ABSTRACT

Recent research has widely emphasized the role of public written records and data-managing strategies in late-medieval governmental growth. The necessity to control information and to assure that a timely stream of news and communications circulated among the various components of a composite domain became central for princes and governments. Such a need was translated into new documentary techniques and archival organization by the endless work of many professionals at various territorial levels. However, the increasing recourse to recorded information was a multifaceted phenomenon. To better understand its complexity, the essay will investigate the intersection of spoken and written strategies of information-gathering and negotiation. Secondly, the paper will also take into account the ambivalent dynamics underlying the recording of the various means required not only to rule a composite territorial domain, but also to control its administrative, judicial and fiscal geography. Whereas the use of written records became the norm for the establishment of a new political order, that practice sometimes, and for different reasons, also contributed to preserving the memory of a different past. In order to adequately capitalize on late-medieval Italy’s complexity, the essay will examine different records and different contexts. The examples will be taken from a set of composite polities in post-communal northern and central Italy (ranging from Milan to Florence or Mantua) which shared some common features, but which were also different in size, strength, ideological models and material constitution. The considered timespan will be a long Quattrocento going from the mid-fourteenth to the early sixteenth century.

摘要

最近的研究广泛强调公共书面记录和数据管理策略在中世纪晚期政府发展中的作用。控制信息并确保新闻和通信在复合领域的各个组成部分之间及时传播的必要性成为王子和政府的核心。通过不同领域的许多专业人员的不懈努力，这种需求被转化为新的纪实技术和档案组织。然而，越来越多地利用记录信息是一个多方面的现象。为了更好地理解其复杂性，本文将研究信息收集和谈判的口头和书面策略的交叉点。第二，文件还将考虑到记录各种手段背后的矛盾动态，这些手段不仅是统治复合领土所需的，而且也是控制其行政、司法和财政地理所需的。尽管使用书面记录成为建立新政治秩序的规范，但这种做法有时出于不同的原因也有助于保存不同过去的记忆。为了充分利用中世纪晚期意大利的复杂性，本文将研究不同的记录和不同的背景。这些例子取自意大利后公社北部和中部的一组复合政体（从米兰到佛罗伦萨或曼图亚），这些政体具有一些共同特征，但在规模、实力、思想模式和物质构成。所考虑的时间跨度将是从十四世纪中叶到十六世纪初期的一个漫长的十五世纪。