Records of people investigated or punished by the Sienese Inquisitor for the years immediately up to 1711, in Latin, tall and thin manuscript on paper [Italy (Siena), 1710-16, with a few later additions from same century]

Records of people investigated or punished by the Sienese Inquisitor for the years immediately up to 1711, in Latin, tall and thin manuscript on paper [Italy (Siena), 1710-16, with a few later additions from same century]

94 leaves (including 80 blank leaves), with entries of names of the individuals concerned arranged alphabetically, each letter leaving blank leaves after the main entry to allow for more names, entries in 2 or 3 scrawling Italian hands, first leaf with lengthy Latin title in ornate capitals and fine script above the inquisitors seal (paper with white wax), the impressing of this seal leaving dents in centre of numerous subsequent leaves, some small spots and an erasure to first leaf, else excellent condition, 340 by 95mm.; contemporary limp parchment over thin pasteboards, detaching in places from spine, but solid in binding, 2 white leather tags at edges of each board

Without wanting to seem frivolous about such unpleasant practises as Inquisitorial persecution and torture, this manuscript is perhaps best described as a torturers rolodex. It opens with the statement that it was owned by the Inquisitor P.M. Iohanne Baptisto Magni a Verrucchio, and in alarmingly calm and ordered fashion states it contains the list of names and surnames of those investigated and punished in Siena, arranged firstly in alphabetical order and then by descending date of the interrogation. It was a practical reference tool, and must have played its part in the final decades of the witch-trials of early eighteenth-century Siena (some doubtless here under the generic title heretic and blasphemer). The upheavals of the Napoleonic invasions destroyed many such archives, and all such records are rare; those of Palermo were burnt in 1782 and those of Galicia were repurposed into musket cartridges during the Napoleonic Wars. Siena is, in fact, reasonably well documented, owing to its transference of much of its records to the Papal archives.