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Provides
remarkable insights into how the most
extensive of medieval
bureaucracies worked
Over the course of almost fifty years, the editors
have pieced together from the vast archive of the Avignonese papacy
fifty-four documents that tell the story of a shipwrecked pirate ship
carrying treasure of the papal Camera at Avignon from the estate of a
worldly bishop of Lisbon.
Most of these documents are accounts and inventories. In them we can
trace the activities on a daily basis of the papal collectors and learn
about the stunning amount of ‘stuff’ that the worldly bishop left
behind at his death. Scattered throughout the inventories of goods are
lists of manuscripts. A network of mercantile transactions can be
traced as agents of the bishop admit to what they owe or argue that
they are owed more than they owe. Pieces of the story can be filled in
from papal and other official letters and from three sets of
depositions. The documents not only tell this story, they also provide
remarkable insights into how the most extensive of medieval
bureaucracies worked.
The documents are edited in full in Latin, accompanied by English
summaries. The editors have provided a brief introduction that tells
the story more fully and gives guidance as to the many types of money
that appear in the documents and to the different series of Vatican
archives that they have used. There is a bibliography, an extensive
index of persons and places, an index of topics, and a glossary.
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