Bolzano city book

Bolzano City Book , fol. 64v: Fire sign of Bolzano Cooper (Cooper) from the year 1518

The Bolzano City Book is a municipal register of offices and privileges of the city of Bolzano, which was created in 1472 by Mayor Konrad Lerhueber and extended until 1525 . With the Bolzano city law, it is an important testimony to urban legal security and written practice.

The composite manuscript , written in the early New High German language , corresponds with its mixed character to the type of the city book and is an impressive testimony to the early municipal constitutional law. It is kept under the holdings of the Bolzano City Archives and, as Hs. 140, opens the series of city copy books kept from the late 15th to the late 18th century . The entries of changing hands began in mid-January 1472 under Mayor Lerhueber (Lerhuber) and significantly ended with an official financial statement from 1525, the year of the peasant revolt in the Tyrolean region.

The city book comprises 211 sheets and is bound in brown leather. The large folio volume is opened with a programmatic text after an incomplete alphabetical table of contents (fol. 1a – 15a) and the quotation of customs tariff rates (fol. 17a):

Here is a note of all traders, so the prudent and white advice who had Botzenn instead of here and wrote back, starting with Kuenradten Lerhue over the tzeyt mayor of the same etc .; in the jartzal after Christ's birth tawsend four hundred and after that in the LXXII. jar.

In addition to copies of privileges , the manuscript also contains annual accounts of the mayors and various municipal offices and authorities (construction and bridge masters, water scribes, church carers ) and is the only copy book in the city dating back to before 1550.

Three main groups of entries can be distinguished:
1) privileges that the city received from the Habsburg- Tyrolean sovereigns from the middle of the 14th to the early 16th century ;
2) Statutes and legal systems (normative texts);
3) Settlements from municipal offices and authorities in abbreviated form (second records in the form of records).

With the crisis years 1525/26 in Bozen the principle practiced with the city register was completely abandoned in favor of factual file management with separate register creation, and in view of the rapidly progressing increase in complexity of the urban environment in the 16th century, the overly static character of the individual book was abandoned. Nevertheless, the aspect of comprehensive legal safeguards aimed at by the city register proved to be permanent: the codification ensured the city council better control over the sovereignty of the territorial city for a long time. "Although the innovative achievements of the Bolzano City Book appear to be rather minor, from the point of view of written use and knowledge of rulership it appears to be an important 'interface' for the order, storage and transmission of information to be recorded and recorded in writing, which enables quick access to the desired wording of the the most important sources of city law still guaranteed today. "

literature

Hannes Obermair : The Bozen City Book. Manuscript 140 - the official and privileges book of the city of Bolzano . Contributions to the international study conference, Bozen, Maretsch Castle, 16. – 18. October 1996. In: Bolzano from the Counts of Tyrol to the Habsburgs - Bolzano fra i Tirolo e gli Asburgo (= research on the history of Bolzano / Studi di storia cittadina ). tape 1 . Athesia, Bozen 1999, ISBN 88-7014-986-2 , p. 399-432 .
Hannes Obermair: The Use of Records in Medieval Towns: The Case of Bolzano, South Tyrol . In: Marco Mostert, Anna Adamska (Ed.): Writing and the Administration of Medieval Towns: Medieval Urban Literacy I (= Utrecht Studies in Medieval History 27 ). Brepols, 2014, ISBN 978-2-503-54959-0 , pp. 49-68, reference pp. 63-64 , doi : 10.1484 / M.USML-EB.1.101928 .

Web links

Digital copies of the Bozen city book on BOhisto - Bozen-Bolzano's History Online . Retrieved April 25, 2020.

Index Librorum Civitatum - City Books: Bozen . Retrieved April 25, 2020.

Individual evidence

↑ To this: Martin Kintzinger : City books . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 8, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-89659-908-9 , column 12 f .; Anna Spiesberger: City Books , in: Südwestdeutsche Archivalienkunde, as of August 24, 2017.
^ Hannes Obermair: Bozen Süd - Bolzano Nord. Written form and documentary tradition of the city of Bozen up to 1500 . tape 2 . City of Bozen, Bozen 2008, ISBN 978-88-901870-1-8 , p. 149, No. 1132 (with ill. 19) .
↑ ^a ^b Hannes Obermair: The Bozen City Book. Manuscript 140 - the official and privileges book of the city of Bolzano . Contributions to the international study conference, Bozen, Maretsch Castle, 16. – 18. October 1996. In: Bolzano from the Counts of Tyrol to the Habsburgs - Bolzano fra i Tirolo e gli Asburgo (= research on the history of Bolzano / Studi di storia cittadina ). tape 1 . Athesia, Bozen 1999, ISBN 88-7014-986-2 , p. 405 .

[1] To this: Martin Kintzinger : City books . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 8, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-89659-908-9 , column 12 f .; Anna Spiesberger: City Books , in: Südwestdeutsche Archivalienkunde, as of August 24, 2017.

[2] Hannes Obermair: Bozen Süd - Bolzano Nord. Written form and documentary tradition of the city of Bozen up to 1500 . tape 2 . City of Bozen, Bozen 2008, ISBN 978-88-901870-1-8 , p. 149, No. 1132 (with ill. 19) .

[obermair-3] Hannes Obermair: The Bozen City Book. Manuscript 140 - the official and privileges book of the city of Bolzano . Contributions to the international study conference, Bozen, Maretsch Castle, 16. – 18. October 1996. In: Bolzano from the Counts of Tyrol to the Habsburgs - Bolzano fra i Tirolo e gli Asburgo (= research on the history of Bolzano / Studi di storia cittadina ). tape 1 . Athesia, Bozen 1999, ISBN 88-7014-986-2 , p. 405 .