Le pergamene dell’ Archivio Capitolare Lateranense (review)

It is hard to believe that until very recently anyone who wished to consult the documentary archives of the chapter of the Lateran Basilica—built by Emperor Constantine and long the seat of the papacy—had to rely exclusively on two handwritten inventories dating to the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, preserved today as manuscript A.75 and A.31 (pp. 189–220). Paul F. Kehr, his recent successors, and Philippe Lauer had indeed used the archives for their publications in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, but Andreas Rehberg urged as late as 1999 to create at least an inventory for the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century parchments that were kept rolled up in an armario.¹ It is very fortunate, therefore, that Louis Duval-Arnould—the former Latin scriptor of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (1969–2003), head of the papal library’s division of manuscripts from 1998 to 2003, and since 1995 a canon of San Giovanni in Laterano as well as prefect of the chapter’s archive—has taken on the arduous task of publishing an inventory of the fond of parchment documents of the Lateran Chapter.

The introduction (pp. 7–17) very briefly explains the historical vicissitudes of the Lateran over many centuries. They resulted on the one hand in enormous losses, one assumes—the earliest document preserved is a copy of a privilege for the chapter of Pope Leo IX—and on the other hand caused a wide dispersal of documents. To complicate matters further, the Lateran Chapter archive also incorporated over the centuries records pertaining to several monasteries that were annexed by San Giovanni in Laterano (Sant’ Andrea in Selci or de Castellis, San Pietro di Ferentillo, Santa Maria della Gloria at Anagni, and Saint-Pierre de Clairac). Also incorporated by the Lateran was a priory of regular canons, San Tommaso in Ascoli. In addition, documents belonging to San Lorenzo ad Sancta Sanctorum in the papal palace were added to the chapter archive (p. 8). It should be noted in the case of Santa Maria della Gloria, absorbed by the Lateran in 1477, that this monastery had earlier annexed in its turn a monastery, Bagnara Calabra. Similarly, Bagnara Calabra had taken over the monastery of Santa Lucia della Montagna in Sicily with its records. Records from all of these monastic institutions are preserved among the documentary materials for San Giovanni in Laterano itself. Yet another illustration of the difficulties that Duval-Arnould encountered is the fact that today one section of the Lateran archive is preserved at the Casa generalizia of the Regular Canons of the Lateran at San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome. The other section of the Lateran archive is housed at the Archivio di Stato in Florence. These latter materials had originally been transferred to the monastery of San Bartolomeo dei Rochettini at Fiesole and were moved to Florence after San Bartolomeo was closed.

The inventory is divided into three parts—I: Serie Q, pergamene; II: Le raccolte medievali (Codici A. 75 and A.31); and III: Bollario della Chiesa Lateranense, where all papal privileges and other correspondence are inventoried, beginning with the privilege of Pope Leo IX of 1049 or 1050 (no. 1, p. 223) already mentioned and ending with a breve of Pope Paul VI of 1969 (no. 558, p. 340). The author modestly acknowledged the value of the inventory compiled in 1763 by the Benedictine Pier Luigi Galletti, whose classification he praised and maintained (p. 9). This means that all parchments are described in a single series, labeled as ”Q” and divided into subsections by subject matter. The exceptions are papal documents, as previously noted. These are found arranged by date and numbered in part III of the volume called the Bollario (pp. 223–340). Parts I and III will probably be most useful for the modern period, but of particular interest are two medieval inventories published by...