Richard Zerla wrote: > 1472 isn't very old. I have a copy of an original, dated novembre 5, > 1017, Borno, plus Italian and English translations of the "Atto Di > Donazione" document giving the land around Ossimo (north of Brescia) > to the church there. Well, I do not think it is a matter of "old". I mean: it's not a race. There are a lot of old manuscripts in Italy. When I went to Genoa State Archive to search for papers related to my family, I had the possibility to look at hundreds of manuscripts of XII and XIII century. The problem is that it is very hard to read them, because of script style, weak ink, paper damages, and content itself (middle age Latin, abbreviations, and so forth). Very few of them have been analysed and transcripted, so you have not an electronic version. In the best of cases you have an electronic list of papers in Archive's computers. Each one takes at least half an hour to be read. So, if you are looking for specific individuals, you have to spend weeks to find fews. That is why it is very exciting when someone finds a document you are interested in. Furthermore, a lot of paper have been destroyed because of wars and fires. So, if you can find more than one document speaking of the same person or relating an individual to another, is just like you got a new piece of a puzzle whose pieces are spead around in a corn field, and you still do not know the final image. Dario de Judicibus P.S. In my site, in de Judicibus :: Valtellina :: XI :: 1078 Oldefredo Iudex, you can find the image of a manuscript of 1078. The original is very beautiful, since it is written by a Gothic Latin character.