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Testaments: A Note on Three Unknown Indices in the Florentine Archives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The final disposition of one's worldly possessions is the prelude to the ultimate act in the life cycle. It offers a rare view into the mind of the testator as well as insights into his social and cultural milieu. For historians of art and students of social, economic, or political history, the form and content of testaments can often supply important data for research. However, all scholars who have sought specific wills know the difficulties encountered in their search.
In the Florentine archives all notarized acts survive in two basic collections: the Notarile antecosimiano and the Archivio Diplomatico. The former consists of volumes of notarial protocols as written and recorded by individual notaries, while the latter consists of rolls of pergamena. The inventories for both collections are cross-referenced. The Notarile inventories are numbers 38 through 40, with an Appendice (No. 41).
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1981
References
1 To request a document from the Diplomatico collection one needs write only the name of the collection and the date of the document.
2 To order either of these two indices, the scholar requests Notarile appendice 112 or 113.
3 To request a will found in Notarile appendice 112, one must include the year and the complete range of shelf marks found for that notary, e.g.,
NOTARILE ANTECOSIMIANO
P 349-357 ANNO 1477
To request one from No. 113, one must again indicate all shelf marks as well as the years shown in the inventory volumes for the Libri dei testamenti, thus:
NOTARILE ANTECOSIMIANO
R 290-293 TESTAMENTI
ANNI 1504-1523
4 In this volume, the letter C indicates a codicil, while a P means a part of or extract from a testament. One cannot be certain that this index is complete after No. 45 of the Diplomatico inventories
5 I would like to thank Rab Hatfield for introducing me to the Notarile appendice and Brenda Preyer, whose perseverance led to the discovery of the index to the Diplomatico testaments (to which I found a reference in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence). Last, but most important, I wish to express my gratitude to Paola Peruzzi and Teresa Arnaldo for their patient assistance and generous willingness to share their knowledge of the Florentine archives.