The Collectio Avellana and the Development of Notarial Practices in Late Antiquity

The essays collected in this volume study the competences and status of late antique notaries, who from simple stenographers acquired responsibilities and growing importance within the imperial court and in the papal chancellery, being charged with drawing up the acts of the consistorium and the ecclesiastical councils, and with preserving and often delivering sensitive documents from Rome to Constantinople. The analysis of their multiple activities and of the functions they occupied, in the imperial and episcopal archives as well as in the libraries of the great Roman domus, also allows us to verify some new hypotheses on the compiler and on the editing of the Collectio Avellana. Since in the Middle Ages, the collection was transcribed into two main manuscripts both preserved in Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana, the essays also try to understand what role the founder of the Monastery, San Pier Damiani, played in preserving this collection.