Le scritture duecentesche "in quaterno" dei notai al servizio della Chiesa ambrosiana

Milan is lacking for the XIII century archiepiscopal registers designed strict sense and also for the cartularies of notaries who worked in the town, for ecclesiastical and civil institutions or private citizens. It is a loss that doesn't allow to fully analyze the techniques used by notaries of Milan during this period and, more significantly, to identify differences in the records production and managment used by the different branches of service. Nevertheless analyzing more than one thousand records written by notaries in mundum in the service of archbishop and curia in the thirteenth century, edited by Maria Franca Baroni, there are no doubts about the existence of these registers and cartularies and it is also possible to gather some information on their structures and techniques of editing and storing. The first and most conspicuous indirect informations of quaterni written by notaries that more continously used their knowledge and ability to serve the Ambrosian Church refer to documentation issued by the ecclesiastical courts. Minor evidence, but not negligible, concern imbreviature about contracts not directly linked to the ecclesiastical courts. These imbreviature are related to the administration of the assets of archbishop or, more generally, to the management of his different competences in temporalibus et in spiritualibus. Even if the records are discontinuous and fragmented, the thirteenth century curial writings in quatemo seem to be typologically varied and complex. Transmitting and storing the quaterni of curia, at least until the middle of the thirteenth century, are similar to those of others notaries in Milan; instead starting from the period of Ottone Visconti (1262-1295) and, most clearly and incisively, during the one of Francesco da Parma (1296-13 08) there are differences between the two areas of professional practice, because of a better management of records by institutions who use them as a tool of government. Within this period the solutions offered by notaries of the Ambrosian Church are not yet defined, but are sufficient to ensure that these notaries are well aware of the complexity of problems created by the adoption of the records in quaterno.