Main description (English)

In this essay I examine the source that, in my opinion, best succeeds in providing us with a concrete image of the men and women who lived through the drama of the plague: notarial protocols. The perusal of a representative sample of registers, including those in the hands of notaries (Roman and foreign) and those linked to hospital and confraternal institutions, has produced a dossier of about 300 relevant acts, including testaments, donationes causa mortis, donationes inter vivos, etc. Additionally, the protocols occasionally conveyed personal events that the notaries themselves jotted down in their work registers, as well as their modus operandi during this dramatic situation. From the notarial material, together with other sources (in particular both diplomatic and private letters), I will try to reconstruct the behavior, the concerns, the devotional practices of the “Romans” during this epidemic, which coincided with the pontificate of Adrian VI.