L’argent des pauvres. L’institution de l’executor testamentorum et procurator pauperum à Pise entre 1350 et 1424

During the late Middle Ages, bishops could supervise the process of testamentary inheritance between lay people thanks to two kinds of prerogatives : their canonical right to control the execution of pious bequests, and their capacity to compel usurers’ heirs to proceed to usury restitutions. In Pisa, this was the duty of the executor testamentorum et procurator pauperum. This member of the archiepiscopal court had to complete the execution of pious bequests which had not been distributed by the originally designated testamentary executors or fideicommissarii ; he was also in charge of the distribution of the sums collected thanks to usury restitutions. In brief, the executor had to administer the poors’ money or denarii pauperum. Three registers had preserved the accounts of this particular administration between 1359 and 1424. Through the pages of these documents, the pisan Pauperes Christi appear to us. These poor people are those whom the Church and the testators granted alms, that is, the « good poors ».