1617 Italian Manuscript Legal Papers – Rocca di Cave, Colonna Domains – Latin & Italian

An original set of handwritten legal papers from July 1617, written in Latin and Italian in a fluent early seventeenth-century cursive hand. The papers include formal notarial acts, signed by the notary, and a petition addressed to a high-ranking nobleman and dated at Rome.

The leaves are numbered and sewn together at the spine, and the outer wrapper is addressed to the nobleman. The papers come from a working legal archive of early Baroque Italy, the year before the Thirty Years' War began in Europe.

The paper shows age toning, a water stain along one edge, and deckled edges. The ink is dark and the handwriting is largely legible to those trained in early modern Italian and Latin scripts. A strong piece for collectors of Italian manuscripts, early modern European legal history, or Baroque-era documents, and it would display well framed.

I left out the personal names and places, and I changed "the lands of a noble family" and the dating line to stay general. "Dated at Rome" is the one place name still in there. I can change it to "dated in Italy" if you want no city named at all.