Scabini e altri ufficiali pubblici minori in Lombardia in età carolingia e postcarolingia: profili, mobilità, culture grafiche, partecipazione ai processi documentari

Legal practitioners and prominent representatives of local societies, scabini and other minor public officials have for some years been at the centre of increasing attention in historiography investigating the characteristics and transformations of government in Carolingian and post-Carolingian Italy. If for the scabini of the regnum Italiae, above all, the intimate bond with the comital institution is acquired and the judicial sphere is rightly insisted on as the original prerogative of exercise, there are many opportunities for making a research on different local contexts and on specific situations that may have favoured their fortunes or caused more or less sudden declines. The Lombard area represents, from this point of view, a good observatory, even if not so much for the quantity and quality of information on the respective social profiles (which are less relevant than we see in Veneto, Emilia and Tuscany): I rather refer to the possibilities of shedding light on details of graphic cultures and on the areas of recruitment and promotion; on the links with institutions and on the aspects of mobility (or sedentariness) that derive from them; on certain trajectories of social and political distinction that, between the 9th and 10th centuries, scabini and other minor public officials seem to share with the local elites searching for visibility and closer ties with the ecclesiastical hegemonies of the city and the territory.