One of the peculiarities that distinguish the holdings of the Casanatense Library is undoubtedly the conspicuous collection of approximately 80,000 Edicts and Proclamations, issued and published by the Ecclesiastical State for the most part, by the Republic of Venice, the Duchy of Savoy later the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Kingdom of Italy in its early years.
Due to the very nature of the material, the cataloguing of the fonds cannot be limited to providing information on the existence of a document, but must also offer the scholar the necessary set of research tools that can enable him to identify organisations, offices, authors and signatories in the exercise of their competences in a given historical period.
With this in mind, with regard to the edicts and proclamations of the Ecclesiastical State that I am dealing with, on the one hand I have tried to establish cataloguing criteria that would provide the information as exhaustively as possible, and on the other hand I have felt the need to create a Repertory that would give an account of the myriad personalities that ‘populate’ the documents held by the Casanatense.
As regards the description of the index cards catalogued and searchable in Opac SBN, titles and titles, where present, have been given in their entirety; when absent, in addition to the incipit, the news has been accompanied by an abstract note illustrating the content, issuing authority, and addressee of the document. In the notes, in addition to the dates of issue, posting, etc., the coats of arms, authors and signatories have been identified with their respective competences.
Since the retrieval of catalogue information by a scholar may be done according to different criteria depending on the subject of his research, I have tried to provide all possible accesses to the catalogued document, including the offices and administrations involved, and the names of the people who performed the functions, with the variant form in Latin where necessary.
The result of this in-depth cataloguing activity is therefore the Repertory I am compiling, which includes officials and administrators of the Ecclesiastical State, the Diocese and the City of Rome. It is ordered by Entities, which in turn are subdivided into the various offices. In addition to the names of the heads of these offices, I have listed those of any notaries, secretaries and chancellors who worked in them. For each personage, I have tried to provide brief biographical information and the main administrative functions performed, with chronological details where possible.