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Premodern European Capitalism, Christianity, and Florence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2020

William Caferro
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Abstract

The essay examines the role of Christianity in premodern European capitalism, with regard to the city of Florence. It traces the formation of the historical construct and the influence of Werner Sombart's Der moderne Kapitalismus, a work much neglected nowadays in the Anglophone academy. The article seeks to historicize and contextualize faith and economy, to stress their fundamentally intertwined nature and more specifically how notions of “negotiation” and diriturra (moral Christian rectitude) connect the seemingly antagonistic sides, and connect also Florentine finance and business history, which are too often studied independently. It argues that Christian rectitude and service to the church (a noncynical quid pro quo) were conjoined with a calculated, reasoned profit motive--evident especially among papal bankers, a key sector of the Florentine economy.

Keywords

FlorenceItalyearly capitalism
Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 94 , Issue 1: Italy and the Origins of Capitalism , Spring 2020 , pp. 39 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 The President and Fellows of Harvard College

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Footnotes

I wish to thank the organizers of the conference, Sophus Reinert and Bob Fredona, and the participants, John Brewer, Maria Fusaro, Lauren Jacobi, Elizabeth Mellyn, Jeff Miner, Dan Smail, Corey Tazzara, and Francesca Trivellato, for their comments and critique. I am grateful to Steven Epstein and Julius Kirshner for their critical readings of the essay. The faults are decidedly my own.

References

1 For a basic outline of the various debates for Europe in the period, see Caferro, William, Contesting the Renaissance (Cambridge, U.K., 2011), 126–55Google Scholar. Maurice Dobb, Paul Sweezy, and others debated the nature of “transition” from feudalism to capitalism, with emphasis on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See Hilton, Rodney, ed., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London, 1976)Google Scholar. Franklin Mendels and others have investigated the role of proto-industry in the countryside. See Mendels, “Proto-Industrialization: The First Phase of the Industrialization Process,” Journal of Economic History 32 (1972). For capital cities, see Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, trans. by Sian Reynolds (New York, 1981–84), 396, 400, 621; and “world systems” in Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, 3 vols. (New York and London, 1974–1989). The work on double entry includes, among others, Basil S. Yamey, “Scientific Bookkeeping and the Rise of Capitalism,” in T. A. Lee, Ashton C. Bishop, and R. H. Parker, eds., Accounting History from the Renaissance to the Present: A Remembrance of Luca Paciol i (New York and London, 1996); Christopher Nobles, ed., The Development of Double Entry: Selected Essays (New York and London, 1984).

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3 Clark, Gregory, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton, 2007), 1–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Persson, Karl Gunnar, Pre-industrial Economic Growth, Social Organization and Technological Progress in Europe (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar. A recent exception to the developmental/evolutionary model (using the methodology of Foucault) is Germano Maifreda, From Oikonomia to Political Economy: Constructing Economic Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution (Burlington, VT, 2012).

4 William H. Beveridge, “Wages in the Winchester Manors,” Economic History Review (1936): 22; see Caferro, William, Petrarch's War: Florence and the Black Death in Context (Cambridge, U.K., 2018), 147–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The so-called transition debate sought to locate the point at which merchant capitalism transformed into industrial capitalism, focusing on free labor and commercialization of the countryside. Rodney Hilton, ed., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London, 1976).

6 Jacques Heers calls feudalism “a real custard pie of a term,” one that is weighed down with “every implication of evil” and is “difficult to define and varied from place to place.” Heers, “The ‘Feudal’ Economy and Capitalism: Words, Ideas and Reality,” Journal of European Economic History 3, no. 3 (1974): 625. For the classic critique of the term, see Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994).

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8 de Roover, Raymond, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494 (New York, 1966), 2Google Scholar; Richard Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, 2009), esp. 35.

9 On Florentine society and the church, see, among others, Roberto Bizzocchi, Chiesa e potere nella Toscana del Quattrocento (Bologna, 1987); Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, 1991); John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Oxford, 1994); Peterson, David S., “Out of the Margins: Religion and the Church in Renaissance Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 53, no. 3 (2000): 835–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and George Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante (Philadelphia, 2005). For discussion of the Florentine monte, see Kirshner, Julius, “‘Ubi est ille?’: Franco Sacchetti on the Monte Comune of Florence,” Speculum 59, no. 3 (1984): 571CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lawrin Armstrong, Usury and Public Debt in Early Renaissance Florence: Lorenzo Ridolfi on the Monte Comune (Toronto, 2003); and Armstrong, The Idea of a Moral Economy: Gerard of Siena on Usury, Restitution, and Prescription (Toronto, 2016). Odd Langholm examines the attitudes regarding economy of forty seven theologians, using many unpublished manuscripts. Langholm, Economics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury according to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200–1350 (Leiden, 1992); “Monopoly and Market Irregularities in Medieval Economic Thought: Traditions and Texts to AD 1500,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 28, no. 4 (2006): 395–441.

10 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore ( New York, 1954), 100.

11 Alfred von Martin, Sociology of the Renaissance (London, 1944), originally published as Soziologie der Renaissance (Stuttgart, 1932), 2.

12 Von Martin, Sociology of the Renaissance, 1.

13 Von Martin, Sociology of the Renaissance, 2.

14 Robertson, H. M., Aspects of the Rise of Individualism: A Criticism of Max Weber and His School (New York, 1959), 34Google Scholar.

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16 Pirenne, Henri, “The Stages in the Social History of Capitalism,” American Historical Review 19, no. 3 (1914): 500CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Tawney, Religion, 25, 28–29, 56.

18 F. L. Nussbaum, “The Economic History of Renaissance Europe: Problems and Solutions during the Past Generation,” Journal of Modern History 13, no. 4 (1941): 527.

19 De Roover, Medici Bank, 7.

20 “Des reports d’échanges furent pratiqués aux Foires plus largement que dans le passé par l'intervention de capitalistes.” André Sayous, “Le capitalisme commercial et financier dans les pays Chrétiens de la Mediterranée occidentale, depuis la première croisade jusqu’à la fin du moyen-âge,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 29, no. 3 (1936): 295.

21 Yves Renouard, Les relations des Papes ďAvignon et des Compagnies commerciales et bancaires de 1316 à 1378 (Paris, 1941), 41; Armando Sapori, La crisi delle compagnie mercantili dei Bardi e dei Peruzzi (Florence, 1926), 147. A particularly forceful argument for the genesis of capitalism in the Middle Ages is in Jacques Heers, La Naissance du capitalisme au Moyen Âge: Changeurs, usuriers et grands financiers (Paris, 2012).

22 Goldthwaite, Economy, 238.

23 Die Juden was Sombart's answer to Max Weber's Protestant Ethic (1904–1905), a debate begun by Sombart himself in 1902, with the publication of Der moderne Kapitalismus. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Religion and Capitalism Once Again? Jewish Merchant Culture in the Seventeenth Century,” Representations 59 (Summer 1997): 56–84.

24 Werner Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, revised, 2 vols. (Munich, 1919--c. 1916). Max Weber had earlier written about medieval commerce, partnerships, and Italian mercantile practices. Weber, Zur Geschichte der Handelsgesellschaften im Mittelalter: Schriften 1889–1894, ed. Gerhard Dilcher and Susanne Lepsius (Tübingen, 2008).

25 “Der Handel wird erst in großem Stile vërmogenbildend wirken können, wenn er erst einmal aus dem verhängsnisvollen Zirkel; kleiner Umsatz, hohe Spesen, geringe Profitmengen, keine Accumulation, in dem wir ihn eingeschlossen fanden, herausgehoben ist.” Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 1:319.

26 Werner Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism: A Study of the History and Psychology of the Modern Business Man, trans. and ed. M. Epstein (New York, 1915), 13, 20.

27 “Man kann schlechthin Kapitalismus ohne doppelte Buchhaltung nicht denken: sie verhalten sich wie Form und Inhalt zueinander.” Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2:118.

28 Sayous, “Le capitalisme commercial et financier,” 271, 274.

29 Pirenne, “Stages.”

30 Pirenne responded also to Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft (1893) by Karl Bücher, another proponent of the German historical school, translated as Industrial Evolution (New York, 1901). Pirenne, “Stages,” 494. See also Peter Koslowski, ed., The Theory of Capitalism in the German Economic Tradition: Historism, Ordo-Liberalism, Critical Theory, Solidarism (Berlin, 2013).

31 Pirenne, “Stages,” 495, 497.

32 “Les historiens ont considéré comme audacieux et, en certains points, même fantaisiste, le gros ouvrage sur les origines du ‘capitalisme moderne’ paru au début de ce siècle.” Sayous cites a French translation of the book published in Paris in 1936. Sayous, “Le capitalisme commercial et financier,” 270.

33 N. S. B. Gras, “Business History,” Economic History Review 4, no. 4 (1934): 390.

34 Gras, Business and Capitalism.

35 Nussbaum, “Economic History,” 529–32. Nussbaum also helped introduce an American audience to Sombart's work. Nussbaum, A History of the Economic Institutions of Modern Europe: An Introduction of ‘Der moderne Kapitalismus’ of Werner Sombart (New York, 1933).

36 Basil S. Yamey, “Scientific Bookkeeping and the Rise of Capitalism,” Economic History Review, n.s., 1, no. 2–3 (1949): 99–113.

37 Eve Chiapello, “Accounting and the Birth of the Notion of Capitalism,” Critical Perspectives on Accounting 18, no. 3 (2007): 263–96.

38 Werner Sombart, Il Capitalismo Moderno, trans. Gino Luzzatto (Florence, 1925). On Luzzatto's career and difficulties with Fascist authorities, see Reinhold C. Mueller, “Per ragioni di ordine generale: Gino Luzzatto vittima delle leggi razziali, 1938–1945,” Venetica 55 (2018): 153–68.

39 Quoted in Sombart, Quintessence of Capitalism, 15.

40 Alfred Doren, Die Florentiner Wollentuchindustrie (Stuttgart, 1901), 25, 34, 202, 249.

41 Heinrich Sieveking, Die Handlungsbücher der Medici (Vienna, 1905); Sieveking, Genueser Finanzwesen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Casa di S. Georgio (Freiburg, 1898–1899).

42 Enrico Fiumi, “Fioritura e decadenza dell'economia fiorentina,” Archivio storico italiano 115 (1957): 387–88.

43 André Sayous argued that European capitalism came to America as a result of Spain's conquest of the New World. Sayous, “Le capitalisme commercial et financier.” In modern textbooks, see Wim Blockmans and Peter Hoppenbrouwers, Introduction to Medieval Europe, 300–1500 (London, 2017). Even the steadfast proponent of individualism H. M. Robertson believed that the Crusades deserved “prominence in the history of capitalism.” Robertson, Aspects, 44.

44 William M. Bowsky, The Finance of the Commune of Siena, 1287–1355 (Oxford, 1970), 2.

45 Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (Oxford, 1989), 60, 70, 61; Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World (New York, 1955), 81.

46 Pirenne, “Stages,” 503; Reginald of Durham, “Life of St. Godric,” in Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, ed. G. G. Coulton (Cambridge, U.K., 1918).

47 Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Cambridge, U.K., 1976), 67.

48 Renato Stopani, La via Francigena: Una strada europea nell'Italia del Medioevo (Florence, 1992), 72–74, 87–88.

49 Stopani, La via Francigena, 88–89.

50 Yamey, “Scientific Bookkeeping”; Chiapello, “Accounting.”

51 Weber saw a rational capitalistic system as one with “capital accounting and calculation according to the methods of modern bookkeeping and the striking of a balance.” Weber, General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Black (New York, 1927), 275.

52 The discussion is in book 2, section 2.3. Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2:110–24.

53 “Die doppelte Buchhaltung erst den Kapitalismus aus ihrem Geiste geboren habe.” Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2:118.

54 “Die doppelte Buchhaltung ist aus demselben Geiste geboren wie die Systeme Galileis und Newtons, wie die Lehren der modernen Physik und Chemie.” Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2:119.

55 Jane Gleeson-White, Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance (New York, 2011).

56 Jacob Soll, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (New York, 2014), xv; John Padgett, “Transposition and Refunctionality,” in The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, John Padgett and Walter W. Powell (Princeton, 2012), 203.

57 Soll, Reckoning, 12–14.

58 Geoffrey A. Lee, “The Coming of Age of Double Entry: The Giovanni Farolfi Ledger of 1299–1300,” Accounting Historians Journal 4, no. 2 (1977): 79–95; Christopher W. Nobes, “The Gallerani Account Book of 1305–1308,” Accounting Review 57, no. 2 (1982): 303–10; Carlo Antinori, “La contabilità pratica prima di Luca Pacioli: Origine della partita doppia,” De Computis: Revista Española de Historia de la Contabilidad 1 (2004): 4–23.

59 Federigo Melis, Storia della ragioneria: Contributo alla conoscenza e interpretazione delle fonti più significative della storia economica (Bologna, 1950); Melis, Aspetti della vita economica medievale (Florence, 1962).

60 De Roover, Medici Bank, 1–2.

61 Florence Edler de Roover, Glossary of Medieval Business Terms (Cambridge, MA, 1970), 348–49. The subsection is entitled “Medici Methods of Bookkeeping.”

62 Richard Goldthwaite. “The Practice and Culture of Accounting in Renaissance Florence,” Enterprise and Society 16, no. 3 (2015): 611–47.

63 Goldthwaite, 619, 641–42.

64 Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800 (Chicago, 2013). Originally published in 1973

65 Caferro, Petrarch's War, 55, 88.

66 Anthony Molho, “The State and Public Finance: A Hypothesis Based on the History of Late Medieval Florence,” in The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300–1600, ed. Julius Kirshner (Chicago, 1995), 110–15.

67 William Caferro, Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena (Baltimore, 1996), xviii–xix, 102–55.

68 On public debt, see, among others, the following important studies: Luciano Pezzolo, “Government Debts and Credit Markets in Renaissance Italy,” in Government Debts and Financial Markets in Europe, ed. Fausto Piola Caselli (London, 2008), 17–32; and Maria Ginatempo, “Il finanziamento del deficit pubblico nelle città dell'Italia centro-settentrionale (XIII–XV secolo),” in Debito pubblico e mercati finanziari in Italia: Secoli XIII–XX, ed. Giuseppe De Luca and Angelo Moioli (Milan, 2007), 39–82.

69 Yoko Kamenaga Anzai discusses “the utilization of public debt for the salvation of souls” in Genoa, as churches, hospitals, and monasteries held shares (compera) of the public debt that they received from bequests, through donations, and in wills. Kamenaga Anzai, “Attitudes toward Public Debt in Medieval Genoa: The Lomellini Family,” Journal of Medieval History 29, no. 4 (2003): 260–63.

70 Steven Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 958–1528 (Chapel Hill, 1996).

71 Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2:118.

72 “La fede di real mercantante . . . in la fede catolica ognuno si salve.” Luca Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica geometria: proportioni: Et proportionalita: Nouamente impressa (Toscolano, 1523), 416. See also Luca Pacioli, Trattato di partita doppia, ed. Annalisa Conterio (Venice, 1994); and Pacioli, Rules of Double Entry: Particularis de computis et scripturis, trans. John B. Geijsbeek (Denver, CO, 2016), 16.

73 “Ora per mare, ora per terra, ora a tempi de pace e dabondantia. Ora a tempi de guerre e carestie, ora a tempi di sanita e morbi . . . e pero ben se figura e asimiglia el mercatante al gallo . . . el piu vigilante animale.” Later, Pacioli suggests that a merchant needs one hundred eyes but that even this was not sufficient. Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica geometria, 416, at 199v.

74 “Ben dicano le legi municipali . . . videlicet vigilantibus et non dormientibus iura subveniunt cioe a chi vegghia e non a chi dorme le leggi sovengono . . . e cosi neli divini officii se canta da la Sancta Chiesa che idio ali vigilanti a promesso la corona.” Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica geometria, 416, at 199v.; Soll, Reckoning, 19–22.

75 Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica geometria, 416–17.

76 Gleeson-White, Double Entry, 23–24.

77 “In nome di dio e dela vergine Maria e de suoi benedetti santi di messer San Piero e di messer Giovanni Batista e di messer San Jacopo and di Messer Santo Antonio e di Messer Santo Giuliano e di tutta gli altri sancti di Paradiso et di Madonna Santa Reparata e di Madona Santa Lucia e di Madonna Santa Caterina e di tutta la chorte di paradiso.” MS 491, f. 2r, Selfridge collection, Medici Collection, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston (hereafter SC).

78 “Al nome di dio e dela groliosima madre Madonna Santa Maria e di messer San Giovanni Battista padrone e prottettore di questa citta e di resto l'celestial corte di paradiso.” MS 497, f. 1r, SC.

79 “Al nome di dio e dela groliosa vergine Madonna santa madre sempre vergine e di messer San Piero, e messer San Pagholo e messer San Giovanni Batista . . .,” MS 500, f. 1r, SC.

80 Padgett, “Transposition and Refunctionality,” 37–38.

81 Edwin Hunt, The Medieval Super-Companies (Cambridge, U.K., 1994).

82 Armando Sapori, “La beneficenza delle compagnie mercantili del trecento,” Archivio storico italiano 83, ser. 7, no. 4 (1925): 254; Sapori, The Italian Merchant in the Middle Ages (New York, 1970), 21–28.

83 Sapori, “La beneficenza delle compagnie,” 254–56.

84 Sapori, 256.

85 Sapori, 259–60.

86 Armando Sapori, “L'interesse del denaro a Firenze nel Trecento: Dal testamento di un usuraio,” in Studi di storia economica (secoli Xlll–XIV–XV) (Florence, 1955), 225.

87 Sapori, “La beneficenza delle compagnie,” 242.

88 Sergio Tognetti, “‘Aghostino Chane a chui Christo perdoni’: L'eredità di un grande usuraio nella Firenze di fine Trecento,” Archivio storico italiano 164, no. 4 (610) (2006): 667–712; Lawrin Armstrong, “Usury, Conscience and Public Debt: Angelo Corbinelli's Testament of 1419,” in A Renaissance of Conflicts: Visions and Revisions of Law and Society in Italy and Spain, ed. John A Marino and Thomas Kuehn (Toronto, 2004), 173–200. See also the detailed study in Sylvie Duval, “L'argent des pauvres: L'institution de l'executor testamentorum et procurator pauperum à Pise entre 1350 et 1424,” Mélange de l’École Française de Rome – Moyen Âge 125, no. 1 (2013), https://doi.org/10.4000/mefrm.1157.

89 Giacomo Todeschini, “Theological Roots of the Medieval/Modern Merchants’ Self-Representation,” in The Self Perception of Early Modern Capitalists, ed. Margaret C. Jacobs and Catherine Secretan (Hampshire, 2009), 19. See also Todeschini, Ricchezza francescana: Dalla povertà volontaria alla società di mercato (Bologna, 2004).

90 For disagreement with Todeschini's reading of Olivi, see Julius Kirshner and Kimberly Lo Prete, “Peter John Olivi's Treatises on Contracts of Sale, Usury and Restitution: Minorite Economics or Minor Works?,” Quaderni Fiorentini per la Storia del pensiero giuridico moderno 13, no. 1 (1984): 233–86.

91 Todeschini, Ricchezza francescana, 129; Todeschini, “Theological Roots,” 27.

92 Todeschini, Ricchezza francescana, 22.

93 Todeschini, 181.

94 For an assessment of the genre, see Marcello Fantoni, ed., Il “perfetto capitano”: Immagini e realtà (secoli XV–XVII), Atti dei seminari di studi, Georgetown University a Villa Le Balze (Rome, 2001).

95 “È hordinata questa arte mercantile, è necessario, postposto ogni altra cura, vacare con gran diligentia ad tute quelle cose le quali in qualche modo possen fare utile et giovare ad tal professione. Unde si convene a le volte durare gran fatica di giorno et di nocte, caminare personalmente a piè et a cavalo, per mare e per terra, e così afaticarsi nel vendere et nel comperare et adestrar le cose vendute et comperate, et usare in tucti simili faciende quanta diligencia è posibile, postponendo, como ò decto, ogni altra cura non solamente . . . ma ancora di quele sono necessarie a la conservacione de la humana vita. Et però ne occore alguna volta el differire lo mangiare e lo bevere e lo dormire, ançi è necessario di tolerare fame, sete e vigilie et simili altre cose che sono noiose et contrarie a la quiete del corpo.” Benedetto Cotrugli, Libro de l'arte de la mercatura (Venice, 2016), 37–38, 51.

96 Cotrugli, Libro de l'arte de la mercatura, 53. “Non te para strana la fatiga che Marte non concesse mai la battaglia . . . e Paolo Apostolo dici che niun degno di corona salvo che hara . . . combattuto.” Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica geometria, 416.

97 Cotrugli, Libro de l'arte de la mercatura, 35–38, 51.

98 Reginald of Durham, “Life of St. Godric,” 415–20.

99 Todeschini, Ricchezza francescana, 8.

100 Bowsky, Finance, 7.

101 Frances Andrews, “Living like the Laity? The Negotiation of Religious Status in the Cities of Late Medieval Italy,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 20 (Dec. 2010): 28–29; Andrews and Maria Agata Pincelli, eds., Churchmen and Urban Government in Late Medieval Italy, c.1200–c.1450 (Cambridge, U.K., 2013).

102 Sister James Eugene Madden, “Business Monks, Banker Monks, Bankrupt Monks: The English Cistercians in the Thirteenth Century,” Catholic Historical Review 49, no. 3 (1963): 341–64; Peter King, The Finances of the Cistercian Order in the Fourteenth Century (Kalamazoo, 1985); Andrews, “Living like the Laity?” 27–56; Constance B. Bouchard, Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century Burgundy (Ithaca, 1991); William Day, “Cistercian Monks and the Casting Counter,” in Andrews and Pincelli, Churchmen and Urban Government, 251–67.

103 P. J. Jones, “Le finanze della Badia Cistercense di Settimo nel XIV secolo,” Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 10 (1956): 106–7; Day, “Cistercian Monks,” 263.

104 For a useful review of the historiography, see Lutz F. Kaelber, Schools of Asceticism: Ideology and Organization in Medieval Religious Communities (University Park, PA, 1998).

105 Elisabetta Ulivi, “Gli abacisti fiorentini delle famiglie del maestro Luca,” in Calandri e Micceri e le loro scuole d'abaco (secc. XIV–XVI) (Florence, 2016); Ulivi, Benedetto da Firenze (1429–1479), un maestro d'abaco del XV secolo: Con documenti inediti e con un'Appendice su abacisti e scuole d'abaco a Firenze nei secoli XIII–XVI ( Rome, 2002), 26–28.

106 Renouard, Les relations des Papes ďAvignon, 77.

107 Kirshner, “‘Ubi est ille?’” 557; Armstrong, Usury and Public Debt; Armstong, Idea of a Moral Economy; Gerard of Siena on Usury, Restitution, and Prescription (Toronto, 2016).

108 Caferro, Petrarch's War, 20, 104–7. The tax in the early trecento is mentioned in Alessandro Gherardi, “L'antica camera del comune di Firenze e un quarderno d'uscita de suoi camarlenghi del anno 1303,” Archivio storico italiano 43 (1885): 320–21.

109 Bernardino Barbadoro, Le finanze della repubblica fiorentina: Imposta diretta e debito pubblico fino all'istituzione del Monte (Florence, 1929); Anthony Molho, Florentine Public Finances in the Early Renaissance, 1400–1433 (Cambridge, MA, 1971); Roberto Barducci, “Politica e speculazione finanziaria a Firenze dopo la crisi del primo Trecento (1343–1358),” Archivio storico italiano 137, no. 2 (1979): 177–219; Giovanni Ciappelli, “Il cittadino fiorentino e il fisco alla fine del trecento e nel corso del quattrocento: Uno studio di due casi,” Società e Storia 46 (1989): 823--72.

110 The money was paid through the Arte della Lana, which did the actual spending. A portion of the proceeds was sometimes also spent on bridge repair, the university, and other public projects, but the cathedral was always the priority. Caferro, Petrarch's War, 105.

111 “Dirittura sempre usando gli conviene/ lunga provedenza gli sta bene . . . Fuori di rampogna con bella raccoglienza/ la Chiesa usare e per dio donare, crescie in pregio, e vendere a uno motto, usura e guoco di zara vietare . . . scrivere bene la ragione e non errare.” Francesco Pegolotti, La Pratica della mercatura, ed. Allan Evans (Cambridge, MA, 1936), 20.

112 “Dritura sempre usare a lui conviene e lunga provendenza li sta bene . . . fuor di rampogna con bell'accoglienza la chesa usare e per dio donare.” Isidoro del Lungo, Dino Compagni e la sua Cronica (Florence, 1879), 389. Robert Lopez freely translates this as “a merchant wishing that his worth be great must always act according to what is right.” Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, 425-426.

113 Andrews, “Living like the Laity?” 35–45.

114 Arnold Esch, “Florentiner in Rom um 1400,”Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 52 (1972): 496–525.

115 Richard A. Goldthwaite, “The Medici Bank and the World of Florentine Capitalism,” Past and Present, no. 114 (Feb. 1987): 3–31.

116 Box 85, folder 1615, Spinelli Archive, Yale University, New Haven (hereafter SA).

117 Goldthwaite, “Medici Bank,” 19, 23–24.

118 Melissa M. Bullard, “‘Mercatores Florentini Romanam Curiam Sequentes’ in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1976); de Roover, Medici Bank, 194.

119 George Holmes, “How the Medici Became the Pope's Bankers,” in Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, vol. 1, ed. Nicolai Rubinstein (London, 1968), 357–80.

120 Holmes, “Pope's Bankers,” 361–66.

121 De Roover, Medici Bank, 213.

122 William Caferro, “L'Attività bancaria papale e la Firenze del Rinascimento: Il caso di Tommaso Spinelli,” Società e storia 55 (Summer 1996): 717–31. The Borromei banking enterprises are the focus of an early and underappreciated study of double entry bookkeeping; see Tommaso Zerbi, Le origini della partita doppia: gestioni aziendali e situazioni di marcato nei secoli XIV e XV (Milan, 1952).

123 Box 85, folder 1615, SA.

124 Caferro, “L'Attività bancaria papale,” 734.

125 Caferro, 737.

126 Caferro, William, “The Silk Business of Tommaso Spinelli, Fifteenth-Century Florentine Merchant and Papal Banker,” Renaissance Studies 10, no. 4 (1996): 417–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127 Caferro, “L'Attività bancaria papale,” 731–32; Holmes, “Pope's Bankers,” 376–79.

128 Caferro, “L'Attività bancaria papale,” 737.

129 Caferro, 728.

130 Caferro, “Silk Business,” 438.

131 Philip Jacks and William Caferro, The Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family (University Park, PA, 2001), 47; de Roover, Medici Bank, 213.

132 Caferro, “Silk Business,” 433.

133 Caferro, William, “Tommaso Spinelli: The Soul of a Banker,” Journal of the Historical Society 8, no. 2 (2008): 303–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

134 Raymond de Roover, San Bernardino of Siena and Sant’ Antonino of Florence: The Two Great Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages (Boston, 1967), 1–43; Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York, 1954), 95–107.

135 Caferro, “Tommaso Spinelli,” 313–14.

136 Box 24, folder 625 bis, SA.

137 There is no modern edition of the Summa. I have used St. Antoninus, Summa theologica moralis, 4 vols., ed. Pietro Ballerini (Verona, 1740). See also Noonan, John T., The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge, MA, 1957), 77–80Google Scholar, 188–90.

138 Antoninus, Summa theologica moralis, rubric IV, 5, 17 column 254; rubric II, 3, 4 column 120; rubric IV, 12, 3 column 623.

139 “Ghabriello, io nonn ò si gran bisogno né ò s̀ı grande ansietà di guadangnare chome tu credi; bastami ch'io mi conservi e non faccia adrieto, non ne volere più di me, non conperare più oro.”Box 86, folder 1626, SA.

140 Cotrugli, Il Libro dell'arte di mercatura, 198, 203–4.

141 “Credo essere lo piu antico merchatante che ci sia, et sono ora may stato in corte circha ad anni XXXII; posso dire questo chon verità, che in questo tempo may fu’ richiesto ńe da’ sommi pontefici ńe Signori chardinali d'alchuna chosa ch'io non li abbi serviti.” Box 85, folder 1615, SA.

142 Kirshner, Julius, “Papa Eugenio IV e il Monte Comune: Documenti su investimento e speculazione nel debito pubblico di Firenze,” Archivio storico italiano 127 (1969): 339–53Google Scholar.

143 Caferro, “L'Attività bancaria papale,” 738.

144 Malatesta, Sigismondo, Statuti delle gabelle di Roma (Rome, 1885), 57–59Google Scholar; Partner, Peter, The Papal State under Martin V (London, 1958), 168Google Scholar.

145 Caferro, “Tommaso Spinelli,” 321.

146 Yves Renouard, “Affaires et Culture à Florence au XIVe et au XVe siècle,” in Il Quattrocento: Libera Cattedra di Storia della Civiltà Fiorentina, vol. 2, ed. Jean Boutier, Sandro Landi, and Olivier Rouchon (Rennes, 2004), 169.

147 Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago, 1996), 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

148 Caferro, Petrarch's War, 8–10; Scott, Joan, “Gender as a Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91 no. 5 (1986): 1067CrossRefGoogle Scholar.