Settlement, territory and notarial formulas: a verification (Verona, IX-XII century)

Abstract

The organization of rural areas in early Middle Ages and its observability through techniques of location taken by notaries is a classic italian subject in the historiography in the second half of the 20^th century. The documentation produced in Verona lend to a verify of the ipothesis and to the formulation of guidelines for the interpretation of this formulas as concerning settlement and village territory. The number of documents produced and preserved in Verona between 9^th and 12^th century, and its homogeneity as institutions which produced and trasmitted them, allows to deal with a complex analysis that must consider several others variables. On the hand of documentation it deals with the possible variety, up to personal practice, of notary’s formulas and uses; these are then linked on to differences on geographic patterns, ownership relations, landlords presence and agrarian practices. The variety of geographical context, equally divided between a hill of significant size, a dry and irrigated high plain and the lowlands subject to flood, is proposed as a positive element to identify different factors in the building of rural settlement, its organization and rapresentations. It is assumed that these formulas are developed into patterns resulting by a dialectic between notary’s culture and perception of the space organization, which should be the resulting in the relationship between human communities and the territory where these act. The aim is highlighting factors which were found to underlie the formation of village territories. This is the level more elusive and less considered by italian historiography that has traditionally focused on the jurisdictional (both landlord and ecclesiastical) or fiscal one and therefore the relationship between power and territory. The comparative reading of location practice as a system of relations between the words – elaborated by a topographic level diachronic as well as synchronous – allows instead to highlight their links with the different practices in the territory: not only through the presence of landlordship, but also the structure of habitat, the forms of solidarity and the access to common resources.