The memory of gentlemen. The cartularies of lineage in the late Middle Ages

Abstract

Despite the feeble interest of the Italian historians for the deeds produced by non-urban political subject, just a simple bibliographical and archival recognition has allowed to show the large diffusion of the cartularies at the end of the Middle Ages. This essay investigates the vicissitude of the cartularies, non only regarding their function within the kinship (time by time labeled as pragmatic, juridical, symbolic, performative), but also regarding to the narrative structure often taken by the cartularies, which provides them as a cultural product. They really were a sort of memory books, of political recollections – even though per fragmenta, produced through an accurate selection of documents – of the “gentiluomini di Lombardia” (as Machiavelli called the rural nobility) whom were alien different ways of codification of the story of the family (such as the more famous “libri di famiglia”, so widespread in Tuscany).