the formularies of medieval portuguese testaments The notator signed all the donationes (tout court or postmortem), while only three of the 25 testaments contain this validating element. And of these three cases, one is perfectly understandable,17 as it is a document drawn up by apublicus tabellio, so only the remaining two are proper exceptions. From an overall viewpoint, the simplicity of the formulary, which highlights the absence of a large number of accessory formulas, including dating, as well as a reduced set of validation forms, leads us to reflect on the idea that testaments (“mandas”) can belong to the group of notitiae in the sense that they are documents that informally record or list certain elements (in this case the goods bequeathed by the testator) to preserve their remembrance.18 If we accept this idea, the simplicity of both the formulary and the validation forms will not be surprising. In addition to the formulas and forms of validation present in the documents under analysis, we were interested to see how they “call themselves” through words, verbal forms, or expressions of action. The results showed that, in the case of donations, there is a tendency to opt for the term“carta/karta”, to which “testament”, “donationis” or “testimonis” are added. It means that to the first element, which has the broad meaning of “written document, act, or diploma”, are added vocables that state the nature of the legal act: “testament”,19 “testimonis” (understood as a testimony of an action), and “donationis” (the use of which is easily comprehensible). But we should also point out the use of the vocables “pactum/ pacto”, in the sense of pact/contract/agreement, and “factum”, understood as deed/act. Regarding action verbs, the most frequent choice was “dare 268 17 Respectively ANTT, S. Pedro de Pedroso, mç. 7, nº 23, mç. 5, nº 32 e mç. 6, nº 24. 18 As Susana Tavares Pedro says, a will is “a final document that, due to the very characteristics of the diplomatic genre, does not obey the rules applicable to dispositive documents” (Pedro 2004, pp. 73–75). 19 Which, in this case, should be defined as “an act attested by witnesses” (Gomes 2007, p. 693). Vocables, verbal forms, and/or expressions that state the nature of the legal act
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