Omnia iura communis Vercellarum. Note sulla compilazione del liber iurium dei Biscioni

Abstract

The essay deals with the Biscioni, the liber iurium promoted by the Visconti in Vercelli in the mid-fourteenth century, shortly after they became the lords of the city. The making of the liber, produced in two copies, and with each specimen composed of two codices, took a total of eight years, from 1337 to 1345, and during this period the original project underwent many changes. The codes originally should not have been four but two, whit the second specimen conceived as a duplicate of the other; yet they ended up being – as the notary responsible for their productions defined them – only similar ('similes' in the latin formulation).

The analysis of these changes in progress reveals the close relationship between the liber iurium and the city statutes, the other great publishing enterprise launched, again on the impulse of the Visconti regime, a few years after the Biscioni, and above all with the municipal policy of those years. In short, the variations in the structure of the Biscioni are not just a documentary issue, but reveal something of the first Visconti domination in Vercelli. The new regime inaugurated, from its inception, a phase of heated conflict, aimed at strengthening the jurisdictional rights of the municipality over the districtus: many initiatives were taken against the lords of the countryside as well as against neighboring cities and powers. The Visconti mayors and their vicars made the liber iurium an active tool and a faithful mirror of the renewed city power.