42 ADP, São Domingos, Livro dos pergaminhos, perg. 9. 43 ADP, São Domingos, Pergaminhos originais dos títulos do convento; caixa 776, perg. 31. 44 “to be firmer”. 45 ADP, São Francisco, Capelas, Tomo I fl. 11–11v. notarial last wills and testaments from medieval porto However, we find two wills of wives of notaries from the city of Porto, which, on the one hand, allow us to circumscribe the time frame of the notary’s life, and on the other hand allow us to observe the notary’s wife as more than a“married woman” or a“widow”, but also as the possessor and administrator of property and assets. Gonçalo Eanes, a notary from Porto, visited the house of Martim Martins, also a notary, in Rua dos Mercadores, on 25 September 1400, to write the will of Maria Gonçalves, wife of Martim Martins. Lying ill in bed, she had donated half of some houses that she and her husband owned in Rua da Lada, in that city, on the condition that the friars of São Domingos would always celebrate a Mass every year at the feast of St Maria of March for the soul of Maria Gonçalves; when the Mass was finished, the friars should attend her grave singing a response verse, carrying a cross and holy water.42 We also know that Maria Freitas, wife of Bartolomeu Fernandes, a public notary of the city of Porto, had her will written on 11 April 146943 by Lourenço Eanes, also a public notary. The mother of Lourenço, Guiomar Dias, had left one hundred reais to the monastery of São Francisco, enjoined to celebrate an annual Mass for her soul upon presentation of the will (9 August 1475) by her son. It was Lourenço Eanes himself, as administrator of his mother’s will, who asked the judge for the certificate, witnessed by only three people, all notaries from Porto (André Gonçalves, Afonso de Leão, and Diogo da Rocha), which he wrote in his own hand “para ser mais firme”,44 on 9 November 1478,45 specifying that Masses should be sung over her grave with cross and holy water. The presence of public notaries as witnesses shows unequivocally the strength of the testimony of the notary public with his fides publica, thus granting greater solemnity and security to the writing of an act, something that neither of the parties (the donor or the recipient) could do without. 528
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