Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome

• Acknowledgments
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• Johns Hopkins University Press
• pp. ix-x
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It seemed like a simple question, “Why did people go to notaries?” Answering it has taken me on a journey with countless twists and turns, and whatever answers I can now give to the question are owed to the aid of many scholars and friends in the United States and Italy. It is a pleasure to be able to thank them at last. I want also to express my appreciation for the support of the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, and Wesleyan University for four project grants. I am indebted to the rare-book librarians of the Lillian Goldman Library at Yale Law School, Harvey Hull and Mike Widener, who supplied a most pleasant work setting, as well as the staffs of the rare-book collections at the law libraries of Harvard University, the Library of Congress, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Although I did not know it at the time, this book had its inception twenty years ago in a pertinent conference comment from John Martin and a brilliant Wesleyan undergraduate history thesis by Daniel Rosenberg. It began its winding course at an NEH Summer Seminar at the Newberry Library directed by Armando Petrucci and Franca Nardella in 1993. Among those who have given me invaluable assistance at numerous points along the way I would especially like to acknowledge the efforts of John Pinto, Irene Fosi, Orsola Gori, and Nicholas Adams. I am grateful to Thomas Kuehn and Simona Feci for answering questions over many years and also for having kindly read drafts of chapter 1. In the course of my research I have benefited from the expertise of many scholars and friends, and I would like to thank them all, especially Renata Ago, James Amelang, Stefano Andretta, Daniel Brownstein, Eleonora Cane-pari, Elizabeth S. and Thomas V. Cohen, Sherrill Cohen, Lucilla Cola, Michele Di Sivo, Bruce W. Frier, Anthony Grafton, Julie Hardwick, Isa Lori Sanfilippo, John Marino, Donna Merwick, James O’Hara, Mary Quinlan, Virginia Reinburg, Kenneth Stow, Maria Antonietta Visceglia, and Patricia Waddy. I would also like to express my gratitude to those whose interest encouraged the project, Paul Gehl, Peter Lukehart, Corinne Rafferty, Nancy Remley Whiteley, and Ann Wightman. Without the friends in Italy who offered hospitality and encouragement on so many occasions I probably could not have arrived at the end of this journey. Grazie di cuore to Renata Ago, Patrizia Cavazzini, Bruna Colarossi and Peter Horsman, Marina D’Amelia, Irene Fosi, Joan Geller, Orsola Gori and Renato Pasta, Angela Groppi, Fabrizia Gurreri, and Maria Antonietta Visceglia. I warmly thank Henry Tom of the Johns Hopkins University Press for his support and Suzanne Flinchbaugh, Brian MacDonald, Suzy Taraba, and John Wareham for their assistance.

The men I consider my Italian maestri, the late Marino Berengo, Giovanni Levi, and Armando Petrucci, perhaps did not realize the impact their attention to notaries would have on a distant American historian, but from them I learned to regard this unfamiliar profession with curiosity, awe, and respect. Their work has been an important part of my mental conversation as I wrote. This book is dedicated to Natalie Zemon Davis who first urged me to look at the Roman notarial records and first introduced me to many of my Roman friends. No one who has been lucky enough to know her has been untouched by the acuity, imagination, and sympathy of this remarkable historian, teacher, and human being. Her generosity of insight and instinct, her adventurous example, and her moral sensitivity have been an unfailing source of admiration and inspiration. I thank her for everything that she has given me. Finally, I owe a special debt to Nicholas Adams, vir mirabilis et dilectus, for his humor, love, and loyalty to the Roman notaries.