The Pelavicino manuscript is a big parchment volume, written in Gothic, quite well conservated but very difficult to understand. It has been studied by Luigi Podestà. There is also a document summary of 1912 edit by Prof. Michele Lupo Gentile. Recently it has been done a microfilm about it by Regione Liguria and there is the intention of publishing the whole work. It exists an italian version edit by Ennio Callegari. The documents are not original but copies of the original ones.

Let’s reconstruct briefly the facts of that time.

Bishop Guglielmo “while he was going to Rome, in 1241, together with many others who were going to the Lateranense Council with the ships of the Republic of St. George, was imprisoned and remained in prison for ten years and the ships were destroyed by the Imperial and Pisan fleets”.

During this period, the Marquess Oberto Pelavicino, who was the Vicar of Emperor Frederick for Lunigiana ordered to gather all the documents about the relationships with the Empire. When he died (1247) also the research stopped. Three years later the Emperor died too and Bishop Guglielmo could come back to Sarzana. The diocese was completely upset: the Pelavicino, the Visdomini and the Castaldi have taken all the lands and the bishop rights.

Enrico da Fucecchio became Bishop of Luni at Orvieto the 25th of April 1273. He was a man of great culture and energy and thought to rivendicate the rights and property of his church and ordered to build, to restore or to fortificate some castles and towers. In 1288 he picked up all the charges given to the Church of Luni but some documents were spoiled, so he made them copied again by the amanuensis Master Egidio (between 1287 and 1289) and added them to the Pelavicino Manuscript: this name remained to all the collection. Some documents that come from the cartularium of the notary Saladino are preserved in the State Archives of Aulla.

The first of more then five hundred documents is of the year 900: a charge of Berengario, king of Italy, that confirms to Bishop Odelberto the privileges granted to the Church of Luni by his predecessors, the last one is of the year 1297: it covers a period of about 400 year.

The documents can be divided in groups:

• A) Privileges (that often contrast with the others granted to the new rising Communes)

• besides the one already mentioned, of great importance is that of the year 963 of Ottone I granted by the Fortress of St. Leo;
• the one of 981 of Ottone I to Bishop Gottifredo;
• the one of 1183 with which Frederick I Redbeard granted to Bishop Pietro the country of Luni, the steep bank and the toll of the ports of Luni and Avenza;
• the one of 1185 with which the Emperor took under his protection the property of the Church of Luni;
• and in the end the one of 1191 of Emperor Henry VI.

• B) Agreements, donations, merits, grantings, rents, emphyteusis, incomes and tolls, duties, contrasts, ect.

The last document of the year 1297 gives us an idea of the situation that it has been established during that period. Its object is a sentence given by Guidotto, the Pope’s chaplain, due to the violences and damages caused by the people of Sarzana to Bishop Antonio da Camilla. He had succeeded Henry, who embittered for not having ri-established the rights, had left the diocese and died soon after in Florence.

Among the most important documents cannot be forgotten the grant to transfer the Village to Asiano and to receive the inhabitants of Arcola, a part of those that regard the Monastery of Corvo and those about the contrasts with the Malaspina for the possession of the area called Brina.

The precious document is kept in the Archive of the cathedral of Sarzana, preserved by the library “Niccolò V”.

Ref. ”Appunti per una storia di Sarzana” Ennio Callegari.