Institutional Memory and Social Networks in the Benedictine Cartulary of St Nicholas of Oltra (1072–1569)
The Cathastico de scritture de S. Niccolo d’Ultra Diocesi Justinopolitana (1072–1569), preserved in the Central Library of Koper, represents the only known surviving cartulary of the Benedictine monastery of St Nicholas of Oltra near Capodistria/Koper. Although compiled in the late sixteenth century, the manuscript preserves copies, summaries, and references to documents dating from 1072 onwards. The source contains records of donations, leases, purchases, exchanges, testaments, legal disputes, exemptions, papal privileges, and economic transactions connected to the monastery and its landed possessions across northern Istria. Despite its exceptional historical value, the manuscript has remained largely unexplored within both Slovenian and broader Adriatic historiography.
This paper approaches the Cathastico as both an instrument of institutional memory and a prosopographical source for reconstructing social and economic networks in medieval and early modern Istria. Particular attention is devoted to the recurring appearance of noble families, clerics, notaries, tenants, benefactors, and communal officials whose interactions reveal long-term continuities in landholding, patronage, and monastic administration. Through the analysis of personal names, legal formulas, property relations, and documentary patterns, the paper examines how the monastery functioned as a nodal institution connecting the urban elite of Capodistria with its agrarian hinterland and with wider ecclesiastical and political structures linked to the Patriarchate of Aquileia, the Holy Roman Empire, and later the Venetian Republic.
The contribution further explores the methodological value of cartularies as prosopographical corpora. Although the Cathastico was primarily intended to preserve legal memory and property rights, its structure simultaneously produced a layered record of collective identities and institutional relationships extending across several centuries. The repeated preservation of certain names, places, and legal relations demonstrates how monastic communities constructed continuity and authority through documentary practice. In this sense, the manuscript provides important insight into the mechanisms of institutional self-representation, the preservation of social authority, and the transformation of regional networks between the High Middle Ages and the early modern period.
Finally, the paper reflects on the broader interdisciplinary potential of the source, particularly for future prosopographical and digital-humanities approaches, including relational databases, spatial mapping, and network analysis of historical actors and places within the northern Adriatic region.
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Peter Štoka is a graduate theologian, Master of Theology, and a doctoral student in Humanities at the University of Primorska, where he researches the Benedictine cartulary of the monastery of St Nicholas of Oltra (1072–1569). He is Head of the Department for Local History and Book Heritage at the Central Library of Koper and co-editor, together with Gregor Pobežin, of the scholarly series Bibliotheca Iustinopolitana. He co-organises the international symposium Divina: Days of Andreas Divus of Justinopolis and edits the series Rara Iustinopolitana, dedicated to editions of Koper humanists and Neo-Latin authors from the northern Adriatic region.
E-mail: stokapeter@gmail.com
