History of Florence

« MÉmoires monumentales ». restaurations À Florence pour le sixiÈme centenaire de la mort de Dante en 1921

by Thomas Renard

The Many Shades of Praise: Diversity in Epideictic Rhetoric in Diplomatic Settings

by Brian Maxson

proofs of an article published in Rhetorik in Mittelalter und Renaissance: Konzepte – Praxis – Diversität, eds. Georg Strack and Julia Knödler, 393-412 (Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2011).

The Many Shades of Praise: Diversity in Epideictic Rhetoric in Diplomatic Settings

Fifteenth-century... more The Many Shades of Praise: Diversity in Epideictic Rhetoric in Diplomatic Settings

Fifteenth-century diplomatic protocol required the city of Florence to send diplomats to congratulate both new and militarily victorious rulers.  Diplomats on such missions poured praise on their triumphant allies and new rulers at friendly locations.  However, political realities also meant that these diplomats would sometimes have to praise rulers whose accession or victory opposed Florentine interests.  Moreover, different allies and enemies required different levels of praise.  Jealous rulers compared the gifts, status, and oratory that they received from Florence to the Florentine entourages sent to their neighbors.  Sending diplomats with too little or too much social status and eloquence could spell diplomatic disaster.  Diplomats met these challenges by varying the style, structure, and content of their speeches.  Far from formulaic pronouncements of goodwill, diplomatic orations varied from one speech to the next in order to meet the demands of the complex diplomatic world into which they fit.  Contextualizing these orations reveals the subtle reservations of diplomats praising a hostile ruler, the insertion of specific citations to flatter specific audiences, and the changing intellectual and stylistic interests of humanists throughout the fifteenth century.  This essay will examine the different shades of flattery practiced by Florentine diplomats and the contexts that explain these variations.

I fiorentini all’estero ed il catasto del 1427: frodi, elusioni, ipercorrettismi

by Francesco Bettarini

«Annali di Storia di Firenze», VI (2011), pp. 37-64.

Il saggio si propone di indagare l’incidenza delle attività economiche promosse dai cittadini fiorentini residenti... more Il saggio si propone di indagare l’incidenza delle attività economiche promosse dai cittadini fiorentini residenti all’estero sulla dichiarazione fiscale presentata al catasto del 1427. La ricerca è stata circoscritta ai fiorentini domiciliati sulle coste dell’Adriatico, attingendo alla documentazione conservata negli archivi di Venezia e Dubrovnik. L’analisi delle «portate» viene quindi affrontata attraverso l’esame dei seguenti punti: a) autodichiarazione di possesso di diritti e/o beni in una città straniera; b) beni immobili; c) bilancio dell’attività commerciale o artigianale; d) obbligazioni (creditori e debitori); e) composizione del nucleo familiare. In conclusione, è stato possibile notare come il rispetto della trasparenza patrimoniale richiesta dal catasto fosse maggiore in quei cittadini che avevano un interesse politico e sociale nel mantenere un buon rapporto con le istituzioni della madrepatria.

Mercanti fiorentini e artigiani pratesi a Ragusa (Dubrovnik) nel XV secolo

by Francesco Bettarini

in «Mercatura è arte». Uomini d’affari toscani in Europa e nel Mediterraneo Medievale, a cura di Lorenzo Tanzini e Sergio Tognetti, Viella, Roma, 2012, pp. 97-114.

I forestieri ed il governo della città di Ragusa nel Quattrocento

by Francesco Bettarini

I forestieri ed il governo della città di Ragusa nel Quattrocento, in La gobernanza de la ciudad europea en la edad media, edited by Jesús Angel Solórzano Telechea e Beatriz Arízaga Bolumburu, Atti del VII Encuentros Internacionales del Medievo, Najera, 27-30 luglio 2010, Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, Logroño, 2011, pp. 383-397.

(Title translated: Foreigners and city-government in Raguse (Dubrovnik) in the XVth century
The Dalmatian town of... more (Title translated: Foreigners and city-government in Raguse (Dubrovnik) in the XVth century
The Dalmatian town of Raguse (Dubrovnik) presents a peculiar example of the development of communal institutions and administrative bureaucracy during the late middle ages. Raguse chose an oligarchical government and, following the Venetian model divided its inhabitants into three juridical groups: nobiles, cives, and forestierii. The town articulated its institutions in the XIVth and XVth centuries, the same period in which it experienced the growth of its harbour, its market and its role in Mediterranean trading routes. To build an efficient institutional support for its merchants, the town recruited merchants, physicians and jurists from Italian cities. Thus, Raguse realized a coexistence of two complementary systems, the political one, restricted to the local patriciate, and the administrative one, shared between patricians, citizens and foreigners. Within these two groups the government delegated offices and tasks to whichever group was best suited to the undertaking.
The majority of skilled officers in the Ragusean administration: chancellors, communal accountants, armourers; were Italian. Essential professions, salaried by communal treasure, given to Italian foreigners included physicians and surgeons. Occasionally, the Commune lavished money and grants to foreign artisans in the hopes of convincing them to move both their residence and activity to Raguse. Beginning in the XIVth century, spicetraders, calderarii and goldsmiths experienced similar conditions in the town. With the birth of a high-quality wool manufacture in 1416, the patriciate invited foreign wool-merchants, dyers and other artisans to Raguse, where they benefited from an agreement with the institutions of the city-state.
The historical, trading and cultural links between Raguse and a number of Italian cities were the fundamental reasons for the choice of foreign officers in the town. When the Raguseans sought out people for medical, juristic and accounting tasks, they looked only to Venice and Tuscany. Famous throughout Europe for their accounting techniques, Tuscan merchants had occupied important offices of the Ragusean administration since the late XIVth century. Other types of officers and artisans came from Venice. The procurators of the Commune found and recruited much of its personnel from this city, a meeting point for many Italian notaries and physicians who had attended the universities at Padua and Bologna.

Comercio exterior del Reino de Sevilla a través de los manuales de mercaderías italianos bajomedievales

by Raúl González Arévalo

In "Historia. Instituciones. Documentos" 38 (2011), pp. 219-253

The evolvement of the pratiche di mercatura in the Italian Peninsula permitted access to information relating to the... more The evolvement of the pratiche di mercatura in the Italian Peninsula permitted access to information relating to the principal commercial and financial centres in medieval Europe, which were located mainly on the Mediterranean and in the Low Countries. This article analyses the relevance of the Kingdom of Seville in these texts. We will see that the Italians considered Seville the main centre of trade in the Crown of Castile, and to be the hub of an extensive commercial network that stretched from Byzantium and the Maghreb to Flanders, including Italy and the Crown of Aragon.

Rapporti commerciali tra Firenze e il Regno di Granada nel XV secolo

by Raúl González Arévalo

In "Mercatura è arte". Uomini d'affari toscani in Europa e nel Mediterraneo tardomedievale, a cura di L. Tanzini e S. Tognetti. Roma, Viella, 2012, pp. 179-203.

This paper aims to study a hitherto bad known aspect, the position of the Republic of Florence in the Nasri sultanate.... more This paper aims to study a hitherto bad known aspect, the position of the Republic of Florence in the Nasri sultanate. To achieve this we shall take as reference the commercial mechanisms developed by the Tuscan merchants in their relationships with the Western Islam between the Thirteenth and the Fifteenth Centuries, underlying the particularities observed in Grenade. Last, data about the Florentine galley system’s commerce will serve to offer a provisional conclusion.

Eugenio Albèri e l'epistolario di Carlo Cappello: le omissioni di un'edizione ottocentesca

by Alessandro Monti

published in 'Archivio Storico Italiano', CLX (2012), fasc. I : pp. 111-126.

Egy firenzei szomszédság a Zsigmond kori Magyar Királyságban (Neighborhood and Migration in 15th-century Florence. The Borgo degli Albizzi and Florentines in the Kingdom of Hungary)

by Katalin Prajda

A város és társadalma. Tanulmányok Bácskai Vera tiszteletére, ed. Árpád Tóth- István H. Németh- Erika Szívós, Budapest 2011. pp.441-449.

A lakóhely mikrotársadalomformáló szerepét a Firenze városából a Magyar Királyságba induló népességmozgás és a... more A lakóhely mikrotársadalomformáló szerepét a Firenze városából a Magyar Királyságba induló népességmozgás és a kereskedelmi kapcsolatok szempontjából is érdemes vizsgálni. Ezeknek a kapcsolatoknak a motorja az 1403/4 és 1426 közötti időszakban minden kétséget kizáróan a Scolari család és ezen belül is Ozorai Pipó, azaz Filippo di Stefano Scolari (1368/69–1426) volt. Ebben az időszakban a Magyar Királyságban megtelepedő firenzeiek mindegyike, akik ismertek a kutatás számára a Scolari család társadalmi, politikai és gazdasági szövetségese volt. Ennél természetesen jóval többen voltak azok a firenzei polgárok, akik elsősorban gazadasági szálakon kapcsolódtak a Magyar Királysághoz, de állandó lakóhelyüket továbbra is Firenze városában tartották. Közülük néhány kereskedőcsalád nemcsak a Scolarik üzletfele, hanem nőági rokona, mitöbb szomszédja is volt. A jelen tanulmányban egyrészt vizsgálni szeretném a Scolari család által lakott utcák elhelyezkedését Firenze városában, az ő példájukon keresztül bizonyítani a rokoni, valamint a gazdasági és politikai kapcsolatok szerepét a lakóhelyválasztás kérdésében, s rámutatnék a lakóhely, mint mikroközösség szerepére egy, a Magyar Királyságba irányuló migrációs csoport formálódásában.

Unions of Interest. Florentine Marriage Ties and Business Networks in the Kingdom of Hungary during the Reign of Sigismund of Luxemburg

by Katalin Prajda

Marriage in Premodern Europe. Italy and Beyond, ed. Jacqueline Murray, CRRS, Toronto, 2012, pp. 147-166.

In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, it was usual for Florentines to make marriage alliances within... more In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, it was usual for Florentines to make marriage alliances within their own social strata, even in their own neighbourhood. While several studies have drawn attention to endogamous marriages ties which existed among Florentine merchant families, little has been said about exogamous marriages bound with outsiders to the Florentine merchant society. There has also been less analysis of the effects of the matrilineal extension of Florentine merchant families on the composition of business networks, which might explain why several of Florentine merchant brothers bound endogamous marriages meanwhile others were seeking to marry woman outside of their social strata or business network. As we will see, the importance of parentado, as an extension of the agnatic consorteria, is well-reflected in several cases of Florentine merchant families who found trustworthy allies in the families of their in-laws concerning business, social and political life. Florentine merchants seeking to integrate into the local society of the Kingdom of Hungary very often used their marriages in order to obtain social advantages, such as a new parentado, local rights or citizenship. This present work therefore is an attempt to reconstruct the close relationship which existed between exogamous ties that developed between Florentines and subjects of the Hungarian crown and their settlement in the Kingdom of Hungary and similarly to reconstruct the relationship between endogamous marriages patterns among Florentine merchant families and their participation in long distance trade with the Kingdom of Hungary during the reign of Sigismund of Luxemburg (1387-1437). The period with which this essay is concerned, that is, the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries coincides with the late republican times in Florence, dominated by the oligarchic regime and expands from the ciompi revolt until 1434, Cosimo de’ Medici’s return to the city.

Fra Filippo Lippi's Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement

by Katalin Prajda

Metropolitan Museum Journal, 2013 (forthcoming article)

Almost a century ago Joseph Breck proposed that the two sitters depicted in Filippo Lippi’s landmark portrait in The... more Almost a century ago Joseph Breck proposed that the two sitters depicted in Filippo Lippi’s landmark portrait in The Metropolitan Museum could be identified as the Florentine-born Agnola di Bernardo Sapiti accompanied by her husband Lorenzo di Rinieri Scolari. Breck’s identification was based on his reading of the coat of arms on which the male sitter rests his hands; he believed they belonged to the Scolari family. Remarkably, aside from Dieter Jansen’s counter proposal that the coat of arms was that of the Ferrero family of Piedmont, the premise of Breck’s hypothesis has never been put to the test. It is the aim of the present article to do just that, reviewing what we know of the Scolari family on the basis of archival information and reading the details of the picture in terms of the emerging evidence.

La rotta del Ferruccio. Nuove evidenze sulla battaglia di Gavinana (3 agosto 1530)

by Alessandro Monti

Published in 'Bullettino Storico Pistoiese', vol. CXIII (2011): pp. 61-92.
ISSN 0007-5809

A ogni cavaliere le sue armi. Grandi famiglie e stemmi araldici

by Alessandro Monti

Published in 'D'Ex', n. 4 (2007), pp. 111-114.
ISSN 1971-6427

Il cippo ritrovato. La tormentata storia del monumento etrusco scoperto a Capalle nel Cinquecento

by Alessandro Monti

Published in 'Microstoria', n. 39 (2005): pp. 4-7.
ISSN 1826-1485

University in Florence. Syracuse, its First Fifty Years

by Alessandro Monti

Published in 'Fellow. International Quarterly Magazine', 2 (2009), pp. 50-55.
ISSN 2035-3863

Pier Capponi e Carlo VIII

by Alessandro Monti

Published in G. Fossi (ed), Agnolo Pandolfini: autore di pace. Atti della giornata di studi di Lastra a Signa, 7 maggio 2003 (Campi Bisenzio : Nuova Toscana Editrice, 2004), pp. 43-50.
ISBN 88-87263-24-8

Establishing Independence: Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People and Ritual in Fifteenth-Century Florence

by Brian Maxson

appears in Foundation, Dedication and Consecration in Early Modern Europe, edited by Maarten Delbeke and Minou Schraven, 79-98 (Leiden: Brill, 2012)

This article looks at how Renaissance states could establish their official versions of the past as "true"... more This article looks at how Renaissance states could establish their official versions of the past as "true" in a world of conflicting historical narratives and political claims based upon them. It uses a case study of Florence to examine this issue. The article argues that the content and ritualized presentations of Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People combined to assert Florentine independence during the fifteenth century. Bruni consistently constructed an historical narrative that presented Florence as theoretically independent from the territorial claims of the ancient Roman Emperors or even the rulers who claimed to be their heirs (particularly the German Emperors and the King of France). The Florentine government then validated the book's narrative by having Bruni present portions of it at the key moment of important political rituals. After the rituals had ended, the government stored the book in its chapel amidst other powerful ritual objects as well as other civic symbols of Florentine independence.

Le ruote nel Canale. Grandezza e decadenza del mulino di San Moro

by Alessandro Monti

Published in "Microstoria", n. 45 (2006): pp. 34-36.
ISSN 1826-1485

Bona guerra, mala guerra. Il massacro di Lastra a Signa del 1529: una strage cercata

by Alessandro Monti

Published in 'Medicea', n. 1 (2008): pp. 20-25.
ISSN 1974-7004

I fatti di Arezzo durante l'assedio di Firenze (1529-1530): un contributo documentario

by Alessandro Monti

Published in 'Medicea', n. 3 (2009): pp. 86-91.
ISSN 1974-7004