This eight-volume set of summaries of state documents (commemoriali) of the Republic of Venice was compiled and edited by Riccardo Predelli (1842–1909), and appeared between 1876 and 1914 as part of a wider series, 'Monumenti Storici', devoted to publishing the content of the nine-hundred-year-old archives of Venice at a time when the original documents seemed in danger of being lost through decay. Predelli notes in his preface that a similar concern was expressed by Doge Iacopo Tiepolo, who in 1248 ordered a commission to sort and codify the legal statutes of the city, which were in complete confusion. The works, arranged roughly in chronological order, provide summaries (and sometimes complete documents) of the political, diplomatic, commercial and legal activities of the Republic, and are a fascinating research resource. Volume 1 (published 1876) contains the first two books of the Commemoriali, covering the period from the 1230s to the 1320s.
