23 There are many references to documents being kept in the homes or offices of notaries public, and to them being searched for when, sometimes several years later, a specific document was required. See Cunha and Seabra 2021, pp. 300−302. 24 We do not have the text of these six testaments, only authentic copies of bequests written by notaries public. 25 Wysmułek 2021, p. 30. some remarks on last wills at guimarães in the 13thand14th centuries reappearing after the mid-century. In the town of Guimarães, the documents would be kept in the office of each notary, or even in the paçodos tabeliães23 (court of notaries public), or at least their registers, since it was unnecessary for either beneficiaries or executors to have an exemplar of a will. This factor may explain why the number of complete wills preserved in the institution’s archive fell substantially from the 13th century to the 14th, as well as explain the greater number of copies of bequests drafted by request of the canons of the Collegiate. However, this does not mean that the Collegiate, in the 14th century, ceased to be a favored institution for the inhabitants of Guimarães.24 In the context of the Black Death in the mid-14th century (although in the set of documents we analyzed there is only one draft in 1348 and another in 1350), we know that at least six more were drafted in 1348, 1349, and 1350. During the following decade, although the number of complete testaments continued to be very low or even null, we know that the Collegiate was the beneficiary of at least 10 bequests. The set of documents we gathered also raises questions of nomenclature: the term used by the testators to classify the acts of disposition of their last wills is “manda”and/or“testamento”. Both terms are frequent in the two centuries studied, being used alone or, as early as the 13th century, together (facio mandam seu testamentum). Sometimes, in the same document, in the protocol one word is used, and in the escathocol is the other. This usage points to the idea that these terms were at that time synonymous, applying these acts to a collection of individual legacies for different persons and institutions. The content of these acts did not necessarily include the designation of an heir to the estate or refer to the entirety of the deceased’s property.25 542
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