Book Series Giornale Italiano di Filologia - Bibliotheca, vol. 31

The Collectio Avellana and the Development of Notarial Practices in Late Antiquity

Rita Lizzi Testa, Giulia Marconi (eds)

  • Pages: 672 p.
  • Size:156 x 234 mm
  • Illustrations:1 b/w, 2 col., 15 tables b/w.
  • Language(s):English, Italian, Spanish
  • Publication Year:2023

  • € 115,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-58836-0
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  • € 115,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-58837-7
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  • Contains contributions in Open Access


On the basis of the famous but elusive Collectio Avellana, this volume traces the evolving status and roles of ‘notaries’ in Late Antiquity, adding an exciting new chapter to the history of information management and technologies

Review(s)

“Readers of this collection of essays – a fitting format for a study of the CA – will surely find much of value here. Each chapter is packed to the brim with interesting thoughts and analyses of under-appreciated evidence, especially pertaining to notarial practices. (...)
(...) Lizzi Testa, Marconi, and their collaborators should be thanked for the impressive work they have put into this wide-ranging collection of papers” (Michael Wuk, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2024.02.25)

Summary

The essays collected in this volume study the competences and status of late antique notaries, who from simple stenographers acquired responsibilities and growing importance within the imperial court and in the papal chancellery, being charged with drawing up the acts of the consistorium and the ecclesiastical councils, and with preserving and often delivering sensitive documents from Rome to Constantinople. The analysis of their multiple activities and of the functions they occupied, in the imperial and episcopal archives as well as in the libraries of the great Roman domus, also allows us to verify some new hypotheses on the compiler and on the editing of the Collectio Avellana. Since in the Middle Ages, the collection was transcribed into two main manuscripts both preserved in Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana, the essays also try to understand what role the founder of the Monastery, San Pier Damiani, played in preserving this collection.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction (Rita Lizzi Testa)

I. The Making of the Collectio Avellana from Cassiodorus to Pier Damiani
La seconda vita di Cassiodoro e la Collectio Avellana (Pierfrancesco Porena)
Ritornando sulla Collectio Avellana. La subscriptio del notarius Sixtus nel codex Berolinensis Latinus 79 (Paola Paolucci)
The Gesta de absolutione Miseni of 495 as Synodal Minutes. A Formal Analysis (Tommaso Mari)
Dal manoscritto medievale ai modelli tardoantichi. Indizi nel codice V della Collectio Avellana (Serena Ammirati)
Pier Damiani e la Collectio Avellana. Storia di un’ipotesi (Giulia Marconi)

II. A Teeming World of Secretaries and Archives, between the Senatorial Aristocracy and the Imperial Court
Alcune note sui notarii nella corte imperiale del IV secolo (Ignazio Tantillo)
The notarii of the Valentinian Emperors (AD 364-392): Social Profiles, Promotion in Rank, and Political Rise in the East and in the West (Milena Raimondi)
L’aristocrazia senatoria romana e la trasmissione di oracoli e prodigi sulla fine dell’impero tra Roma e Costantinopoli (sec. V-VI) (Umberto Roberto)
Archivi palatini tardo antichi. Genesi e mitopoiesi (Maria G. Castello)
Los constitutionarii ¿exceptores del senado? (María Victoria Escribano Paño)
I funzionari dell’amministrazione civile al concilio di Calcedonia (451) (Joachim Szidat)
Archivos y notarii en las relaciones bizantino-visigodas (Margarita Vallejo Girvés)
Lo scriba di Ravenna e la prefettura del pretorio tardoantica (Fabrizio Oppedisano)
Gli exceptores fra tarda antichità e alto medioevo. Aspetti istituzionali, sociali e culturali (Dario Internullo)

III. Tachygraphers, Notaries, and the Formation of the Ecclesiastical Chancellery
Abiectis ante iudicis pedes tabulis. Stenografia e stenografi nelle passioni tardoantiche di martiri cristiani: alcune osservazioni (Michel-Yves Perrin)
Notarii, decretali e apocrifi a Roma tra fine V e inizio VI secolo (Tessa Canella)
Los preceptos romanos en las primeras colecciones canónicas atestiguadas en Hispania (Josep Vilella)
Committenti e ‘tecnici’ delle collezioni: i traduttori tra notarii, copisti, stenografi e altri. Dal caso delle Dionysianae (Teresa Sardella)
Ecclesiastical Bureaucracy at the Synod under Menas in 536 (Sylvain Destephen)
Da stenografi ad amministratori. I notarii nel Registrum Epistularum di Gregorio Magno (Elena Caliri)

IV. Moving Documents in Late Antiquity: Messengers and Negotiators in the Collectio Avellana
Los notarii y otros funcionarios en la Collectio Avellana. Formación, funciones y papel institucional (Juana Torres)
Don’t Shoot the Messenger? Men of ‘Power and Might’ – notarii and exceptores in the Collectio Avellana (Alexander Evers)
Moving the Mail: The Status and Operations of Letter Carriers in the Collectio Avellana (Noel Lenski)

Concluding Remarks. Cassiodorus as antiquarius (Rita Lizzi Testa)

List of Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index nominum propriorum