Original und kopial überlieferte Papsturkunden des 13. Jahrhunderts aus Lucca (1227 bis 1274) - Analyse und Edition

The greatest number of all the documents engrossed during the Middle Ages was produced in the papal chancery and dispatched all over the known world. The calculation of the exact number of issued papal documents contributes to the comprehension of this chancery’s former capacity. However, because of the large number of lost documents and the complicated situation regarding the tradition of the extant letters which are found in different places and in different kinds of sources, this is a difficult task. The papal registers, the records of the issuers, comprise numerous pieces, but since the registration was not obligatory in the 13th century, but subject to additional costs for the petitioners, only a small number of the engrossed documents was presumably registered. That is why there are many documents in the archives of the addresses which are not included in the registers. Other documents have only come down to us because they were transcribed and copied as part of court records in notarial registers – because of the “Massenhaftigkeit ihres Stoffes” (huge amount of contained material), they are known to be “sehr wertvolle Quellen” (very useful sources) (Brandt, Werkzeug des Historikers, Köln 1993, S. 88-89). Such sources are very valuable due to the fact that the original documents lost their preservation value after the completion of the respective legal transaction and were usually destroyed. In this regard, the Tuscan town Lucca offers advantageous source material. In the archives of Lucca, in which large numbers of originals and copies of papal documents are stored, the notarial registers of the uniquely well documented notary Ciabattus from the 13th century have survived. The comparison of nearly 290 documents of Gregory IX, Innocent IV, Alexander IV, Urban IV, Clement IV and Gregory X preserved in Lucca with the relevant registers illustrates the incompleteness of these papal records. At the same time the analysis reveals that there exist register entries for several of the original letters, but none corresponding to the pieces in the notarial registers. The content analysis of the documents explains the reasons: While the majority of the originals, the copies and the registered documents are littere de gratia, almost all of the pieces in the notarial registers are littere de iustitia. Based on these documents, which survived neither in their original form nor in the registers, but in a rather hidden way, many lower clerics and even some secular people attempted to assert their interests and rights on a daily basis. And it is precisely such documents and not the more splendid and well-preserved privileges that inform us about the various aspects of everyday life in the Middle Ages.