<em>Repromissionis pagina</em>. Pratiche di documentazione a Pisa nel secolo XI

Abstract

The object of this study is the notarial practice in Pisa in the eleventh century. First (§ 1) the Author discusses the charters preserved within the period c. 720-c.1100 in their number, form and tipology, both as object of diplomatics and as sources for the economic and social history. Then the A. focuses on the sales (chartae venditionis) of the tenth century (§ 2) and the 'promises' (chartae promissionis) of the eleventh century - the so called repromissionis paginae, as the pisan notars usually said in the charters of this period: the 'charters of promise' are the real new entry in the surviving charters evidence of Pisa and its own territory (§ 4). In this first part of the paper the A. explores the evolution of their form and establishes the textual structure of both types of charters, by focusing on formulae, that the scholars have never considered before, and explaining them: for example, the formula "cum portione seu exemplar", wich is so typical in some charters of sale (§ 3), and the formula "eidem omini qui unc promissio pre manibus abuerit", wich gained a pregnant sense in the charters of promise (§ 5). The A. discusses also the way, in wich the charters are transmissed: in the case of sales, wich in the tenth and eleventh century are mostly transmissed only in notarial contemporary copy, the A. shows (§ 3) that the practice of making copy was a specific phase by recording the transactions of portions of lands and properties, wich were possessed by consortes. 
The main point of the study is however the practice - typical for the eleventh century in Pisa - of writing chartae venditionis and repromissionis paginae together, by the same notar, with the same issuers and beneficiaries and the same datatio. These charters demonstrate the existence of a specific practice, wich notars and judges set up to put on records and made sure in each phase (wich could last for years) the credit transactions based on landed property as guarantee; circulation and mutual relationship of single, different and formal autonomous charters as "écrits d'étape" (F. Bougard) were the columns of this practice, and the pagina repromissionis just the keystone (§ 5). Two other elements had a rôle in this 'play of charters': 1. the so called tenore (a little text, that notars wrote after their completio, out of the structural frame of the charta venditionis, nevertheless in close connection with her, because it contained a condition, that only let exist the legal transaction recorded in the charta itself), wich the A. explains in a different way from the other scholars (§ 6); 2. another little text - that the scholars have completely ignored up to now - that appears written by the notar after the tenore in the charters of sales in the second half of the eleventh century, and represents an 'abbreviation' of a repromissionis pagina, that the notar had still to write (§§7-8).