Paolo Buffo

In the eleventh century the Aosta Valley was first one of the political centres of the kingdom of Burgundy, then a contact area between the confl icting ambitions of the house of Savoy and the bishops of Aosta. This study examines the few remains of manuscript production in the region along that century. The core of the investigation is a palaeographic and diplomatic analysis of the charta Augustana: an endemic documentary type which was written, in its latest form, both on the recto and the verso of the parchment sheet. Most of the studies relating to the Aostan scribes project on the first charters the juridical function and the writing practices mentioned in late medieval documents. This research, which also provides an edition of the eleventh-century chartae, reconstructs the early structure, functions and behaviours of the Aostan «chancery»: a fluid group, which had a close relationship with ecclesiastical institutions and the scriptorium. A comparative examination of chartae and books brings out several clues of a cultural renewal that involved the cathedral clergy by the mid-eleventh century. The survey is based on a continuous comparison with documentary and book production in other regions of the kingdom of Burgundy and of North-Western Italy.

Il saggio studia le politiche editoriali degli enti torinesi che, nella seconda metà del secolo XIX e nei primi anni del XX, pubblicarono edizioni di fonti medievali: la Deputazione di storia patria, l’Accademia delle scienze e altri istituti e sodalizi. Benché, a partire dagli ultimi decenni dell’Ottocento, l’università si sia affermata come polo della ricerca medievistica a scapito delle società storiche, fino all’inizio del Novecento la Deputazione e l’Accademia conservarono un ruolo fondamentale non solo per la messa a disposizione di risorse economiche e di sedi editoriali per la pubblicazione delle fonti, ma anche perché le loro iniziative fecero da banco di prova per i metodi parallelamente elaborati dagli storici professionisti. Tale funzione è qui studiata con riferimento alla messa a punto di tecniche per l’edizione critica delle fonti documentarie; per la pubblicazione di indici e regesti; per la riproduzione fotografica dei codici.

Intorno al 1200 comparvero, nei territori non italiani del dominio sabaudo, varie cerchie di notarii con statuti eterogenei, che redigevano atti per privati. La storiografia ha spesso presentato la genesi del notariato in Savoia come un effetto automatico dell’influenza delle prassi notarili italiane. In questo saggio, che prende in esame soprattutto le tecniche relative all’uso di segni grafici, si sottolinea invece l’originalità delle scelte compiute da quei primi notarii nella combinazione di elementi in linea con il modello italiano ed elementi che appartenevano alle tradizioni documentarie transalpine. Questo bricolage formale, inteso ad assicurare la spendibilità locale degli atti, conferì ai segni dei notai savoiardi del Duecento un valore diplomatico e una funzione simbolica non sempre analoghi a quelli dei signa tabellionis italiani.

The Aosta Valley was controlled by the kings of Burgundy from the 9 th century and by the counts of Savoy from the 11 th century. Although the region lies on the Italian side of the Alps, its documentary traditions were similar to those of the transalpine area. The studies so far carried out on Aosta Valley documentation have focused on the charta Augustana: an endemic form of private act, produced by the urban chancellery of Aosta. This essay looks at a group of about 120 documents, designated as brevia recordationis and written in Aosta Valley between the beginning of the 12 th century and the 1230s. The Aosta Valley brevia do not have authentication elements nor dating formulas. They follow a standardized structure, that underwent little change during the period under review. They mostly concern donations, loans and land occupancy agreements. After studying the formation of the Aosta Valley breve model, the essay describes its functions, which were complementary to those of charta Augustana. Some observations are dedicated to the experiments performed on the basic structure of the breve by scribes working for the episcopal church of Aosta, which was engaged during the 12 th century in a redefinition of its institutional relations with the counts of Savoy. The disappearance of the Aosta Valley breve at the beginning of the 13 th century is connected with the spread in the region of documentary forms hiterto little used, such as instrumentum publicum and sealed act. The last part of the essay focuses on the main recording techniques of the Aosta Valley brevia, which were related mostly to accountability practices. Some reflections are also dedicated to the legal and documentary relevance of brevia, whose credibility was limited to the territory of Aosta Valley and was based on the use of certain diplomatic formalities in the composition of their text.

The study investigates some aspects of the relationship between the counts of Savoy and the scribes who produced their documents, and reconstructs the effects that this relationship had on textual structures, authenticating practices and graphic forms. In Piedmont, the dynasty systematically exploited the work of imperial notaries. In the various sectors of the transalpine domains and in the Aosta valley, the documents concerning the counts were written by local scribes (mainly clerics from the entourages of bishops and abbots) until the end of the 12th century; after 1200 many Sabaudian acts were produced by itinerant notaries mainly from the Savoy region. In that area notaries could have an ecclesiastical, Sabaudian or imperial appointment (many of them had more than one) and notary practices differed from the Italian ones in terms of forms, validation methods and extrinsic characters. The notaries who were Sabaudian officers (usually designated as notarii comitis) adapted those practices taking into account many factors: the ambitions of the counts, who looked for both public legitimacy and administrative efficiency; the legal traditions of the areas where the documents had to be used; the outcomes of the  dialectic between the professional autonomy of the notary and his subordination to the counts as an officer.

The behaviours of the scribes who (in a dynamic relationship of collaboration and autonomy) worked for the bishops of transjurane Burgundy are placed in correlation with the transformation of documentary cultures and institutional frameworks between the end of the Carolingian order and the age of territorial principalities. The construction of episcopal special documents depended on a bricolage of textual and graphic elements originating from both the royal model of “public” document and “private” documentary types and is here analysed in reference to the evolution of the bishops’ political and institutional role.

This essay deals with the birth of a practical documentation relating to the current managing of direct taxation in several communes of the principality of Savoy-Achaea, in Piedmont (particularly Moncalieri, Pinerolo and Turin), between the end of the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century. The increase in the tax burden of the prince on communities stimulated the development of the structure and contents of municipal accounting records. On the one hand there was a gradual tendency for writing the majority of the collection and audit operations carried out by municipal officers. On the other hand, the accounting records were organized as a coherent system of thematic registers, tied to one another by functional links and intertextuality. After 1330 a municipal finance crisis caused an increase of political functions attributed to accounting records, as an instrument of control over the fiscal behaviour of citizens; an effect of this situation was the production of registers dedicated to lists of tax evaders.

L’articolo descrive i rapporti fra le pratiche del reclutamento e del finanziamento militari e la costruzione istituzionale nel principato di Savoia-Acaia. A inizio Trecento i principi si attribuirono una funzione di tutela del bene pubblico e sfruttarono la necessitas militare per inasprire le richieste di denaro e di armati e per legittimare la nascita di una fiscalità pubblica, diretta, estesa alla maggior parte delle popolazioni dominate. La contrattazione degli obblighi militari delle comunità si spostò da un tradizionale contesto di accordi separati con il principe ad ambiti istituzionali centrali quali i parlamenta, convocati soprattutto in occasione della richiesta di sussidi. Molte comunità approfittarono dell’aumento delle esigenze belliche del potere centrale per usare la renitenza militare come strumento negoziale. Le vicende del principato sono confrontate con quelle, in parte diverse, dei domini dei conti di Savoia e dei marchesi di Monferrato.

La communication est consacrée à l’essor d’un système comptable original chez les Savoie-Achaïe. Ce système était fondé sur le rôle comptable du prince au sein de l’équipe des computatores, notamment sur sa participation à la vérification des pièces justificatives; on verra comment le lexique comptable insiste sur ces aspects et on analysera les ordres donnés par le prince à ses officiers et à ses techniciens lors de la production des comptes. On observera ensuite la nature diplomatique des écritures comptables: bien qu’elles n’étaient pas des actes notariés, elles étaient pourvues de la vigueur administrative nécessaire à leur usage éfficace parmi les agents princiers; cette vigueur était assurée par leur conservation dans un lieu précis (les archives de Pinerolo) et par l’emploi d’éléments textuels caractérisants. Le développement du langage et de la structure des comptes fut le résultat de la tension entre adéquation aux besoins changeants d’un pouvoir en construction et nécessité de sauvegarder la validité au niveau formel des textes comptables.

L’objectif du colloque, organisé par les sections d’histoire médiévale des universités de Lausanne et de Berne, est de poser les fondements d’une étude comparée du rayonnement de la culture romane de l’écrit sur les régions d’outre-Sarine, à travers l’exemple des registres notariaux. L’exploitation de l’immense potentiel de ces derniers sera utile à la recherche en raison du rôle décisif que le notariat libre a joué en Suisse occidentale dans la circulation des chartes. Sous l’influence de l’Italie du Nord et du Sud de la France, des notaires formés à l’écriture cursive et aux formulaires ont commencé dès le XIIIe siècle à émettre pour leur propre compte des instruments, tout en étant jurés d’un décanat épiscopal ou secrétaires de ville. Une comparaison des techniques d’écriture et des pratiques professionnelles de par et d’autre de la Sarine permettra de rendre compte des points communs et des divergences. L’observation des registres notariaux du Sud de la France et de l’Italie du Nord permettra d’inscrire dans une perspective plus large les résultats obtenus à l’échelle de la Suisse.

Les conférences auront lieu au Château de Dorigny, salle 106, les 12 et 13 juin. L'entrée est libre.

Organisateurs et personnes de contact :
Prof. Martine Ostorero, Section d'Histoire, UNIL, martine.ostorero@unil.ch

Prof. Christian Hesse, Historisches Institut, Université de Bern, christian.hesse@hist.unibe.ch