The «Consuetudines terre Platee»:an example of the culture of writing in late medieval Sicily

Abstract

This article analises the Consuetudines terre Platee, a collection of public written records registered in a single volume by the community of Piazza. The collection starts around the 1390, and continues in the following centuries, maintaining a central role in the documentary landscape of the city. The Consuetudines, as a monument to the collective memory of the town, are a key-element in the making of the urban identity and in defining the role of the universitas in the kingdom of Sicily. In this sense, the collection allows the historian both to find out the social changes and the institutional experiments in the local society, and to analyse the city’s political struggles and confrontations with the central government. In the first half of the 14th century, the community of Piazza is recognised as an autonomous juridical entity (a universitas) thanks to some important royal concessions. In the second half of 14th century, the increasing complexity of the dynamics between the town and the central governement reveals the growing articulation of the urban institutions. During the 15th century, many elements in the volume reveal more and more clearly the growing conscience of one of the main purposes of writing and preserving public acts: to organise the memory and the transmission of the written texts on which is based the urban authonomy seems in fact to be the best way to guarantee that these same royal concessions would be respected. In the same period, the collection shows also a growing attention to the different political factions in the city, becoming even more eloquent about the social and political framework of the urban society.