Le scritture

This essay analyses parchment covers of communal registers from thirteenth- to fifteenth-century Perugia as privileged sites of documentary writing and visual communication. Detached from the paper registers they once protected, these membrane covers survive as autonomous objects densely charged with graphic, textual, and symbolic signs. The study reconstructs their material production and functional logic, highlighting the technical choices underlying their manufacture and use, as well as the central role of notaries as both makers and writers of these archival devices. Focusing on the scripts employed on the covers—ranging from cursive chancery hands to monumental Gothic capitals and refined book scripts—the essay demonstrates how notarial writing operated as a visual delegate of communal authority, capable of negotiating legibility, solemnity, and heraldic display. Particular attention is given to headings, annotations, pen trials, marginal notes, and occasional vernacular verses, which transform the covers into layered palimpsests of administrative practice, personal expression, and institutional memory. The final section traces the transition from medieval graphic traditions to humanistic models in the fifteenth century, situating these artefacts within the broader cultural shift from communal to early modern documentary culture.