„Alles getreulich anzuzeigen was zur Verlassenschaft gehört“

On the ‘completeness’ of probate inventories from the eighteenth-century Tyrolean region

Abstract

The incompleteness of early modern period probate inventories is notorious. The attempt of explaining these gaps often leads to the assumption of a conflict-ridden relationship between the authorities and their subjects with the latter trying to trick the former. Examining a corpus of 2000 inventories stemming from eighteenth-century Tyrol and the Prince Bishopric of Brixen makes it obvious that the administrative bodies were most likely fully aware of the inconsistencies. This raises questions of how they dealt with the incompleteness of inventories. The thesis this paper proposes is that the incompleteness of inventories cannot simply be considered the result of deviant behaviour of surviving dependants or unknown third parties. Instead, the fact that the authorities accepted obvious blanks within the records is indicative of a subject-authority-relationship with far more cooperative elements than widely expected.