GENERAL, ANCIENT ROME and ROMAN LAW

AUSTRIA

BELGIUM AND THE NETHERLANDS

EASTERN EUROPE AND SCANDINAVIA

ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND, WALES:
    England 1: A - E     England 2: F - J     England 3: K - R     England 4: S - Z

FRANCE:
     France 1: A - D      France 2: E - P      France 3: Q - Z

GERMANY

ITALY:
      Italy 1: A - M      Italy 2: N - Z
 

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

SWITZERLAND

INTRODUCTION

This is NOT a bibliography that will be of immediate use to the genealogist. I have purposely shied away from materials that are strictly genealogical in nature, and have refrained from mentioning most testators by name, unless it is in the title, or the person is reasonably famous.

This IS a bibliography that should be of use to scholars who use wills and probate inventories in their research and teaching, and to those who pursue local history and other endeavors as amateurs.

I have been compiling this bibliography on wills and probate inventories and their uses in historical writing for over ten years. It began with my work on the early 15th-century will of Francesco Datini of Prato, and continued with concentrated exploration of major research university libraries including those of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Emory, Washington, Indiana, Western Michigan, Duke, U.N.C. Chapel Hill, and Georgia, as well as the Newberry Library in Chicago, and the Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome. Kudos also to several correspondents from the US, Poland, The Netherlands, Denmark and England who have provided me with valuable annotated citations. Thanks also must go to ILL staffs at Belmont University and West Georgia College and to secretaries and graduate students who helped process the citations over the years, most immediately Mrs. Toma Kimbro who was key in preparing the online version of this document. Any and all misteaks, of course, are my responsibility.

I have chosen the entries according to the following criteria:
    *    prints or makes substantial use of one or more last wills (testaments) and/or probate
            inventories, or contains important information on the law or practice of will making,
            probate inventory compilation or on their use as historical primary sources;

    *    documents printed or used originate in Europe or the Mediterranean or European colonial
            areas;

    *    documents printed or used originate before approximately 1700;

    *    entries are located in printed published books, journals or magazines with general
            circulation that are likely to be held by U.S. or European libraries.

Every bibliography, like any collection, will reflect the qualities of the compiler as well as the vagaries of the process of collection.  I have read and verified most of these entries, and for these I have provided the following information to the extent possible:
    *    indication of whether a will and/or probate inventory is printed, and if more than one is,
            the number;
    *    the locale(s) of origin;
    *    the date(s) of composition;
    *    the occupation or profession or class of testator or deceased;
    *    for studies that use these documents, the general interest of the author: e.g. charity,
            genealogy, religious affiliation, material culture, literacy.

Annotations may prove frustrating to some, since each peruser will have his or her own needs. I have, for example, avoided listing the county for each English entry, though the name of the Journal often provides necessary orientation. I hope that despite these limitations this list provides a valuable service to a broad range of historians in many fields. Diacritical marks may be missing due to errors in transcription or through the conversion to HTML for posting. I would certainly appreciate being informed of any errors that users of this bibliography find in applying the information contained herein.

    *    I encourage suggestions, corrections and/or additions, and especially encourage suggestions
            for additions.
    *    I will endeavor to keep this list in some sense up to date, and add both newly published as
            well as newly discovered material on a regular basis. I will be happy to credit those
            who submit suggestions for additions, whether of their own work or that of others. Please
            see note below.
    *    I will create and update a supplement to contain new materials rather than inserting new
            materials among the old.
    *    Though a student of wills and probate inventories, I am not an expert on finding or
            interpreting these documents, and would invite the questioner to contact active authors of
            articles most closely related to their interests.

To maintain the integrity of this bibliography I ask that those who wish to submit citations:
    *    provide an entry that follows the format in the bibliography, including annotation (for
            which I will provide credit to you unless and until I have seen the work);
    *    provide some documentation of the entry, such as listing in another printed bibliography, a
            photocopy or scan of a journal's table of contents, or a photocopy of the piece itself;
    *    please provide information only on works in print, and not works in progress or at the
            press.

I can be contacted by e-mail at byrnej@mail.belmont.edu  and will provide faxing or mailing information to those who wish to send material by these means. I will certainly accept information or materials by e-mail as well.

This bibliography remains my intellectual property and is provided for the use of scholars and is not to be substantially reproduced in any form by anyone without my written and notarized permission. Anyone wishing to discuss publication of any portion of this work my contact me by e-mail. I reserve the right to treat additions to this list as part of this list for any future purposes to which I may put this list, including but not limited to publication in print media.

USING THIS BIBLIOGRAPHY

**    All works are listed alphabetically by author or editor, unless these are unavailable, then by title.
**    No work is cross listed, so looking for Italians in Spain, or an English merchant in Brussells may
          require examining both countries' listings. though Christopher Columbus was Genoese, mmost of
          his entries are under Spain and Portugal; though one would do well to double check Italy.
**    When using the primitive keyword search it is sometimes best to use truncated forms of certain
          words: boo should bring up book, books, booklist, booklists, bookhound, and so on. It will also
          bring up taboo and bootstrap. When looking for keywords (names, places, occupations, etc) use
          both English and non-English forms: Columbus should be complemented with Colon, and Cologne
          with Koeln and Koln. This may help bring up non-English language entries that are not annnotated.
          Generally, annotations do not include personal names if the title does.
**    In annotating entries I have usually included three fields, which have been filled as possible:
            1) The sources used or printed. Used is a broad term that indicates a low level of explication;
             studied suggests that the author is summarizing his research in a general way; while analyzed
                means that some statistical work has been done on the documents, and is displayed in the text.
                I have used the abbreviations PI to indicate probate inventory and Inv. to indicate any other
                type of inventory. When possible I indicate the number of documents involved. If the
                document is printed in a language other than the expected vernacular during or after the 15th
                century, this is indicated.The "default" for  medieval documents is Latin, for the early modern
                period the vernacular.

            2) The location and date of the documents' creation. Exact dates, ranges of dates or centuries are
                provided as available. Place names may be problematic, as I usually ignore English counties
                and other regional labels.

            3) Notes on the contents: testator's occupation or class or sex; location in the published work of
                the documents or appropriate chapters or sections; subject matter of the study (material
                culture, religiosity, genealogy, etc.).
**    In some cases information is missing even for annotated entries. This usually entails page
         numbers, and will be filled in as soon as possible.