toll register (probably Gemona, 1426-1427)

The following dataset is based on the register of a toll levied on 'German' merchants possibly in the friulian town of Gemona from October 1426 to September 1427 (the register is preserved in State Archive of Udine, Colloredo Mels, part. I, b. 5, register "MIIIIXXVI todeschi"). The research has been produced within the framework of the 2017 PRIN "LOC-GLOB. The local connectivity in an age of global intensification: infrastructural networks, production and trading areas in late-medieval Italy (1280-1500)".

The register is divided into accounts belonging to individual ‘German’ merchants (further information on the notion of ‘German’ in this context can be found in the paper T. Vidal, Fiscality and Infrastructures). Under each account the scribe recorded in chronological order all the commodities of each merchant as well as the carters and carriers.

The original language of the register is Friulian-venetian vernacular. The entrances in the original are structured as in the following example (f. 3r):

Lenart di Tarvise

October

XII

Andrege di Pultebe

fero IM IIIIC

XIIII

Yori di Dogna

fero IM

XV

Stefin di Chuviza

fero IM IIC

XVIIIIor

Petri di Chuviza

fero IM VC

Structure of the dataset

1) id.: progressive id of the items of the dataset.

2) account id.: progressive id given to each account as it appears in the register. Individual merchants can hold multiple accounts. I have chosen to keep the progressive id order rather than attributing the id according to the merchant to preserve the original structure of the document.

3-5) year, month, day.

6) merchant: name of the merchant holding each account. Since most of the names are a rather rough transliteration of German names in Friulian-venetian vernacular I have chosen not to normalize them to modern forms.

7) merchant origin: declared origin of the merchant. As for (6) many names appear to be tentative transliterations of the scribe. For all the cases were identification is evident the modern toponym is given; for all other cases I have kept the spelling of the manuscript.

8) merchant origin (normalized): proposed normalization and identification of non-normalized toponyms recorded under (7).

9) merchant jurisdiction: jurisdictional area of provenance of each merchant.

10) carrier: name of the carrier to whom the merchant had entrusted his commodities. See (6) for the choices regarding normalization.

11) carrier origin: declared origin of the carrier. See (7) for the choices regarding normalization.

12) carrier origin (normalized): proposed normalization and identification of non-normalized toponyms recorded under (11).

13) carrier jurisdiction: jurisdictional area of provenance of each carrier.

14) commodity: type of commodity declared. In all cases in which identification of the commodity as been impossible I have chosen to keep the origin spelling of the manuscript.

15) commodity unit: type of unit used to measure the commodity as it appears in the register. Given the wide variability of the equivalence between haulage (cart, soma, balla) and weight (libbre) I have chosen not to uniform the data. The libbra is the Friulian libbra grossa = 0.477 kg.

16) unit number: numerical value referred to (15).

17) folio: reference to the folio of the manuscript.