some remarks on last wills at guimarães in the 13thand14th centuries (e.g. concerns about the afterlife and the salvation of the soul). Nevertheless, our main objective is to call attention to some main Diplomatics’ features of last wills as documents with legal value, leaving aside for the moment the content in each of them. For this reason, in the specific set of documents we studied, we only looked at complete wills and not at other documents, such as publicas formas of parts of testaments or bequests copied by notaries public, that might also be included in the typology of acts referring to the provisions of last will. It is possible that these notarial instruments resulted from the need to present them in court as proof to justify a possession, a collection of rent, or something similar needed by the canons of the Collegiate whenever there was a dispute. Besides these acts, many others refer to wills but do not include their text, either fully or partial (e.g., possessions); we did not take these references into account in our study. Overall, we assembled 129 complete wills dated from 1201 up to 1400, 105 from the 13th century but only 24 from the following century. Perhaps this is not much for 200 years, but it should be kept in mind that usually goods and assets were divided among legal heirs, requiring no testamentary procedure.19 As well, we should not forget that institutions other than the Collegiate of Guimarães certainly also received donations from the inhabitants of the town. It is not easy to explain the difference in numbers between one century and the other, especially when we see this is exactly the opposite of what happens with testamentary bequests (verbas or clausolas) during the 14th century, when 77 notarial copies of bequests were drawn up at the request of the Collegiate, a number in contrast with the 14 we know of in the period 1201−1300. Then, in a different paragraph it is stated “Estas son as deudas que Pedro Mendiz dise que lhy deviam”, followed by a list of money debtors. Lisboa, Torre do Tombo, Colegiada de Santa Maria da Oliveira de Guimarães, Docs. Particulares, m.14, nº 41. 19 Makó 2014, p. 283. 540
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