МІРИ ВАГИ В ІТАЛІЇ В VI – ПЕРШІЙ ПОЛОВИНІ XIX СТОЛІТТЯ

Abstract

Medieval Italy, which was formed after the fall of the Western Roman Empire at the end of the V century, completely inherited its material and spiritual culture. This does not apply to the state imperial traditions of Ancient Rome. It turned out that during the entire period of the Middle Ages and partly of the New Age – from the end of the V to the second half of the XIX century, Italy was not a single state. At this time, three main regions – Northern, Central and Southern Italy – were gradually formed here. Each region included several historically interconnected regions. In the territory of these regions, there were cities – republics and separate feudal estates. Each region preserved its distinctive features throughout the Middle Ages. Some of these differences have survived even in modern Italy. They arose from the peculiarities of the geographical environment, as well as the political and economic conditions that developed over a long period of time in each of the three regions of Italy. The single system of measures, including weight, which existed in the Roman Empire, in the conditions of political decentralization of Italy, was gradually, over the centuries, replaced by local measures. The basis of most of the newly created systems of weight measures in Italy was the ancient Roman system of weight measures. However, the development of production, domestic and foreign trade caused a constant transformation of the structure of the systems of weight measures, the mass of their units. Gradually, new systems of weight measures were formed in Italy. The structure of the systems of weight measures in Italy had certain common features, but the mass of their units differed among themselves in almost all cases. The weight systems of Italy during the Middle Ages were influenced by the dependence of the Italian lands at certain times on the empire of Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a result, in some areas of Northern and Central Italy, along with the local systems of weight measures, the following measures began to be used: Carolingian silver and troy weight systems, the German Cologne system of weight measures, Austro-Hungarian weight measures. The long-term existence of the leading Italian city-states – the republics of Venice and Genoa, the Duchies of Milan and Tuscany, the Papal State, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, etc. was a consequence of the use of constantly operating systems of measures and weights in the territory of Italy during the entire period of the Middle Ages.