Beyond the Text. Notaries’ Visual Culture and its Impact on Italian Libri Iurium

In the last 20 years the Visual Turn and the subsequent development of the so-called Visual History brought a great deal of renewal in History in general as well as in the specific field of Diplomatic Studies, rising new questions on the relation between the different graphic elements composing documents and on their meaning and purpose(s). Moving on from the most recent research lines emerged on this topic, our contribution aims at presenting some considerations on the knowledge and the skills expressed by notaries in interpreting and reworking concepts and ideas by drawing not only on the tools of oral and written communication, but also on that graphic-expressive-artistic culture they participated in. We will deal with many aspects permeating their book-documentary production in the second half of the Middle Ages. In particular, the paper means to focus on the visual devices involved in the production of the “libri iurium”, a peculiar category of documentary collections that appeared among Italian municipal writing systems in the late 12th century and kept thriving through the 13th and 14th centuries. These manuscripts were usually conceived by the Communes to gather their most significant documents and they manifest great variety when it comes to both their content and their formal aspects, including the graphic ones such as actual decorative elements (illustrations, incipital letters, marginal maniculae), authentication marks (imperial monograms, signa manuum, signa notariorum), or even the script type chosen for the transcription. Considering the peculiar nature of the “libri iurium”, halfway between jurisdictional tools and monumental memorabilia, it is our intention to investigate whether the presence or abscence of certain elements relates to specific communication strategies and to determine the existance of tendencies on a geographical and/or chronological base.