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

The essays collected in the 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, to preserve and often deliver sensitive documents from Rome to Constantinople. The analysis of their multiple activities, and the functions they had in the imperial and episcopal archives, as well as in the libraries of the great Roman domus allows to verify also 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, 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.