Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Hunt reviews Nussdorfer on Notaries in Early Modern Rome

Via H-Law, we have word of the following review, commissioned by H-Italy: Laurie Nussdorfer, Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), reviewed by John Hunt (Utah Valley University). Here's the first paragraph of the review:
Early modern Rome saw a hubbub of social and economic activity that required legal documentation and verification in the hands of a body of professionally trained notaries.  Scholars have mined the acts of the notaries--housed in the Archivio di Stato di Roma--to understand the social, economic, and religious life of early modern Rome.  But few scholars have sought to study the profession itself or the lives of the notaries who staffed the various offices of the city.  In this ambitious longue durĂ©e study of the notarial profession, Laurie Nussdorfer highlights the changing political and legal milieu in which notaries lived and worked from 1350 to 1650.  
Read on here.