Original scientific paper
The Culture of Reading in Late Medieval Šibenik
Goran Budeč
; Department of Historical Research of the IHSS of CASA, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The process of the democratisation in recording private legal documents that was well established in Dalmatian communes during the late medieval period, resulted with recording of a vast number of inventories of goods and last wills. These sources provide data crucial for studying of everyday life and material culture of members of all strata of communal society, not only of the privileged few like it was the case in previous periods. Inventories of goods recorded by communal notaries for 273 inhabitants of Šibenik from the beginning of 1451 to the end of 1467, enable very good insight in the variety of material objects owned by the contemporary people. Among other things, these private legal documents record many books, manuscripts and private notebooks owned by the members of all strata of late medieval society. The only group that did not had some of them were dwellers of nearby villages that were mainly illiterate. It is important to emphasize that the aforementioned villagers, despite of the fact that they did not own books, notebooks or manuscript, also lived a rather high level of material culture during the fifteenth century, as may be demonstrated from their possession of modern furniture, other household items, weapons, etc. Books, manuscripts and notebooks were recorded in 22 (8,1 percent) inventories of goods, with their content covering works on different subjects from those on liturgical, philosophical and theological subjects and hagiographic works (miracula, passiones martirum, translationes) to books on sciences and medicine. The documents studied here show also a significant number of writings of fine literature from the works of Esopus to Petrarcha, and a great number of notebooks intended for private use, in the first place for conducting business. Therefore, it is possible to state that this paper represents only a small contribution to the research of literacy and reading habits in the late medieval commune of Šibenik.
Keywords
Šibenik; the Late Middle Ages; inventories of goods; culture of reading; books
Hrčak ID:
136435
URI
Publication date:
29.12.2014.
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