HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS FROM NORTHERN ITALY
A Guide to
The Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal Collection
Compiled by James S. Grubb
Department of Special Collections
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY
1984
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-50058
The University of Chicago Library, Chicago 60637
Copyright 1984 by The University of Chicago Library
All rights reserved
Published 1984
Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0 943056 04 7
CONTENTS
PREFACE.............................................v
INTRODUCTION......................................vii
Provenance...................................vii
General Disposition.........................viii
The Veneto Notarial Document..................ix
Non-notarial Documents......................xiii
Uses of the Collection.......................xiv
Calendar....................................xvii
Notes.........................................xx
CALENDAR............................................1
Veronese notarial documents....................1
Veneto notarial documents.....................36
Venetian ducal letters........................46
Papal letters: Germany........................48
Italy..........................48
INDEX OF FAMILY NAMES AND PLACES...................49
Verona - Families............................49
- Locations...........................52
Padua - Families............................56
- Locations...........................57
Treviso - Families............................57
- Locations...........................58
Venice - Families............................58
- Locations...........................60
Miscellaneous Locations - Venetian............60
- Trent...............61
- Italy...............61
- Europe..............61
iii
PREFACE
In the fall of 1982 the University of Chicago Library purchased
from the firm of H.P. Kraus of New York a collection of 2,453 North ltalian
documents formerly in the possession of the nineteenth-century
English antiquary Sir Thomas Phillipps. This acquisition was made
possible through the generosity of Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal
of Chicago, and has been named in their honor.
When the documents arrived in Chicago the greater part of the
collection was loosely arranged in miscellaneous lots in makeshift
cardboard folders. Eight groups of documents remained in Phillipps
bindings; these volumes, however, were neither complete nor ordered
according to any discernible criteria. This group was disbound, and
merged into categories within the general arrangement.
Because of various expressions of interest in the documents by
faculty and students, it was decided to proceed immediately with sorting
and calendaring which would make the collection accessible. This
took five months following a preliminary survey which revealed the
nature of the material as well as the most practical way to arrange
and house it. Once the basic organizational issues were resolved, the
next step involved identification of the individual documents and
their placement into the groups and subgroups described in the introduction
which follows. After being rearranged into the present order,
each piece was assigned a sequential number placed on the top left
side of the verso of each document. At the heart of the project was
the extraction and compilation of the basic information describing
each document. This was recorded on work sheets and subsequently
entered into a computer, which organized the essential data of this
guide: analysis of each document by time, place, principals, form, and basic content.
v
INTRODUCTION
Provenance
In amassing my Collection of MSS. I commenced with purchasing
everything that lay within my reach, to which I
was instigated by reading various accounts of the destruction
of valuable MSS. As in the beginning of any
undertaking few persons are sufficiently masters of
their subject as to judge unerringly what may be done &
what not done so with regard to myself; I had not the
ability to select, nor the resolution to let anything
escape because it was of trifling value.1
Thus Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872) explained both his passion
for collecting and his eclectic approach to the acquisition of manuscripts
and rare books. His passion was such that he amassed some
60,000 manuscripts and 50,000 printed works, one of the largest private
collections in history.2 His eclecticism was such that he purchased
not only the classes of precious manuscripts sought by antiquaries
and collectors -- illuminated or literary works, classics,
local histories, genealogies, heraldry -- but also commonly neglected
pieces such as the notarial documents presented here. He became,
in his own words, a "vello-maniac," and purchased any parchment which
came within his view and his means regardless of its subject.3
The documents now held in the University of Chicago Library's Rosenthal
Collection are among the very few such notarial documents which have
been taken out of Italy; certainly this collection is among the largest
of its kind in North America.
It has not been possible to ascertain the full provenance of the
pieces now assembled at the University of Chicago. Phillipps himself
compiled a catalogue of his holdings with notes on their acquisition,
but unfortunately the catalogue extends only to Number 23837 and
nearly all the Chicago manuscripts come from later lots about which
little is known.4 Numbers 4333 ("Cartae Originales Ecclesiae de
Cologne") and 7818 ("Pope's bulls, &c.") are known only to have been
purchased from the London dealer Thomas Thorpe. But documents from these
volumes are only nineteen in number, and in subject are so discontinuous
with the rest of the Rosenthal Collection that they furnish
no clue to the origin of the others. Numbers 17359 ("Placita Angliae,
& Carta Burdegaliae, et Venetiae &c.") and 17362 ("Cartae Venezianiae")
are also held here, but Phillipps's catalogue does not state
their provenance. The most likely source of the main body of the
vii
INTRODUCTION
Rosenthal Collection, the North Italian notarial documents, is the
Abbe Luigi Celotti, librarian to the Venetian nobleman Giovanni Barbarigo
and later a dealer in Italian manuscripts specializing in collections
from Venice, Padua and Verona.5 These are the cities most
heavily represented in the present collection, which includes a number
of Barbarigo family manuscripts as well. But it is impossible to link
Celotti directly with the Chicago documents; since Phillipps had
access to other Italian sources, the question of provenance must
remain open.
After Phillipps's death in 1872 the problem of the maintenance of
his massive and largely unorganized collection became acute. In 1885
the heirs received permission from the courts to dispose of the manuscripts
and some books and prints. It appears that one block of Veneto
manuscripts was auctioned to an American buyer, Adolph Sutro of
San Francisco, in the next few years, possibly in the Sotheby sales of
1893-1898.6 A succession of auctions and private sales reduced the
estate markedly, but even so a considerable body remained in the hands
of Phillipps's heirs until 1946 when the collection was sold en bloc
to the London booksellers William H. Robinson Ltd. The pieces now in
the University of Chicago Library, still unsold two decades later,
passed to H.P. Kraus in 1978.
General Disposition
The present body of 2,453 documents is the end result of centuries
of unsystematic accumulation and decades of almost random dispersal.
There is a certain homogeneity of geographic range, chronological
scope and notarial origin to the Rosenthal Collection, but these
holdings by no means constitute a single, intact archive. It is evident
that over the past five centuries several small archives have been
combined into a few heterogenous groupings, to which were then
added miscellaneous parchments, and that Phillipps purchased several
such composite collections at different times from different sellers.
After his death, time and the pressure of the marketplace served to
break up related manuscripts: literary, illuminated, particularly complete
or beautiful documents were sold off separately. Even the narrowly
notarial, North Italian documents have been split up: one body
already noted found its way to San Francisco in the last century, and
there may well be many other such collections -- full siblings to the
present collection -- whose existence has not been widely publicized.
As of this writing many of Phillipps's Veneto holdings are still available
for purchase.
viii
INTRODUCTION
In organizing this collection, an effort has been made to reconstruct
wherever possible the pre-Phillipps ordering. This has been
possible in part because some manuscripts -- the papal bulls to
Germany and Italy, the Venetian ducal letters -- were bound together
and are obviously distinct in subject and origin from the rest. More
importantly, about half the documents bear on the verso identification
markings of some prior archival arrangement. One block of 572 parchments,
for example, had been given shelf marks starting with "A.C.",
such as A.C.6.M.I.N.3. Other sets of shelf marks begin with stars,
crosses, and the letters M and O. Still another series is identifiable
by a coherent set of numbers. It should not be claimed that these
correspond to the "original" archival arrangements: many of the shelf
marks are clearly very late, and many documents also bear multiple
marks. But at some point before Phillipps's purchase, such marked
documents definitely formed integral and distinct collections.
Reassembling former archives by these notations is as close as we
can come to a reconstruction of some of the component parts of the
collection. Where it was possible to gather together several documents
with the same designation, these were organized as subgroups.
These subseries are identified (p. xxii) either by their distinctive
shelf marks or by the principal family involved. The remaining half
of the documents, although clearly related to the marked documents,
could not be securely placed in any subgroups and were ordered, chronologically,
as "Miscellaneous".
The Veneto, Notarial Document
Perhaps 95% of the documents in this collection are notarial
documents -- technically "acts" or "instruments" -- redacted in northern
Italy. That is, they are formal records of legal transactions
drawn up by public notaries. They are largely concerned with the
transmission of land and property i.e. land sales, leases, rents and
exchanges, loans, debts and payments, dowries, testaments and divisions
of family patrimonies. There are, as well, legal instruments
such as arbitration agreements, compromises, and decisions in lawsuits
which affected the disposition of those patrimonies.
While these are not, strictly speaking, governmental documents,
they are more than records of private transactions. The notary held
the rank of judge (judex ordinarius), and his instruments were public
statements. Notarial acts did not merely document a legal transaction,
they actually effected that transaction and defined its terms.
They had the force of law, and were binding in law courts. They are
thus solemn, formal legal documents, and are couched in a highly technical
legal language. The notary was trained not only in the law of
his city, but in the venerable Roman law which enshrined the principles
on which municipal statutes were based. These documents should
ix
INTRODUCTION
not, therefore, be read as simple narratives. Imbedded in them are
ancient and complex legal principles and procedures to which the
researcher must be sensitive, lest the underlying meaning be ignored
in a superficial extraction of names, dates and subjects.
The formal and technical nature of notarial acts presents particular
problems for their summary description. Nearly all are in legal
Latin; even those in Italian -- generally Venetian and generally
post-1550 -- translate verbatim the Roman legal terminology. Any
attempt to render the actual transaction into English inevitably
destroys the nuances of the language. At the same time, the more accurate
and technical the translation, the less likely it is that it can
be understood by the non-specialist. This state of affairs is particularly
acute with regard to this inventory's brief description of the
so-called "subject" of the act. Therefore, a few explanations and
definitions are appropriate:
Investiture. This transaction is not unlike a
lease, but it repeats the language of feudalism with an owner
"investing" a tenant with land either in perpetuity
(locatio perpetualis) or for a fixed term (locatio temporalls).
When space for the description was limited,
I have used the abbreviated term "lease" instead.
"Renewal of investiture" refers to the fact that even a
perpetual investiture had to be renewed by heirs upon
their succession to the land.
Land sale. This term can refer to two quite different
types of sale: of the overall ownership (dominium
directum) of a given piece of land, or of the right to
live on and/or exploit that land (dominium utile).
Either dominium could be acquired or sold independently
of the other. For reasons of brevity and clarity, both
types are simply described as land sales.
Confession. In a "dowry confession," the groom formally
confesses that he has received the promised
dowry, renounces further claims to it, and pledges his
own goods for the eventual return of the dowry to his
wife or her assigns. In a "debt confession," on the
other hand, the first party, the debtor, confesses to
owing money.
Land transfer for debt. This, the datio in solutum of
Roman law, is a composite transaction. An individual
confesses to owing money, and declares that he has not
the resources to pay. Wishing to extinguish the obligation,
he transfers a parcel of land to his creditor,
x
INTRODUCTION
either as a sale (venditio) or a donation (donatio
inter vivos) or a cession (cessio) -- the transaction
being the same.
Tithes. The right to collect a share of the fruits of
the land, in theory enjoyed by the Church alone, was by
the medieval period treated as a rent or tax on land
owed by the cultivator. This land right was occasionally
bought and sold. More frequently, it was regarded
as a form of lease and was given out as an investiture
by the bishop or his vicar in exchange for regular payments .
Soccida. This term is untranslatable and has been
left in Italian. Here, an owner invests an individual
not with land but with cattle or sheep, to care for the
animals for a specified period of time, at the end of
which the profits were to be divided between owner and
keeper.
Procurators. The naming of legal representatives
empowered to make binding decisions -- akin to a power
of attorney -- was a common event in medieval and early
modern Italy. Procuration, as it is called, was used
either to handle a specific problem (e.g., an appearance
in court) or to handle one's entire financial and
legal affairs.
Affrancation. In land investitures, the tenant was
frequently granted the right to purchase the lease and
own the land outright, literally, to "free" the land of
obligation.
Declarations. If legal proof (i.e., a prior notarial
instrument) of ownership or debt did not exist, or
if decades of sales and investitures had obscured the real
status of ownership and tenancy, either party in a
legal relationship might find it expedient to make a
declaration of the state of affairs: who owned the
land, who cultivated it, terms of the locatio, who owed
what to whom, and so on. The declaration might include
reiterations of past documents or statements by witnesses.
Alternatively, a recent buyer of land might
order the communal herald to make a formal and public
declaration of the purchase.
Acknow1edgments. Particularly before 1400, notarial
instruments were frequently couched not in the active
voice (A sells land to B) but in the passive
xi
INTRODUCTION
(A confesses having received money from B for the sale
of land). This is particularly true of land sales, investitures,
loans, and debt payments.
The Veneto was a region of intense local particularism. Since
the rise of communes in the twelfth century, all its major cities --
Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso -- had at some point served as the
centers of independent city-states, each with its own statutes, customs
and usage. While the existence of centers of legal training at
Padua and Bologna ensured that there was considerable standardization
in law and procedure, the formularies governing notarial redaction
differed widely from place to place. This situation continued even
after the mainland cities were subject to Venetian rule in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. Venice itself, which had largely
stood outside jurisprudential developments in Italy, produced legal
and notarial formulae altogether different from those of its subjects.
Therefore, while a few generic labels such as "land sale" have
been applied to these documents in the inventory, the collection contains
dozens of variations on dozens of themes. Instruments drawn up
in Padua, Treviso and Venice, while describing similar transactions
regarding lands a few miles apart, may be altogether different in format,
language and information provided. This may be interesting to
the student of diplomatic and comparative legal systems, but it
presents difficulties for other scholars in terms of the multiplicity
of jurisdictions and almost infinite variety of forms in which transactions
were cast.
While procedures varied from place to place, there were always at
least two stages in the drawing up of a notarial instrument. In the
first, the notary jotted down the place, date, witnesses, type of
transaction, principal participants, and details of the transaction in
his notebook (protocollo). There might follow a second step
(imbreviatura) in which the notary composed a rough draft of the
instrument, with the protocollo's details fleshed out with the format
and language of his city's formulae. Neither the protocollo nor the
imbreviatura received the notary's personal seal or signature, and
neither had legal validity by itself. If the transaction was accomplished
smoothly, and neither party needed a permanent record of the
event (in the sale of perishable goods, for example), the process of
redaction might cease at that stage. But if a dispute arose or a
permanent record was desired, one of the parties might commission the
notary to draw up a full, signed, sealed, legally binding notarial
instrument, usually on parchment.
It is these fully developed instruments which, with a few exceptions,
constitute the Rosenthal Collection. These documents were for
Xii
INTRODUCTION
the most part commissioned by the large landowning families as proof
of legitimate title, as verification of tenures, and the like. When
land was sold, inherited, given in dowry, or renounced, the prior
notarial instruments associated with it passed into the hands of the
new owner. In this fashion the noble families of northern Italy gradually
built up large collections of parchments pertaining to the collective
patrimony, documents from a variety of sources which traced
the accumulation, management, dispersal and transmission of wealth
over several generations.
The concentration of many such family archives into a few distinct
collections deserves explanation. A woman's dowry constituted
her share of the family patrimony, the bulk of the patrimony being
passed through the male line. But if a family did not produce sons, a
daughter generally did inherit the patrimony. This wealth was in turn
largely integrated into that of her husband's line. The extinction of
patrilineal families through failure to produce sons is almost inevitable
in normal human reproduction over a long period of time, and was
especially common in an age of frequent irruptions of the plague and
other agents of high mortality. This seems to have happened several
times, for example, to produce the extensive "A.C. Series" of Veronese
documents (MSS 156-727): Donella Baiamonte, sole offspring and heiress
of her family, married into the Vallisnieri family around 1400 (MS
547); Veltra Vallisnieri, the last of her line, married into the Rambaldi
family in the mid-sixteenth century. The A.C. Series is apparently
the Rambaldi family archive -- but it carries the records of
earlier families whose holdings were merged to create the huge Rambaldi
patrimony. Thus the bewildering array of names and places which
confronts the viewer is not as random as it initially appears. It is
the attempt to tie together that array into a coherent flow of families
and places which is the special challenge of this collection.
Non-notarial documents
Four smaller, distinct subsections complete the Rosenthal
Collection. The first (MSS 2354-2373) is a group of Venetian ducal bulls
which had been separately gathered and labelled, probably prior to
their purchase by Phillipps. Though issued over a long period of time
(1339-1596) the bulls are homogenous in format. In each, the doge of
Venice makes public pronouncement on a legal issue -- e.g., validating
a testament which had not been properly redacted, witnessed or registered,
or confirming a land transaction subject to legal controversy.
The second non-notarial collection is likewise made up of ducal documents;
these (MSS 2375-2434), dating from the eighteenth century, are
administrative in origin, and consist of short letters to governors
and officials in the Venetian territorial dominion on military and
fiscal affairs.
xiii
INTRODUCTION
The final section of the collection comprises two groups of papal
bulls which are distinct from each other and from the vast majority of
the parchments. MSS 2435-2443, on heresy and the Reformation in
Cologne, provide a vivid picture of the Counter-Reformation papacy at
work strengthening Church institutions and combatting Lutheranism.
MSS 2444-2453 are largely concerned with relations between the papacy
and the city of Genoa in the sixteenth century, particularly as
regards the construction of warships to lead an anti-Turkish fleet.
Uses of the Collection
The Rosenthal Collection was purchased primarily as an aid to the
teaching of paleography and diplomatics. These documents are well
suited for training students from many fields -- history, art history,
Italian language and literature, musicology -- in the deciphering,
classification and interpretation of primary sources. The manuscripts
cover a broad chronological spectrum, are written in Latin and various
forms of Italian, and display a wide variety of notarial hands and
document types. The quality of writing and the degree of abbreviation
vary widely within any given time period and permit a gradual exposure
to the vagaries of notarial redaction. Nearly all of the documents
are of parchment and are in excellent condition, and can be handled
safely by students under supervision. Direct contact with documents,
as opposed to the study of photocopies, remains the best means of
introducing students to the reading of primary texts.
A venerable but still valuable graduate school exercise for historians
illustrates the use of these documents for the study of language
and writing. The student is given a single parchment. The
first task is to work out the paleography and abbreviations, and to
produce a transcription of the instrument. The next step is a full
translation, demanding not only linguistic skills but also an understanding
of the intricate conventions of translation of personal and
place names. There follows a formal analysis of the text, identifying
the document's structure, component parts and syntax. Technical legal
forms must be identified and defined; if possible, the text should be
placed within the context of formularies and local usages. Finally,
identification of individuals, families, places and general historical
setting introduces the student to printed sources, relevant journals
and the secondary literature.
At the same time, this collection -- purchased sight unseen and
on the basis of a summary description -- has proven to be of significant
value for primary research, and can be expected to attract scholars
from both sides of the Atlantic. This is particularly true of
those documents which make up the core of the collection: the
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INTRODUCTION
unpublished notarial acts originating in northern Italy in the fourteenth
through seventeenth centuries. Two considerations make these
documents attractive for the study of agrarian and rural history, the
history of families and their patrimonies, and the history of the expanding
Venetian share of mainland property holding.
First, much of the information carried in these texts is unique.
The Veronese notarial archives suffered a disastrous fire in 1723 and
today do not preserve any large amount of pre-1500 material outside
the specialized ecclesiastical archives. Therefore, the 1,847 pieces
held in the University of Chicago Library represent a major increase
in known Veronese documents.7 Many of the Veronese parchments concern
families -- Vallisnieri, Tramarini, Tarengo, Castello, Persico, Baiamonte
-- which are very poorly documented elsewhere but which were
clearly important in Veronese society and politics during this period.
Venetian family archives, too, are scarce, and it is rare to find any
single series of manuscripts documenting the landed activities of the
Venetian patriciate.
Secondly, because the Rosenthal Collection is made up of several
family archives, there is a preselection of lineage and geographical
scope which makes concentrated and specialized research possible.
Tracking down the transactions of the Rambaldi family in the State
Archives of Verona, for example, would require weeks of research in
scores of notarial imbreviature and ecclesiastical archives; at the
University of Chicago Library, this family's strategies for the accumulation,
manipulation, preservation and transmission of land and movable
wealth are detailed in a relatively small, compact, easily consulted
archive. Individual villages such as Castagne in the Veronese
territory or Lanzenigo in Treviso are far more accessible here than in
the widely scattered acts recorded in hundreds of notarial registers
in several Italian archives.
The Rosenthal Collection combines the archives of several wealthy
and noble families; most obviously and conventionally, the collection
is well suited to the study of the north Italian patriciate. We can
trace the rise of families from relatively humble beginnings -- the
Tramarini as drapers from the village of Lavagno, the Raspi as small-time
merchants alertly buying up land at public auction -- through the
accumulation of land, marriage to heiresses and the addition of titles
culminating in their succession into the ranks of the nobility. We
witness, too, their extinction through lack of sons or, as with the
Gandolfi, through rebellion and confiscation. The establishment of
alliances between families through intermarriage, investitures, procuration,
business partnerships and donations is well documented. So,
too, is the emergence of distinct branches within families and the
politically expedient dispersal of families through the city's neighborhoods.
The fact that, on the whole, these parchments concern little-known or
unspectacular patrician families only adds to their interest.
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INTRODUCTION
Beyond such specific concerns, the notarial document is a mine of
information on economic, legal, social and agrarian life. For example,
a parchment of a land sale: in addition to a precise description
of the place of redaction and prosopographical data on witnesses, we
are furnished with the names, patronyms, surnames or toponymies, occupations,
domiciles and former places of residence of the principal
actors. We are told exactly how the seller came by the land --
purchase, inheritance, dowry -- and given the date and author of the
notarial instrument by which it was acquired. From the current transaction
we know the price of the land, the method of payment and the
currency rates to be used in payment. Of the land itself we learn the
size, precise location, owners of neighoring plots, description of
dwellings, crops grown there, presence of hedges, vines, roads, and
other natural features, as well as all rents and dues owed.
Other sorts of documents hold rich and sometimes unexpected
information. Dowry contracts and confessions, for example, frequently
include a list of the bride's movable possessions -- personal clothing,
linen and furniture -- as a detailed domestic inventory. Investitures
generally include an entire history of tenures, ownership and
cultivation of the piece of land involved. Sales of houses provide a
minute description of the urban landscape. Debt documents specify the
conditions and misfortunes of the transaction which ended in debt.
The sum total of such scattered and incidental data is a vivid
picture of life in the Veneto in the late medieval-early modern period.
We can know where people came from, what they wore, what their
houses looked like, who their neighbors were, whether villages
consisted of compact nuclei or scattered dwellings, how people bought or
rented their land, what the soil conditions were, how they worked the
land and what they produced, how they passed the land on to their
heirs. The various statuses accorded women, the elderly, orphans and
bastards, can be seen at first hand.
The summary calendar which follows cannot do justice to the richness
of these documents for it only points to the possible use of such
parchments as sources for family, legal, topographic or rural history.
Behind a bare calendar entry may lie an entire narrative of family
descent, agrarian production, death, dowry, wardship, inheritance,
quarrels, coming of age, betrothal and marriage, earning a living and
falling into debt, piety and the Church, taxation, lean years, community
and household. It is a world remote from our own experience, but
one with rich potential for historical investigation.
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Calendar
Time and space did not permit full calendaring of the 2,453
pieces with dimensions of parchment, full names, patronymics, occupations,
domiciles, description of land, price, language and incidental
information. On the other hand, a summary description of this collection
would have obscured the considerable number of families and
places represented here, and the depth of the collection's documentation.
A calendar inventory is necessarily a compromise, an attempt to
provide at least skeletal information on each document without bogging
down in details. Exigencies of computer compilation of the inventory
-- notably, the line length of 132 spaces -- imposed a further set of
compromises and simplifications. Several aspects of the inventory
require explanation. All place names and surnames have been put into
their modern Italian forms. Orthography, Latin and Italian alike, was
not standardized in this period; in addition, conventions of translation
from Latin to the vernacular were not then and are not now standardized.
The spelling here is based on well-known secondary works 8,
but there may be some variation from the researcher's perception of
spelling.
Explanatory notes on some sections of the calendar follow:
Date. I have here repeated the dates given in the
documents. The researcher should realize that these
dates may not correspond with modern dating: the Venetian
calendar began on March 1; the calendar of most
Veneto cities began on 25 December. For example, 20
February 1450 in a Venetian document is actually 20
February 1451 in modern usage; 28 December 1550 in a
Veronese document is actually 28 December 1549 in
modern usage.
Place redacted. Both the place in which the document
was redacted, and the place involved (e.g. where the
invested land was actually located) have been put into
their modern forms. In most cases this was not difficult,
but in several instances the village could not be
traced, and in several instances the village name was
ambiguous. "Roveredo," for example, could refer either
to Rovereto on the Adige between Verona and Trent, or
the Roveredo di Gua near Cologna. "Castelnuovo" refers
both to the homonymic town near Peschiera and to the
hamlet of Castelnuovo dell'Abbate near Affi. A particular
problem was posed by the "Povegiano" or "Poveiano"
of dozens of documents. It was initially identified
as Povegliano southwest of Verona, but the more
precise "Poveiano Montenario" of MS 330 belied this
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INTRODUCTION
hypothesis. Poiano in the Valpantena was a possibility;
but a much stronger candidate was the hamlet of
Poiana near Tregnago,9 close to the area in which the
greatest number of identifiable lands -- Castagne, Marcellise,
Illasi, Mezzane, Lavagno -- were located.
Identification of ancient Latin with modern Italian
place names cannot, however, always be absolute.
Party 1 and Party II. The term party refers to the
participants in a transaction. In a land sale, for
example, Party I is the seller and Party II the buyer;
in a dowry confession, Party I confesses having
received the dowry from Party II. Obviously this
produces oversimplification: a party to a transaction may
appear for himself and his wife jointly, a transaction
may be effected by a procurator or third party. I have
put into the inventory the actual owner, tenant, etc.,
and not the procurators or advocates. If a third party
is involved, that name has been added to the indices.
Women appear under their own family names; if they married
into an important family, the husband's surname
has been inserted into the indices.
Many persons of this era, particularly those of
lower social orders, were not endowed with family names
but with toponymies referring to the family's place of
origin: Da Negrar, Da Nervesa. In the absence of surnames,
I have given toponyms; occasionally the place
name was too long to permit the "Da" in the allotted
space, and this has been omitted. A problem arises
when what began as a toponymic becomes, in time, a true
surname: the Da Tarengo of Verona are later known simply
as the Tarengo, the Da Bologna of Treviso as the
Bologna. In such cases I have used the eventual surname.
Sometimes a person is identified by first name
alone (e.g., MS 168), and this has been used in the
calendar.
When a person appears not in his own right but as
an office-holder (bishop, tax collector, judge), the
office, not the man, is specified. Institutions
(monasteries, churches) are identified as such lest
they become confused with toponyms.
Place involved. In divisions of patrimonies and large
land sales there might be several places involved. The
two scrolls (MS 1846, MS 1847) each list dozens of parcels
of land spread over several towns. It was not possible
to list all such places; only the first or most frequent
is given. This simplification is somewhat justified by
the fact that most documents deal with
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