Specializzazioni grafiche e forme della documentazione nelle Alpi occidentali (Savoia, Borgogna transgiurana, secoli XII-XIII)

The essay focuses on the relationship between the emergence of new agents and forms of documentation and the transformations of documentary handwriting in the western Alps between the 12th and 13th centuries, in the context of the European genesis of new cursive graphic languages. Firstly, the chancelleries that produced documents for private individuals in Sion, Aosta and Saint-Maurice are analysed: in the first two cases, the use of distinctive graphic styles contributed to fixing the extrinsic characteristics of the documentary types which were associated with those offices. The graphic behaviour of the notaries working as officers of the counts of Savoy is then analysed. Throughout most of the 13th century, they used rapid scripts but not properly cursive graphic chains; the latter were introduced during the second half of the century, in the new documentary types these notaries constructed for the administrative management of princely domains. In all the contexts examined by the essay, the use of cursivity or the textualis model coexisted as possible choices, between which many scribes could oscillate with individual digraphical outcomes.