The roman monastery of St. Sixtus in the second half of the fourteenth century: the female community and the administration of its patrimony

Abstract

Our informations on the Domenican convent of St. Sixtus in the fourteenth century are fundamentally based on a register of entries and exits of the years 1369-1381 and on other fragmentary accounting records of late fourteenth-early fifteenth century. These sources are an exception for the Roman documentation that is preserved for this period and they can to be investigated from many points of view. In this paper are analyzed especially the data provided by the oldest register about the writing practices that were put in place within St. Sixtus monastery for administration and management, the systems of exploitation of its rich landed patrimony, the life of the female community that lived in the monastery, and, finally, the Roman economy of the second half of the fourteenth century. The essay also discusses various hypotheses about the possibility of attributing to the case of St. Sixtus and to register of the years 1369-1387 a paradigmatic value both in terms of wealth management and about the Roman documentary practices, especially those of women's religious communities.