Medici Bank Research Articles

The Medici Bank and Florentine Perceptions of Usury in the 15th Century

The Medici Bank and Florentine Perceptions of Usury in the 15th Century

Medici Influence in 15th Century Movements

During the Renaissance period, the Medici family has played a fundamental role in encouraging the spread of humanism ideas. As humanist believed, spirit of human is lost during the Middle Ages prior to the Renaissance period due to feudal system. The introduction of such humanism idea is impactful towards the society; however, it is lacking in direct support that promotes such idea. In Florence, the Medici family made huge contributions to allowing the growth of humanism to be shown in works of art that challenges traditional thinking. During the stage where financial power is mostly held by kings and political leaders, the success of the Medici in the Medici bank allows them to support artists who are in need for support. By stabilizing peace in Florence, it provided chances for artists under Medici support to receive a positive environment for art creation. The peaceful Florence also brought in more artists from other places to investigate into the rising humanism possibilities; hence, Florence under Medici control became an important art center.

A ‘Magnificent’ military entrepreneur? The involvement of the Medici Bank in the arms trade (1482-1494)

Sifting through business accounts and public records, this article demonstrates the involvement of Medici Bank in the military industry of the fifteenth century, shedding new light on the final years of one of the most important companies in Renaissance Italy. By restating the relation between the public role and the private business of Lorenzo the Magnificent, this article emphasises the exploitation of government operations for his economic gain as well as the use of the family business for his political purposes – in this case, the consolidation of the new, permanent military institutions of the Florentine Republic. Developing this point further, the entire military organisation of the Medicean regime, traditionally assessed as haphazard and inefficient, is re-evaluated. Finally, this article contributes to the current debate on the military entrepreneurship of the preindustrial world, focussing on the cooperation between state administration and capitalist elites in supplying the materiel indispensable to early modern armies.

The Medici’s Influence: Revival of Political and Financial Thought in Europe

The history of the European Renaissance has been written in many versions. The move from medieval to Renaissance period in world history shows clashes between empires and human nature. The contemporary scholars have many variants of history to choose from and form their own views about what actually transpired during the historical period. The most significant role of the Medici family was in the new era of European history that witnessed the art of administration on the Medici Bank in Florence/Italy. This paper portrays the point of view of the influence of Islamic Arab scholars as scribes in the re-introduction of Greek-Aristotelian philosophies to Renaissance Europe. This view is being increasingly challenged. The Islamic-Arab scholars such as Averroes and Avicenna were not mere scribes. Better translations of Arabic and Persian historical treasures reveal that the Islamic-Arab scholars during the golden age of Islam were globally accepted literary giants who made profound changes to the ideological shaping of Renaissance Europe.

Unveiling the Historical Reconstruction of Financial Activity: Leveraging Compliance Practices for Implementation and Sophistication in Brazil

In recent years, economic scandals and fraudulent practices in financial institutions have captured national attention, prompting the demand for ethical conduct, transparency, and responsibility. Compliance, as a form of corporate governance, has gained significance in the Brazilian context, particularly within the financial sector. This research aims to examine how historical banking practices serve as a foundation for the establishment and advancement of compliance mechanisms in optimizing financial activities.
 Using an inductive methodology supported by bibliographic and documentary research, this study analyzes historical cases to determine if banking activities have deviated and adopted fraudulent systems. The research begins by examining the concept of the contract of deposit of fungible goods in ancient Rome, focusing on the concrete case of the Bank of Calisto I. It then explores medieval banking practices in commercial Italian cities, particularly Florence and the Medici Bank, as well as Catalonia, with emphasis on Barcelona.
 The study further investigates the financial systems of the modern era, analyzing banks in Amsterdam, Stockholm, and the Bank of England, specifically their handling of deposits and reserve contingencies. Finally, the research explores the link between past banking practices and the contemporary financial system, evaluating current prevention mechanisms, internal and external oversight of banks, and the historical contributions of financial activities to the evolution of existing control mechanisms.
 This research provides valuable insights into the historical foundations that have shaped compliance practices in Brazil. By understanding the historical context, it offers valuable knowledge for enhancing and sophisticating financial activities within the compliance framework, contributing to improved transparency, risk mitigation, and ethical behavior in the financial sector.

Memling’s Pagagnotti Virgin and Child : Italian Renaissance sculpture reimagined

Hans Memling's Pagagnotti Virgin, the central panel of a triptych painted in Bruges for a distinguished Florentine patron (fig. 1), belongs to a group of small devotional paintings by the artist which have long been acknowledged as the earliest Netherlandish paintings to employ the distinctly Italianate, all'antica motif of putti and garlands, widely associated with Renaissance sculpture. The other works in this group are the triptych of the Virgin and Child and an unknown donor in Vienna, the Resurrection triptych in the Louvre, and the Virgin and Child in Washington, all of which have been speculatively associated with Italian patronage, because of their use of the putto motif.1 In my view, on grounds of quality of execution and inventiveness of design, the Pagagnotti triptych is the prime version in this group. Now divided between the Uffizi and the National Gallery, London, it was painted for the Dominican Benedetto Pagagnotti, bishop of Vaison in Provence, who resided in Florence and was one of the most important churchmen in the city.2 It should probably be dated no later than 1480, since the detail of the mill from the background of its central panel, much cited by late fifteenth-century Florentine painters, first appears in an altarpiece by Filippino Lippi of 1482-83.3 Pagagnotti's desire to own a Netherlandish devotional image is explicable given the vogue for Netherlandish painting in Florence at the time, but Pagagnotti did not himself visit the Netherlands, and must have placed the commission through a middleman, perhaps his nephew Paolo Pagagnotti, who did visit Bruges.4It is likely that Memling introduced the putti and garlands as a gesture to his Italian patron, together with other details of apparently Italianate inspiration which have hitherto largely escaped notice: in the upper corners, the figures of Samson rending the jaws of the lion, and Cain slaying Abel, painted to resemble gilded sculptures, and the decorative detail of the arch itself. This article will consider the possible sources for these Italianate elements.Working in Bruges offered Memling ample contacts with the many Italians resident there, and with Italian visitors.5 These included some of his most important clients in the 1470s, such as the manager of the Medici bank, Tommaso Portinari, and the Venetian ambassador to the Burgundian court, Bernardo Bembo. Such individuals offered the potential for artistic exchange, whether through the commissioning of locally produced artworks such as tapestries, for which drawings were often sent from Italy, or as the owners of personal possessions brought from Italy, such as the sestertius of the Emperor Nero held by Bembo, a noted antiquarian, in his presumed portrait by Memling (Antwerp, Koniklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten), an object that the artist studied closely.6 Confraternity membership provided another means of communication: Memling was a member of the Confraternity of Our Lady of the Snow, to which several members of Bruges' Italian community also belonged.7Contacts between Italy and the Low Countries extended well beyond the mercantile community to princes, nobles, diplomats, prelates and legists, whose travels to Italy must have generated a flow of artefacts from south to north, such as the gold chain presented to the distinguished Burgundian nobleman Philippe de Croy on his mission to Naples in 1472.8 There were also numerous Italians employed in various capacities at the Burgundian court during the reign of the Italophile duke, Charles the Bold (ruled 1467-77).9 These included the Neapolitan nobleman and ducal secretary Giovanni di Candida, who in the 1470s produced the first Renaissance portrait medals in the Netherlands.10 The Florentine goldsmith Niccolo di Forzore Spinelli, also known as Niccolo Fiorentino, was appointed in 1468 as maker of ducal seals.11 It is possible that both these artists brought with them drawings and other artworks from Italy.By 1498, when Gerard David cited them in The Justice of Cambyses (Bruges, Groeningemuseum), it was possible to see in Bruges versions of two antique gems from the Medici collection, the famous and much-reproduced 'Sigillo di Nerone' of Apollo, Olympos and Marsyas, and the so-called Ceres and Triptolemus. …

Alberto Ceccherelli (1885–1958): pioneer in the history of accounting practice and leader in international dissemination

This paper seeks to reveal Alberto Ceccherelli (1885–1958), a student of the Italian accounting scholar Fabio Besta, as an important pioneer in the history of accounting practice. Ceccherelli based his accounting history research programme on the thorough review of the surviving business records of medieval Tuscan firms and the critical investigation of the origins of accounting systems, balance sheets and early cost-accounting methods and records. This paper also illuminates his leading role in the dissemination of international accounting history through his works, and especially his seminal and widely referenced publication, I libri di mercatura della Banca Medici e l'applicazione della partita doppia a Firenze nel secolo decimoquarto [Merchant Books of the Medici Bank, and Double-Entry Bookkeeping in Florence at the Beginning of the 14th Century].

The Fuggers of Augsburg: Wealth and Honor in Renaissance Germany by Mark Häberlein (review)

Reviewed by: The Fuggers of Augsburg: Wealth and Honor in Renaissance Germany by Mark Häberlein Thomas Max Safley The Fuggers of Augsburg: Wealth and Honor in Renaissance Germany. By Mark Häberlein. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. Pp. ix + 286. Cloth $39.50. ISBN 978-0813932583. The press release that accompanies Mark Häberlein's synthesis of historical scholarship on the Fugger family of Augsburg trumpets, "In contrast to the other famous merchant family of the period, the Medici of Florence . . . no English-language work on them has been available until now." The Medici have indeed attracted the attention of scholars, whose works have been published in several languages including English, while literature on the Fuggers remains almost exclusively a German-language phenomenon. Unfortunately, this volume does little to redress the balance. Whereas readily available studies of the Medici offer meticulous, original scholarship—Raymond de Roover's classic The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494 (Cambridge, MA, 1963) comes to mind—Häberlein's work rehearses the findings of others, putting old wine in new skins, to turn a parable: a kind of bait and switch that is not satisfying, but rather, at points, deeply frustrating. Häberlein's study opens most promisingly. After a concise discussion of the historiography on the Fuggers, he arrives at "several conclusions" that "a new history of the Fugger family" can draw (5). First, it should not focus too exclusively on great leaders, especially Jakob and Anton; second, it should avoid the teleology of a linear rise from common labors to aristocratic achievements; third, it should attend to "the social norms that were of fundamental importance to late medieval and early modern estate society" (6), among which he privileges notions of the common good and honor. Yet, the volume does not live up to its author's intentions. Because it is not "new," in the sense that the author has not engaged in original research or interrogated past scholarship, it remains captive to that scholarship: not only its insights, but also its errors. The results are neither "meticulously researched" nor particularly "timely," all claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Häberlein's Table 1, for example, borrows figures on taxable wealth from the work of Peter Geffken ("Soziale Schichtung 1396 bis 1521. Beitrag zu einer Strukturanalyse Augsburgs im Spätmittelalter," unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Munich, 1995) to claim that Hans Fugger's widow, Elisabeth Gefatermann, "must have been a remarkably business-minded woman" (13). He thus argues from matter to mentality, going beyond the limits of the available evidence. Nor does he analyze the evidence he has: it shows, in fact, a simple growth rate of 3.5 percent annually, which is healthy but not remarkable. In chapter 4, Häberlein claims that "it is hardly justified to speak of a decline of the Fugger's trade" (120), a hypothesis that he borrows whole-cloth from an essay by Georg Lutz ("Marx Fugger [1529-1597] und die Annales Ecclesiastici des Baronius. Eine Verdeutschung aus dem Augsburg der Gegenreformation," in: Baronio Storico [End Page 679] e la Controriforma. Atti del Convegno internazionale di Studi, Sorra 6-10 Ottobre 1979 [Sora, 1982], 421-546) and then elevates into one of the volume's major findings (viii). Yet, Lutz based his analysis solely on the Generalrechnung of 1577, and neither his analysis of the account nor the author's pastische of scholarship actually addresses the question of decline. Marx Fugger managed a consolidation of the Fugger firm and extended its life far beyond the expectation of his father, yet the company became smaller under his leadership than it had been under Jakob and Anton, as well as smaller than companies then on the rise in Italy and the Netherlands. Its "decline" was thus both absolute and relative, and the issue requires more research than Lutz or Häberlein have given it. Häberlein hopes to avoid teleologies through greater attention to context. Yet, as the discussion of decline suggests, he chooses selectively, privileging local economic and political circumstances while ignoring comparative or theoretical discussions. With regard to the growing difficulties that the Fuggers confronted in the late sixteenth century, Häberlein invokes...

Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy. Essays in Honour of John M. Najemy (review)

Reviewed by: Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy. Essays in Honour of John M. Najemy Riccardo Fubini Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy. Essays in Honour of John M. Najemy. Edited by David S. Peterson with Daniel E. Bornstein. [Essays and Studies, 15.] (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. 2008. Pp. 518. $29.50 paperback. ISBN 978-0-772-72038-2.) This volume collects twenty-five essays of various authors to recognize the scholarship of John Najemy, author of A History of Florence, 1200–1575 (Oxford, 2006). While the editors sum up Najemy’s themes and thesis, Anthony Molho outlines with new documents (pp. 61–90) the uneven academic career of Hans Baron prior to his very influential The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1955). Between the last product of the old German Geistesgeschichte and the new American sociological synthesis we can recognize the core of the historical problems discussed in the volume. The editors summarize such methodical issues in this way: “demography and economics, religion and Church history,” in conjunction with new approaches, such as “gender and relation of the sexes, the history of the private life, ritual and public behaviour, and patronage (cultural, social and political; private, corporate and public)” (p. 19). However, this scope is perhaps too ambitious. To begin with, the essays on specific political subjects seem among the weakest ones of the collection. Whether the subject is “Alberti Kinship and Conspiracy” at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, according to Susannah F. Baxendale (pp. 339–53), or the “Medici’s inner circle,” according to Margery A. Ganz (pp. 369–82), the historical problem is presented as a pure matter of individuals and family networks, abstracting from political and institutional [End Page 539] frameworks as well as a broader historical continuity. For example, we observe the Ricci, the Alberti, and finally the Medici succeeding each other in the common enmity against the Albizzi and the old Archguelph party through the period spanned now by Gene Brucker’s two books: this fact cannot be explained only through parental or other kinds of anthropological ties. The massive research by Nicolai Rubinstein into the Florentine institutions of the Medici regime, which deserve further developments and debates, has been, if not forgotten, surely put aside. Furthermore, as the brilliant essay of Julius Kirshner shows (pp. 257–70), the analysis of legal documents, both statutory and of Roman law, can disclose unexpected aspects relevant not only for social history, but for political projects as well. On religious and ecclesiastical history are James M. Blythe and John La Salle’s essay on Ptolomy of Lucca (pp. 93–106), William Hyland’s essay on “Late Medieval Camaldolese Spirituality” (pp. 107–20), and Nancy Bisaha’s essay on the letters between Enea Silvio Piccolomini and the Polish bishop Zbigniew Olesniski on the Christian conception of poetry (pp. 121–34).The confidential epistolary exchanges between the patron and his trustees reveal much: the letters between Cosimo de’ Medici and ser Alesso Pelli, his main appointee in patronage of charitable undertakings, analyzed by Dale Kent (pp. 355–67); the letters between Lorenzo de’ Medici and Nofri Tornabuoni on the Medici Bank’s affairs in the Roman Curia, discussed by Melissa Meriam Bullard (pp. 383–98); and the letters of ser Pace di Bambello, a chancery functionary and a close friend of Niccolò Michelozzi, the most distinguished among Lorenzo’s secretaries, which are covered by Alison Brown (pp. 229–55). These letters disclose some secret projects of Lorenzo in his last years. Beside the control Lorenzo exercised through ser Niccolò and ser Pace himself on old Florentine institutions such as the Arte della Lana and the Parte Guelfa, and his lifelong participation in the Opera del Duomo, he planned to elevate the cathedral’s chapter by adding enlightened canons (p. 243). Moreover, it is also noteworthy that ser Pace at the time of Lorenzo’s funerals referred to the love shown by the populace “to this holy house” (p. 244).This expression is found later, in 1517, in the title affixed by Giovanni di Strada detto lo Stradino, a servant...

The Orsini: A Family of Roman Baroni in Context 1: THE ORSINI FAMILY PAPERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES: PROPERTY ADMINISTRATION, POLITICAL STRATEGY, AND ARCHITECTURAL LEGACY

Much of the material in the Orsini archive at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is administrative. Among other things, it reveals how the Orsini turned their vast but sometimes unwieldy holdings not only into income, but also into political capital. They did so in the fifteenth century partly by using two administrative tools: a form of long-term rental called emphyteusis, and the pactum redimendi— the right to buy back property after it was sold. This article examines how the Orsini applied these tools to their real-estate assets in Rome, which included some of the city's prominent buildings, such as their palace at Campo de' Fiori, and the Medici, Pazzi, and Spinelli bank buildings in the Banchi quarter. It argues that the family used emphyteuses and pacta redimendi as a means of securing and maintaining strategically important friendships, and traces the long-term impact these administrative practices had on the Orsini's buildings.

Cicero, Plutarch, and Vincenzo Foppa: Rethinking the Medici Bank Fresco (London, The Wallace Collection, Inv. P 538)

The Medici Bank Fresco (ca. 1463) by Vincenzo Foppa (ca. 1428–1515) is this artist’s only surviving secular work. It had survived three centuries of wind and weather before the Medici Bank palazzo in Milan was demolished in 1863, and its acquisition by Sir Richard Wallace in 1872. E. K. Water-house identified the subject in 1950 as “The Boy Cicero Reading,” attributing its literary invention to Plutarch’sVita Ciceronis (2.3), the interpretation generally accepted. Waterhouse’s note had appeared the year after Fernanda Wittgens (1949) proposed the title “Fanciulloleggente Cicerone.” Our investigation presents substantial reasons to support Wittgens’s reading: (1) the consistency of her argument with what we do know of Foppa’s decorative program for the Banco Mediceo, (2) the richer dramatic, historical, political, biographical, and ethical implications of a different passage of the Plutarch, and (3) the ideals for the virtuous ruler expressed in John of Salisbury’s pseudo-PlutarchanInstitutio Traiani as incorporated in hisPolicraticus.

Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance by Melissa Meriam Bullard

BOOK REVIEWS 559 grammatical usage is consistent with convention; otherwise spelling is altered to agree with grammar and the original spelling is presented in a footnote. The visitors record the condition of church property and sometimes the pledges of pastors and parishioners to improve them. Whether those pledges were fulfilled is an interesting question, but of course cannot be answered by the visitation . The preoccupation of the bishop and his visitors with liturgical accoutrements testifies to the importance that worship played as a measure of "Christianitas." Scholars interested in late medieval pastoral care and in the condition of late medieval parishes will find the edition ofWildermann and Pasche most useful. Robert W Shaffern University ofScranton Lorenzo U Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance. By Melissa Meriam Bullard. [Istituto Nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento: Studi e testi, XXXTV] (Florence: Leo S. Olschki. 1994. Pp. xv, 245. Lire 58,000.) This is a very important collection of eight articles by Melissa Bullard drawn together by a common concern with the fifteenth-century Florentine statesman , Lorenzo de' Medici. The concentration on one man is occasioned by a combination of two circumstances: the fifth centenary of Lorenzo's death in 1992, marked by conferences in the United States and Europe at which Bullard was a key speaker, and her collaborative work of more than a decade on an edition of Lorenzo's letters. This detailed and painstaking work has left Bullard in an enviable position of superiority vis-à-vis understanding the functioning of the Laurentian machine, and has enabled her to formulate new theories about the Magnifico himself, his inner circle, and the construction of his image. The first section of the book contains, among others, two articles which propose convincing revisions to the accepted orthodoxies of Lorenzo's life. One introduces the concept of anxiety, arguing that Lorenzo's dissemination of an image of his own magnificence was initially a response to uncertainty, and that control of his public reputation (and as a byproduct the invention of the myth surrounding him) helped to compensate for his vulnerability. According to this reading, cult of personality deflected attention from personal and political shortfalls. The second article almost heretically suggests that Lorenzo was not a heroic superman who administered Florentine affairs single-handedly but a more prosaic corporate manager who delegated day-to-day tasks to a handpicked team of decision-makers. It is the second part ofthe book, on Lorenzo and Rome,which will be ofmost interest here, and Bullard's expertise in financial matters ensures the reader of fascinating new insights. Concentrating on the 1480's and early 1490's, Bullard isolates two incidents in the relationship between Lorenzo and Pope Innocent 560 BOOK REVIEWS VIII of crucial importance for the history of both Florence and Rome. In December , i486, Innocent established an appalto or tax farm with nine firms of Italian bankers (including the Medici bank) which loaned the pope money in advance on his spiritual revenues, thereby assuring him of a more regular income . Over the eight-year period of the farm's existence, these nine expanded to become a body of forty-six investors, and from the point ofview of the initial bankers, the enterprise was a dismal failure and may, in Lorenzo's case, have helped to lead to the downfall of the Medici bank. Innocent, however, profited, and the idea of a funded debt was taken up later by Clement VII. Bullard also maintains that the arranged marriage between Lorenzo's daughter and InnocentVffl 's son which took place in 1487 bound the two fathers together for the rest of their lives, providing Lorenzo with a much-enlarged arena for patronage and with greater financial opportunities, but in addition sucking him into the black hole of Innocent's debt. This collection makes very exciting and persuasive reading, and is coherent, accessible, and well written. It is a welcome and individual contribution to studies of Laurentian Florence and of the late fifteenth-century papacy. Kate Lowe Goldsmiths'College, University ofLondon Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain. The Mothers of Saint Teresa ofAvila. By Ronald E. Surtz. [Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press. 1995. Pp...

Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain. The Mothers of Saint Teresa of Avila by Ronald E. Surtz

560 BOOK REVIEWS VIII of crucial importance for the history of both Florence and Rome. In December , i486, Innocent established an appalto or tax farm with nine firms of Italian bankers (including the Medici bank) which loaned the pope money in advance on his spiritual revenues, thereby assuring him of a more regular income . Over the eight-year period of the farm's existence, these nine expanded to become a body of forty-six investors, and from the point ofview of the initial bankers, the enterprise was a dismal failure and may, in Lorenzo's case, have helped to lead to the downfall of the Medici bank. Innocent, however, profited, and the idea of a funded debt was taken up later by Clement VII. Bullard also maintains that the arranged marriage between Lorenzo's daughter and InnocentVffl 's son which took place in 1487 bound the two fathers together for the rest of their lives, providing Lorenzo with a much-enlarged arena for patronage and with greater financial opportunities, but in addition sucking him into the black hole of Innocent's debt. This collection makes very exciting and persuasive reading, and is coherent, accessible, and well written. It is a welcome and individual contribution to studies of Laurentian Florence and of the late fifteenth-century papacy. Kate Lowe Goldsmiths'College, University ofLondon Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain. The Mothers of Saint Teresa ofAvila. By Ronald E. Surtz. [Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press. 1995. Pp. xii, 223. $32.95.) The topic of women writers is not a novel area of research for Ronald Surtz. In the Guitar of God, published in 1990, Surtz treated questions of gender, power, and authority in the visionary world of Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481-1534), depicting the Franciscan abbess as an avid chronicler and defender of her visionary experiences of the divine. Mother Juana's only extant work,El libro del conorte, is again treated in the final chapter ofthe present volume ,which also examines perceptively the writing of four other women of the Spanish Middle Ages and Renaissance, namely, Teresa de Cartagena, Constanza de Castilla, María de Ajofrín, and María de Santo Domingo. Against the formidable obstacles—social and religious—posed to women intent on writing, these nuns undertook with vigor and firm conviction the task of not only recording on paper their extraordinary religious experiences but also incorporating into their verbal message a staunch defense ofthe authenticity ofthose supernatural events. In chapter I,"The NewJudith:Teresa de Cartagena," Surtz reviews the pathetically moving life of the deaf Franciscan nun and her avant-garde assertiveness as an exponent of literary expression, once cited by Alan Deyermond as a rare example in medieval Spanish letters of "a writer's reflections on the creative process, an indication of how it feels to be a writer" ("'El convento de BOOK REVIEWS 561 dolencias': the Works of Teresa de Cartagena,"Journal ofHispanic Philology, I [1976], 25). In fact, Teresa de Cartagena's Admiración operum Dei, a powerful defense of her right to literary activity, has been seen by some critics as an exquisite example of a feminist text. Following a brief explanation ofTeresa's first extant work, a spiritual treatise titledArboleda de los enfermos, Surz focuses at length on the Admiración'^, rhetorical strategies and varied imagery to explain Teresa's defensive and protective posture toward her own writings. Surtz pays particular attention to Teresa's skillful use of three images, the bark/pitch image, the biblicalJudith, and the blind man on the road toJericho. The result is a carefully structured work which points to the role of divine empowerment in enabling a feeble woman, Teresa, to conquer her weak female status by performing tasks traditionally reserved to the male gender, while picturing herself and her writing as a "sign of divine might" (p. 40). Chapter 2, titled "Constanza de Castilla and the Gynaeceum of Composition," provides a socio-historical and literary picture of Constanza, the legitimate granddaughter of King Pedro I,who in the midst ofpolitical feuds sought refuge in the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo el Real, where she served as prioress for some...

The Patron and the Pirate: The Mystery of Memling's Gdańsk Last Judgment

Memling's Gdansk Last Judgment is undocumented before its capture at sea in 1473. Information about the career of the triptych's patron, Angelo Tani, implies that he commissioned it on an unrecorded trip to Bruges in 1465 and helps to clarify its much debated relationship to Rogier van der Weyden's Beaune Altarpiece. The activities of Tani's successor, Tommaso Portinari, as manager of the Bruges branch of the Medici Bank, suggest that the addition of Portinari's portrait on the scales of judgment relates to his piratic appropriation of the painting.

THE MEDICI BANK AND THE WORLD OF FLORENTINE CAPITALISM

Journal Article THE MEDICI BANK AND THE WORLD OF FLORENTINE CAPITALISM Get access Richard A. Goldthwaite Richard A. Goldthwaite The Johns Hopkins University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 114, Issue 1, February 1987, Pages 3–31, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/114.1.3 Published: 01 February 1987

Money, Banking, and Credit in Mediaeval Bruges: Italian Merchant-Bankers, Lombards, and Money-Changers: A Study in the Origins of Banking. By <italic>Raymond de Roover</italic>, Associate Professor of Economics, Wells College. [The Mediaeval Academy of America, Publication No. 51.] (Cambridge: the Academy. 1948. Pp, xvii, 420. $8,75, to members of Academy $7.00.) and The Medici Bank: Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline.

Money, Banking, and Credit in Mediaeval Bruges: Italian Merchant-Bankers, Lombards, and Money-Changers: A Study in the Origins of Banking. By Raymond de Roover, Associate Professor of Economics, Wells College. [The Mediaeval Academy of America, Publication No. 51.] (Cambridge: the Academy. 1948. Pp, xvii, 420. $8,75, to members of Academy $7.00.) and The Medici Bank: Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline. By Raymond de Roover. [Business History Series.] (New York: New York University Press. 1948. Pp, xv, 98. $4.00.) Get access Money, Banking, and Credit in Mediaeval Bruges: Italian Merchant-Bankers, Lombards, and Money-Changers: A Study in the Origins of Banking. By de Roover Raymond, Associate Professor of Economics, Wells College. [The Mediaeval Academy of America, Publication No. 51.] (Cambridge: the Academy. 1948. Pp. xvii, 420. $8.75, to members of Academy $7.00.) The Medici Bank: Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline. By de Roover Raymond. [Business History Series.] (New York: New York University Press. 1948. Pp. xv, 98. $4.00.) Benjamin N. Nelson Benjamin N. Nelson University of Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 56, Issue 3, April 1951, Pages 539–542, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/56.3.539 Published: 01 April 1951

The Medici Bank: Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline. Raymond de Roover

<i>The Medici Bank: Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline</i>. Raymond de Roover

The Medici Bank: Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline. By Raymond de Roover. [Business History Series, Graduate School of Business Administration, New York University.] New York: New York University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1948. Pp. xv, 98. $4.00.

The Medici Bank: Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline. By Raymond de Roover. [Business History Series, Graduate School of Business Administration, New York University.] New York: New York University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1948. Pp. xv, 98. $4.00. - Volume 9 Issue 1

A New Book on Banking Four Hundred Years Ago

A book has recently been published in the field of medieval business which should be called to the attention of readers of the Bulletin. It is The Medici Bank: Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline, by Raymond de Roover. This hundred-page volume in large part appeared earlier in the form of articles in a learned journal, but it is now available to a wider circle of readers in attractive form and beautifully illustrated. This notice is especially addressed to businessmen, who presumably did not see the articles as they appeared in the Journal of Economic History.

The Decline of the Medici Bank

The power of the Medici as a banking house, and their weakness also, become clearer when we examine the source of their funds. The main problem is whether the Medici bank operated mainly with the money invested by the partners or whether most of the operating capital was supplied from outside sources. It would be easy to settle this question if some balance sheets of the Medici bank were still available. As none have come down to us, another method of approach has to be used.