So Nakaya, La giustizia civile a Lucca nella prima metà del XIV secolo

While medieval justice in Italian cities has been studied from new perspectives over the last few decades, few studies have investigated the practices of civil justice. This essay, based on court records available in Lucca’s State archive, examines [...]]]>

Memorie

So Nakaya, La giustizia civile a Lucca nella prima metà del XIV secolo

While medieval justice in Italian cities has been studied from new perspectives over the last few decades, few studies have investigated the practices of civil justice. This essay, based on court records available in Lucca’s State archive, examines the practices of civil judicial trials in the first half of the 14th century. A close examination of civil suits reveals a close mutual relation between communal authority that regulate judicial practices and people that use the judicial systems strategically, which indicates citizens’ participation in and contribution to the operation of communal institutions.

Petra Pertici, Novelle senesi in cerca d’autore. L’attribuzione ad Antonio Petrucci delle novelle conosciute sotto il nome di Gentile Sermini

A valuable XVth century collection of short stories has been attributed, until now, to Gentile Sermini who, actually, never existed. The stories, well known during the XVth and XVIth centuries, were rediscovered by scholars in the XVIIIth century and attributed to the mysterious Sermini. This study traces the clues that allow to ascribe the collection to the literary coterie gathered around the powerful Sienese Petrucci family. According to the themes addressed by the stories, it would be possible to recognize the humanist Andreoccio Petrucci as the author of a text that is incomplete and lacks of a final revision. Many elements and the tradition of the manuscript itself suggest, however, a juvenile divertissement by the mercenary Antonio Petrucci, a cousin of the humanist. Antonio, who was an influential figure in Siena for a long period, was later sentenced for high treason and became the target of a defamatory campaign that also involved his leterary work that since then circulated anonymous and stigmatized for its scabrous and desacrating content.

Kurt Weissen, La rete commerciale tedesca delle compagnie fiorentine romanam curiam sequentes, 1410- 1470

During the 15th century, there were never more than five to seven Florentine banks operating as mercatores romanam curiam sequentes in the international curial monetary transaction market at the same time. The transfer of money from Germany to the curia was also based on coexistence and informal market arrangements. Whilst Florentines were fully integrated into the network and benefitted from its communication channels and logistical support, Germans were denied this privilege. All attempts to establish a permanent and direct connection between Germany and the curial financial system in the 15th century failed, primarily because of the low revenues in this business and the severe economic fluctuations in German trade. This meant that in times of crisis, the difficulties inherent to this business very quickly led to problems that could not be solved.

Remo L. Guidi, Storia in ombra, ovvero Bessarione e i Francescani

Those who study the XVth century have no problem recognizing the influence the Franciscans exercised on every aspect of life in that century. Why then did the Franciscans need a Cardinal Protector, given their indispensable role in so many of the Papal initiatives? Cardinal Bessarione was appointed Protector of the Franciscans by Pope Pius II. As we know, the Cardinal was extremely busy, and the Franciscans were experiencing one of the most turbulent periods of their internal history. The article examines this little known aspect of the Cardinal’s life, which, rather unusually, has also been neglected by the Franciscan historiography.

Discussioni

Leandro Perini, A proposito di una nuova edizione del De bello italico di Bernardo Rucellai

Recensioni

Chris Wickham, Le società dell’alto medioevo (Gian Paolo G. Scharf)

Alessio Fiore, Signori e sudditi: strutture e pratiche del potere signorile in area umbro marchigiana (Francesco Pirani)

Vieri Mazzoni, Accusare e proscrivere il nemico politico. Legislazione antighibellina e persecuzione giudiziaria a Firenze (Giuliano Milani)

Statuti del Comune di Firenze. Tradizione archivistica e ordinamenti a cura di Giuseppe Biscione (Enrico Spagnesi)

Eva Pibiri, En voyage pour monseigneur. Ambassadeurs officiers et messagiers à la court de Savoye - Tommaso Duranti, Diplomazia e autogoverno a Bologna nel Quattrocento (Isabella Lazzarini)

Maria Elisa Soldani, Uomini d’affari e mercanti toscani nella Barcellona del Quattrocento (Sergio Tognetti)

La sollecitudine ecclesiale di Pio XI alla luce delle nuove fonti archivistiche a cura di C. Semeraro (Maria Paiano)

Notizie

Archivio Storico Italiano – ISSN 0391-7770

Fulvio Delle Donne, Il trionfo, l’incoronazione mancata, la celebrazione letteraria: i paradigmi della propaganda di Alfonso il Magnanimo

The triumph celebrated by Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1443 was an exceptional moment in the history of the kingdom of Naples. On the one hand, it was a joyous feast, an unprecedented public [...]]]>

Memorie

Fulvio Delle Donne, Il trionfo, l’incoronazione mancata, la celebrazione letteraria: i paradigmi della propaganda di Alfonso il Magnanimo

The triumph celebrated by Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1443 was an exceptional moment in the history of the kingdom of Naples. On the one hand, it was a joyous feast, an unprecedented public spectacle, but, on the other hand, it replaced the ceremony of the royal coronation: by choice of Alfonso himself, the ceremony never took place. If the sacred liturgy of the coronation would have represented an act of submission to an oftentimes contested papal authority, the secular liturgy of the triumph, with its references to the Roman tradition, immediately pointed to the propagandistic line that the Magnanimous and his learned humanists would follow: a line linking the aspirations of the new king and the glories of the ancient emperors.

Angela Orlandi, Al soffio degli Alisei. Mercanti fiorentini tra Siviglia e il Nuovo Mondo

This study intervenes in the debate concerning the crisis of the Mediterranean world and its merchant-bankers following the European expansion into the New World, shedding a new light on the presence and the role of Florentine merchants in Andalusia during the sixteenth century. Their business strategy was more successful than previously thought: this assumption comes from comparisons between quantitative data or descriptions offered by sources contained in Tuscan archives, and the written documentation kept in the Spanish archives. Their networks – which included the main economic hubs of Europe – and the financial instruments they would use, allowed the Tuscan merchants to play a role of paramount importance in the Andalusian market. In addition, they invested money in the transatlantic trade, in the manufacturing activities of the West Indies and, in general, in other financial and insurance enterprises.

Lara Marchi, L’organizzazione del lavoro all’interno della Segreteria del Regio Diritto nella Toscana granducale tra XVII e XVIII secolo

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the evolution and organization of activities in the “Auditorato dei benefici ecclesiastici” (the future Secretariat of the Royal Law), an institution erected in the Sixteenth century by the Medici Grand Dukes in order to manage State-Church relationships in Tuscany. Our attention in this regard has focused on two aspects: on the one hand, on the State and its role in the transformation of the Auditorato into a Secretariat, i.e. from a simple task, assigned to trusted men of the Grand Duke, to an actual ministry, whose roles and salaries were better structured; on the other hand, on the profiles of the officials and bureaucrats who brought the State to the threshold of modernity, while at the same time making the institutions more and more suitable to their daily needs. Both these trends have undoubtedly made the Secretariat one of the better organized institutions in Tuscany, according to the judgement of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo.

Documenti

Silio P. P.  Scalfati, I falsi nei privilegi della ‘deutsche Königsherrschaft’ di Federico II

This study examines the false privileges relative to the period of the German reign of Emperor Frederik II Hohenstaufen. For the years 1212-1220 about 500 documents are extant, and they have recently been published in two volumes of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH). Among the documents published there are about twenty false diplomas, the majority of which favour German and Italian monasteries. The abbots and the priors of these religious bodies had the false documents made in order to gain possession of lands and palaces, and to obtain the protection of kings and emperors, as well as rights of various kind. In this way the ecclesiastics became holders of conspicuous patrimonies and wealth, and could enjoy an important and privileged position in medieval society.

Discussioni

Rita Mazzei, La Ferrara di Ercole II (1534-1559). A proposito di un recente studio sugli ebrei a Ferrara

Recensioni

Condannare all’oblio. Pratiche della damnatio memoriae nel medioevo (Francesco Pirani)

Francesco Salvestrini, I Vallombrosani in Liguria. Storia di una presenza monastica fra XII e XVII secolo (Valeria Polonio)

Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, L’autre Rome. Une histoire des Romains à l’époque communale (Sergio Tognetti)

Fabrizio Titone, Governments of the Universitates. Urban Communities of Sicily in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Francesco Barone)

Alison Brown, The Returm of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence (Fulvio Delle Donne)

Alessandro Pastore, Veleno. Credenze, crimini, saperi nell’Italia moderna (Francesco Ciuti)

Notizie

Archivio Storico Italiano – ISSN 0391-7770

Giovanna Petti Balbi, Fenomeni usurari e restituzioni: la situazione ligure (secoli XII-XIV)

This paper focuses on the problem of usury seen in different forms: the illegal earnings, the restitution’s practices that the local rules and canonical law imposed on a strong market oriented society. Commercial trades, investments in public [...]]]>

Memorie

Giovanna Petti Balbi, Fenomeni usurari e restituzioni: la situazione ligure (secoli XII-XIV)

This paper focuses on the problem of usury seen in different forms: the illegal earnings, the restitution’s practices that the local rules and canonical law imposed on a strong market oriented society. Commercial trades, investments in public debt, piracy’s events, all offer the opportunity to usury practices that drew also the interest of Franciscan authors accustomed to such topics.

Mustafa Soykut, Note sui rapporti tra Italia, Islam e impero ottomano (secoli XV-XVIII)

The present article attempts to shed light on the relations between Islam, Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Seen from the perspective of the hitherto lesser known archival sources on political history, it focuses on the writings of Marcello Marchesi, the imperial councilor to Rudolf II and Angelo Petricca da Sonnino, the apostolic vicar Istanbul during the Thirty Years War. In order to give the reader a contrasting perspective, this article also focuses on the self-perception and on the general world view of the Ottomans vis-à-vis Europe in modern era. Within the framework of political history, it not only attempts to highlight certain patterns pertinent to the relations between two civilizations, but also attempts to explore the genealogy of a priori Western notions about the Islamic culture and civilization.

Carlo Campitelli, L’Oratione alli fuoriusciti di Fiorenza et altri cittadini amatori della libertà (1556). Per un’attribuzione a Bartolomeo Cavalcanti

The essay gives a new contribution to the study of florentine political exile through the publication and the analysis of an unpublished text: the Oratione alli fuorusciti di Fiorenza et altri cittadini amatori della libertà. Almost forgotten by historians, the document proves the vitality of the republican spirit. After the truce of Vaucelles and despite the recent defeats in war (Marciano and Siena), it in fact shows that the hope of disengaging from the tyranny of the Medici family was still in the exiles’ environment. According to a series of cultural, rhetorical and ideological elements the suggestive hypothesis that the author of the text is Bartolomeo Cavalcanti is brought forward. Bartolomeo Cavalcanti was a famous literary figure and diplomat and one of the main Florentine Diaspora representatives. In those years he was living in Rome on behalf of the Farnese family and would shortly be entering the service of cardinal François de Tournon.

Richard A. Goldthwaite, Le aziende seriche e il mondo degli affari a Firenze alla fine del ’500

The article is primarily a study of a Florentine silk firm active in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. It is based on research into the firm’s surviving account books, it being perhaps the best documented of all firms for which accounts survive for this period. The emphasis is on business organization and management rather than on technical aspects of production. Beyond being a study in business history, however, the article has three wider objectives. The second part of the article builds on this study of one firm and on research soundings in the accounts of contemporary firms to arrive at some generalizations about the silk industry in Florence at the end of the sixteenth century. From this point, the article then proceeds to a third section to extend the horizon of the study to the business culture in this period in general, with special attention to contrasts with the situation a century earlier, in the 15th century, which has been well studied by historians. Finally, an appendix offers a preliminary inventory of all the surviving account books of all the Florentine silk and battiloro companies from the end of the 14th century to 1600 that are known to the author, both in public and private archives. In short, the article has been conceived as a contribution to the economic history of Florence at the end of the sixteenth century, with the hope of stimulating further research into a period that has scarcely been studied.

Documenti

Francesco Pirani, Moderazione del vivere cittadino: il Testamentum di Pietro da Fermo (1292)

This essay takes in account an unpublished and unknown manuscript preserved in the public Library «Romolo Spezioli» of Fermo. It’s a ‘moral’ testament written by a civic servant, Pietro da Fermo, at the end of the XIIIth Century, while he was in the town of Rieti, in the service of the podestà Offreduccio di Falerone. Pietro’s text, addressed to his sons, is composed of 83 rubrics, mainly gathering sententiae and proverbs coming from classical and medieval literature. The text has no originality or literary pretensions.  It proves, nevertheless, the wide circulation, within an average culture such as the one of Pietro da Fermo, of ideas developed in the contemporary didactic literature. The author spreads a “down to earth” education, addressed to the citizens that were aware both of the institutions as well as the social practices of communal towns, and of their delicate balance, a field where lies the concrete experience of the author and those to whom he is writing.

Discussioni

Mauro Ronzani, A proposito della nuova edizione dei «Gesta triumphalia per Pisanos facta»

Giuseppe Scalia recently has provided an excellent edition of the text called “Gesta triumphalia per Pisanos facta”. It contains several sections, dealing with the first Crusade, the Italian journey of Henry V in 1110-1111, the Pisan expedition against Maiorca in 1113-1115 and, finally, the war caused by Genoua, after pope Gelasius II, in September 1118, had confirmed the Pisan Archbishop in the metropolitan authority over Corsica. Our text was organized in the present format between 1119 and 1120, in order to convince the new pope, Callixtus II, to confirm definitively this decision.

Recensioni

Sandro Carocci, Vassalli del papa. Potere pontificio, aristocrazie e città nello Stato della Chiesa (Francesco Pirani)

Rosa Smurra, Città, cittadini e imposta diretta a Bologna alla fine del Duecento (Diana Tura)

Stéphan Pequignot, Au nom du roi. Pratique diplomatique et pouvoir durant le règne de Jacques II e d’Aragon (Lorenzo Tanzini)

Beatrice del Bo, Banca e politica a Milano a metà Quattrocento (Sergio Tognetti)

Lorenzo Bianchi, Alberto Postigliola, Dopo Machiavelli / Après Machiavel (Sergio Bertelli)

Oretta Filippini, Memoria della Chiesa, memoria dello Stato. Carlo Cartari (1614-1697) e l’Archivio di Castel Sant’Angelo (Linda Giuva)

Il Piemonte come eccezione. Riflessioni sulla “Piedmontese exception”, a cura di Paola Bianchi (Paola Volpini)

Notizie

Archivio Storico Italiano – ISSN 0391-7770

Andreas Meyer, La critica storica e le fonti notarili. Note su registri di imbreviature e pergamene lucchesi del secolo XIII

It is a truism that a historian has to work with the documents that are available to him. However, this should not prevent him from asking how much of [...]]]>

Memorie

Andreas Meyer, La critica storica e le fonti notarili. Note su registri di imbreviature e pergamene lucchesi del secolo XIII

It is a truism that a historian has to work with the documents that are available to him. However, this should not prevent him from asking how much of the former amount of documents is extant and how much has been lost meanwhile. The best possibility to document the loss of sources quite precisely in their quantity and quality is offered by the documents, which Italian notaries left us in copious amounts: the notarial registers and the notarial instruments based on them. This article gives a deep insight into the tricky situation of the tradition on the basis of the example “Lucca in the 13th century”.

Tobias Daniels, La congiura dei Pazzi nell’informazione e nella cronistica tedesca coeva

The article deals with the diffusion of the news about the Pazzi-conspiracy (1478), with special attention to the story of Hans Pucheler, a contemporary German eye-witness present in Florence at the time of the conspiracy. Starting from a description of the way in which many Germans were involved in the affairs of Florence and the Pazzi-conspiracy, the article proceeds to ask which communicative networks made a wide diffusion of the news in Germany possible. What were the observations of the German eye-witnesses, who were the transmitters, intermediaries and recipients in Italy and Germany, and how did they read, understand and transmit the news? Special attention is paid regarding the process of adaptation that took place during the various stages of the transmission of the report.

In the appendix, the report of Hans Pucheler and the reports collected by the German chronicler Konrad Stolle are edited critically, accompanied by Italian translations.

Giuseppe Galasso, Ernesto Sestan, un’esperienza di storia politica

This article analyzes some of the essays written by Professor Sestan, one of the most famous historians of the past century, stressing the special attention Sestan gave to many aspects of public life. Within the many historical topics – from the Middle Ages to the contemporary world – explored during his historian’s career, Professor Sestan selected from time to time the most idoneous side – istitutional, cultural, social, economic, ethnic, religious one – to enlight the specifical theme he wanted to focus on.

Documenti

Sergio Tognetti, «A me converrà trescare secondo il loro ballo». Un lodo arbitrale tra lanaioli nella Firenze del 1347

Could a swift arbitral law managed in an informal way and accustomed to handling papers written in vernacular, be considered in XIV century Florence one of the main ways  to administer commercial justice? If so, would it be possible for the thousands of notarial registers filed in the Notarile Antecosimiano to attract, for the history of business, the attention otherwise addressed to private deeds, account books and mercantile correspondence? This topic would deserve a monographic study, not only for its importance, but also because the sources allow a thorough investigation in the long run. This short methodological paper highlights the possibilities offered by this source, analyzing an arbitration which took place in 1347. The judgement involved three partners of a Florentine wool shop, in disagreement over past business management of the shop. The notarial deed contains memories in vernacular of the parties involved and the transcription of the corporate agreements taken from an account book.

Vanna Arrighi, Lettere inedite di Lorenzo il Magnifico in una Appendice alle carte Strozziane

This essay retraces the fortunes of a small group of documents, belonging to the collection of Carlo of Tommaso Strozzi (1587-1670), and explains why it wasn’t taken into consideration by the cataloguing of the whole ‘Strozziana’ collection, which was led to completion in the late XIX century. This group, consisting of eight files, also contains three letters of Lorenzo the Magnificent which escaped the census of P. G. Ricci  and N. Rubinstein in 1964. Attached to the essay is an analytic description of the documents which, for their lack of an inventory, have remained unknown until now.

Recensioni

Enrico Faini, Firenze nell’età romanica (1000-1211). L’espansione urbana, lo svilupo istituzionale, il rapporto col territorio (Sergio Tognetti)

Benoît Grévin, Rhétorique du pouvoir médiéval. Les Lettres de Pierre de la Vigne et la formation du language politique européen (XIIIe – XVe siècle) (Lorenzo Tanzini)

Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance historical thought (Elena Valeri)

Lucia Felici, Profezie di riforma e idee di concordia religiosa. Visioni e speranze dell’esule piemontese Giovanni Leonardo Sartori (Michaela Valente)

Graziano Ruffini, Libri tra Spagna e Genova: la biblioteca del Collegio di Sant’Anna (1 maggio 1600) (Angela Nuovo)

Pietro Verri, Storia di Milano (Rolando Minuti)

Giulia Vertecchi, Il ‘masser ai formenti in Terra Nova’. Il ruolo delle scorte granarie a Venezia nel XVIII secolo (Renzo P. Corritore)

Lettere, Diritto, Storia. Francesco Forti nell’Italia dell’Ottocento (Andrea Landi)

Notizie

Archivio Storico Italiano – ISSN 0391-7770