Notai e documentazione nella Sardegna dei giudici (secc. XII-XIII)

Fadda, Bianca

2022-01-01

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Abstract

Starting from the eleventh century, the Giudicati of Torres, Gallura, Cagliari and Arborea have now acquired full autonomy from the previous Byzantine domination and assumed the appearance of state entities that exercise power through the issuance of documents by the 'chancelleries' . But we must not think of complex structures similar to those active in the same period in the service of kings / emperors or popes; the Judge chancelleries are extremely simple offices in which, if necessary, the sovereign's trusted men alternate, generally clerics, the only medieval literates and main repositories of knowledge and written culture, who draw up documents in the vernacular or in Latin mixed with vulgar Sardinian. In the twelfth century, continental notaries appeared on the Sardinian Judge chancelleries, to whom the judges rely, even if not exclusively, for the management of relations with foreign institutions. Notaries are sometimes inspired by the schemes of the private document (short, instrumentum), at other times they create hybrid and variegated compositions, which cannot be inserted in rigidly pre-established grids, which are placed halfway between the private document and the public one, but in all in cases the credibility of the act is entrusted to the leaden seal of the Sardinian judge.