Liber Regularum spectabilis officii domino rum patrum communis et salvato rum portus et Moduli Civitatis Janue […] MCCCCLVIIII

Parchment manuscript, 15th century, mm. 330 x 240, cc 154. A first page with the coat of arms of Genoa between two Angels (in colour). By a different hand additions until 1676. Binding sec.XVIII in leather with dry impressions. Coll .: A.S.C.G, MS 422.
The figure of the magistrate “Fathers of the Municipality” originated in the thirteenth century with the name of Salvatores Portus et Moduli, with the task of managing, maintaining and developing the Port; to it the Government delegated particular sectors of intervention, with its own budget and extensive jurisdictional powers, in some cases, up to the death penalty. The name of “Padri del Comune” appears in documents from the fifteenth century on.
The Fathers of the Municipality had responsibilities comparable to those of a modern municipal administration, for their variety and the vastness of the areas controlled, including streets, squares, aqueducts, cleaning, waste collection and disposal.
The archival documentation of the Fathers of the Municipality preserved in the historical Archive of the Municipality covers a time span ranging from 1412 to 1797. It amounts to 1249 volumes between books of accounts and folders of documents, The series of account books (paper and manuals) covers the years from 1412 to the end of the fall of the aristocratic republic; for the most ancient period (1340-1406) the accounts documentation is kept in the State Archives of Genoa, Antico Comune fund.