Paleographical, diplomatic and philological analysis of files of Petrus Perençanus, a notary from Zadar (1361–1392)

Bartulović, Anita. (2014). Paleographical, diplomatic and philological analysis of files of Petrus Perençanus, a notary from Zadar (1361–1392). PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of History. [mentor Matijević Sokol, Mirjana and Perić, Olga].

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Abstract

This PhD thesis presents for the first time a life and activities of a medieval notary in a form of a monograph. Petrus called Perençanus, of the late Sir Aço de Lemicetis from Padova, who came to Zadar in the sixties of the 14th century as a notary with the authentication power of the emperor, has been chosen as a subject matter of this work. The work is divided into four chapters. The first chapter presents his biography based on very poor and mostly indirect data. According to the files which he drafted himself it is evident that he acted as a public (1361–1392), court (1366–1367) and chapter (1380–1392) notary in Zadar. The only direct information which was brought by Petrus from Sarzana and which has not been published until now, refers to, only sparingly though, his practice on the island Cres as a locumtenens vicecomitatuum (?) and a procurator of the insular communes Cres, Beli and Lubenice in the seventies of the 14th century. Other indirect data coming from his colleagues relate to him as a witness during completion of different contracts which were made by them, further data relate to him as an owner of a certain land in the Draženica mala Bay and finally three contracts have been found which were drafted by his son Aço. Incidental addresses of the place of his living were mentioned by Perençanus himself in the eschatocol of the agreement he drafted himself but it is hard to say anything more detailed about the character of ownership over those residential objects since no contract was found which he drafted himself at one of his colleagues. The reason for the lack of this kind of information should lie in the fact that a great deal of notarial registers from this period were lost and not preserved. Having taken into account all the references of Perencan's colleagues to his contracts, he most probably died in Zadar in the second half of 1392. The second chapter presents a description of his hand-writing as a part of paleographical analysis which shows characteristics of a notarial cursive Gothic script, then the system of abbreviations in a tabular form as well as a material description of all his preserved files and charters. It has been concluded that the notarial register, which is kept in The State Archives in Zadar, and which covers the period from 1366 to 1392, is not complete because of evident damages made not only as a result of moisture but also because of physical disadvantages of many contracts. This is proved by their incompletness as well as by the references of his colleagues and himself to certain contracts which are not preserved in the notarial register itself. The analysis states that one piece of paper preserved in the notarial register belongs to his lost notarial minute. The third chapter states, by the means of diplomatic analysis of the files, that there were some minor contradictions in the notarial practice in relation to legal provisions that deal with the obligation of releasing charters because the notarial minute as the main book had a high level of authencity based on the signature of the judge examinator himself which is evident in the preserved notarial minutes of Perencan's colleagues as well as in a half of a page of Perencan's notarial minute. Further, the third chapter demonstrates, by the means of comparison, basic differences in diplomatic structure between notarial and chapter charters, respectively files as well as court files, and it introduces a synthesis of legal formulas typical for around forty legal actions in comparison with provisions of Zadar statute book. The last chapter notes, by the means of philological analysis, the majority of appearances on phonological, morphological and syntactic level as well as the influence of vernacular languages on the lexic of Perencan's notarial work written in Latin language. It is recorded that the majority of the mentioned changes move within the norms of Medieval Latin which reflect a very minor influence of Roman language appearances and which in the end witness Perencan's enviable level of knowledge of classical and medieval norms of Latin language.

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