In the rapidly transforming world of thirteenth-century Mediterranean Spain, the all-purpose scribe and contract drafter known as the notary became a familiar figure. Most legal transactions of the Roman Law Renaissance were framed in this functionary's shorthand, and for that reason, notarial archives offer a remarkable window on the daily life of this pluri-ethnic society.

Robert Burns brings together the testimony of a multitude of documents, and transcribes in full nearly fifty Jewish wills and will-related charters prepared by notaries, to give a never-before-seen view of Jewish society in that place and time.