Francesco Datini Research Articles

Keeping Track of the Household: Accounting the Exceptional Spousal Collaboration between Margherita and Francesco Datini

Previous articleNext article No AccessKeeping Track of the Household: Accounting the Exceptional Spousal Collaboration between Margherita and Francesco DatiniDeborah PellegrinoDeborah PellegrinoYale University, USA Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance Volume 25, Number 2Fall 2022 Published for Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/721697 Views: 30Total views on this site © 2022 Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Profit Calculation in a Late 14th Century Sole Proprietorship: The Case of Francesco Datini

ABSTRACT This paper examines the Profit on merchandise accounts (a forerunner of the income statement) in a sole proprietorship in Pisa that officially operated between 1386 and 1392, but took several months to finally end its activities, which it did in 1393. The Profit on merchandise account was where the balance on each goods account was transferred when all the items recorded in it were sold. The principal contribution of this paper is the identification of a unique approach to medieval product costing that ensured indirect expenses on merchandise were recovered from customers when sales took place, while earning an average return of over 10 percent on those costs. It also highlights the problems encountered when working with archival material that has deteriorated over time; and presents a research method that reconstructs missing data using the trail to original entries and contra entries recorded in double entry.

FRANCESCO DATINI IN EPISTOLARY REFLECTION

The article attempts to reconstruct the mentality of the medieval burgher Francesco Datini (1335-1410) on the materials of his epistolary archive in order to study his inherent reflexive practices in the context of time and life circumstances. The period of Datini’s life (XIV-XV centuries) was marked by a number of cataclysms, among which the Great Plague Pandemic of the middle of the XIV century seems to be the most global phenomenon. People of the “Old World” who survived these shocks felt irreversible social and mental changes. Their habitual way of life seemed to go into an irrevocable past, the established group and individual identity was destroyed. At the same time, a new model of life behavior and identity has not yet taken shape. As a methodological basis for the research undertaken, we chose the methods of emotive history, which allowed us to concentrate research efforts on emotions and value orientations, as well as the theory of liminality, which focuses on studying the states impact of uncertainty on groups of people and individuals. Datini’s correspondence was divided into two parts, official — with his business partners and private — with his foster mother Monna Piera di Pratese Boschetti, his wife Monna Margarita and his closest friend, notary and judge, Ser Lapo di Macei. In business correspondence, Francesco Datini appears to be occupied exclusively with thoughts on income, prone to maxims and evil irony. In private correspondence, the religious motivation of his actions, emotions, doubts, fears and fears are revealed, which were reinforced by the eschatological expectations of the transitional period. These observations made it possible to characterize the reflexive practices of Francesco Datini as liminal. Datini’s reflexive experience turned out to be very multidimensional, reflecting the catastrophic nature of the time he lived through, which prompted him in the last years of his life to turn to charity, long fasts and asceticism.

DATINI ARCHIVE DOCUMENTS AS A SOURCE FOR STUDYING THE ETHICAL CONCEPTS OF THE PREMODERN BUSINESS MAN

The article provides an analysis of documents from the Datini archive, the purpose of which is to determine the prospects for studying the ethical views of a business person of the premodern era on their material. During the High and Late Middle Ages in Western Europe, there was a “rise of cities” due to the activities of the most mobile and creative social groups of medieval townspeople — merchants, and later entrepreneurs and financiers. Their occupations and way of life contributed to the development of a different type of behavior, new ethical attitudes. One of these business people was Francesco Datini (1335-1410). The methodological basis of the research was formed by the theory of the ethos of the Polish researcher Maria Ossovskaya, which was perceived by domestic scientists in the post-Soviet period. The analysis made it possible to establish the linguistic identity of 148265 letters from the archive. Most of them were written in Tuscan “volgare”. This confirmed the prevailing point of view in historiography about the formation of commercial and financial companies in the cities of medieval Tuscany mainly on the basis of family ties. There were also found letters in Latin, Catalan, Provencal and other languages. Due to the linguistic diversity of sources and the vast geography of their origin, it seemed the most promising to use the methods of “digital history” in further research, which implies the creation of a prosopographic database of Datini’s correspondents and the construction of a GIS on its basis. The linguistic affiliation of the letters was the main marker of the cultural and national identity of their authors, however, the supranational factor that united these people was their belonging to the ethos of a business man of the premodern era, which is characterized by a combination of irrational religiosity with the emerging rational pragmatics.

The Merchant as a Rhetor: Francesco Datini and the Strength of the Holding Company

Argumentation in business settings has gained renewed interest within social science research. Managers are seen as rhetors, and the spread of a practice depends on the discursive justifications used to rationalize it. These topics are particularly relevant for understanding the business leadership of one of the most famous merchants of the late Middle Ages: Francesco Datini, «The Merchant of Prato.» The merchant rhetor’s persuasive effort was practiced daily through his letters (not theorized) and became a cornerstone for building both a strong holding company and a trusted relationship with his partners. This case study provides a contribution to the history of Middle Ages merchants’ culture and to the impact of language in business activities.

Francesco Datini, Merchant of Prato

Francesco Datini, Merchant of Prato Will Schutt (bio) It was a religious age in love with transgression.—Tim Parks, Medici Money Money was the weather he went out inin his robe of madder root. On a priest’s suggestion he paid for a paintingof St. Christopher above his front door. In a back room he hung his own portraitconducting orphans to the Virgin Mother. He lost both parents to the Black Plagueand built his capital in Avignon selling arms to emperors and art to clerics.He skipped his guardian’s funeral but was relieved to know she’d diedwith “a sufficiency of candles.” To his young wife he wrote, “It is needfulto comfort the afflicted.” About a slave: “I shall always consider her merchandiseon which one sometimes loses and sometimes gains.” Like every trader of note,he led a private life in a public age. On Sundays, when he’d enlist his wifeto hide his books under the staircase, [End Page 510] a couple of ex-cons would shavetheir skulls, bind their hands, and, for sport, head-butt a cat nailed to a postin the square, to the sound of trumpets. [End Page 511] Will Schutt WILL SCHUTT is the author of Westerly, winner of the 2012 Yale Younger Poets Prize, and translator, most recently, of My Life, I Lapped It Up: Selected Poems of Edoardo Sanguineti (Oberlin College Press, 2018). Copyright © 2018 Will Schutt

The Early Practices of Financial Statements Formation in Medieval Italy

ABSTRACTIn 1494, Luca Pacioli was the first to describe the accounting statements that he called the “bilancio del libro” and “summa summarum.” While the “bilancio del libro,” or trial balance, never raised doubts as to its usefulness, the obscure interpretation of the summa summarum in the treatise and the inclusion of both statements by Pacioli led to varied perceptions of the value and meaning of this section of his treatise. This paper presents the results of many years of research in the archives of the merchant of Prato, Francesco Datini's companies between 1363 and 1410. It reports the finding of the earliest known example of a “bilancio del libro” inside the Ledger in 1395 when, in one accounting cycle, the company simultaneously formed both documents. The bilancio del libro served as a trial balance and the summa summarum was used as a statement to be transmitted to the head office. The research method employed was logical and analytical modeling.

Social Perception of Infertility and Its Treatment in Late Medieval Italy: Margherita Datini, an Italian Merchant's Wife.

Because the perception of infertility in medieval Europe ranged from the extremely religious view of it as a malediction of God or the devil's work, to the reasonable medical conception of it as a sort of disease to treat, it is very difficult to determine the general attitudes of ordinary people towards infertility. This article seeks to elucidate the common social perception of infertility and its treatment in late medieval Europe by analyzing the case of Margherita Datini, an Italian merchant's wife who lived in the 1400s. It relies heavily on the documents left by her and her husband, Francesco Datini; the couple left many records, including letters of correspondence between them. Margherita and those around her regarded infertility not as the devil's curse or a punishment by God but as a disease that can be cured. Margherita and her husband, Francesco, tried hard to cure their infertility. They received treatment and prescriptions from several doctors while also relying on folk remedies, religious therapies, and even magical remedies. The comparative analysis of Datini documents, medical books, and theoretical treatises or prescriptive essays by clerics suggests that the general perception of infertility in medieval Europe was located between the extremely religious and modern medical conceptions of it.

L’ultima impresa di Francesco Datini. Progettualità e realizzazione del «Ceppo pe’ poveri di Cristo»

The establishment of Francesco Datini’s «Ceppo pe’ poveri di Cristo» holds various meanings for the history of Prato in a long span of time. As charitable organization of extraordinary relevance and gift-giver of donations to the poor, the Ceppo entered also the wheat market and became a sponsor of various public works and artworks. Thanks to the Ceppo Datini, charities based in Prato reached a relevant portion in the context of the same Tuscany in terms of both the dimension of their landed properties and the amount of services in comparison to the population. By using the sources stored in the Archive Datini and in the Ceppo’s Archive it is possible to understand the plan and the making of a ramarkable example of late medieval welfare, which operated as socio-economic facilitator in the Prato of that time.

Letters to Francesco Datini by Margherita Datini trans. by Carolyn James and Antonio Pagliaro (review)

Reviewed by: Letters to Francesco Datini by Margherita Datini trans. by Carolyn James and Antonio Pagliaro Andrea Rizzi James, Carolyn and Antonio Pagliaro, trans., Letters to Francesco Datini by Margherita Datini (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, 16), Toronto, Iter/Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012; paperback; pp. 431; 1 colour illustration; R.R.P. US$37.00; ISBN 9780772721167. Carolyn James and Antonio Pagliaro have brought to life the first English translation of the 251 letters Margherita Datini (1360–1423) wrote to her husband – the merchant of Prato, whose life was famously described by Iris Origo – between January 1384 and January 1410. It is a fascinating corpus of letters, made even more special by the fact that it is by far the largest collection of letters by a single premodern, western laywoman. In the enlightening Preface to the edition, James explains why this collection has remained largely ignored: it belongs to a large mercantile archive frequented solely by economic historians looking for Francesco Datini’s business records, not the epistolary voice of a woman. But perhaps two further reasons account for this neglect. Prato is no Florence or Venice, and its State Archive has only recently attracted sustained attention from Renaissance scholars. This is a familiar story for Italian Renaissance scholars working outside Florence, Venice, and Rome. Another reason is language. Margherita and Francesco Datini’s letters have been available through modern Italian editions for some time now – Margherita’s since 1977 and Francesco’s since 1990. These editions were printed by Prato-based publishers and in relatively small print runs. The accessibility has been further limited by the fact that the original documents are in a polymorphic Tuscan vernacular, and contain cryptic and at times confusing domestic and private information that only the Datini and their entourage could have understood. An example is a postscript at the end of letter 13 in which Margherita asks her husband to relate to a ‘Benvenuto the bread man’ that ‘not everyone who managed to make you laugh should be a jester’. This English edition is a remarkable contribution to the study of women’s writing. Not only does it make this unique corpus of letters accessible to general and academic readerships, the translation is carefully produced to account for the complex swings of registers, styles, and content. I have crosschecked the 1977 Italian edition of these letters against this English version, and found the latter flawless, inspired, and utterly convincing. Margherita was no ordinary woman: from a disgraced knightly Florentine family, she emerges from her letters as a spouse required by her irascible and workaholic husband both to conform to and stray from the conventional obedience expected of wives as described by the prescriptive texts of the period. In her letters, Margherita communicates unrelenting love, fractious complaints, stern reproaches, and intelligent observations on everyday life. She embraced the domestic and mercantile business in a dignified and canny [End Page 177] manner, fending off her husband’s demands, suspicions, and inattentiveness. Such endurance of Francesco’s often inconsistent, tactless, and demanding behaviour towards her was somewhat rewarded towards the end of her husband’s life: in January 1410, Margherita produced a flurry of letters showing utmost confidence, authority, and empowerment. On 4 January of the same year she was occupied with preparations for Cardinal du Puy’s visit, while at the same time she was busy attending to signing documents and keeping debtors at bay until the cardinals departed Prato. Margherita’s strong-willed and wise views extend over domestic turmoil, her husband’s business, and the complex social fabric of employees, friends, and family in Florence and Prato are couched within an impressively complex syncretism of epistolary conventions, improvisation, self-representation, and pragmatic communication. Margherita asserts her voice by engaging in various levels of mediation: the expectations of her husband and the Florentine and Prato mercantile neighbourhoods, and the complex and gendered relationship with her scribes. The latter is particularly interesting, for in her letters Margherita constantly redefines the boundaries between semi-private and semi-public communication and her dependence on and independence from the male scribe and Lapo Mazzei, her informal and involuntary teacher of calligraphy. The letters...

I mercanti lettori del Petrarca

The article is divided into two parts. The first part analyses how, between the 14th and the 16th century, the Italian merchants read the works of Petrarch, paying attention to material aspects, such as ownership, support, mercantesca hand, language and circulation; the study is based on the available catalogues of manuscripts by Petrarch. The second part studies the circulation of Petrarch's works among a small group of readers who lived in Florence and Prato (late 14th and early 15th century): the merchant and politician Guido del Palagio, the merchant Francesco Datini, the notary Lapo Mazzei and two churchmen, Giovanni dalle Celle and Luigi Marsili. The paper is based on material already published as well as research in archives.

Armourers by Matthias Pfaffenbichler (review)

reviews9o matthias pfaffenbichler, Armourers. Medieval Craftsmen Series. Toronto.University ofToronto Press, 1992. Pp. 72. isbn: 0-8020-7732-3. $18.95. This short work offers a view ofmedieval armour from the unusual perspective ofits makers rather than ofits wearers. The author rightly observes that, while the emphasis ofmuch recent research has been directed towards the armourer's product, the study ofthe craftsmen and their communities has suffered some neglect. This observation is confirmed by the scarcity ofmaterial published within the past twenty years in the book's small 'Further Reading' section. The author is by profession a curator ofmedieval armour and conveys his knowledge with clarity and authority. His study is concerned almost exclusively with the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries and confines its geographical scope to Western Europe. Interestingly, there appears to be a dearth of sources relating to armour production prior to c.1200. The author notes, for example, that the first medieval armourer whom we know by name is mentioned in a document from as late as 1232. Not surprisingly, the contents ofthe book lean heavily towards the great armourproducing cities ofItaly and Germany: Milan and Brescia, Augsburg and Cologne. A wealth of surviving contemporary documentation, largely in the form of financial accounts, tax records and sketchbooks, has enabled the author to offer us a relatively clear picture ofthe social and occupational organisation of the medieval armourers. However, none of this material is footnoted or otherwise referenced, an omission which will hinder those readers who might wish to consult Pfaffenbichlers sources. The rise of important armour-making families, such as the Helmschmids of Augsburg, is traced in the context ofroyal or aristocratic patronage oftheir wares by such eminences as the Habsburg princes. This theme ofpatronage is further explored by the author in detailed descriptions ofthe contracts which were established between armourer and client following upon the latter's request for a regular supply ofarmour to his household or to his army. The nature of these trade relationships was not, however, based on a single Europe-wide custom. In Italy, for instance, it was common for individual armourers to amalgamate as large commercial companies, each employing numerous specialist craftsmen to mass-produce armour for major contracts. Within the industry itselfthere also existed contracts between armourers, and between armourers and traders, the latter being responsible for selling the wares made by the former. Out ofthis type ofrelationship there developed a class of'merchant armourers', some ofwhom became powerful retailing magnates on a pan-European scale. The Milanese merchant-armourer Francesco Datini, for example, expanded his retail operation to Avignon in 1361, thence to Barcelona, where he expected to reap a fifteen percent profit. Another merchant-armourer was Frederic the Lombard, who maintained resources and facilities sufficient to equip one client's entire fleet with a vast array of armour, including three thousand helmets, four thousand mail shirts and six thousand shields. Incidentally, the author frequently includes this type of arthuriana 6.3(1996) reviews detailed financial and numerical information, but it is a feature of the book which some readers may find unnecessary in so short a study. Throughout the text, Pfaffenbichler is keen to highlight the similarities and differences which existed between the armour-making industries of the various European states. Thus, while the political and social systems ofItaly allowed powerful entrepreneurs to flourish, the industry in Germany was influenced by stria regulations laid down by the armourers' guilds, which prohibited the formation oflarge Italianstyle companies by restricting the number of craftsmen and apprentices who could be employed at any single concern. Pfaffenbichler provides the anecdote ofa sixteenthcentury Augsburg armourer who defied the rules and imported three hundred suits ofarmour to fulfil an order within the deadline set by his customer. The guild imposed a heavy fine, but the armourer's prominent position within the city meant that he was able to ignore such censure. One ofthe book's strengths is the conciseness of its prose. Another is the quality and quantity ofits illustrations. Most pages carry an illustration ofsome sort, ranging from photographs of armour to reproductions of manuscripts and engravings. The majority of the photographs are in colour, and have been produced in such a way as...

The Merchant as Penitent: Francesco di Marco Datini and the Bianchi Movement of 1399

"The Merchant as Penitent: Francesco Datini and the Bianchi Movement of 1399." In the summer of 1399, amid war and plague, thousands of Italians donned white robes and joined the penitential "Bianchi" processions. Francesco Datini, the so-called Merchant of Prato, participated in one of these and left a record (ricordanza) of his and his companions' itinerary and supplies. Because of Datini's renown and this unique document historians have often referred to Datini's pilgrimage when writing of the Bianchi. Hitherto unutilized letters and account-book entries allow for a fuller picture of Datini's motivations and activities. From early on in the movement Datini was kept apprised of the enthusiasm of the people for the reconciliations and miracles which accompanied the Bianchi. His letters show belief in the movement's divine inspiration and in the efficacy of participation. Though an old man, he caught the enthusiasm of his younger associates and embarked with them in a nine-day procession from Florence to Arezzo. Nevertheless, he retained his fear for his soul and his unwillingness to turn away from this-worldly concerns.

Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages

The book is based on Arabic sources, documents in archives of centers of Levantine trade, and material from the files of the firm of Francesco Datini. From the fall of Acre to the journey of Vasco de Gama, the author provides an invaluable description of late medieval Mediterranean trade. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A contract for world maps at Barcelona, 1399–1400

A contract for world maps at Barcelona, 1399–1400