Apprenticeship, training and work in the Venetian inns and bastioni (16th–18th centuries)

Abstract

This article centres on apprenticeship in the context of unstable professional careers. More specifically, it focuses on innkeepers and bastioneri (wine merchants) in early modern Venice. These were two temporary professions in which membership lasted just for a few years. The right to manage an inn or a wine shop had to be renewed in public auctions every two to four years. This instability seems to contradict the fact that innkeepers and wine merchants were skilled workers with technical know-how: beyond the sale of wine, they also offered their customers a pawnbroking service, which was of critical importance to the lower classes. The combination of precariousness and a high degree of specialisation raises questions about the training they followed during the early phase of their careers. To delve deeper, this research focuses on a corpus of about 300 accordi – apprenticeship contracts – which were drawn up between the 16th and 18th centuries and which are cross-referenced with normative and judicial sources. The paper shows that the statutes of both innkeepers and bastioneri did not regulate apprenticeship and that they did not establish any ad hoc training to achieve status as a master. The low quantity of accordi found in the archives is contradicted by the large number of apprentices that were working in the city bastioni. On the other hand, the fact that innkeepers lived in the inns with their families probably favoured forms of informal and unregulated apprenticeship. In general, the intrinsic features of these professions characterised what could be defined as a particular apprenticeship, less regulated but nevertheless complex and highly formative.