55 Maillard−Luypaert 2010, p. 7; my translation. 56 Pedro 2008, p. 101. some remarks on last wills at guimarães in the 13thand14th centuries servants, and pious works and institutions. They hoped that these offerings would reduce the burden of their sins and open the doors to eternal life. The will was, indeed, “the ultimate means of ensuring the salvation of one’s soul and redeeming one’s sins through a whole series of foundations, gifts, and legacies”.55 In the set of testaments analyzed, we noticed a remarkable reduction in the number of testaments in favor of copies of single clauses during the14th century, which led us to think that in this century the Collegiate church was no longer the repository of the acts that expressed the wills of the testators (even though it was one of many beneficiaries). It seems that the preservation of these kinds of documents may have been related to the presence of mendicants in Guimarães towards the end of the 13th century, because many pious activities were concentrated in their monasteries. However, the development of the notary public and the organization of the notaries themselves may also have played a role in determining who was responsible for preserving these types of documents. The wills written in Guimarães during the 13th century differ greatly from those drawn up in the following century, mainly because the formulary used becomes a little more complex: in the first ones (from the 13th century), we hardly find any formulas in the initial part of the documents, and there are no final clauses. In the 14th century, in addition to a more elaborate construction of the initial considerations, the formulas of the escathocol also seem to follow notarial practice (i.e. one used by the notaries public), and rarely lacked the (previously non-existent) validation made by the notarial signature. Before the emergence of notaries public, or more precisely, before notaries were primarily responsible for drawing up this type of act, thetestamentumandmanda took the typical form of a notitia, which was considered to be a sequential list of homogeneous, quantifiable, and countable elements,56 written after a very brief introduction stating who was the author of the testament. Slowly, and certainly influenced by theartesnotariaethat shaped the composition of documents throughout the 13th cen552
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