Le reintegre o platee dei Sanseverino di Bisignano: diritti e prelievo signorile nella Calabria settentrionale (secolo XV - prima metà del XVI)

The aim of this paper is to reassess the history of the Sanseverino family, princes of Bisignano in Calabria in the Late Middle Ages; by focusing on a specific and unpublished source: the so-called “reintegre or platee” as written in the first half of the 16th century. These are public sources mostly enlisting properties and benefits; they serve the purpose of re-possessing the privileges taken from the princes themselves over the previous century. The paper will therefore focus not only on the management and character of the seigneurial landholdings but also on the reconstruction of both the local networks of power exerted on the population and the local political system. It will shed new light on the still debated historiographical issue centered on the seigneurial authority in southern Italy by assessing its local rooting and pervasiveness since the 14th century.

Construire un comté: Sinopoli (1330-1335)

Charles I of Anjou restored the counties according to the Norman system; his successors im- proved them and let them become a space of local power inside the the Royal districts, the gi- ustizierati. At the same time some aristocratic families consolidated themselves, like the Ruffo of Calabria, lords of Sinopoli, who obtained the comital title in 1334. The paper analyses two important records: the cartulario 1 and the cartulario 17, integrating them with all the availa- ble documents. The cartulario 17 contains platea dating from 1335, which includes one or two older texts written in Greek and translated into Latin. It is at the same time an inventory and a municipal statute. The cartulario 17 is the main source for studying the creation, composition and ruling of the county of Sinopoli, not to mention the various world of the subjects to the lords, according to their status (vassallus) or their possessions as freemen (burgenses). We have also suffeudatarii and other people depending on the baron, like the raccomandati.

I Conti erariali dei feudi nella I serie delle Dipendenze della Sommaria dell’Archivio di Stato di Napoli (XV secolo): per un nuovo inventario ragionato

In this paper we present the results obtained from the systematic investigation of the sub-series ‘Conti erariali dei feudi’ of the fund ‘Dipendenze della Sommaria’ preserved in the State Ar- chives of Naples. A reasoned analytical inventory is proposed, limited to the documentation re- lating to the period between 1421 and 1500, for a count of 58 envelopes and 212 dossiers. This is fiscal documentation that has flowed into the Archive of the Camera della Sommaria following the deliveries by the provincial administrators required to submit their work to the audit of the rational of the king, but also as a result of traumas and confiscations on fiefs by the sovereign.

Percorsi familiari e preminenza a Nola alla fine del Medioevo. Il caso degli Albertini di Cimitile

Through the parchments of the aristocratic archive, the essay reconstructs the events and paths of construction and consolidation of the political and social role of the Albertini of Cimitile, an important family of the Nolan élite, of legal professionals and with consolidated relations with the Orsini count dynasty, in the period between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period.

Introduzione

The paper introduces the volume, focuses the purposes of the research, summarizes the essays and their historiographical framework. If you study the archives of Southern Italy’s feudal lords, you are studying the nature of seigniorial power and the strategies of the aristocratic memory.

Il signore va alla Camera. I relevi dell’archivio della Regia Camera della Sommaria

The essay offers an analysis of the largest concentration of records concerning the feudal lord- ship in the Kingdom of Naples from the 15th to the 17th century, the serie Relevi, kept at the Ar- chivio di Stato of Naples. The Relevi were the core of the enormous mass of records hold by the Archives of the Camera della Sommaria in Naples. These files must be considered as a whole: by tracing the creation, the evolution and the integration of the archives of the most important fiscal and financial court of the reign, the paper points out the crucial links between archivistic order, government of the state and seigneural power in the Aragonese and Spanish era.

Le signorie del Mezzogiorno aragonese attraverso i libri dei relevi

The essay provides an overview on fiefs and seigneurial powers in the Kingdom of Naples in the Aragonese era, on the base of findings and research issues drawn on the serie Relevi kept at the Archivio di Stato of Naples. It includes discussions on demographic development and settle- ment patterns, successions, government and productive structures, the territorial vocation, the process of “monumentalization” of the seigneurie in the medieval and early-modern southern sources.

L’Archivio del principe di Taranto Giovanni Antonio Orsini del Balzo

In recent years, historiographical reflection has devoted more and more attention to the rela- tionship between the exercise of power and the processes of production/management of doc- uments, understood as real instruments of government, capable of guaranteeing the correct functioning of the administrative apparatus of kingdoms, principalities, republics and lord- ships, more or less extensive. The essay investigates one of the most important noble archives of the fifteenth-century Southern Italy, the archive of the Prince of Taranto, Giovanni Antonio Orsini del Balzo, which over time has been invested by a vast process of dispersion. The fundamental objective is to take stock of the most consistent core of documents, coming from the principality of Taranto, and merged into the fond of the Regia Camera della Sommaria of the Archivio di Stato of Naples.