Analytical inventory of the archive of the Scampicchio family (Labin, Motovun, Svetvinčenat) 1447-1878 1882,1903

Abstract

The analytical inventory of the archive fund »Scampicchio family« consists of two parts. In the first the Author briefly presents the history of the family through the centuries, and the history and movements of the family documents with the bibliography on the family. The second part is structured according to the principles theoretically explained by Dr. Danica Božić-Buzančić in her paper »Family archives - classification and scientific evaluation« (Arhivski vjesnik, vol. XIV, pp. 275-287, Zagreb 1971), and it consists of the inventory of the documents. The documents are divided in five basic groups. The first group consists of family documents in the restricting sense. It contains: the family genealogical tree (put together in the Historical Archive in Rijeka on the basis of bibliography and sources); deeds and other juridical documents which testify to the peerage, decorations, privileges and so forth; wills and inheritances, marriage and tutelage, relationships of the family with ecclesiastical organizations, family legal proceedings and legal proceedings by single members of the family except law- suits regarding lease-holding; documents regarding the house administration (bills, receipts, papers about insurance, monetary authorization etc.), and finally the private correspondence of various members of the family in chronological and genealogical order. The second group comprises documents regarding real property and possessions: there are documents collected in books of copies and in binded volumes of notarial acts, lists of properties, records, inventories etc.; documents regarding the family’s real property in land and in town, law-suits regarding land possessions, mortgages etc. The third group contains documents concerning the economic activities of the family, in the fourth there are fragments of archives of related families, while in the fifth there are various, sometimes unidentified documents, under the heading of miscellanea. The vast majority of documents belongs to the first two group», and they occupy eight and a half boxes, while the remaining three groups are in half a box. Through the inventory, we can follow the history of the three branches of the family, respectively based in Labin, Motovun and Savičenta, during sixteen generations. The documents show that the members of the Scampicchio family, as members of the social elite of the Venetian province, big landowners and communal officers had a rich and diversified public life. Someof the global elements of this way of life were the leasehold as juridical practice (the profession of basic economic relations, but also of the popular will and social tensions), the family law and family relations in the Istrian gentry (particularly interesting the divorce in the 18th century), political work and everyday phenomena as well. Documents from the Scampicchio archive are an interesting source for paleographers, topographs and hagiotopographs, dialectologists and linguists.