Scelte cancelleresche del comune di Roma delle origini. In margine a una sentenza dell’anno 1148

This paper re-reads a 1148 document of Roman Senate, focusing on the particular documentary practices of the commune of Rome, which represent an exceptional case in the Italian communal panorama of the twelfth century. The municipal institutions of Rome, in fact, used since the beginning changery written practices and external and internal forms of public documents. This allowed the Roman Senate to express his authority, his prestige and his political weight. The author gives an analitycal description of the internal features of the document and highlights its language and its efficacious rhetoric, two means that the Roman Senate used to transmit his political message, inspired to the glorious history of ancent Rome. This ideology could be manifested through senatorial documentation thanks to Roman notaries, who possessed technical and cultural knowledges of the highest quality.