Governare gli oggetti: prassi notarili e documenti in forma di lista nella Lombardia bassomedievale

The article examines, with particular reference to Lombard cases, three types of documents (customs registers, inventories, and tax declarations) as sources for the history of objects in the late Middle Ages. It highlights the role that notaries played in managing – by establishing new categories and hierarchies – the growing quantity and variety of objects with which contemporary societies interacted. This effort, which took place in a context of rapidly expanding and increasingly complex administrative practices and went hand in hand with the diplomatic formalisation of the examined types of writings, deeply influenced both the image of the material world conveyed by these documents and the very conception of objects and their relationships with their owners.