Register

REGISTER. - The word regestum (from re-gero) was used mainly, from the end of the classical age almost to our own days, as equivalent to registrum (in the sense of "treasury" it occurs three times in Gregory of Tours, Hist., IX, 9 and 34; X, 19), yet with a value that does not always coincide with the modern meaning of "register."

I. Common is the title of r. given to the books in which all or the most important documents constituting the munimina of monasteries, churches (cf., for example, the r. of Tivoli), confraternities, etc., were copied; it often, however, goes back to a recent date: to the 15th century is attributed the designation of Regestum to the cartulary of S. Angelo in Formis (ed. M. Inguanez, in the Tabularium Casinense, Montecassino 1925); to the end of the 17th or beginning of the 18th the name of Regestum Farfense for the Liber gemmographus sive cleronomialis ecclesiae Farfensis (ed. I. Giorgi and U. Balzani, 5 vols., Rome 1879-92 and 1914 [introduction]), etc. More common in these cases in the Middle Ages was the designation of registrum, as for the famous Register of Peter the Deacon, or for the Register of Thomas the Dean (called r. by its editors [Montecassino 1915]: but cf. the codex at f. 1v), or else those of chronicon, cartularium, liber instrumentorum or privilegiorum, etc. On the other hand, the opposite case is frequent, namely the extension of the word r. to true registers, that is, to the collection of acts issued by one and the same author or drawn up by one and the same notary, registered by the will of the author himself as documentation of the acts in progress at the chancery or the notarial office.

Diplomatists today commonly call r. the partial editions of documents in which the data deemed essential are reported, with omission of the fixed formulas and rhetorical amplifications, similar to what was done, for practical reasons, in many chancery registers. Such a system, which enjoyed great fortune between the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one, no longer finds many followers today; it proves in fact methodologically imperfect both because the criterion of selection between essential and non-essential data always remains subjective, and because the continuity of a formula, its even minimal mutations, the lexical varieties with which it can present itself have their weight from the historical, juridical, linguistic, as well as diplomatic point of view. A different value, insofar as they do not intend to replace the edition but only to offer an index of documents, is instead possessed by the r. consisting of a very brief summary that gives notice of the author, the addressee, the disposition and sometimes also of the writer of the act: arranged in chronological succession, they closely resemble, in structure, archival catalogues (especially of the 17th and 18th centuries). It is also customary to place them, in the editions of "diplomatic codes," before the individual documents, to offer the reader a rapid notice of the content.

II. To the modern meaning of r., in the double acceptation indicated, are linked the titles of some important collections, among which the principal are:

1. REGESTA IMPERII. Index of the documents of the Imperial Chancery begun by Johann Friedrich Böhmer in 1831 with a volume dedicated to the Regesta chronologico-diplomatica regum atque imperatorum Romanorum, inde a Conrado I usque ad Heinricum VII (Frankfurt am Main 1831), for the period 10 Nov. 911-24 Aug. 1313. Subsequently Böhmer prefaced to it the Regesta chronologico-diplomatica Karolorum (ibid. 1833), from March 752 to May 987; and then added to it a III vol. of Regesta imperii inde ab anno MCCCXLIII usque ad annum MCCCXLVII (ibid. 1839), in which he also collected, in separate sections, the pontifical documents and those of other chanceries particularly important for the history of Germany of that period. This volume also had three Additamenta, published respectively in 1841, 1846 and 1865 (the latter printed posthumously at Innsbruck, edited by J. Ficker).

The knowledge acquired of other documents soon suggested the usefulness of a 2nd ed. which, enlarged with respect to the original plan, comprises several volumes, still in the course of publication. There have appeared so far: vol. I: Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern, 751-918, edited by E. Mühlbacher (3 tomes, Innsbruck 1899-1908); II: Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Herrschern aus dem Sächsischen Hause, 919-1024, fasc. I (from 919 to 973), edited by E. von Ottenthal (ibid. 1893); fasc. II (from 973 to 983), edited by H. L. Mikoletzky (Graz 1950); III: Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter dem Sächsischen Hause, 1024-1125, part I, fasc. I (from 1024 to 1039), edited by H. Appelt with the collaboration of N. von Bischoff (ibid. 1951); V: Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter Philipp, Otto IV., Friedrich II., Heinrich (VII.), Conrad IV., Heinrich Raspe, Wilhelm und Richard, 1198-1272, edited by J. Ficker and (from fasc. III) by E. Winkelmann, t. I: Kaiser und Könige, fasc. I and II (Innsbruck 1881-82); t. II: Päpste und Reichssachen, fasc. III and IV (ibid. 1892-94); t. III: Einleitung und Register, fasc. V (compiled by F. Wilhelm, ibid. 1901); VI: Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter Rudolf, Adolf, Albrecht, Heinrich VII., 1273-1313, part I (from 1273 to 1291), edited by O. Redlich (ibid. 1898); part II, fasc. I and II (from 1291 to 1295), edited by V. Samanek (ibid. 1933-35); VIII: Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter Kaiser Karl IV., 1346-78, edited by A. Huber (ibid. 1877), with an Additamentum primum, edited by the same (ibid. 1889); XI: Die Urkunden Kaiser Sigmunds, 1410-37, edited by W. Altmann, part 1 (from 1410 to 1424), fasc. I and II (ibid. 1896-97); part 2 (from 1425 to 1437), fasc. III-V (ibid. 1897-1900).

2. REGESTA PONTIFICUM. Collection analogous to the preceding one for the documents issued by the pontifical Chancery, begun by Philipp Jaffé with the vol. Regesta Pontificum Romanorum ab condita Ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum MCXCVIII (Berlin 1851), now republished in 2 vols. with additions and corrections edited by S. Loewenfeld, F. Kaltenbrunner and P. Ewald (I: a s. Petro ad a. MCXLIII, Leipzig 1885; II: ab a. MCXLIII ad a. MCXCVIII, ibid. 1888): there are included in it, counting also the forgeries and the supplements, 18,009 r.

The compilation of Jaffé, which extends to the pontificate of Celestine III (the terminus had been chosen on the assumption that for the subsequent period the list would prove useless, given the preservation of the pontifical registers [v.]: in reality only a minimal part of the documents of the pontifical Chancery is transcribed in the registers), was continued by August Potthast for the popes from Innocent III to Benedict XI (and namely for the entire pre-Avignon period) in the Regesta Pontificum Romanorum inde ab a. post Christum natum MCXCVIII ad a. MCCCIV, in 2 vols. (Berlin 1874-75), which comprise altogether 26,662 r.

The same title was prefaced by Paul Fridolin Kehr (v.) to two collections, still incomplete, dedicated to the pontifical documents up to Celestine III existing in the libraries and archives of Italy, Germany and Switzerland (the original plan also comprised France, the British Isles, Spain and Portugal, but the relevant volumes were never published). For the preparatory phase of the work, conceived as the basis for the complete critical edition of all pontifical documents up to 1198, Kehr availed himself of the collaboration of M. Klinkenberg and L. Schiaparelli for Italy, of A. Brackmann for Germany and Switzerland, and of W. Wiederhold for France, and set out its results from time to time in numerous communications to the "Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften" of Göttingen (v. the relevant Nachrichten of the historical-philological class from 1896 onward). The published volumes, all issued in Berlin, offer the material divided by regions, dioceses, and archives, and give valuable information on the contents of each collection, with appropriate bibliographical references. The two collections are divided as follows: Italia Pontificia, I: Roma (1906); II: Latium (1907); III: Etruria (1908); IV: Umbria, Picenum, Marsia (1909); V: Aemilia sive provincia Ravennas (1911); VI: Liguria sive provincia Mediolanensis, part 1: Lombardia (1913); part 2: Pedenantium, Liguria Maritima (1914); VII: Venetiae et Histria, part 1: Provincia Aquileiensis (1923); part 2: Respublica Venetiarum, Provincia Gradensis, Histria (1925); VIII: Regnum Normannorum, Campania (1935). Germania Pontificia, I: Provincia Salisburgensis et episcopatus Tridentinus (1911); II: Provincia Maguntinensis, part 1: Dioeceses Eichstetensis, Augustiensis, Constantiensis I (1923); part 2: Helvetia Pontificia: Dioeceses Constantiensis II et Curiensis et episcopatus Sedunensis, Genevensis, Lausanneensis, Basiliensis (1927); part 3 (erroneously indicated on the title page as vol. III): Dioeceses Strassburgensis, Spirensis, Wormatiensis, Wirzburgensis, Bambergensis (1935).

3. REGESTA CHARTARUM ITALIAE. An ongoing collection of volumes (33 so far) dedicated to the edition (initially in the form of regesta, later complete) of documents taken from Italian archival collections. It was begun in Rome in 1907 under the auspices of the Prussian Historical Institute and the Italian Historical Institute; the latter took over its publication alone from 1928 (vol. XIV), and after its split into the Italian Historical Institute for the Middle Ages and the Italian Historical Institute for the Modern and Contemporary Age (1934) it passed it on to the first of the two.

4. Even outside the collections cited, lists of regesta have been published for the acts issued by certain authorities, whether as an appendix to historical monographs or as independent compilations. Among the best known, we may recall K. Fr. Stumpf-Brentano, Die Kaiserurkunden des X., XI. und XII. Jahrhunderts... (vols. I and II, Innsbruck 1865-83), from Henry I (beginning 919) to Henry VI (Sept. 1197), only partly superseded by the Regesta imperii; W. Behring, Regesten des normannischen Königshauses (in Sicilianische Studien, II, Elbing 1887, pp. 3-28); R. Poupardin, Les institutions politiques et administratives des principautés lombardes de l'Italie méridionale, IXe-XIe siècles (Paris 1907); R. Ries, Regesten der Kaiserin Constanze, Königin von Sizilien, Gemahlin Heinrichs VI. (in Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 18 (1926), pp. 30-100), etc.

Alessandro Pratesi