In the course of an extensive criminal inquest that unfolded in the Provençal town of Moustiers between August and November of 1434, an inventory was made of the goods of Franciscus Botelhe, a herdsman from the nearby village of Saint-Jurs. Franciscus, along with a fellow herdsman named Petrus Leporis, from Marcoux, was found guilty of having set fire to a pine woods (pineda) while herding oxen in Saint-Jurs. The inventory preserved in the record was compiled so that the court could lay claim to his possessions. The components of Franciscus’s estate were classified in three broad categories: real estate, movable goods, and animals, the latter of which were grouped under the colorful legal rubric bona pro se moventia, which means “goods that can move on their own.” In addition to providing insights into the possessions of a Provençal herdsman in the middle of the fourteenth century, the inventory also reveals clues about the web of family relations and possessions in rural Provence. The full record is 115 folios in length; this record consists of the inventory alone.

  • Record type: Inventory-Criminal Inquest
  • Date: 1434
  • Locale: Moustiers, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France
  • Language(s): Latin
  • Archival location: Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, 56 H 2883
  • Extent: 7 Folios (paper, register - quarto)

Edited by Claire Allen.
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