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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
On a Thursday in June 1433 nine leaders of the Peruzzi family, one of Florence's biggest and most celebrated lineages, met in the house of Ridolfo di Bonifazio Peruzzi to discuss, as they had precisely four years earlier, how to prevent or if necessary how to deal with various offences—slanders, robberies, assaults or even murders—that might be committed by men of the Peruzzi against others. We know about these intriguing clan meetings, a response to the factional manoeuvring of the years 1426-34, from an unpublished document, formally recording the family's decision on 25 June 1433 to elect three of their number with “pieno e libero mandato da tutti gl'altri a potere procedere contro a qualunche persona facessi per l'innanzi alcuna villania, danno o dispiacere ad alcuna persona,” which survives in two seventeenth-century copies in the Archivio Peruzzi de' Medici, a private collection deposited in the Florentine State Archives in 1935.
1 The copy published below is in Florence, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Peruzzi de’ Medici,6, insert A (first quademo), fols. 28-29v. On the relationship between this and the almost identical version in the second quaderno of the same insert (fols. 22-23v), see below, n. 52. The Peruzzi archive is briefly described by Camerani, Sergio, “Notizie degli Archivi Toscani,” Archivio Storico Italiano, 114 (1956), 428.Google Scholar Henceforth all archival references will be tocollections in the Florentine State Archives, unless otherwise indicated. We are grateful toour friends Gene Brucker, Gino Corti, Heather Gregory (who also kindly allowed us to citeher unpublished dissertation), and Nicolai Rubinstein for advice and information.
2 Notarile Antecosimiano, A 444 (1340-45), unfoliated, 26 January 1346, modern style. This document, very kindly brought to our attention some years ago by John Najemy, is so far as we know unpublished. There are other resemblances to the Peruzzi pact: for example, provision is made for substitutes for the elected leaders, who had the power to punish “inobedientes.” On the magnate Ciccioni (often called the Malpigli) and their Mangiadori associates, see Testi, Maria L. Cristiani, San Miniato al Tedesco: Saggio di storia urbanistica e architettonica (Florence, 1967), pp. 90, 95, 98, 103, 110Google Scholar: Malpigli violence in S. Miniato in early 1347 is described by Villain, Giovanni, Cronica, 4, ed. Dragomanni, Francesco Gherardi (Florence, 1845), 130.Google Scholar For an apparently comparable pact of the mid-fifteenth century among members of a Genoese albergho, see Heers, Jacques, Le clan familial au moyen âge (Paris, 1974), pp. 114, 254.Google Scholar
3 Kent, Dale, “I Medici in esilio: una vittoria di famiglia ed una disfatta personale,” Archivio Storico Italiano, 132 (1974), 3–63 Google Scholar; idem, “The Florentine Reggimento in the Fifteenth Century,” Renaissance Quarterly, 28 (1975), 575-638; idem, The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence 1426-1434 (Oxford, 1978): Kent, Francis W., Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1977): on family meetings, see p. 245 Google Scholar; Herlihy, David and Klapisch-Züber, Christiane, Les Toscans et leurs families (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar; Heather J. Gregory, “A Florentine Family in Crisis: The Strozzi in the Fifteenth Century,” unpublished doctoral thesis (University of London, 1981).
4 Quoted in ibid., p. 283. See too Bullard, Melissa Meriam, “Marriage, Politics and the Family in Florence: The Strozzi-Medici Alliance of 1508,” American Historical Review, 84 (1979), 668–687.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Kent, Dale, Rise of the Medici, p. 3.Google Scholar
6 The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434 to 1494) (Oxford, 1966), pp. 27, 100, 118-119, 135, 150, 156-158, 217-218, 226.
7 Published by Sapori, Armando, “Cosimo Medici e un ‘pattogiurato’ a Firenze nel 1449,” Éventail de L'Histoire Vivante: Hommage à Lucien Febvre, 2 (Paris, 1953), 115–132 Google Scholar, who mistakenly thought it anti-Medicean; see Rubinstein, , Government of Florence, p. 27 Google Scholar, n. 3. A photograph of the parchment in the Niccolini private archive containing the articles, and a summary of them, was earlier published by di Camugliano, Ginevra Niccolini, The Chronicles of a Florentine Family, 1200-1470 (London, 1933), pp. 200–202.Google Scholar The text of the other pact, of May 1466, is published by Guido Pampaloni, “Il Giuramento Pubblico in Palazzo Vecchioa Firenze e un patto giurato degli antimedicei (maggio 1466),” Bulletino Senese di Storia Patria, 71, 3rd ser., 23 (1964), 213-238. In this case the jurors neither elected officials nor swore familial allegiance to one another.
8 For Florence, see Santini, Piero, “Società delle Torri in Firenze,” Archivio Storico Italiano, 4th ser., 20 (1887), 25–58, 178-204Google Scholar, and the texts he published in Documenti dell'antica costituzione del Comune di Firenze, Documenti di Storia Italiana, 10, parte 1 (Florence, 1895), 517-539. Niccolai, Franco, I Consorzi Nobiliari ed il comune nell'alta e media Italia (Bologna, 1940)Google Scholar, discusses consorzi and their pacts, from all of upper Italy, into the early modern period. A good recent discussion in English is Waley, Daniel, The Italian City-Republics (London, 1969), pp. 165–182.Google Scholar
9 The text is in Niccolai, , Consorzi Nobiliari, pp. 164–166 Google Scholar; there is a partial translation in Brucker, Gene, The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study (New York, 1971), pp. 84–86.Google Scholar The articles of the official Consorteria della libertà, composed of all the members of the emergency council or Balìa of June 1378, are in Gherardi, Alessandro, Cronache dei secoli xiii e xiv, Documenti di Storia Italiana, 6 (Florence, 1876), 505–510 Google Scholar; the context is explained by Brucker, Gene, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1378 (Princeton, 1962), pp. 369–372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 The texts of twenty-five pacts of different sorts are collected by Niccolai, , Consorzi Nobiliari, pp. 102–169.Google Scholar See too those mentioned above, in notes 2, 7, 9, and an extremely unusual notarial act of April 1457, by which the powerful Borromeo family of Florence formally accepted into its consorteria several men, not their kin but from S. Miniato whence the Borromeo originally came: Notarile Antecosimiano, L 189 (1451-66), fol. 142-142v, a reference we owe to Robert Black.
11 Archivio Peruzzi de’ Medici, 6, insert A (first quaderno), first unnumbered folio. This passage is in the hand of the rest of the quaderno, including the document published below. No clear provenance for the pact is given; nor have we found it even referred to in any printed or manuscript sources consulted for this article. To those cited elsewhere in the notes, one should add: Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 2414-17; Carte Strozziane, 2nd ser., 60, fols. 103-237; Peruzzi, Simone L., Storia del Commercio e dei Banchieri di Firenze(Florence, 1868).Google Scholar A document copied in busta 6 has previously been cited by Borsook, Eve, “Notizie su due Cappelle in Santa Croce a Firenze,” Rivista d'Arte, 36, 3rd ser., II (1961-62), 89–107 (p. 99, n. 50).Google Scholar
12 Archivio Peruzzi de’ Medici, 5, 6; cf. Armando Sapori, ed., I Libri di Commercio dei Peruzzi (Milan, 1934).
13 Kent, Francis W., “The Letters Genuine and Spurious of Giovanni Rucellai,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 37 (1974), 342–349.Google Scholar
14 Cronica, 3: 315.
15 Published by Rubinstein, , Government of Florence, p. 323.Google Scholar
16 See the numerous references to the Peruzzi in Dale Kent, Rise of the Medici, the most detailed analysis of these events; see too Brucker, Gene, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1977)Google Scholar, chap. 8. However since all three Peruzzi meetings of which we know (see below, n. 26) took place in June, it is possible that there was regularly a gathering in that month.
17 Kent, Dale, Rise of the Medici, pp. 241–245 Google Scholar; Brucker, , Civic World, pp. 487–493.Google Scholar Assometimes happens, we have found no such decree (bullettino) in the appropriate registers for that period: Provvisioni, Registri, 120; Deliberazioni, Signori e Collegi (speciale autorità), 22.
18 Dale Kent, Rise of the Medici, ch. 5.
19 “Contra interficientes aliquem et eorum consortes”: Provvisioni, Registri, 124, fols. 64v-65. The reference to the “commandamento e volere” of the Signoria and popolo is presumably to some official exhortation to peace and unity. For statutes empowering men to consign erring kin to prison, see Kent, Francis W., Household and Lineage, p. 59.Google Scholar
20 On 3 November 1434 the whole “family and progeny” of the Peruzzi was deprived in perpetuity of the right to hold office, save for the paternal descendants of Rinieri di Luigi and Rinieri di Niccolò: Balìa, 25, fol. 55-55v. Rinieri di Niccolo himself was at the meeting and with him two grandsons of Rinieri di Luigi, namely Luigi di Giovanni and Niccolò di Conte.
21 Kent, Dale, Rise of the Medici, pp. 341–342.Google Scholar
22 For a notable Veronese example, see Clough, Cecil in Studi Veneziani, 8 (1966), 543 Google Scholar, are view of Ventura, Angelo, Nobilità e Popolo nella società veneta dell ‘400 e ‘500 (Bari, 1965).Google Scholar
23 Rinieri's description of his bad health was made in 1427, when he was then 62 years old: Catasto, 35, fol. 1299v. Despite the possible political ambivalence of the exempt Peruzzi (see Kent, Dale, Rise of the Medici, p. 331 Google Scholar), no Peruzzi won a majority in the scrutiny of 1444, though previously the family had electorally dominated the gonfalone of Lion Nero: Rubinstein, , Government of Florence, p. 9.Google Scholar
24 Otto di Guardia e Balìa (periodo repubblicano), 224, fols. 35v-36v, 52v, 56v-60, 67v, 70v, 73, 74v-75, 85v, 86v, 87v. See too Kent, Dale, Rise of the Medici, p. 153 Google Scholar, and Piero Guicciardini's judgment on the Peruzzi's position in 1484: Rubinstein, , Government of Florence, p. 323.Google Scholar Peruzzi property, like that of other exiles, was also forcibly sold “per loro graveze non paghate”: for an example of early 1441, see Deliberazioni, Signori e Collegi, 43, fols. 6-7v, a reference we owe to Gene Brucker.
25 Morpurgo, Salomone, “La Guerra degli Otto Santi e il Tumulto de’ Ciompi nelle ricordanze di Simone di Rinieri Peruzzi,” Miscellanea Fiorentina di Erudizione e Storia, 2, no. 13 (1892), 7.Google Scholar We are grateful to Gene Brucker for confirming from his intimate knowledge our impression that the Peruzzi were not particularly violent at this time; see however the incidents reported in his Civic World, pp. 66, 68, 199. For a kidnapping by a Peruzzi after the Medicean return to power, see Capitano del Popolo, 3212, fol. 43, a reference we owe to Professor Brucker.
26 On the chapel, see Tintori, Leonetto and Borsook, Eve, Giotto: The Peruzzi Chapel (Turin, 1965)Google Scholar, and Borsook, “Notiziesu due Cappelle,” pp. 98-103, 105-107. Borsook's reference (ibid., p. 99, n. 50) to the meeting of June 1453 should read “fu fatto scritta per la quale elessero tre che havessino la cura …”: Archivio Peruzzi de’ Medici, 6, insert A (first quaderno), fols. 29v-30. The Peruzzi were also collectively still responsible in the fifteenth century for some of their defaulting ancestors’ debts: Sapori, Armando, La crisi delle compagnie mercantili dei Bardi e dei Peruzzi (Florence, 1926), p. 170.Google Scholar
27 Sinding-Larsen, Staale, “A Tale of Two Cities: Florentine and Roman visual context for fifteenth-century palaces,” Acta ad Archaelogiam et artium historiam pertinentia, 6, Institutum Romanum Norvegiae (Rome, 1975), 178–180.Google Scholar On the Peruzzi houses, see too Lisci, Leonardo Ginori, I Palazzi di Firenze nella storia e nell'arte, 2 (Florence, 1972), 605–608.Google Scholar
28 Vasari, Giorgio, Le Opere, 2, ed. Milanesi, Gaetano (1906; rpt. Florence, 1973), 215.Google Scholar
29 On the significance of loggias, see Kent, Francis W., “The Rucellai Family and its Loggia,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 35 (1972), 397–401 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and, more recently,the mass of information in Leinz, Gottlieb, Die Loggia Rucellai, Ein Beitrag zur Typologie der Familienloggia (Bonn, 1977).Google Scholar Leinz has collected numerous early references to the Peruzzi loggia and houses (pp. 598-607), to which one can add the following, perhaps worthy of closer analysis. The family meeting of 16 June 1453, interestingly, was concerned not only with the upkeep of tombs in the church of S. Croce but also with “la cura di fare racconciare… la nostra loggia,” the expense to be shared among the eleven signatories: Archivio Peruzzi de’ Medici, 6, insert A (first quaderno), fols. 29-30. Ibid., 7, insert B, contains documents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries concerning the loggia which, like most other such aristocratic meeting places, by that time had become “un magazzino detto la loggia de’ Peruzzi… in cattivo stato.” At one point, sadly considering its ancient meaning to the family, some of the many Peruzzi owners wanted to sell the loggia to acquire “altri beni a loro più utili e più comodi” (fol. 11).
30 Most explicit was Lorenzo di Bartolomeo in 1427: “La sesta parte della chasa della nostra abitazione a chomune per non diviso chom Bonifazio di Niccholò Peruzzi; e’ figliuoli d'Amideo di Ruberto Peruzzi; e’ ffigliuoli di Giovanni di Bartolomeo Peruzzi; e rede di Giotto di Bartolomeo Peruzzi posta in sulla piazza de’ Peruzzi” (Catasto, 35, fol. 914). Others called the dwelling a palagio (ibid., fol. 1368). These generalizations about residenceare from all Peruzzi tax reports for 1427 (ibid., 34, 35) and 1433 (ibid., 450, 451); nineteen households lived in or near the piazza in 1433, three well away from it and the remaining five gave no details.
31 In 1427, for example, Bartolomeo di Verano lived in “Una chasa con volta sotterra e sopraterra posta in sulla piazza de’ Peruzzi… che da primo la piazza de’ Peruzzi; a secondo l'erede di Conte di Rinieri Peruzzi; da 1/3 via; da 1/4 reded'Amideo Peruzzi e di Bonifazio di Nicholò Peruzzi, e dell'erede di Bartolomeo di Giotto Peruzzi” (ibid., 34, fol. 177).
32 The quotation is from ibid., 450, fol. 185v; in 1427 it was Benedetto di Giovanni who submitted reports for Giovanni di Lorenzo and for Francesco di Giovanni (ibid., 34, fol. 446v; 35, fol. 741v). Transactions within the Peruzzi consorteria are too numerous to documentin detail here.
33 Kent, Dale, Rise of the Medici, p. 142.Google Scholar An example of an intra-family dispute is Amideo di Amideo's complaint that his brother Filippo owed him 600 florins “di montte chomune di chapitale … no’ gli ò mai potutto avere; è grandisima quistione” (Catasto, 450, fol. 160).Several parchments in the Peruzzi papers appoint arbiters in such disputes: Archivio Peruzzi de’ Medici, Pergamene, 1 September 1431; 13 February 1433, modern style. Collectively, the Peruzzi was, however, still the sixth richest Florentine family in 1427 ( Herlihy, and Klapisch-Züber, , Les Toscans, pp. 251–252 Google Scholar).
34 Catasto, 34, fol. 488v.
35 Domenico Boninsegni, Istorie, o Memorie della Città di Firenze dall'anno 1410 al 1460, (Florence, 1637), p. 69.
36 See however the brief remarks of Heers, , Clan familial, pp. 113–115, 252-254.Google Scholar
37 Cena Familiaris, in Opere Volgari, 1, ed. Cecil Grayson (Bari, 1960), 347. This work postdates Della Famiglia, written around 1433-34 (pp. 379, 454).
38 Catasto, 34, 35, 450, 451. Possibly the claims to representation of “houses” as well as “households” were taken into account since the jointly owned palace in which five separate households lived sent only one man to the meeting, Piero di Giovanni (see above, n. 30).
39 There is no complete published genealogy of the Peruzzi. This analysis is based upon Luigi Passerini's manuscript “Genealogia ed Istoria della Famiglia Peruzzi,” dated 1850 and in the Florentine Biblioteca Nazionale, Manoscritti Passerini, 41 (hereafter cited as Passerini).The lines unrepresented were those descended from Tommaso di Arnaldo and Guidodi Filippo. Particularly favored were Ridolfo's near relations.
40 Manoscritti, 555, unfoliated, gonfalone of Lion Nero. Cared for, but presumably not reckoned politically a Peruzzi, was the youth Ridolfo graphically described as “u[n] mio nipote, fuor di suo sentimento; non parla nè cosa del mondofa” (Catasto, 451, fol. 301).
41 See the examples in Kent, Francis W., Household and Lineage, p. 245 Google Scholar.
42 Manoscritti, 555; Kent, Dale, Rise of the Medici, pp. 153–154 Google Scholar; Passerini, fols. 44, 87-99, 133-136.
43 Martines, Lauro, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390-1460 (London, 1963), pp. 353–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The tax reports of the nine, from which come this and much other information concerning them, are: Amideo di Amideo, Catasto, 34, fols. 94-95v; 450, fol. 160-160v: Bartolomeo di Verano, 34, fols. 177-205; 450, fols. 193-201v: Bernardo di Bindaccio, 34, fols. 217-19v; 450, fols. 183-87v: Donato di Bonifazio, 34, fols. 488v-91v; 450, fols. 379v-82v; Luigi di Giovanni, 35, fols. 929-33v; 451, fols. 75-77v: Niccolò di Conte, 35, fols. 1080-87v; 451, fols. 195-96v: Piero di Giovanni, 35, fols. 1200-1201v; 451, fols. 271-72v: Ridolfo di Bonifazio, 35, fols. 1342-56; 451, fols. 287-303v: Rinieri di Niccolò, 35, fols. 1290-1303v; 451, fols. 304-308.
44 Ibid., 451, fol. 32. Those ages not given in tax returns are taken from Passerini.
45 Catasto, 451, fols. 337-43v; Martines, , Social World, pp. 365–368.Google Scholar Rinaldo (Passerini, fols. 187-89) had held communal offices but was not an important figure in the regime.
46 For the “weightier part”, see Alan Gewirth's introduction to Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of Peace, 1 (New York, 1951), 182-199.
47 See Kent, Francis W., Household and Lineage, pp. 245–246.Google Scholar On Ridolfo's position, see Kent, Dale, Rise of the Medici, pp. 140, 142.Google Scholar
48 In 1427 the wards Bernardo di Bindaccio and brothers admitted to the tax officials that their report might contain errors: “e se alchuno errore o dubitazione per niuna chosa avessi, mandate per Ridolfo Peruzi nostro zio e chiareravi d'ogni chosa” (Catasto, 34, fol. 218v).
49 Ibid., 35, fols. 1345v, 1356.
50 Ibid., 451, fols. 287-303v; references to “muramentomio” are on fols. 296, 299, 300. This is, we believe, an addition to the sketchy biography of Delli, and confirmation of Vasari's statement that he was a specialist in painting and decorating furniture and rooms, above all “in far pitture piccole con molta grazia” and “figure piccole”: Le Opere, 2, pp. 148-149; cf. SirColnaghi, Dominic, A Dictionary of Florentine Painters … (London, 1928), pp. 86–87.Google Scholar
51 Giuseppe O. Corazzini, “Diario Fiorentino di Bartolommeo di Michele del Corazza (anni 1405-1438),” Archivio Storico Italiano, 5th ser., 14 (1894), 297: Boninsegni, , Istorie, p. 69.Google Scholar
52 Archivio Peruzzi de’ Medici, 6, inserto A (first quaderno), fols. 28-29v, copied in 1623 by Lodovico Peruzzi who presumably supplied the heading; “JM” may mean “In Memoriam.” There is another version in the second quaderno, dated 1642, of the same insert (fols. 22-23v); the two quaderni are almost identical. The relationship between the two copies of the pact is not, however, clear. Given their respective dates, one might have been copied from the other; alternatively, both could be independent versions of the original document. Certainly the two are identical, save for a few very minor variations in spelling (e.g. “absentia”/“assenzia”) or word order, and one tiny addition (see below, n. 54). In preparing this edition we have preferred the copy with the earlier date, which is also the better preserved. Abbreviations have been expanded silently except where explanation seemed necessary.
53 For “percuotere”, a slip suggesting that the seventeenth-century copyist has confused two very common abbreviations.
54 The second version (see above, n. 52) reads: “… e per chiarezza di ciò et osservanza… ”