Frammenti e registri notarili pavesi e vogheresi del Trecento presso l'Archivio di Stato di Pavia

The twenty surviving registers of the Vogherese notary Giovanni de Acurso, active in Voghera between 1341 and 1406, make it possible to reconstruct the activities of a notary who worked in a peripheral centre during years that were troubled by wars and plague. Through the contracts he registered we can assess the local commercial activities and identify alternations between periods of economic prosperity and stagnation. Furthermore, an analysis of the formulary makes it possible to verify the legal competences of a notary-jurist who was active in reforming the statutes. The originals, preserved in the archives of Voghera and in the Archivio di Stato di Milano, also allow us confirm the absence of professional collaboration during Giovanni de Acurso’s long life, and the fate of his imbreviature which were entrusted to the de Bosco, a family of notaries likewise active in Voghera. An analysis of the annotations of the first centuries of the modern age, as well as a comparison with the parchments obtained from the registers of the imbreviature written by Giovanni himself and his successors, elucidates that other registers were lost between the middle of the fifteenth and the early seventeenth centuries. Despite being mentioned by scholars of demographic history, and economic and social history who studied Voghera, the notary has never been studied from the perspective of his professional competences