can be reconstructed through evidence of housing proximity and their business alliances and professional and legal ties. Chapter 4 draws on sources on urban domestic architecture and material culture to reconstruct the Cabanis's likely domestic setting. The notarial corpus that is Reyerson's main source cannot supply much detail about Martha's life beyond business, so chapters 2 to 4 are necessarily more speculative than they would be if Reyerson had also been able to draw, for instance, on letters or family chronicles. Chapters 5 to 8, focused on business, benefit from being able to make detailed use of the notarial records. Chapters 5 and 6 explore the responsibilities that fell to Martha after her husband's death and the legal capacity she had to meet them, in theory and in practice. Widows like Martha enjoyed a privileged status vis-à-vis other women, particularly in southern France, but Reyerson cautions us against taking for granted the 'privilege' of agency for such women (p. 89). She also shows how notarial documents, which capture the interaction of customary and Roman law in practice, offer an excellent guide to a region's 'living law' (p. 87). Chapter 7 gets to grips with the detail of the Cabanis's dealings in silk, linen, and mercery, examining their business strategies such as partnerships and use of credit, and Martha's role in these, especially before her sons could act independently. Chapter 8 covers similar territory but in relation to real estate, and here Martha is more visible as an investor in her own right. The chapter considers the reasons for women's...

Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy by Katherine Ludwig Jansen

Reviewed by: Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy by Katherine Ludwig Jansen Carrie E. Beneš Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy. By Katherine Ludwig Jansen. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2018. Pp. xxii, 253. $39.95/£30.00 hardcover; $27.99 ebook. ISBN 978-0-691-17774-8 hardcover; 978-1-4008-8905-1 ebook.) The ideal of peace may seem universal: while the United Nations deploys peace-keeping troops, the rest of us employ yoga, meditation, and other techniques to acquire inner peace. Yet as a concept peace is elusive, recognized most easily in its disturbance, breach, or absence. This was as true in medieval Italy as it is today: while preachers and magistrates extolled the benefits of peace, scholars generally characterize the era as one of vendetta, factionalism, and regional warfare. But conflict and conflict resolution are two sides of the same coin, and one of the chief contributions of Jansen's new book is its insistence that all of the well-studied hand-wringing about violence betrays a fundamental belief in peace as a key social virtue. Jansen's book therefore focuses on peace agreements: what we might call the aftermath of violence in medieval Italy. Jansen brings an impressive range of evidence to her study, using sermons, political treatises, chronicles, and works of art to enrich and contextualize her analysis of over five hundred peace agreements from Florentine notarial registers between 1257 and 1343. While scholars debate the extent to which events and practices in Florence can be considered representative of medieval Italy more broadly, Jansen persuasively employs the riches of the Florentine archives to illuminate peacemaking as a broad social phenomenon. Chapter 1 explores how the confessional requirements introduced at the Fourth Lateran Council and the preaching of the new mendicant orders encouraged a culture of penitence—for example in the "Great Devotion" of 1233 or the Battuti of 1310. Chapter 2 then analyzes how political theorists and communal councils (including figures such as Remigio de' Girolami and Albertanus of Brescia) linked the practice of personal penitence to the maintenance or restoration of civic order: in other words, arguing that citizens' acquisition of inner peace through penitence was an essential prerequisite to the outer peace of the community. Chapters 3 and 4 represent the core of Jansen's archival work, laying out the social conventions and legal requirements that surrounded these peace agreements and providing a typology of the crimes which they were drawn up to resolve—from burglary to rape, armed assault, and vendetta. Such agreements were employed by both men and women along a broad social spectrum. Chapter 5 then turns to pictorial representations of peace agreements, focusing first on depictions of the "angel of peace" uniting two parties in a conflict, and [End Page 711] second on representations of the traditional "kiss of peace": when informed by contemporary peacemaking rituals, for example, Judas' kiss of betrayal in Giotto's scene in the Arena Chapel inverts not just an expression of personal affection but a legal act of reconciliation and an affirmation of community. Jansen's book stands out first for its breadth and interdisciplinarity: subjects that had previously been treated chiefly in isolation (penitential culture, communal ideologies, ritual and artistic practices) are revealed as facets of the same social problem. In this it closely resembles Dennis Romano's important recent book on the marketplaces of medieval Italy. Secondly, Jansen's focus on practice, performance, and social meaning highlights the social roles played by notaries as well as women—who participate here not only as victims and allegorical inspiration but also as perpetrators and mediators. The book's final great virtue is the case it presents against positivist views of state-formation, which see progress from the informal or private justice of "pre-modern" societies to the formal or public justice of "modern" societies: Jansen's analysis reveals clearly the close co-operation between private and public forms of justice in medieval Florence. Here her work dovetails with related studies by Glenn Kumhera (2017) and James Palmer (forthcoming). In fact, this demolishing of an artificial public/private divide reinforces Jansen's fundamental point that medieval Italians saw the personal as inextricably...

Una lauda e uno scongiuro da un registro dell’Archivio di Stato di Udine

AbstractGiovanni Antonio Battaglia was a notary and a secular priest of the diocese of Aquileia. He was active between the late fifteenth and the first four decades of the sixteenth century in Gemona, his place of birth, in the castle of Porcia and the city of Udine. A register he compiled (Udine, Archivio notarile antico, n. 2247), contains two documents which are worthy of attention. The first one is a funeral lauda in Italian vernacular which completes the rather short list of the religious laude repertoire of the Friulian region between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The second document is the text Dolce Regina, dona la tua pace. This work can be placed within the framework of the brotherhoods of the Battuti, which Battaglia served as a priest and as a teacher. A rather composite Latin text also appears on the same page of the notarial register. It includes an invocation to the Magi, a quote from the Scriptures and an adapted liturgical oration. The presence of this exorcism, unusual if compared to the local context of traditional beliefs and therapeutic practices, requires wide-ranging comparisons. The figure of Battaglia himself also deserves further analysis especially in order to understand his cultural background as well as clarifying his relationship with the humanists whom he was corresponding with.

On freedom, kinship, and the market. Rethinking property and law in the ottoman slave system

This article focuses on domestic slavery, kinship, and the early modern market in 17th -century Ottoman Istanbul. By drawing on the notarial registers (sicils) kept by the legal courts of Istanbul as well as on jurisprudential (fiqh) works, this article dismantles the interplay amongst notions of freedom, kinship, and the economic value not only of slave bodies but also of their labour, which could be de tachable from the body as an object of commercial contract. While grappling with these questions, the article also unravels the fictional capacity of Islamic jurisprudencie in fabricating kinship ties between the master and the slave. Hence, this article aims at exploring the servile component of the market and the social in 17th -century Istanbul.

Small Landlords: Land Transactions in and around Bozen (South Tirol) in the Mid-Thirteenth Century

The notarial registers (imbreviatura) of Jakob Haas are used in this paper to describe the land market in Bozen and its hinterland in the middle of the thirteenth century. The analysis of the transactions documented by the notary demonstrates that this property market was both complex and dynamic. Several social groups ranging from nobility to urban population and peasants were engaged in the trade of a great variety of plots (urban, agrarian, with and without farmsteads) applying different kinds of legal transaction forms (fief, sale, pledge, etc.). To further profile the mid-thirteenth-century land market in and around Bozen, a comparison is made with the conditions in the same region at the end of the same century and with Montpellier in the first half of the fourteenth century. The general picture that emerges from the study is that of a dynamically unfolding land market used by people of varying social backgrounds to further their individual purposes - the main aim being the enlargement of one’s own property or securing a short-term or long-term credit.

Transakcje radnego miasta Uniejowa Stanisława Pieczyńskiego w świetle najstarszych akt notariusza warckiego z 1809 roku

W 1808 roku wprowadzono na ziemiach polskich instytucję publicznego notariatu. Pierwsze transakcje zawarte w 1809 r. w Uniejowie zapisano w księdze notarialnej powiatu warckiego. Większość z akt zarejestrowanych w 1809 r. dotyczyła inwestycji jednego z najbogatszych mieszczan uniejowskich Stanisława Pieczyńskiego. S. Pieczyński zakupił wówczas 20 składów stajowych ziemi przy drodze niewieskiej oraz browar w Uniejowie. Kupił także zrujnowany dom mieszczan Ptaszkiewiczów oraz od burmistrza Uniejowa posesję dawniej należącą do miejscowego duchownego. Pieczyński przekazał również w postaci legatu znaczną sumę na utrzymanie szpitala w Uniejowie, w którym przebywali najubożsi mieszkańcy miasta. Suma ta została ulokowana na hipotece domu burmistrza. Transakcje S. Pieczyńskiego świadczą o jego zamożności pozwalającej na inwestowanie w nieruchomości i działalność dobroczynną.

Aging analysis of a color facsimile binding for the 14th century manuscript “Registro Notarial de Torres”

AbstractThe re‐use of older documents or parts of books to make covers for archive documents has been common practice throughout the history of books. Such is the case with the 14th Century Registro Notarial de Torres, the binding of which is a fragment of a parchment belonging to a Visigothic codex of extreme historical value. In this work, it was decided that the parchment binding of the notarial register should be conserved as a separate document, replacing it with a color facsimile. The article discusses the accelerated aging tests to determine the stability of the materials used in producing the facsimile. Differences in color, pH, and ink transfer were evaluated. The original appearance of the manuscript was successfully retained using the optimum choice of materials, and the fragment of parchment used as its original binding was preserved, thus safeguarding its physical integrity and its aesthetic and artifactual value. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 42, 474–485, 2017

Tabelliones scribunt de foris: Captions and their Functions in Italian Notarial Records of the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries

The aim of this paper is to study the structure, functions, and meanings of paratextual elements in Italian notarial registers. These “captions”-marginalia, notes, signs, symbols, and other graphic elements-assume an increasing importance from the twelfth century onward. They ensure the authenticity of the documents to which they are attached and create better access to information contained in a notary’s register, not only for the notary himself but also for his clients. The system of captions that develops becomes the most important and distinctive feature of notarial registers produced in the Middle Ages.

Marriage patterns in the Western French Pyrenees during the 1800–1899 period: data from the village of Béost (Ossau Valley, Béarn)

The Western Pyrenees are made up of isolated valleys that were associated until recently with low marriage mobility. We chose to study the Ossau Valley (Bearn, France), which has one of the least mobile populations in this area. Marriage patterns in the village of Beost were analyzed over the 1800-1899 period. Data on 238 marriages obtained from parish, civil and notarial registers were used to assess the following variables: seasonality, endogamy rate, isonymic marriages and the consanguinity coefficient calculated from isonymy and from ecclesiastical dispensations. A clear seasonal marriage pattern emerged, linked to religious and local social parameters. Levels of endogamy were 57.5% in the village and 92.4% in the valley as a whole. The consanguinity coefficients calculated from isonymy (Ft) and ecclesiastical dispensations (α) were 0.0031 and 0.0040 respectively. The negative non-random component of F (Fn) indicated that Beost residents avoided contracting potentially consanguine isonymic marriages. These biodemographic markers were compared to those observed among various other 19th century mountain populations in Western Europe.