Memory, Family, and Self
Edited by
Arianne Baggerman, Erasmus University Rotterdam and University of Amsterdam Rudolf Dekker, Center for the Study of Egodocuments and History, Amsterdam Michael Mascuch, University of California, Berkeley
Advisory Board James Amelang, Universidad Autónoma Madrid Peter Burke, Emmanuel College Cambridge Philippe Lejeune, Emeritus, Université de Paris-Nord Claudia Ulbrich, Freie Universität Berlin
VOLUME 6
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/egdo
Tuscan Family Books and Other European Egodocuments (14th–18th Century)
By
Giovanni Ciappelli
Translated by
Susan Amanda George
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ciappelli, Giovanni. Memory, family, and self : Tuscan family books and other European egodocuments (14th-18th century) / by Giovanni Ciappelli ; translated by Susan Amanda George. pages cm. -- (Egodocuments and history series, ISSN 1873-653X ; volume 6) “This book collects, for the first time in English translation, fifteen essays (plus an introduction) written on the same subject over twenty-four years (but mostly in the last twelve)”--Preface. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-26631-5 (hardback: acid-free paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-27075-6 (e-book) 1. Autobiography-- Social aspects--Italy--Tuscany--History. 2. Autobiography--Italy--Tuscany--Psychological aspects--History. 3. Diaries--Social aspects--Italy--Tuscany--History. 4. Memory--Social aspects--Italy--Tuscany--History. 5. Collective memory--Italy--Tuscany--History. 6. Families--Italy--Tuscany--History. 7. Identity (Psychology)--Italy--Tuscany--History. 8. Tuscany (Italy)--Genealogy. 9. Tuscany (Italy)--Social life and customs. 10. Tuscany (Italy)--History--Sources. I. Title. CT25.C464 2014 929.20945--dc23 2014005999
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Editorial Note vii List of Abbreviations x Preface xi
Introduction: Memory, Family, Identity in Early Modern Italy and Europe 1
1 Family Books in Florence: Evolution and Involution of a Genre 12
2 Books and Readings in Florence in the 15th Century: “Ricordanze” and the Reconstruction of Private Libraries 30
3 Memory of Historical Events in Florentine “Ricordanze” (14th–15th Century) 54
4 Domestic Devotion in Florentine “Ricordanze” (13th–16th Century) 82
5 The Family Books of the Castellani 109
6 The Medici “Ricordi” 123
7 Collective Memory and Cultural Memory: The Family between Antiquity and the Early Modern Period 146
8 Family Memory in the Early Modern Age: The Case of Tuscany 163
9 The Evolution of Family Memory Models: Tuscan Family Books (16th–18th Century) 184
10 Family Memory in Florence in the Time of Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni 209
11 Collective and Individual Identity in Florence (16th–18th Century): The Family Book of Gianni 227
12 Family Memory and Individual Memory: Florentine Private Diaries and Family Books of the Early Modern Period 241
13 The Edition of Tuscan Sources for Family History in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period 260
14 Is there a Main Road in the Study of Autobiography? 275
15 Memory and Egodocuments in Early Modern Europe 280
Index of Modern Authors 293 Index of Names and Places 299
The (adapted) essays have been first published as follows:
Introduction “Introduzione,” in G. Ciappelli (ed.), Memoria, famiglia, identità tra Italia ed Europa nell’età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009), pp. 11–18, 31–36.
Chapter 1 Chapter 6 of G. Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze. I Castellani di Firenze nel Tre-Quattrocento (Florence: Olschki, 1995), pp. 183–202.
Chapter 2 “Libri e letture a Firenze nel XV secolo. Le ‘ricordanze’ e la ricostruzione delle biblioteche private,” Rinascimento n.s. 29 (1989), pp. 267–291.
Chapter 3 “La memoria degli eventi storici nelle ‘ricordanze’ fiorentine del Tre- Quattrocento,” in C. Bastia, M. Bolognani, F. Pezzarossa (eds.), La memoria e la città. Scritture storiche tra Medioevo ed età moderna, (Bologna: Il Nove, 1995), pp. 123–150.
Chapter 4 “La devozione domestica nelle ricordanze fiorentine (fine XIII-inizio XVI secolo),” Quaderni di storia religiosa 8 (2001), pp. 79–115.
Chapter 5 Chapter 3 of Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 49–64.
Chapter 6 “I libri di ricordi dei Medici,” in I. Cotta and F. Klein (eds.), I Medici in rete. Ricerca e progettualità scientifica a proposito dell’archivio “Mediceo avanti il Principato”, Atti del Convegno (Firenze, 18–19 settembre 2000) (Florence: Olschki, 2003), pp. 153–177.
Chapter 7 “Memoria collettiva e memoria culturale. La famiglia fra antico e moderno,” Annali dell’Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento 29 (2003), pp. 13–32.
Chapter 8 “La memoria familiare in età moderna. Il caso toscano,” in R. Ago and B. Borello (eds.), Famiglie. Circolazione di beni, circuiti di affetti (Rome: Viella, 2008), pp. 317–339.
Chapter 9 “L’evoluzione dei modelli di memoria familiare: i libri di famiglia toscani (secc. XVI–XVIII),” in Ciappelli (ed.), Memoria, famiglia, identità, pp. 201–233.
Chapter 10 “La memoria familiare a Firenze al tempo di Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli: rifles- sioni e documenti,” in R. Pasta (ed.), Scritture dell’io fra pubblico e privato (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), pp. 21–39.
Chapter 11 “Identità collettiva e individuale a Firenze fra Seicento e Ottocento. Il libro di famiglia dei Gianni,” in G. Ciappelli, S. Luzzi, M. Rospocher (eds.), Famiglia e religione in Europa nell’età moderna (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2011), pp. 261–275.
Chapter 12 “Memoria familiare e memoria individuale a Firenze nell’età moderna (diari e libri di famiglia),” Giornale di storia 3 (2010), pp. 1–14. URL: http://www.giornaledistoria.net/index.php?&nomeCat=Articoli&title =Memoria familiare e memoria individuale a Firenze nell’età moderna (diari e libri di famiglia)&sezione=1&content=14&cat=9&view=2&id=42. Also publ. in French as “Mémoire familiale et mémoire individuelle à Florence d’après journaux et livres de famille de l’époque moderne,” in S. Mouysset, J.-P. Bardet, F.-J. Ruggiu (eds.), “Car c’est moy que je peins”. Ecritures de soi, individu et liens sociaux (Europe, XVe-XXe siècle) (Paris-Toulouse: CNRS- Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 2010), pp. 23–38.
Chapter 13 “Le edizioni di fonti per la storia della famiglia nell’età medievale e moderna,” in A.M. Pult Quaglia and A. Savelli (eds.), Per la storia delle città toscane. Bilancio e prospettive delle edizioni di fonti dalla metà degli anni Sessanta a oggi, Atti del Convegno (Firenze, 9–11 febbraio 2011) (Florence: Consiglio Regionale della Toscana, 2013), pp. 73–90.
Chapter 14 “¿Existe una linea maestra en el estudio de la autobiografia?,” Cultura escrita & sociedad 1 (2005), pp. 52–57.
Chapter 15 “La mémoire en Europe à travers les écrits du for privé à l’époque moderne,” in F.-J. Ruggiu (ed.), The uses of first person writings. Africa, America, Asia, Europe. Les usages des écrits du for privé. Afrique, Amérique, Asie, Europe (Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2013), pp. 61–75.
ASF Archivio di Stato, Florence BNCF Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence BRF Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence Corp. sopp. Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese MAP Mediceo Avanti il Principato Misc. rep. Miscellanea repubblicana NTF Nuovi Testi Fiorentini Protocolli Protocolli dei carteggi di Lorenzo il Magnifico Pupilli Magistrato dei Pupilli avanti il Principato R.I.S. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores
Three asterisks in the text of quotations (***) indicate omission of text by the scribe himself in the original manuscript.
This book collects, for the first time in English translation, fifteen essays (plus an introduction) written on the same subject over twenty-four years (but mostly in the last twelve). The family book has been defined as a genre in Italy in the 1980s, a sort of diary which has been written by, about, and for the family. Whereas at that time scholars were seeing it mainly as an Italian genre, now it can be said that such a pattern can be found in different forms in several parts of Europe. In any case Florence can be considered the “cradle”: the place where such documents were produced earlier and more lavishly. Florentine ricor- danze begin as early as the end of the 13th century, are produced in hundreds in the 14th–15th, and start a writing tradition which – in lessened but still sub- stantial numbers – crosses the whole early modern period. Such abundance is not only a matter of archival preservation (other places in Italy possess just dozens, not hundreds, of family books), but has to do with the very nature of the social structure of the city. Besides the importance of family books in strengthening collective identity, during the Republican period (until 1530) social mobility makes such writings desirable and necessary for a family in order to establish and cultivate the basis of its social promotion. During the Grand Duchy family books will be abandoned by the now noble families for other, more functional, forms of family memory, but will still be cultivated by families which are still trying to improve their status. The book – whose author is also the editor of several sources of this kind and is currently still dealing with a research project about family memory and individual memory in Italy in the early modern period – deals with both a reconstruction of ways and reasons of the genre’s evolution and persistency, and the several aspects of social history which can be enlightened through such a source: reading and private libraries, domestic devotion, the memory of historical events. Progressing in time, the investigation broadens to the 17th–18th centuries and their different forms of memory, related to both the family and the individual: private diaries and autobiographies. Special atten- tion is dedicated to two prominent families of Renaissance Florence: the anti- medicean Castellani, and the Medici themselves; and to two families of the grand-ducal period, the Pelli and the Gianni (Giuseppe Pelli is author in the 18th century of a “monstre” zibaldone in 80 volumes; while Francesco Maria Gianni, minister in the government of the Enlightened Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, will write no family book but will start a peculiar autobiography). A final section is dedicated to the edition of Tuscan sources for family history, and to the issue of memory in the egodocuments (a newly defined genre which
The theme of memory in relation to the early modern age is slightly different from that which prevails when considering contemporary times. In relation to the twentieth century the term memory is used mostly to refer to particular episodes of collective memory, which are also basic (even if reactive) to a cer- tain type of identity: the extermination of the Jews, for example, or the world wars.1 Or better known is the concept of memory places, essentially invented by Pierre Nora and then taken up in Italy by Mario Isnenghi: places in the broad sense, that may be physical places, or individuals, concepts, symbols, myths tied to a particular aspect of memory and anchors for the identity of a community or a nation.2 From a methodological point of view the theme of memory, especially col- lective, has returned forcefully to stage front since the 1990s, with the taking up and development of the ideas that had been originally elaborated by Maurice Halbwachs in his two fundamental works: Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, published in 1925 and La mémoire collective, posthumously in 1950.3 It was basically Halbwachs who made the first precocious attempt to theorize the existence of collective images of memory. In this vision memory is a factor of
1 Just see for example F. Lussana, “Memoria e memorie nel dibattito storiografico,” Studi storici 41 (2000), pp. 1047–1081: 1047 (“The memoirs on the Nazi massacres, the discussion about Shoah, and the public use of history in historiographical revisionism are among the many cases which can be taken as an example to demonstrate the methodological and interpreta- tive usefulness of the relationship between history and memory. We will try a reconstruction of the most recent discussion about these three historiographical cases”); G. Corni and G. Hirschfeld (eds.), L’umanità offesa. Stermini e memoria nell’Europa del Novecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003); J. Winter, Sites of memory, sites of mourning. The Great War in European cul- tural history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); G. Mosse, Fallen soldiers. Reshaping the memory of the World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); G. Corni (ed.), Storia e memoria. La seconda guerra mondiale nella costruzione della memoria europea (Trento: Museo Storico, 2007). 2 See P. Nora (ed.), Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols. (Paris, 1984–1992): I, La République; II, La Nation; III, Les France; M. Isnenghi (ed.), I luoghi della memoria, 3 vols. (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1996– 1998): I, Simboli e miti dell’Italia unita; II, Strutture ed eventi dell’Italia unita; III, Personaggi e date dell’Italia unita. 3 M. Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris, 1925); Engl. transl. in Id., On collective memory, ed. by L.A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Id., La mémoire collective (Paris, 1950); Engl. transl.: Id., The collective memory (New York-London: Harper & Row, 1980).
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4 See below, chap. 7, pp. 148–150. 5 See F.A. Yates, The art of memory (London: Pimlico, 1992 [1966]); P. Rossi, Clavis universalis. Arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz (Bologna: Il Mulino, 20003 [1960]); Id., Il passato, la memoria, l’oblio. Otto saggi di storia delle idee (Bologna: Il Mulino, 20012); L. Bolzoni, Il teatro della memoria. Studi su Giulio Camillo (Padua: Liviana, 1985); L. Bolzoni and P. Corsi (eds.), La cultura della memoria (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992); L. Bolzoni, La stanza della memoria. Modelli letterari e iconografici nell’età della stampa (Turin: Einaudi, 1995). 6 See the art. “memoria” in Vocabolario della lingua italiana [Treccani] (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1986), I, p. 347. 7 G. Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, 4 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1949–1969; orig. ed. I vol.: 1907). The last tome is IV.2, Von der Renaissance bis zu den autobiographischen Hauptwerken des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, 1969. 8 On Misch (1878–1965) and his relationship with Dilthey one can see now M. Mezzanzanica, Georg Misch. Dalla filosofia della vita alla logica ermeneutica (Milan: Angeli, 2001); A. Marini,
L’autobiografia in Dilthey come concetto fondamentale di una coscienza storiografica, in M. Mezzanzanica (ed.), Autobiografia, autobiografie, ricostruzione di sé (Milan: Angeli, 2007), pp. 9–22. 9 P. Lejeune, L’autobiographie en France (Paris: Colin, 1971); Id., Le pacte autobiographique (Paris: Seuil, 1975). Nevertheless, in his more recent studies Lejeune payed greater atten- tion to both the historical context and non-literary authors. 10 The relevant bibliography is very extensive. A recent synthesis for the French-speaking world is provided by P. Lejeune, C. Bogaert, Le journal intime. Histoire et anthologie (Paris, 2006). A very recent Italian work on the (intimate) diary as literary genre, with some bib- liographical indications, is S. Piccone Stella, In prima persona. Scrivere un diario (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008). 11 The term as such derives from a neologism which was introduced in the Dutch language around 1950 by the Dutch historian Jacques Presser in order to define memoirs, autobiog- raphies, personal letters and private diaries. Resumed and adopted for his own research on Dutch sources by Rudolf Dekker since 1982, the word has been later on accepted in the English and German linguistic areas in 1990s. The first to adopt the term in German has been Winfried Schulze, who also proposed a particularly large meaning for it, as such not accepted by all the historians who deal with this topic, above all for the difficulty in using it for both the census of sources (as too generic), and for their analysis (it combines very different things). See R. Dekker, “Introduction,” in R. Dekker (ed.), Egodocuments and History. Autobiographical writing in its social context since the Middle Ages (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002), pp. 7–20: 7–9; W. Schulze, “Ego-Dokumente. Annäherung an den
Menschen in der Geschichte? Vorüberlegungen für die Tagung ‘Ego-Dokumente’,” in W. Schulze (ed.), Ego-Dokumente. Annäherung an den Menschen in der Geschichte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996), pp. 11–30. On the opportunity to use a less large concept, or at least more nuanced analysis criteria, see also below, chap. 14, and see in general the whole dossier De la autobiografía a los ego-documentos: un forum abierto, coordinado por J.S. Amelang, Cultura escrita & sociedad 1 (2005). 12 J.S. Amelang (ed.), A Journal of the Plague Year. The Diary of the Barcelona Tanner Miquel Parets (New York, 1991). 13 J.S. Amelang, The Flight of Icarus. Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), esp. “Prologue” and chaps. 1–2. 14 Here too the relevant bibliography is now very large. See above all A. Cicchetti and R. Mordenti, “La scrittura dei libri di famiglia,” in Letteratura italiana, dir. by A. Asor Rosa, III, Le forme del testo, t. 2, La prosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), pp. 1117–1159; A. Cicchetti and R. Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, Filologia e storiografia letteraria (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1985); L. Pandimiglio, “Ricordanza e libro di famiglia.
The most recent definition of them is “memory text, tendentially multigen- erational, in which the family is at once the author, subject, and receiver of the writing,”15 keeping in mind that a text of this kind can be plural even when it is the work of an individual, because the author’s manner of presenting himself is often (as has been said) as a “collective self.”16 In itself, the family book as codified by Cicchetti and Mordenti in 1984– 198517 is a genre certainly present in all Italy from the end of the 13th to the 20th century. As early as the 1980s, a national census was projected, but it immedi- ately ran into various difficulties (first of all financial),18 and is available only in a very partial and little systematic form in the BILF on line, edited by the Italian Department at the University of Rome at Tor Vergata.19 The more complete and massive attempts at census and study are concen- trated in the area of the greatest concentration of family books, Florence, and
Il manifestarsi di una nuova fonte,” Lettere italiane 39 (1987), pp. 3–19; C. Klapisch-Zuber, La famiglia e le donne nel Rinascimento a Firenze, It. transl. (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1988); F. Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina della memorialistica,” in G.M. Anselmi, F. Pezzarossa, L. Avellini, La “memoria” dei mercatores. Tendenze ideologiche, ricordanze, artigianato in versi nella Firenze del Quattrocento (Bologna: Patron, 1989), pp. 39–149; L. Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia e storia del patriziato fiorentino. Prime ricerche,” in Palazzo Strozzi. Metà millennio 1489–1989, Atti del Convegno di studi (Firenze, 3–6 luglio 1989) (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1991), pp. 138–158; C. Bastia, M. Bolognani, F. Pezzarossa (eds.), La memoria e la città. Scritture storiche tra Medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna: Il Nove, 1995); G. Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze. I Castellani di Firenze nel Tre-Quattrocento (Florence: Olschki, 1995); G. Ciappelli and P.L. Rubin (eds.), Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); R. Bizzocchi, In famiglia. Storie di interessi e affetti nell’Italia moderna (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2001); R. Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, Geografia e storia, In Appendice gli Atti del Seminario nazionale “I libri di famiglia in Italia: quindici anni di ricerche” (Roma Tor Vergata, 27–28 giugno 1997) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2001). 15 See Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, p. 15. 16 Ibid., p. 18. 17 Cicchetti and Mordenti, La scrittura; Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia. 18 See G. Ciappelli, “I libri di famiglia a Firenze. Stato delle ricerche e iniziative in corso,” in Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, pp. 131–139: 133. 19 BILF is the Biblioteca Informatizzata dei Libri di Famiglia, until recently published on line at the URL www.bilf.uniroma2.it/exist/bilf/. The site, now apparently difficult to locate, was updated until September 2004, but already at that date the addition of new records to the “Schedario,” seen by his founders as a “work in progress” which should have been spontaneously increased by the researchers of various kinds interested in the subject, was very limited.
20 See especially F. Pezzarossa, “Per un catalogo dei testi memorialistici fiorentini a stampa,” in the Appendix to his “La tradizione fiorentina della memorialistica,” pp. 93–149. For the advance in this field see Ciappelli, “I libri di famiglia a Firenze.” 21 Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II. 22 Even in this case the bibliography is very large. I will only cite Amelang, The Flight of Icarus, which provides a large overview of genres and places of production, and must be complemented by most of the essays cited in the following notes. See now also the syn- thesis of the European studies on this subject provided in S. Mouysset, Papiers de famille. Introduction à l’etude des livres de raison (France, XVe-XIXe siècle) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007), pp. 79–100 (par. “Du Nord au Sud, le renouvellement his- toriographique européen du second XXe siècle”). 23 See G. Ciappelli, “Family memory. Functions, evolution, recurrences,” in Ciappelli and Rubin (eds.), Art, memory and family, pp. 26–38: 30; Id., “I libri di famiglia a Firenze,” p. 138; below, chap. 7; many of the essays in De la autobiografía a los ego-documentos: un forum abierto, go exactly in this direction.
“Writings and family memory,” dedicated to Italy, Switzerland, and southern Germany.24 In 2005 a new Spanish journal, “Cultura escrita & sociedad,” born along the lines of the sadly defunct “Scrittura e civiltà” edited by Armando Petrucci, published the Dossier De la autobiografia a los ego-documentos: un forum abierto, in which many European and American historians expressed hope for the convergence of research on these themes.25 A project to make a census of Tuscan family books began in 2006 under my direction,26 and soon after that at least one international convention has been held in Holland on autobiographical writing27 and another large convention in Paris, organized by the patrons of the French national census of écrits du for privé, with 46 talks and the involvement of most of the European researchers who work on these themes.28 The year 2007, besides the international convention at Trento that also inspired a book of collected articles edited by myself,29 saw in Florence another international conference on ego-writings in the
24 Dossier “Écritures et mémoire familiale,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 59 (2004), pp. 783–858 (which comprises R. Mordenti, “Les livres de famille en Italie,” pp. 785–804; C. Cazalé Bérard – C. Klapisch-Zuber, “Mémoire de soi et des autres dans les livres de famille italiens,” pp. 805–826; R. Black, “École et société à Florence au XIVe et XVe siècles. Le témoignage des ‘ricordanze’,” pp. 827–846; S. Teuscher, “Parenté, politique et compt- abilité. Chroniques familiales autour de 1500 (Suisse et Allemagne du Sud),” pp. 847–858). 25 See De la autobiografía a los ego-documentos. 26 “La memoria familiare in età moderna: censimento delle fonti toscane e analisi compara- tiva,” Research Unit of Trento, directed by G. Ciappelli, as part of the Research Project of Relevant National Importance (PRIN) 2005 financed by the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research “Storia della famiglia. Costanti e variabili in una prospettiva euro- pea,” principal investigator S. Seidel Menchi. 27 Rotterdam, 15–17 June 2006: see now A. Baggerman, R. Dekker and M. Mascuch (eds.), Controlling time and shaping the Self. Developments in autobiographical writing since the sixteenth century (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 28 Paris, 6–8 decembre 2006: see now J.-P. Bardet, E. Arnoul, F.-J. Ruggiu (eds.), Les écrits du for privé en Europe du Moyen Age à l’époque contemporaine. Enquêtes, analyses, publica- tions (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2010). The conference has been orga- nized by the Groupe de recherche n. 2649 of CNRS “Les écrits du for privé en France de la fin du Moyen Age à 1914,” directed by J.-P. Bardet and F.-J. Ruggiu. The group, which has realized a database of all the French writings “of the private sphere” (family books, auto- biographies, private diaries, memoirs, etc.), has its own web page (www.ecritsduforprive .fr), and has already produced several conferences and as many volumes: J.-P. Bardet and F.-J. Ruggiu (eds.), Au plus près du secret des coeurs? Nouvelles lectures historiques des écrits du for privé (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2005); M. Cassan, J.-P. Bardet and F.-J. Ruggiu (eds.), Les écrits du for privé. Objets matériels, objets édités (Limoges, 2007). 29 G. Ciappelli (ed.), Memoria, famiglia, identità tra Italia ed Europa nell’età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007).
Settecento,30 as well as the first results of the Roman research group that has been working in recent years on a census of writings of women in that region, where various of the texts catalogued are in fact memory writings.31 And finally, in 2008 there were at least two conventions and meetings of interna- tional researchers on these same themes. The first was one of the periodic con- ventions organized in France by the group studying écrits du for privé.32 The other was the Exploratory Workshop financed by the European Science Foundation which was held in May at Bordeaux.33 This seminar looked at the possibility of setting up an European research group to take on the systematic analysis, and at least for some nations the census, of memory texts written in the first person. The occasion brought together scholars from twelve countries, who having established the convergence of their interests decided to join forces and elaborate a project to propose to the European Research Council. Since then, still other conferences have followed almost regularly in differ- ent European countries in order to deepen, update, and enlarge the study of an impressive bulk of writing which can literally be detected all over the European continent. The informal European research group now comprises some 12 western and eastern countries Some of these countries started earlier, some later; some already have their national censuses of such documents, some not yet (above all for financial problems). But all the researchers involved agree that this topic should be analyzed in depth at a comparative level. Three of these countries (Italy, France, Germany) will discuss such topics in three dis- tinct meetings which will be held in 2013–2015.34 And these workshops will
30 R. Pasta (ed.), Scritture dell’io tra pubblico e privato (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009). 31 M. Caffiero and M.I. Venzo (eds.), Scritture di donne. La memoria restituita, Atti del con- vegno (Roma, 23–24 marzo 2004) (Rome: Viella, 2007). 32 See now S. Mouysset, J.-P. Bardet and F.-J. Ruggiu (eds.) “Car c’est moy que je peins”. Écritures de soi, individu et liens sociaux (Europe, XVe-XXe siècles) (Paris-Toulouse: CNRS – Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 2010). 33 “Ego-documents in European Context. First-person writings in Europe from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the twentieth century,” ESF Exploratory Workshop (Bordeaux, 21–25 May 2008), convened by F.-J. Ruggiu (University of Bordeaux, and now Paris IV). 34 It is the Trilateral conference of Villa Vigoni (Loveno di Menaggio, Como) about “Les écrits à la première personne en Europe de la fin du XVe siècle au XIX siècle. Une enquête au prisme de la recherché allemande, française et italienne,” financed by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Ecole de Sciences de l’Homme and Centro di Studi Italo- Tedesco. The limitation to these countries is only due to financing opportunities which privilege the collaboration of researchers from these language areas.
35 See now F.-J. Ruggiu (ed.), The use of first person writings. Africa, America, Asia, Europe. Les usages des écrits du for privé. Afrique, Amerique, Asie, Europe (Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2013).
36 A. Baggerman, R. Dekker, “Otto’s Watch. Enlightenment, Virtue, and Time in the Eighteenth Century,” in A. Immel and M. Witmore (eds.), Childhood and Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550–1800 (New York, 2006), pp. 277–305; Baggerman, Dekker and Mascuch (eds.), Controlling Time and Shaping the Self. 37 “Selbstzeugnisse in transkultureller Perspektive,” DFG Forschergruppe 530 (website http:// www.fu-berlin.de/dfg-fg/fg530/): G. Jancke and C. Ulbrich (eds.), Von Individuum zur Person. Neue Konzepte im Spannungsfeld von Autobiographietheorie und Selbstzeugnisforschung (Göttingen, 2005); A. Bähr, P. Burschel and G. Jancke (eds.), Räume des Selbst. Selbstzeugnisforschung Transkulturell (Köln, 2007). 38 E.H. Erikson, Young Man Luther. A study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1958).
Writers of family books in Florence used varying titles for their works. One title frequently applied to this genre is that of ricordi, or ricordanze.1 But what in effect are the Florentine ricordanze? Private ricordanze2 are the evolution of what were more specifically the account books of the medieval merchants as early as the end of the 13th cen tury in Florence.3 In the beginning they were writings more properly tied to the merchants’ activities (mercatura) and a direct document of the company, encompassing a broad range of types from “books of debtors and creditors,” books of purchases, inventory books, etc. A common denominator of many of these records was the listing of the date, name, indication of debt or credit (“de’ dare,” “de’ avere”), of payment made or received, and accompanied by the monetary value. The first natural evolution of these records is in that which brings the individual to compile books in which they distinguish their per sonal wealth from that of the company or business, in which they record data relative to their land holdings or other aspects of the management of their
1 If we take into consideration the bulk of the writings of a family I have studied in depth for the 14th–15th century, the Castellani, while the register written by both Vanni di ser Lotto and Michele, the family’s oldest authors known, have no title (the beginning records recite “scri veremo,” or “ci ò scrite,” “tutte le conpere” – “we will write,” or “I have written” “all the pur chases”), the word “ricordanze” appears in the incipits of three books, the ones by Michele and messer Michele, and the first one by Francesco (begun respectively in 1354, 1429 and 1436). The same word does not appear in Francesco’s second book, which has “Quaternuccio e giornale” in the incipit and “Giornaletto” in its cover. See below, chap. 5. 2 I use this term here, instead of “family books,” preferred for these sources by other authors, because it seems to me that its use (especially if every time accompanied by specifications) gives a better idea of the particular nature of Florentine sources, whose features (steps in evolution, relationship with other writings which are not family oriented, etc.) run the risk of blurring into the otherwise excellent “gender” name used for the first time by Cicchetti and Mordenti. On family books in general see below. 3 Several precocious examples of such account books can be found in the two collections of 13th century documents edited by Schiaffini and Castellani. See A. Schiaffini (ed.), Testi fio- rentini del Dugento e dei primi del Trecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1954 [repr.]); A. Castellani (ed.), Nuovi testi fiorentini del Dugento, 2 vols. with continuing numeration (Florence: Sansoni, 1952).
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004270756_003
4 See for example the texts by Lapo Riccomanni (1281–1297) and Vese Genovesi (1294– 1298) in Castellani (ed.), Nuovi testi fiorentini, pp. 519, 531, 536, 539, 541–544, 548, 553, 647–648. 5 In the text by Guido dell’Antella (1299–1312) (Castellani [ed.], Nuovi testi fiorentini, pp. 804– 812), about which see also Pandimiglio, “Ricordanza e libro di famiglia,” p. 15. 6 Ibid. 7 See below. 8 Some of them are kept in the most important university libraries in the United States: Harvard (Houghton Library), Yale (the so called “Spinelli papers” fund), Chicago (Newberry Library), Cornell. For numbers see below, chap. 9, p. 185 and note 3.
An important component of these books is their structure. The incipit, where the author declares his intent, gives us the original title, the list of registers with the same purpose (often distinguished by letters: ricordanze “A,” “B,” etc.) or other physical characteristics (the color and form of the cover), which some times indicate how the book is organized. The books are often divided into func tional sections and the author states that he will dedicate, for example, the first part to one subject and the second to another. In most of the cases in which the distinction is explicit, one of the sections is for “debtors and creditors” and the other for “notes on other things,” “ my records and more,” ricordanze.9 The more interesting part, at least for the student of family books, is often that called “Ricordanze,” even though in some cases this indicated the title already inscribed on the cover when the author purchased the register from the Florentine stationer (this occurred above all in the 15th century).10 A common form of registration is the so-called “record,” a portion of the text physically separated from the others of the same type and usually dedi cated to a single content or similar types of content (the unifying factor was almost always the economic aspects of the transaction). The record is often introduced by the formula “ricordo che.”11 As noted above, in many cases this is followed by a name, the description of an action (purchase, sale, a loan made or received), accompanied by the indication of a payment, or a debit or credit and followed by the (repeated in the margin) monetary value. Once the partita (this is the technical term used in the account books, carrying the etymological sense of “division,” even physical, of the page) was closed, the
9 See Archivio di Stato, Florence (henceforth: ASF), Carte strozziane, V s., 15, fol. 1r (Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi, cit. in G. Cherubini, “I libri di ricordanze come fonte sto rica,” in Id., Scritti toscani. L’urbanesimo medievale e la mezzadria [Florence: Salimbeni, 1991], pp. 269–287: 280); Francesco di Matteo Castellani, Ricordanze, 2 vols., ed. by G. Ciappelli (Florence: Olschki, 1992–1995), I, Ricordanze “A” (1436–1459), p. 63; ASF, Corp. sopp., 95, 212, fol. 1r (Bernardo Rinieri). 10 See F. Allegrezza, “La diffusione di un nuovo prodotto di bottega. Ipotesi sulla confezione dei libri di famiglia a Firenze nel Quattrocento,” Scrittura e civiltà 15 (1991), pp. 247–265; L. Pandimiglio, “Titoli e ricordanze,” LdF 2, n. 4 (1990), pp. 4–11; Id., “La memoria di Lionardo Morelli (1476–1539) figlio e padre,” in Bastia, Bolognani, Pezzarossa (eds.), La memoria e la città, pp. 151–233. 11 Originally the formula alternated not only with “ricordanza che” and “ricordanza sia,” but also with “memoria che” or “memoria sia.” As I have stressed elsewhere (see below, chap. 3), alternating forms make clear that even the formula “ricordo che” is not the beginning of a sentence in the first person (I remember that), but is rather the enuncia tion of a “ricordo” (reminiscence) as a noun. See also Pandimiglio, “Titoli e ricordanze,” p. 8, according to whom “ricordo” means “fatto da ricordare”.
12 On the importance of the notarial model for ricordanze, and on the similarities between the two kinds of document, see above all A. Petrucci, “Introduzione” to A. Petrucci (ed.), Il libro di ricordanze dei Corsini (1362–1457) (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1965), pp. LXIV–LXVII. 13 U. Tucci, “Il documento del mercante,” in Civiltà comunale: libro, scrittura, documento (Genova: Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 1989), pp. 541–565. 14 For rights on real estate and money there is a growing importance of the family patri mony’s forms of transmission, since it is from family patrimony that authors often draw inspiration for a definition of the family’s collective identity, and thus they try with all means to avoid property division and dispersion. As to political rights, see below.
15 See Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli, Ricordi, ed. by V. Branca (Florence: Le Monnier, 19692; ed. or. 1956) and Petrucci (ed.), Il libro di ricordanze dei Corsini. 16 See F. Pezzarossa, “La memorialistica fiorentina tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Rassegna di studi e testi,” Lettere italiane 31 (1979), pp. 63–90; Id., “La tradizione fiorentina della memorialistica”. 17 An expression of this trend is the limited circulation document “Proposte di norme edito riali per la collana La memoria familiare” (on which see Ugolino di Niccolò Martelli, Ricordanze dal 1433 al 1483, ed. by F. Pezzarossa [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1989], p. 63), now published by R. Mordenti in Ldf. Bollettino della ricerca sui libri di fami- glia 1, n. 2–3 (1989), pp. 5–61.
18 See Cicchetti and Mordenti, “La scrittura dei libri di famiglia,” pp. 1117–1118n; Eid., I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, pp. 115–119 and the Appendix at pp. 121–193, which represents “un primo elenco di libri di famiglia editi, o di loro frammenti, o di loro tracce” drawn up using mainly “i testi meno noti e in genere quelli non toscani” (p. 121). See now also Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II. 19 The definition, never proposed again as such by the two authors in the aforementioned essays (where they apply what they call a “tâtonnement testuale,” a “procedimento insie mistico”: see Cicchetti and Mordenti, “La scrittura,” pp. 1128–1129), had been introduced in a former, limited circulation, essay: Eid., I “libri di famiglia” (problemi di storiografia letteraria e metodologia della ricerca) [Materiali per la didattica e la ricerca 1] (Rome, 1983). 20 A. Asor Rosa, “Introduzione” to Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, p. XXI (and in general pp. XX–XXII). 21 See E. Sestan, “La famiglia nella società del Quattrocento” (1972), now in Id., Italia comu- nale e signorile (Florence: Le Lettere, 1989), pp. 245–272: 246–247.
22 On Lucca see the recent P. Paradisi (ed.), Il libro memoriale di Donato. Testo in volgare luc- chese della fine del Duecento (Lucca, 1989) and A. Capitanio, “Un libro di conti di un orafo lucchese trecentesco,” Rivista d’Arte 40 (1988), pp. 333–356. On Arezzo, besides the text analyzed by G. Cherubini, “La proprietà fondiaria di un mercante toscano del Trecento (Simo d’Ubertino d’Arezzo),” now in Id., Signori, contadini, borghesi. Ricerche sulla società italiana del Basso Medioevo (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1974), pp. 313–392, see several examples in the fund “Testatori” of the Fraternita dei Laici (see A. Antoniella [ed.], L’Archivio della Fraternita dei Laici di Arezzo, Introd. storica e inventario (Florence, 1985– 1989), II, pp. 453–492 [1314–16th cent.], passim). On Siena see G. Cherubini, “Dal libro di ricordi di un notaio senese del Trecento,” in Id., Signori, contadini, borghesi, pp. 393–425 and D. Balestracci, La zappa e la retorica. Memorie familiari di un contadino toscano del Quattrocento (Florence: Salimbeni, 1984). 23 Even Balestracci (La zappa e la retorica, p. 4) admits that the extant Sienese books are no more than a couple of dozens. 24 “This characterization shows up clearly if from the context of merchants’ writings one passes to consider in general the whole range of private writings, and namely the ver nacular ones”: P. Cammarosano, Italia medievale. Struttura e geografia delle fonti scritte (Rome: Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1991), p. 284. 25 “We find that boys and girls learning to read are from eight to ten thousand; boys learning abacus and arithmetic, in six schools, are from 1,000 to 1,200; and those learning Latin and logic, in four great schools, from 550 to 600”: Giovanni Villani, Cronaca, XI, 94; D. Herlihy
Such a long and consistent tradition, and need for literacy were the basis for the production of practical writings that in the end concerned family life. But the urge for this production came from a need that was even more specific: to demonstrate, above and beyond the patrimonial and economic rights men tioned above, more precisely the political rights which in a mobile society like Florence’s could be justified by a family history of public office-holding. Later these same motives would give rise to another typically Florentine source: the constantly updated and systematic repertories of the various families’ occupa tions of the highest posts in the republican administration, the prioristi. This did not hold true in other situations. In a seigneurial regime the signore himself determined the criteria for the distribution of political favors. In a dif ferent republican city like Venice, the governing class was, unlike in Florence, defined a priori.26 In both cases the noble families did not need to demonstrate their status or rights by private writings. In respect to other Tuscan situations in which there were similar political regimes, if the basic practical motives for keeping records were closer to the Florentine, the memory books did not take on full legal value as in Florence, and this in part influenced both their production and conservation.27 Legal demonstration of one’s own past was instead a definite requirement for the Florentine patrician: so much so that the ricordanze and prioristi com piled in the Republican period were still used in the 18th century as proof in the hearings for family ennoblement.28 And not only for the patriciate, but for anyone intending to participate in the city’s public life: for whoever had citi zenship, whether by residence or by census (as we will see later). We have noted that while not all the ricordanze are family books, all the Florentine family books were, originally, ricordanze. Even when they are not explicitly concerned with the family the private ricordanze are in any case important family historical sources; when they are explicitly intended as fam ily records, they are even more important. Very often the author began his diary at an important moment in his life: marriage or emancipation, unless he was recounting news of a deceased father
and C. Klapisch-Zuber, Les toscans et leurs familles. Une étude du catasto florentin de 1427 (Paris: EHESS, 1978), p. 563. 26 See G. Ciappelli, “Commentary” to the section “Consciousness and Representation,” in A. Molho, K. Raaflaub, J. Emlen (eds.), City-states in classical antiquity and medieval Italy. Athens and Rome, Florence and Venice (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1991), pp. 121–131: 129. 27 See the explanation offered by Balestracci, La zappa e la retorica, p. 4, and shared by F. Pezzarossa, “Libri di famiglia e filologia,” Filologia e critica 12 (1987), pp. 63–90: 69. 28 See Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia e storia del patriziato”.
29 See, in the case of the Castellani family, the examples of Michele di Vanni di ser Lotto (who starts his book when his father dies) and Francesco (who starts his ricordanze in coincidence with his marriage): below, chap. 5. 30 The “archetype” for the creation of sections specifically dedicated to such matters is pre cisely the first book entitled “ricordanze,” the one by Guido dell’Antella (1299–1312), where the author describes his own birth and his working experience at fol. 3r, and his legitimate and illegitimate children at fol. 3v, while in the following fol. his son registers notes about his father’s and mother’s death, his marriage, his children births, his sister’s marriage. See Castellani (ed.), Nuovi testi fiorentini, pp. 804–806. For later examples see ASF, Carte stroz ziane, II s., 9, fols. 28v, 90v, 112r (ricordanze by Luca da Panzano, 1406–1461: see now A. Molho and F. Sznura [eds.], “Brighe, affanni, volgimenti di stato”. Le ricordanze quattro- centesche di Luca di Matteo di messer Luca dei Firidolfi da Panzano [Florence: Sismel, 2010], pp. 53–54, 179–181, 225); Martelli, Ricordanze, pp. 208–210, 223. See also G. Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze. I Castellani di Firenze nel Tre-Quattrocento (Florence: Olschki, 1995), pp. 112–113. 31 See many of C. Klapisch-Zuber’s essays cited in the bibliography below. 32 See G. Duby, “Introduction” to P. Ariès and G. Duby (eds.), A history of private life, Engl. transl., II (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 3–31;
M.S. Mazzi, “Civiltà, cultura o vita materiale?” (1985), now in Ead., Vita materiale e ceti subalterni nel Medioevo (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1991), pp. 3–31. To the bibliogra phy in the few following notes one may add now the works cited below, chap. 13, notes 49 and 51. 33 See G. Pinto, “Le fonti documentarie bassomedievali,” in Problemi di storia dell’alimentazione nell’Italia medievale, monographic issue of Archeologia medievale 8 (1981), pp. 39–58. 34 See also Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, chap. 5. 35 See R.A. Goldthwaite, “The Renaissance Economy. The preconditions for luxury con sumption,” in Aspetti della vita economica medievale (Florence: Università degli Studi di Firenze, 1985), pp. 659–675, and a synthesis of the criticisms of his view in A. Molho, “Fisco ed economia a Firenze alla vigilia del Concilio,” Archivio Storico Italiano 148 (1990), pp. 807–844: 816–819. 36 See in particular Klapisch-Zuber, La famiglia e le donne.
37 On dowries in general see A. Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), and also Id., “Tamquam vere mortua. Le professioni religiose femminili nella Firenze del tardo Medioevo,” Società e storia 12 (1989), pp. 1–44 on female religious professions. 38 See F. Pezzarossa, “Non mi peserà la penna. A proposito di alcuni contributi su scrittura e mondo femminile nel Quattrocento fiorentino,” Lettere italiane 41 (1989), pp. 250–260, who nevertheless considers exclusively letter writing. 39 The not very many texts written by women comprise, besides letters, above all account books dedicated to the administration of the hereditary patrimony in the interest of minor orphans: see the book by Nanna Peruzzi cit. below, chap. 5, and the Sienese one by Bartolomea widow of Girolamo di Domenico cited in A. Petrucci and L. Miglio, “Alfabetizzazione e organizzazione scolastica nella Toscana del Medioevo,” in S. Gensini (ed.), La Toscana nel secolo XIV. Caratteri di una civiltà regionale (Pisa: Pacini, 1988), pp. 465–484: 477–480. Even when the destination of such texts is not so specific, the female author is often a widow who writes in place of her dead husband (see the “libro A” by Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi cited in A. Macinghi Strozzi, Lettere di una gentildonna fiorentina del secolo XV ai figliuoli esuli, ed. by C. Guasti [Florence, 1877 and repr. 1972], pp. XL, 62 and passim; on it see also above, note 9). The need for widows to endorse male roles had already been stressed by C. Klapisch-Zuber, “Le chiavi fiorentine di Barbablù: l’apprendimento della lettura a Firenze nel XV secolo,” Quaderni storici 19 (1984), n. 57, pp. 765–792: 782.
I, Filigno di Conte de’ Medici, seeing the past fortunes of internal and external wars, and the deadly plagues that Our Lord God has sent and we fear will send…I will record the things of the past that I see can be neces sary that you who remain or come after me know, so that you may find them if you need to…41
Here the familial and patrimonial scope is clear. But Filigno goes on even more explicitly:
I pray again that you not only keep what you have, but conserve the status acquired in the past, which is great and was greater…42
40 See below, chap. 3. 41 The text continues: “And I pray you that you preserve the lands and houses you will find in this book…and that you take care of and keep this book in a secret place, so as it does not fall in the hands of strangers, and because you might need it in the future as now we need it, since we are obliged to find documents one hundred years old for reasons you will find written ahead, because people’s conditions change and are not stable”: G. Biondi de’ Medici Tornaquinci (ed.), Libro di memorie di Filigno de’ Medici, transcr. by B. Santi (Florence: S.P.E.S., 1981), p. 6. 42 “And today, God may be praised, we are about fifty men. And note that since I was born more than one hundred men of our family died, and few of their families are still existing, and today we are in a bad way as for children, that is we have few. I will write this book in several parts, and first I will put some facts of our ancestors that you will be delighted in knowing; secondly, I will put down what I will be able to know about documents, dowries, payments, arbitration agreements. Then I will put all the purchases and the notaries; then I will put all the houses and lands we possess, with their boundaries”: ibid., p. 7.
“Keep the status”: this is one of the principal functions that Florentine citi zens assign to their ricordanze, even when this motivation is only implicit. Even at this chronological point (1373) the model represented by it is common and extremely conscious, even if it is destined to know a greater diffusion, if not in the same way for every class or individual. Its use becomes general ized in the period that terminates with the so-called “oligarchic” phase; beginning in 1434 probably sees a deviation, and while it spreads among the classes formerly not directly interested in managing power, stimulated by the different social “mobility” of the late Medici phase, it narrows at least its func tion for those families that can no longer participate in public leadership as they had been used to. Beginning under the Medici regime in the 15th century, ever more numerous groups of Florentines realized that participation in politics was limited, and depended not only on one’s class but whether one belonged to the ruling faction (a tendency that will become even more clear in the 16th century under the Duchy and Grand Duchy, when political privilege will be ever more directly tied to enjoyment of the Duke’s favor). At this point, many ricordanze develop either in a more chronicle-like or external way, or more internally, but by now lack a more general function. The ricordanze of citizens like Landucci or Masi, small artisans with no direct relation to the power centers, in effect imitate a model that does not for them have a role comparable to the past or for other Florentine families that knew they would be able to use the data they were recording in their books to political advantage.43 It is for this reason that very early on, more or less mid-fourteenth century, the ricordanze began to include long lists of political offices held by members of the family. Even the records kept of political events are often closely tied to office-holding on the part of the writer.44 And this is also the reason why the
43 Landucci’s diary, for selection of materials and style of writing, can be surely classified as a “cronaca cittadina scritta in forma diaristica” (Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, p. 159), even though its beginning has (pp. 1–8, until the author’s marriage) features which are specifically proper to ricordanze. 44 Marco Parenti, for example, is “proposto” of the Signoria when he registers in his book the news of the Peace of Lodi (1454); Dietisalvi Neroni is a member of the judicial magistracy of the Otto di guardia when he writes about the “parlamento” (general assembly of the people in front of the Signoria palace) of September 1434; others, when they write about their office-holding experience of public posts, feel the need to state that in their period of office nothing exceptional happened, thus confirming an annalistic kind of model which links memory of specific events to the public officials in charge at that time. See below, chap. 3.
45 See also Pezzarossa, Introduction to Martelli, Ricordanze, p. 48, who stresses that “We are not at all in front of diaries, of the intimate development of individual experiences which the pre-romantic period made familiar to us. We are dealing with collections of docu ments with the function of demonstrating and cataloging material data, aimed at social and economic purposes”. 46 See below, chap. 5.
The following generation, working entirely in the “oligarchic” period domi nated by the Albizzi faction, of which the Castellani were authoritative mem bers, has left no examples of ricordanze that would let us follow the development of the writing model. We are, however, certain that the tradition continued, and that ricordi were kept, at least by Matteo di Michele, and probably also by the other brothers. The existence of the administration book of Matteo’s inher itance, compiled by his widow Giovanna, also testifies – if nothing else – to the success of the model also among the female and acquired members of the fam ily (even though there were the limiting factors that we have already men tioned, that in general mark women’s written products).47 In the course of the next generation, the fourth after the writings under examination, the model for the ricordanze seems to divide: Michele, son of Matteo’s brother Vanni, goes on to keep a hyper-specialized register of his prin cipal activities (with the occasional mention of family matters) in the first quarter of the fifteenth century in one of the periods of greatest political activ ity, and is all attentive to the public sphere.48 Matteo’s son Francesco, younger, came to the city stage (and also to that of the family: he both gained majority and was married in 1436) when the political games were already finished, due to the rise to power of the Medici (the Albizzi’s opponents) in 1434. It may be that, not having been directly affected by the exclusion measures at the begin ning, as still minor, he contemplated the possibility of involvement in public life: this is a factor that is not referred to in his ricordanze. But the financial situation in which he soon finds himself as a result of acts of the treasury soon makes clear that this terrain is tendentially off limits. The formal exclusion of himself and his descendants from public offices in 1444, as a sanction for the family’s anti-Medicean activities, closed the door.49 At this point his attention may only turn to his family, internal affairs and wealth, given that public ser vice has been forbidden to himself and his closest family members. The things that become more important for Francesco thus go all in this direction: the project of reconstructing in his person the unity of the family palace; the attempt to avoid dispersion of the real estate that had earlier been the “brand” of possession of the family. Probably all in the hope that it would be he, the wealthiest and most influential member of the Castellani, to leave the greater part of the material wealth and associated memories to following generations.
47 See ibid. 48 See ibid. 49 See Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, p. 75.
This is the reason why one of his principal early concerns, above and beyond the creation and management of a series of differentiated books that allow control of his ménage, is the creation of a “family archive,” or at least a personal archive, together with the instruments to manage a larger mass of documents which he did not necessarily possess or hold. The fact that Francesco Castellani waited years for this is proven by the proliferation of every sort of note, marginal notes, copies, of a whole series of interventions even in the writings of others (this shows also that he was used – by education, and probably by inclination – to consult law instruments and notarial documents).50 Using this key, the notes on fiscal questions that we find spread throughout Francesco’s two books of ricordi increase in significance. Francesco had prob ably completely lost hope of regaining a role in political life: he may also have lacked the vocation, but in any case, as we have seen, the continual absence for years from the borse (the bags containing the names of eligible citi zens for public offices assigned by lot), and the continued state of tax debtor make it almost impossible to continue to run even after his name was re -instated in 1466. For him the defense of the wealth inherited from his father became increasingly important – perhaps also as a compensation for damages suffered in other spheres – and thanks to his efforts it will be only partially affected.51 The lack of a direct male successor will however render his efforts futile. Perhaps even Francesco realized it, since at a certain point in his life he seems to slacken his attention to a certain kind of registration. Certainly he will not stop noting all his and his nuclear family’s economic aspects, but the fact that these diminish into notes of details of expenses diminishes the importance of the project behind the writing: this becomes less ordered and even the forms of conservation seem to lessen. It is a fact that he passes from the initial “notebook” to the quadernuccio, and then to the stracciafoglio, or the group of notes of all sizes that he more and more frequently forgot to copy out. It is like the last stage of a process of involution. The kind of writing that had accompanied the Castellani for almost two centuries seems to have no con tinuation in the century that follows the ones we have looked at. Francesco had at least posed the problem of leaving the family palace to the nucleus that was closest to him, and which seemed to him to have a greater possibility of survival. But notwithstanding a brief return to public life by the sons and
50 See ibid., chap. 3. 51 See ibid., chap. 4.
52 See ASF, Guardaroba medicea, 141, fols. 20r–25v, also cited in C. Elam, “Piazza Strozzi. Two Drawings by Baccio d’Agnolo and the Problems of a Private Renaissance Square,” I Tatti Studies 1 (1985), pp. 105–135: 112 and 130, note 39. Fourteen years after Francesco’s death, in 1508, a legal dispute for the ownership of the family palace had opposed Leone di Antonio and his son Niccolò, on one side, and Matteo di Bernardino Niccolini (Margherita Castellani’s son) on the other side. A private judgment (lodo) pronounced on 31 May had put an end to the dispute by declaring that, owing to the difficulties in easily dividing the third part of the castle which was assigned to Niccolini, this one should sell it to the two Castellani for 290 large florins (ASF, Castellani Borgherini, perg. 33). 53 After 1574 the Castellani palace became the residence of the Giudici di Ruota, who moved there from the Palazzo del Podestà and remained until 1841 (hence the current name piazza dei Giudici for piazza de’ Castellani, which the Grand-Duke Cosimo I was obliged to buy along with the palace as integral part of the property).
As Christian Bec reminds us in his work on Florentine reading, until a short time ago Italian study of books oscillated between two opposing tendencies: that of considering the book to be exclusively an individual work of art, and thus examining it in its internal and proper characteristics (typically the ten- dency of literary study); and that of considering the book mostly on its exter- nal characteristics in a bibliological way or as a “bibliophile.”1 A merit of scholars like Bec is in having underlined the importance of the book as an instrument of cultural circulation, as an instrument for knowing the mental and intellectual milieu of a society, and of having tried to establish, even for Italy, and particularly for Florence, the methodological instruments that would permit undertaking a study of the “circulation of the book” based on quantita- tive information.2 An important step was taken by Bec when he identified the mass of inventories in the fondo of the Magistrato dei Pupilli in the Florentine State Archives as an important source, and made available, by publishing the results of the systematic culling of these documents, a great quantity of mate- rial about the books in the possession of Florentines.3 This magistracy was
1 C. Bec, Les livres des Florentins (1413–1608) (Florence: Olschki, 1984), p. 8, which refers partially to A. Quondam, “Mercanzia d’onore, Mercanza d’utile. Produzione libraria e lavoro intellet- tuale a Venezia nel Cinquecento,” in A. Petrucci (ed.), Libri, editori e pubblico nell’Europa moderna. Guida storica e critica (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1977), pp. 51–104: 55. 2 For France, precociously sensitive to the methods of quantitative history, such tools have a longer tradition, mostly related to France itself and limited, until Bec’s work, to the early modern period. See the texts cited by Bec himself: L. Febvre – H.-J. Martin, L’apparition du livre (Paris: Albin Michel, 1958); F. Furet, Livre et societé dans la France du XVIIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris: Mouton, 1965–1967); H.-J. Martin, Livres, pouvoirs et societé à Paris au XVIIe siècle, 1598– 1701, 2 vols. (Genève: Droz, 1969); the three essays by French authors published in Petrucci (ed.), Libri, editori e pubblico; H.-J. Martin’s Histoire et pouvoirs de l’écrit (Paris: Perrin, 1988). Even not founded on a strictly quantitative basis, studies by anglophone scholars on the same subject are equally important, even though Bec – in spite of their more specific focus on the Renaissance – omits to mention them. One example will be sufficient: E.L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Communication and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), with ample general bibliography. 3 The publication of the items related to books which can be found in inventories (Documents, and two of the Appendices) is the larger part of Bec’s book (359 pp.): pp. 147–337. It is
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necessary to stress that Bec’s work’s value is at least weakened by the insufficient care he seems to have used in transcribing the book lists which are present in the inventories. See the remarks by A.F. Verde, “Libri tra le pareti domestiche. Una necessaria Appendice a Lo Studio Fiorentino 1473–1503,” Memorie domenicane, n.s., 18 (1987), pp. 1–225: 7–11. Bec’s “omissioni ed errori” induced Verde (who had interrupted an analogous project he had conceived in com- pletion of his work about the Studio fiorentino) to “riprendere la trascrizione dei documenti dall’originale” by completing it with specific annotations. The bulk of Verde’s long essay (pp. 40–203) is actually represented by this “new edition” of the book lists in the Pupilli regis- ters, in relation to the years 1471–1508. 4 In particular, the following periods are covered: 1386–1393; 1413–1453; 1467–1520; 1531–1793 (Bec, Les livres, p. 13). 5 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 6 Ibid., p. 20. 7 There are 131 inventories for the first half of the century, related to 779 volumes (p. 23); 75 inventories for the second half of the century, related to 785 volumes (p. 39).
8 See Bec, Les livres, p. 14 and Martin, Livres, pouvoirs et societé, p. 535; P. Barrière, La vie intel lectuelle en France du XVIe siécle a l’epoque contemporaine (Paris: Albin Michel, 1961), both cited and commented by Bec (Les livres, pp. 16–17 and notes). 9 See preceding note. 10 Bec, Les livres, p. 15. 11 See D. Herlihy, “Vieillir à Florence au Quattrocento,” Annales E.S.C. 24 (1969), pp. 1338– 1352: 1346–1347; J. Kirshner and A. Molho, “Il Monte delle Doti a Firenze dalla sua fonda zione nel 1425 alla metà del sedicesimo secolo. Abbozzo di una ricerca,” Ricerche storiche 10 (1980), pp. 21–47: 41–42 and 47. 12 See Kirshner and Molho, “Il Monte delle Doti a Firenze,” p. 42, and also C. Klapisch- Zuber, “Parenti, amici e vicini: il territorio urbano d’una famiglia mercantile nel XV secolo,” Quaderni storici 11 (1976), n. 33, pp. 953–982: 968. 13 An example can be the case which will be analyzed hereafter: Matteo Castellani, who is among the owners of books whose properties are described in the Pupilli inventories, died in 1429 leaving his 12 year-old first-born son. In 1427, in his tax declaration, he had said he was 60: see ASF, Catasto, 68, fol. 125r. In general on the “ambiguity” of book lists in the Pupilli, as related to an indeterminate past, see Verde, “Libri tra le pareti domes- tiche,” p. 6.
14 It has been said (C. Bühler, The Fifteenth century book. The scribes, the printers, the decora tors [Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960], p. 19): “Books may have been expensive, but little care seems to have been taken for their safe-guarding. The loss of manuscripts given or bequeathed to public institutions is one of the sorriest happenings in the history of libraries.” It seems, though, that this statement must refer above all to the transmission of property from a private donor to an institution, where the donated prop- erty becomes a sort of “no man’s land” in the hands of testamentary executors alien to the family, not particularly interested in its fate. For other situations it would be as legitimate to state the opposite. Where the book is a property transmitted “from father to son,” one can think that both economic and affective reasons may have converged in inducing an heir to preserve it. It is a little bit too much taken for granted – I think – that what did not reach us did not overcome the span of a generation. This is almost a nonsense. How many other objects of common use did not reach us (for the time distance which separates us from the time of their production), and nevertheless have lasted much more than the “espace d’un matin”? In a society which was careful about listing in the inventories of transmitted properties (thus, considered of some value) even used shoes and stockings and “sacche triste,” i.e. worn out, or torn, sacks (and this not only at the lowest levels of the social ladder: see e.g. the full inventories of many even ancient families which are found in the Pupilli fund), where used notebooks were used again from the reverse side in order to use the remaining sheets of paper, how can we think that a book, originally expensive (and this society had a keen sense of money’s value) could be simply disdained by heirs? Though very precise (as usual) for other respects, not even the following statement by Petrucci, about vernacular books, dispels these doubts: “The vernacular books possessed by private readers were mostly made of paper, and not of parchment, and poorly bound. Such circumstances, added to disorder and the precariousness of preservation, con- demned them to fast destruction; and in vain their possessors, in their notes, were recom- mending to keep them far from oil-lamps and children, both great enemies of books. The perishability of private middle-class collections was deeply rooted in their physical nature, their disorganization, their very smallness, the narrow link between volumes and people, which made them equal, in use and fate, to simple domestic objects” (A. Petrucci, “Le biblioteche antiche,” in Letteratura italiana, II, Produzione e consumo [Turin: Einaudi, 1983], pp. 527–554: 545–546). 15 Bec writes: “Durant les deux premiers tiers du Quattrocento, le manuscrit, produit arti- sanal, est souvent fabriqué sur commande, ce qui signifie que l’achat en est motivé par un besoin spécifique.” And later on: “Quant au livre provenant d’un heritage, dès le moment
Thus even though I share Bec’s perplexity as to the significance of the inven- tory of a large library, it is difficult to overcome the pessimism implicit in the caution advised by other scholars.16 A method such as Bec’s, apart from some observations (not only formal),17 may and must in order to paint the most convincing picture be corrected by adopting other instruments and having recourse to other types of documenta- tion. In this sense it seems to me that up to now the possible contribution that could be brought to this type of research by a systematic study of sources like the Florentine private ricordanze has not been emphasized enough. If this extraordinary mine of information about the society of its time (already under scholars’ scrutiny, both as instrument and as object of a systematic treatment) has already been pointed out in more than one study as a means of knowing
ou il est conservé, ni détruit ni vendu, il témoigne également de l’intérêt que lui porte son nouveau possesseur ou, au moins, d’une continuité culturelle qui se perpétue d’une génération a l’autre” (Lex livres, p. 16). Neither one of the statements fully considers what I tried to say in the preceding note: in a “post mortem” inventory it is impossible to distin- guish a book which has been bought from a book which has been inherited. When the book has been inherited, we must exclude that it can be destroyed by the new owner. There remains the possibility that the inherited book be sold; but if it is kept by the heir, this can happen for reasons not univocal and of a different value in relation to Bec’s expla- nations. Among these, the most convincing ones appear affective explanations, and the application of a sense of “family continuity” even to this aspect (the son’s interest for the books read by his father, in a context where it is impossible to go to the bookstore and buy an identical copy). Besides, we must consider the tendency to “preserve everything,” especially written documents, in a society which is characterized by an obsession for memory. 16 Like Martin and Barrière, cited by Bec himself (Lex livres, pp. 16–17 and note). Bec con- cludes by moderating (just in a footnote) his own thesis: “Ces réserves étant faites…nous ne pensons pas qu’il faille renoncer a notre enquéte quantitative, quitte à ne lui attribuer d’autre valeur qu’indicative: non absolue en tout cas”. 17 Soon after its publication, Bec’s book was reviewed critically by many authors. For an essential dependence on the quantitative method by M. Grendler, Renaissance Quarterly, 39 (1986), pp. 286–288, who nevertheless desired especially a simpler and shorter argu- mentation and a greater precision (as for footnotes and indexes) in the use of the tran- scribed inventories. For more substantial reasons by L. Miglio, Rivista di letteratura italiana, 3 (1985), pp. 495–503, who continues some of the themes treated by A. Petrucci, “Il libro manoscritto,” in Letteratura italiana, II, pp. 499–524, with a stress not entirely to be shared. A critical judgement on Bec’s method is also provided by F. Pezzarossa, Intersezioni, 3 (1983), pp. 183–188, in his review to C. Bec, Cultura e società a Firenze nell’età della Rinascenza (Rome: Salerno, 1981). Finally Verde, by seriously questioning the accu- racy of book list transcriptions by Bec, has implicitly undermined the reliability of the French scholar’s conclusions (see above, note 3).
18 See in particular, by the same author, C. Bec, Les marchands écrivains: affaires et culture à Florence 1375–1434 (Paris-La Haye: Mouton, 1967), the chap. “Formation intellectuelle et culture des marchands,” esp. pp. 393–415 and notes; Id., “La bibliothèque d’un grand bourgeois florentin, Francesco d’Agnolo Gaddi (1496),” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 34 (1972), pp. 239–247, now in Id., Cultura e società a Firenze, pp. 197–207 and in part in Les livres, pp. 319–323. In this last case Bec uses specifically a libro di “ricor- danze,” but mostly because this contains a three folios inventory wherein the author (Gaddi) lists the more than 200 titles of his private library. 19 For the systematic perusal of sources which can remind (in a Bolognese context) Florentine “ricordanze,” see R. Greci, “Libri e prestiti di libri in alcune biblioteche private bolognesi del sec. XV,” La Bibliofilia, 85 (1983), pp. 341–354. 20 Like R. Ridolfi, Vita di Niccolò Machiavelli (Florence: Sansoni, 19787), pp. 424 and 5–7. 21 Even though only a not superficial examination of the manuscript can tell how significant it can be for this particular purpose. As for quantity: even only the inventory of partially or integrally published texts by F. Pezzarossa, in Appendix to his “La tradizione fiorentina della memorialistica” (pp. 93–149), indexes 330 manuscripts. A census of Florentine unpublished texts until the end of the 16th century has been in the late 1980s the aim of a research team – organized into the larger inter-university research team “I libri di famiglia in Italia: inventario ed edizioni” (Ministero della P.I., ricerche 40%) – composed by Franca Allegrezza, Giovanni Ciappelli, Oretta Muzzi, Leonida Pandimiglio and Fulvio Pezzarossa. While first soundings of the existing material induced me to think that the final number of manuscripts will go beyond one thousand, my more recent estimate gives a more lim- ited figure: around 500; see below, chap. 9.
22 As will be shown by the characteristics of entries related to books in “ricordanze,” an example of which is examined in this chapter. 23 The present analysis of Francesco Castellani’s books of ricordi is part of a larger work which has found expression in their integral edition, in other essays of mine, and eventu- ally in a monograph. See now Castellani, Ricordanze, I, Ricordanze “A” (1436–1459); II, Qua ternuccio e giornale “B” (1459–1485); Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze. 24 See below. As examples it will be sufficient to cite the following studies, mostly related to humanists, statesmen, physicians or booksellers: C. Bec, “Une librairie florentine de la fin du XVe siécle,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 31 (1969), pp. 321–332; Id., “Pier Francesco Portinari homme politique et humaniste florentin du debut du XVe siécle,” Rinascimento 23, II s. (1973), pp. 219–234 (now both in Id., Cultura e società, pp. 185–197 and 208–228; the first is reprised in Les livres, pp. 325–337); Id., “La bibliothèque”; S. Caroti, “La biblioteca di un medico fiorentino: Simone di Cinozzo di Giovanni Cini,” La Bibliofilia 80 (1978), pp. 123–138; Id., “I libri di un copista del Poliziano: Lorenzo del Forbiciaio,” La Bibliofilia 81 (1979), pp. 205–222; S. Caroti – S. Zamponi (eds.), Lo scrittoio di Bartolomeo Fonzio umanista fiorentino (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1974); G. D’Adda [but published anonymously], Leonardo da Vinci e la sua libreria. Note di un bibliofilo (Milan, 1873); A. De La Mare, “The Shop of a Florentine Cartolaio in 1426,” in B. Maracchi Biagiarelli and D.E. Rhodes (eds.), Studi offerti a Roberto Ridolfi (Florence: Olschki, 1973), pp. 237–248; B. De Vecchi, “I libri di un medico umanista fiorentino del sec. XV,” La Bibliofilia 34 (1932), pp. 293–301; L. Dorez, “Recherches sur la bibliothèque de Pier Leoni médecin de Laurent le Magnifique,” Revue des bibliothèques 4 (1894), pp. 73–83; 7 (1897), pp. 81–103; V. Fanelli, “I libri di messer Palla di Nofri degli Strozzi (1372–1462),” Convivium 1 (1949), pp. 57–73; G. Fiocco, “La biblioteca di Palla Strozzi,” in Studi di bibliografia e di storia in onore di Tammaro de Marinis, 4 vols. (Verona: Valdonega, 1964), II, pp. 298–310; F. Novati, “Inventario d’una libreria fiorentina del primo Quattrocento,” Bullettino della società bibliografica italiana 1 (1898), pp. 10–12; G. Tanturli, “I Benci copisti,” Studi di filologia italiana, 36 (1978), pp. 197–313; S. Sclavi, “La biblioteca di Antonio Benivieni,” Physis 17 (1975), pp. 255–268.
Albizzi faction, his destiny was marked principally by the events following Cosimo de’ Medici’s return from exile. After 1434, instead of taking up – as was the family tradition and possibilities – a political career in his father’s foot- steps, the sanctions that hit first his family and second his fiscal debt will keep him far from the “offices” until his death in 1494. Blessed with considerable wealth (he was sole heir to his father’s estate, estimated at 14,000 florins in 1427), he will not exercise – even in virtue of his rank of knight, which he also inherited – any activity beyond the administration of his real estate (and his wealth, because of heavy taxation, will be seriously reduced over the years).25 He married twice, to Ginevra di Palla Strozzi and Lena di Boccaccino Alamanni, but had no male offspring to carry on his branch.26 When his father died in 1429 Francesco Castellani was not yet twelve.27 This is why we have, also for him, an inventory from the Magistrato dei Pupilli.28 Seven volumes are noted in it: two on religious subjects (a Bible in vernacular and a “book of Our Lady”), two classical authors (Cicero, De amicitia; Statius, Achilleides), one identified only as St. Prosper of Aquitaine (probably the Chronicon of the world from the beginning to 455 ad), one book almost certainly by a medieval author (seven signatures of a “chronicle,” perhaps by Giovanni Villani) and one technical work (“of noteria”: on notary’s craft).29 In truth it is difficult to believe that a man like Matteo Castellani, a member of an illustrious family prominent in the pre-Medicean Florentine oligarchy, who had been one of the leaders of the city’s political life during a crucial phase of its own government and in foreign relations, holding public office for about thirty years, could have left a cultural inheritance of only seven books, of which one was a prayer book.30 Nevertheless, keeping in mind the usual reservations on the relationship possession/knowledge (in both senses) this slim list should
25 See G. Ciappelli, “Il cittadino fiorentino e il fisco alla fine del Trecento e nel corso del Quattrocento: uno studio di due casi,” Società e storia 12 (1989), pp. 823–872. 26 See Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 72, 77, 93–94; Castellani, Ricordanze, I, pp. 67, 116–117. 27 See ibid., p. 69. 28 See ASF, Pupilli, 164, fol. 56r, and 168, fols. 265v, 266v. Both lists are published in Bec, Les livres, pp. 166 and 179. The “Bibbia in volghare, in charta di pechora” is only in the second list published by Bec. Actually in the original document it is, separated from the other books, even in the first list (see ASF, Pupilli, 164, fol. 54v). 29 We have used Bec’s own classification in order to facilitate comparisons (see Bec, Les livres, pp. 22–23). 30 Actually Matteo Castellani had been both Prior and Gonfaloniere of Justice, had taken part in a score of embassies and had been commissioner of the Florentine Republic in war, besides having been appointed to several minor offices, “intrinseci” (into the direct
administration of Florence) and “estrinseci” (in the territory). See still Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 66–67, 210–212. 31 To the perplexities expressed by Bec (Les livres, p. 16 and note) we can add the circum- stance that, if in a group of people the lending of books is frequent (and we will see that this is the case), it is impossible, in the absence of very specific and difficult double checks, account for loaned books which have not been returned to their owner. 32 Actually Bec classifies as “little” all the libraries with 6 to 10 books; “of very little impor- tance” libraries with 1 to 5 books; “modest” with 11 to 20 books; “middling” with 21 to 30 books; “big” beyond 30 books. See Bec, Les livres, pp. 20–22. 33 See the statements by Bec, Les livres, pp. 14 and 29. 34 See ibid., p. 23. The datum is valid provided that we also reckon the “libro di nostra donna,” a kind of book (see below, note 66) that Bec – for its characteristics – does not consider in his statistics (see accordingly Verde’s remarks on Bec’s omitting to transcribe purely quan- titative information of book lists: Verde, “Libri tra le pareti domestiche,” p. 8). On the contrary it is possible to classify such a book as “di argomento religioso.” Actually, Bec himself reckons it as such, when citing Matteo Castellani, in the Table where he estab- lishes a relationship between social level and quantity of owned books (see Bec, Les livres, p. 125). 35 As it also results from the general tone of his speeches in the Republic Consulte (the con- sultive meetings of the government) (see G.A. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977], pp. 306, 349, 350, 384, 397, 411, 412, 424–425, 458; see also Giovanni Cavalcanti, Istorie fiorentine, ed. by G. Di Pino [Milan: Martello, 1940], p. 54). 36 See C. Calvani, Castellani, Matteo, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XXV (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1980), pp. 630–632 (630): “forte di una notevole
preparazione culturale (il Bec lo cita come lettore appassionato delle opere coeve, tra cui il De re uxoria di Francesco Barbaro)”. 37 See Bec, Les marchands écrivains, p. 363. 38 See ibid., p. 299. 39 See ASF, Carte Strozziane, III s., CXII, 158. 40 The letter was actually written on 24 February 1434 (1433 Florentine style). Bec wrongly interprets the date, which is “VI K. mar.” (the sixth day before March Kalendae), and tran- scribes it as “VII maii.” This means, taking into account the complications deriving from the Florentine style of calendar, not postponing the actual date by just two months, but anticipating it by almost one year. In any case, Matteo Castellani was dead in September 1429 (see Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, p. 29; and Giovanni Cambi, Istorie fiorentine, in I. Di San Luigi (ed.), Delizie degli eruditi toscani (Florence: 1770–1789), XX–XXIII: XX, 1785, pp. 176–177). What probably induced the French scholar’s mistake is the fact that Francesco signs “F. Matheus,” and Bec did not consider the “F”. 41 Even though he is active above all in the political field: see Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 65–68. 42 See above, note 36, and Bec, Les marchands écrivains, p. 299. 43 See Bec, Les livres, p. 30. Actually Cicero is in a good position among the choices of people sharing the general climate of “Florentina libertas”’s defenders, and not only of humanists strictly considered (ibid., p. 33).
The letter attributed to Matteo on the other hand gives us the certainty that Francesco borrowed De re uxoria by Francesco Barbaro (written 1415–1416) from Matteo Strozzi.44 This fact is not surprising, either. On the one hand, the Castellani were close to the Strozzi45 and Francesco himself married Ginevra di Messer Palla di Nofri Strozzi, himself a humanist and collector of manu- scripts, besides being in opposition to Cosimo de’ Medici. On the other hand, in an era in which artisanal production of books kept prices very high, and numbers low, loaning was a very common way of circulation, especially within a circle of persons having a reason to nurture relations of reciprocal trust (and this was true, at least for the motives mentioned above, for Francesco Castellani and Matteo Strozzi).46 It is thus the young Castellani who is open, following in the wake of the “in-law” Strozzi, to reading the humanists. Apart from this epi- sode documented by a letter, our knowledge of Francesco Castellani’s reading would end here, because he took care to live a long seventy-seven years, when his children were far past the “pupilli” stage. At this point we are aided by two surviving books of ricordi that he compiled between 1436 and 1485. The special characteristic of this sort of source lets us discover, among other things, the effective use of books and increase the specifications: beyond the content, cover description, and price, kept here in a form that was no less precise than those used by the less approximate compilers of inventories. In truth, the first of these, marked “A,” has few references: books are present on two occasions and on two close dates. On 15 July 1447 Francesco acquired from the curator of Antonio Bellacci’s inheritance a not better specified “Virgil” for 7 florins and a “Justin and Suetonius” for 4 florins.47 On 16 April 1448, he returned to Vespasiano “stationer in front of the Badia,” who is in fact Vespasiano da Bisticci, a volume “in papyrus” containing the “Orations of Tullius” that he had
44 Paolo Orvieto (“Castellani, Francesco,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XXV, pp. 620– 621), who does not cite Bec in his bibliography, draws the opposite (and wrong) conclu- sion from the same letter: “From one of his letters one draws in fact that already in that period many distinguished Florentines used to turn in person – as Strozzi did – to Castellani, or were addressing their dearest friends to him, so as to borrow books of every kind, but above all the manuscripts of works which were difficult to find” (p. 620). 45 Michele di Vanni Castellani, Francesco’s grandfather, had married Lionarda di Carlo Strozzi in 1379; Giovanni di Michele, Francesco’s uncle, had married Lena di Nofri di Palla Strozzi in 1384 (see Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 24, 33, 164). 46 What follows will make clear how much the custom of personal and mutual lending of books could be diffused, and how much it can put in doubt analyses mostly based on “post mortem” inventories of private libraries. See below, notes 88–104 and context. 47 See Castellani, Ricordanze, I, pp. 104–105.
48 Ibid., p. 111. 49 See above. Even though the works titles are not specified, the alternative for Suetonius is between De vita Caesarum and De viris illustribus; “Giustino” is almost surely Justin’s epit- ome of Pompeius Trogus’s Historiae Philippicae. 50 But also in Roman history, as we have seen with what is probably St. Prosper of Aquitaine’s Chronicon. 51 This, among other things, finds an explanation in Francesco’s experience, as he was excluded since 1444 from participation in public offices because involved in the bans that hit “antimedicean” families that coalesced against Cosimo in 1433 (see Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, p. 75). 52 See Bec, Les livres, pp. 30 and 44. 53 In 1448 he had married (in his second marriage) Lena Alamanni, after Ginevra Strozzi’s death in 1444: Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 76–77. 54 See Castellani, Ricordanze, II, p. 48. He will lend it again to him 14 months later (on 31 December 1461): this time the book will be kept for a shorter time, and Francesco’s entry specifies that it had been kept by “messer Luigi da Orveto Capitano del Popolo”: either Andrea had in his turn lent it to somebody else, or he had from the beginning asked for the book in behalf of this official (ibid., p. 209).
55 Ibid., p. 52. 56 Ibid., p. 63. 57 Ibid. 58 On the relationships between the poet Luigi Pulci and Francesco Castellani (which pro- duced many wrong statements by some literary historians so far) the first historical study to which all the later authors refer is C. Carnesecchi, “Per la biografia di Luigi Pulci,” Archivio Storico Italiano 17, V s. (1896), pp. 371–379, who draws all the information he treats from Francesco’s ricordi. On Francesco’s relationships with Lorenzo the Medici (it is a commonplace that it was Francesco who introduced Luigi Pulci into the Medici palace), see my perplexities in Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 84–86. 59 Castellani, Ricordanze, II, p. 70. 60 Ibid., p. 71.
61 In the Pupilli inventory it was described as “seven quinternions of chronicle, in vellum”. 62 See ASF, Pupilli, 168, fol. 265v. 63 Castellani, Ricordanze, II, p. 70. 64 See E. Garin (ed.), Il pensiero pedagogico dell’umanesimo (Florence: Giuntine-Sansoni, 1958), pp. 99–101. According to Orvieto, “Castellani, Francesco,” p. 621, it would be “proba- bly a collection of passages or sentences of various authors, or maybe a treatise of metrics and prosody.” But he uses almost the same words as Carnesecchi, “Per la biografia di Luigi Pulci,” p. 378: apparently he did no further research about that. 65 Castellani, Ricordanze, II, p. 100. 66 See Bec, Les livres, p. 25 and Klapisch-Zuber, “Le chiavi fiorentine di Barbablù,” p. 776. These books, considered “plus des livres-objets précieux que des livres proprement dits” are not included by Bec in his statistics. 67 In his 1458 tax declaration we find a debt of 15 florins with the miniaturist ser Benedetto di Salvestro; the payment of the full debt with ser Benedetto da Pistoia “for partial
I spoke with my friend of the Trionfi, he says he will take it, but wants to know the price; so let me know what you can do. And then I said that I had a person who could write a Dante in good ancient script if he liked. He said yes and promised to pay down two large florins, but says that he wants good script, so inform me also of the quinternions needed and I will order everything; and tell me also the money, which you will have tomorrow or the day after. And he also said that he wants it in italic hand on bambagina paper La cacciata del Duca d’Atene, so if you write it as well it would be good. Now, since my friend wants these things for a small friend of his, please note below what is to be done, and I will make the order, but I don’t want Lione to know about it. And you are to tell no one.
At the bottom is the reply, as if the same sheet served for both: “I said that I had a couple of Trionfi, on bambagina paper, well and correctly written. They are worth four lire: they are in truth by a friend, so I could get them for three and a half lire. If he wanted a couple by my hand the cost will be one large florin. As for the Dante I can’t write just now. I could start it and finish it later into the castle.69
payment of the Bible he illuminated” is in the “libro B”: see ASF, Catasto 798, fol. 152r; Castellani, Ricordanze, II, p. 197. Benedetto di Salvestro is a priest (he is a priest in the church of San Giovanni in 1445) who works as illuminator between 1445 and 1473, for which we do not dispose of a precise biography. The Opera del Duomo will pay to him 25 lire in 1457 for the partial illumination of two antiphonaries. Other sources did not stress his provenance from Pistoia, and have described him as definitely Florentine. See D.E. Colnaghi, A Dictionary of Florentine Painters from the 13th to the 17th Century (London: John Lane, 1928), p. 38 and M. Levi D’Ancona, Miniature e miniatori a Firenze dal XIV al XV secolo (Florence: Olschki, 1962), pp. 65–67. 68 Actually, not only Francesco was exchanging letters with his cousin, as it is possible to draw from a group of letters preserved in ASF, Corp. Sopp, 90, 132, fols. n.n., but the letter handwriting is very similar to Antonio di Niccolò’s hand. Moreover, the “Lione” cited in the letter is most likely Leone di Antonio Castellani, Niccolò’s brother. 69 That is during the office of “castellano” or Captain of one of the castles of the Florentine domain. Normally the office lasted six months (see G. Guidi, Il governo della città repub blica di Firenze, 3 vols. [Florence: Olschki, 1981], III, p. 246).
I will come by and tell you the price in person.”70 We are not able to identify as Francesco Castellani this person who was never named. It is a fact that the son of the cousin speaks of “a friend,” but is also true that he does not wish to name him. In fact the document is in a “group of papers” all of which have to do with Francesco Castellani or his family and were passed on to him because he was head of the family. In any case the transaction is interesting, as it confirms that the habit of copying books by non-professional literate persons demonstrates that it was undertaken not only for pleasure, but also for gain.71 The other “extra-memory writing” reference in this list of books belonging to and/or read by Francesco Castellani is a trace – to be verified – in a book produced in his time: the Trionfo delle virtù by Bastiano Foresi,72 written to exalt Cosimo de’ Medici after his death in 1464 and dedicated to Lorenzo around the mid-1970s.73
70 ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 132, fol. n.n. 71 These considerations should be added to the analogous statements in V. Branca, Boccaccio medievale e nuovi studi sul Decameron (Florence: Sansoni, 19815), pp. 5–6 and Id., “Copisti per passione, tradizione caratterizzante, tradizione di memoria,” in Studi e problemi di critica testuale, Convegno di studi di filologia italiana nel centenario della Commissione per i testi di lingua, 7–9 aprile 1960 (Bologna, 1961), pp. 69–83. 72 On Foresi see V. Rossi, Il Quattrocento (Milan: Vallardi, 1964), p. 248. A partial edition (chap. IX) of the manuscript, compiled in the 19th century for a “nuptiale,” is P. Giorgi, F. Novati and G.A. Venturi (eds.), Il Trionfo di Cosimo de’ Medici. Frammento d’un poema inedito del sec. XV (Ancona, 1883). 73 The manuscript which may have passed through Castellani’s hands is the MS. Richardson 46 of Harvard University Library, considered the exemplar which was dedicated to the Magnificent. A particularly faithful copy of this codex (produced at a not specified time) has, above a final note in two verses in praise of Foresi, cancelled with a pen stroke, the writing “dominus Franciscus Castellanus miles,” similarly stricken out (see Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Landau, 263, fol. 49v). In the Harvard manuscript, while the two final verses are the same as the ones on the Florence copy, one finds just a very feeble trace of the line above, illegible in a photographic reproduction (see Harvard University Library, Richardson, 46, fol. 47v). A direct examination of the manuscript, which was possible to me only in Summer 1990, makes visible (under raking light) a vague imprint of stricken out words which in my opinion are the ones present on the Florence copy. These would seem to represent a note of possession written some time later than the manuscript’s production. It would be in any case strange that the copyist simply invented such a note, all the more so since a trace of striking is present on the exemplar. I would then tend to confirm a relation between the Richardson 46 and Francesco Castellani, to whom the codex probably belonged for some time, even though it is not clear how and when he came into its possession (maybe by purchase, towards the end of his life). See the new inventory G. Lazzi and M. Rolih Scarlino (eds.), I manoscritti Landau-Finaly della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, 2 vols. (Florence: Giunta Regionale Toscana,
Apart from these two uncertain references, the last sure reference we have to Francesco Castellani’s books is from 1462. Francesco was about 44: he is mature, but not yet old.74 This is the time of life when a deceased father would have left his goods to the “wards.” Thus the complete list of his books is conso- nant with Bec’s findings: it did not appear in the sources analyzed by him because of Castellani’s particular destiny. One may make comparisons, even if the data are collected in different ways, and some are the more important because of this. Thus we will make a new list of all the books we have dealt with (see Table 1). The volumes in Francesco’s possession were at least 16 in number, for 20 titles (the books not belonging to him are marked by an aster- isk). If the books were certainly all different (even those that, for want of pre- cise description, could be duplicates) there would have been 24 titles. At any rate even 20 titles are what Bec would classify as a “medium” sized library.75 Following Bec’s classification,76 we have:
2 religious books; 1 technical; 8 classical authors; 4 medieval authors; 4 authors from the 15th century (Quirino Veronese is, almost certainly Guarino Veronese);77 1 not classifiable (the Life of Virgil).
The medieval authors are rather heterogeneous: from Prosper of Aquitaine (5th century) to Villani and Boccaccio (14th century), passing by Alexandre de Villedieu (12th–13th century) on the way. The same is true for the authors of the 15th century, not all properly definable as “humanists” (consider Fini guerri, degli Agli): but anyway belonging to the period of the flowering of
1994), II, pp. 458–459; P.O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum, I (London-Leiden: Brill, 1963), p. 172; S. Gentile, S. Niccoli and P. Viti (eds.), Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone, Catalogue of the exhibition (17 May–16 June 1984) (Florence, 1984), p. 77. See also S. Gentile, “Introduzione” to Marsilio Ficino, Lettere, I, ed. by S. Gentile (Florence: Olschki, 1990), pp. LXX, CX. 74 It would be at the end of “gioventute,” according to the view about man’s ages exposed by Dante in the Convivio, examined by Herlihy, “Vieillir à Florence,” p. 1339. The other stages were: adolescence (1–25 years); old age (45–70 years); decrepitude (beyond 70). 75 See above, note 32. The statement about titles is valid also after taking “messali” out of the statistics, as Bec does (see notes 34 and 66). 76 See above, note 29. Even in this analysis “messali” have been eliminated. 77 “Regolette” must therefore be identified with his Regulae, sufficiently diffused in the sec- ond half of the 15th century and in the 16th.
Table 1 Books connected to Francesco Castellani. n. Author Title Material Format
1 Bible (vern.) Parch. 2 Bible (vern.) (Old Testament) Paper 3 Cronica Parch. 4 Book of Our Lady (“Libro di nostra donna”) 5 Little Book of prayers of Our Lady (“Libricino dell’oficio di nostra donna”) 6 Book on notary’s craft (“Libro di Paper noteria”) 7 Life of Virgil Parch. 8 Antonio degli Agli Dell’invidia Paper 4° 9 Francesco Barbaro De re uxoria* 10 G. Boccaccio Corbaccio Paper 11 Cicero De amicitia 12 Cicero Epistulae ad familiares Parch. f° 13 Cicero Orations* Paper 14 Stefano Finiguerri La buca Paper 14 Stefano Finiguerri Lo studio di Atene Paper 15 Bastiano Foresi Triumphus virtutum* Parch. 8° 16 Guarino Veronese Regulae (“Regolette”) Parch. 4° 17 Justin Parch. 18 Prosper of Aquitaine 19 Statius Achilleides 17 Suetonius Parch. 20 Giovanni Villani Cronica 21 Alexandre de Villedieu Doctrinale puerorum Paper 4° (“Dottrinale”) 22 Virgil 7 Virgil Bucolicae Parch. 7 Virgil Aeneid Parch. 7 Virgil Georgicae Parch.
* The number refers to volumes, and is repeated when more titles are contained in the same volume. In the calculations it is necessary to consider that vols. 9, 13 and 15 do not belong, or at least not certainly, to Francesco Castellani. Of the remaining 19 volumes number 3, 5 and 22 have not been reckoned, since they might be duplicate citations of books already considered. Moreover, n. 4 has not been considered (see above, notes 75–76).
78 The classification by “fields” gives the following results: 1. classic authors: 8 (40%); 2. 15th century authors: 4 (20%); 3. medieval authors: 4 (20%); 4. religious works: 2 (10%); 5. technical works: 1 (5%); 6. uncertain author: 1 (5%: it is the Vita di Virgilio). Whereas clas- sification by authors gives the following order: 1. Virgil (3); 2. Cicero (2); Finiguerri (2); 3. All the rest (1). 79 See Castellani, Ricordanze, I, p. 69: “Euge, poeta”; “Euge tuum (et) belle,” fragments drawn from Persius, Satires, I, 75 and I, 49. 80 On Andrea Alamanni see L. Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists. 1390– 1460 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 345–346. I did not mention, here, more occasional contacts (Vespasiano da Bisticci, Paolo Toscanelli), or more generic (Giovanni Rucellai, even Luigi Pulci). 81 See Castellani, Ricordanze, I, p. 129, where he writes that he gave the goldsmith a ring in order to modify it: “And he must write into it: ‘semper μήτιος esto’, that is ‘semper consilii plenus esto’.” It does not seem a case that after the quotation he translated Greek into Latin: as if he wanted to avoid forgetting a meaning which he does not know directly. In other, later writings Francesco Castellani uses an elementary cryptography, based on the substitution of letters with analogous letters of the Greek alphabet.
In respect to the completeness of the data we have supplied, one might wonder: how many did Castellani omit to record? While it is probable that he did not omit writing any of the acquisitions in the two record books, he may have made purchases in the times not covered by the books. There may have been others, of which note is not made because the chance was missed. In this case the Pupilli source would in general seem to be more objective. It is, how- ever, also true that an analysis like Bec’s, based exclusively on mass, is not able to take into account certain aspects (and in effect, it doesn’t). Beyond the examples cited82 a further one is in the loans that the post mortem inventories cannot include. Furthermore, analyses of this sort should, in order to be con- vincing on all levels, be as complete as possible even in the use of statistical data. Consider the “success” attributed to Bec on this basis, of religious works: they seem in his book to be preponderant for the entire 15th century.83 In effect, since religion was the worldview (and not only of this era) it is probable that the works on religion were much more commonly found in very small libraries: whoever had only a few books almost certainly had one of a religious nature.84 The smallest libraries are not the most numerous,85 but represent – in this period – the majority of books inventoried,86 and this helps to explain the preponderance of “spiritual” books. Probably, breaking down the data, according to the size of the libraries, or the social condition of the owners, one could attain a more precise reading, not just a simple average. Bec makes this type of analysis only in two cases of larger quantitative importance and greater “cultural” interest.87 The references to books that we have cited up to now, even if they do not allow us to make an exhaustive hypothesis of the composition of Francesco Castellani’s library, in any case need to be compared with a larger body of data
82 See above, notes 67–77 and context. 83 See Bec, Les marchands écrivains, pp. 23, 39–40, 115. 84 As Bec himself remarked (even though the period there considered is only up to 1434) in Les marchands écrivains (p. 394): “Au vrai, les livres ‘di chose vertudiose’, les ouvrages reli- gieux et mistiques sont les fonds des premières lectures marchandes. …si un homme d’affaires ne possède qu’un livre, c’est un missel, et…s’il ne possède que quelques livres, ce sont d’ordinaire des extraits de la Bible, des oeuvres d’auteurs mystiques ou bien encore des Vies de saints”. 85 See Bec, Les livres, pp. 21–22 and 37–38. 86 In the 15th century differently – for example – from the second half of the 16th century, when the ratio is inverted. This consideration derives from my elaborations of Bec’s data. 87 They are the cases of Francesco Gaddi (Bec, Les livres, pp. 127–132) and Pier Francesco Portinari (ibid., pp. 133–144). Portinari though, born in 1484, dies in 1532. The formation of his library already belongs to the 16th century.
88 See in particular E. Garin, “La letteratura degli umanisti,” in E. Cecchi and N. Sapegno (dirs.), Storia della letteratura italiana, 9 vols., III, Il Quattrocento e l’Ariosto (Milan: Garzanti, 1976 [rist.]), pp. 5–279: 78–83. 89 See Martines, The Social World, pp. 334–335. 90 See above, notes 44–46 and context and note 51. 91 See in general Klapisch-Zuber, “Parenti, amici e vicini”. 92 See above, notes 47–64 and context. 93 See Bec, Les livres, pp. 34–35. 94 I would like to expand this judgment and state that owning and lending books is some- thing which grants prestige to a person. Probably considerations which can be made about any favor which derives from patronage can also apply to book loans: when one cannot grant it personally, he can mediate it. This happens when Andrea Alamanni, who
nevertheless owned probably a rich library, “mediates” the loan of Cicero’s book to the Captain of the People (see above, note 54). 95 Which does not begin in Florence before 1471: see W.A. Pettas, The Giunti of Florence. Merchant Publishers of the Fifteenth Century (San Francisco: Rosenthal, 1980), chap. I, “Earlier Florentine Printing and Publishing,” pp. 1–18: 3. See besides above, pp. 44–45 and note 71. 96 See Herlihy, “Vieillir à Florence,” pp. 1346–1347. 97 See above, note 73 and Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 90–91. 98 Even though, according to Bec, the Corbaccio had in any case good success among the readings of the Florentines in the first half of the 15th century (see Bec, Les livres, p. 112). 99 When the results of the several censuses started but not yet completed will be available.
100 See above. It is rather common, when one deals with the circulation of texts in the Middle Ages, to find in sources note of authors and titles completely unknown to us, and never- theless considered as such by their contemporaries. 101 At least for the immediate need, from which ricordanze are born, to keep memory of what the author can deem significant, especially if it has an economic value. 102 Bec’s inventories for the 15th century are 206 (see above, note 7). 103 Which remains such, lacking a systematic attempt to classify the existing material. Without considering manuscripts, for which the important integration represented by the volumes IV–VI of Kristeller’s Iter Italicum is now available (London-Leiden: Brill, 1989–1991), even the incunables’ repertory, the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (Leipzig- Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1925–2008), which aspires to be exhaustive, still remains largely incomplete (up to now it only gets to letter “H”). 104 More and more necessary, when thousands of data are in question, as is the case with the Pupilli inventories studied by Bec. Suggestion in this direction were given by Grendler in his cited review in Renaissance Quarterly (p. 288).
105 ASF, Mediceo avanti il Principato (henceforth: MAP), 23, 228 (13 January 1469). 106 At least in the confiscation of properties, as can be drawn from another letter to Lorenzo written a few days later: see ASF, MAP, 23, 168 (letter of Bartolomeo di Antonio del Vigna, Captain, 27 January 1469). 107 See ibid.
At first we will narrate…all the parts we wish, and as they happened…In the fourth and last will be the memory of certain grand facts that hap- pened to our city and us, that is our proper selves, telling only the things happened in my time and earlier, that is that I remember having seen or heard first hand or from trustworthy witnesses, and no other.1
So writes Giovanni Morelli at the beginning of his ricordi, stating his wish to insert, in a text designed “to teach our children or descendants by true example and by cases that had happened to us,” a section regarding the story of the city. Consequently, Morelli will dedicate a good half2 of his ricordi to Florentine history between 1363 and 1411,3 and more specifically after 1374, because – “with the chronicler’s lively scruples” as Branca notes – he declared that he would write “not of things prior, because I am poorly informed of these things; one who tries to deal with things not of his own time, can never speak well of them.”4 Now, if it is true that Morelli’s Ricordi is an absolutely paradigmatic text of its kind, it is also true that it is not an “average” text. Thus this is not the type of
* On the relationship between “ricordanze” and family books a synthetic view can be found in the beginning pages of Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia e storia del patriziato fiorentino,” pp. 138–141 (to be consulted also for its bibliography), and see above all the essays by Cicchetti and Mordenti, Klapisch-Zuber, Pandimiglio, Pezzarossa, largely cited also below, passim. A survey, with further references, in G. Ciappelli, book review of Martelli, Ricordanze, Journal of Modern History 64, 4 (1992), pp. 814–820, partially reworked above, chap. 1. On Morelli see of course the several essays by Pandimiglio, among which “Casa e famiglia a Firenze nel Basso Medioevo,” La Cultura 23 (1985), pp. 304–327. On the memory of artisans and workers see the recent F. Franceschi, “La mémoire des laboratores à Florence au debut du XVe siècle,” Annales E.S.C. 45 (1990), pp. 1143–1167. For a definition of chronicles as compared to other kinds of sources see G. Ortalli, “Cronache e documentazione,” in Civiltà comunale: libro, scrittura, documento, (as above, p. 15, note 13) pp. 507–539. 1 Morelli, Ricordi, pp. 83–85. 2 Even if it is the “fourth” part, which will be actually the third: see V. Branca, “Introduzione” to Morelli, Ricordi, p. 15 note. 3 In theory until 1421, but only one record belongs to this year. 4 Ibid., and p. 303.
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5 This analysis excludes, therefore, the texts specifically analyzed, for example, by Bec, Les marchands écrivains. In this work Bec – besides treating the “marchands moralistes” (among which Paolo da Certaldo, and Mazzei in his relationship with Datini), and a “marchand con- teur” (the Lucchese Giovanni Sercambi), both external to our scope – distinguishes between “Marchands mémorialistes” (Morelli and Pitti) and “Marchands historiographes” (Gino di Neri Capponi and Goro Dati). 6 Especially Velluti and Pitti. See Pezzarossa, “La memorialistica fiorentina,” pp. 52 (“triade capitale e canonica”), 54, 57, 87.
7 See especially Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina.” 8 In the Appendix to Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina,” pp. 93–149.
I intend, here at least, to consider only those that start before the Medici exile of 1494. Thus the list is reduced to 240 texts, from which we must subtract all those with the above-cited characteristics. We may add those few Florentines not present here but instead in – as “printed family books” – the Appendix of the volume I libri di famiglia by Cicchetti and Mordenti,9 and all those printed since then, as well as a series of unpublished ones which I have catalogued. The result is a provisional sample of about one hundred texts, that will be the object of this initial study. For reasons of space, in this essay I will cite only a part (ca. 50) of the larger group of examples that support my conclusions. Of the 14 texts that Pezzarossa found having a beginning date before the 14th century, only those by seven authors are ricordanze in our sense of the word, and of these only those of two authors – effectively begun before 1300 – contain annotations referring to “historical” events. Of these last texts, one has already been indicated as the oldest coherent example of this genre, because it is the first to call itself ricordanze.10 The other two, though not able to claim this status, are still among the oldest texts of this type: the little credit books of Bene Bencivenni.11 The older of these has mostly dry economic registrations, but amongst these (and it is the earliest example we have) there is an historical note: “Guadagnino son-in-law of Arringhieri of Peretola owes s. 40, that I loaned to him personally at Pisa when King Charles went to Rome from Porto Venere.”12 This note refers to 1265, and then is referred to in the second little book with the following comment: “We wrote no paper on this. I wish I had had it made! Since it remained on my shoulders.”13 This is the registration of a loan (like others in the little book), and Bene, in order to remember a fact with no other proof, feels the need to specify the episode to which it refers: Guadagnino was in Pisa, it seems, together with Count Guido Novello of the Conti Guidi, vicar of Manfred of Swabia for Tuscany, who was trying to block Charles of Anjou’s travelling from Marseille to Rome.14 It is the trace of this
9 Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, pp. 121–193. 10 “Chuaderno di Guido Filippi de l’Antella ove iscriverae cierte ricordanze,” started in March 1299: “Ricordanze di Guido Filippi dell’Antella (con aggiunte d’un suo figliolo fino al 1328),” in Castellani (ed.), Nuovi testi fiorentini [henceforth: NTF], pp. 804–813. 11 “Primo e secondo libricciolo di crediti di Bene Bencivenni,” in NTF, pp. 212–228 and 363–458. 12 NTF, p. 223. 13 Preceded by “Guadagnino Soldi…must give 40 sous of silver coin (we took them away from the other register), that I lent him, putting them in his hands, when he was there with the count Guido Novello, the 8th of May, when king Charles went to Rome”: NTF, p. 368. 14 Charles had stopped in Porto Venere on 15 May 1265, and had continued his journey by sea towards Ostia, before entering Rome. See R. Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, It. transl., 8 vols. (Florence: Sansoni 1972–19733), II, pp. 760, 781–783.
15 Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, II, p. 803; D. Abulafia, Federico II. Un imperatore medievale, It transl. (Turin: Einaudi, 1993), p. 348. 16 For example: “in 1264 when I was building a house” (NTF, p. 217), “when he gave in marriage his daughter Fia” (218), “when he helped me to build” (223), “when the proscription on him was lifted, and then I lent him the money,” “when she remarried” (225), “that I lent them when the ban on them was lifted…in 1272,” “I lent him when he gave in marriage his sister,” “when he went to St James in Galicia” (366). And also: “that I lent him for his expenses when his son Bianco injured Ghese da San Donnino” (373), “when he came back from France” (380), “when priest Bene had me arrested” (385), “that I lent them when Vanni himself went to France to the firm of messer Simone and Fantone di Giotto de ***” (387), “when he went to Venice with ***,” “when he was ill,” “when we buried Iacopo” (409). 17 NTF, p. 368. 18 NTF, p. 404 (12 March 1289). 19 Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, III, pp. 428–429; see also ibid., 456. The battle (11 June 1289) is not registered. 20 “at the time of messer Giliuolo da Padova”: NTF, p. 388; two more cases follow: pp. 392–393; the reference to Podestàs in office at the beginning of this note-book is typical: pp. 363–364. 21 NTF, p. 806. In the case in point, the record deals with the conquest of Pistoia by the Florentine troops guided by Filippo di Sanguineto, appointed vicar of Florence by Charles of Calabria in January 1327. See Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, IV, p. 1117 note.
22 M. Luzzati, Firenze e la Toscana nel Medioevo. Seicento anni per la costruzione di uno stato (Turin: Utet Libreria, 1986), pp. 91–92; Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, IV, pp. 1128–1129. Pistoia became free again, along with the other cities which composed the Duchy, at Castruccio’s death, on 3 September 1328 (Luzzati, Firenze e la Toscana, p. 93). 23 “Libro segreto (1308–1315),” edited in full in A. Sapori, I libri di commercio dei Peruzzi (Milano: Treves 1934), pp. 393–415. 24 Ibid., pp. 411–412. See also L. Pandimiglio, “Pigliate esempio di questo caso. L’inizio della scrittura di Bonaccorso Pitti,” Lettere italiane 39 (1988), pp. 161–175: 162; Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, IV, pp. 668–669. 25 Also due to the costs for transportation and medical assistance: see also Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, IV, p. 669 note. 26 On which Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, IV, pp. 670–700. 27 Published in G. Corti, “Le ricordanze trecentesche di Francesco e Alessio Baldovinetti,” Archivio Storico Italiano 92 (1954), pp. 109–124: 115–124. 28 See C. Varese, “Giovanni Cavalcanti storico e scrittore,” in Id., Storia e politica nella prosa del Quattrocento (Turin: Einaudi 1961), pp. 93–131: 111–112; the episode is also mentioned in Giovanni Villani, Cronica, X, 183. 29 “Memoria che…”: Corti, “Le ricordanze trecentesche,” pp. 120–121. See Villani, Cronica, XI, 1.
The important thing, even in this case, is personal involvement (here, of course, during a very trying event for the whole city) and the direct testimony of at least part of what is recounted (the encounter with the survivors, of whose experiences he will certainly have heard tell). A different kind of texts, but in substance bearing the same kind of informa- tion, are two late manuscripts (late 15th–early 16th centuries) that are however copies of compilations written early in early 14th century by ancestors of the writers. Both Bindaccio de’ Cerchi (1501–1512)30 and Piero da Verrazzano (1490– 1533)31 in the beginning include genealogical notes in their ricordanze, in which historical events appear in direct proportion to the family members’ participation in them. Thus Bindaccio speaks of the battle of Montaperti in relation to the roles of some of the Cerchi; and Da Verrazzano follows the same path when he recounts that his ancestors were driven from Florence by the Ghibellines in 1241; when he also mentions Montaperti to say that two ances- tors were killed; when he describes the return of the Guelphs in 1267 it is to say that on that occasion his family returned to Florence.32 For the rest this outline (the expulsion and return of the Guelphs) is used also by Lapo Niccolini at the end of the 14th century in compiling a genealogical note with these same char- acteristics.33 At the end of a description of a bloody family vendetta, after 1297, Da Verrazzano (probably copying this also from his source) notes: “And let this be an example for our descendants; beware the questions that bring the destruction of men, souls and things.…And you who follow us take this as example.”34
30 Published in F. Maggini, “Frammenti di una cronica de’ Cerchi,” Archivio Storico Italiano 76 (1918), pp. 97–109: 101–109. 31 Published in R. Ridolfi, “L’archivio della famiglia da Verrazzano,” La Bibliofilia 30 (1928), pp. 20–39: 36–39. 32 The motif of ancestors who died in the Commune’s war will be, at a later time, common to another distinguished author, Dietisalvi Neroni, one of the main leaders of the Medicean regime. This one felt the need to list in one of his books of ricordi in 1430, before the clear and definitive sanction of his political role in the state following Cosimo de’ Medici’s coup d’état of 1434, how many Dietisalvi had been “morti et presi” in the wars fought by the Guelph Florence, having found their names in one of his ancestor’s ricordi. See ASF, Manoscritti, 85, fol. 103: “Memory for any of our descendants that we found under the year....” The episodes cited are three defeats: Montecatini in 1315; Altopascio in 1325; “Lughiara” in 1342. 33 C. Bec, Il libro degli affari proprii di casa de Lapo di Giovanni Niccolini de’ Sirigatti, édition critique et commentée (Paris: SEVPEN, 1969) (henceforth: Niccolini), pp. 154–155: “at the time when the Guelphs were expelled for the first time,” “and then when they returned.” 34 Ridolfi, “L’archivio della famiglia Da Verrazzano,” p. 39.
If this motivation belongs to the 14th century author, as we believe it to be, and not to the copier one hundred fifty years later, it represents one of the more precocious cases of explicit motivation and destination of the memory book, or at least of that part of them that more directly concern the memory of both family and city. There is no doubt that the internal thrust of these books is the destination of the family. It seems to me that the debate brought forward by Cicchetti and Mordenti, Pandimiglio, Pezzarossa and others in recent years, that has led to an ever more precise definition of the genre “family book” has clarified the genesis and development of these texts, which, born as account-books on the part of medieval merchants, are soon characterized by their need to “keep a record” of everything the individual risks forgetting or not being able to dem- onstrate sufficiently, and which could instead be useful for himself and above all for his descendants.35 That they were aimed at the family is clear at the very first, in the type of record, in the fact that quite early on there is a passage from prevalently economic records to those covering the whole family, even adding especially biological information: births, deaths, weddings of the family members. Then, almost at the same time, the data demonstrating participation in the political life of the city: the traditional Guelph loyalty (the fact of not being marked as Ghibellines, of having on the contrary participated in anti- imperial exploits), the holding of office. I will return to these aspects in my conclusions. If we continue our chronological overview of the historical events in Florentine memory books, the next step, after the mention of the flood of 1333, is given in the notes of a merchant, Francesco di Giovanni di Durante, who compiled a book of ricordi between 1334 and 1345.36 Among the “past memo- ries” cited on the first page, personal and family memories are unusually mixed in with episodes of town history: the abacus school and apprentice reports of himself and his brothers alternate with some Florentine victories or defeats in the years 1337–1342. If, in the year 1342, two months after the nomination of Walter of Brienne as Signore of Florence, Francesco feels the need to record the entrance into Florence of the new Bishop Agnolo Acciaiuoli, he also provides us with a synthetic and efficacious account of the era of the Duke of Athens up
35 On the discussion about family books see the essays cited above, beginning note (*). 36 BNCF, II.III.280, fol. 4r: “In the name of God 1334 this day November 5th. In the name of God we will write here below things of past ricordanze.” The earliest registration describes the events of July 1305, when white Guelphs, who had come up to Florence’s city walls, had been rejected.
37 Ibid., fols. 21r–23v: “in the name of God 1342 this day August 5th. In the name of God here below we will write ricordanze of past things. On August 5th 1342 the new bishop of Florence entered the city….” 38 About which see also A. Sapori, “La cultura del mercante italiano,” in Id., Studi di storia economica, 3 vols. (Florence: Sansoni 1955–1967), I, pp. 67–68. 39 “…and in this same day [24 May 1345] the wool workers of Florence, that is combers and carders, as soon as they knew that said Ciuto had been arrested while in his bed by the Captain of the People, they stopped working and stayed, and declared that they would not work if they did not have said Ciuto back. And said workers went to the Priors and prayed them to do so as they had said Ciuto back safe and sound…and also they wanted to receive better salaries.” Also cited in N. Rodolico, Il popolo minuto (Florence: Olschki, 1968 [1899]), p. 37. On the episode see also G.A. Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society 1343–1378 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 110. 40 ASF, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese (henceforth: Corp. sopp.), 169 (S. Spirito), 122, fol. 110v. “Memory that in my book marked ‘A’ which I lost during the robbery of September there was written a promise by Ventura Micheli to Bindo and Tura Bonavere and company…and I did not have back the writing in my own hand, and I have lost said book, therefore I make this memory”; “…I made a memory in my own hand. But since I could not satisfy him because of the expulsion of the Duke [of Athens], and of the robbery of Bardi, he denounced me to the officer of Mercanzia [the commercial tribunal].” And further on: “Memory that in the book marked ‘A’ which was stolen to me during the robbery in September….” The expulsion of the duke had happened, as it is well known, on 6 August 1343, and the turmoil which accompanied the assault by the people on the palaces of Frescobaldi and Bardi in September, which ended with their arson, is here defined “ruberia.”
There are relatively few notations in books of ricordanze of the most impor- tant event of the century (and perhaps, in its consequences, in all the Middle Ages): the Black Death of 1348. In fact the mortality rate and upset in this tragic time was such that it is likely that the ordinary writing of private ricordanze suffered an almost total pause. In any case authors report 1348 as a period of time (for example by Lapo Niccolini when he noted that his father “took a wife” “after the deaths of 1348”), or for the fact that at the time of the plague mem- bers of their families died. The relatively greater mention of 1348 in our sam- pling is because in that year some new books of ricordanze end or begin.41 After the profound change marked by the plague, one may say that the fol- lowing historical period noted by Florentines in their private books of ricordi lies astride the 1370s and 1380s: years of heavy internal political upheaval that questioned the citizen’s own image of the city and his family’s collocation therein. Thus Niccolò d’Alesso Baldovinetti42 annotates with quite a lot of detail in a rather classical sort of family book “the names of the fifty-six who suspended from office and excluded from public palaces” in 1372 “three of the Albizzi and three of the Ricci.”43 And also the names of the promoters of the petition in 1374 that again excluded the Ricci and the Albizzi from office for 10 years.44 The event that gains the most attention from Niccolò Baldovinetti (and others) is at any rate the Tumult of the Ciompi: if he described in detail – not secondarily for the fact that he was himself knighted – the ceremony of investiture of the knights of the Popolo, he also took care to list all those excluded by the popolo minuto on 28 August 1378.45 Leonardo Bartolini Salimbeni instead distinguished the “small clamor” (picholo romore) following
41 This is the case for the books by Leonardo Bartolini Salimbeni, Niccolò di Ventura Monachi, Niccolaio (who died in 1348) and Giovanni Niccolini (who continues his writ- ing). See Vicchio di Mugello, Archivio Bartolini-Salimbeni, n.n. (on which R. Signorini, “Il libro di ricordi di Leonardo di Bartolino Salimbeni,” LdF 2 [1990], n. 4, pp. 18–20: 18); ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 2; Florence, Archivio Niccolini-Sirigatti di Camugliano, n.n. Entries on the Black Death can be also found in Luca da Panzano (Molho and Sznura [eds.], “Brighe, affanni, volgimenti di stato” [henceforth: da Panzano]), p. 365: “Said Niccolò, son of messer Luca, died in Bologna in July 1348; he had gone to Bologna to avoid the plague, and he died there from the plague.” 42 BNCF, Palatino Baldovinetti, 37. 43 “for five years. The name of the three Albizzi are these: …; the names of the three Ricci are these: …; the names of the 56 are these, starting with the Priors: ….” Ibid., fol. 19r. 44 Ibid., fol. 20r. Bese Magalotti, on the contrary, mentions his personal participation, as “arroto” (added member) of the Guelph Party, to the “ammonitions” of 1377. ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 116 (18th century apograph), fols. 229v, 236r. 45 BNCF, Palatino Baldovinetti, 37, fol. 29r–v.
46 Vicchio di Mugello, Arch. Bartolini-Salimbeni, n.n., fol. 84r. 47 Another detailed entry about the Tumult of the Ciompi is in the “libro segreto” by Simone di Rinieri Peruzzi (who had been one of the Otto di Guardia during the Tumult). The entry, beyond and above the narrative details, is also interesting for its preliminary statement: “Memory that [ricordanza che] what I will write here, if it should clarify the facts thor- oughly, should be very long, and with much writing; but I do not think this a good thing, and then I do not do that, since a scandal might come out from it in the future, and my conscience cannot suffer this. On the contrary I will write briefly, telling the truth and following the form that is necessary to clarify my innocence and integrity, and so as to allow my descendants to have direct and full information about the truth”: published as “Frammenti del libro segreto di Simone di Rinieri Peruzzi,” in Sapori, I libri di commercio dei Peruzzi, pp. 513–524: 521–522. 48 About ten days after the scrutiny which had made eligible many of the members of “popolo minuto.” See ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 4, fol. 53v; N. Rodolico, La democrazia fiorentina nel suo tramonto (1378–1382) (Rome: Multigrafica, 1970 [1905]), p. 190. 49 ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 4, fol. 60v. 50 ASF, Manoscritti, 77, on which I. Chabot, “Il libro di ricordanze della famiglia fiorentina dei Ciurianni (1326–1429). Presentazione del manoscritto,” LdF 1 (1988), n. 0, pp. 15–17.
51 Ibid., fol. 25v. 52 ASF, Carte strozziane, II s., 4, fol. 64v. On the Monte dell’un tre see G. Ciappelli, Fisco e società a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2009), pp. 26 and passim. 53 Niccolini, p. 155. 54 ASF, Carte strozziane, II s., 4, fols. 66v, 67v, 68v. 55 See Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 27–28. 56 ASF, Corp. sopp., 90 (S. Verdiana), 131, fol. 50r. 57 BNCF, Palatino Baldovinetti, 37, fol. 10v (1367). 58 ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 59 (Strozzi apograph), published by G. Grazzini in Appendix to A. Bini and G. Grazzini (eds.), Annales arretinorum maiores et minores, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (henceforth: R.I.S.), n. ed., XXIV, part I (Città di Castello: Lapi, 1909), pp. 83–91. 59 The Bianchi are also mentioned in Filippo Rinuccini, Ricordi storici di Filippo di Cino Rinuccini dal 1282 al 1460, ed. by G. Aiazzi (Firenze: Piatti, 1840), p. XLIV (which is, though, more “cronaca” than book of ricordanze).
60 The “Quadernaccio A,” in Archivio di Stato di Prato, Datini, 613. 61 Ibid., fols. 8–9, publ. in Lapo Mazzei, Lettere di un notaro a un mercante del secolo XIV, ed. by C. Guasti, 2 vols. (Florence: Le Monnier, 1880), I, pp. XCIX–CV; and later on also in F. Melis, Aspetti della vita economica medievale, Studi nell’Archivio Datini di Prato (Siena: Monte dei Paschi, 1962), pp. 100–103. 62 ASF, Manoscritti, 77, fol. 33r. 63 Ibid., fols. 36r, 37v. 64 BNCF, Palatino Baldovinetti, 77, fol. 12v. 65 Bernardo Machiavelli, Ricordi, ed. by C. Olschki (Florence: Le Monnier, 1954), p. 93. 66 ASF, Manoscritti, 77, fol. 36v: “Memory that on 9 October 1406 in the morning around nine o’ clock, in the day of St Donnino, the Commune of Florence took Pisa.” 67 Da Panzano, p. 3. 68 Ibid., p. 24: “I remember that Pope Martin V entered Florence the said day one hour before sunset, and our Priors and Captains of the Guelph Party made him great and rich honors, and a new room was built and prepared for him in Santa Maria Novella, and there he settled and stayed.”
69 Ibid., pp. 24, 32. 70 Ibid., pp. 27–29. The text was also published, without indication of fols., by C. Carnesecchi, “Un fiorentino del secolo XV e le sue ricordanze domestiche,” ASI, s. V, 4 (1889), pp. 145–173: 149–153. 71 ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 14 (on which F. Allegrezza, “Il libro di ‘Ricordanze A’ di Terrino di Niccolò Manovelli,” LdF 1 [1988], n. 0, pp. 18–19). 72 Ibid., fols. 3v–5r.
Luca da Panzano, member of an anti-Medici family, instead notes the cir- cumstances of Cosimo de’ Medici’s rise to power that coincides with the birth of one of his children.73 Among the exiled citizens, not by chance, was Luca’s brother Matteo, as Luca writes in another moment, also because he is among the citizens who sodano (guarantee) in his favor, that is they contributed a cer- tain amount of money to insure that he would respect the exile. Matteo di Giovanni Corsini will do a similar thing when he mentions the upheavals of September 21, 1434 (and only these) because that was the day of his own matrimony.74 Different in tone (as well as in sign) are the records that in September 1434 were kept by the Medici “militant” faction, first of all Cosimo de’ Medici, who anyway treated of the events above all because he was a protagonist.75 Ugolino di Niccolò Martelli also notes only this important historical event in his ricor- danze at some length because of the role played in it by his family. He too begins with the list of the Signori who took office on September 1, 1434 and then describes their decision to convoke a parlamento, and the charge given to Ugolino’s brother, Antonio, to call Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici back to Florence. Next is the chronicle of the events of the morning of September 26. At this point there is the part that more specifically regards the Martelli: the decision of the anti-Medici to “go to the houses of those in the Signoria and of their friends, and take their families, and sack their houses that night, and in the morning appear in the square with them and make a pact.” As we know
73 “A male child, whom I named Francesco, was born on 26 September 1434, and the said morning many families, and with them some popolani, took the arms, and then on *** September the bell in the Palace of the Priors rang to summon a parlamento, and many merchants were part of the balìa, and they condemned to exile many citizens.” Da Panzano, p. 54. See ibid., p. 169, on Matteo di Matteo’s (Luca’s brother) condemnation by the Balìa on 9 November 1434 (Matteo is confined for 5 years in Borgo San Sepolcro, and Luca must go bail for him). 74 See Petrucci (ed.), Il libro di ricordanze dei Corsini, p. 143. Uguccione di Mico Capponi will record that the foreseen marriage of his daughter with a member of the Peruzzi family was postponed on that occasion “for some tumult that happened in Florence”: ASF, Corp. sopp., San Piero a Monticelli, 153, fol. 3r (also cit. in D.V. Kent, The Rise of the Medici. Faction in Florence 1426–1434 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978], p. 3). 75 The ricordi by Cosimo on the “parlamenti” of 1433 and 1434 were published by G. Lami in Deliciae eruditorum, seu Veterum Anecdoton Opuscolorum Collectanea (Florence: Viviani, 1736–1755), XII in publishing order (1742), pp. 169–183 and hence taken later by A. Fabroni, Magni Cosmi Medicei Vita (Pisa: Landi, 1788–1789), II, pp. 96–104 and others. I have found in the Riccardiana Library the apograph used by Lami, which had been considered lost (Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina,” pp. 60 notes 59 and 128): it is the miscellaneous Riccardiano, 1849, fols. 178r–182r. See below, chap. 6, and my new edition in its Appendix.
76 Martelli, Ricordanze, pp. 115–121. 77 “Memory [ricordanza sia] that on 15 September 1434 I Dietisalvi di Nerone di Nigi entered the office of the Eight of Ward, and then it happened that in that month a parlamento was summoned, and since the office of Eight was very much engaged in the defense of the Palace, and also in making the state secure, the said balìa decided that, while before us the office lasted one year, we could stay in office for two years, and so last two years as the other members of the balìa.” ASF, Manoscritti, 85, fol. 101v. 78 See ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 16 (fols. 1r, 8v); 16 bis. 79 Castellani, Ricordanze, I, pp. 164, 177.
Or, as happened to the physician Giovanni Chellini, mention will be made of a disaster of natural origin like the earthquake of September 1453: “the great- est and most terrible earthquake that the living of our day had ever heard of or felt,” on the occasion of which Piero de’ Medici himself set up an encampment in the gardens of San Marco, seems to be described first hand by Chellini (“for tomorrow the first of October is ordained the first of 4 days of devout processions”).80 At mid-century Marco Parenti relates the final act of the war with Venice and Naples: once again, in virtue of his personal involvement (it was the provost of the Signoria who received the news, and as such had the means to see and write down the articles of the peace treaty). But also because in some way he gath- ered the historical importance of the event: the peace of Lodi marked as we know the end of a long period of warfare and established a long-lived equilib- rium in the peninsula. For Florence it meant 24 years of uninterrupted peace, and the end of an economic situation carrying unbearable taxation. Parenti, as contemporary, but above all as politician, understood its import immediately.81 While the other important moment of the 1450s, entirely internal and regarding the Medici regime, is noted by Bernardo Rinieri because it corre- sponded to an unusual public event – the convocation of a parlamento, the massed gathering of the citizens in Piazza della Signoria to listen to the com- munication of political decisions and acclaim their agreement.82 Francesco Giovanni is an exception to this rhapsody, registering the major part of the more important events between 1444 and 1458, probably in virtue of the above mentioned re-orientation of attention, in a second book which was already strongly marked (“in which I will keep memory and ricordanza of every and each association and happening worthy of remembering”), which enu- merates the objectively important themes (papal and imperial entrances, earthquakes, peaces, parlamenti); underlining, when it is the case, the occa- sions of personal involvement.83
80 M.T. Sillano (ed.), Le ricordanze di Giovanni Chellini da San Miniato (Milan: Angeli 1984), pp. 195–196. 81 ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 17bis, fol. 38v. 82 It is the parlamento of 1458. Otherwise Rinieri limits himself to cite in his ricordi two other events which seemed important to him (and other chroniclers of the time) for the ceremonies connected to them: the visit to Florence by Galeazzo, Francesco Sforza’s 16-years-old son, which was confirming at a symbolic level the renewed alliance of Florence with Milan; and the two visits (and entrances) by the Pope Piccolomini, while going to and returning from Mantua, in order to launch his project of the Crusade against the Turks. ASF, Corp. sopp., 95 (S. Francesco), 212, fols. 153v, 154v, 156r. 83 ASF, Strozziane, II s., 16 bis.
The fact that a branch of one of the most important anti-Medici families could be re-admitted to office in 1466 (we learn little of this date from this type of source, and much more from explicitly historical sources), allows us to read that which otherwise, for the very characteristics of this type of registration, would not be possible: that is, the record of the Pazzi Conspiracy by Filippo di Matteo Strozzi. He, re-established after a thirty-year exile, with the dignity that was required of the members of his family, could mention in his book Libro di tutti i suoi fatti of “a horrible case born in our city of Florence.” And this also because “the noise in the church was great; I was there.”84 Not limiting himself to this episode, Filippo continued with a real chronicle (synthetic) of the events up to the end with the absolution of the Florentines by Sixtus IV in December of 1480. But this was also because he was involved in a part of these, having been sent as ambassador to the King of Naples just before Lorenzo de’ Medici, to prepare the terrain for his history-making embassy. Lorenzo, also author of Ricordi, exemplifies the genre even in the “historical” sense of ricordi, even though in his case it is more difficult to distinguish pri- vate and public dimension. He was certainly more self-conscious than other authors of memoirs, but with this in mind, the form, structure, and themes of his ricordi (even of historical events) are very close to the model. Furthermore, the intentional conciseness, the interruption on September 1471,85 cause them to be much more terse than we would expect. In them we find, beyond his own birth and the deaths of his nearest relatives, among whom is grandfather Cosimo (with the solemn funeral in which all the grandest powers of Italy as well as the King of France participated), the parlamenti of 1433–1434 and of 1466, the death of his father Piero (and the description of the “passage of power” which he is advised to make and says he does so with reluctance), the embassy to Rome on the occasion of the installation of Pope Sixtus IV, which
84 ASF, Carte Strozziane, V s., 22. The entry is also published in G. Capponi, Storia della Repubblica di Firenze (Florence: Barbèra, 1875), II, pp. 520–521. 85 This means that the attention is completely turned towards the past, because the book was started on 15 March 1473. The most recent edition of Lorenzo’s Ricordi is now in Lorenzo de’ Medici, Opere, ed. by T. Zanato (Turin: Einaudi, 1992), pp. XXXIII–XXXIX, which mentions nine apographs (the original writings are lost), and establishes the text through a comparison of three of them: BNCF, Nuovi acquisti, 1070; II.IV.309; ASF, Manoscritti, 817. Despite A. Fabroni, Laurentii Medicis Magnifici Vita (Pisa: Grazioli, 1784), II, pp. 299–300 (on which Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina,” p. 129), the manuscript ASF, MAP, 63 is not one of the cited nine witnesses. Fabroni cites as Lorenzo’s ricordi the entries by unknown hand which are found in one of Lorenzo’s letter-books (“protocolli”) (ibid., fol. 1r–v: they are now publ. in M. Del Piazzo (ed.), Protocolli del carteggio di Lorenzo il Magnifico [Florence: Olschki, 1956], pp. 449–450).
86 Soon after Lorenzo records his participation as godfather to Gian Galeazzo’s baptism. This is certainly due in part to a confirmation of the established political links with Milan; but in part (and this is not the place to expand on this subject) this confirms the existence of a model for libri di ricordi, where the established relationships between a godfather and the baptized child’s family represent an essential aspect (surely also for the spiritual kin- ship they create), since we find them in almost all such books. 87 See respectively the ricordanze by Baldovinetti, Giovanni di Bruno and Ciurianni. On the origins and fortune of the term “ricordanza” since the late 13th century see Pandimiglio, “Ricordanza e libro di famiglia,” pp. 11–19. 88 “Ricordanza e memoria” (ante 1370); “Ricordanza e memoria fia” in an entry of 1380, and then still “memoria sia” in 1406. See ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 4, fol. 26r; ASF, Manoscritti, 77, fols. 25v, 36v. 89 See on this the study by Pandimiglio, “Ricordanza e libro di famiglia.” 90 See ASF, Manoscritti, 85, fol. 98r (Dietisalvi Neroni, 1430); Niccolini, p. 58 and passim (Lapo Niccolini, 1379). This induces one to think that the form “ricordo che” or “ricordo come” does not correspond – at least originally – to the introduction of an objective sentence depending on a verb in the first person (“I remember that”), but to the enunciation of a “ricordo” (“record”) as noun. It seems significant that “renembrassa sia” is the beginning of the Limousine text by Etienne Benoist described by J. Tricard (“La mémoire des Bénoist: livre de raison et mémoire familiale au XVe siècle,” in Temps, mémoire, tradition au Moyen Age (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 1983), pp. 119–140: 121 (started in 1426)).
But in part this aspect is common also to other types of annotation present in family books. The form of the presentation, then, especially if taken out of context, does not by itself give us elements for classification or interpretation. Let us turn then to the other questions we posed at the beginning. What events are recorded? Let us note parenthetically here the characteristics neces- sary to an event: an event is a perceived change, that must therefore happen in the presence of one or more observers, in a visible space, and it must also have appreciable dimensions or importance.91 What, of the events classifiable as historical, is recorded in these texts? Certainly that which captured the atten- tion of the writer; but it does not seem to be only the exceptional: it is excep- tionality as personally witnessed; for example, ceremonies of entry of high prelates or foreign political personages have this quality. In recording them the writer wishes to indicate his participation, as member of the community, in this collective happening which also had an anthropological importance: the welcoming of a foreign potentate into the circle that defines the community’s territory. But in greater measure is recorded that which implicates direct involvement of the writer or his family. This is practically true for all the ricordi that I have listed and in part described.92 These events may be grouped by type: important internal political or cere- monial events (“parlamenti,” strikes, fiscal provisions, revolutions, solemn entries), external political events (wars, peace treaties, successions of govern- ments or reigning dynasties), natural catastrophes (floods, earthquakes, plagues). Using these typologies it is possible to classify the what, to which the when and how can be added. But what are the motivations: why? I would like to add to Giovanni Morelli’s phrase quoted above, another one less well known even though in print, but perhaps precisely because it appears as the incipit of a book of ricordi with much more economic and modest characteristics than Morelli’s: that of Filigno de’ Medici, begun in 1373. Filigno is very clear as to the function of his book:
91 See K. Pomian, “Evento,” in Enciclopedia, V (Turin: Einaudi, 1978), pp. 972–993: 978–979. 92 Just to mention the events cited: Arnoldo Peruzzi’s death (1312) for his brother Tommaso; the theft of his account books (1343) for the merchant Giovanni di Bruno; the strikes in the wool industry (1345) for the wool merchant Francesco di Giovanni di Durante; the involvement of their families in the plague for many authors; the riots of 1378 for Sassetti and Baldovinetti; the preparations for war for Luca Da Panzano (1420); the “parlamenti” of 1433 and 1434 for Manovelli, Martelli, Da Panzano, Cosimo de’ Medici; the war against Alphonse of Aragon and the peace of Lodi for Francesco Castellani and Marco Parenti; the “parlamento” of 1458 for Rinieri; the Pazzi Conspiracy for Strozzi.
I Filigno di Conte de’ Medici, seeing the past fortunes of city and foreign war and the unlucky mortal plagues that Our Lord God has sent to earth and one fears he will send…I will keep a record of the things happened that I will see that can be useful for you who remain or follow me to know, so that you can find them if you need them for any reason….93
And here the familial and patrimonial destination is clear, and appropriate to the evolution of family books. But Filigno is even more explicit:
Again I pray that you not only keep what we have, but conserve the status acquired by our forefathers, as it is great and used to be greater….94
This is substantially the scheme of Florentine ricordanze, or if you prefer, fam- ily books. Even when these motives are implicit, that is – when they are not announced at the beginning of the book, this is the function that the citizens of Florence attributed to them (these are, remember, not all Florentines, but all those qualified to hold public office because they are registered in the city’s fiscal rolls) and in particular those of the upper classes, for whom the stimulus to maintain a family memory which is closely tied to the city is even stronger. Filigno’s book begins three years after the conclusion (the author died) of the one that is considered one of the archetypes95 of Florentine family books, that of Velluti – which we have excluded from this overview because of its characteristics – and six years after it was begun. The repetition of these prem- ises96 after only a short time lets us understand how already at this period we
93 “And I pray you that you preserve the lands and houses you will find in this book…and that you take care of and keep this book in a secret place, so as it does not fall in the hands of strangers, and because you might need it in the future as now we need it, since we are obliged to find documents one hundred years old for reasons you will find written ahead, because people’s conditions change and are not stable”: Biondi de’ Medici Tornaquinci (ed.), Libro di memorie, p. 6. 94 “And today, God may be praised, we are about fifty men. And note that since I was born more than one hundred men of our family died, and few of their families are still existing, and today we are in a bad way as for children, that is we have few. I will write this book in several parts, and first I will put some facts of our ancestors that you will be delighted in knowing; secondly, I will put down what I will be able to know about documents, dowries, payments, arbitration agreements. Then I will put all the purchases and their notaries; then I will put all the houses and lands we possess, with their boundaries.” Ibid., p. 7. 95 Pandimiglio, “Pigliate esempro da questo caso,” p. 171. 96 Donato Velluti, La cronica domestica, scritta fra il 1367 e il 1370, con le addizioni di P. Velluti, ed. by I. Del Lungo and G. Volpi (Florence: Sansoni, 1914), pp. XXXIV–XXXVII.
97 Later on it would have experienced an inverted trend: see Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia.” 98 Luca Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516, ed. by I. Del Badia (Florence: Sansoni, 1883); G.O. Corazzini (ed.), Ricordanze di Bartolomeo Masi calderaio fiorentino dal 1478 al 1526 (Florence: Sansoni, 1906). Masi starts his book on 1 January 1511, and Landucci prob- ably around 1500. Landucci’s book, moreover, for selection of materials and writing style, is definitely assimilable to the “cronaca cittadina scritta in forma diaristica” (Cicchetti and Mordenti, “I libri di famiglia,” p. 159), even though it contains at the beginning (pp. 1–8, until his marriage) characteristics proper to ricordanze. 99 It is the case of Leonardo Bartolini (1348–1382), Niccolò Baldovinetti (since 1362), Bernardo Rinieri. Goro Dati writes in his “Libro segreto” detailed notes about all the offices he has been appointed to since 1405 to 1433. Terrino Manovelli programmatically dedicates a sec- tion of his book to “Memory of offices for which I will be drawn.” Luca da Panzano also dedicates specific lists to “office drawn and carried on or refused, up to now and from now on.” Ugolino Martelli dedicates especially the last part of his ricordanze to the list of offices he has been appointed to in more than thirty years. Marco Parenti records only one office,
Office-holding is, to look at it, closely tied to the memory of many of these historical events: Marco Parenti was the provost of the Signori when the peace of Lodi was signed, Dietisalvi Neroni was one of the Otto di Guardia at the time of the September 1434 parlamento, others wrote of some episodes because they were public officers or ambassadors who took part in them. And Bernardo Rinieri, in saying he was drawn as Prior, felt the need to note that in the two months of his priorate nothing special happened beyond the sinking of a gal- ley headed towards Flanders, confirming among other things the annalist pro- cedures that tied the memory of events to city magistratures in whose time the event occurred.100 This is all in respect to directly observed events, or what has been called “short-term memory.”101 Nevertheless we have seen that some of the records of historical events are taken by the authors of family books from older books, often lost to us; the scope in these instances was to construct the family geneal- ogy, finding out first of all exactly when the family settled in Florence, and for a precise reason: the claim to the family’s proper place in participation in pub- lic affairs.102 For this it is important to find proof of the original residence in Florence, and also of the citizenship which – as we have said – came not only from residence but also from the fact of being a contributor listed in the tax rolls. Thus for example the importance for Matteo Palmieri, in a book dedi- cated entirely to his personal relation with the tax office, to indicate – drawing
because he has given it (with its charges) to another person, but his son Piero lists the father’s offices in his book of ricordi in his place. Francesco Castellani does not list his public offices simply because he is not appointed to any of them, because of his life-time exclusion from public life, earlier for political reasons, and later for his overdue tax debts with the Commune. See Signorini, “Il libro di ricordi,” p. 20; BNCF, Palatino Baldovinetti, 37, fol. 9r; 77, fols. 10v, 12v. ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 14, fol. 1r; da Panzano, pp. 13–14 (1415–1430); 139–141 (1432–1439); 205–206 (1438–1457); Martelli, Ricordanze, pp. 246–249 (1448–1452); 279–282 (1452–1464); 283–300 (1467–1482); ASF, Corp. sopp., 95, 212, fol. 161v; Carte Strozziane, II s., 17bis, fols. 74v, 79v. 100 This is the reason why Prioristi (systematic lists of people who were appointed to the high- est political office in the Republic) were increasingly written and preserved in families since at least the 14th century. Such compilations also illustrate, between a two month mag- istracy and the next, the contemporary events which could be noteworthy according to their author. See also D. Hay, Annalists and historians. Western historiography from the VIIIth to the XVIIIth centuries (London: Methuen, 1977), p. 118; Martines, The social world, p. 47. 101 See C. Klapisch-Zuber, “L’invention du passé familial à Florence (XIVe–XVe s.),” in Temps, mémoire, tradition, pp. 95–118 (now in Ead., La famiglia e le donne, pp. 3–25, from which I cite). 102 Ibid.
103 M. Palmieri, Ricordi fiscali (1427–1434). Con due appendici relative al 1474–1495, ed. by E. Conti (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1983 [but: 1984]), p. 212. 104 Among the causes of tax increases one finds often, also in these sources, war expenses. See among others Leonardo Bartolini Salimbeni, who already in 1351 had registered, among the causes which had induced the Commune to impose new “prestanze” (forced loans), the costs met to repel the attack of the Milanese archbishop Giovanni Visconti. Likewise, in 1373 he will write that the forced loan was imposed in order to face the “guerra dell’Alpe” during the War of the Eight Saints against the Pope: Arch. Bartolini-Salimbeni, Florence, n.n., fols. 74v, 84v. 105 One must read in this sense also the authors’ preoccupation both to eliminate traces of politically compromising behavior (Manovelli on the “parlamento” of 1433) and to dem- onstrate one’s “innocienzia e nettezza” in relation to the role played in occasion of revolu- tionary events (Simone Peruzzi about the “Tumulto” of the Ciompi): see above, note 47. 106 Surely Velluti and Pitti, but also Filigno de’ Medici, and even the most ancient writings cited by later authors (which are not extant, but apparently did exist before the ones which have been preserved). 107 Klapisch-Zuber, La famiglia e le donne, pp. 24–25.
108 Ibid., p. 20. 109 For example Francesco Castellani owned (and maybe kept with his ricordanze in his “scrittoio”) at least a copy of Giovanni Villani’s chronicle (and maybe a second chronicle by uncertain author), Matteo’s ricordanze, inherited from his father, other books of his own ricordi besides the ones which have been preserved, which refer to them in several occasions. See above, chap. 2; ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 133, fol. 8r; Castellani, Ricordanze, I, p. 208, sub voce “ricordanze….”
110 One such example is the “Libro di ricordanze di cose di Chomune cominciato per me messer Miche
114 Kent, The Rise of the Medici, pp. 2–3. 115 Ibid., p. 3 note. 116 M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307, 2nd ed. (Oxford- Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993), p. 147.
The normal dimension of religious experience (religious normality as an his- torical factor)1 is certainly an important and significant factor for understand- ing past realities. And within this “domestic” devotion lies a basic element which gives us the measure of the external forms with which religiosity was lived by various individuals in the privacy of home and family and can perhaps also tell us something of the way in which these forms were felt. If this is so, could one then imagine a better source for discovering this aspect than the early medieval Florentine ricordi. Almost like diaries in make-up, and attentive to the little details of the individual and the family and home, these can only be a “mine of information” also about domestic religious practice. In truth, after a closer look at an “average” sample of the family books rather than at the “exceptions” represented by the more well-known critical editions, this affirmation could be at risk. The Florentine libri di ricordi are, as is well- known, very numerous compared to analogous documents from other parts of Italy. Of these the most well-known are those whose authors dwelt mostly on their own or their family’s events. But the large majority consists of bare-bone annotations of economic interest to the author or his family, which only occa- sionally dealt with questions closer to the private religious sphere. An attempt to examine this genre, then, must from the beginning state its distance from any global recognition of the theme in this genre. We will instead look at a sampling of some dozens of this kind of source, published and not, and attempt to draw significant indications, from a synchronic and diachronic comparison, about everyday religion at this time, and possible changes over the ages.2 A primary relation with God is present in this type of source from the very start. In the invocation, a ritual element of the fixed structure of the Florentine
1 G.G. Merlo, “Ripensando ai primi cinque numeri,” Quaderni di storia religiosa 6 (1999), pp. 7–14, especially p. 12. 2 Florentine libri di ricordi are a well-known source, about which much has been written and discussed even recently. This is not the place to recall a definition, or to resume the discussion which connects a part of them to the larger genre of family books. For all this see above, chap. 1, and below, passim; G. Ciappelli, “I libri di famiglia a Firenze. Stato delle ricerche e iniziative in corso,” in Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, pp. 131–139.
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3 Cicchetti and Mordenti, “La scrittura dei libri di famiglia,” especially p. 1119. 4 “Primo e Secondo libricciolo di crediti di Bene Bencivenni,” in NTF, pp. 212–228 e 363–458; “Libro del dare e dell’avere di Gentile de’ Sassetti e de’ suoi figli,” ibid., pp. 286–382; “Estratto notarile dal libro del dare e dell’avere di Filippo Peruzzi e compagni della tavola,” ibid., pp. 643–649. 5 Morelli, Ricordi, p. 82. 6 Corazzini (ed.), Ricordanze di Bartolomeo Masi (henceforth: [Masi], Ricordanze), p. 1. 7 “Prete Rinieri da Petriuolo”: see NTF, pp. 391, 432. 8 Ibid., p. 385 (y. 1284). See also Libro del dare e dell’avere di Noffo e Vese figli di Dego Genovesi, in NTF, pp. 622–642, esp. pp. 625, 641. 9 “Libro del dare e dell’avere e di varie ricordanze di Lapo Riccomanni,” in NTF, pp. 516–555, esp. p. 523. The friar is fra Salomone da Lucca, Franciscan, inquisitor “dell’eretica pravità” in
Otherwise religion is present above all in reference to the liturgical calen- dar, a fundamental instrument for one’s knowledge of time, wherein the feasts took on a special value also because of the customs tied to them, when they coincide with a given event.10 Or in these earliest ricordi religious devotion appears in the notation of a payment of bequests “ad pias causas” which the authors make for their clients, as occurred in 1292 to Filippo Peruzzi, who specifies that the legacy was due to “uncertain usury” (“usura non certa”).11 For that matter, sacred decorations and furnishings, provided they were valu- able, may certainly have been used in economic transactions just like their lay counterparts: the merchant banker Gentile Sassetti, for example, makes no scruple in taking “an archbishop’s mitre with gold, pearls, and gems”12 in pawn. If we take into consideration the period of greatest development of the libri di ricordi apart from these “archetypes,” which could be considered structurally still somewhat archaic, and are certainly less frequent over a whole series of problems, and move on to the full 14th and 15th century, it is possible to subdi- vide the presence of memoirs tied to domestic devotion into a number of groups.
1 Prayer
Certainly prayer is common to all forms of private devotion. It is well to pray, even according to Bernardino da Siena who wrote two cycles of prayers recited in Florence between 1425 and 1427, but it is more important to pray earnestly than frequently: “better one Our Father said slowly than a hundred quickly.”13
Florence since 1282, author of the posthumous condemnations of Farinata degli Uberti and his kin. See Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, III, pp. 377–378. 10 See with many others “the eve of St. James’ day,” “Lent,” “the day of St. Salvatore,” “expenses for Christmas Eve,” “the day of the blessed Saints Peter and Paul,” “the eve of Holy Trinity’s day,” in NTF, pp. 377, 383, 385, 406, 433, 706. Some feasts are also the occasion when, traditionally, tips are paid to people who lent their services (teachers for children at All Saints, for example), or the tenants of land or houses must pay traditional rights to the owners (Easter, All Saints, Christmas). See Castellani, Ricordanze, II, p. 129; BNCF, II.II.357 (henceforth: Tribaldo de’ Rossi), fol. 54r; B. Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, p. 114; [Masi], Ricordanze, p. 6. 11 [Peruzzi], “Estratto notarile,” p. 644. 12 [Gentile Sassetti], “Libro del dare e dell’avere,” p. 315. 13 Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari [Quaresimale fiorentino del 1424], ed. by C. Cannarozzi, 2 vols. (Pistoia: Pacinotti, 1934), I, p. 164.
And in any case “oral prayer requires a special place, but pray discreetly.”14 Now, what was the prayer practice, discreet as may be, of lay Florentines in the 12th–13th centuries? In this as in other fields, Giovanni Morelli remains our best illustrator of practices that are otherwise difficult to understand. After having deviated from the description of very important Florentine events to recount the death of his first-born Alberto, dead at nine years in 1406, Morelli dedicates an entire separate section of his book to his own behavior on the occasion of the anniversary of that loss. The intense suffering at the death of his son, not eased by time, leads him to kneel in penitence before a sacred household image:
having many times recommended…the well-being of my son’s soul…in front of the crucified son of God, to whom he many times had recom- mended his body’s health when he was sick, on my bare knees and in shirtsleeves, head uncovered, with the leather strap around my neck, in my praying towards him, I first began to imagine and look into my sins… And so…with devout psalms and prayers to the crucified son of God I began to pray; and after many psalms and prayers…I started to pray to him directly.
After asking to be placed in a state of grace, Giovanni asks for the satisfaction of a request: if Alberto’s soul had not yet reached heaven because impeded by some sin, that he be called immediately before God. The complex and detailed prayer is addressed first to the crucified Jesus, then to the Virgin, to his right in the painting, that she use her power of intercession with her divine son.
And as I said the prayer…with that devoted reverence that God allowed me, I stood, took the painting devotedly in hand and kissed it, just where my son had sweetly kissed it when he was sick and after asking to get well again; and then I replaced it, and kneeling again, recited the Credo and then the Gospel of St. John.
At this moment his eyes are concentrated on St. John, to the left of Christ, to whom he also prays for intercession. When he has finished,
With great comfort, as it seemed I must be satisfied, many times, holding the painting in my arms, I kissed the Crucifix and the figure of His mother and the Evangelist, and then said the Te Deum. And bowing to the holy
14 Ibid., p. 117.
saints, I went to repose my body; and so happy, and full of good hope and much comforted I got into bed, and making the sign of the cross lay down to sleep.15
In this unusual description of an individual’s private prayer are explicitly con- tained many of the elements that we may find, even if only more implicitly, in other more reticent libri di ricordi. Morelli writes out all of his very long prayer which is intermixed with other texts drawn from the liturgy (psalms, lauds, excerpts from the Gospels, the Salve Regina, the Credo, the Te Deum) and Richard Trexler, author of a long examination of this exceptional source, has hypothesized that his aim was to register, for his descendants, a procedure that had succeeded, and that could be used again in similar circumstances.16 This is not an isolated tendency: other authors have in fact copied into their notebooks prayers thought to be useful for devotional, or even apotropaic purposes. If they are not always found in the family books, they are at any rate conserved in the zibaldoni,17 those less personal collections of copies of writings variously useful to their compilers. For example Luca da Panzano copied into his ricordi a section dedicated to “Prayers that must be said and used in any adverse circumstance and for redemption of our souls,”18 where there are the dates on which thirteen masses are to be celebrated, “which Pope Innocent said wanting to get counsel for his soul,” a prayer in Latin (“Deus propitius esto mei peccatori”), and a prayer to the angel of the annunciation in vernacular. Sometimes these prayer texts in fact are found mixed in with a series of moral considerations in those family books that are more inclined towards diaries or chronicles, like those belong- ing to the latter part of the period in hand. For example, more than once the apothecary Luca Landucci copied prayers of this kind, such as when he wrote on the occasion of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s death: “Man, man, of what have we to be proud? The true attribute of man is real humility…The real property of man is his docility and humility, and revering God…who shall be blessed eternally by all his creatures, as he merits. May he pardon my sins, and also forgive the above-mentioned dead, as well as myself; and so for all human creatures.”19
15 Morelli, Ricordi, pp. 475–492; there follows the equally famous vision by Morelli. 16 R.C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980), p. 179. 17 See for example BNCF, Palatino, 867, XVIII, fols. 61r–73v, which contains indications on the prayers to say in special periods, on readings from Scripture, and so on. 18 Molho and Sznura (eds.), “Brighe, affanni, volgimenti di stato” (henceforth: da Panzano), pp. 220–222. 19 Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 65. See also pp. 71, 114.
And in another instance: “Thus I pray that he forgive me my sins and send me all those things which are to his glory. God be praised always by all creatures; and with this medicine all sickness and suffering may be cured.”20 Recording the recipes for curing the more common illnesses is similar to the tendency of recording prayers: in both cases we are dealing with “good and proven” remedies that often contain religious kinds of invocations.21 Besides, the habit of considering prayer itself as a sort of talisman, when transcribed on strips of paper or vellum and carried or stitched into clothing, had a long tradi- tion in the Middle Ages,22 and similar customs continued for a long time to be “if not exactly approved, at least…tolerated” by ecclesiastical authorities.23 It is not by chance that similar practices, publicized by charlatans for gain, find space in the libri di ricordi of the more narrative kind: as in the episode described by Landucci of a Spaniard who “climbed up on a bench like a charla- tan to sell his orations…of a female saint who performs miracles” and who in order to demonstrate the validity of his product went in shirtsleeves and bare- foot into a lighted oven and did other tricks, almost succeeding in convincing the otherwise orthodox apothecary of their miraculous nature (“and I say that, of all the things I have ever seen, I’ve never seen a greater miracle, if it is a miracle”).24
2 Religious Images
Nevertheless the other aspect with which Morelli’s testimony puts us into direct contact is the function of the religious images in Florentine lay devotion in the Renaissance. On the one hand many sources tell us that images of this kind were a not unimportant part of domestic furnishing, with certainly deco- rative functions, which were not separable from devotional practice or from a certain symbolic-anthropological value.
20 Ibid., p. 284; and also pp. 298–299. Compare with the zibaldoni from Veneto cited by J. Grubb, Provincial Families of the Renaissance. Private and Public Life in the Veneto (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 186. 21 Castellani, Ricordanze, I, pp. 175–176: “And this is a good and holy medicine, and the per- son will be immediately healed, by the grace of God, amen.” 22 R. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 78. 23 F. Cardini, Magia, stregoneria, superstizioni nell’Occidente medievale (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979), p. 98. 24 Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 300.
Giovanni’s complicated prayer was recited in front of a panel painting, a crucifix with the Madonna and St. John which was placed in a corner of the house dedicated to this kind of profound meditation, or in the bedroom. The extant inventories confirm the presence of similar devotional objects in Florentine patrician homes of the 14th–15th centuries. Certainly an image of the Madonna and Child was almost always present in the master bedroom, often part of the wedding dowry, or at least part of the furnishings provided for the new couple. Like the round “panel painting of Virgin Mary (colmo di Vergine Maria), that is a painted panel of Our Lady,” of which Bernardo Machiavelli records the purchase in his book in 1483, immediately before the marriage of his daughter Primavera to Francesco Vernacci.25 Tribaldo de’ Rossi, too, ordered a similar painting right after his marriage in 1481.26 Beginning above all in the second quarter of the 15th century, even bas reliefs or half-bust figures of the Madonna and Child became objects commonly acquired for weddings, des- tined to memorialize the new union (often they bore the coats of arms of the two families), fulfill a role of heavenly protection for the couple, as well as hav- ing the symbolic value as wish of fertility, sometimes underscored by talisman- like27 practices. It is probable that they were often kept in special niches or tabernacles, perhaps like the sculptured or painted crucifixes similar to Morelli’s.28 However these were not the only objects of this type that could be found, intended for similar use, in Florentine houses. In the second half of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, whether for a wedding or for entrance into convent (where the taking of the veil corresponded to a kind of mystic wedding), the daughters of numerous authors of libri di ricordi received as part of their dowry a little statue of the Christ child, richly dressed and sometimes with a tabernacle. In this case too, the object was endowed with multiple symbolic functions, but was probably anyhow meant to be the center of forms of devotion. At the very least, when the parents had followed the advice of the Dominican Giovanni Dominici, author of a manual of domestic behavior, to put “paintings of holy children and young virgins in the house in
25 Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, pp. 176–177. 26 Cited in C. Klapisch-Zuber, “Le sante bambole. Gioco e devozione nella Firenze del Quattrocento,” in Ead., La famiglia e le donne, pp. 305–329, especially p. 317; “a painting of Our Lady, beautiful,…with my wife’s coat of arms,” also in one of Luca da Panzano’s house inventories, along with “a flanking panel for a painting of Our Lady, with a crucifix,” in the “ground chamber,” and “a veil for a painting of Our Lady” in the bedchamber chest: see da Panzano, pp. 81, 270, 273, 275. 27 G.A. Johnson, “Family Values. Sculpture and the Family in Fifteenth-Century Florence,” in Ciappelli and Rubin (eds.), Art, Memory and Family, pp. 215–233, especially p. 220. 28 “A tabernacle for a painting of Our Lady” also in da Panzano, p. 82.
29 G. Dominici, Regola del governo di cura familiare, ed. by D. Salvi (Florence, 1860), p. 146, also cited in Klapisch-Zuber, “Le sante bambole,” p. 319, which must be seen in general for this subject. 30 Landucci, Diario fiorentino, pp. 34, 44, 68, 106, 139, 238, 250, 291, 308, 322, 330, 337. It is mentioned at least three times by ser Giusto d’Anghiari, between 1439 and 1479, once to thank God for allowing to conclude the League of 1466: see BNCF, II.II.17 (henceforth: Giusto d’Anghiari), fols. 36v, 92v, 133r. 31 Landucci, Diario fiorentino, pp. 13, 41, 47, 279, 233. On this latter case see now also W.J. Connell and G. Constable, “Sacrilege and Redemption in Renaissance Florence. The Case of Antonio Rinaldeschi,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 61 (1998), pp. 53–92 [now republ. with the same title, 2nd rev. ed. (Toronto: Center for Reformation
The cult of saints and relics is similar to the cult of sacred images. Not only are there translations (intended by ecclesiastical promoters to revive a cult)32 of sacred remains or the discoveries of new relics (like the pieces of the Cross33 found at Rome in 1492) noted at times in the family books. But some authors carefully report, especially when they are away from their own city, any visit made to a given relic, or the lighting of a candle at the tomb of a saint or blessed. Thus in reporting his trip to Rome at Easter of 1512, Bartolomeo Masi writes, almost stupefied at the concentration, that he had seen “the head of St. John the Baptist and of St. Peter and St. Paul and St. Andrew, and many others and infinite relics.” While ser Giusto d’Anghiari more prosaically notes in 1471 having spent 16 quattrini for a “little torch that I lit at the tomb of blessed St. Antonino.”34 This kind of attention is not so different from that given to important reli- gious ceremonies that take place in the city, which catalyze the interest of the writers, as is perceivable in the abundance of detail they provide of the excep- tional events that they had witnessed: papal entries, consecrations of churches, a prelate’s funeral, etc.
3 The Life Cycle
If we wish to remain focussed on the more “private” aspects of domestic devo- tion, there are other elements around which the annotations are more fre- quent and widespread and in which the element of devotion may appear in this kind of source. First of all, the rites tied to important moments in the life cycle of everyone. Given his concentration on what concerns or may interest his family, the author cannot avoid reporting the religious essentials that accompany the phases of biological development: baptisms, weddings, deaths. These elements are present in practically all the ricordanze that are also family books (otherwise they are just account books).
3.1 Baptisms First of all, at least chronologically for the individual involved, come the bap- tisms. Rite of passage, essential moment for the entry of the newborn into the
and Renaissance Studies, 2008)]. Also Giusto d’Anghiari registers in 1475 the case of a speaking Virgin: Giusto d’Anghiari, fol. 111r. 32 See the translation of St. Jerome’s relics in Santa Maria del Fiore in 1487: Landucci, Diario fiorentino, pp. 51–52. 33 Tribaldo de’ Rossi, fol. 94v. 34 [Masi], Ricordanze, p. 6; Giusto d’Anghiari, fol. 95r.
35 See for example Martelli, Ricordanze, pp. 208–210, where the author registers all the births of his family from 1435 to 1456. The registers of “approvazioni d’età” (age approval), neces- sary to establish the eligibility for office, were instituted by the Florentine government after 1429. Even after this date, the “age proof” was normally provided by a father’s book of ricordi. See Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Les toscans et leurs familles, p. 351 note. 36 C. Gargiolli (ed.), Il libro segreto di Gregorio Dati (Bologna, 1869; repr. 1968) (henceforth: Dati), pp. 40–44, 74–79, 101–104. Also Lapo Niccolini enumerates his children in special lists, even without assigning a title to them: see Bec, Il libro degli affari proprii (henceforth: Niccolini), pp. 80–81, 89, 93–94, 109–110; “Figliuoli arò,” also in da Panzano: pp. 179–181, with more lists at pp. 53–54, 225. 37 Dati, p. 40. Bartolomeo Masi always accompanies the entries about a birth with the expression: “by the grace of God.” 38 See C. Klapisch-Zuber, “Il nome rifatto. La trasmissione dei nomi propri nelle famiglie fiorentine,” in Ead., La famiglia e le donne, pp. 59–90, esp. p. 78.
39 Dati, pp. 40–44. 40 Dati, pp. 77–78. Also see Martelli, Ricordanze, p. 243. 41 Dati, pp. 102–103. See for other cases: F. Guicciardini, Ricordi, diari, memorie, ed. by M. Spinella (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1981), p. 79 (“They named me Francesco in honor of Francesco di Filippo de’ Nerli maternal grandfather of my father, and Tommaso in respect of St. Thomas Aquinas, since the day I was born was St. Thomas’ day”); Morelli, Ricordi, pp. 190, 195; Martelli, Ricordanze, p. 150; Niccolini, p. 93. 42 Dati, p. 78. Also see da Panzano, p. 180: “I named her Mattea and Niccolaia for my mother who died in May.” 43 Dati, p. 102. 44 See Morelli, Ricordi, passim.
45 At the birth of Francesco Guicciardini’s daughter, all the Eight are godfathers: Guicciardini, Ricordi, pp. 97, 102; at a baptism in which Ugolino Martelli takes part all the Six are godfa- thers; whereas, for two of Martelli’s children, all the accoppiatori and the Sei di mercan- zia, respectively, are godfathers, even though, in this latter case “by Monsignor’s leave.” See Martelli, Ricordanze, pp. 123, 243, 258. 46 Niccolini, p. 89. Bonaccorso Pitti, “Ricordi,” in V. Branca (ed.), Mercanti scrittori. Ricordi nella Firenze tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Milan: Rusconi, 1986), pp. 341–503, esp. p. 346. At “Curadina seconda”’s and Maddalena’s births, Pitti is respectively vicar of Valdinievole and Podestà of Montespertoli (ibid., pp. 435–436, 439). Another example of corporative godmothers is offered by the nuns of Murate who stand godmothers for two female twins of Francesco Guicciardini’s: Guicciardini, Ricordi, p. 105. 47 Morelli, Ricordi, p. 195. 48 Niccolini p. 93: “ser Simone, priest of our chapel.” 49 Castellani, Ricordanze, I, p. 124; Sillano (ed.), Le ricordanze di Giovanni Chellini, p. 185; Guicciardini, Ricordi, pp. 80, 81 etc.; Martelli, Ricordanze, pp. 90, 124. 50 Guicciardini, Ricordi, also pp. 82, 84, 85, 88, 91, 92, 96, 97. In spite of a relatively low social level, even Bartolomeo Masi, in his artisan milieu, is called upon very many times: [Masi], Ricordanze, passim. 51 Morelli, Ricordi, p. 150.
On the other hand it is Guicciardini himself who indicated the reason for resorting to the baptism “for the love of God”: “and these ones did not send sweets or any presents because I requested it, as I did not want those airs, with their and my expense.”52 In this sense, even godfathers of great importance could be counted among those “for the love of God.”53 In special circumstances, as for example the arrival of a long-awaited son, the author might dwell more on the baptism, adding special thanks to God and wishes for the future health and well-being of the child.54 Certainly this was the sort of occasion on which one looked for prestigious godparents, even in greater numbers than usual.55 During the ceremony or immediately afterwards, a candle or lamp (of thanks) was lit and alms were given to the officiating priest (the “batteziere”) and to the poor.56 Sometimes (and this is less frequent, even though in keeping with the strongly patriarchal nature of the upper-class Florentine family) it was the father of the husband who gave the name and registered it, as happened to Giovanni Chellini, who gave the name of his deceased wife to a son’s daughter (and to Neri Capponi, who at the birth of his son’s son “wanted to remake him- self”).57 And in certain cases auspicious – but certainly extraliturgical – cus- toms were registered, such as placing coins in the swaddling clothes to encourage wealth (“and placed in the child’s clothes in San Giovanni three coins, of which one was a fiorino largo”).58 Some authors noted that it was themselves among all the godfathers, in a sign of special consideration, who held the child.59 In exceptional cases, when the child risked dying soon after birth, the bap- tism took place immediately, and the writer specified this in the certainty that grace would be granted. So Giovanni Morelli (“and if it please God to call him now that he has had holy baptism…Really they affirmed this: that the child was alive after the holy baptism received by him for the well-being of his soul; may he be pleased to have conceded grace”), and Luca da Panzano (“they said he
52 Guicciardini, Ricordi, p. 89. 53 At two baptisms of the Martelli family even Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici is godfather “for the love of God”: Martelli, Ricordanze, pp. 204, 208. 54 Castellani, Ricordanze, I, p. 171. 55 Also see Martelli, Ricordanze, pp. 130–131, for the first-born son, even if not in the same office at the moment. 56 Castellani, Ricordanze, I, p. 171; II, p. 135. 57 [Chellini], Le ricordanze, pp. 196, 185. 58 [Chellini], Le ricordanze, p. 197. 59 Martelli, Ricordanze, p. 124: “and I carried him in my arms”; [Masi], Ricordanze, p. 215: “I found myself carrying the child in my arms at the holy baptism.”
3.2 Marriages Information about marriage in the family books is without doubt very impor- tant to the historian because of its completeness, such that sophisticated anal- ysis can be made of the effective phases (and variants) in the establishment of a marriage union in the Renaissance.65 Nevertheless, prior to the Council of Trent that decreed the fundamental role of the Church for the marriage form by fixing an obligatory and uniform religious ceremony, the importance of this very information in evaluating domestic “devotion” is rather minor, because the religious component played a reduced part in the establishment of the union. In the four classic phases of marriage – preliminary contact (impalmamento), formal contract (giuramento), marriage, wedding – before Trent the religious rite, especially in Tuscany, was never essential to the validity of the union, and is rarely present in the descriptions even as a choice. Certainly the protagonists experienced the sacrality of the act, and this is clear also from the forms of invocation used by the writers at these moments, which often corresponded to the beginning of a family book, begun at the moment of the
60 Morelli, Ricordi, p. 199; da Panzano, p. 242. 61 As in the case of one Morelli: Morelli, Ricordi, p. 368. 62 Morelli, Ricordi, pp. 359, 402, 410. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., p. 359 and note. 65 See C. Klapisch-Zuber, “Zaccaria, o il padre spodestato. I riti nuziali in Italia tra Giotto e il Concilio di Trento,” in Ead., La famiglia e le donne, pp. 109–151.
66 “as it pleased God and his glorious mother always Virgin our holy Lady Mary, I married,” Castellani, Ricordanze, I, p. 116; “as it pleased God almighty and the blessed Virgin and mother, our holy Lady Mary, I married Ermellina,” Niccolini, p. 71, and see also 92. 67 See Guicciardini, Ricordi, pp. 83, 85 (“may it please God”). 68 Morelli, Ricordi, p. 341. 69 See ASF, Corp. Sopp., 90, 131, fols. 3r–v, 15v, 23v, 32v, 52r–v, on which also Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 53, 55. 70 Morelli, Ricordi, p. 340. 71 The betrothal of Giovanni Chellini’s sister takes place in the “oratorio d’Orto San Michele” ([Chellini], Le ricordanze, p. 64). Also see Guicciardini, Ricordi, p. 83 (in Santa Reparata); [Masi], Ricordanze, p. 245; Niccolini, pp. 71, 92, 99, 108, 113. Ugolino Martelli “impalma” and subsequently makes his promise in the same church (Martelli, Ricordanze, pp. 98–99); for Lapo Niccolini compromise and promise take place in the same church (Niccolini, p. 88).
72 [Chellini], Le ricordanze, p. 187, at his son’s marriage. This use is testified also by Paolo Sassetti’s ricordanze: “to find a place in my arms for the child.” See ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 4, fol. 70 (y. 1384), cited in Klapisch-Zuber, “Le sante bambole,” p. 316, who cites at least another case drawn from Lapo Mazzei’s letters to Francesco Datini. 73 Sometimes the two stages were separated; see Martelli, Ricordanze, p. 99: first comes the contract, and second the ring exchange in the bride’s father’s house after the “messa del congiunto.” 74 Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, p. 177; [Masi], Ricordanze, p. 245, y. 1529. 75 Guicciardini, Ricordi, p. 85. 76 “and therefore this morning they listened to the messa del congiunto…and thus later on this evening they slept together and consummated the marriage here in my house in Florence”: Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, pp. 177–178; [Masi], Ricordanze, p. 257, y. 1521. 77 [Masi], Ricordanze, p. 5, y. 1478. 78 [Masi], Ricordanze, p. 30, y. 1495. 79 Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, p. 185. 80 See the discussion in Klapisch-Zuber, “Zaccaria, o il padre spodestato,” pp. 129–130. Antonino’s Episcopal constitutions are published in R.C. Trexler, Church and Community, 1200–1600 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1987), pp. 453–466 (prohibitions about marriages without messa del congiunto at rubr. 3 and 58, pp. 454, 466).
3.3 Deaths and Family Memory Perhaps the greatest amount of annotations relative to devotion in libri di ricordi is linked to memorial writing, records of deaths in the family. Whether this represented one of the stronger recommendations to devotional practice (even on the part of authors of books on rules of behavior like Paolo da Certaldo: “have masses celebrated often for the souls of your dead”),82 or there be contained in it a powerful element of involvement, considering the exem- plary value that the family book should have for the descendants (with the more or less explicit meaning of “follow this example even when it is my turn”), it is at the moment of death of relatives that the more explicit and numerous accents of contact with God appear: prayer, pious dispositions, etc. At times even in this case the authors dedicated specific sections of their ricordi to deceased relatives.83 More often there are the lists of births that are used to annotate the frequent deaths, with the indication of the day, some- times the cause, and the place of burial. Quite often there is a marginal note, by the writer or others after him, that underlines the news, together with the sign of the cross that in some way sacralized it.84 Occasionally the author noted series of names of relatives also in relation to inheritances received, but this is more frequently done for practical than devotional motives.85 The annotation is not rarely accompanied by brief comments on the moral quality of the deceased relative (wife, son, father, etc.), with an invocation for his eternal grace. Thus Chellini: “my most loved, dear and good son Cosimo, for whom may God have made true pardon and had pity on his soul, passed from this life.”86 Another common form is: “It pleased God to call to himself the blessed soul of….” One indication frequently encountered in this type of registration concerns whether or not the dying person had had time to repent, to make a will (that which also insured a precise carrying out of pious bequests), or to receive the
81 An example of lower class marriage with messa del congiunto might be found in the milieu described by Bartolomeo Masi. While similar examples among the patricians are found in the Martelli (1434), Machiavelli (1483), Guicciardini (1508) marriages cited above. 82 Paolo da Certaldo, Libro di buoni costumi, in Branca (ed.), Mercanti scrittori, pp. 1–99, esp. p. 24. 83 Martelli, Ricordanze, p. 223: “whom may God have forgiven.” 84 See da Panzano, and others. 85 Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, pp. 68–69. 86 [Chellini], Le ricordanze, p. 185.
87 Guicciardini, Ricordi, p. 94. 88 BNCF, Magliabechiano, VII, 1014, fol. 46v, cited in C. Klapisch-Zuber, “Il bambino, la memoria e la morte,” in E. Becchi and D. Julia (eds.), Storia dell’infanzia (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1996), pp. 155–181, esp. p. 164. See also Morelli, Ricordi, p. 456. 89 [Masi], Ricordanze, p. 284. 90 Guicciardini, Ricordi, pp. 89–91, 93–95. 91 Morelli, Ricordi, pp. 177–183. 92 Ibid., p. 223. 93 Da Panzano, pp. 42–43.
buried in Santa Croce, under the vaults, in the tomb of Agnolo Barucci, to the left. As you enter under the vaults, after a door, go in a cemetery-like room, and she is to the right, as you enter that door, along the wall. I wanted to clarify this point, because by seeing her burial-place, for her goodness, to all of us from her and the place where her bones lie must come an odor (of sanctity). And especially I pray every descendant of Pagolo that at least on the anniversary of her death they go to the place where she lies, and pray to God for the health of her soul, and illuminate the sepulchre with a small lamp, as do many.99
94 Ibid., p. 43. 95 “with that honor we could do, without exceeding the rules”: Morelli, Ricordi, p. 458. 96 See S. Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore-London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), p. 42. 97 Desiderius Erasmus, The funeral, in Id., Colloquies, 2 vols. (Collected works, 39–40), Engl. transl. by C. Ringwalt Thompson (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1997), p. 774. 98 [Chellini], Le ricordanze, p. 151. 99 Morelli, Ricordi, pp. 182–183.
It is, in sum, the cult of the dead, of one’s ancestors as a form of family memory that is being practiced, through the remembrance of the souls of the dead, the care of their ultramundane existence by means of the rites necessary for their being welcomed in Paradise, the cultivation of their example. To all this is added the practice of particular ways of perpetuating the identity of the family also inside the community of the dead: by constructing family tombs, or at any rate a devotional space in which to rejoin one’s deceased relatives. Giovanni Morelli was particularly attentive to this form of collective iden- tity, and never missed a chance to point out that the body of this or that rela- tive “was buried…with great honor in the church of Santa Croce, in the burial place of his father and brothers.”100 The search for a common burial place for the family is evident from either the dispositions in the deceased’s will, when he states such, or from the description of the way in which the body was trans- ported from the place where death occurred: he was “buried in the place of the Minorites in Forlì, and then we had his body brought to Florence and it was buried in Santa Croce in Florence with the other ancestors, honorably like those before.”101 So too when a relative of Luca da Panzano died when vicar in Pescia, the family had the body brought to Florence.102 Only when the burial had been “honorable,” and sufficiently identified, was it possible to tolerate a burial far from home (“They honored his body, and it was buried in Bologna in the church of the [Franciscan] friars…on the right, between the chorus and the wall,…and I believe there is a stone with our arms…And because, as it is said, it is an honorable burial, his brothers deliberated to let him stay there, and not be moved here”).103 For that matter, the establishment of a common burial ground for the members of a family appears to be one of the earliest cares for the aver- age Florentine, so much so that it involved, at the end of our period, even a modestly well-off artisan like the father of Bartolomeo Masi, a coppersmith who in 1514 purchased a “burial ground” for 5 fiorini larghi inside the church of Santissima Annunziata, “which my above-mentioned father Bernardo bought for himself and for all his descendants who may wish to be buried there,” and placing above it “a marble plaque…bearing our arms.”104 In general the family tomb is occupied by the men, while the women, always considered to have been “acquired,” often are buried with their own lineage.
100 Elsewhere: “his body was put in the burial place of our ancestors, that is in the church of Santa Croce.” Ibid., pp. 159, 164 and in general: 137, 140, 141, 142. 101 Morelli, Ricordi, p. 167. 102 Da Panzano, p. 42. 103 Morelli, Ricordi, p. 171. See anyway at least also [Masi], Ricordanze, pp. 9, 29, passim. 104 [Masi], Ricordanze, pp. 145–146.
Nevertheless, many affectionate wives, either because they expressed such a desire (Bartolomea Bagnesi, mother of Lapo Niccolini; Lena Niccolini, his daughter),105 or because there had been a fully recognized integration into the family of the husband, were buried in the husband’s family tomb.106 Sometimes this choice caused ill humor, as in the case of the Sassetti, when an acquired relative was buried in the family tomb “by mistake” by a monk entrusted with the formalities, “believing to do her more honor; but we were not very pleased. However, nothing was done, since it is our funeral monument.” For that matter, even for other women in the family the author almost feels the need to justify special mention on this kind of occasion, as in the case of monna Lippa, widow of Bernardo di Anselmo: “We have made special mention because we consid- ered her like our dear mother, and in everything she was one of the dear women of our house.”107 The essential indications regarding death included, beyond the place of burial for the above reasons, also the date of death, because having the precise date rendered possible all the complex rituals of memorial masses which were often expressly requested at the point of death or in any case at the moment of drawing up the will. The Niccolini wills reported in Lapo’s ricordi are an exam- ple of this.108 It could be the “masses of San Ghirigoro,” the only ones requested in 1499 by Piero di Giovanni Capponi in his will, that is the thirty masses to be said one each day for thirty days after death (in imitation of the thirty masses said by St. Gregory the Great for the liberation of the soul of the monk Giusto).109 Or the “rinnovali,” or the masses that were celebrated annually on the anniversary,110 whose number was specified in the will or by the relatives. The rinnovali could also be the occasion for a “piatanza,” an extraordinary offering of food usually made to monks of certain orders.111 In as much as these are writings with a heavy economic-patrimonial value, also for the memory of one’s own descendants, the libri di ricordi often contain copies of wills: those of the authors themselves or of other members of the family. In most cases these are functional annotations: to remember the date
105 Niccolini, pp. 134, 140. 106 See also F.W. Kent, Household and lineage in Renaissance Florence. The family life of the Capponi, Ginori, and Rucellai (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 262. 107 ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 4, fols. 67r, 34r (Paolo Sassetti). 108 Niccolini, pp. 61, 69. 109 Capponi’s will is cited in Kent, Household and lineage, p. 265. For Saint Gregory Masses see Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. by V. Branca (Turin: Einaudi, 19842), p. 354 note. 110 Castellani, Ricordanze, I, p. 107. 111 See ibid.; Niccolini, pp. 61, 78–79.
112 Niccolini, pp. 60–63, 67, 97. 113 Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, pp. 51, 186 (in 1477 and 1483). 114 [Chellini], Le ricordanze, p. 215. 115 Castellani, Ricordanze, II, pp. 49–50. 116 Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, pp. 25, 63, 77.
4 The Religious Experience
Sacraments tied to the life cycle are not the only ones that hold the attention of authors of ricordanze. Religious orders embraced by children or relatives are important moments for the family and were carefully registered, sometimes in minute detail. Only at the end of our period do we find considerations like those that Guicciardini (also noted for his caustic judgments on ecclesiastic institutions)118 attributed to his father, when in 1503 on the death of his uncle Rinieri, bishop of Cortona, he had thought of undertaking an ecclesiastical career: “Piero arranged everything so as not to have a son be priest…as he thought the things of the Church were in moral decline; and he preferred to miss the great usefulness… than dirty his conscience by making a son priest for cupidity of things or great- ness.”119 Ugolino Martelli did not think the same way fifty years earlier when he wrote “I remember how…by the hand of my lord the archbishop of Florence, I had the first two orders given to my son Carlo,” and eight years later repeated the same choice and report for his son Lodovico.120 Others, whether because particularly devout or especially interested in all the happenings in the extended family, wrote in detail of similar episodes not only in relation to close relatives, but also the more distant ones. Thus Bartolomeo Masi describes the entrance of two brothers into the Benedictine order in 1521 and 1523, annotating scrupu- lously also the passage of his mother’s cousin from lay cleric to observant Dominican in 1496. It is however primarily in the descriptions of the ordination of his young brothers Matteo and Romolo (the first not yet sixteen, the second nearly twenty-four) that he furnishes details even about the circumstances and motivations for their sudden vocations, that began when the one was a mercer’s apprentice and the other already was a second-hand dealer:
117 Niccolini, p. 90. 118 “I want to see three things before I die…: a well ordered republic in our city, Italy liberated from all the barbarians, and the world delivered from the tyranny of these wicked priests”: F. Guicciardini, Maxims and reflections of a Renaissance statesman (‘Ricordi’), trans. by M. Domandi (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 144 (Q17). 119 Guicciardini, Ricordi, p. 81. 120 Martelli, Ricordanze, pp. 257–258, 282–283. Of the two sons, only Lodovico will continue the ecclesiastic career, and will become Protonotario Apostolico: ibid., p. 258 note.
I remember how…the evening of San Giovanni…waiting for my brother to come to supper, it was nearly dusk, and a person came from the Abbot of the abbey of Florence, [to say] not to expect him to supper because he was staying the night in that convent, and would become a monk there…121 I remember that…my brother Romolo made his profession in the order and ministry of the abbey of Florence…and up to the 29th June 1522…and on the 24th, the day of Saint John the Baptist, having eaten at our house, went out as is customary to Vespers, and never came home again….122
It is precisely the special sensitivity of some of our authors like Masi that makes them such clear sources about religious experience in their times. For this rea- son, even the importance of such notes can never be disjoined from an analysis of the single author’s characteristics. Masi, a coppersmith who never married, writes in his ricordanze (a singular mixture of family book and diary that reports also the more important civic events),123 all of his participations in reli- gious confraternities, doubtless the more usual means by which lay persons could practice a more rigorous devotion, but also an essential vehicle for pursuing the advantages of social and spiritual services, and for experiencing a sociability endowed with multiple functions. Such appear to be the motives that lead Masi to multiply his connections with confraternities (they were at least nine) in the course of thirty years.124 This was not an exceptional experi- ence for the time and context,125 and what strikes us here is the careful regis- tration in the ricordi of the enrolment along with some details about the confraternity’s working. Domenico Pollini, who joined the confraternity of
121 [Masi], Ricordanze, pp. 247–249. 122 Ibid., pp. 263–265. 123 On which see also above, chap. 3. 124 Born in 1480, he took part in at least nine confraternities: after the entrance when twelve, in 1490, in the “compagnia di fanciulli” of San Giovanni Evangelista (which he will leave in 1507), he will enter when 22 in the flagellant society of San Benedetto, to which already his father and two brothers had belonged, when 24 in the still flagellant society of San Paolo, when 27 in the “compagnia del Tempio,” when 31 in the society of Santa Margherita and soon after in that of Crocetta, when 32 in the “compagnia di stendardo” of San Zanobi, when 34 in the society of the Virgin Mary, when 41 in the society of Santa Cecilia of Fiesole, of which already his brother was a member. See [Masi], Ricordanze, pp. 15, 49, 63, 79, 80, 114, 146, 256. 125 See L. Sebregondi, “Lorenzo confratello illustre,” Archivio Storico Italiano 150 (1992), pp. 319–341, esp. p. 338.
Gesù Pellegrino (Jesus Pilgrim) for the first time rather late in life, and with the aim of preparing for his own death, had a different experience. In describing the admission ceremony and the duties of the company for every year and every week, he comments: “I really appreciated this, especially since I am this day 58 years, 4 months and 26 days old, and I thank Omnipotent God for pre- paring me to repent my sins. And so I pray that he make me persevere in good and fruitful penitence so that in the end he will in his mercy receive me to eternal life.”126 Unusual in this late joining by Pollini (less typical than the early joining by Masi) is his especial zeal in copying into his ricordi both the mem- bership roll and the statutes of the confraternity.127 All considered, the authors of libri di ricordi who write explicitly about their devotional activity in the confraternities are few, also because, common as the practice was, those who undertook this kind of activity were not necessarily the majority of writers of ricordanze, or this was not such as to call forth regis- trations differing from those that appeared in the collective libri di ricordi kept by the confraternities themselves. Viceversa, personal and private registrations of other kinds of devotion are common enough, worthy of recording because of their sporadic and excep- tional nature: first among these is participation in jubilees and pilgrimages. By definition the jubilees, begun in the year 1300, could only take place occasion- ally: at the beginning every fifty, then every forty, and finally every twenty-five years. For this and the difficulties of travelling, for the limited average human life span, at the time taking part in such celebrations was often a unique expe- rience for an individual, especially if one considers that otherwise people did not move much: when he is twenty-two Masi himself notes, in relating of a trip to Siena, Volterra, and San Gimignano, during which he had visited some holy buildings: “and this was the first time, that any of us had left the contado and district of Florence.”128 The same holds true for pilgrimages. Thus it is not sur- prising that a record of them is found in documents of this kind. Masi himself recounts three-four times: once in 1502, in the course of another trip to Arezzo, he went on to Verna where the monks “took us to see…all those holy places, showing us where St. Francis received the stigmata.” Another time he went to Rome, in 1512, and tried to arrive in coincidence with the Holy Week. A third time in 1526 he described the “jubilee” declared by Pope Clement VII for Florence: “this jubilee is of the same value as the one in Rome this last holy
126 BNCF, Magliabechiano, VIII, 1282, fol. 43r (Pollini), also cited in R.F.E. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1982), p. 144. 127 Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood, pp. 73, 97. 128 [Masi], Ricordanze, p. 54.
129 [Masi], Ricordanze, pp. 282–283. 130 Also in 1501 Pope Alexander VI proclaimed a Jubilee in Florence, “which the Pope sent for people who could not go to Rome,” as Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 218, registers faithfully. 131 [Masi], Ricordanze, pp. 66–69. 132 [Chellini], Le ricordanze, p. 191. 133 Francesco di Tommaso Giovanni’s brother leaves in 1429 for Santiago; Francesco himself leaves in 1431 for Loreto, “where he had taken the vow to go”: ASF, Carte Strozziane, II s., 16, fols. 4r, 5r. 134 Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 14.
“And I wrote this to keep it better in mind should I in my confusion do other”; and again: “These are not vows, but I do it to help me better observe these as best I may.” The same reason makes him deliberate, having already held some important public offices, to refrain from trying to obtain others, and “feeling myself weak in resisting sinning, to not ever wish…to accept any administra- tive office with power to judge questions of blood.” The proposal is corrobo- rated by a complex system of fines, in the form of alms “for God’s poor,” set by Goro himself.135 Many libri di ricordi contain direct and indirect information that let us see other types of private devotional behavior: from the reading of religious texts,136 to listening to sermons,137 to respecting food restrictions, which is sometimes expressly noted138 or may simply be clear from the lists of food purchased.139 To conclude this partial overview, then, we may affirm that it remains diffi- cult, on the basis of sparse information extrapolated from texts by different authors whose lives we cannot fully reconstruct here, to try to relate the dia- chronic evolution of Florentine religious and devotional attitudes between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. Only bring- ing together data like these and others indicative of the evolution of the con- text is it possible to draw somewhat meaningful conclusions, and each time it is necessary to keep certain questions in mind. Furthermore, overall it is true that apart from the cases of the more “exceptional” ricordi like Giovanni Morelli’s or others similar for their breadth of aspects treated and the sensitiv- ity of the author, the ricordi source does not in itself contain many explicit reports about this side of human experience. Nevertheless the range and at times the depth of information collected is such to let us think that a complete reconstruction, especially as the sources used here are a small part of those available, could in effect still say something that other documents do not, or at least contribute to the illumination of this side of Florentine family life in the Renaissance.
135 Dati, pp. 68–73. 136 I refer in general above, chap. 2. 137 See Landucci, Diario fiorentino, passim, also beyond the intense predication of the savon- arolan period; Tribaldo de’ Rossi, fols. 16r, 63r, 68v. On further sources about the average devout attendance of preaches, esp. during Lent, see G. Ciappelli, Carnevale e quaresima. Comportamenti sociali e cultura a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1997), pp. 104–105. 138 Giusto d’Anghiari, fol. 100v. 139 Ciappelli, Carnevale e quaresima, esp. pp. 69–71.
Florentine patrician and upper class families usually kept their family books with great care,1 whether they were commercial or patrimonial. This almost compulsive conservation of family writings (a result of the education and cul- tural formation that was a characteristic of the city) has been one of the deter- mining factors – together with a continuity of family lines (perhaps greater than in other Italian situations),2 and above all with the renewal of those moti- vations, in diverse forms, that induced them to conserve these writings3 – for the transmission to us of these documents in a quantity that is absolutely unique for this same era. The preferred place of conservation, when a family branch kept its docu- ments together over some generations, was certainly the family palace,4 and so it was probably also for the Castellani after a certain point slightly before mid- fifteenth century.5 Nevertheless, up until this time, the very existence of differ- ent individuals emerging within the family caused the books to be conserved as they were written: separately. And this fact has influenced their conserva- tion and transmission to us. It is a fact that while the references we have show that there were many and diverse libri di ricordi produced by members of the family before 1436 and the emergence of Francesco as an “aggregator” of the family memory,6 only three of these have survived. This result is certainly largely casual, and it is not the case to give it meanings that would be difficult to sustain. Nevertheless it is significant enough that the three family books that we do have, that are chronologically nearly contiguous (there is a gap of about thirty years between the second and the third) are also representative enough, in their differing typologies, of the evolution of this same family in time.
1 On this see in general Klapisch-Zuber, La famiglia e le donne, pp. 15–20; Kent, Household and Lineage, pp. 272–278. 2 Molho, Marriage Alliance, pp. 9–11. 3 See Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia,” pp. 138–158. 4 See now on this subject also E. Insabato, “Le nostre chare iscritture. La trasmissione delle carte di famiglia nei grandi casati toscani dal XV al XVIII secolo,” in Istituzioni e società in Toscana nell’età moderna, Atti delle Giornate di studio dedicate a Giuseppe Pansini (Firenze 4–5 dicembre 1992) (Rome: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, 1994), II, pp. 878–911. 5 In coincidence with the figure of Francesco, on which see above, chap. 2. 6 On whom see above, ibid.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004270756_007
The first of these is the notebook begun in 1310 by Vanni di ser Lotto who writes up until his death (April 13, 1354), when his son Michele takes over:
A. In the name of God and his most holy mother. This book is Vanni di ser Lotto’s: here I will record all the purchases that I Vanni di ser Lotto will make of land and houses. B. Thus it followed that it pleased God to call Vanni to himself, that I Michele have written all the purchases that I have made as one sees in separate “partite”, beginning on April 13, 1354, when he died.7
The stated scope of Vanni’s incipit, repeated exactly by Michele when he con- tinued, is to note “all the purchases I will…make of land and houses.”8 And the aim is fully respected in the notebook, that follows a fixed format in all its 42 pages, each divided into a variable number of entries (partite; on average 3–4 to 6). Each entry begins with the words “We bought” and describes in detail the act of acquisition: the date, the seller, the size of real estate property, its location (usually by indicating the name of the “popolo” (parish) of the city or contado or territory where it stood), the price, the notary who drew up the contract. Last, in the right hand margin, is the sum paid, while at the bottom of the page is the total (“Somma…”) of all the sums of money there listed. If considered against the evolutive pattern of the libri di ricordi as a whole, this is a fairly archaic kind of typology, as their evolution shows. It is in fact not a book in which all the private affairs of the author appear, which from a cer- tain point in time will include also references to personal and family affairs.9 The notebook reminds us instead of the early specialized books of a merchant in which he registered separately the notes relative to a given part of his activi- ties: in this case the personal and private acquisition of real estate. As such, this type of model is common also to some of the more precocious examples of the genre: for example the Ricordi di compere in val di Streda e dintorni (1255–1290), or the Ricordi di compere e prestiti in val d’Orme e vicinanze (1264– 1284) edited by Arrigo Castellani.10 And it is, however, a recurring model: the “books of possessions” (sometimes accompanied by “notebooks of the har- vests”)11 are a specialized kind within the broader class of libri di ricordi that
7 ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 130, fol. 1r. 8 Ibid. 9 See above, chap. 1. 10 In NTF, pp. 169–206, 229–248. 11 P.J. Jones, “Florentine families and Florentine diaries in the fourteenth century,” Papers of the British School at Rome 24 (1956), pp. 183–205 now in Ital. transl. in Id., Economia e società
nell’Italia medievale (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), pp. 345–376: 365. See moreover the examples cited there: the books of Giovanni di Palla Strozzi (1400–1437) (ASF, Strozziane, IV s., 341: “libro di possessioni”); Rosso Strozzi after 1340, Rosso’s death (ASF, Strozziane, III s., 270, fols. 14 ff.: properties “that we bought for Rossello d’Ubertino’s children and heirs after the division they made with their uncle Andrea”); Nofri di Palla Strozzi (1394) (ASF, Strozziane, IV s., 64: probably the “quaderno delle recholte”); Francesco, Giovanni, Simone e Iacopo di Palla Strozzi “morto il 1377” (ASF, Strozziane, III s., 277). See ibid., pp. 353n, 361–362n, 364n, for some of which also Rodolico, La democrazia fiorentina, pp. 145 and 147. The thematic concentration on real estate, in many of these cases, after an ancestor’s death, induces one to think that one of the strong reasons for keeping such books is the management of a once united patrimony, in the difficulty to divide the property. 12 See Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 13–17. 13 See ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 66, folder n.n. (16 maggio 1348). Another, incomplete, copy in Corp. sopp., 90, 132, n.n. 14 See ASF, Misc. rep., 77, fol. 4v.
15 “In the name of God and of his blessed mother, our holy Lady Mary, and the blessed St. John, and the blessed St. Peter, and the blessed St. Michael, and all the male and female saints in Heaven, may they by their pity and mercy give grace to me to do and say well for my soul and body. This book is of Michele di Vanni proper, in which he will write all his personal business in an orderly way, and will also write the records of his company’s busi- ness and what can be found in it in the first account which can be seen, and thus all his other facts and memories, and this register will be marked by a large ‘A’, made as the one in this page: ‘A’.” ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 131, fol. 2r.
Entries which almost always end with the double slash which Michele uses to indicate conclusion of the economic transaction are related to loans and repayments and are at least partly evidence of his activity as moneylender.16 Otherwise, they describe the most important operations of his firms, from the Woolen Guild company founded in 1362 and dissolved in 1364 (conferring of capital, separation from other members),17 to that of the Cambio [exchange] (some money anticipated between 1374 and 1376).18 Nevertheless, other annotations begin to be mixed in with these data at this point in the register, and while still of economic interest, they are more per- sonal or regard the family. Of the first type are, besides the entries of payments of personal gravezze (taxes),19 a whole series of annotations that are different from both loans and earlier entries in that they are introduced by the formula “Ricordanza che” (“memory that”), which indicates that they are more personal and private. In part these are somewhat unusual economic transactions, like the purchase of “some silver vessels” which would later be partly sold (fol. 25r), the payment in 1372 of 300 florins in observance of a “peace” with Niccolò Villani and the sons of one ser Picozzo (fol. 42v), the “trade” (merchato) of one hundred moggia (modii) of grain in 1383 with Niccolò and Antonio da Uzzano shortly before Michele’s death (fol. 52v). However, two other notes are introduced by the same formula: in 1375 Michele receives evidently in fiduciary trust or perhaps as executor, the text of an arbitrator’s award between two other people: “I must keep this lodo and do about it what is said in a writing by Cristofano, which is attached to said lodo; and said lodo I’ve put in the chest that is in my room so that it not be lost” (fol. 48r). Here for the first time in the Castellani records there is mention of a “cas sone” which may have been either one of the chests (there were usually two) of the wedding trousseau which were placed at the foot of the bed, or the hus- band’s own chest or safe in which he kept his papers.20 Eventually, in June of 1376, the book contains the record of his peace embassy to the Pope in Avignon,
16 See ibid., until fol. 23v. 17 See ibid., fols. 14r, 16v–17r. 18 See ibid., fols. 46r, 47v. Fols. 36r, 38v contain, on the contrary, loans (and restitutions) of large amounts of money to Michele’s son Niccolò, maybe to cover a commercial activity which had had a bad conclusion. 19 See ibid., fols. 32v, 34r, 36v, 39r, 44r, 45r, 46v–47r, 48r–49v, 51r. 20 It seems to me that other, similar sources preserve this ambiguity. Nevertheless, when the document specifies that the cassone is kept in the scrittoio, it is probably a coffer or a safe; if it is in the bedroom, it is probably one of the marriage chests. See for both meanings Klapisch-Zuber, La famiglia e le donne, pp. 16, 184 note, 201 note.
21 “Memory that on 2 June of the same year I left Florence to go as ambassador to the Pope, together with messer Pazzino Strozzi, and with messer Alessandro dell’Antella.” The three ambassadors, who left on 2 June, were back in Florence on 22 September. 22 ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 131, fol. 15v (25 October 1363). The dowry amounted to 730 florins. 23 Ibid., fol. 23v (3 January, 23 November 1367). The dowry amounts to 800 florins. 24 Ibid., fol. 32v (25 February 1368/1369). The dowry for Vanni’s wife is 1000 florins. 25 Ibid., fol. 52r (21 January 1377/1378). 26 Ibid., fol. 52v (2 November 1382). 27 “This memory is also put in my white book, covered with boards, which is called the illumi- nated, marked with a ‘C’, at fol. 3”; “This memory is put in my white book in parchment, called the illuminated, marked with a ‘C’, at fol. 3”: ibid., fols. 15v, 23v, and 32v almost in the same terms. 28 See ibid., fol. 46r (22 February 1373/1374): “…put in white book marked ‘C’ and called the illuminated at fol. 2, at the end of a memory where there is registered the money I have invested in the body and above the body of the company.” 29 See Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 27–28. 30 See ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 131, slip of paper 11, 12.
All, as is clear from the very recognizable autograph annotations, was checked and glossed by Michele’s grandson Francesco Castellani when all this data, a collection that constituted a true family archive, came into his hands.31 Michele, unlike his father, will also leave his own handwritten will,32 a very detailed document which shows a desire to avoid any possible inequity in the distribution of the inheritance among the children. In particular, since Michele had already donated two thousand florins to each of the two first-married sons at the time of their marriage, and had for them made “all the purchases of the strongbox (forzerino), clothing, master bedroom and wedding,” wished that similar conditions hold for the remaining three sons should he die before their marriages (the document is dated 1370); for the as yet unwedded daughter he cites a dowry (one thousand florins) equal to that of the married sisters.33 In his will he mentions “my own books” and “a yellow book that was Vanni’s at the shop (fondaco),” even though these are probably mostly account books.34 The later notes by his grandson Francesco, which apparently refer to books con- temporary to these and still extant, show that still other writings of this sort existed.35 Following Michele’s death (1383), there is a gap of many years, and there is at least a generation missing as regards the survival of the family ricordi.36 We do
31 See ibid., slip of paper 14 (the words in italics are in Greek alphabet letters): “In white book marked ‘A’ at fol. 218 it appears on the account of messer Lotto that he had 5 florins and 6 deniers for the masters who divided the castle. In black book marked ‘M’ at fol. 6 appears that Stefano di Vanni reimbursed to Michele 425 florins for the division of the Altafronte Castle. Divisio immobilium 10 March 1355, notary ser Francesco di ser Palmeri. Divisio immobilium 29 November 1456 [actually 1356]. Emptio K. (?) at fol. 26, made on 20 October 1462 [actually 1362], notary ser Niccolò di ser Piero Gucci. The division on 1 June 1380 by sentence of masters in black book at fol. 6. In the long register of Michele at fol. 18, 21….” 32 ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 132, fols. n.n., publ. in G.A. Brucker, Firenze nel Rinascimento, Ital. transl. (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980), pp. 266–269, which dates it at “ca. 1370.” The date is actually between Vanni’s and Niccolò’s “giuramento” (1368) and Antonia’s promise (1377). It is an autograph compilation, not by a notary (“Memory of what I did to Vanni and Niccolò my sons”). According to an entry in the same sheaf of papers there would have been also another notarial version of Michele’s will, dated 9 July 1383 and drawn up by ser Niccolò di Piero Gucci, which has not been preserved. In the same sheaf of papers there are two copies of a later quadernuccio of “Details about Michele di Vanni’s inheri- tance for his children.” 33 See ibid., and Brucker, Firenze nel Rinascimento, pp. 266–267. 34 Ibid.: “This is written in the hand of Nicola di Lippo, what I have to give or receive.” 35 See above, note 31: “White book marked ‘A’, at fol. 218,” “black book marked ‘S’, at fol. 6” (1380). 36 Various entries mostly by Michele’s sons appear, nevertheless, on the three books cited so far.
37 ASF, Pupilli, 164, fol. 54v. 38 ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 133, fol. 8r. 39 See ibid. Here follows the incipit: “This book is of the heirs of messer Matteo di Michele Castellani marked ‘A’, and is called the book of administration, that is income and expenditure, and debtors and creditors, kept by monna Nanna widow of messer Matteo Castellani, administrator, begun on 5 September 1429.” The book, bought at the shop of the stationer Agnolo Tucci for 2 pounds, 8 sous (fol. 192r), appears for the larger part, with the exclusion of occasional entries by different hands, as written by Giovanna Peruzzi. Giovanna, in fact, although using almost always the third person singular to indicate her- self (“madonna Nanna”), and a generic “messer Francesco” for her son (but it is maybe by a different hand), shifts sometimes to the first person singular, even writing about Francesco (“mio figliuolo”), and at least once describes Luigi Peruzzi as her brother: “To Bartolomeo Ridolfi on 20 September, 10 new golden florins, I sent them to him through Gigi Peruzzi my brother” (fols. 43r, 68r, 201r, 203v, 195v). See about that also the essay by A. Ventigenovi [Arrigo Castellani], “Il monottongamento di ‘uo’ a Firenze,” Studi linguistici italiani 19 (1993), pp. 170–212: 184, note 57. 40 See the copy of one of Matteo’s letters to the Signoria, dated 31 May 1403, kept in ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 132, fols. n.n. 41 Francesco Castellani, Ricordanze, 2 vols. 42 See BNCF, Ginori Conti, 17: “Book of ricordanze of things of the Commune, begun by me messer Michele Castellani on 19 March of the said year [1413].”
43 C. Guasti (ed.), Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi per il Comune di Firenze, dal 1399 al 1433, 3 vols. (Florence: Cellini, 1867–1873), p. xii. 44 See ibid. 45 ASF, Signori, Dieci di Balìa, Otto di Pratica; Legazioni e commissarie, Missive e responsive, V, 1, publ. in M.E. Mallett, The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century. With the Diary of Luca di Maso degli Albizzi, Captain of the Galleys (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 207–275. 46 See below and N. Lerz, “Il diario di Griso di Giovanni,” Archivio Storico Italiano 117 (1959), pp. 247–278, publ. at pp. 256–278. On the need to specifically study this kind of source see above, chap. 3.
Here too all the letters were not copied by Michele himself, who wrote only some of the pages containing the diary of his three embassies, but by another who was certainly his secretary on two of these occasions.47 Michele too does not begin his notebook with the first of his diplomatic missions, which we know took place in 1407, followed by three others between 1408 and 1413,48 but with the diary of a mission in Romagna, accompanied by Niccolaio di Pepo degli Albizzi, to the signori of Forlì, Faenza, and Rimini, which began on March 19, 1414 and ended a couple of weeks later (fols. 2r–3v). The second mission recorded by Michele is the one in which he will partici- pate – in the company of the writer of the galley diaries, Luca di Maso degli Albizzi – to Pope Martin V in Mantua, between January 10 and February 7, 1419, when the Pope left Mantua for Ferrara, on his way to Florence.49 The third diplomatic mission described in the book is the one begun in 1421 in the company of the author of the Commissions, Rinaldo degli Albizzi, again to Martin V, who was now in Rome, and will then continue with commissions from the Pope and the Florentine signoria to Naples and Giovanna II and then to the camp of King Alphonse of Aragon at war with Louis III of Anjou (fols. 5r–47v).50 Whereas after December 26 Rinaldo returned to Florence, Michele stayed on until mid-January, as we see from the exchange of letters with the Ten of Balìa.51
47 I think, for the concurrence of the name with which he is usually cited (ser Giovanni da Volterra; he himself signs, at a later time, “Ser Iohannes de Vulterris”) and of the evident similarity of the writing, that he must surely be identified with the notary ser Giovanni Cafferecci da Volterra, in spite of the different opinion of I. Walter (who did not know these documents) in her biographical note on Cafferecci: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XVI (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1973), pp. 263–264. See Guasti (ed.), Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi, II, p. 54: “On the said 5 [May 1424], by the hands of ser Giovanni da Volterra, chancellor of messer Michele Castellani in Bologna, I wrote to the Ten.” Apparently, at this time ser Giovanni da Volterra was often appointed as chancel- lor of ambassadors. He was certainly serving as chancellor of Rinaldo degli Albizzi in November 1421, and of Giovanni Gambacorti (and maybe even of Rinaldo) in October– November 1423 (Guasti [ed.], Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi, I, pp. 352, 545, 576, 578). 48 See L. Matteoli, “Castellani, Michele,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XXV (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1980), pp. 633–634: 633. 49 Where he entered on 26 February. 50 It corresponds, in part, to the XXXV Commission of Rinaldo degli Albizzi. Almost all the documents therein correspond to the ones published by Guasti, except for letters written after 26 December 1421, and a couple of letters included in that period. 51 “After we did this, by command of our Priors messer Rinaldo went to Florence, and I think that he will come back soon, thus may please your lordships to send as soon as possible k., as we agreed with your lordships before we left. I remain at your command, the said day, Michael de Castellanis” (fol. 43v).
Finally, Michele’s fourth commission sees him as commissary to Bologna in February 1424, a mission that at a certain point will encounter Rinaldo’s forty- second commission. In this case, while the documentation published by Guasti covers only Rinaldo’s itinerant mission, Michele’s is quite full and detailed. The first part goes from February 14 (date of the commission entrusted by the Balià)52 to March 12, 1424. On March 15 Michele, still in Bologna, received a second commission (“changes and additions…to the old commission”)53 which will last until April 29, 1424. From May 1 the commission from the Ten included Vieri Guadagni, and Michele dedicated a section of the register to “letters sent by messer Michele and Vieri Guadagni.” Rinaldo degli Albizzi was given instructions to meet the two ambassadors at Bologna, where he stayed only for the 5th, returned on the 19th, and was in Florence again on the 22nd.54 During their commission, instead, Michele and Vieri Guadagni in Bologna write or receive letters almost every day up until June 4, 1424, after which Michele Castellani presumably returned to Florence, following the instruc- tions received from the Ten.55 At this point the notebook, which was almost full, was no longer kept up. Besides, Michele died in Florence only five months later.56 Alternating with these annotations of diplomatic missions (not always in Michele’s hand, but on two occasions in the hand of his secretary), are some notes by him of a decidedly family nature. At fol. 80r he writes, dated February 8, 1419, that he has taken the inheritance of his wife Alessandra Panciatichi for their sons Antonio and Otto;57 on the same date, in fact, as is specified later, his father
52 Even though, as is shown by Biagio Guasconi’s letter to Rinaldo degli Albizzi and others in Ferrara, he was expected in Bologna on 12 February (not on 12 December, as in Matteoli, “Castellani, Michele,” p. 634). He will get there on the 16th. Guasti (ed.), Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi, II, pp. 31, 39. 53 Even though drawn up by ser Niccolò Tinucci on 6 March (fols. 76r–78v). 54 See Guasti (ed.), Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi, II, p. 50. 55 See fol. 119r: “You messer Michele stay there for all this month (of May), and then, without waiting for a letter from us, you will come back.” All Michele’s and Vieri’s letters are sent from Bologna. It is groundless the information in Matteoli, “Castellani, Michele,” p. 634 (where other dates and details about the same embassy are equally wrong), according to which Michele would have been sent to Venice on 2 May 1424 (he was in Bologna). 56 Fol. 144v is blank, and 144r is almost entirely blank. However, in case of a continuation, it would perhaps have been possible to add new quinternions. Michele’s death, on 29 October 1424 (ASF, Grascia, 188, fol. 58r), is mentioned by Vieri Guadagni in a letter to Rinaldo degli Albizzi: Guasti (ed.), Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi, II, pp. 287, 293. 57 See Klapisch-Zuber, La famiglia e le donne, p. 196, about the husband’s right to maintain control of the wife’s dowry property to transmit it to the children at their coming of age.
58 Lotto died between May 1412 and March 1413: see C. Calvani, “Castellani Lotto,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XXV, pp. 627–628: 628 and ASF, Tratte, 599, fol. 70v. For whatever is connected to male and female emancipation see T. Kuehn, Emancipation in Late Medieval Florence (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982). 59 See above, note 45, and chap. 2. In the meanwhile, ser Giovanni da Volterra accompanies in an important embassy to Milan (October 1428–February 1429: C. Calvani, “Castellani, Matteo,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XXV, pp. 630–632: 631) also Francesco’s father, Matteo, as we know from an entry in the account book of Matteo’s inheritance: “And on the said 19: 186 golden florins which Niccolò Giugni had from Bartolomeo Ferrucci cashier of the Camera [Treasury], they were for an allocated sum of 155 florins in messer Matteo’s name, and 31 florins in ser Giovanni da Volterra’s name, for the trip from Milan” (ASF, Corp. sopp., 90, 133, fol. 69r; see also ASF, Camera del Comune, Notaio di Camera-Uscita generale, 1, fol. 150r).
This register then is part of a tradition on the part of many of the Florentine ambassadors to keep detailed records of their activities, that also served – when these documents were kept in the family – as a way of keeping the mem- ory of the family’s important contributions to the republic alive among the descendants. Beside Michele’s case, we can cite at least the cases of the two Albizzi brothers, and that of Piero Guicciardini that we will mention later. For that matter, this is the form in which the greater part of the writings of this type are kept (privately, within the family of the person who carried out the diplomatic mission) up until the time of the reform (by Leonardo Bruni or ser Filippo Pieruzzi) of the first chancery of the Florentine republic in March 1431 which established definitively that the chancery would conserve in its own books the registrations of the commissions and the letters to and from ambassadors.60 Also for this reason, Michele’s register has an absolute documentary value: it contains for example, in the cases of commissions that coincide with those of Rinaldo degli Albizzi, which are better known because of the Guasti edition, and effectively more outstanding in style (at least for the quantity and coherence of the personal notes), some letters (in some cases, many) that are not to be found in the official chancery collections, and which add informa tion also in respect to those kept in the fondo Dieci di Balìa. Legazioni e commis sarie, Missive e responsive.61 Roberto Ridolfi62 also hypothesized that Francesco Guicciardini himself, who in his Cose fiorentine began to use documents like these for his historiographic production, and who in fact from 1406 begins to use the Commissioni of Rinaldo degli Albizzi63 as a source and from 1423 also the diplomatic papers of his ancestor Piero Guicciardini (a document very similar to those we have so far considered),64 had also Michele Castellani’s
60 See D. Marzi, La cancelleria della Repubblica fiorentina (Rocca San Casciano: Cappelli, 1910), pp. 194–195. 61 Which actually are for this period, for the above-mentioned reasons, extremely incomplete. 62 See Ridolfi, “Introduzione” to Francesco Guicciardini, Le cose fiorentine, ed. by R. Ridolfi (Florence: Olschki, 1945), p. XXXIII. 63 Since 1414 he even cites them: see ibid., pp. XXXIII–XXXIV: “Under the year 1406 we see for the first time in the narration, without citing them, Rinaldo degli Albizzi’s Commissioni; and later on, starting with 1414, we will find them cited, always with the letter R. It is therefore a proper documentary source that from this point on inserts its strong threads into the Cose fiorentine’s fabric; and it is Guicciardini the first Florentine historian to take advantage of it, not Ammirato….” 64 See ibid.: “With the year 1423…begins to go through Piero Guicciardini’s letters, received and sent, these latter coming from copy letter books or from registers today only partially preserved…in the family archive.” On Piero di Luigi Guicciardini see the biographical note by Francesco himself in Guicciardini, Ricordi, diari, memorie, pp. 37–43.
65 BNCF, Ginori Conti, 17, fol. 1r: “Di Iacopo di Piero di Iacopo Guicciardini.” 66 Ridolfi, “Introduzione,” pp. XXXIII–XXXIV.
The title of this chapter needs first of all some explanation. The ricordi I will examine here are not all the books of this kind written by the entire Medici family, but only those from Cosimo il Vecchio’s branch up to the end of the fif- teenth century, at the time when Piero di Lorenzo was exiled from Florence. Moreover, I shall concentrate not only and not especially on the sources that may generically be called libri di ricordi, that also include simple account books, but on those that by now are largely known as “family books,” because of the attention they give to the life and memory of the family. From this point of view this chapter will turn on more an absence than a presence, more a “not being” than a “being,” since (as those familiar with the subject know) despite the importance of the Medici family, not much has remained. Nevertheless, that which survives is for the most part conserved in the Florence State Archive in the Archivio Mediceo avanti il Principato. If so little has remained, one could think, why talk about it? One could also think it probable that, given the attention constantly paid to Cosimo and his descendants over the last five centuries and especially these latest years, these texts would have been thoroughly studied by others. This is however only par- tially true. Often these sources, as a matter of fact, are known and mentioned, but as far as I know there has never been a systematic study on the distinctive aspects, the connecting elements or influences among generations of writers, the possible continuities within an ideal model of family memory. Furthermore, they have never been studied all together: this means, I believe, that it would be useful to try a survey that, besides being a sort of census of what is available, would also include the more recent developments in this field of research. Another necessary premise is methodological.1 In this case more than in others, the memory books that we have are not all the texts of this type pro- duced by this family, but only those which have survived. As this survey will show we are only able to evaluate a portion of the texts written by each writer, and often we have only fragments. Given this state, we must observe some cau- tion in analyzing the material. It is clear, for example, that it is not possible to reach final conclusions about the intentions of the authors of these books,
1 Similar considerations about the production/transmission relationship can be found, related to the Castellani, above, chap. 5.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004270756_008
2 On this see esp. G.A. Brucker, “The Medici in the Fourteenth Century,” Speculum 32 (1957), pp. 1–26. 3 See Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, p. 26. 4 Brucker, ibid. 5 R. De Roover, The rise and decline of the Medici bank, 1397–1494 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 35. 6 See De Roover, The rise and decline, pp. 35–36. The society lasted since 1386 to 1393. 7 Ibid., pp. 36–37. 8 They are three registers bound in one in ASF, MAP, 153: “Libro segreto” n. 1, 1397–1420; n. 2, 1420–1435; n. 3, 1435–1451. 9 See A. Ceccherelli, I libri di mercatura della Banca Medici e l’applicazione della partita dop pia a Firenze nel secolo decimoquarto (Florence, 1913), also cited in De Roover, p. 417. 10 R. De Roover, “I libri segreti del banco de’ Medici,” Archivio Storico Italiano, 107 (1949), pp. 236–240.
11 De Roover, The rise and decline, passim. 12 Ibid., p. 68, and see F. Melis, Documenti per la storia economica dei secoli XIII–XVI (Florence: Olschki, 1972), pp. 60–61, and the reproduction of two examples from book n. 2 at pp. 422–425. 13 MAP, 153, n. 1, fol. 104r. 14 Ibid., n. 2, fol. 2r. 15 Ibid., n. 3, fol. 1r. 16 MAP, 133, n. 1, only fols. 17–110, is a “libro mastro” about the years 1395–1396. There are moreover fragments of two more “libri mastri,” for two different branches of the same firm: MAP, 133, n. 2 (Rome 1412–1413), and MAP, 133, n. 3 (Pisa 1424–1426). See De Roover, The rise and decline, pp. 417, 461. 17 MAP, 154, 1427–1428. See De Roover, The rise and decline, pp. 20, 225 (on Rosso see also p. 256).
18 MAP, 153, n. 3, fol. 1. 19 MAP, 154, fol. 94v: “Memory [ricordo] that on this day 20 February 1428 [Flor. style], about 5 hours after sunset, it pleased God to call to him the blessed soul of Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, and on the 23rd in the morning, at the usual time, he was buried in the church of San Lorenzo with very great honor, as now I will tell.” There follows a list of the “drappel- loni” (flags) on behalf of the Commune, the Guelph Party, the Guilds, and other public institutions, along with a detailed account of the number of candles, masses, offers in food-stuffs to the mendicant orders, names of relatives who wear mourning. 20 MAP, 68, 583. 21 See Lami, Deliciae eruditorum, XII, 1742, pp. 169–183; Fabroni, Magni Cosmi Medicei vita, II, pp. 96–104; D. Moreni, Della carcere, dell’ingiusto esilio di Cosimo e del trionfal ritorno di Cosimo Padre della Patria, narrazione genuina tratta dall’Istoria fior. Ms. di Giovanni Cavalcanti (Florence: Magheri, 1821), pp. 214–216.
22 See Lami, Deliciae eruditorum, XII, p. XXV: “Quae a Cosimo Medice de se scripta edidimus, ea ex codice mss. Bibliothecae Riccardianae descripsimus.” 23 See Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina,” pp. 60 note 59, 127–128. 24 The codex, described in Pezzarossa’s census according to the old shelf-mark Q.IV.XIX, is now Riccardiano 1849, a miscellaneous volume where Cosimo’s Ricordi are at fols. 178r–182v. 25 C. Gutkind, Cosimo de’ Medici il Vecchio, It. transl. (Florence: Giunti Martello, 1982), pp. 84–86 and passim: “Cosimo himself relates it, with great clarity, in his ricordi” (Gutkind still cites from Lami). 26 Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Riccardiano, 1849, fol. 178r. 27 BNCF, Magliabechiano, XXV, 636, fols. 1r–5r. It is a miscellaneous codex formerly of Strozzi property, which also contains (at fols. 7r–12r) the description of the 1484 scrutiny in an autograph excerpt by Piero Guicciardini, Francesco’s father (see N. Rubinstein, The gov ernment of Florence under the Medici (1434 to 1494), 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 245–246, which also contains the transcription of Piero’s writing at pp. 363– 372). Was it possible, I asked myself, that the writing in the Magliabechiano was the copy in Luigi Guicciardini’s hand on which the Riccardiano codex is based? A doubt remained about the identity of “Luigi,” a rather common name in the Guicciardini family, who nev- ertheless could be Francesco’s older brother, and whose papers, at the extinction of his family branch, ended precisely in senator Carlo Strozzi’s collection (see R. Ridolfi, Vita di Francesco Guicciardini [Rome: Belardetti, 1960], p. 435). The doubt was dissolved by the comparison with another text, surely in Luigi Guicciardini’s hand: the autograph of his Dialogo on the government of Florence: BNCF, Strozziano, VIII, 1488, fols. 281r–293r, at the beginning of which senator Strozzi himself writes: “Dialogue of Luigi Guicciardini, inter- locutors Francesco Capponi and Piero Vettori, who discuss about the government of Florence. Written in Luigi’s own hand. The end is lacking.” The dialogue is published in R. von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato. Storia e coscienza politica, It. transl. (Turin: Einaudi, 1970; orig. ed. 1955), pp. 428–435.
28 Appendix, fol. 3r. Prioristi were lists of Priors since the origins of the Commune or a given year, often accompanied by a description of the main events occurred in their period of office, written in an annalistic or chronicle-like style. 29 Ibid., fols. 3r, 4v. 30 Ibid., fol. 5r. 31 They are publ. in Lorenzo de’ Medici, Opere, pp. XXXIII–XXXIX.
In these there is reference, preceded by the phrase as “it appears,” to “a ricordo in my grandfather Cosimo’s hand, to a private book of his in red leather at fol. 7” on the death of his father Giovanni di Bicci, in 1429, and the extent of his inheritance; and again to “the said secret book of Cosimo’s at fol. 13” on the death of his brother Lorenzo di Giovanni in 1440, and the size of his wealth.32 Elsewhere it is asserted that there are to be found “with full particulars in the books of said Cosimo, where everything is accounted for,” the evidence of the management by Cosimo of the inheritance left by the same Lorenzo to his son Pierfrancesco and his grandsons Piero and Giovanni.33 Neither the “red leather secret book” nor the other “books of said Cosimo,” certainly still extant in 1473, has been preserved. Nevertheless the lacking transfer of these texts has much to do with their conservation, which I will consider later. On the contrary, not only Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo was aware of these books as we have seen, but before this latter his father Piero, from whom we have at least a draft of an autograph or anyway original libro di ricordi. It is codex MAP, 163, which has the outward aspect of a book considered “impor- tant” by its compiler at the time of Piero rather than later: the binding of embossed black leather, the clasp bearing the Medici arms (ring with diamond point and palms), good humanistic writing betraying no uncertainties, and thus copied over from other texts or drafts. The book was begun on January first 1465: “This book is of Piero di Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici. It is called the purple book, marked A, in which one will write of many things belonging to the aforesaid Piero; begun this first day of January 1464 [Florentine style].” On the verso Piero wrote a “Memory of the ancestors whom I Piero saw in my life,” where he gives short profiles of various members of his line starting with Giovanni di Averardo, his grandfather and founder of the family fortune. For each of them he notes the birth date and where applicable the death date. He includes himself, his sons and his daughters (even though these latter in a sec- ondary form). It is clear that his intention is to draw a picture of the patrilinear family succession with a completion with Piero himself and his male offspring. Yet it is on fol. 2 that one better understands what must have been the occasion that induced Piero to compile this kind of register: here in fact he records in detail the circumstances of his father Cosimo’s death: “I remember that on the first of August 1464 at hour twenty-one and a half [2.5 hours before sunset] Cosimo…passed from this life.” He also notes that “he was honored by all the
32 One must remark that part of this information was also present in some of the aforemen- tioned books of ricordi: MAP, 154, fol. 94v for Giovanni di Bicci’s death, and MAP, 153, n. 3, fol. 1r for Lorenzo di Giovanni’s death. 33 Lorenzo de’ Medici, Opere, pp. XXXIV, XXXV.
34 MAP, 163, fols. 3r–12v.
35 See now M. Spallanzani (ed.), Inventari medicei, 1417–1465: Giovanni di Bicci, Cosimo e Lorenzo di Giovanni, Piero di Cosimo (Florence: Amici del Bargello, 1996), who describes them in the “Introduzione,” pp. XX–XXIII, by citing the preceding transcriptions by Fabroni (1789), Bandini (1793) and Müntz (1888), and publishes the integral text (fols. 60–68) at pp. 137–161. 36 Guicciardini, Ricordi, diari, memorie, pp. 113–115, on which see Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, p. 68. 37 See G. Rucellai, Zibaldone quaresimale, fol. 69r (from the manuscript kept in Florence in the Rucellai family archive): “Memory that we have in our house several things in painting and sculpture, tarsias and mosaic works, by the hand of the best masters”; ASF, Manoscritti, 85, fol. 100r: “All the volumes of books I find by me today” “I find by me, besides these ones,…” is the expression used by Guicciardini, Ricordi, diari, memorie, p. 115 (cp. Piero de’ Medici’s expression “I find that I have”). 38 See the footnote at the beginning of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Opere, p. XXXIII. 39 T. Zanato, “Gli autografi di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Analisi linguistica e testo critico,” Studi di filologia italiana 44 (1986), pp. 69–207: 173.
Most probably, Lorenzo refers directly to the book of his father that I have ana- lyzed above. “I find in the books of Piero our father that I was born the first of January 1448 [Flor. style], and our father had…seven children…of whom four are now alive”: all this is also in Piero’s book. Speaking of Cosimo, it almost seems as though Lorenzo had in mind also the ricordi of 1433–1434, because in two paragraphs he in fact repeats their content rapidly, even though evidently (as we have seen) he had also others of his grandfather’s books in hand.40 Lorenzo also uses a formula similar to Cosimo’s (“ricordi d’importanza”: impor- tant memories) to describe his ricordi (“alcune altre cose d’importanza”: some other important things). The paragraph about the death of Cosimo is substan- tially a synthesis of what Lorenzo could gather from Piero’s book. He only adds references to titles of privilege found in the family archive: the public decree and letter patent giving Cosimo the title of “Pater Patriae,” and the letter patent “with royal seal attached” with which Louis XI of France granted the Medici the right to add the three lilies of France to their arms.41 The rest, apart from Galeazzo Sforza’s coming to Florence, and the acquisition of Sarzana and Sarzanello, both in 1467, is Lorenzo’s direct experience of these last years: the marriage to Clarice Orsini in 1469, going to Milan for the baptism of Galeazzo’s son in Piero’s place, the carnival joust in 1469, the death of Piero in December of that same year.42 On this occasion the commemorative scheme repeats the one for Cosimo. Afterwards, the assumption of the responsibility of power is at the center, “as my grandfather and father did,” pushed by the “city’s principals,” and then the expenses sustained by the Medici between 1434 and 1471, “between alms, buildings, and taxes,” which the de facto lord of Florence judges “great honor to our condition, and I think well placed.” After this there is only the trip to Rome as ambassador to Sixtus IV in September 1471.43 Lorenzo’s ricordi have been variously, although briefly, commented: by Cicchetti and Mordenti, by Guglielminetti, up to the editors of the catalogue of one of the exhibitions for the centenary of his death.44 In all these analyses, even though extremely synthetic, some of the aspects found are probably true. The desire for self-legitimization, even politically, is certainly present in the
40 See Lorenzo de’ Medici, Opere, pp. XXXIII, XXXIV–XXXV. 41 Ibid., p. XXXVI. 42 Ibid., pp. XXXVII–XXXVIII. 43 Ibid., pp. XXXVIII–XXXIX. 44 See Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, pp. 168–169; M. Guglielminetti, Memoria e scrittura. L’autobiografia da Dante al Cellini (Turin: Einaudi, 1977), pp. 273–276; P. Benigni and D. Toccafondi, “Mutamenti e riforme istituzionali,” in M.A. Morelli Timpanaro, R. Manno Tolu, P. Viti (eds.), Consorterie politiche e mutamenti istituzionali in età laurenziana (Milan: Silvana, 1992), pp. 17–39: 30–32.
45 See Guglielminetti, Memoria e scrittura, p. 274: “Since he could not show…documents which could certify his nobility and dignity, he enumerates all the facts or gestures which could show that sovereigns and princes of sure nobility were recognizing the Medici as their equals.” 46 See Benigni and Toccafondi, “Mutamenti e riforme istituzionali,” p. 31. 47 See above, notes 19 and 34. 48 MAP, 88, 304. See Zanato, “Gli autografi,” pp. 165–167; the transcription at pp. 184–186. 49 So far the edition of Lorenzo’s Lettere, directed until 2002 by Nicolai Rubinstein, and then until 2010 by Francis William Kent, has reached vol. XVI (2011) and n. 1631 (25 February 1490). According to their modern census (1964) at least 323 letters between this latter date
and Lorenzo’s death survive, plus about 30 not precisely dated. But several other letters have emerged in the meanwhile, for both these last years and the preceding period; there- fore this figure is approximate by defect, and eventually a final supplement will be neces- sary to integrate the edition. As for the production-preservation ratio, one should think that only for the still unpublished period (Feb. 1490–Apr. 1492) protocols show a produc- tion by Lorenzo’s chancery of almost 1800 letters: Del Piazzo (ed.), Protocolli del carteggio di Lorenzo il Magnifico (henceforth: Protocolli), pp. 412–490. 50 See V. Arrighi and F. Klein, “Dentro il palazzo: cancellieri, ufficiali, segretari,” in Morelli Timpanaro, Manno Tolu, Viti (eds.), Consorterie politiche, pp. 77–102: 98–102. 51 MAP, 63, fol. 1r. For the attribution, see the facsimile of Giovanni Antonio’s writing in Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere, VII, ed. by M. Mallett (Florence: Giunti, 1998), Tav. VI. 52 Fabroni, Laurentii Medicis Magnifici Vita, pp. 299–300. 53 In his edition of Protocolli, Del Piazzo started the transcription of register MAP, 63 with the “Ricordi di lettere,” skipping the fol. in question. He provided then its transcription at the end of his edition of the register, introducing it with the sentence: “A c. 1 si leggono inoltre i seguenti ricordi,” without mentioning the possible author. See Protocolli, pp. 235, 449–450. 54 The relevant events are now summarized in Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere, VII, p. 179.
55 See for all Sillano (ed.), Le ricordanze di Giovanni Chellini, pp. 179–225 (the pages corre- spond to the final part [fols. 171–175, 196–200] of the written folios in Chellini’s “ricordi”), where almost all the entries refer to loans. 56 See MAP, 62, fol. 140r–v. The two receipts by Calcondila (3 and 30 October 1491), along with others of the same period by Gregorio da Spoleto (teacher of Giovanni de’ Medici) and others, are transcribed in Protocolli, p. 448. 57 MAP, 62, fols. 128r–130v: 30 May 1480–12 September 1487. They are transcribed in Protocolli, pp. 226–229. 58 MAP, 63, fols. 138r–140v: 24 April 1483–29 October 1491. They are transcribed in Protocolli, pp. 444–449. 59 MAP, 64, fols. 132r–133v. They are transcribed in Protocolli, pp. 490–493. At fol. 134r there is a “ricordo di arienti prestati” (21 April 1492). At fols. 132r–133r there are some autograph receipts, for books, by Angelo Poliziano (9 July and 1 September 1492), and Giovanni Lascaris (23 August, 2 October, 6 November 1492; 11 October 1493). Notes relative to the last letters dictated by Lorenzo are at the beginning of MAP, 64. 60 Ibid., fol. 1r: “Memory [ricordo] that on 12 September 1492, at 18 hours and a third [reckoned after sunset], Piero’s first male son was born, and on the 13th he was baptized and named Lorenzo, Francesco and Romolo. Godfathers were all the members of the Eight of Pratica, Filippo Valori apostolic abbreviator, Gilio Portinari and two friends of Piero, in behalf of whom eventually it was the Prior of San Lorenzo who carried the child in his arms.”
Cosimo, the use of direct private writing became more rare. With Lorenzo we see the greatest synthesis on the one hand, and the least personal involvement, on the other: those who took care of certain things were his secretaries. At least, this was true when it was necessary to write the records of current events. As regards instead the possibility of using the biographical events for encomi- astic or celebratory writings, or for official biographies, even in Cosimo’s time these were entrusted to (or carried out by) intellectuals outside the family.61 Another interesting aspect that emerges from this survey is the one tied to the conservation and circulation of this kind of family document. Some authors have recently thrown light on the transformation of the Medici papers between 15th and early 16th centuries from family archive to princely archive (in Rubinstein’s definition).62 Vanna Arrighi and Francesca Klein have men- tioned posthumous attempts, after the end of the Republic, to reconstitute the Medici archive carried on by the branch of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, and especially Cosimo I.63 In this process, and in this passage, in respect to what survives today, a crucial moment seems to have been the parenthesis in which the Medici were expelled from Florence, between 1494 and 1512. For eighteen years the Medici were not only absent from Florence, but their possessions were confiscated or in precarious condition, and this is true for the books and papers as well. Of the books, understood to be Lorenzo’s private library, which were deposited in the convent of San Marco, the fate is known.64 Certainly a small part of the family archive will have been taken out of Florence by Piero
61 For the encomiastic or celebratory poetry written for members (or important stages in the life) of the Medici family, it will suffice to think of the role played by authors like Naldo Naldi, Bernardo Cambini, Bernardo Pulci, Ugolino Verino, during the life or imme- diately after the death of Cosimo de’ Medici. See M. Martelli, Letteratura fiorentina del Quattrocento. Il filtro degli anni Sessanta (Florence: Le Lettere, 1996), pp. 82–93, 99–102. As for Lorenzo himself, it will suffice to recall the role played, among others, by Luigi Pulci and Angelo Poliziano; not to mention what in the meanwhile was filtering into the more properly and largely historiographical works by Poggio Bracciolini (Historia Florentini Populi) or Bartolomeo Scala (Historia Florentinorum). 62 See N. Rubinstein, “L’archivio Mediceo avanti il Principato da archivio di famiglia ad archivio principesco,” in I. Cotta and F. Klein (eds.), I Medici in rete. Ricerche e progettua lità scientifica a proposito dell’archivio Mediceo avanti il Principato, Atti del Convegno, Firenze 18–19 settembre 2000 (Florence, Olschki, 2003), pp. 117–122. 63 See V. Arrighi and F. Klein, “Strategie familiari e competizione politica alle origini dell’archivio mediceo,” in Cotta and Klein (eds.), I Medici in rete, pp. 83–113. 64 See E. Piccolomini, “Delle condizioni e delle vicende della libreria medicea privata dal 1494 al 1508,” Archivio Storico Italiano 19 (1874), pp. 101–129; 254–281; 20 (1874), pp. 51–94; 21 (1875), pp. 102–119; 282–296.
65 There come to mind Cosimo’s Ricordi about his brother Lorenzo’s exile, after his arrest: “Lorenzo left for Venice with my children and taking what he could of money and other goods.” See Appendix, fol. 1v. 66 The pillage concerned especially the house of the other son of Lorenzo, Cardinal Giovanni, “who was residing in the church of Sant’Antonio”: Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 77 (10 November). But on 9 November it had invested also “the garden and the orchard in front of the church of San Marco, where there were things of great value which had been moved there from the Medici palace, because of the preparations for the king of France’s arrival.” See G. Pampaloni, “I ricordi segreti del mediceo Francesco di Agostino Cegia (1495–1497),” Archivio Storico Italiano 111 (1957), pp. 188–234: 197. 67 Already on 10 November “The Priors banned, under pain of death, that whoever had, or knew who had, goods which belonged to Piero de’ Medici or the cardinal his brother….” And later on (10 December) they appointed a commission with the charge to “retrieve Piero’s goods which had been hidden” (ibid., pp. 77, 95). On 9 July 1495 “Piero de’ Medici’s goods and clothes were auctioned” in Orsanmichele (ibid., p. 111). 68 See ibid., pp. 160–161: “And on the 16th they beheaded Cegino, in the Captain’s courtyard, for that same sin, that he had done the Medicis’ business.” On Cegia see Pampaloni, “I ricordi segreti.” 69 According to Albertini the Dialogue’s action is held between late April and early May 1530, and its writing took place a little later: Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato, p. 271. 70 Lorenzo de’ Medici, Opere, p. XXXIII. The specification is in BNCF, Nuove accessioni, 1070, fols. 88r–93r: 88r.
Appendix
Cosimo De’ Medici Ricordi BNCF, Magliabechiano (Strozziano), XXV, 636, fols. 1r–5r
The text continues with an “Extracto d’altri libri de’ casi del ‘33 et ‘34” (“Extract from other books on the events of 1433 and 1434”), up to fol. 6r. At fol. 6v there is a small synthetic Medici genealogical tree. The same passage, including the “Extracto…del ‘33 et ‘34” has been copied later by another hand in BRF, Riccardiano, 1849, fols. 178r–183v (Cosimo’s ricordi are on fols. 178r–182v), and this is what Lami published in 1742. Later editions always take up Lami’s reading (see above, notes 21–23). Nevertheless, not only could this have been more faithful to the original text, but the copier was not very faithful even to the original that was almost certainly a copy of Cosimo’s original by Luigi Guicciardini, and published here. Certainly this edition corrects the numerous errors of the anonymous copier and/or Lami’s transcription. Not only does the general style of the text restore Cosimo’s Quattrocento vernacular (with the third person remote past plural in -ono, -orono, and the imperfect in -vono, the conjunction et, the frequent hypercorrectnesses ciptadini,
71 See P. Innocenti, “Formazione cinquecentesca e dispersione seicentesca di una biblioteca laica: i libri di Giovanni e Simone Berti,” in Id., Il bosco e gli alberi. Storie di libri, storie di biblioteche, storie di idee, 2 vols. (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1984), I, pp. 105–257: 109–112, 122.
ciptà, the forms drieto for dietro, suto for stato, Vinegia for Venezia), but finally names or words that made no sense in the earlier versions, now have sense. To take just a few examples: the Lami/Riccardiano version has among the names of the signoria of September 1433 one Carlo instead of one Corso di Lapo Corsi, Berto instead of Pero di messer Marco di Cenni; ventitré cittadini, instead of nostri contadini; concordorono la mia liberazione instead of cercorono la mia liberatione, quando non si riceva instead of quando non si vinceva, Baccio d’Antonio di Baccio, instead of Puccio d’Antonio di Puccio; Caca instead of Luca di Buonaccorso Pitti, governatore instead of gonfaloniere of justice; fu replicato a Lorenzo, instead of fu replicato a Firenze.
[1r] Copy of the Parlamenti of 1433 and 1434, extracted from an autograph book of Cosimo de’ Medici, in which he wrote his most important memories.
Memory that on the first of September Giovanni di Matteo dello Scelto, Donato dia Cristofano Sannini, Corsob di Lapo Corsi,c Iacopo Berlinghieri, Mariotto di messer Niccolò Baldovinetti, Bartolomeo di Bartolomeo degli Spini, Bernardo di Vieri Guadagni Gonfaloniere of justice, and Piero di messer Marco di Cenni hotel-keeper entered the office of the Signori. And when they were drawn it began to be murmured that during their time in office there would be an attempted coup in Florence; and I was written to in the Mugello, where I had been for a few months to get away from the contention and divisions in the city, to return, and so I did on 4 September. That same day I went to see the Gonfaloniere and the others, and especially Giovanni dello Scelto, whom I considered a very good friend, and had obligations towards me, like the others. And when I told them what I had heard, they all denied it and told me not to worry, that they wanted to leave things as they had found them. On the 5th of September they called a pratica [a consultation meeting] of eight citizens, two per quarter, saying that they wanted to make every decision with their advice, and the men called were: messer Giovanni Guicciardini, Bartolomeo Ridolfi, Ridolfo Peruzzi, Tommaso di Lapo Corsi, messer Agnolo Acciaiuoli, Giovanni di messer Rinaldo Gianfigliazzi, messer Rinaldo degli Albizzi, and myself Cosimo. And even though as I said it a Donato di: interlinear addition. b Corso: intelinear correction above Cresci stricken out. c Corsi: above di Cresci stricken out.
was noised abroad in the city that they were going to make a coup, never- theless, having had the answer as I said, and thinking them to be friends, I didn’t listen to these voices. It followed that the morning of 7 September, with the excuse of a convocation of that pratica I was sent for, and when I got to the Palazzo (dei Signori) I found the majority of the other mem- bers and started to talk with them. After a little while I was ordered by the Signori to go up to their rooms, and here the Captain of the Fanti (guards) put me in a room called the Barberia, and locked the door; and when this became known, the whole city arose. That same day they called a con sulta and the Gonfaloniere said that they had had good reasons for the deed, as they would explain later; and on this they did not want council, and sent the men away again. And the Signori, with a majority of three quarters of the votes [1v], exiled me to Padua for a year. This done, my brother Lorenzo in the Mugello was immediately advised, as well as my cousin Averardo,d who was at Pisa, and the news was also given to Niccolò da Tolentino Capitano di guerra of the Commune, who was a good friend of mine. My brother Lorenzo came to Florence that same day and the Signori sent for him to come immediately to the Palazzo, and the sen- tence was communicated to him. Consequently he left Florence immedi- ately and went to our Villa at Trebbio in the Mugello. Averardo left Pisa quickly because they had given orders to have him arrested there, and if they had gotten all three of us, we would have ended very badly. Niccolò da Tolentino, having heard what happened, came with his armed com- pany to Lastra on the 8th of September with the intention of promoting a tumult in the city, so as to free me; and likewise, as soon as the news spread into the Apennines, a great number of soldiers came from the lands of Romagna and other places to Lorenzo. Both the Captain and Lorenzo were advised against armed intervention, as it could have pro- voked a decision to hurt me, and so they did; and even though the people who advised this were friends and relatives, and well intentioned, it was not good advice; because if they had gone ahead armed, I would have been free, and those who had provoked the situation defeated. But it was all for the best, because a greater good ensued, and more honorable for me, as I will now tell. Since my friends did not think it wise to use force, as I have said, the Captain returned to his camp, pretending to have moved for another reason, and Lorenzo left for Venice with my children and taking what he could of money and other goods. The Signori exiled Lorenzo to Venice for d Averardo: interlinear correction above Gherardo stricken out.
a year, myself to Padua for 5, and Averardo to Naples for 5. Then on the 9th of September they rang the bell to convene a Parlamento [civic assembly], and those who had caused the change in government entered the piazza with soldiers called in from outside in the contado; but in the piazza there were only a few armed and few people because in effect the majority of the citizens were not in agreement. By acclamation of the piazza (Parlamento) they gave power to the citizens who had called it, as is usual in these cases, and exiled me to Padua for 10 years, Lorenzo to Venice for 5, Averardo to Naples for 10, Orlando de’ Medici to Ancona for 10 and Giovanni d’Andrea [2r] di messer Alamanno and Bernardo d’Alamanno de’ Medici to Rimini; and proclaimed all my Medici family grandi (Magnates), excepting the sons of messer Vieri, because Nicola was Gonfaloniere; also excepted the sons of Antonio di Giovenco de’ Medici, because Bernardetto was very well liked by the Capitano della guerra, and out of respect for the Captain they made an exception for Averardo and his brothers; they made a series of laws against us, and above all decided that I could not sell my real estate or public bonds; and they kept me prisoner in the Signoria Palazzo until October 3rd. When this news reached Venice, the Venetian government immedi- ately sent three ambassadors: messer Luigi Stolardo, and messer Tommaso Michiel, and ***, who tried everything to gain my release, offering to keep me in Venice, promising to keep me from acting against the Signoria, and to make me obey their orders; and even though they could not obtain my freedom, their having come pleased me greatly, because there were those in Florence who wanted me killed, and the Venetians were promised that I would not be harmed. Likewise, the Marquis of Ferrara sent ser Gherardino da Subiglia to the Captain of the balìa, one messer Lodovico del Ronco da Modena, subject of the Marquis, to order him, if I were consigned to him, to treat me as if I were messer Leonardo his son, and fly with me from Florence with no fear of any consequences. They kept me in jail, as I said, until October 3rd for two reasons: first, because they could get constitutional laws approved in the Balìa as they wished; because when these measures were not approved they threat- ened me with death; and fearing this the relatives and friends who were in the Balìa approved whatever was proposed. Second, they thought that, by keeping me in prison so that I could not touch my patrimony, our busi- nesses must fail; but they did not succeed in this because not only did we not lose the credit we had, but many foreign merchants and Lords offered and sent large amounts of money to us at Venice. Finally, seeing that the
plan to make us fail was not working, a thousand florins [2v] were offered in cash to Gonfaloniere Bernardo Guadagni by two people, 500 from the capitano della guerra, and 500 from the spedalingo of Santa Maria Nuova, and to Mariotto Baldovinetti, one of the Signori, were given 800 fiorini by Puccio di Antonio di Puccio [Pucci], and on 3 October, in the night, I was taken from the palazzo della Signoria and put outside the gate of san Gallo; they did not have much courage, because if they had wanted more money they could have had even ten thousand florins or more to save me from danger. I got to Cutigliano in the Pistoiese mountains on the 4th of October and was accompanied by two of the Otto della Guardia, Francesco Soderini and Cristofano *** del Chiaro. The men in the mountains gave me fodder and wax, as if I were an ambassador. On the 5th I left there and reached Fanano in the region of the Marquis of Ferrara and was accompanied by more than 20e men from the mountains. On the 6th I arrived at Modena and the Governor, who was messer Piero ***, came to me on the part of the Lord, visited and brought gifts, and the next morn- ing gave me company and a guide. On the 7th I got to Bondeno and the next morning I went to Francolino by water; I stayed there for two days waiting for Antonio Uguccione de’ Contrari, who made me many offers on the part of the Marquis. October 11th I reached Venice, where many gentlemen friends and my brother Lorenzo came to meet me; and I was received not as an exile, but as an ambassador. The following morning I went to the Signoria, and thanked it for having helped to save me, and showing that I realized that I owed my life to them; I was received with so much honor and benevolence that it is hard to describe, and the govern- ment was pained by my misfortune and offered the city and its income for any need I may have, and I received visits and gifts at home from many gentlemen. On the 13th I left for Padua as I had been ordered, and in my company there was messer Iacopo Donato, who put me up in his beauti- ful [3r] house complete with clothes, beds, and food fit for the great; and he stayed with me until I returned to Venice, around the 20th. In Padua he came to visit me at home on the part of the Signoria of Venice, offering me everything they could do to please me. I wanted to record the honor done to me so as not to seem ungrateful in the recording, and also because it was an unbelievable thing, having been thrown out of my home, to find such honor, because often friends are lost with fortune; the honors I received were referred to Florence, both by merchants’ letters and by a e 20: above 20 stained.
mace-bearer (mazziere) of the Signori who came with me to Padua, and who was ordered not to speak of it. Then in the month of December, I asked the Signori the favor of stay- ing in Padua and Venice, and in the territory of the Venetian Signoria, and since Bartolomeo Ridolfi was gonfaloniere di giustizia, it was decided and thus I gained the liberty of the Venetian territory, and to stay at least 150 miles from Florence; and they did this to please the Venetian Signoria who had asked Florence in this sense through their ambassador messer Andrea Donato; it is true that they added to this grant the norm that under heavy penalties it was not possible in the future to let me return, or enlarge the territory of exile, as written in the text of the decision. In the time of these signori, Puccio and Giovanni d’Antonio di Puccio [Pucci], my best friends, were exiled. And then the following Priors, when Mariotto Scambrilla was gonfaloniere, exiled messer Agnolo Acciaiuoli, for certain information he had sent to Puccio and us; which was not really very important, nor enough to justify his exile. I remember that on the first of September 1434 there were drawn as Signori Giovanni di Mico Capponi, Luca di Buonacorso Pitti, Niccolò di Cocco Donati, gonfaloniere of justice, Piero d’Antonio di Piero and Feltriano di Antonio Martini for the minor arts, Simone di Francesco Guiducci and *** [3v] di Tommaso Redditi, Baldassarre d’Antonio di Santi, Neri di Domenico Bartolini; and as soon as they were drawn all the good citizens took strength and courage, as they thought the moment to get out of the bad government had come; they would have done earlier, if they had had Signori who wanted to consider it; because in truth all the people, and all the good citizens, were unhappy; and immediately Antonio di ser Tommaso Masi came to visit me at Venice, sent by some citizens to say we should come towards Florence, offering, when they had news of our being near Florence, to rise and let us enter into the city; and many relatives and friends continually pressed us in this way. It seemed to us important to understand what the intentions of the Signori were, saying that we did not wish to act against the will of the Signoria; and for this we sent Antonio Martelli from Venice to Florence to hear from the Signori what were their intentions, and he had the good answer that we could come; and so by means of a servant we had a letter, and as soon as we received it we, my brother Lorenzo and I, left Venice on 29 September, while Averardo stayed in Venice, as he was sick with fever and could not come, and on the 30th we were at Ponte al Lago. We stayed in the house of Magnifico Uguccione, who together with the Marquis at our request had recruited a large number of soldiers in the mountains of Modena and
Frignano, and also had with him 200 horsemen, to come with us, as had been decided. And the 1st of October, while we were at mass, a courier came from Antonio Salutati bearing letters advising us that, since the intentions of the Signori were known in the city, and thinking that we would return, on the 26th our enemies, that is, messer Rinaldo degli Albizzi, Ridolfo Peruzzi, and others numbering 600 people, had taken up arms; then the evening, having lost courage, and there being as mediator of an agreement for the Pope messer Giovanni Vitelleschi at that time Bishop of Recanati, and then Archbishop of Florence, and then Cardinal, who was my very [4r] good friend, they took refuge in Santa Maria Novella where the Pope resided; and hearing that our friends were backed by men and arms, for fear that harm come to them, messer Rinaldo and Ormanno his son, and Ridolfo Peruzzi stayed there the night, and did not want to leave; and those with them went here and there, and went to leave their weapons. Then the Signori called a large number of soldiers into the city, such that just from the Mugello and the Romagna Apennines there were 3,000 soldiers, and they called also the company of Niccolò da Tolentino; and on the 29th, the day of St. Michael, they called a Parlamento in piazza dei Signori, where there was all the populace in large number and armed and well organized, and gave the Balìa to *** citizens, and cancelled what had been done the year before, and their first decision was that Cosimo and Lorenzo be restored to full honor, and everything done against them be annulled, and there were not even 4 contrary votes, and all exhorted us to come soon. And this letter we sent immediately to Venice, where there was great joy, and we went to visit the Marquis, who was happier than we; we thanked him for what he had ***, and the favors he had done for us, and on 2 October we left Ferrara and on the 3rd were in Modena, where we were received with great honor at the Marquis’ house, and the Governor and Podestà came to greet us, as well as many citizens of Modena. The 4th we came ***, and the expenses incurrred on the way were paid by the Marquis, and everywhere we found soldiers who had been ordered to come with us, and we let them go because there was no need; and the 5th we arrived in Cutigliano, and then Pistoia, and precisely a year after we had left, in the same day, that is the 5th of October, we returned to Florentine [4v] territory, in the same place. I have recorded this because we were told by several devoted and good persons, when we were exiled, that we would be back in Florence before a year had passed. On the road many citizens came up to us, and in Pistoia everyone came to the gate to see us pass so arm
were in our villa at Careggi where many awaited us; and the Signori sent to say that we should not enter the city without first advising them, and so we did; and after sundown they sent to say we could enter, and so we left with many people following. And since all the streets that we took were full of men and women, Lorenzo and I with a servant and mace- bearer went around the walls and arrived behind the church of the Servites, and then behind Santa Reparata, and from the Palazzo del Podestà, and from the Palazzo dell’Esecutore we entered palazzo dei Signori hardly noticed because all the people were waiting for us in the via Larga in front of our house, and it was for this that the signori did not want us to enter in the daytime and cause disorder in the city. We were received nicely by the Signori, and after thanking them courteously, they wished us to stay in the palace with the Signori themselves and other citi- zens, and so we did. We discovered that, before our arrival, messer Rinaldo degli Albizzi and his son Ormanno, Ridolfo Peruzzi and many others had been exiled; the city was at peace, even though in the square and palazzo dei Signori there were still many armed soldiers. Then in early November priors were elected [rather than drawn]: for Santo Spirito Sandro di Giovanni Biliotti and Pietro di Bartolomeo del Benino; for Santa Croce, An-[5r]drea Nardi and Lodovico da Verrazzano; for Santa Maria Novella, Giovanni Minerbetti gonfaloniere di giustizia, Brunetto butcher *** for the minor arts; for San Giovanni, Ugolino Martelli and Antonio di ser Tommaso Masi. These Priori exiled many citi- zens, and excluded many suspect families from office-holding, and did many things in favor of the state; and during their term terminated the balìa that had been assigned to some citizens, and the vote ended, and the bags [of names to draw] for the Priorate stayed in the hands of the Accoppiatori for five years, and they may elect the Priors and Gonfaloniere di giustizia as they wish. And the next January there was the first drawing of the bags for Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, and during my term we did not exile nor hurt anybody. But instead arranged that Francesco Guadagni and others, whom I found in the hands of the Captain of the balìa, and they had confirmed the ***, did not die, but were condemned to life imprisonment; and so in my time I removed certain armed soldiers away from the door of the Signoria palace, and returned the palace and the piazza as they were before the change of regime, and caused the alliance with the Venetian signoria to be extended for ten years.
My interest in undertaking a reflection on the combined themes of memory, tradition, and identity starting from Jan Assmann’s points in his book on cul- tural memory derives above all from a primary interest in family memory. One could object that family memory is not at the center of Assmann’s book and I would agree. On the other hand I believe that Assmann’s book is important above all if one accepts its characteristics of “incentive” to thought. Certainly it is not a text that exhausts its argument. Not only because, as the author him- self says, his “four examples…are neither systematic nor completely represen- tative but are meant to offer a starting point” for a series that could continue ad libitum.1 But also because often theoretical reflections find fields of applica- tion other than those foreseen by their originator. No book is in itself all-comprehensive. And certainly Assmann’s is strongly oriented. As has been underlined recently also in a long review in Scrittura e civiltà, this decided orientation is not only to the antique (and here too with a prevalence of certain components of ancient history: Egypt, Israel, Mesopotamia, while Greece is allowed less space and Rome is absent), but also in the theoretic-sociological sense, with a marked selection of available stud- ies. For example the literature used on the theme is certainly a large part of that existing in German, but there is a lack of recent reflections in the “Annales” vein, and Italy, where research on this argument is not exactly lacking, is instead entirely overlooked.2
* Some themes of the second part of this chapter have been anticipated, in a different context, in my Family memory: Functions, evolution, recurrences, in Ciappelli and Rubin (eds.), Art, Memory and Family, pp. 26–38. 1 J. Assmann, Cultural memory and early civilization. Writing, remembrance, and political imagi- nation, Engl. transl. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 11. The original work was published in German in 1992, and the Italian translation in 1997. 2 A. Mastruzzo, “Scrittura e memoria collettiva. A proposito di un recente saggio di Jan Assmann,” Scrittura e civiltà 22 (1998), pp. 371–386: 372–373, who notes that Assmann never cites Jacques Le Goff’s essays about memory, nor works about memory in the ancient world like Arnaldo Momigliano’s or Mario Liverani’s. Important on this topic is also the mono- graphic issue of Storiografia 2 (1998): Il potere dei ricordi. Studi sulla tradizione come problema di storia, ed. by M. Mastrogregori.
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If the proposed attempt at synthesis is fascinating, it would be very difficult to take it as a functional theoretical model in a broad space-time range without submitting it to comparisons or new elaborations. One of the originating ideas of this chapter was thus that of trying to find possible examples – for epochs, contexts, and in part also different objects – of verification and adaptation of the scheme proposed by the German Egyptologist. For that matter, it is true that Assmann’s research is part of a field of thought on the theme of memory that began in a composite German work group (bible scholars, Egyptologists, classical philologists, scholars of literature and linguists)3 in “Archaeology of literary communication,” in which antiquity was a very strong component at the beginning.4 But one must remember that that project later involved schol- ars from other disciplines and periods, and besides figures such as Assmann’s own wife who teaches English literature (and in substance the theory of litera- ture) at the University of Constance, certainly many medieval historians such as Otto Gerhard Oexle, director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte in Gottingen and editor of the recent Memoria als Kultur (1995),5 and Karl Schmid and Joachim Wollasch, editors of, among others, various editions of libri memo- riales and necrològia for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.6
3 Assmann, Cultural memory, p. 7. 4 The group has produced so far, from 1983 to 2010, ten conferences (and as many volumes of proceedings): Schrift und Gedächtnis (1983), Kanon und Zensur (1987), Weisheit (1991), Text und Kommentar (1995), Schleier und Schwelle (three volumes, 1997–1999); Einsamkeit (2000); Aufmerksamkeiten (2001); Hieroglyphen. Stationen einer anderen abendländischer Grammatologie (2003); Verwandlungen (2006); Vollkommenheit (2010); all published in München, Fink. In the introduction to his book, Assmann was referring to the parallel research of his wife Aleida, “guided by the same interests, but leading in different directions,” saying that she would have presented her analyses in a book then (1992) forthcoming, and now published: A. Assmann, Erinnerungsräume. Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (München: Fink, 1999). On the concept of cultural memory, esp. in relation to Aleida Assmann’s work see now also E. Agazzi, “Memoria culturale,” in M. Cometa, Dizionario degli studi culturali, ed. by R. Coglitore and F. Mazzara (Roma: Meltemi, 2004), pp. 254–261. 5 O.G. Oexle (ed.), Memoria als Kultur (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), where not by accident one finds an essay by Assmann on cultural memory in ancient Egypt and Israel: J. Assmann, “Kulturelles Gedächtnis als normative Erinnerung. Das Prinzip, ‘Kanon’ in der Erinnerungskultur Ägyptens und Israels,” pp. 95–113. 6 See K. Schmid, Gebetsgedenken und adliges Selbstverstaendnis im Mittelalter: ausgewählte Beiträge (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1983); K. Schmid (ed.), Gedächtnis, das Gemeinschaft stiftet (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1985); K. Schmid and J. Wollasch (ed.), Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter (München, 1984) [“Commemoration and noble conscience in the Middle Ages”; “Memory, which founds society”; “The historical witness of liturgical memory in the Middle Ages”]. Examples of the editions of texts:
Cultural memory is, according to the German Egyptologist, that part of the external dimension of memory, necessitated by the dilation of the context in which individuals and groups find themselves remembering, in which a sense is transmitted to other possible fields. There exist, in an ideal classification of memory, the mimetic memory, memory of things, and communicative mem- ory, which occurs through language. When these fields acquire a value that goes beyond the merely functional, one has cultural memory: this occurs when the simple repetition of a gesture becomes rite, when objects become symbols, when language, communication, and writing acquire a meaning that goes beyond their practical usage.7 Assmann’s book is in fact dedicated to this third scope: the passage of communicative memory into a zone endowed with its own meaning, with particular attention to the role of writing. In proposing his particular concept of cultural memory Assmann often uses the theories elaborated by Maurice Halbwachs and published by this latter both in Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (1925), and in La mémoire collective (published posthumously, in 1950).8 I shall not repeat them in detail here. The fundamental concepts of this elaboration, well enough known to those who study these themes, are as follows: the memory of each is inscribed in collec- tive frameworks; the past is conserved by processes of selection and interpreta- tion; collective memory is a factor in the identity and cohesion of a group, and it is also the expression of it since it projects onto the past the needs of the present. An especially important element of this theory is the recognition of the existence of more than one collective memory in any given society. Social memory is thus the fruit of the intersection (and at times collision) of more collective memories.9 Assmann says that he takes above all from Halbwachs the concept accord- ing to which the past is a cultural construct.10 This is the strong recovery of a
E. Hlawitschka, K. Schmid, G. Tellenbach (eds.), Liber Memorialis von Remiremont (Frankfurt, 1970); G. Althoff, J. Wollasch (eds.), Die Totenbücher von Merseburg, Magdeburg und Lüneburg (Frankfurt, 1983). On Schmid’s work about the self-consciousness of medi- eval nobility see also P. Guglielmotti, “Esperienze di ricerca e problemi di metodo negli studi di Karl Schmid sulla nobiltà medievale,” Annali dell’istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 13 (1987), pp. 209–269. 7 Assmann, Cultural memory, p. 7. 8 Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire; Engl. transl. in Id., On collective memory; Id., La mémoire collective; It. transl.: La memoria collettiva, ed. by P. Jedlowski (Milano: Unicopli, 1996); Engl. transl. The collective memory. 9 See P. Jedlowski, “Halbwachs, Maurice,” in Dizionario di storiografia (Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 1996), pp. 500–501. 10 See Assmann, Cultural memory, p. 33.
11 Among others by Marc Bloch, in a book review which appeared in Revue de synthèse his- torique 40 (1925), pp. 73–83 soon after the publication of Halbwachs book about “cadres sociaux.” In particular Bloch was blaming Halbwachs for just touching on the question: “comment les souvenirs collectifs passent-ils dans un même groupe de géneration en géneration?.” And was attributing the omission to the “vocabulaire durkheimien, caracté- risé par l’emploi, avec l’epithète ‘collectif’, de termes empruntés à la psychologie individu- elle” (p. 78). Still in 1953, on the contrary, the founder of the same journal Berr was claiming that society, which does not think, cannot remember; therefore memory must be considered an exclusively individual function (see B. Arcangeli, “Introduzione” to M. Halbwachs, Memorie di famiglia, ed. by B. Arcangeli [Rome: Armando, 1996], p. 14). 12 See Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire, chap. V, La mémoire collective de la famille (pp. 199–242). The chapter has been also entitled differently and separately pub- lished in Italian as Id., Memorie di famiglia. 13 Halbwachs, La memoria collettiva, pp. 49–53, 74–75, but esp. the paragraph “Permanenza e trasformazione dei gruppi. Le epoche della famiglia,” pp. 127–130. 14 The original term used by Halbwachs, drawn from Bergson (Matière et mémoire), is “images-souvenirs” (see Les cadres sociaux, passim, but esp. chap. 1). 15 See Assmann, Cultural memory, pp. 23–27.
16 Family memories are “en même temps, des modèles, des exemples, et comme des ensei- gnements. En eux s’exprime l’attitude générale du groupe.” Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux, p. 206. See Assmann, Cultural memory, p. 25, who, though, places as subject of the sentence in general the “memory figures.” 17 Ibid. See Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux, p. 313, where the statement does not refer only to the feudal period. 18 Assmann, Cultural memory, p. 25. 19 I intend to develop it in a future volume about family memory between the Middle Ages and the early modern period. 20 See Cicchetti and Mordenti, “La scrittura dei libri di famiglia.”
21 See esp. Ciappelli, Family memory. 22 P. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance. Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). On oblivion as a tool which allows, among other things, to organize memory see, however, also Y.H. Yerushalmi, “Reflexions sur l’oubli,” in Usages de l’oubli (Paris: Seuil, 1988), pp. 7–21; M. Augé, Les formes de l’oubli (Paris: Payot, 1998). 23 Assmann, Cultural memory, pp. 54–55. 24 Ibid., p. 148.
25 Ibid., p. 147. 26 Ibid., pp. 57–58, 148, 164, 214. 27 See R. Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili. Scritti di storia nell’Europa moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995), pp. 119–121. In the New Testament references are above all to Matthew 1. 1–17 and Luke 3. 23–38. As for the Bible, the whole first part of Chronicles’ first book is formed of genealogies (I Chron. 1–9: from Adam to Saul); but the same features can be found also in Genesis, 4. 25–26, 5. 1–32, 10, 11. 10–26, 25. 1–26, 36 (descendants of Esau and Seir, and of the kings of Edom), 46.8–25; Exodus, 6. 14–25, and there are in general many of the cen- suses present in the Pentateuch. One must add to these at least Ruth, 4.18 (David’s geneal- ogy); and we can even find there Judith’s genealogy (Judith, 8.1). 28 See Glaucus’s genealogy, in the dialogue he starts with Diomedes to demonstrate his nobility, in Iliad, VI, 150–211. 29 See R. Cantarella, La letteratura greca classica (Firenze: Sansoni, 1967), pp. 87–88, 197. 30 F. Schachermeyr, Die griechische Rückerinnerung im Lichte neuer Forschungen (Wien, 1983), esp. chap. 7, “Stammbäume und Generationen,” pp. 70–84, and on Hecataeus pp. 70–77. On this topic see also R. Thomas, Oral tradition and written record in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) (I owe the knowledge of this work to Maurizio Giangiulio). 31 J. Vansina, Oral tradition. An essay in historical methodology, Engl. transl. (Chicago: Aldine, 1965; or. ed. 1961). See Assmann, Cultural memory, pp. 34–35. 32 The empty period is also called dark ages. For British families see K. Thomas, The percep- tion of the past in early modern England (London, 1983), also cited in Assmann, Cultural memory, p. 35.
In referring to the texts which express cultural memory Assmann distin- guishes between normative texts (where the question that the authors pose is: “what must we do?”) and formative texts (where instead the question is: “who are we?”), and places the genealogies among the formative: they are useful to the self-definition and understanding of the composition of the group.33 In any case, the genealogies of the Homeric-Hesiodic period first, and those of the Hecataeus’s time, later, have an explanation also in terms of active relation with the past. There has been a break with the past, represented by the Mycenaean age. Aristocratic Greek families associated themselves with this past, also because of the floating gap, but above all to establish a self- celebrating mythic antiquity, claiming a heroic past of greater value than the present.34 This is a first possible model of construction of cultural family memory in the ancient world. If instead we turn to the other great civilization of the clas- sical world, in Rome family memory is above all tied to the cult of the forefa- thers. Especially in the Republican era (6th–1st centuries bc) the noble families kept wax images of their forefathers in a niche or tabernacle in the atrium. To the images were often added inscriptions praising the ancestors, and they were tied to each other by lines (the stemmata), that indicated the reciprocal family relationships. This custom represented on the one hand a form of veneration for one’s own dead, and on the other it was connected to the ius imaginum, the privilege of keeping images of especially dignified forefathers and using these in particular ceremonies.35 These ceremonies, briefly recorded also by Assmann, were those (above all in occasion of funerals of a member of the family) in which the patricians car- ried their forefathers, in the form of portraits and masks, in procession.36 This too is certainly a memory culture, according to Assmann’s definition:37 one commemorates the dead and assures him a kind of posterity, on the one hand. On the other, one demonstrates the antiquity of the family, realizes the union of the group and reinforces its identity around the ancestors (at certain levels, one could almost establish a comparison with the manifestations of recent
33 See Assmann, Cultural memory, p. 122. 34 See ibid., pp. 249–250. 35 See M. Bettini, Antropologia e cultura romana. Parentela, tempo, immagini dell’anima (Rome: Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1986), pp. 177–179, who cites sources from Pliny the Elder to Seneca. 36 See Assmann, Cultural memory, p. 19, on the basis almost certainly of Polybius. 37 “Memory culture is concerned with a social obligation and is firmly linked to the group. The question here is: ‘What must we not forget?’.” Ibid., p. 16.
38 See B. Shaw, “The cultural meaning of death. Age and gender in the Roman family,” in D.I. Kertzer and R.P. Saller (eds.), The family in Italy from antiquity to the present (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 66–90. 39 See Assmann, Cultural memory, p. 46. Retrospective is that form of memory by which a group keeps remembering its own dead members in the present, while at the same time seeing them as part of its own image: the prevailing aspect is pietas; prospective is on the contrary that memory where performance and fame tend to prevail. 40 In this sense it would be possible to see a parallel behavior in the Egyptian society, when writing becomes a specific competence of the priests, by assuming both a clerical and sacral form (Assmann, Cultural memory, p. 172).
41 In general on these documents see Cammarosano, Italia medievale, pp. 89–92. 42 O.G. Oexle, “Memoria als Kultur,” in Oexle (ed.), Memoria als Kultur, pp. 9–78: 38. 43 On the definition of the two kinds of memory see Assmann, Cultural memory, pp. 34–44. 44 Great attention to (esp. feudal) nobility is dedicated also by Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux, pp. 301–326 (all the first part of the seventh chap.). 45 On such themes in relation to early medieval nobility see more in Oexle, “Memoria als Kultur,” esp. pp. 37–41, with an essentially German reference bibliography. 46 G. Duby, The knight, the lady and the priest, Engl. transl. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983; or. ed. 1981), pp. 227–228.
47 Ibid. 48 The norm found its application esp. following the treaty by Peter Damian, De parentelae gradibus (y. 1063), which modified moreover the ways to calculate kinship degrees, so actually doubling the range for which marriage prohibitions were enforced. Even though the norm was modified (establishing prohibition within the fourth, German, degree) by the Lateran Council of 1215, the habit of reckoning kinship degrees more rigorously was maintained. See J. Goody, The development of the family and marriage in Europe (Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 134–139. 49 D. Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 136.
50 See M. Del Treppo, “La nobiltà dalla memoria lunga. Evoluzione del ceto dirigente di Amalfi dal IX al XIV secolo,” now in G. Rossetti (ed.), Forme di potere e strutture sociali nel Medioevo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1977), pp. 305–319. 51 See S. Bortolami, “Famiglia e parentela nei secoli XII–XIII. Due esempi di memoria lunga dal Veneto,” in “Viridarium floridum.” Studi di storia veneta offerti dagli allievi a Paolo Sambin (Padua, 1984), pp. 117–157.
52 Particularly convincing in attributing them this specific meaning is H.I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996; repr. 2001). 53 See Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, pp. 195–198. 54 On such busts see also Johnson, “Family values.”
55 See O.G. Oexle and A. von Hülsen-Esch (eds.), Die Repräsentation der Gruppen: Texte, Bilder, Objekte (Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1998); O.G. Oexle and W. Paravicini (eds.), Nobilitas: Funktion und Repräsentation des Adels in Alteuropa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1997). 56 See J. Grubb, “Memory and identity. Why Venetians didn’t keep ‘ricordanze’,” Renaissance Studies 8 (1994), pp. 375–387. 57 Among the cases mentioned by Grubb esp. Freschi (ca. 1450), who were actually original citizens, and Amadi. On Freschi see now Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, p. 52. 58 See Grubb, “Memory and Identity,” p. 382. In general see now also Mordenti, I libri di fami- glia in Italia, II, passim. 59 See E. Irace, “La memoria formalizzata. Dai libri di famiglia alle prove di nobiltà per gli ordini cavallereschi,” in Bastia, Bolognani and Pezzarossa (eds.), La memoria e la città, pp. 73–103.
60 See Ciappelli, Family Memory, p. 29. 61 See Irace, La memoria formalizzata. 62 It is a trend which had already been formalized in the feudal period, but which is taken again, reinforced, in the early modern period, esp. in the 16th century: see Duby, The knight, the lady and the priest, pp. 228–230; Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili. 63 Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili. 64 See Tricard, “La mémoire des Bénoist”; Id., “Qu’est-ce qu’un livre de raison limousine du XVe siècle?,” Journal de savants (1988), n. 3–4, pp. 263–276; J. Blanchard, Commynes l’européen. L’invention du politique (Genève: Droz, 1996), pp. 344–354.
Germany.65 The tradition of livres de raison continues in France into the 17th century, when we also find a substantial group of books of accounts and diaries in England belonging essentially to the same typology.66 In the Iberian peninsula, memory texts with similar characteristics are present primarily in Catalonia as diaris or dietaris, especially beginning in the 16th century, with some follow-up in the following centuries.67 If we then look at some not neces- sarily written forms, their permanence and diffusion in the early modern period is even easier to demonstrate, even if an exact census and description of all is, if possible, an even more complex undertaking. The spread over a vast area of a model of writing relative to the family with common characteristics, often deriving from account books which began in a mercantile environment, leads one to wonder if this phenomenon could be seen as the product of reciprocal contacts between different areas of cultural influence, or if it should be attributed to the presence of similar socio- economic characteristics: commerce, and above all the prolonged residence abroad of merchants could have been for example a vehicle for the diffusion of habits like those precociously matured in the Florentine area. For instance, it is striking that there seems to be a greater diffusion of this genre, with similar characteristics and in the same period, in areas tied together by strong com- mercial relations: Limoges, Provence and Burgundy, Catalonia, Tuscany, north- ern Germany. Even if the importance of the notarial model of writing, at the origin of the mercantile, and available through the frequent contacts of all social strata with that professional figure, should not be underestimated. In the absence of direct contact, commerce and the presence of a self-conscious mer- cantile class that tended to become city patriciate and to express itself in ways meant to exalt the group identity of the single family rather than that of the
65 See P. Braunstein, “Toward intimacy,” in P. Ariès, G. Duby (dirs.), The history of private life, II, Revelations of the medieval world, Engl. transl. (Cambridge, Mass.-London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 535–630: 551, with references to Nicolas Muffel or Anton Tucher from Nuremberg (15th cent.), or Lucas Rem from Augsburg (early 16th cent.). 66 M. Foisil, “The literature of intimacy,” in Ariès and Duby (dirs.), The history of private life, III, Passions of the Renaissance (1989), pp. 327–361: 330–332, 348–351. On English diaries see also K. von Greyerz, Vorschungsglaube und Cosmologie. Studien zu englischen Selbstzeugnissen des 17. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen und Zurich, 1990). Especially valuable is É. Bourcier, Les journaux privés en Angleterre de 1600 à 1660 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1976). 67 See on this the bibliography cited in J. Amelang, “The mental world of Jeroni Pujades,” in R.L. Kagan, G. Parker (eds.), Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World. Essays in honour of John H. Elliott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 211–226: 217.
Family history has been the object of increasing attention of historians and literary historians over these last thirty years. A new course of study began about thirty years ago when Italian family books were highlighted and consid- ered an autonomous genre, and then scholars from differing fields both in team and individually have attempted to analyze their structure and function, the motives of their authors, and characteristics of their social contexts.1 Family memory writings (the family as receiver, the sense of the family as principal inspiration) are a type of source which can give us indications about the most varying aspects of social, cultural, and mental history of an age, allow- ing us to know details of material life, of family groups’ survival strategies, both individual and social. They are in close relation to the process of formation and evolution of the family identity, in relation to its tradition and context, they express the consciousness of the writer’s and his group’s social position, consti- tute an indicator and are sometimes at the beginning of, those same forms of representation of social life: it is no accident that they are produced mainly in the city, and especially those cities with an autonomous tradition of political representation. Recently there have been additions to the field that studies these texts, regarding equally significant types for the understanding of social realities of sectors otherwise little represented in traditional sources: the expressions of popular autobiography studied by Amelang, or the so-called Ego-Dokumente according to Schulze and Dekker, documents of varying type that can supply information about personal events or the history of their authors or protagonists.2
1 Bibliography on this topic is by now rather large. See esp. Cicchetti and Mordenti, “La scrit- tura dei libri di famiglia”; Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I; Klapisch-Zuber, La famiglia e le donne; Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina”; Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia e storia del patriziato”; R. Bizzocchi, “Familiae Romanae antiche e moderne,” Rivista storica italiana 103 (1991), pp. 355–397; Bastia, Bolognani, Pezzarossa (eds.), La memoria e la città; Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze; Ciappelli and Rubin (eds.), Art, Memory, and Family; Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II; above, chap. 7. 2 See Amelang, The Flight of Icarus; Schulze (ed.), Ego-Dokumente; Dekker (ed.), Egodocuments and history.
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Just as greater and closer attention has been given even by Italian historians to autobiographical and in general to memory writings.3 These ones, however, even considering, differently from the past, also unpublished sources and those not intended for publication (overlooked at least initially by theoreti- cians of autobiography such as Lejeune)4 are still dealing with different types of sources, where the individual memoir and the intimate diary prevail over the family view, in the wake of the autobiographical model that some say found its paradigm in the 18th century in Rousseau’s Confessions. In any case this “new course” has certainly produced results both in terms of conferences and in original publications, up until very recent times.5 Nevertheless one aspect, even in the coordinated projects, has been left behind: that of a systematic census of the unpublished sources (and consequently also their equally systematic and complete evaluation). Begun with enthusiasm by a group of young volunteer scholars in mid-1980s, it has produced partial results for some Italian regions where there was less material or there were more scholars, but it has remained in a nearly embryonal state from the point of view of quantity in the area of absolutely greatest concentration of family memory writings: Tuscany.6 Here, to give an idea, even just the census of mem- ory texts printed wholly or partially from the 14th–15th century revealed 330 texts, while in other places this type accounts for only some dozens for all epochs.7 In this region the early modern period has been especially overlooked by scholars, who have tended to concentrate primarily on the earlier manifesta- tions of the family book (end 13th–15th centuries).8 In fact a closer study of the centuries 16th–18th shows a great continuity with the earlier period as regards the tradition and the function of these writings, whose production (judging from the surviving sources) stayed at constant levels notwithstanding a series of long term processes (the diffusion of parish registers after the Council of Trent; the formalization of recognition of noble status) that tended to re- dimension their practical applications. The project carried out by the research unit of Trent, which I have coordi- nated, was intended to gain a more exact recognition of these sources and
3 See M.L. Betri and D. Maldini Chiarito (eds.), Scritture di desiderio e di ricordo. Autobiografie, diari, memorie tra Settecento e Novecento (Milano: Angeli, 2002). 4 See Lejeune, Le pacte autobiographique, p. 13; Id., L’autobiographie en France. 5 See now also the dossier De la autobiografia a los ego-documentos. 6 See on this Ciappelli, “I libri di famiglia a Firenze.” 7 See Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina.” But see below, p. 169. 8 See texts on Florence cited at note 1.
9 See Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, p. 15. 10 Ibid., p. 18. 11 The original project had foreseen (with a very moderate estimate which was also keeping into account the global limit which must be assigned to an enterprise with the participa- tion of five research units) an assignation of resources for 30 months/person, whereas the financing of the Ministry through PRIN (Progetti di Ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale) only covered about 10 months/person, which in order to speed up results have been assigned to two researchers: Fabrizio Vannini and Irene Gennarelli, while later on also Alida Caramagno got involved. Clearly, since papers cannot be compressed, it has not been possible to get the census to completion for the whole region by the end of 2007 as foreseen, but only for the most important situation, Florence (with the exception, though, of private archives).
12 See above, chap. 1. 13 In the hypothetical case of 30,000 items, there would have needed at least from 5 to 10 years/person in order to index them; whereas we have received resources only for about 1 year/person. 14 Lately an attempt to measure the production of French “livres de raison” (analogous, with differences, to Italian family books) has chosen to use, as a basis, the inventory of manu- scripts kept in French public libraries. See N. Lemaitre, “Les livres de raison en France (fin XIIIe–XIXe siècles),” LdF. Bollettino della ricerca sui libri di famiglia in Italia 7 (2003–2004) [a download is now available at http://cultivoo.com/documents/articles/livreraison.pdf].
15 The decision to exclude these last texts from the preselection has been particularly pain- ful, because it is true (as Isabelle Chabot has rightly observed during the conference’s discussion) that some of the so-defined registers can sometimes contain texts compiled by widows, or orphans, which in their turn can develop as family books. Nevertheless the sampling has shown that in most cases registers “di eredità” correspond to account books kept by third persons, alien to the family (clerks, accountants), and that their negative incidence in preselection risked being similar to the one of account books identified as such. Should further financing allow a completion of the census, surely also many texts which belong to this typology will deserve to be examined. 16 This work has been much facilitated at the Biblioteca Nazionale, where a preliminary agree ment with the Direction allowed me, under surveillance, to preselect personally, by directly examining the probably corresponding manuscripts into the deposits. The card-compilers have then indexed texts which had already been recognized as total, or partial, family books. The situation was different at the State Archive, where in spite of a foreseen participation of some archivists in the preselection (with direct checks in the deposits) none of them could work on this except for a short beginning. Several bureaucratic hindrances, and above all the difficulty to find a suitable formula for a convention between University and State Archive, prevented a more concrete collaboration. The work has thus implied the indexing of all possible cases according to inventory descriptions, but this implied the use of a large amount of the available time and energies. I wish to thank for their help especially Paola Pirolo (department head) and Isabella Truci (librarian), of the Sala Manoscritti at Biblioteca Nazionale, and Vanna Arrighi, archivist at the Archivio di Stato. 17 February 2007.
All the texts that cover even part of our classic period of early modern his- tory have been cataloged. There are, therefore, also some manuscripts that were begun in the second half of the 15th century and finished after 1492, or begun before 1815 and completed later. One part of the preparatory work has been the setting up of a computerized frame for collecting the data. Here I was able to refer to other, earlier experi- ences (specific, starting with an analogous census project, dropped for a lack of funds around 1992, and general, like the database for the marriage trials of the Italian episcopal archives).18 The resulting template,19 which is very simple, contains all the data needed to identify the manuscripts and their authors and for the evaluation of their content.20 The results of the cataloging are rather encouraging. In about half of the time allotted21 604 items have been cataloged, 94 in the Biblioteca Nazionale (a systematic cataloging) and 510 in the Archivio di Stato (about half of the selected material). At the end of the project the cataloged manuscripts will number about 1400, and given the difficulty of evaluating ahead of time the
18 See G. Ciappelli, “I processi matrimoniali: quadro di raccordo dei risultati della scheda- tura (Venezia, Verona, Napoli, Feltre e Trento, 1420–1803),” in S. Seidel Menchi and D. Quaglioni (eds.), I tribunali del matrimonio (secoli XV–XVII), (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006), pp. 67–100. 19 Even this time I could take advantage of the precious collaboration of the head of techni- cal services at the Facoltà di Lettere of Trento University, Stefano Bernardini, who pre- pared, with the structure I suggested, the template for data insertion, hereafter described. The application has been elaborated by using Filemaker Pro 7. 20 The first page is dedicated to general information: conservation (place and institute where the document is kept, archival reference or shelfmark, former shelfmarks and notes of possession); author (name, family name, father, grandfather), provenance and residence, profession, sex; period, with initial and final dates and possible notes; com- piler. The second page is about title, internal and external, incipit, declaration of con- tents, a possible internal division in sections of the manuscript. The third page concerns the contents: here one can use free language, even though somehow oriented to a sort of thesaurus we have predisposed. In this language “birth” is preferred to “he/she was born,” “marriage” to “he/she get married.” The program allows questioning the database with the function “Find,” or to print reports, more or less complex. The last page contains all what is related to the bibliography about the manuscript: possible partial or integral editions, studies where it is cited. This part is bound to be filled after the indexing, since it is easier to compile such parts all together drawing the information from repertories or studies, than consult it as a whole while indexing a specific manuscript into the archive. 21 In the equivalent of ten months/person at part time, or five months/person.
22 Surely it will be impossible to dip into the other provinces’ situation, except on the basis of external communications, also for the high costs of research missions. 23 See Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina”: “Appendice, Per un catalogo dei testi memori- alistici fiorentini a stampa,” pp. 93–149. 24 See Grubb, “Memory and identity,” p. 375 note.
This data leads us to relate the genre in the narrow sense to other possible forms of family memory, in an attempt to formulate hypotheses about their evolution. But it is also necessary to recognize that the writing of family books corresponds, rather than to a uniform evolution that changes their aspect over time according to a standard model, to a process in which it is the particular family itself that produces it that is the pivot, so that the “archetypal” character- istics, with possible successive development stages, may recur in different eras. As Christiane Klapisch-Zuber and Claude Cazalé Berard have rightly remarked, bit by bit as the fifteenth century was left behind in early modern Florence, there are few “family books” that completely fulfill the definition: it is more likely that the information about the family be spread throughout the books that are still primarily account books, or concentrated in small sections within account books that are sometimes disproportionately large in respect to notations of specifically family interest.25 Certainly beginning in the second half of the fifteenth century, and for the entire 16th, the Florentine libri di ricordi was divided into two sections, the larger titled Debitori e creditori, and another smaller one dedicated to more diffuse ricordi, wherein those regarding the family are sometimes the most important. And it is correct (as someone has noted) to consider these sections as distinct “family books,” even though not attractive and not independent of the absolutely overwhelming economic material.26 From this point of view it would be right to keep in mind the entire system of texts that form the heavily interwoven context from which these particular writings draw their meaning.27 But that cannot be delegated to this project in this phase.28 The important priority for now is to finish this first census of the more important manifestations of family memory. The rest, also with the help of the preparatory work carried out in the cataloging process, can come later. I have some, absolutely provisional, numerical data that however come from a pretty significant sampling and seem already to outline some tendencies. Let us start with the “internal” title, that which is ascribed by the writers. Of circa 240 family memory texts, 30 have no internal title (because not given, or lacking). The title of 140 of these turns on the concept of ricordo or ricordanza,
25 See Cazalé Berard and Klapisch-Zuber, “Mémoire de soi et des autres,” p. 818, who cite in their turn analogous observations by Pandimiglio. 26 Ibid., on the basis of L. Pandimiglio, “Quindici anni (circa) con i libri di famiglia,” in Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, pp. 115–129: 128. 27 See Cazalé Berard and Klapisch-Zuber, “Mémoire de soi et des autres,” p. 818 and also Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, p. 198. 28 Esp. with a so reduced financing.
Figure 1 Family memory writings by century.
29 See Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, pp. 108–109.
15th 16th 17th 18th 19th
Figure 2 Family memory writings by century of production (pondered values).
15th 16th 17th 18th 19th
Figure 3 Family memory writings by century of beginning.
Nevertheless also the presence of seventeenth century family memory texts (28%) is strong, and the 18th century (12%) not weak. While the numbers col- lapse for the 19th century (1%). But at this time other processes have inter- vened and forms of memory have diversified. In this period the prevailing forms will be the individual memoir or autobiography proper. The fact is substantially confirmed if we consider the century in which the family memory texts began, instead of that of production, and then in this case the weight of the fifteenth century increases (16%) and that of the eighteenth diminishes (7%) [Fig. 3]. The seventeenth in sum remains, in part despite ini- tial estimates, a century of rather strong production. On the other hand for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the data could be falsified by the nature of the archival and library sources which we examined, many of which were constituted in the 18th century. Thus, before
30 See G. Calvi, “Maddalena Nerli and Cosimo Tornabuoni. A couple’s narrative of family history in early modern Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly 45 (1992), pp. 312–337. Maddalena de’ Nerli took part in the writing of the ricordi started by her husband in 1586, kept by this latter until his death in 1605, and by her until her death in 1641 (ASF, Carte Galletti, 37). She kept herself a “journal” of accounts from 1622 to 1641 (ASF, Acquisti e doni, 252). 31 See Cazalé Berard and Klapisch-Zuber, “Mémoire de soi et des autres,” pp. 822–824; L. Polizzotto and C. Kovesi, Memorie di casa Valori (Florence: Nerbini, 2007).
1380 by an important member of the family, Bartolomeo, who recapitulated a series of episodes regarding himself up to 1376 and left it to his son Niccolò when he died (1384), and this latter in his turn left it to his son Bartolomeo (1427), having made no additions. Niccolò’s son used it from 1438 as a family book (births, marriages, deaths) until 1477. His first-born, Filippo, followed his father’s model until he stopped writing in it in 1486 (eight years before his death). Then, starting in 1494,32 Bartolomeo’s second son Niccolò took over from his brother and used it as a family book mixed with notes of political events in which the Valori were involved, up until 1526. Niccolò died in 1528 and this first family book,33 in which four writers of four generations have intervened, remained with his first-born son Francesco, who added nothing. In 1529 the younger son of Niccolò, Filippo, feels the need to begin his own little notebook, which will establish his right to a personal fam- ily memoir. His motives are clear:
And because I want and am content that this book stay with Francesco di Niccolò my older brother, as first heir, I wanted there to be, for any neces- sity, a double note, not of everything, but of the more important things and especially about myself. Furthermore I will write everything that I have to do with others, and likewise every other memory that I think necessary.34
Filippo will pursue his personal way, strongly influenced by the model of his predecessors, almost up to his death (by execution) in 1537. The two texts (two separate manuscripts, that have clearly had different treatment as for both composition and conservation, as one can understand from Filippo’s own specification) may be read as a single text that marks emblematically, certainly from a chronological perspective, but also in sub- stance, the passage from the late medieval to the early modern period. In the same family, and within the establishment of a writing tradition from which few members of the agnatic line subtract themselves, we find both the awareness of the importance of the text for the family’s memory (“This book is to be shown to no one,” is the 16th century inscription on the cover of the earliest text),35 and
32 This is the reason why the manuscript has been inserted in our census (see above, the selection criteria). 33 BNCF, Panciatichi, 134, ins. 1. 34 BNCF, Panciatichi, 134, ins. 6, fol. 1v (publ. in Polizzotto and Kovesi, Memorie di casa Valori, p. 124). 35 Ibid., ins. 1 (publ. in Polizzotto and Kovesi, Memorie di casa Valori, p. 57).
36 Cazalé Berard and Klapisch-Zuber, “Mémoire de soi et des autres,” p. 823. 37 This statement must be verified for Florence in the light of more abundant material. It seems certainly verified for Perugia, whose writings of family memory are described through a series of examples between 15th and 17th century in Irace, “Dai ricordi ai memo- riali.” The “opening to politics” is seen by Cazalé Berard and Klapisch-Zuber as an element which makes Valori’s text similar to those produced at the same time in regions close to Tuscany like Umbria. Nevertheless Irace stresses that between late 15th century and early 16th century the attention to politics is a remnant in family books from Umbria, and in the following period it will tend to disappear in connection with the closing of local poli- tics after the definitive return of Umbria to the Pope. 38 See BNCF, Panciatichi, ins. 6, fol. 1v: “Et chiamasi memoriale segreto.” 39 See F. Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana. I Medici (Turin: Utet Libreria, 1987), p. 71 (wrong on Filippo as his brother, since he is actually his cousin). 40 See BNCF, Panciatichi, 134, ins. 2 e 3.
41 “From where the Duke Cosimo’s change came, I do not know”: fol. 2r. 42 Ibid., ins. 8. 43 See Rubinstein, The government of Florence under the Medici, p. 125 note. 44 The presumable first Baldovinetti was a consul already in 1178: see Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, I, p. 823. The painter is Alessio Baldovinetti, 1425–1499, in his turn author of two Libri di ricordi rather well-known esp. to art historians: “libro A” (1449–1491), whose origi- nal is lost, and “B” (1470–1472), in ASF, S. Maria Nuova, S. Paolo, Libri diversi (on which see esp. P. Horne, “A newly discovered ‘Libro di ricordi’ of Alesso Baldovinetti,” Burlington Magazine 1 (1903), pp. 23–32; 167–174; 377–390). On the Baldovinetti see now also the introduction to R. Romanelli (ed.), Inventario dell’Archivio Baldovinetti Tolomei (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002).
family books, in the 14th century, with a substantial continuity that covers the entire late medieval period.45 At the beginning of the 16th century (1513) one of them, Francesco di Giovanni, with great awareness, looked at the past and began to gather information from all the family’s writings that he could find. He wrote:
the work of this present book, composed and written by my hand…taken from many other originals and writings ancient and modern of our house, that here merit and need that I make mention, that I do for their honor and salute of my soul, and for the honor and usefulness and contentment of all my house…46
In this phase he also organized the material in a very significant way on a grid that includes a precise series of aspects, as can be seen from the following tavola (table of contents):
Tree [1–7] Bastards’ tree [7–9] Priorist a chartte [chronological] [9–10] Who held office [11–23] Who is born of the Baldovinetti [23–26] Baldovinetti religious [26–29] Baldovinetti relatives [28–34] Baldovinetti history [34–38] Patronages [35–36] [E]lections of said benefices [38–43] Baldovinetti burial places [43] Houses and possessions of the Baldovinetti [44–48] Contracts of the Baldovinetti, old and new [48–70] My own contracts [70–95] All the rest of said book: news of Florentines and of other potentates in the world.47
45 Other members of the family who are also authors of late medieval “libri di ricordi” are at least Francesco and Alessio di Borghino (“Ricordanze,” 1285–1338), and Niccolò d’Alesso (“Ricordanze segrete,” 1354–1391), on which see Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina,” p. 102. 46 See BNCF, Palatino Baldovinetti, 44, fol. 1r. 47 See BNCF, Palatino Baldovinetti, 244, fol. 1r. The manuscript n. 244 is essentially the better organized copy of n. 44. See below, note 48.
In substance the text contains: the family tree, the list of family members who had been priors, those who had held other public offices, the names of those in ecclesiastical posts, the “parentadi” (i.e., the women married into and out of the family), church patronages, burial sites, real estate belonging to the family, “ancient and modern” contracts. Baldovinetti concluded all this with a rela- tively succinct universal “chronicle” of the history of Florence from its Roman origins to his time. This paradigm is very significant. All the elements that concur in the forma- tion and the definition of the family’s identity are included: the consciousness of the entity of the family, in the past through genealogy and in the present through the variations brought about to its composition by births, marriages and deaths; public offices held, as well as positions held in that other impor- tant sphere, the ecclesiastical; the awareness of the real estate holdings, wherein the ancestral houses have a special value, and also in this case the variations introduced by purchases and sales (contracts); the exercise of a con- trol over ecclesiastical benefices through the patronages (and elsewhere in the book the possession of relics); the basis of the other prevalent form of memory, the commemoration, by mean of registration of the burials of family members. All of this is inserted into the context of reference which gives meaning to the single elements, the city’s history, a sort of collective family book within which one’s own family’s life acquires a sense. This Baldovinetti does not stop here, with the reorganization of the family writings and the compilation of a true family book. Not satisfied with the work so far, he improved it by making another, more organized copy almost as if to give others material from which to continue.48 And in effect that is what hap- pens, given that this second book was taken up by his son Giovanni and carried forward, even including the updating of civil events, from 1545 to 1594.49 As a matter of fact, one interesting aspect from this point of view is that some Florentine events, that exactly because of unforeseen political developments could have had negative consequences for the family, have been carefully scraped off the vellum (the qualification of Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici as “rebel of the city,” or the outrages committed, after all, by order of Clement VII de’ Medici, against the helpless population during the sack of Prato).50
48 It is actually MS. 244, essentially the same as 44 except for its internal organization, a bet- ter handwriting, the addition of chronological updatings after 1530 to the section dedi- cated to chronicle. 49 See BNCF, Palatino Baldovinetti, 244, fol. 217r: “it is continued by me, Francesco di Giovanni Baldovinetti.” The text which follows fol. 241r and the year 1594 belongs to a still different hand. 50 See BNCF, Palatino Baldovinetti, 244, fols. 130r-v, 155v, passim.
This model will be a reference point within the family that will be used again on various occasions in later periods. Certainly there is another Baldovinetti family book belonging to another branch, begun in 1620 by Giovanni di Iacopo (called Poggio) and kept up by his two sons and a grandson until 1771.51 The author seems to have begun his text in a different way from the writing tradition of the other branch, at a crucial moment in his life, when even being the younger son, and on the basis of a promise to marry, he col- lected the donations of real estate and rights of primogeniture of his brothers (the donation was later retracted by the older brother, probably because the marriage did not take place). In 1633 Giovanni di Bernardo di Giovanni di Francesco (grandson of the last writer of the Baldovinetti book mentioned above) died in Florence, leaving his relative his Florentine house and the exe- cution of a fideicommissum.52 Two years later Giovanni di Iacopo, notwith- standing his age, married: “for the good of our house, by now badly reduced, there being none left of our true and legitimate branch others than my brother and me, he of sixty-two years and I of fifty completed on this last 6th of November.”53 From this point on the text continues like a classical family book with annotations of births and deaths. And so it continues up to his death (1648), and is then carried on by his son Vincenzo (1645–1719). This one will become a Knight of Saint Stephen in the 1650s,
after having had no small difficulty proving the nobility of the family for the quarter of Poggio of Lucca, and those difficulties were encountered because of the interest of a minister who seemed to have had the aim of prolonging the negotiations so that Vincenzo exceeded the age limit for being the Grand Master’s page, and another that the minister favored could take his place.54
51 Archivio Baldovinetti Tolomei di Marti (Pisa), n. 118.8 (p. 138 of the printed inventory). The text was started by Giovanni di Iacopo in 1620, and interrupted at his death in 1648 (fol. 38). It is started again by his son Vincenzo, and written by him until 1694, when this latter is substituted by (fol. 53) his younger brother Niccolò (at his marriage, while the firstborn had become in the meanwhile a knight of Santo Stefano). At Niccolò’s death (1717, ca. 73) the book is continued by his son Giovanni until 1771, the year before his own death. 52 Ibid., fol. 12. I wish to thank Rita Romanelli, who drew up the inventory of the Baldovinetti family private archive (today owned by the direct descendant Stefano Majnoni), who brought the manuscript to my attention and kindly allowed me to consult the photo- graphic reproduction she had made of it. In 1633 the elder brother Vincenzo renounced his claim of inheritance from the other branch in favor of Giovanni (fol. 13). 53 Ibid., fol. 16. 54 Ibid., fol. 39.
Vincenzo knight not only registers here a series of entries in his own hand, but also turns to another kind of text, designated as “autobiography” of himself and his mother.55 In the common book he instead remarks on his and his brothers’ worry that the family line stop, born of the fear that should there be no heir everything would go to the Church. The problem is resolved in the moment in which they verify, from the instituting testament, that the last of the family may still dispose of the majorat as he wishes.56 The “true” continuation of the family book occurs at the hand of his brother Niccolò, who married in 1694, also because the brothers offered strong mate- rial encouragement,57 and died in 1717 after having produced nine children, one of whom would be elected, like his uncle, page to the Grand Duke.58 In the following century it would be instead the grandson of the first writer, the jurist Giovanni di Niccolò (1695–1772), who carried on the writing. But above all, at this point, enamored of the history and memoirs of the family, it will be he who reorganizes the archive at the end of the eighteenth, and fill the major part of the texts with erudite glosses. The Baldovinetti iter marks therefore an important paradigm: an old family history, a tradition of writing memory texts begun in the 14th century and con- tinued almost uninterruptedly even though in different branches up to nearly the end of the eighteenth, with at least a couple of important turning points: the early 16th century, and in particular the year after the restoration of the Medici, when a Francesco di Giovanni saw the need to reorganize the whole of the family’s memoirs, and make it easily and directly available to all his various descendants; and again about mid-eighteenth when at least even the necessity to keep an eye on the new dispositions for official recognition of nobility (1750) induced many patrician families to search out the proofs of antiquity of status in their archives, and in some cases reorganize them.
55 See the Autobiografia del capitano Vincenzo e della madre Camilla di Benedetto Rucellai, Archivio Baldovinetti Tolomei, Marti, 118.17. 56 Archivio Baldovinetti Tolomei, Marti, 118.8, fol. 48: “I make memory this 18 July 1691 how, while we four brothers were discussing the ways to continue our lineage, given our old age,…the last of the family will be able to dispose of it as he likes,…and he will be able to present this prize to whomever he wishes, and may God’s will be done in everything, since I recognize that this common curse for the end of our family derives from my sins only, and not from anybody else’s fault.” 57 See ibid., fol. 55: “The knight Vincenzo my brother, so as to convince me more easily to marry, gave me and presented me with a sum of until 5 thousand ducats” “Iacopo my older brother, with the consent he gave to my marriage, promised to transfer and assign to me the money he keeps in common with us the other brothers.” 58 As Great Master of the Knights of Santo Stefano: see ibid., fol. 60 (1701).
The characteristics of the texts of these two families, of course synthesized here, for now represent just some examples of the broad range of possible cases that may be analyzed and interpreted only after the conclusion of the census. Another collateral result of this survey has been that of uncovering also a whole series of other ways of conceiving of family and individual mem- ory, which although they are not the same as family books, are still constella- tions in the universe of memory writings. I refer not only to the more definitely autobiographical forms which increase in number as years advance (above all in the eighteenth century, and its second half), from which in some cases (or always) one should evaluate the measure to which they have elements in com- mon with family books, and to what degree – implicitly or explicitly – they are in relation with them. (How is one to judge, for example, some texts compiled by lettered persons, or priests, or lettered priests? The churchmen, naturally, cannot account for their own direct genealogical succession, but it must be considered significant that they use the model of the “family book” when com- piling their autobiographies).59 I look rather to absolutely new forms of travel and life memoirs for images, composed by persons who knew how to draw, and extend this faculty to facts concerning the family and its memory (in the form of commemoration of the dead: one 18th century author, member of a noble family in Pistoia, who gener- ally left notes of the hunting trips he usually enjoyed between the end of October and beginning of November, drew in the margin of his notebook a whole series of small images of the tombs of relatives).60 Or to the various forms of preparatory materials, of family memoirs of other types which were for example useful after a certain moment for the recognition of nobility (cer- tainly 1750 for the Libri d’oro [Golden Books]; but even earlier for other reasons such as the proofs of nobility necessary to become a Knight of Malta), but no longer have the characteristics of a classical family book, and in some cases are not even written directly by family members, but in any case contribute to the corpus of writings that compose the family identity. On the other hand, the libro di ricordi model of the family book, begun in the Middle Ages, had such a force that it lasted for centuries and is still forceful at
59 Some of which are, however, already known: the ones by the priest Buonsignore Buonsignori (1497–1554), by Vincenzo Borghini, or by Serafino Razzi, to which one can add the memories of the literate Gabriele Simeoni (1509–1561), or the Vita by Raffaello Sinibaldi. See respectively F. Buonsignori, Memorie (1530–1565), ed. by G. Bertoli (Florence: Chiari, 2000), pp. 15–16; Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina,” pp. 105, 136, 142. 60 BNCF, Rossi Cassigoli, 380. They are the “Ricordi di villeggiatura, caccia e altro” by Ignazio Fabroni (1665–1690).
61 See among others BNCF, Tordi, 228 (“Memorie” of the Spulcioni family, 1758–1811). I describe an unpublished family book of the Gianni family (16th–19th cent.) below, chap. 11. 62 See G. Ciappelli, Un ministro del Granducato di Toscana nell’età della Restaurazione. Aurelio Puccini (1773–1840) e le sue “Memorie” (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007). 63 See above, chap. 7. 64 Ciappelli, Un ministro del Granducato di Toscana.
65 BILF is the “Biblioteca Informatizzata dei Libri di Famiglia,” once published on line at the URL www.bilf.uniroma2.it/exist/bilf/. The site has been updated until September 2004, but already at that date the addition of new descriptions to the “Schedario,” seen by the founders as a “work in progress” which researchers of various origins should have sponta- neously fed, was very much reduced. 66 See Ciappelli, “Family memory,” p. 30; above, chap. 7, and below, chap. 14. 67 It is the conference “Memoria, famiglia, identità tra Italia ed Europa nell’età moderna,” organized in Trento on 4–5 October 2007 by the University of Trento (with the contribu- tion of the Ministry of University and Research), by the Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler and by the Museo Storico in Trento, which produced the volume Ciappelli (ed.), Memoria, famiglia, identità. 68 A preparatory Workshop held in Bordeaux in May 2008 was financed by the European Science Foundation. The workshop, coordinated by François-Joseph Ruggiu (then University of Bordeaux, now University of Paris, Sorbonne), saw the participation of a large group of researchers (eleven countries of the European Community plus Switzerland), among which I represented Italy. See the website www.firstpersonwritings.eu.
While I have already mentioned some aspects of the organization and meth- odology in the Introduction, in this chapter I would like to draw some conclu- sions from the still partial results of my research on Tuscan family books, and also develop some more general thoughts about the evolutive models of family books, on the basis of the broad characteristics of the genre. I must say first that, as regards the census of Tuscan texts, the results are still very provisional. The funding so far received has allowed us to deal only with Florence, the greatest center of production and conservation, and even there a good part of the texts in the very numerous private archives have not been cataloged. I presented to a seminary of the interuniversity research group I belonged to, in February 2007 at Rome, both the forms of the survey (the computerized format) and the choices that governed the selection of texts to be catalogued.1 On this occasion I will repeat only rapidly some numerical data. These are important because they confirm once again the exceptional quality of the Florentine model, where the number of surviving family books is the greatest in comparison to any other example, both Italian and foreign; and because even though provisional they are still quite a broad sample. In March of 2007 circa 600 texts from the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale and the State Archives in Florence had been cataloged. Of these (in part already examined in the stacks, in part pre-selected on the basis of their external characteristics, and especially on the inventory descriptions), about 240 were in greater or lesser measure texts of family memory, and the proper family books numbered at least 130. Even 130 family books as a partial result for the years 1492–1815 is not a small number if one considers that the texts surveyed and partially published for all of the late medieval period are about
1 See above, chap. 8. The structure of the template is described at note 20, and obviously con- tains all the essential data: place of preservation, author or authors, incipit, title, author’s program, contents, division in sections, presence in the text of special themes, bibliography of studies where it has been cited. The criteria are sufficiently large as to consider all the typologies which can be linked to the genre of family books. They are also sufficiently selec- tive as to overcome the problems linked to the sometimes extreme closeness (esp. in Tuscany) of the family book with the generic account book. See ibid.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004270756_011
140.2 At the end, the number that I posited on another occasion, of about 500 family books (published and not) between the Middle Ages and the early mod- ern period might not be far from the truth.3 Of these 240 family memory writings the absolute majority (above 50%) are from the 16th century. And this was entirely foreseeable, as the long wave of the period of greatest development of this genre of writing in Florence was the 14th–15th century. Nevertheless the seventeenth century texts are (I repeat: as it stands now) almost 30% of the whole, and from the 18th century there are another 12%, a substantially confirmed fact even if one takes into consider- ation only the century of a book’s initiation.4 Almost all of the compilers are male: only six of the 240 are women. But this too was to be expected, and they are almost always widows that take up the husband’s writing model. A proper female family book is practically non- existent, even though a text partially studied by Giulia Calvi is particularly diffuse.5 The social extraction of the writers is various, but with a strong presence of families not of the top level: some are artisans, and often of families that have undergone some social promotion but are not noble, or at any rate not long- lived. In the books preserved in Florence there is a certain presence of families from the province or region (immigrants, or whose papers were transferred to Florence with inheritances or archival moves). Further, the concentrations are not particularly diffuse: the authors of the 240 texts belong to 140 different families, with few situations in which many books are from the same family (apart from one case with thirty, almost all families have only one text, or at most from one to six).6 Is it possible to delineate some models? Probably it is still early to say, but some cases seem significant. As I mentioned before, Florence is not only the
2 The repertory of printed memory texts, published in part or in full, prepared by F. Pezzarossa in 1980 (Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina,” pp. 93–149) comprised 330 texts for the period late 13th-early 16th century. But if we subtract the texts which belong to other typologies, like chronicles and travel journals, and the texts written after 1492, the late medieval family books are 144. See above, chap. 8, p. 169. 3 See my personal communication to the author cited in Grubb, “Memory and identity,” p. 375, which corrected more optimistic hypotheses I had expressed in former times. 4 See above, chap. 8, pp. 171–172. 5 See ibid., p. 173. The cited text is represented by Maddalena de’ Nerli’s continuation of the libro di ricordi formerly kept by her husband Cosimo Tornabuoni: this latter wrote it between 1586 and 1605, the year of his death, and Maddalena wrote from 1605 to her own death in 1641 (ASF, Carte Galletti, 37). See Calvi, “Maddalena Nerli.” 6 See above, chap. 8, p. 173.
7 The Appendix “I libri di famiglia editi” of Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, pp. 121–193, listed 103 texts from the 13th to the 20th century, published in part or in full, 52 of which were from Florence. The “Schedario” of BILF (“Biblioteca Informatizzata dei Libri di Famiglia”) once published on line at URL www.bilf.uniroma2.it/exist/bilf, which according to its curators (Raul Mordenti and Simona Foà) should work as a database spontaneously fed by all researchers who deal with this topic, updated only until September 2004, only contains records about 96 manuscripts from the 14th to the 20th century, almost all unpublished, 27 of which are from Florence. Mordenti mentions, for this whole research, a corpus of 195 texts, essentially corresponding to the sum of the two figures: R. Mordenti, “Scrittura della memoria e potere di scrittura (secoli XVI–XVII) (Ipotesi sulla scomparsa dei libri di famiglia),” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, III s., 23, 2 (1993), pp. 741–758: 744, in part followed in Id., I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, pp. 100–109. 8 See the considerations about the role played in this sense by “linguaioli” (16th century scholars interested in the origins of the Italian language), since Vincenzo Borghini on, in Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina,” pp. 45–46; Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, chap. 2, “La storiografia letteraria e i libri di famiglia: da Borghini a Muratori”; Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, pp. 43–44. 9 According to data drawn from Giovanni Villani, at mid 14th century over half the children between 6 and 13 years old received primary education: G. Villani, Cronaca, XI, 94; Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans et leurs familles, p. 563. 10 See Grubb, “Memory and identity,” p. 376; Id., “Introduction,” in J.S. Grubb (ed.), Family mem- oirs from Verona and Vicenza (15th–16th centuries) (Rome: Viella, 2002), pp. V–XXXIX: XV. 11 See Martines, The social world, pp. 45–46; Sestan, “La famiglia nella società del Quattrocento,” pp. 246–247. 12 See Pezzarossa, “La memorialistica fiorentina,” pp. 133–134; Id., “Libri di famiglia e filolo- gia”; Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia.”
evolution of merchant’s writings, and soon include various information about the family. But it is immediately clear that one of the greater concerns of their authors is to demonstrate the degree of the family’s participation in the city’s political life: not only does a part of the ricordi (sometimes a whole section) always deal with the public offices held, but another constant category of their annotations is that of the payment of taxes, one of the principal proofs of citizenship.13 As underlined also by James Grubb,14 it is not surprising that a situation similar to Florence’s at least until 1530, Venice and thus a republic with a strong mercantile base and in which literacy is common, did not produce texts with the same characteristics. In fact in Venice, after the closing of the great council in 1297, there existed a formal definition of the elite.15 And here, as has been emphasized, the nobility had other means of underlining their class conscious- ness, for example knowing that they were present in those forms of collective celebration of the Venetian nobility that were the city chronicles and the lists of the noble caxade (houses), a kind of collective family book.16 The private ricordanze became a successful model in the 14th–15th centu- ries, which was followed for many generations. It had the advantage of being very flexible, lending itself to being structured and developed according to the author’s inclination: usually they included the biological evolution of the fam- ily, besides the more important patrimonial facts, participation in political life, and sometimes even reports of personal experiences or explicit advice to descendants. In this way they became a real tradition: certainly within single families, where some books were compiled by more than one generation of writers, sometimes passing more than once from father to son and with no interruptions; but also within the society. Beginning in the second half of the fifteenth century the model of the ricordanze is followed at every social level: not only in patrician families but also by persons at lower levels. Only, in moments in which special family events are lacking, often the writer’s atten- tion turned to events in the city, and the book of ricordi – family book joins with the diary-chronicle of important city events, as in the texts of the copper- smith Masi or the apothecary Landucci.17
13 See above, chap. 1. 14 See Grubb, “Memory and identity,” and now also Id., “I libri di famiglia a Venezia e nel Veneto,” in Ciappelli (ed.), Memoria, famiglia, identità, pp. 133–158. 15 See F.C. Lane, Venice. A maritime Republic (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 112–113. 16 See Grubb, “Memory and identity.” 17 See above, chap. 1, and eventually Ciappelli, “Family memory,” p. 28.
Thus the explanation of this phenomenon is, as I have said before, the force of function and the power of tradition.18 In Venice where the function was lacking the family book practically did not exist, while in Florence the opposite is true. And anyway, even in this situation the results may be (even at the same time) very different among themselves: families that have recently obtained public recognition of their status may begin a very self-conscious family book, while older families who have no need of further confirming their status could ignore that level of expression, leaving not much more than account books (as happened with the Medici).19 If we look away from Florence and consider other realities, we see that often family books are related to an early stage of social promotion: a family feels the need to register proof of its social promotion for later genera tions on paper, or recount the details of their history. And this certainly occurred not only in Florence but in the Veneto, in Bologna, Perugia and other places.20 Or family books could originate in the desire of a family of antique origin to counteract the menace of economic or social decline. And thus a decision to begin, or continue a memory writing relates to a consciousness of identity that a family attempts to transmit to its own descendants or to society.21 And this brings us to the period that interests us most, the early modern age. At this point family books could develop in different ways, and according to some interpretations it is exactly in the course of the early modern age that they tend to disappear. Since one of their first essays in 1984 Cicchetti and Mordenti suggested that the factors responsible for the decline and progressive demise of the family book that began in the seventeenth century were essen- tially three: on the one hand the institution of parish registers after the Council of Trent would have made “the family book’s section on personal data” super- fluous; on the other, “the function that the writing fulfilled in respect to the outside world was taken over by the diffusion of print and new instruments of information,”22 and thus it diminished progressively with the consolidation of public information. The third factor is in the affirmation of a new genre of family memory writing, that of the genealogical histories entrusted to professionals or written by members of the family, that constitute a form of
18 Ibid. 19 See ibid., p. 29 and above, chap. 6. 20 See in general Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, and more specifically the mentioned essays by Grubb, Pezzarossa, Irace. 21 Ciappelli, “Family memory,” p. 29. 22 Cicchetti and Mordenti, “La scrittura dei libri di famiglia,” pp. 1155–1156.
23 Ibid., p. 1157. On the evolution of genealogies as mythologic descriptions of the family origins see Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili. 24 See Mordenti, “Scrittura della memoria” (corresponding to his contribution to a 1989 con- ference), pp. 744, 749; Id., I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, p. 100. 25 See Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia.” Pandimiglio was then referring to Pezzarossa, “Libri di famiglia e filologia,” and J. Boutier, “Les ‘Notizie diverse’ de Niccolò Gondi (1652–1720). A propos de la mémoire et des stratégies familiales d’un noble florentin,” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome – Moyen age, Temps modernes 98 (1986), pp. 1097–1151. 26 Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia,” p. 139.
27 Ibid., p. 151. 28 Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia,” pp. 155–156, note 53. The text of the “Legge per regola- mento della nobiltà e cittadinanza” of 1 October 1750 is in L. Cantini, Legislazione toscana raccolta ed illustrata, 30 vols. (Florence 1800–1808), XXVI, pp. 231–241. See on it R.B. Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureacracy. The Florentine patricians, 1530–1790 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 55–57; M. Verga, “Per levare ogni dubbio circa allo stato delle persone. La legislazione sulla nobiltà nella Toscana lorenese (1750–1792),” in M.A. Visceglia (ed.), Signori, patrizi, cavalieri nell’età moderna (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1992), pp. 355–368. The text recited (Cantini, 231): “We recognize as nobles all those who possess, or have possessed, noble fiefs, and all those who are admitted to the noble orders, or obtained nobility by our or our predecessors’ diplomas, and finally the greater part of those who enjoyed, or are able to enjoy now, the first, or most distinguished honor of their cities of origin, and we recognize as citizens those who have, or are able to have, all the city’s honors except the first.” It was therefore ordered that in Florence and in other thir- teen cities of the Grand Duchy (Siena, Pisa, Pistoia, Arezzo, Volterra, Cortona, Sansepolcro, Montepulciano, Colle, San Miniato, Prato, Livorno and Pescia) registers be compiled, dis- tinguishing between nobles and citizens. In the first six provincial cities, as more ancient, it would also have been possible to obtain the recognition of the status of noble patrician for the members of families “of which our order of Saint Stephen has received the proofs by justice, and all the other noble families which, by virtue of any other requirement enunciated in par. 1, will prove the continuity of their nobility for over 200 years” (ibid., p. 232).
29 Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia,” p. 155, on the basis of Litchfield, Emergence of a bureau- cracy, of the today still unpublished J. Boutier, Construction et anatomie d’une noblesse urbane. Florence à l’époque moderne (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles), Thèse de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris, 1988), and of Id., “I libri d’oro del Granducato di Toscana (1750–1860). Alcune riflessioni su una fonte di storia sociale,” Società e storia 11 (1988), pp. 953–966. 30 E. Irace, “Dai ricordi ai memoriali: libri di famiglia in Umbria tra Medioevo ed età moderna,” in Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, pp. 141–161. 31 Irace, “La memoria formalizzata,” p. 93.
this present book…taken from many other originals and ancient and modern writings of our house, that here are important and deserve that I mention, that I do it in their honor, and health of my soul, and honor and usefulness and happiness of all my house….32
The following turning point seems to be in some way favored by the general climate of 16th century Florence, formally Republican up to 1532, and where even after the creation of the Duchy and up to 1537, one had yet to understand what would be the real institutional result of a republic turned over to the gov- ernment of a Duke while retaining various republican institutions.33 It is after the installation of Cosimo that the construction of a proper duchy begins, even though some traces of the preceding regime remain on a formal plane.34 The newness of Cosimo’s state, its hybrid character, the fact that formerly the Medici were not signori by law, at first created a lack of legitimization in respect to other Italian states that involved Tuscan nobility as well: it too was hybrid, lacked an unambiguous definition and was initially based only on the sharing of a style of living. Between 1545 and 1569 the consequences of con- tinual diplomatic incidents about ceremonial precedence with older courts like the Estense35 diminished the Medici image and ended only with the (Pope’s) concession of the title of Grand Duke in 1569. Cosimo’s attempts to legitimize the dynasty take place on more than one level in this period: in 1562 the noble knightly order of St. Stephen was instituted, and became the Duke’s principal instrument for formalizing noble status and establishing a founda- tion for princely authority;36 at the end of the 1560s the Archivio mediceo avanti
32 See BNCF, Palatino Baldovinetti, 44, fol. 1r. On the Baldovinetti, and on this text in particu- lar, see above, chap. 8, pp. 176–180. 33 See Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana, pp. 51–54. 34 Ibid., pp. 73–77. 35 See Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili, pp. 257–262. 36 On the order a quite large bibliography is available. See now F. Angiolini, I cavalieri e il principe. L’Ordine di Santo Stefano e la società toscana in età moderna (Florence: Edifir, 1996).
37 Arrighi and Klein, “Strategie familiari.” 38 Cantini, Legislazione toscana, VII, pp. 148–163 (14 December 1569). 39 See Arrighi and Klein, “Strategie familiari,” p. 95; C. Donati, L’idea di nobiltà in Italia. Secoli XIV-XVIII (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1995), p. 220. In general on Ammirato see ibid., pp. 219–226, 241–244 (in particular on his biography p. 241, note 70). 40 Jean Nestor, Histoire des hommes illustres de la maison de Medici (Paris: Charles Perier, 1564), cit. in Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili, p. 258 (the dedication letter of the physician Nestor is addressed to Caterina de’ Medici, queen of France). In 1587 a Latin treatise by the Dominican Stefano Lusignani, published in Paris, will claim that Francesco I de’ Medici is a relative of all the Christian princes: see ibid. 41 By the physician Paolo Mini: Difesa della città di Firenze e dei Fiorentini. Contro le calunnie e maledicentie de’ maligni (Lyon: Filippo Tinghi, 1577), also cited in Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili, pp. 190–191. The same work will be published again in 1593 in a new version and with a new title: Paolo Mini, Discorso della nobiltà di Firenze e dei Fiorentini (Florence: Manzani, 1593) (see J. Boutier, “Un Who’s Who de la noblesse florentine au XVIIe siècle. L’Istoria delle famiglie della città di Firenze de Piero Monaldi,” in Sociétés et idéologies des Temps modernes. Hommage à Arlette Jouanna [Montpellier, 1996], pp. 79–100: 80). 42 Francesco de’ Vieri, Il primo libro della nobiltà (Florence: Marescotti, 1574). Francesco Vieri the Younger (“Verino secondo” in order to distinguish him from his homonymous grand- father, who was as well a philosopher) was reader of Philosophy at the Studio of Pisa. 43 Vincenzo Borghini, “Dell’arme delle famiglie fiorentine,” in Id., Discorsi, 2 vols. (Florence: Giunti, 1584–1585). On the flourishing with this function, in the same period, of treatises on nobility and repertories of heraldry and noble families see also M. Fantoni, La corte del
Probably the conjoined effects of the institution of the Order of St. Stephen, which at first left room in the margins for the possibility of demonstrating the antiquity of one’s lineage, and the flowering of similar publications, caused a sort of “genealogical frenzy” in many Florentine families beginning in the 1570s,44 as they tried to reconstruct their trees or write their histories. A “chain reaction” determined by the new characteristics of genealogical research seems to have been set off by Ammirato’s work. Writing in 1580,45 he said: “This I know for sure: …that after I devoted myself to this work, many have undertaken burial sites and chapels and inscriptions in honor of the memory of their ancestors, and other similar honored works, that without this stimulus would not have done.”46 Some families turned to professionals (such as Ammirato, even though thought rather expensive),47 but many attempted themselves to write family memoirs with a strong genealogical bent, or copied out traces of their own antiquity (and especially of public offices held) from earlier family books. This is what took place in relation to the families that could aspire to formal recognition of nobility. While families of other extraction, and many from that circle of “new men” that the Duke wanted around him in the new state’s bureau- cracy,48 aimed a bit lower, at more attainable titles. For example, regarding the inhabitants of the district, one must keep in mind that in 1555 Duke Cosimo, in recompense to these subjects for their loyalty during the war against Siena, consented that all the communities of the state select a certain number of citi- zens who would receive the privilege of Florentine citizenship in perpetuity.49 And even though a direct relation with this episode is difficult to prove, it seems undeniable that this rule must have had a role in broadening the diffusion of this type of writings, as they seem to be more frequent after this date.50
Granduca. Forme e simboli del potere mediceo fra Cinque e Seicento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1994), pp. 32–33 and 46, note 31. Several of these treatises are mentioned in F. Diaz, “L’idea di una nuova elite negli storici e trattatisti del principato,” Rivista storica italiana 92 (1980), pp. 572–587. 44 Boutier, “Un Who’s Who,” p. 88. 45 Even though its publication belongs to 1615. 46 S. Ammirato, Delle famiglie nobili fiorentine…Parte prima (Florence: Gio. Donato e Bernardino Giusti e compagni, 1615), p. 212, cited in Donati, L’idea di nobiltà, p. 224. 47 See ibid., pp. 220 and 241–242, note 72. 48 See Litchfield, Emergence of a bureaucracy, pp. 77–78. 49 See P. Viti and R.M. Zaccaria, “Introduzione,” in Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Archivio delle Tratte, ed. by P. Viti and R.M. Zaccaria (Rome: Ministero per i Beni culturali e ambientali, 1989), pp. 1–115: 79–80. 50 The fact that in some cases the authors of family books from the contado or distretto register with a special importance the marriages of members of their family with Florentine men or women seems to go in the same direction.
In Pistoia, where many family books begin after 1550, this fact was probably influenced by the end of the almost decade-long exclusion of Pistoiese from public office (1538–1546) decreed by Cosimo I in punishment for their continu- ous and bloody factional struggles.51 Even in the case of Florentines of lower extraction, coming not only from the professions, but also commerce and artisanship, it was probably also once again the strict functionality and force of tradition to push in this direction, combined with the desire to imitate their “superiors” in this way, and anyway in an attempt to account, in a durable manner, for a process of social promo- tion. How can one otherwise explain the relative flowering of these 16th cen- tury texts in relatively low-class families that could certainly never have aspired to nobility? In any case the examples of family books, or genealogical writings produced privately during this flowering could be numerous: from a Cei family book that begins around 1567,52 to a “History of the Nasi family” of 1581 (presented to a patrician Nasi by a Nasi minorite).53 Not last is the case of Niccolò Machiavelli’s grandson Giuliano de’ Ricci (compiler also of two very beautiful prioristi a famiglie and of a Cronaca), who from the end of the 1560s compiled family trees that he gave to his relatives.54 A certain concentration of dates immediately after 1590 confirms Ammirato’s impression that in that period there were changes sufficient to induce more than one Florentine to provide forms of memory of his own past.55 Particularly
51 See L. Gai, “Centro e periferia: Pistoia nell’orbita fiorentina durante il ‘500,” in Pistoia: una città nello stato mediceo, Catalogo della mostra (Pistoia 28 giugno-30 settembre 1980) (Pistoia, 1980), pp. 9–147: 11, 26, 93–94. 52 See BNCF, Magliabechiano, II.I.14, on which see L. Megli, “Per l’edizione critica della ‘Memoria del principio e successo delle persone di casa nostra’ di Galeotto Cei e suo figlio (1100 circa-1579),” LdF. Bollettino della ricerca sui libri di famiglia 5–6 (1994), pp. 25–30. 53 BNCF, Magliabechiano, XXVI, 151. Lionardo di Lionardo Nasi had been made knight of Santo Stefano in 1564: Giuliano de’ Ricci, Cronaca (1532–1606) ed. by G. Sapori (Milan- Naples: Ricciardi, 1972), p. 25. 54 G. Sapori, “Prefazione,” in Ricci, Cronaca, p. IX. Ricci’s prioristi were held in high esteem by Florentines already at the time of their compilation (in 1594 and 1597), and they engaged their author for 25 years (ibid., p. VII). 55 See ASF, Libri di commercio e di famiglia, 612 (Ottavio Buonaparte, 1591); 2424 (Pompilio Franchi, 1591); 3999 (Giovanni Battista Pigli, notaio di Arezzo, 1594); ASF, Covoni Girolami, 136 (“Storia della famiglia Pucci,” 1592); ASF, Corp. sopp., 87, 175 (Raffaello Rossi, 1593); BNCF, Baldovinetti, 87 (“Cose di antichità di casa sua” by Francesco di Cristofano del Pace, 1593); BNCF, Tordi, 501 (famiglia Doni, 1594); BNCF, Magliabechiano, II.X.21 (“Ricordi e memorie storiche della famiglia Alessandrini,” 1596). As one can remember, the Discorso della nobiltà di Firenze e de’ Fiorentini, which sees in the appointment to the position of
Gonfaloniere of Justice the main indicator of noble status in Florence, is published in 1593 (see above, note 41). 56 BNCF, Baldovinetti, 87, fol. 2r: “This book is of Ricciardo di Francesco di Bastiano…del Pace, written in his own hand,…about things of the antiquity of his family.” 57 Ibid., fol. 4r. 58 Ibid., fol. 4v. 59 Ibid., fol. 11r. 60 Ibid., fols. 23r–49v, spec. fols. 23r–27r. 61 Ibid., fols. 35r–36r. 62 Ibid., fols. 32v–33r. “Visti di collegio” meant: extracted from the purses which contained the names of citizens eligible for the higher offices. Extraction was a value “in se,” even if a person, formally qualified, could not occupy the position. 63 Ibid., fol. 50r.
64 See Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia,” p. 154, note 50, who observes how Segaloni’s notes, transmitted to Michelangelo Buonarroti’s nephew, would have constituted the basis for the following Priorista Mariani (ASF, Manoscritti, 191). Actually Segaloni’s work “fu com- pilato nell’Accademia dei Virtuosi che nella propria casa teneva Michelangelo Buonarroti il Giovane”: D. Moreni, Bibliografia storico-ragionata della Toscana (Florence, 1805), p. 328; and on the Academy also G. Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, VIII (Venice, 1796), p. 461. Buonarroti the Younger died in 1646. See also below, note 76. 65 BNCF, Baldovinetti, 87, fol. 56v. 66 Ibid., fols. 63r (“a great part of most noteworthy things, which are in a book called ‘Memoriale’ of Francesco di Cristofano di Rinieri del Pace, my father Francesco’s grandfa- ther, which my cousin Bastiano lent me, and later on I gave it back to him”); 87r–95r. 67 Ibid., fol. 102r. 68 ASF, Pelli Bencivenni, 1, ins. 1, fol. 1r: “having I decided…to write all that in truth I have been able to draw about the life and progress of my relatives, not only of our family of Pelli, but also of their relatives by marriage, so as to bring to perfection the family tree,
and give better information about the hereditary successions and real estate which con- tinually came into our family.” On Giovanni di Andrea Pelli see also below, chap. 10. For other examples of family books started in this period see above, note 55. 69 Different views which emerged in the same period, on the contrary, in order to make noble recognition more accessible, insist on the appointment to the position of Priore: see Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia,” p. 148. On the text by Mini see above, note 41 and context. 70 On which see above, note 36. Already the 1562 statutes of the order were defining the figures of the “cavaliere milite,” who needed to have all four quarters of nobility, and of the “cavaliere commendatario,” who could be the receiver of a “commenda” established by his family even in case that this latter was not noble. Who wanted to be “ricevuto in cavaliere milite” had to submit his “probationi” to the Order Council (Statuti, Capitoli et Constitutioni del Ordine de’ Cavalieri di Santo Stephano… (Florence: Torrentino, 1562), tit. II, chaps. 1–2, 4–5). 71 For the knights of Malta a restriction in relation to the more general norms of 1262 was decided in 1543, by introducing the requisition of the four quarters of nobility, even though a large discretionality remained as to the ways to demonstrate their possession. After 1555 and 1558 it was established that “probationes” (proofs) be submitted, although without specifying which ones. In 1578 it was decided that a notary’s son or nephew could not enter the order, and in 1588 a further norm decreed the exclusion of persons whose parents or grandparents had practiced mechanical arts. In 1599, finally, “regole precise e definitive” were decided, on the basis of which a pretender had, for all the four quarters, to have been noble for at least 200 years. See Donati, L’idea di nobiltà, pp. 247–251. 72 See F. Angiolini and P. Malanima, “Problemi della mobilità sociale a Firenze tra la metà del Cinquecento e i primi decenni del Seicento,” Società e storia 4 (1979), pp. 17–47: 25–26, also cited in Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia,” p. 152.
Borghini on the construction of a family tree was not coincidentally published in 1602.73 Still at the beginning of the century Piero Monaldi wrote (1607) his Storia delle famiglie e della nobiltà di Firenze, which would, as Jean Boutier noted, become a “Who’s who” useful to anyone having this kind of interest or need.74 A few years later, in 1615, Ammirato’s work on the Florentine families was published posthumously. In it the curator, among other things, made explicit the importance for evaluation as nobility of having belonged to the republican patriciate, and consequently of the documents proving that fact.75 In the wake of Ammirato’s work, the secretary of the Riformagioni Segaloni was among the promoters between 1605 and 1630 of a small circle of gentle- men which discussed genealogical and heraldic questions, that became a real school for formation of whoever intended to dedicate himself to this kind of activity personally or for second parties.76 And certainly the senator Carlo di Tommaso Strozzi (also the author of his own libro di ricordi) was already active as genealogist to the Barberini in Rome between 1637 and 1640, and he remained such for the rest of his life (+1690).77 Between 1668 and 1673 the Istoria genealogica delle famiglie nobili Toscane et Umbre, by the learned Benedictine (and theologian to Cosimo III) Eugenio Gamurrini,78 was published in four volumes and was a guide to the most
73 [V. Borghini], Discorso di mons. Vincenzio Borghini d’intorno al modo del far gl’alberi delle famiglie fiorentine (Florence: Giunti, 1602). 74 See Boutier, “Un Who’s Who.” It remained handwritten, but circulated widely. 75 Ammirato, Delle famiglie nobili fiorentine. The book’s editor Cristoforo del Bianco, the author’s heir and known as Scipione Ammirato the Younger, actually wrote in his dedica- tion to the readers: “How wrong are those who absolutely put the nobility of a gentleman born in a kingdom or a princedom before that born in a republic, they can easily realize by reading this book. Because, since nobility consists in antiquity and splendor, it is very plausible, nay it is evident in fact, that it is easier for those in a republic, than for the former, to show for many ages their continuous successions, by being helped more by public writings, as it is here in Florence the Priorista” (ibid., cited in Donati, L’idea di nobiltà in Italia, pp. 222–223, and also see pp. 224–227). 76 See ASF, Auditore delle Riformagioni, 36, fols. 6–25 (23 gennaio 1632), cited in Boutier, “Un Who’s Who,” p. 88. See above, note 64. 77 In 1639, for example, the Salviati family’s archivist (Francesco Fazzi) wrote to Rome to Strozzi in order to receive information which could be useful in his work to organize Salviati’s genealogical memory, while in his turn providing information to Strozzi. See Insabato, “Le nostre chare iscritture,” pp. 908–909. On Strozzi and his libri di ricordi see now C. Callard, “De l’experience à l’action: journaux d’érudits florentins,” in Bardet and Ruggiu (eds.), Au plus près du secret des cœurs?, pp. 79–92: 86–88. 78 On which see R. De Rosa, “Gamurrini (Gamburrini) Eugenio,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, LII (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1959), p. 133.
79 See S. Baggio and P. Marchi, “L’archivio della memoria delle famiglie fiorentine,” in Istituzioni e società, pp. 862–877: 864. The preparation had just started when Benvenuti died in the year 1700. 80 From 1700 to 1708 the work was suspended and the archive remained closed. In 1708 Ferdinando de’ Medici entrusted the same charge to the priest Lorenzo Maria Mariani, who in 1710 was appointed “Antiquario regio” until 1736, when he retired and was substi- tuted by Giovanni Battista Dei. See ibid., pp. 867–868. Another genealogist of this period will be the canon Anton Maria Biscioni (1674–1756), librarian, archivist, secretary and tutor for Niccolò Panciatichi, who will compile the Storia genealogica della famiglia Panciatichi (1738, MS. in the Panciatichi Archive), and reordered the family archive in 1732 (Archivi dell’aristocrazia fiorentina, Catalogo della mostra [Firenze 19 ottobre–9 dicembre 1989] (Florence, 1989), p. 52).
81 On social mobility in Florence between late 16th century and early 17th century see Angiolini and Malanima, “Problemi della mobilità sociale.” 82 BNCF, Tordi, 109. A book of the Alberti family started in 1613 certainly treats this aspect among the “several records that occur daily,” and in the same book a descendant who cop- ies there his father’s ricordi from 1636 to 1654 writes that he wants “to note in this what will happen of importance, not only for my own interests, but also for those of the whole family, for memory of all the descendants” (BNCF, Nuove Accessioni, 258). 83 So the observation by L. Polizzotto is little verified, (“Introduzione,” in Polizzotto and Kovesi, Memorie di casa Valori, p. 18), according to which the permanence of family books in Florence is not justified by this aspect, since “they had no juridical value…Neither polit- ical survival, nor the claiming of arbitrarily subtracted rights were warranted by the infor- mation collected in ricordanze.” To be sure: per se family books did not have a juridical value, but it was the registration in them of data and events which allowed their owners to claim rights they could have, through more official proofs. This is what happened when nobility proofs where compiled: even in this case it was not sufficient that a person had written in his/her family book that some of his ancestors had been priors. But the very fact of knowing this fact through the family book allowed the person in question to start the certification procedure by resorting to the official sources (as is actually demonstrated by the Del Pace case).
84 See for example a 1679 nobility proof of the Del Rosso family in BNCF, Tordi, 101. A MS BRF, Riccardiano, 1975, contains the results of research about events and documents related to the Portigiani di San Miniato family from the 14th century to 1669, apparently for a similar purpose. Research was carried out in several official archives: Proconsolo, Archivio Generale, Cancelleria de’ mercatanti, Tratte, Riformagioni, Arte della Lana, Gabella dei contratti, Camera fiscale, and Libreria (library) d’Ognissanti. Other 17th cen- tury genealogies written by family members, among the ones already analysed, refer to the following families: Panciatichi, Strozzi, Arfaioli of Pistoia, Medici, Pandolfini, Del Giocondo, Pucci, Bartolomei, Marucelli of Ferrara, Cassi, Uguccioni. 85 A Medici family book (ASF, Capponi, 218) stresses how in 1641 Filippo Medici graduated in Pisa and became knight, and how in 1732 Francesco Rosso del cavalier Niccolò entered the order of Santo Stefano (fol. 50). Another text (Archivio Baldovinetti Tolomei, Marti [Pisa], 118.8 [1620–1772]) registers the circumstances by which Vincenzo Baldovinetti, around 1650, was knighted (fol. 39); later on, his other brother Niccolò registered that his son had become “paggio del Granduca” (the Grand Duke was Great Master of the Order of Santo Stefano). This book also contains references to the fidei-commissum of a differ- ent branch of the Baldovinetti family, of which the authors were beneficiaries. 86 Boutier, “Les Notizie diverse,” p. 1102, in relation to ASF, Gondi, 270, n. 24. 87 Boutier, “Les Notizie diverse,” pp. 1116–1117. 88 J. Corbinelli, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Gondi (Paris: Coignard, 1705). The Gondi of a particular branch were, since the end of the 16th century, French dukes and peers.
89 Boutier, “Les Notizie diverse,” pp. 1121–1122. 90 Ibid., p. 1122. 91 See Ciappelli, Una famiglia e le sue ricordanze, p. 112. 92 Accompanying this there was then almost always the transmission of patrimony from uncle to nephew, often added to a transversal fideicommissum. See Boutier, “Les Notizie diverse,” pp. 1147–1148. On the fideicommissum in the Florentine patriciate see now S. Calonaci, Dietro lo scudo incantato. I fedecommessi di famiglia e il trionfo della borghesia fiorentina (1400–1750) (Firenze, 2005).
93 On which see Verga, “Per levare ogni dubbio,” and in general above, note 28. 94 See the view (not of his own) summarized in Amelang, The Flight of Icarus, p. 13. 95 On Pelli Bencivenni I refer below, chap. 10. 96 They are analyzed below, chap. 12.
97 See M. Barbagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto. Mutamenti della famiglia in Italia dal XV al XX secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 20002), pp. 187–188. 98 See Grubb, “I libri di famiglia a Venezia,” cit.; Irace, La memoria formalizzata, cit.; Ead., Dai ricordi ai memoriali. 99 For example in Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II. 100 Lemaitre, “Les livres de raison en France.” 101 Ibid., note 17 and context. 102 Ibid., Tabl. 1. 103 Ibid., note 28 and context.
The spread over a vast area of a model of writing relative to the family with common characteristics, often deriving from account books which began in a mercantile environment, leads one to wonder if this phenom- enon could be seen as the product of reciprocal contacts between differ- ent areas of cultural influence, or if it should be attributed to the presence of similar socio-economic characteristics: commerce, and above all the prolonged residence abroad of merchants could have been for example a vehicle for the diffusion of habits like those precociously matured in the Florentine area. …In the absence of direct contact, commerce and the presence of a self-conscious mercantile class that tended to become city patriciate and to express itself in ways meant to exalt the group identity of the single family rather than that of the class in general, are more prob- able explanations for certain forms.106
In the countryside where family books are present the motivation was proba- bly in the prevalent agrarian system and in the diffusion for example of a type of stem family, in which the land was passed to a single heir: this reinforced the authority of the person at the head of the family of mid-level proprietors.107 This occurred in Catalonia, as Amelang and others have shown,108 in some
104 Ibid., notes 32 and 33 and context. 105 Ibid. 106 Above, chap. 7, pp. 161–162. 107 On the stem family (“famille-souche” in French) according to Le Play’s definition, see Barbagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto, p. 43, note 11. On its larger or narrower presence in agrarian Europe see M. Anderson, Approaches to the history of the western family, 1500–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; or. ed. 1980), pp. 15–20; A. Burguière and F. Lebrun, Les cent et une familles de l’Europe, in Histoire de la famille, sous la dir. de A. Burguière et al., 3 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1986), III, pp. 21–122: 54, 63–64, 67–68. 108 Amelang, “The Mental World of Jeroni Pujades,” p. 217; Id., “Spanish Autobiography in the Early Modern Era,” in Schulze (ed.), Ego-Dokumente, pp. 59–71: 67; X. Torres Sans, Els lli- bres de famìlia de pagès. Memòries de pagès, memòries de mas (segles XVI–XVIII) (Girona: CCG, 2000), pp. 33–34.
109 See Lemaitre, “Les livres de raison”; J.-L. Flandrin, Familles. Parenté, maison, sexualité dans l’ancien société (Paris: Hachette, 1976), chap. 2. 110 See F. Volpe, “I libri di famiglia nel Principato citeriore. Il punto su quindici anni di ricerche,” in Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, pp. 163–168, which lists for Principato Citeriore alone (roughly corresponding to the present province of Salerno) a good twenty- seven texts written between 1592 and 1900 mostly by “heads of household of the rural middle class,” land owners (see also Mordenti, pp. 72–74). 111 See R. Dekker, “Egodocuments in the Netherlands from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century,” in E. Griffey, Envisioning Self and Status. Self-Representation in the Low Countries, 1400–1700 (Hull, 1999), pp. 255–284: 260. 112 On which see Amelang, The Flight of Icarus, pp. 34–35, 178; von Greyerz, Vorsehungsglaube und Kosmologie. 113 On the diffusion in Tuscany, since the 16th century, of the private diary as typology see below, chap. 12.
114 I analyze this book below, chap. 10.
In the passage from the end of the early modern era to the beginning of the contemporary as usually understood, between end 18th and beginning 19th centuries, the Efemeridi by Giuseppe Pelli may well appear to be unique for its size, genre characteristics, and motivations. About eighty manuscript volumes of uninterrupted diary,1 written almost daily, that covers the whole existence of this Florentine noble from age thirty to his death [1759–1808], touching every aspect of his and his city’s events, could well give this impression. This impression only partially corresponds to reality. The Efemeridi may not even be considered an unicum, and has precedents in every sense we have mentioned. The size finds its comparison somewhat later in Italy,2 but there are also earlier examples. Not only in the first half of the century there are the Efemeridi by the physician Antonio Cocchi, thirty-eight years in 110 volumes, and taken as a model by Pelli himself,3 but on a broader European level one finds the memorial source of the Mémoires of Saint Simon, for the most part
1 They are as a whole 80 volumes: almost all the first (1759–1773) and second series (1773–1808) in BNCF, Nuove accessioni, 1050; at the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza the Magazzino universale, fasc. n. 31 of the II series of Fondo Fabbroni, plus two volumes of Efemeridi (VIII and XVIII of the second series: 1789). Moreover in the Pelli papers (now ASF, Carte Pelli), busta 3, ins. 9, the last volume of the second series: 1808 (January–27 June 1808). 2 See il Giornale della mia vita (1848–1910), by Paolo Mantegazza, in 62 volumes (Biblioteca Civica di Monza, MSS A 15) on which see F. Millefiorini, “Il 1848 a Milano nel diario di Paolo Mantegazza,” in Betri and Maldini Chiarito (eds.), Scritture di desiderio e di ricordo, pp. 334–349; or the 16.000 pages of H.-F. Amiel’s Journal intime, 1839–1881 (see now the 10 vols. edition by P.M. Monnier [Lausanne-Paris: L’Age d’homme-Centre de diffusion de l’édition, 1976–1991]); a selection in Engl. transl. in Amiel’s Journal, transl. by M. Ward (London: Macmillan, 1889). 3 The diary (1720–1758) is kept in the Medical Library of the University of Florence, at Careggi. On Cocchi see A. Corsini, Antonio Cocchi, un erudito del Settecento (Florence: Olschki, 1928); E. Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 352, 378, 430, 474, 539, 547–548, 550; C. Francovich, Storia della massoneria in Italia. Dalle origini alla rivoluzione francese (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1974), p. 49 and passim; and now also A. Cocchi, Discorso sopra la cioccolata, ed. by O. Gori (Florence: Polistampa, 2005).
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4 Mémoires complets et authentiques du duc de Saint-Simon sur le siècle de Louis XIV et la Régence [1691–1723], collationnés sur le ms. original par M. Chéruel, 20 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1856–1858), and now Saint-Simon, Mémoires, ed. by Y. Coirault, 8 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1982–1988). 5 R. Latham and W. Matthews (eds.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys [1660–1669], 11 vols. (London: HarperCollins, 1970–1983). 6 On the writings “du for privé” see now Cassan, Bardet, Ruggiu (eds.), Les écrits du for privé. 7 Other similar writings of the same period are surely at least the Efemeridi by Marco Lastri (Biblioteca Moreniana, Florence, Frullani, 32), the autobiographical part of Giovanni Lami’s Diario storico (Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence [henceforth BRF], 3808) and, started in the preceding century, at least the Diario by Giovanni Battista Fagiuoli (BRF, 2695–2697 [the first part, in final draft, years 1672–1705], and 3457 [in 12 tomes, second part which surmounts the former for about two years, synthetic rough copy, years 1703–1742]). On Lastri see M.A. Morelli Timpanaro, “Su Marco Lastri, Angelo Maria Bandini, Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni e su alcune vicende editoriali dell’Osservatore fiorentino,” in Ead., Autori, stampatori, librai. Per una storia dell’editoria in Firenze nel secolo XVIII (Florence: Olschki, 1999), pp. 667–704. On Giovanni Lami see E. Cochrane, “Giovanni Lami,” in G. Ricuperati (ed.), Dal Muratori al Cesarotti, V, Politici ed economisti del primo Settecento (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1978), pp. 451–494. On Fagiuoli, besides G. Milan, “Fagiuoli, Giovan Battista,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XLIV (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1994), pp. 175–179 (all centered on the liter- ary work), see M. Bencini, Il vero Giovan Battista Fagiuoli e il teatro in Toscana ai suoi tempi. Studio biografico-critico (Turin: Bocca, 1884); W. Binni, “Fagiuoli e Nelli,” in Id., L’Arcadia e il Metastasio (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1963), pp. 207–243: 207–227. Many passages from his diary are cited in G. Conti, Firenze dai Medici ai Lorena. Storia – cronaca aneddotica – costumi (1670–1737) (Florence: Bemporad, 1909), pp. 403–449.
8 The scientific literature on family memory in general and on the Florentine in particular, is by now very large. I refer here to a few essential studies: Pezzarossa, “La memorialistica fiorentina”; Id., “La tradizione fiorentina della memorialistica”; Cicchetti and Mordenti, “La scrittura dei libri di famiglia”; Eid., I libri di famiglia in Italia, I; Klapisch-Zuber, “L’invenzione del passato familiare a Firenze”; Ead., “Le genealogie fiorentine,” in Ead., La famiglia e le donne, pp. 3–25; 27–58; Pandimiglio, “Ricordanza e libro di famiglia”; Id., “Libro di famiglia”; Ciappelli, “Family Memory: Functions, Evolution, Recurrences”; Id., “I libri di famiglia a Firenze”; below, chaps. 1 and 7. 9 See below. 10 For the editions: Morelli and Pitti in Branca (ed.), Mercanti scrittori, respectively pp. 101–339; 341–503; Velluti in Del Lungo and Volpi (eds.), La cronica domestica. For the presence of those which have been called the “three crowns” of memory writings in the histories of
This kind of writing was at first used above all by the patriciate, the class that had greater interests to defend and a larger quantity of goods or wealth to pass on, but later the other lower classes took up the writing in imitation, even down to the lower artisan levels. In the passage, which corresponds with the political evolution of the original Republic, some of the original traits were lost and, for example, at a certain point in time the prevailing model seems to be one where the registration of external, public facts, the history of the city, tend to overwhelm the experience of families that no longer have a great tradition behind them. On the other hand, another aspect that needs to be considered is that the family book, and not only in Florence, is a genre practiced above all by families and individuals that feel an especial need to leave something: that is, they are often families either in decline that need to remind their own descendants of their glorious past that risks being forgotten, or families within which one member has for the first time reached an important goal, and feels the need to fix the memory on paper for its use as a contribution to identity and a further push up the social ladder.11 Up until not long ago it was not clear enough, in the lack of a systematic census of these sources, which was the evolution in time of the Tuscan family book. Some tended to say, a bit generically, as for the rest of Italy, that at least for production the model lost strength, especially after the Council of Trent, and that at the end it is relatively little present, and above all as residual of a once vigorous tradition. Now, a partial conclusion of a survey which has taken into consideration a large part of the documents conserved at least in Florence allows us to say that, compared to a sure flowering in the 14th–15th century, there was essentially a continuation of the tradition for the entire course of the early modern era, that especially includes a certain type of forms and subjects.12
literature until the late 1960 see G. Petrocchi, “Cultura e poesia del Trecento,” in Storia della letteratura italiana, dir. by E. Cecchi and N. Sapegno, II (Milan: Garzanti, 1965), pp. 559–724: 627–628 (Velluti); D. De Robertis, “L’esperienza poetica del Quattrocento,” ibid., III, pp. 355–784: 378–381; V. Branca, “Ricordi domestici nel Trecento e nel Quattrocento,” in Dizionario critico della letteratura italiana, III (Turin: Utet, 1973), pp. 189–192; C. Bec, “I mercanti scrittori,” in La letteratura italiana, dir. by A. Asor Rosa, II, 1983, pp. 269–297. The expression “tre corone” (like Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio) for Morelli, Pitti and Velluti in Pezzarossa, “La memorialistica fiorentina,” p. 109. 11 See above, chap. 7. 12 The survey (“La memoria familiare in età moderna: censimento delle fonti toscane e ana lisi comparativa”) has been performed by the research Unit of the University of Trento, which I directed, in the context of the Progetto di Ricerca di Importanza Nazionale (PRIN)
At a conference held in Rome in February 2007 I presented in advance the results of the ongoing census that for now concerns the two principal insti- tutes of conservation of this kind of source: the Archivio di Stato in Florence and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence.13 At that time (we were about mid-way in the census) about 240 texts had been cataloged, largely Florentine, that in some degree could be held to be family memory texts, of which at least 130 are proper family books (compared to the 144 certain late medieval ones, even if only those wholly or in part printed, surveyed in 1980 by Pezzarossa). Of the early modern texts, about 50% are from the 16th century – and this was to be expected: it is the long wake from the earlier tradition. Less expected was the presence of 28% of texts from the 17th century, and also the existence of a 12% of family books (about thirty) written – and more than half started – in the 18th century. Thus in the 18th century the tradition of family memory in Florence was still alive, not just residual. Not that the persistence of the genre into the age of Enlightenment was not known: at least the corpus of family books (a good 15 of them) written by Leonardo Bracci Cambini, a Pisan gentleman with Florentine forefathers, between 1703 and 1742 and kept in the family archive, appeared in Bizzocchi’s studies on the family.14 But even in this case they might have seemed to be a final, bizarre, and belated manifestation of a by now dead tradition.15 While the tendential data, still incomplete, lead us to think other- wise, of a greater sense of internal continuity in – at least – the ruling class behavior. Such are the quantitative data, with numbers that shall increase with the inclusion of further information from the numerous private archives of Tuscany. In this sense we can see as particularly significant the case of a ricordi book – family book (and as far as I know, unknown to date) which belonged to a person culturally and ideally close to, as well as a contemporary of, Pelli Bencivenni: Francesco Maria Gianni. The book remained unknown and unused for two reasons: it was with the family’s private papers, only relatively recently deposited in the State Archives in Florence, and its collocation in the inventory was ambiguous and made it
2005 “Storia della famiglia. Costanti e varianti in una prospettiva europea,” directed by Silvana Seidel Menchi (Pisa), with the participation of the Universities of Pisa, Palermo, Roma La Sapienza, Urbino and Trento. The indexing of texts has been made by F. Vannini, I. Gennarelli, A. Caramagno. 13 See above, chap. 8. 14 See Bizzocchi, In famiglia, p. 12. 15 See ibid., p. 14.
16 It is ASF, Carte Gianni, Codici, 33, entitled in its cover “Libro di ricordi,” with an addition under the title: “Da tenerne di conto.” It was deposited in the State Archive at the end of the 19th century. 17 See F. Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni. Dalla burocrazia alla politica sotto Pietro Leopoldo di Toscana (Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1966). One of the main aspects for which the data in the book of ricordi correct Diaz’s reconstruction refers to the circumstances of Gianni’s mar- riage with Maria Alessandra dei Medici. According to Diaz, this marriage would have been essentially a forced marriage (or shotgun marriage), since it would have happened four months and 12 days after the birth, on 14 August 1753, of their firstborn Ridolfo Maria (ibid., p. 3 “A true scandal, which was probably kept accurately hidden by the families”). Actually if the family book confirms Ridolfo Maria’s date of birth (fol. 48r), it has for Francesco Maria’s marriage a different and absolutely regular date of marriage, on 4 September 1752 (fol. 47v, with the transcription of the marriage agreement). The misun- derstanding was caused by the papers submitted by Francesco Maria’s father for the rec- ognition of his nephew’s nobility, cited by Diaz (ASF, Deputazione sopra la nobiltà e cittadinanza, 2, ins. 317). Niccolò Maria actually submitted two certificates about the cir- cumstances of his son’s marriage and the birth of his firstborn. In his book of 1966 Diaz made a slip about the dates on the two documents, taking the 26 December 1753, compila- tion date of the certificate, for the date of marriage, which is instead even in this case, correctly, 4 September 1752. The wrong detail has been followed (via Diaz) also in V. Becagli, “Gianni, Francesco Maria,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, LIV (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2000), pp. 465–471: 466. Eric Cochrane writes cor- rectly September 1752, without citing his source: Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, p. 419. See now below, chap. 11. 18 In the first, retrospective entries (fol. 1r) the author describes in a classic way the deaths of his mother Caterina Ricasoli Baroni in October 1639, of his brother Tommaso in May 1642, and of his father Ridolfo in December 1644, but the first contemporary entry (fol. 1v) refers to the author’s marriage with Maria di Carlo Strozzi, in July 1647.
19 ASF, Carte Gianni, Codici, 33, flyleaf v: “The ricordi which precede these ones are in the book entitled ‘Debtors and creditors’ of Ridolfo di Tommaso Gianni covered with white parchment and marked ‘A’, at fols. 129, 131, 190, 192, 239, 241.” 20 Ibid., fols. 1r–4r. 21 Ibid., fols. 4v–26r. 22 Married to Guido de’ Ricci (ibid., fol. 8v, 1699). 23 Born respectively in 1683 and 1686 (ibid., fols. 5v–6r). 24 Ibid., fol. 11r. Niccolò married Anna Mannelli on 2 October 1713. 25 Ibid., fol. 22r. In the same year the author records pope Benedict XIII’s decision to proceed with the beatification of Lorenzo Maria, the author’s second born, who had died eight years earlier (see also Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni, p. 1, on the basis of another document). 26 ASF, Carte Gianni, Codici, 33, fol. 25v. 27 He does not allow others to touch his father’s body for 24 hours, during which time he has some Capuchin friars and the priest keep watch beside the body; he has a chalk mask made from the face, following a tradition which was in use at least from the 15th century, aiming to obtain a memorial portrait as like as possible; he has it brought to the family chapel in San Niccolò, lit up “both near the body and at the altars according to that which
in this same book under the 13 May 1729 can be read that he did for lady Lucrezia his wife”: ibid., fol. 26v. 28 Even though Giuseppe Maria will induce his father to despair by showing early his inten- tion to modify his condition, by passing from hermit and Servite to abbot, then to knight of Malta. See ibid., fols. 26v–52v. 29 See Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni, p. 13; Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, p. 420; Becagli, “Gianni, Francesco Maria,” p. 466. 30 See ASF, Carte Gianni, Codici, 33, fols. 52r (interruption), 52v (resumption by his daughter Anna from 6 February 1802, until fol. 53r [February 1803]). 31 See Pandimiglio, “Libro di famiglia”; Boutier, “Les ‘Notizie diverse’.”
32 It is the writing Memoria della vita al 29 agosto 1759, in Efemeridi, I s., I, pp. 1–100. For a short biography of Pelli see moreover R. Zapperi, “Bencivenni Pelli, Giuseppe,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, VIII (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1966), pp. 219–222. 33 Efemeridi, I s., I, p. 4. 34 See ASF, Deputazione sopra la nobiltà e cittadinanza, 16, ins. “Bencivenni, già Pelli.” 35 See Efemeridi, I s., I, p. 7. “so as not to be witness to such a different match, and to escape his severity, which by weighing too much on me was making me feel less the brother’s affection than the whip of a harsh pedant, on 23 July 1743 I suddenly left from my father’s house, and took shelter in that of Coppoli, in which I was benevolently welcome.”
However I would like to see that archive, because there must be some interesting things about Florentine history. Our ancestors kept many notes of what happened among the private family ricordi, and there is no house where this does not happen. The trouble is that few care for them, or know what they have, so that every day old papers of some value go to the cheesemongers, and shopkeepers.36
It wasn’t that Pelli lacked interest in the family, but that interest was not preva- lent: it was as though hidden in the midst of other factors of his individuality, the ones that he resolves to express in his diary:
Since these Efemeridi must be a center for all of me, I want to gather in them many records of my house, and also from time to time my patri- mony etc.37
Thus he places his own family tree in the “third daily filza [file]” along with other similar papers (almost certainly the papers of the ennoblement process) and whatever he has found in other ricordi relating to other branches of fami- lies with the same surname.38 While he cited in the XXIIIrd volume of the Efemeridi (1769) whatever he could gather, from compilations of learned men or archival papers, about the presence of the surname Pelli in some older, 14th–15th century sources.39 These last data in fact do not really create a
36 Efemeridi, I s., XX, pp. 76–77 (1767–1768). 37 Ibid., XXIII, p. 108 (1769). 38 See ibid. and XXIII, p. 132: “which [branches] I am not sure can join my tree, nor have I sufficient reason to graft them on each other, since the records I have found of them are unlinked and separate.” Documents are in the third Filza giornaliera at numbers XIX and XX respectively. As remarked by M.P. Paoli (in her part [117–165] of M.P. Paoli, R. Graglia, “Marco Lastri: aritmetica politica e statistica demografica nella Toscana del ‘700,” Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 12 [1978], pp. 117–215), “The ‘daily file’ (filza giornaliera) to which Pelli often hints in his diary and of which we unfortunately have no trace, must have been a set of notebooks and fascicules containing notes and materials for works almost never completed or just planned” (p. 142). 39 See Efemeridi, I s., XXIII, pp. 108–111 e 132–137. The compilations cited are the Artis criticae lapidariae quae extant by Scipione Maffei (Lucca 1765), Hodoeporicon by Giovanni Lami
I am not so silly as to give weight to this antiquity, I rather think that my house was formed by the truncation, breaking, or abbreviation of a name, like Filippo who is among the first of the tree, or something like.42
Nevertheless his attitude from this point of view is at the least ambivalent, as will be clear in relation to an older document produced within the family. Among the Pelli papers in the State Archives there is a substantially family book from the end of the 16th century, written by one Giovanni di Andrea Pelli, who demonstrates, even beyond the affirmations cited above, that a sim- ilar tradition and perhaps more precocious than that of the Gianni existed in the Pelli house as early as 1593.43 In this book in fact Giovanni di Andrea [1538–1608], a silk merchant who in his youth had lived and traded far from home in Venice and in Puglia, at the age of fifty-six had accumulated a fair
(in his Deliciae Eruditorum, X-XII, Florence, 1741–1743), the Zibaldone Istorico, manuscript by Ferdinando Leopoldo Del Migliore (BNCF, Magliabechiano, XXV, 404), the notes from Riformagioni “del dottor Teglia.” 40 Efemeridi, I s., I, p. 4: “noble family, which in the person of said Giovanni di Piero di Andrea enjoyed the Priorate for the minor guild in January and February 1486.” 41 The vague quotation of inscription cited is from the aforementioned Maffei (p. 158, note 4): “PELLIAIMF/SECUNDAI/SORORI/BLANDAIL.” 42 Efemeridi, I s., XXIII, p. 109, which continues: “This conjecture was born in me already in reading, in doctor Lami’s Odoeporicon [literally ‘itinerary’; here: travel diary], part III, p. 733, that a street, which from the bridge of Santa Croce above the channel Gusciana leads to the same town of Santa Croce, is named Apello, or Pelle etc. street (via di Apello, di Pelle) in several ancient maps, and that said author gives the same street the aforesaid origin.” 43 It is ASF, Carte Pelli, 1, ins. 1. At fly-leaf II: “Memoirs of the Pelli family. More complete copy.” Fol. 1r: “This book is of Giovanni di Andrea di Giovanni di Piero…Pelli, Florentine citizen.”
44 See respectively ibid. and fol. 2r. 45 Ibid., fol. 2r. And it continues: “which is not so exceptional, given the many political changes…nor should it rouse astonishment, given the many and various changes in gov- ernment, with the fires that follow, which produce the loss of public and private writings, which are also lost when they fall in the hands of strangers, since one cannot know.” 46 Ibid., fol. 2v. 47 See ibid., fols. 3r–79r. By referring to the two books written by Giovanni di Piero Pelli (prior in 1486) and to one written by this latter’s son Andrea, at the basis of a Discorso informativo about Pelli in the Passerini papers (BNCF, Passerini, 190, 16, Pelli), Pandimiglio states: “also Pelli’s books must today be considered lost” (“Libro di famiglia,” p. 158n). Actually, it is possible that at the basis of the aforementioned Discorso informativo was exactly Giovanni di Andrea’s book, which gives details on his father’s and grandfather’s lives, by drawing information from documents which still existed at the time. 48 ASF, Carte Pelli, 1, ins. 1, fol. 2v.
Also for this reason he insists, with an intention that is apparently addressed to his descendants, on the connection to the past that was represented by him- self. Relating his own life he uses about thirty pages and creates a sort of true autobiography, even though all external and retrospective:
Having I the above Giovanni collected over a long time and effort all the content of the present book, and written it in my hand…, I have also wished to remember my own actions….49
This same 16th century Pelli is also the author of two other texts, absolutely in line, at the end of the century, with the Florentine memory writing tradition: one is a classic Sommario of priorists organized by families, a repertory that during the Republic (and even later) permitted every Florentine to understand on what step of the Florentine hierarchic ladder, as dictated by participation in public life, his family could be found; and the other is a zibaldone containing a series of lists pertinent to Florentine history, but equally useful as instruments of social and political classification: Popes, captains general and commissaries, senators, saints, illustrious men and governors, cardinals, knights, public offi- cers of all sorts, “principal families.”50 We know from some annotations of the Efemeridi that Pelli had some of these texts among his papers. “I have two copies of the memoirs of my family written by Giovanni di Andrea di Giovanni Pelli in 1590, they are in 4°, one more complete than the other,” he wrote in the first volume.51 He would refer to this text (and immediately afterwards to the others) explicitly sixteen years later in 1775, after his appointment as director of the Galleria degli Uffizi:
In handling my archive for the move I ran into a book, kept and written in 1593 by Giovanni d’Andrea di Giovanni Pelli, my great-great-grandfather, of news of my ancestors and other random notes that confirm and enlarge what I gathered in 1769…: this gave me great satisfaction and pleasure, as I came to know the truth of my past, so I will take great care of that book and those papers, and with these in hand as soon as I have
49 Ibid., fol. 70r. 50 See ASF, Carte Pelli, 1, ins. 2 (fol. 1r: [1598] “We start here the present book of memoirs. This book is of Giovanni di Andrea di Giovanni Pelli…where he will write many things he has collected with long time and labor, for the benefice of all”) and 4 (“Sommario di Priorista,” 1603). 51 Efemeridi, I s., I, paratext b (1759).
gotten past my current confusion I will make the opportune additions to the cited memoirs.52
We also know that Pelli venerated the memory of this ancestor both generally and specifically. One of his autobiographical notes penned on the frontispiece of these memoirs in fact says: “If you can care for a great grandson, you would find him in me, as every morning I honor your portrait respectfully before breakfast,” followed by his signature: “Giuseppe di Andrea Pelli the last.”53 In fact he did have an oil portrait of this relative.54 Pelli seems therefore to assign to Giovanni di Andrea the especial merit of having posed the problem of passing on the memory of the family, or at least that which he could find, and to have given it concrete continuity through the transmission of property. But his attitude towards family memoirs as we have seen is ambivalent, because in other instances he does not keep to the same project. Again in 1769 he wrote:
All these memoirs will not show my family to be any great thing. But what does it matter? A person in a play said, I am what I am, that is enough for me, nor do I need more. Much more as my house will die with me, every- thing will be smoke, fog, or something even thinner, if such exist.55
In sum, Pelli certainly identified with his family, but the life’s project that most interests him in starting his diary is not the collective one of the family group (of which he senses the transitoriness) as subject and aim. It is rather the realiza- tion of an individual identity in which the inclinations and passions of the sin- gle person are expressed, and to whom the survival of the group is de facto sacrificed. Moreover, the personal condition of Pelli itself plays a part in this: the last of eight children, he was orphaned at 9 and entrusted to tutors, victim of the poor management of his father’s wealth by his older brother Pietro, and had left the family home at 14 as he disagreed with him. Pelli is a person who “will dress
52 Efemeridi, II s., III (1775), fol. 528, also cited in S. Capecchi, Scrittura e coscienza autobio- grafica nel diario di Giuseppe Pelli (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 2006), p. 56 note. In the marginal note: “I did nothing but having the said book bound, which I have copied and cherish.” A rubric: “Historical books written by my ancestors.” 53 ASF, Carte Gianni, 1, ins. 1, autograph note in flyleaf II. 54 See ibid. the slip of paper bet. fols. 69 and 70, in Pelli’s hand: “Giovanni d’Andrea Pelli, his writing. This is the one of whom we have an oil portrait.” 55 Efemeridi, I s., XXIII, 134 (1769).
56 See Efemeridi, I s., I, Memoria della vita, passim and p. 98: “My dressing up to now as an abbot exempted me from showing, in official occasions, that I am not able to do what sometimes must do those of my rank”; IV (1761)…: “And that’s why, in spite of my dressing up to now as an abbot, I never wanted, nor sought, benefices, pensions, commendams, or other goods of the Church”; XII (1764), p. 158: “There is valid reason to think that I must leave the abbot’s habit, because at the new court there is a rumor going about that the sovereign does not like that employees wear it. This I much regret, because in it there is much of my interest, and because in this conjuncture this habit would mean a lack of com- mitment”; XIV (1765), p. 25: “I would not gain much, and I should leave the abbot’s habit”; p. 135: “I am in the need to leave the abbot’s habit”; XV (1765–1766): “A new age in my life: this morning I have left the abbot’s habit, and worn the secular one” (4 September 1765). 57 See R. Chartier, L’uomo di lettere, in M. Vovelle (ed.), L’uomo dell’Illuminismo (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1992), pp. 143–197: 181. 58 Ibid. 59 Efemeridi, I s., I, p. 6; XXIII, p. 144 (1769). 60 For the entry in possession of both the inheritance and the name Bencivenni see Efemeridi, I s., I, p. 9; XXIV, p. 147 (1769). For the decision to adopt Teresa see R. Pasta, “Ego ipse…non alius. Esperienze e memorie di un lettore del Settecento,” in Betri and Maldini Chiarito (eds.), Scritture di desiderio e di ricordo, pp. 187–206: 192; Efemeridi, I s., XXVI, pp. 137, 144. 61 See what he still states in 1769 after assuming the family name Bencivenni: “…later on, doing the appropriate research in my archive, I will find, hopefully, some distinguished informa- tion about this ancient family, and I will have occasion to write about it, as in the past I have written about mine in the past volume of these Efemeridi” (Efemeridi, I s., XXIV, p. 148, y. 1769). Moreover in 1761 he remarked: “At last I begin to compile the family tree and historical information of the Gherardini, from which I was born by mother, and grandmother, because
Finally this afternoon in private we made the agreement about the union of Teresa with Mr. Giovanni Fabbroni in the presence of the Abbot Giulio Petrini and lawyer Michele Niccolini witnesses, with a dowry of 300 scudi in clothing and linens, saying that whatever will be given more to the former will be an extra-dowry.63
And further on:
This evening in very private form my ward Teresa was married in Santo Stefano ad Portam Ferream, and she behaved more solidly than I expected…64
Then follows a careful description of the wedding banquet that certainly is, as Silvia Capecchi noted, “a sometimes pedantic dwelling on the particular cir- cumstances, that seems to render the pages of the diary sterile,” but is also a writing that follows very closely the Florentine family book model in which such things are noted, always ready to go into minute and economic detail, given its mercantile origins, about the events in hand. For the rest, and given also Teresa’s past, having fallen shortly before into the seductive trap of that lowly Chelli who had pushed her into a secret promise of marriage, Pelli expressed pedagogic intentions towards his only adopted daughter that are not unlike those of the 15th century Florentines, and that pass through the exact description of the patrimonial consequences of the girl’s actions so as to remind her, should she be tempted again, of the sacrifices made in her behalf.65
the decadence of this family is such that one is afraid that its memory can be lost… The papers I have in my hands make this work, however tiresome, easier” (Efemeridi, I s., IV, p. 34 [1761]). 62 See Capecchi, Scrittura e coscienza autobiografica, p. 95. Details about Teresa are present already after 1770: see Efemeridi, II s., III (1775), fol. 482v, where he fires the maid Maddalena Fioriti for having “slapped my girl’s face.” 63 Efemeridi, II s., X, fol. 1867 (1782). 64 Ibid., fol. 1867v. 65 Ibid., fol. 1916v: “I promised before to note how much Teresa cost me, except for mainte- nance and education. Therefore I will say that, included the sum I paid to her villainous seducer Chelli, and included the expenses of the lawsuit, I paid 3,520 lire, plus, for her
Even afterward the Efemeridi remained what they were, and that is a diary with more than one register. Nevertheless, it is precisely the annotations about Teresa that represent, if extrapolated and taken together, the equivalent of a very scattered family book which also shows its author’s particular sensitivity and traits of intimate retirement that were unknown in the past and instead more in tune with his times. Examples, besides the above, are in the reports of Teresa’s pregnancy, her sicknesses, the birth and baptism of her son, and on this latter’s health.66 In every case Pelli more or less self-consciously carries out a project that also by another criterion bears notable analogies to that of his ancestors: the writ- ing on different levels, which beyond the author’s special interests (culture, books, learning) includes the various aspects of the memory that seem impor- tant, among which are primarily the outward individual (offices, duties, con- tacts) and the context (the city and important events therein). So also the adopted form continues the traits of earlier memoirs in giving life with other texts, subdivided and specialized, to an interconnected system of writings, in which everything recalls and everything may serve to complete the informa- tion needed to its understanding (the Efemeridi, the zibaldone of the Magazzino universale, the Filze giornaliere, and even the Index that lists and connects everything).67 That which we may say in generally evaluating Florentine family memory in Pelli’s time is essentially that the Enlightenment is the breaking point. The ear- lier tradition is known, but when one arrives at the generation that ends its life at the turn of the century, or even better lives astride the 18th and 19th centu- ries, this tradition suffers a refutation that is partly ideological. Furthermore, the different cultural climate has produced a different man, who has read what has been written in the meanwhile, and adheres to new systems of values, who has had time to know the French memoir model (not so much Rousseau, whom Pelli will meet only twenty-three years after commencing his diary, but
trousseau, 3,241 lire and 19 sous, without considering the cost of the rosette of diamonds I gave her, which I had had as a present from the Archduke Maximilian, the party for the preliminary contract and for the day of the ring, and the wedding banquet, and some piece of furniture given out of solicitude for the married couple I was taking into my house; and I have also given to the same Teresa a donation of 7,000 lire so as to give her the interest of 4 per cent a year.” 66 See for example Efemeridi, II s., XI (1783), fol. 1934r, 2073r, 2074v-2075r, 2081, 2131, 2168, 2192, 2288. 67 See also Pasta, “Ego ipse.” See moreover ASF, Carte Pelli, cart. 38, ins. 404 (Indice delle cose manoscritte e delle cose a stampa, also publ. on line: www.memofonte.it/home/files/pdf/ pelli_scritti10.pdf).
68 See also the remarks in J.J. Martin, “The Myth of Renaissance Individualism,” in G. Ruggiero (ed.), A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 208–223: 220. 69 See Barbagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto. 70 G. Ciappelli, Un ministro del Granducato di Toscana nell’età della Restaurazione. Aurelio Puccini (1773–1840) e le sue “Memorie” (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007).
On the basis of an interesting document I have discovered, in this chapter I would like to examine the relationships between collective and individual identity in the early modern age, and the moment in which a greater awareness of the individual dimension and of self may have formed in relation to collec- tive bodies such as family, class, corporation that dominated earlier. I will men- tion only briefly the way in which research of recent years, both in Italy and abroad, has looked increasingly at that very variegated and fertile type of docu- ments known as egodocuments, that is sources of various kinds in which the individual writes of himself. Egodocuments in fact permit us not only to know in detail a series of stories that would not otherwise catch the historian’s atten- tion, but their revelation within the private papers where they are often hidden, and comparative analysis, ideally let us understand even the ways and moments in which the individual acquired and expressed a special self-consciousness.1 The common idea, taken from Burckhardt, is that the individual conscious- ness that detaches the person from the principal collective entities to which he belongs, among which are the family, was formed in the Renaissance.2 And certainly a series of definitely individual writings were compiled in that period, beginning with the earliest true “autobiographies” worthy of the label since antiquity (above all Augustine): Cellini, Cardano, Montaigne.3 And also of course those less known until more recently, like Leon Modena, studied by Natalie Davis.4
1 On the concept of egodocument there is by now a rather large bibliography, starting with Schulze, “Ego-Dokumente.” See now Dekker, “Introduction,” pp. 7–9; above, “Introduction,” pp. 3–4. Also Number 3 (2010) of the on line journal Giornale di storia (www.giornaledisto ria.net), has been dedicated to egodocuments, with contribution by C. Judde de Larivière and M. Caffiero (and see now below, chap. 12). 2 J. Burckhardt, The civilization of the Renaissance [in Italy], transl. by S.C.G. Middlemore (Oxford and London: Phaidon Press, 19452), p. 81. 3 On the three see the observations below, chap. 12. 4 N. Zemon Davis, “Fame and secrecy: Leon Modena’s Life as an early modern autobiography,” in M.R. Cohen (ed.), The autobiography of a Seventeenth-century Venetian Rabbi. Leon Modena’s ‘Life of Judah’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 50–70.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004270756_013
Starting from this I thought that even a phenomenon by now considered recurring, thanks to the pioneering studies by Cicchetti and Mordenti and others; the family books, texts in which the family is the author, object, and receiver of the writing, born at the end of the 13th century and flourished especially in Florence and Tuscany between 14th and 15th, suffered a crisis in the course of the early modern era both for practical reasons (increasing interventions of the Church and State in the facts regarding the family and its records), and for the emergence of a new course in the definition of individual consciousness.5 In truth, according to recent studies by myself and others, the genre has shown itself to be alive and well in Florence, where it probably originated, substantially repeating the original model even over a long period, as long as a family for the most various motives had something to remember: not only in the 16th century as a continuation of the tradition but also in the 17th and full 18th (as has been demonstrated by the studies by Roberto Bizzocchi on the Bracci Cambini papers in his book In famiglia).6 Exemplary from this point of view is the case of an important (and up to now almost unknown) ricordi-family book, belonging to a person who lived both chronologically and culturally at the end of the early modern period proper: Francesco Maria Gianni. Gianni was, as we know, a politician in the Leopoldine period. Born in 1728, he entered very young into the administration of the Grand Duchy as a func tionary in the financial sector, climbed up the steps as far as Minister without portfolio in 1789, just before Pietro Leopoldo became Emperor (1790). In the following years, Ferdinand III, even though keeping him in office, excluded him from active governing more for his difficult character than for his ideas. Up until 1799, when in order to recover his role and visibility, he accepted a post in the new French administration, still in the financial sector. He was almost immedi- ately the object of popular protest against measures he instituted, and the Aretine uprising of the “Viva Maria” led him to flee towards Genoa and essen- tially to a lifetime exile from Tuscany, first with the advent of the Kingdom of Etruria, then with the following regimes, that notwithstanding his past
5 The main studies by Cicchetti and Mordenti are Cicchetti and Mordenti, “La scrittura dei libri di famiglia”; Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, and now also Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II. For a reassessment of the views about the “crisis” since the 16th century see now at least above, chap. 9. 6 See above, chap. 9; Bizzocchi, In famiglia.
7 On the biography of Gianni see Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni; Becagli, “Gianni, Francesco Maria.” 8 See F. Venturi, “Francesco Maria Gianni,” in F. Venturi (ed.), Illuministi italiani, III, Riformatori lombardi, piemontesi e toscani (Milan–Naples: Ricciardi, 1958), pp. 981–1083; Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni; Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, pp. 397–500. Settecento riformatore is the title of the famous and classical historiographical work by Venturi, in 5 volumes (Turin: Einaudi, 1969–1990), of which two volumes have been trans- lated into English by R.B. Litchfield with a different title: F. Venturi, The end of the old régime in Europe, 1768–1776 (vol. III); and …, 1776–1789 (vol. IV) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989–1991). 9 ASF, Carte Gianni, Codici, 33 (henceforth: Libro di famiglia Gianni). 10 Ibid., cover. An addition on the cover recites, under the title: “da tenerne di conto.”
Later I will go into the details, which among other things give a rather pre- cise accounting of Francesco Maria Gianni’s early years (in a way that Furio Diaz could not in his otherwise exemplary biography of the Tuscan statesman, and thus correct some of his affirmations).11 What interests us here are the form and function of the text inherited from an earlier tradition, and transmitted almost intact into the society of the end of the seventeenth century and then the eighteenth, up to the beginning of the nineteenth. Who were the Gianni before this Leopoldian minister? They were a family, still relatively unknown, of a middling level in the history of the Republic: they had had presences in the Priorate, the highest magistrature in the Commune, beginning in 1313 and by 1530 they had had 20 Priors and 5 Gonfalonieri of justice.12 The most famous member, head of the branch which concerns us here, was most certainly Astorre di Niccolò Gianni, com- missioner with Rinaldo degli Albizzi of the Commune of Florence during the war with Lucca in 1429, and author of the “misdeeds” at Seravezza for which he was bitterly criticized by Giovanni Cavalcanti and later by Machiavelli in his Istorie fiorentine.13 Astorre was in the Balìa of 1434 for the Santo Spirito quarter that recalled Cosimo de’ Medici, even if his family (or at least a part of it) would later be banished by the Medici in 1444.14 In 1427 he was the wealthiest in the family, but even at 1000 taxable florins, he was not among the 150 top taxpayers in his quarter.15 In the 16th century, Astorre’s line did not yet own much real estate, but then at the beginning of the 17th the family began a series of commercial activities, and in particular the great-great-grandfather of Pietro Leopoldo’s minister, Ridolfo di Tommaso, managed to accumulate notable riches, to which was added the large inheritance of the extinct Benivieni family.16
11 See above, chap. 10, esp. p. 214 and note 17. On this family book the following pages develop some research lines that I have anticipated in that chapter. 12 See Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy, p. 372; ASF, Nobiltà e cittadinanza, fasc. 2, ins. 317 (“famiglia Gianni”). 13 See Giovanni Cavalcanti, Istorie fiorentine, pp. 166, 168–172; Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, ed. by F. Gaeta (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962), pp. 299 and ff.; Capponi, Storia della Repubblica di Firenze, I, pp. 495–496. 14 See Rubinstein, The government of Florence, p. 283; N. Eckstein, The District of the Green Dragon. Neighbourhood life and social change in Renaissance Florence (Florence: Olschki, 1995), p. 178. 15 See Florentine Renaissance Resources. Online Catasto of 1427, ed. by D. Herlihy et alii (http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/catasto/); Martines, The Social World, p. 378. 16 See Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy, p. 227.
Ridolfo began the greater family fortune and in 1640 also set up the family fideicommissum, whereby the wealth would be transmitted only to the first- born males.17 While Ridolfo was the author of a “book entitled debtors and creditors (…), with white vellum covers and marked A,” that is more nearly an account book, the one who began the proper family book was his son Niccolò, born in 1626, who began his own ricordi in the classical way at the time of his own wedding in 1647, and for earlier events referred to his father’s book.18 Niccolò, who married the daughter of Senator Carlo Strozzi, erudite collector of every kind of document and very well known to everyone who studies Florentine history,19 only filled seven pages,20 noting down the out- standing facts of the family, and above all the positions held under the Grand Duke or other members of the Medici family, the births of all his children, and daughters’ entrances into convent up until his relatively early death at fifty in 1676.21 At this point the writing is taken over, with no interruption, by his twenty- year old first-born son Ridolfo, Francesco Maria’s grandfather, who will keep up the book for almost sixty years until his own death in 1733.22 Only a few months after his father’s death Ridolfo married a highly placed noblewoman, daughter of the Marquis and Senator Lorenzo Niccolini, with whom he had five daugh- ters (two died young) and two sons.23 Ridolfo was a true patriarch, very Catholic and conformist, close servant of the Grand Duke and chamberlain to Prince Ferdinando.24 All three daughters were “educated” in convent, and two of the three would take vows.25 Of the two sons, Niccolò Maria and Lorenzo Maria,26
17 Ibid., pp. 221, 227; ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, fols. n.n. 18 See ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, flyleaf v: “Entries before these ones are in the book entitled ‘Debtors and creditors’ of Ridolfo di Tommaso Gianni, covered with white parch- ment and marked ‘A’”; fol. 1v (the marriage). 19 On Carlo Strozzi and his libri di ricordi see now Callard, “De l’expérience à l’action,” pp. 86–88. 20 ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, fols. 1r–4r. 21 Ibid., fol. 4v. 22 Ibid., fols. 4v–26r. He was born in 1656. 23 Ibid., fol. 4v. 24 Since 1681: ibid., fol. 5v. 25 Of the five daughters from his marriage, one died soon after her birth, another one after 18 months. The younger ones, Maria Francesca and Maria Maddalena, took vows in the convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Borgo Pinti when 18, whereas the firstborn, Maria Elisabetta, married at twenty (1699) to Guido de’ Ricci. 26 Born respectively in 1683 and 1686.
27 ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, fol. 8v. 28 Ibid., fols. 9r–v, 10v. 29 Ibid., fols. 9v, 10v, 11r. 30 See respectively ibid., fols. 11r–v, 12v, 13v, 14r, 18v, 19r–v, 22r, 24v, 26r. 31 Ibid., fols. 11v, 12v, 13v, 14r. 32 Ibid., fols. 14r, 15v, 18r (years 1720–1721). 33 Ibid., fol. 20r: “having been informed by the very reverend father friar Pier Maria da Lucca, Capuchin of great merit and high esteem, general prior of the order and consultor of the Index [of forbidden books], about the Life which had already been printed in 1725 of the God’s servant and now blessed Lorenzo Maria Gianni my son.” The printed text is Della vita del servo di Dio Lorenzo Maria Gianni decano della chiesa fiorentina libri due dal dottor Giuseppe Maria Rossi (…) scritti e dedicati all’illustriss. e reverendiss. monsignor Giuseppe Maria Martelli arcivescovo di Firenze principe del S. R. Impero, e vescovo assistente al soglio pontificio (Florence: Albizzini, 1725). In the same year 1728 a new edition will be pub- lished, dedicated to the Pope.
On November 4 of the same year also his grandson Francesco Maria34 was born. In the following years other grandchildren were born and one took the veil (anyway necessary under the rigid scheme of primogeniture), up until the death of the writer at the advanced age of seventy seven, in 1733.35 Ridolfo’s longevity, together with the by now solid family tradition that only the paterfamilias continue the family book, meant that Francesco Maria’s father could only take over the writing when he was fifty. And he was very respectful of his father’s model. He repeated the same funeral procedures for him that his father had practiced for his wife,36 and even later, both in life and in the writing of the book Niccolò followed his father’s example: in the career destinations of his sons;37 and in the destiny of the daughters; and – what interests us here – in keeping the monopoly of the family writing to himself.38 In tune with the tendencies of aristocratic families of the ancien régime, Niccolò and Anna Mannelli had numerous children: twelve, and not counting those who died in the first days or months, they had three boys and five daugh- ters who survived. The daughters, born between 1714 and 1732 were all, with no exception, placed in convent, just like two of the three paternal aunts and all the sisters of the paternal grandfather, following the principle of conservation at all costs of the family’s wealth and honor. The males followed equally pre- dictable, if not linear, careers. The first-born was Giuseppe Maria, born in 1717, and as we have seen, immediately destined to a career at court. He, however, seeing his two sisters enter convent at sixteen and seventeen, having a blessed relative in the family, and being part of a family group where all, grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, were such devout and worthy members of the ostentatiously pious court of Cosimo III, seems to have matured early-on a reli- gious vocation, and at twenty (September 1737) entered the Servite hermitage at Montesenario. Less than a year later “for reasons of poor health” he returned to the city and the convent of the Santissima Annunziata.39 But he was a rest- less soul. Two years later in 1740, having returned to Montesenario, Giuseppe Maria presented a “writing of claim against the profession” to the archbishop’s
34 ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, fol. 22r. 35 Ibid., fols. 24v–26r. According to his son Niccolò’s entry, Ridolfo died on 22 November 1733. Another niece, Maria Maddalena, will take vows in 1736 (fol. 28r). 36 See ibid., fol. 26v. 37 Even though Giuseppe Maria will make his father dispair by early showing his intention of modifying his status, passing from hermit and Servite to abbot, then knight of Malta. See below. 38 See ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, fols. 28r, 31r. Niccolò will keep his part of the book from fol. 26r to fol. 52r (15 October 1765). 39 Ibid., fols. 12v, 31r, 33r.
40 The norm dated back to the Council of Trent, sess. XXV, Decretum de regularibus et monialibus (3–4 December 1563), chap. XIX, in G. Alberigo et alii (eds.), Conciliorum oecu- menicorum generaliumque decreta. Editio critica, III (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), p. 158. The decree is also cited in A. Sosnowski, L’impedimento matrimoniale del voto perpetuo di castità (can. 1088 C.I.C.). Evoluzione storica e legislazione vigente (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2007), p. 147. On the instances of annulment of religious profes- sion see now also A. Jacobson Schutte, By force and fear. Taking and breaking monastic vows in early modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011). 41 ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, fols. 34v, 38r–v. 42 Ibid., fols. 44v, 45r, 50r, 51r. Giuseppe Maria is also mentioned in Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni, p. 2 and passim, but the adoption by him of another name as religious (Luigi Maria) provoked another oversight, besides the other I have stressed on Francesco Maria’s marriage (see above, chap. 10, note 17 and context). There is not a fourth-born of Niccolò named Luigi, knight: it is still Giuseppe Maria, after he entered the order of Malta. 43 See ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, fols. 24v, 44r, 46v. Giovanni Maria takes the abbot’s dress in 1747, and goes to Pisa “to study in that University,” in 1750. 44 Ibid., fols. 22r, 34r, 44r. On the Casino dei nobili, exclusive meeting place for the elite, intended for amusement, but also for cultural training and the reproduction of noble
identity and values see at least J. Boutier, “L’‘Accademia dei nobili’ di Firenze. Sociabilità ed educazione dei giovani nobili negli anni di Cosimo III,” in F. Angiolini, V. Becagli and M. Verga (eds.), La Toscana nell’età di Cosimo III. Atti del Convegno (Pisa – San Domenico di Fiesole, 4–5 giugno 1990) (Florence: Edifir, 1993), pp. 205–224. It is possible that the attendance of the Casino dei nobili from age twenty represented the perfectioning of a cultural training which for Florentine nobles started elsewhere (private teachers, colleges for nobles). In any case, the family book does not bear any sign of it. Also Francesco Maria’s father and his uncle Lorenzo Maria had entered the Accademia dei nobili when eighteen, and also his brother Giovanni Maria enters it when twenty, nine months before going to study in Pisa. 45 ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, fol. 46r (22 May 1750): “By God’s grace Francesco Maria Gianni my son has been admitted by His Imperial Majesty in the office of Soprassindaci… as supernumerary assistant…with the faculty of perceiving the usual gratuities”; on 1 August 1750 he was elected “permanent assistant”: “Francesco Gianni is elected as one of the assistants in the scrittoio of soprassindaci in place of the deceased Vincenzo Vantucci.” 46 They are Ridolfo Maria (n. 1753) and Anna Maria Maddalena (1755). A third son, born on 1762, died a few days after his birth. 47 ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, fols. 52v–53r: “The present libro di ricordi will be continued by myself, Anna Canigiani, to whom the senator Mr. Francesco Maria Gianni my father gave the administration of his patrimony since 6 February 1802, day in which Mr. Ridolfo Gianni, my only brother, left the world and retired into the monastery of the fathers of San Giovanni di Dio in this city.”
Francesco Maria was in exile in Genoa (1802) and tried to exert his rights over the wealth he had been forced to abandon in Florence. In fact, he wrote a long letter of self-justification to his daughter, trying to provide her with elements she could use to manage the difficult situation.48 To this end he named her administrator of the patrimony and the few folios she wrote during the year were about these affairs, and confirm among other things that the family archive in which the necessary information could be found had remained in the house in Florence.49 After 1803, with this kind of emancipation of the woman which allowed her to manage documents otherwise monopolized by men (and here it would be good to know if it was the father to suggest it or whether she herself took over the continuation of the family memoir), maybe because she was obliged (the absence of the father, the necessity to follow the family’s affairs and use its documents), the text keeps silent forever. Anyway, there were no other heirs, as the brother died soon afterwards.50 Francesco Maria however was still alive and would die at ninety-three only in 1821, having survived by many years that Giuseppe Pelli who knew him, did not like him, and who was of the same age (it would be interesting to set out here a comparison with Pelli, champion of eighteenth century memoirs with his “monster” diary of 80 volumes).51 Naturally Francesco Maria was far away and could not himself consult the book. But he had already shown his disinterest at the time of his father’s death, especially by not continuing it. There is instead another text by him, written in the same years in which his daughter takes up the ancestral book that is indica- tive of the changes in culture and style that had matured in the meantime. The Gianni family book in fact helps us to understand that in mid-18th century the cultivation of family memory in this traditional manner, with the characteristics that had been established nearly five hundred years earlier,
48 See ASF, Carte Gianni, 16, n. 336, “Memory for my daughter on the edict of 2 October 1799.” The text is undated, but since the author says there that he is 72, it can be dated at a date after 4 November 1800. 49 See supra, note 47; ASF, Libro di famiglia Gianni, fol. 52v: “The papers on this business are among the extinct files in the pigeon-hole ‘S’ of the archive.” 50 In January 1803: ibid., fol. 52v. 51 Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni, born in 1729, dies in 1808. For a synthetic biography see Zapperi, “Bencivenni Pelli, Giuseppe.” I deal with Pelli above, chap. 10; Pelli writes about Francesco Maria Gianni, whose brother Giovanni he knew rather well, on several occa- sions in his Efemeridi, with always rather critical comments. See Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Nuove Accessioni, 1050, passim (the edition, still partial, is on line in pelli.bncf.firenze.sbn.it).
But for the character of his civil life, he himself was subjugated to the customs of his times, and contracted the corresponding habits, that formed his maxims, as happens to everyone of mediocre genius (…) On this base he founded the education of his children, whence he sowed and reaped also in my soul the principles of his opinions, sure to make me happy (…) Thus in my earliest adolescence I heard tell of the history of my ancestors and of contemporaries who in the eyes of my good old man seemed venerable and so he presented them to me, because they had been distinguished by the sovereign’s favor and had made rapid and suc- cessful careers rising to the highest and most luminous posts.52
But in part this happens because his initial adherence to his father’s ideas later causes his disgust for these same when he realized that at least the cultural and intellectual values could be different. This shows in the latter part of his life, after the exile and in the early years of the new century. Apart from a series of self-justificating writings which are also with the family papers, this is expressed in a text that, even though used by at least one of his biographers such as Diaz, has not been completely understood. The text has in fact even been directly quoted, but as if it were random, undated fragments, from different moments.53 Viceversa, closer examination shows that it is the notes for a memoir, of which three chapters have survived: an “Introduction”; a first Chapter, “Direct educa- tion for the posts and offices by means of the passions leading to them”; a Second Chapter, “Maxims and opinions formed on the errors of the passions acquired by education”; and that which was probably a third chapter: “Reform of com- munity legislation, errors committed in its execution, and the consequences.”54
52 ASF, Carte Gianni, fasc. 20, ins. 431, fols. 51r–54r; 45v–46r. 53 See Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni, pp. 3–4, 6–7; 255–256. 54 It is ASF, Carte Gianni, fasc. 20, ins. 431, fols. 43r–44r (“Introduzione”), 45r–50v (chap. I), 52r–54v (chap. II), 59r–66r (probable chap. III).
Looking back, Gianni realized that he had been moved by a series of “passions” derived mostly from his father’s teachings towards mistaken objectives (ambi- tion and wealth), pursued only because he had not yet realized some other truths. Thus, as he states,
I feel sorrow, but not shame, for having committed errors, because I do not approve, or defend them, rather I want to confess them for the instruction of others and thus gather the most beautiful fruit of enlight- ened reason (…) This is the aim of my ingenuous confession in which will be included diverse notable events experienced in the many quickly passed years of my life, and always in the service of my sovereign, so that learning from my experience who so wishes may avoid committing simi- lar errors.55
“Confession” is the recurrent term, as if Gianni had imbibed the spirit of self- presentation in that which is, rightly or wrongly, considered the first modern autobiographical form: Rousseau’s Confessions published in 1782 and known immediately also in Italy. Even if, in truth this draft of Memorie was, in tune with other, even Tuscan, contemporary authors like Gianni, a presentation of oneself entirely centered on that which was the principal “passion” of Francesco Maria: government activity. Some autobiographical notes, especially on the relationship with his father, at once loved and hated, shows between the lines the formation of a man who had not had a formal education (scholars have often wondered about the origins of his knowledge):
Thus blinded I was put to carry out the practical things that are the aim and subject of the business of service to the sovereign in the province of public finance…For the same enthusiasm that dominated me I aban- doned the studies of the beautiful sciences only just begun because it seemed I would not find any basis for my hopes there, but saw only sterile exercises with no promise of reward.56
And then above all the reconstruction, filtered through the subjectiveness of his own career, of the political-administrative life of the Grand Duchy between 1750, his first year as public officer, and the 1770 s in which the Chamber of Communities was created, and saw him protagonist together with Angelo Tavanti in the construction of a central organ to control local
55 Ibid., fols. 43r–44r. 56 Ibid., fol. 51r–v.
administrations.57 The text stops at this point, at least according to my cur- rent reconstruction, as there remains to be carried out a complete examina- tion of the family’s archive to determine if there are other pieces which have been so far wrongly identified. Carlo Capra had also perceived the potential of this text from Diaz’s book, and it could be interesting to publish an edition of it, even in this incomplete form.58 This Gianni text is the nth example of the changes in taste and sensibility of the generation of this period, and the confirmation of the change from a tradi- tion in which the collective identity of the family group is still strong, to a moment in which the self prevails. Clearly the earlier tradition is not ignored as it is noted in the examples and the education received from his father. But at a certain point he decided not to continue this and instead initiated a form of writing about himself that was more centered on his own identity. Not a diary, which apparently was not congenial to him (he is not a Pelli, a versatile, cul- tured, polyhedric reader who loved to write of his thoughts and readings) but a memoir, a genre by now diffuse also in printed examples, in which he could write retrospectively about his own experiences, especially when he felt the need to justify himself and his choices (and this was particularly true of a Gianni after 1799, when accused of cowardness and treason, exiled and never called home); and if furthermore he needed to put things down on paper to better understand them, with perhaps a note of melancholy and nostalgia for a part of his past, or for the past in general. For that matter men, and especially if they have been in politics, at this period astride two centuries, in this Sattelzeit as Koselleck called it, had experienced an important discontinuity between before and after.59 Revolution and other turmoils tied to it often made them exiles and increased their sense of isolation, leading them to reflect differently on the past. Belatedly, the seventy year old Gianni thought about his own experience as official in the Leopoldine government and reinterpreted it together with his own role (which makes his own attempt at self-justification not completely convincing), seeing probably in the ideals and objectives of the Leopoldine reforms, if coherently pursued, the means to avoid revolution and its conse- quent upset. It has been said that individuals like himself were “stranded in the present,”60 incapable of adapting to a present that they no longer understood,
57 Ibid., esp. fols. 53r–66r. 58 See C. Capra, “Il funzionario,” in Vovelle (ed.), L’uomo dell’Illuminismo, pp. 354–398. 59 See R. Koselleck, Futures past. On the semantics of historical time, transl. and ed. by K. Tribe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983) (or. ed. 1979). 60 See P. Fritzsche, Stranded in the present. Modern time and the melancholy of History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).
The title of a recent colloquium1 is a well-known phrase from the note addressed To the reader in Michel de Montaigne’s Essays (1580): “Here I want to be seen in my simple, natural, everyday fashion, without striving or artifice – says the great man from Bordeaux – for it is my own self that I am painting.”2 Apparently he meant in this way to underline the character of the Essays as intimate reflec- tion and individual memory, which, among a hundred other things, they are: philosophical text, humanistic treatise, learned reflection on all aspects of life, and also (even though some deny this)3 autobiography; since in the end this is what the author gives us: an unequaled autobiography, even though anoma- lously and between the lines. Not exactly common in his era. One of the first true modern autobiographies is the Latin one by the Italian mathematician and philosopher Girolamo Cardano, finished in 1576,4 preceded slightly by the vernacular one (though not published at the time) by the Florentine artist Benvenuto Cellini (begun in 1558 and broken off in 1567).5 But both were pub- lished posthumously: the first in 1643, the other not until 1728.6 A proper auto- biography lacked a model, then, in Montaigne’s time, at least in a printed version and for a lay type of production, with the exception of ancient authors. But what happens if we look outside the intellectual sphere? When does intimate reflection turn and become part of a writing that is more broadly
1 Which produced the volume: Mouysset, Bardet, Ruggiu (eds.), “Car c’est moi que je peins.” 2 Michel de Montaigne, The complete essays, transl. and ed. by M.A. Screech (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 63 (“To the reader”). 3 Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, IV.2, Von der Renaissance, p. 683: “Montaignes Essais sind gewiss keine Autobiographie.” 4 Hieronymi Cardani Mediolanensis, De propria vita liber (Parisiis: Villery, 1643). On Cardano see also A. Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos. The world and works of a Renaissance astrologer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 5 B. Cellini, Vita, ed. by E. Camesasca (Milan: Rizzoli, 1985), pp. 18–20. 6 By the physician A. Cocchi: ibid., p. 65. One might add the synthetic diary kept by the painter Pontormo for about two years (where he writes above all about the frescoes he was painting in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence, besides his meals and his illnesses), unpublished until recently: Iacopo da Pontormo, Diario “fatto nel tempo che dipingeva il coro di San Lorenzo” (1554–1556), ed. by E. Cecchi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1956); Pontormo, Il libro mio, ed. by S.S. Nigro (Genua: Costa e Nolan, 1984).
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004270756_014
7 Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, p. 15. On Italian family books and their origins in late 13th century Florentine texts the bibliography is by now quite large. Besides Mordenti’s book, one can see esp. Pezzarossa, “La memorialistica fiorentina”; Id., “La tradizione fio- rentina della memorialistica”; Cicchetti and Mordenti, “La scrittura dei libri di famiglia”; Eid., I libri di famiglia in Italia, I; Klapisch-Zuber, “L’invenzione del passato familiare a Firenze”; Ead. “Le genealogie fiorentine”; Pandimiglio, “Ricordanza e libro di famiglia”; Id., “Libro di famiglia”; Ciappelli, “Family Memory”; Id., “I libri di famiglia a Firenze”; above, chaps. 1, 7, and 9. 8 Burckhardt, The civilization of the Renaissance, p. 83, also cited by Zemon Davis, “Fame and secrecy,” p. 52. 9 Where the story of his works corresponds to that of his success: Guglielminetti, Memoria e scrittura, pp. 295, 298–299. 10 Ibid., p. 301. But see now L.A. Waldman, Baccio Bandinelli at the Medici court. A corpus of early modern sources (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2004), pp. xi–xii, who claims that Bandinelli’s Memoriale is a forgery by his nephew Bartolomeo, written “to glorify his family’s past and buttress their claims to a wholly imaginary nobility.” After Vasari’s text, similar features are present in that by Michelangiolo’s student Raffaello da Montelupo (Raffaello Sinibaldi) (ca. 1566): ibid., pp. 307–308. For completeness’ sake we must add an autobiography in verses by V. Danti (1565–1570 ca.), and the diary by Alessandro Allori of 1579–1584 (E. Camesasca, Narciso disperato, in Cellini, Vita, pp. 5–37: 5). 11 M. Guglielminetti, “Biografia ed autobiografia,” in Letteratura italiana, dir. by A. Asor Rosa, V, Le questioni (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 829–886: 864.
(1) Cellini was not unaware of the earlier tradition of family memory writ- ings, and in parallel with his autobiography he follows it (as shown by his Ricordi in the Riccardiana Library);14 (2) that tradition did not break off with the emergence of explicitly autobio- graphical forms, but continued up to and beyond the end of the early modern era. (3) there had already been instances of more autobiographical narration within the tradition of family memory writings, in the sense of attention strongly paid to the writer (Bonaccorso Pitti, at least);15 (4) even in the Florentine memoir tradition Cellini did not start a strong autobiographical strain, because his memoir was first published in 1728, and there are not many Florentine autobiographies written after his;16 (5) in any case, his was not an intimate diary: he described the events of his life which he perceived (for the people with whom he associated, for the events experienced, etc.) to be exceptional.
To derive more general conclusions it is necessary to keep in mind both the earlier production and the writing of the self as individual which starts with a
12 Cellini starts writing, as we have seen, in 1558. The first edition of Vasari’s Vite had been published in 1550, and the second will be printed in 1568. 13 Without actually realizing which were the aspects that made his work unsuitable for such a destination (for example the absence of flattering intentions towards the Medici court): Camesasca, “Narciso disperato,” pp. 19–20. 14 Largely already published in the 19th century: F. Tassi (ed.), Ricordi, prose e poesie di Benvenuto Cellini con documenti la maggior parte inediti in seguito e ad illustrazione della vita del medesimo, III (Florence: Piatti, 1829), pp. 3–262. 15 For the edition of Bonaccorso Pitti’s text (1412–1430) see Branca (ed.), Mercanti scrittori, pp. 341–503; for the autobiographic part of it see Guglielminetti, Memoria e scrittura, pp. 260–267; V. Branca, “Introduzione,” in Mercanti scrittori, pp. LV–LXXI. 16 See above, note 6 and context.
17 Pezzarossa, “La tradizione fiorentina della memorialistica.” 18 I directed between 2005 and 2007 the research unit of Trento which dealt with La memo- ria familiare in età moderna. Censimento delle fonti toscane e analisi comparativa, into the Progetto di Ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN 2005) “Storia della famiglia. Costanti e varianti in una prospettiva europea (secoli XV-XX)” coordinated by Silvana Seidel Menchi. On the first results of the research see now above, chap. 8. 19 “In this book…we will make memory of some things related to me, starting with the day I was born, and then subsequently; even though I began this book on 13 April 1508 in Florence” (Guicciardini, Ricordi, diari, memorie, p. 79. In this edition the Ricordanze are at pp. 77–99, and a second “libro di ricordi,” started in 1527, is at pp. 100–115. A detailed analy- sis of Guicciardini’s two family books is in Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia, I, pp. 43–68). 20 The second of Guicciardini’s family books starts in July 1527 – after an interruption of eleven years, due to his charge as Governor of Modena, received in 1516 – and summarizes retrospectively the most important events since 1508, with a concentration on the period 1516–1527, not covered by the first book. The text ends with the description of gold and silver objects owned at that time by the family.
An important different example has already been used by myself and others to describe the characteristics of the 16th century family book, and that is the one of the Valori family.21 This is a true family book, multigenerational, begun by an important exponent of the family – Bartolomeo – in 1380 and continued almost uninterruptedly, even if with varying attention, by eight writers and as many generations up to 1676.22 The text has all the characteristics of a late medieval Florentine family book up until 1537, when Filippo Valori, opponent of Cosimo I de’ Medici, was executed. When it was taken up thirty-eight years later (1575), Filippo’s son Bartolomeo who had become a jurist and received public responsibilities in the cultural field from Grand Duke Cosimo, adopted a rather different style from his father. He rendered himself autonomous even materially from the earlier family book by starting a small separate fascicule,23 and would begin a recounting of himself, inaugurating that which could be called a kind of intellectual autobiography. After a premise with literary tones,24 Bartolomeo synthetized his life up to that moment: orphaned by the execution of his father, and “deprived one could say of all goods except for his mother since puberty,” it was in fact his mother who encouraged him to study. The author lists the various stages in his formation and is pleased to list all the members of the cultural world that he met in those years, among whom the learned Pier Vettori and Benedetto Varchi, in Pisa, the anatomist Gabriele Falloppio and the learned Francesco Robortello at Padua, the painter Titian in Venice.25 In the second part he dwells on, besides his marriage, the period in which his relationship with the Medici had not yet been clarified, and then on the charges entrusted to him by the Grand Duke after 1570. At the end he returns to the more classic tones of a family book, with the registration of his two weddings, births of children, etc., and recounting in detail his own health over the course of serious illnesses.26 After this rather individual memorial, the
21 BNCF, Panciatichi, 134. See above, chap. 8, pp. 173–176; Cazalé Berard and Klapisch-Zuber, “Mémoire de soi et des autres,” pp. 822–824. 22 The text can be now easily read in a recent edition: Polizzotto and Kovesi, Memorie di casa Valori. 23 BNCF, Panciatichi, 134, fasc. 2 and 3: Polizzotto and Kovesi, Memorie di casa Valori, pp. 157–175. 24 “In the middle of the journey etc., and this too passed…it seems to me to be obliged to give account today of the way I spent my years, and with which hindrances the time has passed until now…in the sea of this life”: Polizzotto and Kovesi, Memorie di casa Valori, p. 157. 25 Ibid., pp. 157–164. 26 Ibid., pp. 164–175.
27 Ibid., pp. 191–193. 28 Ibid., p. 171: “…and she gave birth. He was baptized by don Vincenzo Borghini, superinten- dent of the Innocenti hospital.” 29 On him see G. Folena, “Borghini, Vincenzo Maria,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XII (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970), pp. 680–689. On the censorship on Decameron see R. Mordenti, “Le due censure: la collazione dei testi del Decameron ‘rassettati’ da Vincenzio Borghini e Lionardo Salviati,” in Le pouvoir et la plume. Incitation, contrôle et répression dans l’Italie du XVIe siècle, Actes du colloque International (Aix en Provence-Marseille, 14–16 mai 1981) (Paris: Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1982), pp. 252–273. 30 BNCF, Magliabechiano, XXXVIII, 117, on the years 1531–1544, published in A. Lorenzoni (ed.), “I Ricordi di don Vincenzo Borghini,” Frammenti inediti di vita fiorentina, IV (1909), pp. 1–24. The Florentine tradition of “libri di ricordi” was, however, well known to Borghini also through early examples produced within his family: see Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, p. 12. 31 Lorenzoni (ed.), “I ricordi.” 32 Ibid., p. 22.
33 For example, in June 1544 “I was appointed bursar [cellario] and dean with my great displeasure, may God free me soon of it. I had as partners don Teofilo Benintendi…and a thousand and more worries.” A troubled travel in Lombardy on behalf of his order in November 1544 induces him to register in the margin: “Remember not to go any more to work on behalf of friars, because I endured a mule’s toil for my monastery, and I was rewarded with the coin of the holy fathers and choice spirits of our times.” The end of the unsolicited charge of cellario in June 1545 pushes him to write: “By God’s grace, may He be always praised and thanked, I was taken away from the celleria. May God keep me in the present quiet,” surely more suitable to devote oneself to the favorite studies. Ibid., pp. 23, 24. 34 BNCF, Magliabechiano, XIII, 93. The trip, made between August 1497 and November 1498, is described at fols. 9r–53r. 35 BNCF, Palatino, 37, fols. 88v–92v. The travels are made between 1572 and 1578, but the most recent aspects of the text’s autobiographic part refer to 1601 (fols. 94r–95v). 36 Razzi is, actually, considering that Borghini’s reminiscences refer to his youth, the most consciously “author” among the three. He also wrote a formal preface to the text, where he justified the text’s object with his reader. 37 BNCF, Panciatichi, 175. On Simeoni, antiquarian and poet, close to the Florentines exiled for political reasons, and later also in touch with the Queen of France Caterina de’ Medici, see La corte, il mare e i mercanti. La rinascita della scienza. Editoria e società. Astrologia, magia e alchimia, Catalogo delle mostre (Florence, 1980), pp. 419–420; P. Zambelli, L’ambigua natura della magia. Filosofi, streghe, riti nel Rinascimento (Venice: Marsilio, 19962), pp. 175–176. 38 Even though they have not been studied so far in this sense, as most of the 16th century protoautobiographies.
39 ASF, Pelli Bencivenni, 1, fasc. 2. Quotations are at fols. 2r, 70r. 40 Ibid., fols. 70r–79r. 41 An example is cited by Guicciardini himself at his father’s death: “I was so sorry that I could not say, since I was coming back with a strong desire to see him…I loved him more fervently than children usually love fathers”; and at his father in law’s death: “I was sorry in an incomparable way, so much that up to that moment I had not felt such a great suf- fering”: Guicciardini, Ricordi, pp. 95, 91. 42 On printed collections of letters see M. Ariani, “Memoria e persuasione,” in Storia lette raria d’Italia, new ed. dir. by A. Balduino, Il Cinquecento, ed. by G. Da Pozzo (Milan: Vallardi, 2006), pp. 1193–1250: 1217 (starting with Pietro Aretino’s Primo libro de le lettere, published in 1538–1539). On the influence of almanacs and calendars on French “livres de raison” see Mouysset, Papiers de famille, p. 238. A witness of travel books’s diffusion is the aforementioned Razzi himself: “Nor am I the first who wrote diaries and about the travels he did. On the contrary countless have been and are at present those who write their com- mentaries…”: BNCF, Palatino, 37, fol. 86r.
manner of keeping memories of oneself. Certainly in other European coun- tries: in England for example, where the diary was precocious also because it had the model of the spiritual diary;43 but in Italy as well, and especially in Florence. Bit by bit the reference models for memory writings changed and in parallel with the family book first embryonal and then more precisely auto- biographical forms spread: with the tendency above all to reconstruct a posteriori the events related to one’s own life. We find also in Florence, from mid-seventeenth century, more than one example of a Diary: they are often notebooks in which the author noted day by day what he has done and in some cases transposes to it the writing habit that earlier would have found an outlet most likely in the family book, while some functions that belonged only to the family book were now sometimes transposed to the diary. Probably this hap- pened above all in the cases of persons who had contacts with several social environments and there found the cue for this kind of writing. In fact, if we look at the Florentine authors of diaries or the like in this period, we find persons almost all of a type: various sorts of intellectuals in contact with the court and open to external cultural influences like the physi- cian and scientist Francesco Redi,44 the playwright Giovan Battista Fagiuoli,45 another anonymous seventeenth century author,46 the physician and intellec- tual as well as propounder of the idea of Masonry, Antonio Cocchi.47 Later we will find the librarian and founder of literary journals Giovanni Lami,48 the priest and Florentine intellectual Marco Lastri.49 We can add to these texts,
43 K. von Greyerz remarks that the private diaries of two English Puritans, Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward, belonging to the years 1587–1630, are the first spiritual autobiographic sources written after the Reformation period: see K. von Greyerz, “La vision de l’autre chez les auteurs autobiographique anglais du XVIIe siècle,” in R. Sauzet (ed.), Les frontières reli- gieuses en Europe du XVe au XVIIe siècles, Actes du XXXIe colloque international d’etudes humanistes (Paris: Vrin, 1992), pp. 59–68: 60. In such texts the authors follow rather strictly the “spiritual accounting” criterion. 44 Francesco Redi (1626–1697) starts his own “libro di ricordi” in 1647. 45 Giovan Battista Fagiuoli’s (1660–1742) diary starts in 1672 and ends in 1742. There are two versions: BRF, Riccardiano, 2695–2697 (1672–1705, a good copy in fully developed form); Riccardiano, 3457 (1672–1742, 12 little notebooks, a bad copy in synthetic form). 46 Biblioteca Moreniana di Firenze, Acquisti Diversi, 64, VII. 47 Antonio Cocchi (1695–1758) starts his own diary in 1722: University of Florence, Biomedical Library, R.207.24.I.1 and following (103 notebooks). 48 Giovanni Lami’s (1697–1770) Diario storico fiorentino, with autobiographic insertions, starts in 1661 (but news on his life are only present after 1717), and ends in 1757: BRF, Riccardiano, 3818. For Lami’s private memoirs see Pelli’s observations cited below, which show that such memoirs existed, but almost surely were destroyed after his death. 49 Marco Lastri’s (1731–1811) diary starts in 1774: Biblioteca Moreniana di Firenze, Frullani, 32.
50 Filippo Baldinucci, Diario spirituale, ed. by G. Parigino (Florence: Le Lettere, 1995). Of the author’s life (1624–1696) the diary covers the years 1669–1696. 51 Redi’s Ricordi (Arezzo, Biblioteca “Città di Arezzo”, ms. 299), already used by G. Imbert, Francesco Redi. L’uomo (dal carteggio edito e inedito e da’ Ricordi). La villa medicea di Pratolino secondo i viaggiatori francesi e i poeti (Milan-Rome-Naples, 1925), were partially published by U. Viviani, Vita e opere inedite di Francesco Redi, III, La vacchetta. Libro di ricordi (Arezzo, 1931). An on line edition is now available at the URL http://www .francescoredi.it/. 52 See F. Redi, Libro di ricordi, ad datam, before 1660, and between October 1693 and January 1696. 53 Pepys starts his diary in 1660, and Fagiuoli in 1672. However, the first private diaries by Puritans already appear in the late 16th century: see above, note 43. On Fagiuoli see G. Milan, “Fagiuoli, Giovanni Battista,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XLIV (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana 1994), pp. 175–179 (the article, all about the literary
Fagiuoli began his annotations at the age of 12, when his father died, and records the final year of school with the Jesuits, his first jobs, and everything that happens, from having witnessed executions or gone to the theater, to the duties assigned to him by influential persons. Certainly he was attentive to epi- sodes that he considered important, which sometimes corresponded to rites of passage: his first visit to the barber for a shave, at sixteen; at twenty-one shav- ing himself for the first time, or the voyages and sojourns also outside Italy where he was in service.54 The diary is in fact just that, but it is mixed with the functions of a family book because, in tune with the desire to record every- thing that is important to him, Fagiuoli notes the deaths of all his relatives, his own marriage, the births and baptisms of his children. His feelings show through on the occasion of the death of his parents, or of an older friend who was like a father to him.55 The spiritual diary of Filippo Baldinucci is a different case, and is almost unique: so scrupulously devout as to be almost obsessive and dependent for his own serenity on the opinions of the spiritual guides to whom he turned, he used the diary (not every day) specifically to record his worries, anxieties, “hells” (inferni), perhaps instigated by these same guides.56 His family is pres- ent (some of his worries are about the household, the patrimony, the future of
works, cites the MS. Riccardiano 2695 only for the author’s father’s death). Otherwise: Bencini, Il vero G.B. Fagiuoli; and the little volume R. Foggi, Giovan Battista Fagiuoli (1660–1742). Cultura e umorismo di un uomo alla corte dei Medici: un’eredità conservata (Florence: Bruschi, 1993). Excerpts from the diary had been published in Conti, Firenze dai Medici ai Lorena, pp. 403–449. 54 BRF, Riccardiano, 2695, passim. Among his travels: with the Apostolic nuncio to Warsaw in 1690 (he stays there for one year), the pastoral visits with the Archbishop Morigia in 1698, his sojourn in Rome with Cardinal Medici in 1700 for the conclave. 55 Ibid., at fols. 1r, 85r, 98r respectively. His older friend is Orazio Vignali: “He was one of my dear friends and patrons, and I was as sorry as I was for my father, because besides his special qualities he was a real and honored gentleman, and almost one might say that in Florence it was impossible to find his equal.” 56 See F. Baldinucci, Diario spirituale, p. 27: “The night and the whole New Year’s Day my mind suffered the worst miseries that one can imagine, and such that I never suffered them before, nor can I equate them to other than a mental hell,” whereas the whole text is scattered with expressions like “travagli,” “tribolazioni,” “scrupoli,” “tentationi,” “timori.” On Baldinucci, who (charged in 1665 by Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici to reorder the col- lection of drawings which became the core of the Uffizi Drawings Department, and author of the Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua [1681]) can be considered one of the first art historians in the modern sense, see P. Barocchi, Storiografia e collezio nismo dal Vasari al Lanzi, in Storia dell’arte italiana, II, L’artista e il pubblico (Turin: Einaudi, 1979), pp. 5–86.
57 See for example F. Baldinucci, Diario spirituale, pp. 31–32, 37, 50–51, 53–57, 87–89 and passim. 58 In spite of the recent corrections, on the Grand-Duke’s possible motivations, to the picture presented by Furio Diaz in 1971, the fact remains that Cosimo III’s (1671–1723) period repre- sented in Tuscany an age particularly inclined to follow the indications of Counter- Reformation Church. See M. Fantoni, “Il bigottismo di Cosimo III: da leggenda storiografica ad oggetto storico,” in Angiolini, Becagli, Verga (eds.), La Toscana nell’età di Cosimo III, pp. 389–402; Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana, pp. 493–496 (par. “Il bigottismo di Cosimo III”). 59 On Antonio Cocchi, physician and professor of anatomy and surgery at the Florentine Studio, polyglot, antiquarian, philologist and literary critic (besides being the first Tuscan admitted to the English Masonic lodge of Florence in 1732), after the by now old biogra- phy by A. Corsini, Antonio Cocchi. Un erudito del “settecento” (Milan 1928), one can see U. Baldini, “Cocchi, Antonio,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XXVI (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1982), pp. 451–461. Cocchi’s Effemeridi are now available in digital form (“Le Effemeridi di Antonio Cocchi”) at the following URL of the University of Florence: www.sba.unifi.it/CMpro-v-p-466.html. 60 See University of Florence, Biomedical Library, R.207.24.I, notebooks 1 to 7 (22 May 1722 – 23 July 1725), passim.
Other Florentine 18th century diarists are equally intellectual: Giovanni Lami and Marco Lastri. Lami, librarian of the Riccardiana and docent of eccle- siastical history and theologian, erudite, founded the first true Florentine liter- ary review, the Novelle letterarie, in 1740.61 Around 1757 he wrote a Diario storico fiorentino which at moments includes annotations in the third person relative to his own biography.62 He too had written an Efemeridi, which has not sur- vived, or not completely, seemingly because he was too critical of his contem- poraries in his remarks.63 Lastri, provost of San Giovanni, academician of the Georgofili, and with varying interests, succeeded with Pelli to Lami in the direction of the Novelle letterarie.64 Even though he cited the earlier autobiographical tradition, from Augustine to Montaigne, he put off writing until late, in 1774, held back until then by the feeling that to write about oneself corresponded to a negative form of amor propre.65 He too adopted, along the lines of Cocchi, an external diary form in which he gives his attention to his activities, his works, just like Lami (who wrote separately – among other things – a sort of “family book” in which his literary works66 are treated like children), and a small part is given over to questions of health.
61 On Lami see now M.P. Paoli, “Lami, Giovanni,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, LXIII (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2004), pp. 226–233. 62 See above, note 48. 63 See Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni, Efemeridi, in BNCF, Nuove accessioni, 1050 (henceforth: Pelli, Efemeridi), I s., XXVI, fol. 117: “Even the aforesaid Lami left exact and detailed memo- ries of the things which happened to him, but I understand that they contain too cynical liberties, and such details that neither I nor another wise person would leave to posterity”; II s., IV, fol. 639: “Among these [texts bought by Anton Maria Bandini in 1776] there is the diary kept by said Lami, but not complete, maybe because some sheets of it have been cut off, as it seems, by the person who had them into his hands before the first sale.” 64 On Lastri see now M.P. Paoli, “Lastri, Marco,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, LXIII (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2004), pp. 810–814. 65 Biblioteca Moreniana di Firenze, Frullani, 32, fol. 1r: “Many wrote their own life, or at least some of the more remarkable facts of their days: Caesar, Augustine, Montaigne, monsignor Palafox; some others kept an exact diary of what they not only did, but also saw and said, and they entitled their memoirs in any possible way they liked, as Chronicles, Ricordi, Journals, Efemeridi. Up to now I thought that all that which belongs to the writer’s history was suspect and condemnable as ‘amour propre’; but I changed my mind: I believe, that is, that among the many news and people may be some which can interest the posterity…Here are the reasons why I decided about the beginning of July of the current year 1774 to write all what I do, see and feel of more remarkable and worthy of engaging the curiosity of enlightened and brilliant people, and which can be useful for my instruction and memory.” 66 Cfr BNCF, Nuove Accessioni, 6, esp. fols. 1–9.
In general we may say that in the course of the 18th century decidedly dif- ferent forms of self-consciousness appear so that a writer feels much more defined as a person than as a member of a family. It is especially the second half of the century that sees this change in consciousness and models of memoir. But it is not necessary to wait for the Confessions of Rousseau, first published in 1782. There were already forms of memoir in mid-18th century Florence that assumed the characteristics of personal diary, of chronicle of events of the day, of Zibaldone (commonplace book) of news, annotations, reflections considered important to the author. The champion, from this point of view, was Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni who wrote, almost daily, 80 uninterrupted volumes of his own Diary called the Efemeridi,67 between 1759 and 1808. Pelli was certainly an important exponent of Tuscan Enlightenment and with Lastri succeeded to Lami to the direction of the Novelle letterarie. A Florentine patrician, having in some way begun the cursus honorum in the Grand Duchy, he became one of the book censors in 1763 and his most impor- tant public office was as director of the Uffizi Gallery from 1775 to 1792.68 Pelli has been studied as a precocious example of autobiography:69 and he was surely that, even anticipating Rousseau himself in some traits. In a recent essay I have tried to throw light on how his tendency to write a Diary with these characteristics, beyond the earlier Florentine models (especially Cocchi, who he himself cites, as will Lami later) has its roots in certain traits of the family memory writings.70 Only that now the perspective is overturned: while earlier the center of interest lay with the family and the individual emerged only at moments, now it is the individual and his intimate aspects that are the center, while the family remains in the margins. But this dimension was certainly also included, as is clear from some explicit excerpts:
67 Almost the whole first (1759–1773) and the second series (1773–1808) are kept in BNCF, Nuove accessioni, 1050. Volumes VIII and XVIII of the II series are at the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, while the last volume of the II series (1808, January-27 June 1808) is at the ASF, Carte Pelli, busta 3, ins. 9. 68 On Pelli see R. Zapperi, “Bencivenni Pelli, Giuseppe”; Pasta, “Ego ipse…non alius”; S. Landi, Il governo delle opinioni. Censura e formazione del consenso nella Toscana del Settecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000), passim. See moreover, directed by Pasta himself, the website Efemeridi. Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni (http://pelli.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/), which is pub lishing online the edition of the complete text of Pelli’s diary (so far [July 2013] all the 30 volumes of the first series, and the first 18 of the second series have been published [until 1790]). 69 See Capecchi, Scrittura e coscienza autobiografica. 70 See above, chap. 10.
Since this Efemeridi must be centered on me, I want to add to it many notes about my household, and bit by bit my patrimony, etc.71
Thus Pelli included in various parts of his enormous diaristic undertaking mention of the family, and citations of the name Pelli discovered in various sources. His intention was ambivalent: on the one hand, for example, he col- lected the papers and the proper family book of an ancestor from the early 17th century which contained the reconstruction of the lives of many relatives, revering their memory.72 On the other hand he does not keep to the same project:
All these memoirs will not show that my family is a great thing. But what matters? As I heard in the theater, I am as I am, that is enough for me, nor do I wish for more. The more because when my house dies with me, everything will be as smoke, fog, or something thinner if it exists.73
So Pelli, a bachelor who wore the abbot’s habit up to the age of thirty-five, felt all the frailty of his family group. At least up until a certain moment: when his first-born brother with whom he was never in agreement died, leaving to him the patrimony and the title, he had a change of spirit and of attitude. He even considered the possibility, later realized, of adopting a fatherless girl who would become the means (with the marriage he procured for her with Giovanni Fabbroni) of his transmission into the future. From this moment on he inserted into that which remained his zibaldone and intimate diary phrases that recall the ones from the family books of an earlier time.74 Nevertheless the intimate component remained dominant. And at the base is his broad reading, which included much of the earlier memoir genre. From autobiographies75 to biographies, Pelli read a large part of all published works in the course of his life. At thirty he read for the first time the Essais of
71 Pelli, Efemeridi, I s., XXIII, p. 108 (1769). 72 ASF, Carte Pelli, 1, ins. 1, autograph note in the second flyleaf: “If you can look after a grand-grandson of yours, you found him in me, who every morning venerate your mem- ory with respect in a portrait in front of my table.” 73 Pelli, Efemeridi, I s., XXIII, p. 134 (1769). 74 See above, chap. 10. 75 Pelli read, among other things, Cellini, Montaigne, Cardano, saint Teresa, Monluc (Commentaire de messire Blaise de Montluc, 1592: memories about 50 years of service as a soldier), Cardinal de Retz, bishop Palafox (Vida interior, 1687), marshal Bassompierre (Mémoires, 1665), Pierre-Daniel Huet bishop of Avranches (Commentarius de rebus ad eum pertinentibus, 1718), Helvétius, Rousseau.
Montaigne,76 and from him he draws a sense of intimate correspondence which in some way will guide the writing of his own enormous Diary.77 He wrote, as he himself says at the beginning, in imitation of the physician Cocchi.78 Even though this intention modifies during the project, and Pelli would write according to his own sensitivity, which forbade a whole series of external manifestations.79 In this sort of enormous Zibaldone which encompasses everything, from his reading to the registration of meteorological events, from his personal daily diary to various considerations on life and the world, the idea of intimate confession dominates, aiming at self-portrait, self- representation with the end of better knowing oneself, and in which is con- tinuously reproposed the motif of a different, and particularly acute, individual sensitivity. The author defines it as the “memoir of a solitary who loves to study himself and converse with himself.”80 Wherein the end, I would say, is that of modern autobiography. Even, as I have said, before Rousseau. Because Pelli began his undertaking in 1759, and Rousseau’s Confessions (notwithstanding that the author was very well known for his work well before that date) became available in print only in 1782. Pelli acquired them and read them as soon as they were available, curious about the content,81 and from then until the end
76 Pelli, Efemeridi, I s., I, p. 104 (1759). 77 Pelli, Efemeridi, I s., V, p. 141 (1761): “If I often cite Montaigne, this happens because in him I find many things that befit me, and because he develops many ideas that I feel vaguely, and puts me in the condition to reason about subjects which he treats with a precision greater than the one I might have used before I came across him.” 78 Pelli, Efemeridi, I s., I, p. 1 (1759): “Men like mostly to remember things done or known in their lives, therefore many characters respectable by doctrine or worthy activities, and illustrious, took care to note their actions, accidents, things seen, read, or heard. Among the first the late physician Antonio Cocchi, distinguished name, man of letters of vast knowledge, of the greatest honesty, since his youth took note in some little notebooks of all that he was doing, reading, and hearing, often mixing the memory of the most remark- able things of his times with his most private and domestic actions. These notebooks he called Efemeridi, and the same title I assigned to this and the following volumes in which, in imitation of him, I decided from now on to write what day by day I will do.” 79 Pelli, Efemeridi, I s., XI, p. 88 (1763): “I am told that doctor Cocchi in his Efemeridi was hint- ing at all the times he had to do with his wife. I have no wife, and therefore I do not have this amusement, but in case I had it, I would not think it a subject to write about.” 80 “this private depository of my thoughts…is the memoir of a solitary man, who likes to study himself and to talk with himself”: Pelli, Efemeridi, II s., I, p. 108v (1773), also cited in Capecchi, Scrittura e coscienza autobiografica, p. 148 without providing the exact reference. 81 Pelli, Efemeridi, II s., X, p. 1819v (22 June 1782): “Rousseau’s Confessions have just been pub- lished, and I have seen them superficially, because I ordered them so as to have them for myself.”
82 Ibid., X, p. 1832, and in general see esp. the comments on Rousseau in vol. X of the II s. (1782). 83 See Barbagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto. 84 See Ciappelli, Un ministro del Granducato di Toscana.
85 See Tassi (ed.), Ricordi, prose e poesie, p. 86: Benvenuto’s plea (preci) to the Duke “with which he narrates that, being sixty years old without children nor descendants, and with- out any hope of having them, he wishes to take in adoption as his son…the about four years old Antonio.” His wish was accepted, but seven years later Benvenuto, who had assigned to his adopted son (by him called Benvenutino) an inheritance of 1000 scudi, and had in the meanwhile had a son (1561), disinherited him when 11, since he had missed the condition according to which he had to pratice the craft of sculptor (ibid., pp. 88–89, 94, 106). 86 Montaigne had six daughters, only one of which will survive him, but no male children. More than a critic has seen in the Essais a substitution for the male heir he could not have: A. Compagnon, Nous, Michel de Montaigne (Paris: Seuil, 1980), pp. 194–230; G. Nakam, Montaigne et son temps (Paris: Gallimard, 1993, ed. or. 1982), pp. 420–423; F. Garavini, Mostri e chimere. Montaigne, il testo, il fantasma (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991), pp. 110–112; S. Mancini, Oh, un amico! In dialogo con Montaigne e i suoi interpreti (Milan: Angeli, 1996), pp. 116, 122, 250. 87 See above, chap. 10. 88 Also Capecchi, Scrittura e coscienza autobiografica, p. 86 mentions a form of “ausculta zione interiore.”
I had just conceived of the pleasure of reflecting, of examining, measur- ing myself, and this gave me the idea before Rousseau to make my Confessions in some way, but especially after St. Augustine and Montaigne. This latter became for the same reason my favorite writer, my best teacher, my almost constant companion. I haven’t written everything, being prudent, but I’ve written nothing false or left out anything of import, and […] I have painted my heart as well as a good painter could have painted my face.92
89 See above, note 6. 90 Amelang, The Flight of Icarus, p. 132 (Cellini’s German translation was published in 1803). Cellini influences however also Stendhal (in his Vie d’Henri Brulard) (ibid.). 91 J.-J. Rousseau, Confessions, transl. by A. Scholar, ed. by P. Coleman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 505 (book X). The contemporary criptoautobiographer Rétif de la Bretonne, in Monsieur Nicolas, cites of course both Montaigne and Rousseau (see Amelang, The Flight of Icarus, p. 394). 92 Pelli, Efemeridi, II s., X, p. 1829 (1782) [Italics are mine].
In this chapter I would like to provide an annotated survey of the critical edi- tions of sources for the history of the family in relation to Tuscany, for a span of over fifty years, and for two historical eras. Since it is difficult to do it in a short essay, I will necessarily have to be schematic. First let us define clearly which sources will be taken into consideration. Family history has been, in the last fifty years, one of the principal sectors of social history, and in consequence it produced a very large number of stud- ies. Its development is in general along the three lines defined by Michael Anderson as early as 1982 and generally accepted since: the family structures, which corresponds to an historical-demographical approach; family relations, or the affective relations between the members and the ways in which they interact; the economy of the family, the characteristics and management of the patrimony, its transformations over time, the strategies used to conserve or transmit it.1 This scheme can be expanded further, following the same lines or coupling them with others, in function of more specific interests that have emerged among historians recently: one may be interested, beyond the above, in the norms regarding the family in all periods, in the forms of private life and material civilization expressed by the family; in ideal models for the family according to the political-religious context. Each of these lines has its own specific sources that in a general survey should be mentioned and considered. Let us take for example family structures. The sources are in large part the same as for demographic history: the parish registers of baptisms, marriages, deaths, the status animarum (status of the living), various fiscal sources, such as the Florentine catasto of 1427 and later, provided that they contain informa- tion about the composition of the family as well as its wealth. With the increas- ing difficulty of printing large series of data like the ones in the above sources, one must from now on consider the possibility of publishing the more impor- tant ones online, especially if they are organized as databases that can be consulted online, of which one model is the Online Catasto of 1427 elaborated by David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber and put online by Burr
1 Anderson, Approaches to the history.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004270756_015
Litchfield and Anthony Molho.2 Sources of this type are of course polivalent in the sense that they are useful not only to the historian of family structures but also for the historian of family economy. Regarding family relations, the sources are various, but an important part is played by the private family archives, papers of differing types that document the relations between members of the family, keeping together the letters, the notary acts for marriages and wills, the forms of cultivation of the memory, or reconstruction of the history of the family by its members (in the form of dia- ries, memoirs, family books), the papers about litigations on wealth, which very often involve a series of more or less close relatives. The same variegated group of papers also serves in documenting the economic-patrimonial part of studies on the family, and as such should be taken into consideration. These sources then accompany, for the familial component, those studied by eco- nomic historians in general and of business. And actually the whole of these documents, and especially letters, private account books, family books, and at the end of the period diaries, is fundamental for the reconstruction of the private and material life of the family. One field itself is represented by other sources which, as a part of those on its structures, are not produced within the family yet concern it, in the sense that they either regulate its functioning, like the norms relative to it present in the various forms of codifications, or represent cultural models, like the ideals of the family elaborated in various epochs in lay or religious preceptive litera- ture, written now by ecclesiastical now by lay intellectuals or representatives of political power. For the first part (norms) I must refer the reader to specific literature on legal sources. It is clear that here one must fill in the empty spots in the available normative corpus of the various epochs and situations that we are looking at. However, in reality, much of it is already available in general from the beginning of the nineteenth century in printed texts that are often rare but can be consulted in libraries. A fuller source could be in the thematic collection of the norms that from time to time (situation to situation, period to period) concerned the family: a sort of reconstruction of “family law” in the various eras. For the second part of this field (models), an equally specific enterprise to undertake would be the identification of the corpus of useful texts, which should then be examined to see which are the more important to be published, in print or online. Steps have been taken in this sense on the national level for some sectors of this kind of source. I am thinking of the volume which is at once a study and a repertory, Donna, disciplina, creanza
2 D. Herlihy, C. Klapisch-Zuber, R.B. Litchfield, A. Molho (ed. by), Florentine Renaissance Resources. Online Catasto of 1427
3 See G. Zarri (ed.), Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo. Studi e testi a stampa (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1996). 4 The subject has been treated above all by the research group which was formed at Trento in 1996, to which I have taken part myself, which produced several national and international seminars and conferences and four volumes, all published in Bologna by Il Mulino between 2000 and 2006, and all edited by S. Seidel Menchi and D. Quaglioni: Coniugi nemici. La sepa- razione in Italia dal XII al XVIII secolo, 2000; Matrimoni in dubbio. Unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia, dal XIV al XVIII secolo, 2001; Trasgressioni. Seduzione, concubinato, adul- terio, bigamia (XIV–XVIII secolo), 2004; I tribunali del matrimonio (secoli XV–XVIII), 2006. The edition of sources, which was already part, abridged or integral, of the first volume (four trials published in full, of which one from Lucca (1424), and one from Florence (1773)), continued systematically in the second volume, in which an attached CD contains the full edition of eight trials, three of which are from Tuscany (Lucca, 1396; Pisa, 1583; Livorno 1772).
5 See “La memoria familiare in età moderna: censimento delle fonti toscane e analisi compara- tiva,” research unit of the University of Trento (dir. by G. Ciappelli) as part of the Project of Relevant National Importance “Storia della famiglia. Costanti e varianti in una prospettiva europea (secoli XV–XX),” national coord. S. Seidel Menchi. Bibliography on the subject is by now very large. Besides the works cited in the following notes, see esp. Klapisch-Zuber, “L’invenzione del passato familiare”; Ead., “Le genealogie fiorentine”; Pandimiglio, “Ricordanza e libro di famiglia”; Id., “Libro di famiglia”; Ciappelli, “Family Memory”; Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II; above, chap. 7. 6 See above, chap. 1. 7 Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, p. 15. 8 For the definition “écrits du for privé,” especially followed by the French-speaking scholars, see now the several publications produced by the French research group author of the web- site Les écrits du for privé de la fin du Moyen-age à 1914
I will not now review the lines of “historiographic success,” and conse- quently partial editorial success, of the Florentine texts from the beginning up to the last fifty. I refer for this to the very good overview by Fulvio Pezzarossa of 1980: La tradizione fiorentina della memorialistica, which goes up to 1940. Not by chance the essay was followed by Per un catalogo dei testi memorialistici fiorentini a stampa, containing 330 titles even if the family books are fewer. To this must be of course added the other survey by the same author La memoria listica fiorentina tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, which instead covers the period from after World War Two to 1979.9 It is enough to say that after the frequent use made of these texts by 19th–20th century historians as sources of language, or for biographical or more generically documentary purposes, when only texts considered exceptional were published in full (and often editors elimi- nated precisely those “little” items about the family), the time for integral edi- tions of ricordi or family books, almost all 14th–15th century, began in the 1950s with the publication of Bernardo Machiavelli’s Ricordi by Cesare Olschki (1954) and of Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli’s Ricordi by Vittore Branca (1956).10 These were pioneering studies, also inspired by the exceptional sources: the first was the first family book of Machiavelli’s father, and the second written in an almost literary style that makes it one of the “three crowns” of Tuscan memory writings along with Bonaccorso Pitti and Donato Velluti and as such was already included among the “minor authors”11 in one of the principal histories of Italian literature in the mid-1960s. Skipping over other examples of editions in those years by philologists or historians of literature (the even too selective one of Giovanni Rucellai’s Zibaldone edited by Perosa in 1960, or the partial one of political and family ricordi of Gino Capponi, edited by Folena in 1962),12
9 Pezzarossa, “La memorialistica fiorentina”; Id., “La tradizione fiorentina della memoriali stica.” See moreover at least the chapter “La storiografia letteraria e i libri di famiglia: dalle edizioni settecentesche agli studi più recenti” in Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I, pp. 21–31. 10 B. Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi; Morelli, Ricordi. 11 See Petrocchi, “Cultura e poesia del Trecento,” pp. 627–628 (Velluti); De Robertis, “L’esperienza poetica del Quattrocento,” pp. 378–381 (Morelli and Pitti); the definition “three crowns of memory writings” for Morelli, Pitti and Velluti is by Pezzarossa, “La memoriali stica fiorentina,” p. 105. In the same years also the edition of Jacopo da Pontormo’s Ricordi, by Emilio Cecchi himself, is published. Pontormo’s Ricordi are not a real family book, but rather a diary of the years when he was painting his frescoes in the church of San Lorenzo, and are published because of their importance for the artist’s biography (Pontormo, Diario). 12 See Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone, I; G. Folena, “Ricordi politici e familiari di Gino Capponi,” in Miscellanea di studi offerti a Armando Balduino e Bianca Bianchi per le loro nozze (Padua: Seminario di Filologia moderna dell’Università, 1962), pp. 29–39.
13 Petrucci (ed.), Il libro di ricordanze dei Corsini (“Fonti per la Storia d’Italia,” 100). 14 Bec, Les marchands écrivains; Id., Il libro degli affari proprii. 15 C.M. de La Roncière, Un changeur fiorentin du Trecento: Lippo di Fede del Sega (1285 env.- 1363 env.) (Paris: SEVPEN, 1973). 16 L. Bardeschi Ciulich and P. Barocchi (eds.), I Ricordi di Michelangelo (Florence: Sansoni, 1970); Neri di Bicci, Le ricordanze (10 marzo 1453–24 aprile 1475), ed. by B. Santi (Pisa: Marlin, 1976). 17 Biondi de’ Medici Tornaquinci (ed.), Libro di memorie; Sillano (ed.), Le ricordanze di Giovanni Chellini. 18 Branca (ed.), Mercanti scrittori, pp. 341–503.
In the mid-1980s Angelo Cicchetti and Raul Mordenti, both Italianists, began to identify the genre “family book,” no longer confined to Florence and Tuscany in the form of ricordanze, but as a type of writing that was tendentially present in the whole peninsula, with its own specific formal characteristics, even if they varied, and motivated by the causes mentioned above.19 The iden- tification of a paraliterary genre, and the need to define it more precisely within the vast universe of private writings preserved in the family sections of public archives and in private family archives, often difficult to access, or hid- den by incongruous or brief archival descriptions, pushed the interuniversity research group that was formed, composed of historians and historians of lit- erature, to undertake a national census. This attempt at a systematic excava- tion aborted fairly early on, suffocated in part by a lack of funds for the research, not sufficiently compensated by the voluntarism of the youngest scholars, and in part by the Florentine situation which, notwithstanding the reassessment of the apparent quantitative monopoly owing to the new contextualization, con- tinues (even today) to be the Italian reality in which family books are by far the most numerous and witnesses a specificity of function that is present here in a way that is not comparable to other places, especially outside of Tuscany. I have reported the results of the group’s work between 1983 and 1997 in another essay to which in general I refer the reader.20 In 1989, the third volume of the research group’s series, “La memoria familiare” by the Roman publisher Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, was the edition of Ugolino di Niccolò Martelli’s Ricordanze by Fulvio Pezzarossa, who also tried to define new criteria for the edition of this kind of source.21 The discussion about the best way to publish family books was in fact an unsolved knot at the time (and has not ended).22 On the one hand Mordenti and others, among them the paleographer Bartoli Langeli, were proposing the adoption of criteria which were very sophisticated but very laborious, even from a printing point of view, and more adapted to short or less complex texts like many of the non-Tuscan ones. On the other hand the need to treat broader and more numerous sources, always with rigor, but in a more agile form, inspired a new editorial project, the series “Fonti per la storia del Tardo Medioevo e della prima età moderna,” in which I published the two volumes of Francesco di Matteo Castellani’s Ricordanze between 1992 and 1995.23 Already in 1997, in the work cited above, I was able to note the
19 Cicchetti and Mordenti, “La scrittura dei libri di famiglia”; Eid., I libri di famiglia in Italia, I. 20 Ciappelli, “I libri di famiglia a Firenze.” 21 Martelli, Ricordanze (“La memoria familiare,” 3). 22 Ciappelli, “I libri di famiglia a Firenze,” pp. 132–133. 23 Castellani, Ricordanze, 2 vols.
24 Ciappelli, “I libri di famiglia a Firenze,” pp. 137–138. 25 Molho and Sznura (eds.), “Brighe, affanni, volgimenti di stato”; I. Chabot, Ricostruzione di una famiglia. I Ciurianni di Firenze tra XII e XV secolo. Con l’edizione critica del “Libro pro- prio” di Lapo di Valore Ciurianni e successori (1326–1429) (Florence: Le Lettere, 2012); Giovanni di Pagolo Rucellai, Zibaldone, ed. by G. Battista (Florence, Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013). 26 Pandimiglio, I libri di famiglia e il Libro segreto di Goro Dati (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2006), where the edition takes the whole second part, pp. 93–139. The text should have been published in the “Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano” in 1985, as Branca recalled in 1986 (Mercanti scrittori, p. LXXXVI), and Pandimiglio himself remarked twenty years later (I libri di famiglia, p. 43). 27 Polizzotto and Kovesi, Memorie di casa Valori. I am not considering here the new editions of Pontormo’s Ricordi by Nigro (which, however, is not really a family book: Pontormo, Il libro mio), and of Del Corazza’s and Giusto d’Anghiari’s ricordi, more chronicles than family books (Bartolomeo del Corazza, Diario fiorentino, ed. by R. Gentile [Rome: De Rubeis, 1991]; N. Newbigin, “Giornali di ser Giusto d’Anghiari (1437–1482),” Letteratura italiana antica 3 (2002), pp. 41–246). 28 Bartolomeo Cerretani, Ricordi, ed. by G. Berti (Florence: Olschki, 1993); Bernardo Machiavelli, Libro di ricordi, ed. by C. Olschki (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007, reprint of the 1954 edition, with preface by L. Perini); Buonsignori, Memorie. 29 Lorenzo’s ricordi have been published in Lorenzo de’ Medici, Opere, pp. XXXIII–XXXIX; Cosimo’s ricordi are now in English translation above, chap. 6, Appendix, and in original in G. Ciappelli, “I libri di ricordi dei Medici,” in Cotta and Klein (eds.), I Medici in rete, pp. 170–177. To these ones one may add the Ricordi by Biagio Buonaccorsi (1495–1525), a friend and colleague of Machiavelli’s, published in D. Fachard, Biagio Buonaccorsi. Sa vie, son temps, son oeuvre (Bologna: Boni, 1976), pp. 169–221.
This is the Florentine situation, that thus, among other things, has seen an almost exclusive concentration on the late medieval period. This is also because it was thought, wrongly, as has been recently demonstrated,30 that the production of family books had undergone a substantial crisis in the early modern era owing to varying factors which it would be too long to consider here. In consequence, in part these texts were not even looked for, and cer- tainly they were not considered to be candidates for critical editions. We will soon see what the situation is today. What can we say about the other Tuscan situations? Because of the pre- sumed Florentine monopoly on the production of this type of text even on the Tuscan plane, it was often thought that family books were produced almost exclusively in Florence, and much less in other places. This had not prevented one, from time to time, from finding and studying some in diverse situations. If we follow the same chronological scheme traced for Florence, we see that a series of texts worthy of our attention have bit by bit emerged, for the late Middle Ages, though for the most part this has not brought about their publica- tion. In Arezzo we have the libro di ricordi studied by Cherubini in Signori, con- tadini, borghesi (1974), in Lucca Il libro memoriale di Donato, from the end of the thirteenth century (1989), and the account book of a 14th century Lucchese goldsmith (1988), in Siena the fifteenth century account book of a farmer (any- way not autograph) studied by Balestracci (1984), and that of a notary, again by Cherubini, in the volume mentioned.31 In the province of Massa we have the extraordinary case of the apothecary Giovanni Antonio da Faie, Lunigianese, which was instead printed more than once between 1971 and 1997.32 However,
30 See above, chap. 8. 31 See Cherubini, “La proprietà fondiaria” (Simo d’Ubertino d’Arezzo); Id., “Dal libro di ricordi di un notaio senese” (ser Cristofano di Gano di Guidino); Paradisi (ed.), Il libro memoriale di Donato; Capitanio, “Un libro di conti di un orafo lucchese”; Balestracci, La zappa e la retorica. 32 Uno scrittore lunigianese del ‘400. Giovanni Antonio da Faie, ed. by Association Manfredo Giuliani (Pontremoli: Artigianelli, 1971); Giovanni Antonio da Faie, Libro de croniche e memoria e amaystramento per lavenire, ed. by M.T. Bicchierai (La Spezia: Luna, 1997). The text, actually published for the first time by G. Sforza in 1904 in Giornale storico per le province parmensi (pp. 129–183), and missed until recently by the specialists of memory writings (also for the very local circulation of recent editions), is now at the center of at least three contemporary studies: S. Bordini, “Lo sguardo su di sé. Vita di Giovanni Antonio da Faie speziale, 1409–1470,” in G. Tonelli (ed.), Pier delle Vigne in catene da Borgo San Donnino alla Lunigiana medievale, Atti del convegno (2005–2006) (Sarzana: Grafiche Lunensi, 2006), pp. 33–64; F. Franceschi, “Il dolore del figlio nell’ ‘autobiografia’ quattro- centesca di Giovanni Antonio da Faie,” in M. Montesano (ed.), “Come l’orco della fiaba”.
Studi per Franco Cardini (Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2010), pp. 393–406; G. Airaldi, Senza un denaro al mondo. Vita e avventure di Giovanni Antonio da Faie, speziale di fine Quattrocento (Genova: De Ferrari, 2009). 33 Vincenzo Burlamacchi, Libro di ricordi degnissimi delle nostre famiglie, ed. by S. Adorni Braccesi (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 1996 [“Rerum italica rum scriptores recentiores,” 7]). On one of these text see now also S. Broomhall and C.H. Winn (eds.), Les Femmes et l’histoire familiale (XVIe–XVIIe siècle). Renée Burlamacchi, Descrittione della Vita et Morte del Sigr Michele Burlamachi (1623); Jeanne du Laurens, Genealogie de Messieurs du Laurens (1631) (Paris: Champion, 2008). 34 See R. Ambrosini and A. Belegni (eds.), Antonio di Buonaventura Minutoli: memorie di un medico lucchese (1555–1606) (Lucca: Accademia lucchese di scienze, lettere ed arti, 1993); F. Falletti (ed.), Il diario del pievano Girolamo Magni. Vita, devozione e arte sulla montagna pistoiese nel Cinquecento (Pisa: Pacini, 1999); R. Manno Tolu, “Le ‘Memorie universali occorrenti anticamente’ di Cipriano Bracali (1498–1509),” Bullettino Storico Pistoiese 90 (1988), pp. 33–58. 35 G. Baronti, I libri di bottega di Giordano di Guido Giordani, maestro coltellinaio a Scarperia (1546–1562) (Florence: Giorgi & Gambi, 1991). 36 I. Biagianti, Storie di famiglia. Nobili, capitani, dottori nei Ricordi della famiglia De’ Giudici di Arezzo (1493–1769) (Florence: Olschki, 2004); L. Carbone (ed.), I libri di famiglia dei Nobili de Giudici di Arezzo (1769–1876). Con alcune note sul carteggio tra Angelo Lorenzo de Giudici e Vittorio Fossombroni (Florence: Olschki, 2008).
1931).37 For Siena there is the very recent edition, above all for linguistic rea- sons, of the 16th century libro di ricordi of Giovanbattista da Radicondoli edited by Gianluca Biasci.38 In Pisa, the wealth of 18th century family books of the Bracci Cambini has been highlighted in Roberto Bizzocchi’s In famiglia (2001), and after that it would be possible to expect, for its objective interest, an at least partial edition of the 15 notebooks.39 There was certainly in the Pisan territory an eighteenth century family book by a Volterran podestà in the Leopoldine period, but like others from the same source it has not been published.40 The results of studies like Bizzocchi’s on the Bracci Cambini, and the con- tinuing research on family books in the modern era in the Tuscan area also by myself, have determined another context of research. Beginning at least in 2005 a research group from the University of Trent, directed by me, undertook to make a systematic census of modern Tuscan family books, with the inten- tion of creating an all-embracing database, that would also include complete or partial editions of the texts.41 The dearth of funds allowed has so far only let us count the texts kept in public archives or libraries in Florence, while the other provinces and the greater part of private family archives have only been sounded out. Nevertheless, the results of this have already thrown light on two things: (1) that the production of these texts, that was thought to have entered into crisis in Florence and Tuscany in the modern age because of the new role of the state or Church in the sense of their appropriation of the data of private family memory (through parish registers and public administration), in truth continues to flower between 16th and 18th centuries, and even at the beginning of the 19th it lives on as a tradition, and spreads also from the elite families to those of the lower classes;42 (2) that in the early modern age the number of
37 See the website Francesco Redi. Poeta e scienziato alla corte dei Medici
43 See above, chaps. 1, 8, and 9. 44 See the website Les écrits du for privé cited above, note 8. 45 See above, note 8. 46 See the website First Person Writings in European Context
All these areas by now overlap and confront each other: periods, limited areas of research, document types. What conclusions may we draw? Even if we consider only the sector “family book,” the production and pub- lishing of editions of this kind of source in the last fifty years has been abso- lutely rhapsodic and not coordinated, as could anyway have been expected given the multivalence of this sort of text. Various series and editors, almost always for single or few texts, the editors primarily historians (even economic, at times) with some historians of literature and language, publication rhythms which have been very slow even within the two major specific series (“La memoria familiare” in Rome, “Dalle biblioteche e dagli archivi toscani,” in Florence) because of the difficulty of finding funds for the printing of this kind of publication. The accuracy of the editions, instead, compared with some edi- tions of documents produced up to the 1960s, has increased constantly, both philologically and in the presentation and contextualization. Philological respect, use of footnotes and exhaustive description of the manuscripts, inte- gral editions of the text (as opposed to the past, when there was a more or less arbitrary selection of the more important parts) by now accompany – in most cases – even very simple (in other respects) text editions. Beyond the objective usefulness of this kind of edition for the historian of the family, their actual use in all scientific literature has increased in recent years: the existing family books have been the center of comparative linguistic analyses,48 systematic reappreciations by art historians,49 social historians, and historians of law,50 of economics,51 of culture and literature. Nevertheless, for the publication of new texts, as with all the other possible historical sources, the current season is not favorable (if there ever has been one that was). There are no funds for printing; critical editions of sources, even though they require much time and effort on the part of the scholar, and no less than that for a monograph, capture in the official assessment of research
autobiografica, the contribution by S. Capecchi in Pasta (ed.), Scritture dell’io, and above, chap. 10. 48 A. Ricci, Mercanti scriventi. Sintassi e testualità di alcuni libri di famiglia fiorentini fra Tre e Quattrocento (Rome: Aracne, 2005). 49 Both P.L. Rubin, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-century Florence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) and E. Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance. Consumer cultures in Italy 1400–1600 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) base themselves strongly on Florentine family books. 50 For example T. Kuehn, Heirs, Kin and Creditors in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 51 Last but not least R. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
52 See the University of Montpellier website directed by Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire
Finally, in some special cases one might have to have recourse to still other forms of making the text available. Pelli’s case has already made it clear that a philologically correct edition with commentary of a very large text can be extremely expensive even in an online form, even if only for the amount of work necessary on the part of transcribers of the text.55 It might be possible for other very large texts (as has already been done for the large eighteenth cen- tury Cocchi diary)56 to use a digitalization of the text by putting the images directly online, as has been successfully (even if the energy required was not much less) carried out in the case of the letters contained in the fondo Mediceo avanti il Principato in the State Archives of Florence. It is clear that in this case it is no longer possible to speak of effective editions, but rather of making a text available, which however at that point can be treated in various possible ways, from proper commented edition to cataloging, not only by historians but also scholars of other disciplines. These are all possibilities to be considered, assum- ing that in the future there remain the material and human resources in the humanities to realize them.
55 Even though one must keep in mind that textual research is much more efficient in this case than with printed editions. 56 See the website of the Biomedical Library of the University of Florence Le Effemeridi di Antonio Cocchi
Is there a main road to follow in the study of autobiography? This is the ques- tion that I have used as a starting point for this chapter. The most direct and frank answer should be: it is hard to say. Autobiography is in itself an area that is not easy to grasp in full because of the multiplicity of perspectives from which it can be seen. It has in fact, and rightly, drawn the attention of histori- ans of literature as it is one of the first manifestations of writing of the self, of the objectivizing of self-awareness which, especially beginning in the eigh- teenth century (the model is Rousseau) took on a full and mature form; and is naturally interesting to historians, as it is a sometimes unequaled document of the biography of a given person and related events. There is a basic difference between the two approaches that is both the- matic and chronological. Historians of literature have paid most attention to those works of an autobiographical setting that were intended for publication;1 thus they have for the most part studied autobiography as a literary genre, and looked at the texts that have a decided value in that sense. For historians, instead, interest in the content tends to prevail over that in form, and it is for this reason that at a certain point the broad and functional category of ego- document was elaborated, intended as texts of various genres produced by an individual that are able to give us information about him: his ways of being, consciousness of self, self-representation and sense of identity even as it is reflected in one’s own perception by others as seen in social exchanges. The different approach has thus brought about a distinction in the texts that are prevalently studied, but also in chronology. Since autobiography as a literary genre begins rather late in certain forms, the literary historians have above all studied a type of text that, even though it manifested itself earlier, was mostly developed in France and England at the end of the 17th century, and flowered in the rest of Europe in the 18th. Historians instead take into consideration the sources relative to individual histories in every period in
1 See also Lejeune, L’autobiographie en France (1971). Compared to his early works, Lejeune’s late research broadened its scope to other perspectives, which adopt social historical meth- ods. See Id., Postfazione [1985] to Il patto autobiografico, It. transl. (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986), p. 409 (orig. ed. 1975).
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2 See for example recent Italian volumes like Betri and Maldini Chiarito (eds.), Scritture di desiderio e di ricordo. 3 See Cicchetti and Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, I.
4 See also above, chap. 7, pp. 160–162. 5 See for a first interdisciplinary proposal of reflection on this topic, even though in a context which is geographically and chronologically circumscribed, Ciappelli and Rubin (eds.), Art, Memory and Family. 6 J. Huizinga, “The task of cultural history,” in Id., Men and ideas. History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, trans. J.S. Holmes and H. van Marle (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), pp. 17–76.
7 Schulze, “Ego-Dokumente,” p. 28. 8 See ibid., p. 21.
9 One of the clearest examples of the cautions which are necessary in this field is still the “classical” essay by T. Kuehn, “Reading Microhistory: The Example of Giovanni and Lusanna,” Journal of Modern History 61 (1989), pp. 512–534.
Memory is strongly tied to identity in as much as a person is that which he remembers, and in general it is possible to have an idea of the individual or collective identity, or self-consciousness by the way in which the memories of a person or group are expressed. This equation between memory and identity is a concept expressed by John Locke1 early in the Enlightenment, but comes down to us directly and little modified by later thought. There are, certainly, different written forms of this type of memory. Up until recent times it was thought that there were essentially three codified genres that expressed personal memories: the diary, memoir, autobiography, with their respective characteristics. In the diary, the subject tends to remember and write every day, while memoirs are written from a distance in time and often at maturity or in old age. In both cases, it is possible to distinguish between more “external” and more “internal” forms of memory, and even “intimate,” as in diaries.2 Autobiography instead, according to an authoritative dictionary, is the “recounting that an author makes of his own life, or a part of it, above all as a literary work.”3 It is this conception of autobiography as a “literary” genre, with certain aesthetic or stylistic characteristics, or with an intention of publication, that has until recently strongly limited historians’ use of autobiographies that did not adhere to the norms of literary criteria. When these too rigid classifications were finally abandoned – among other things they did not allow for medieval examples, since diary, memoir and autobiography proper do not appear until the early modern era – historians came across memory texts that, even though imperfect under existing definitions, were representative of “genres” different from the usual. The majority of concrete late medieval and early modern memory writings are very hybrid. They are texts in which the subject narrates himself, and up until a certain era, mostly events surrounding himself,
1 A. Whitehead, Memory (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 56. 2 Already G. Gusdorf, La découverte de soi (Paris: PUF, 1948), pp. 39–40, was distinguishing between “external diary” and “intimate diary.” 3 Vocabolario della lingua italiana, 4 vols. in 6 tomes (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1986), I, p. 347.
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4 Dekker, “Introduction,” p. 7. 5 Schulze, “Ego-Dokumente,” p. 28. 6 See above, chap. 14, pp. 277–279. 7 Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II, p. 15. 8 See above, chap. 1, pp. 12–13.
16th–17th centuries, and arrive, certainly in diminishing quantity, at the 19th and 20th.9 They assume different characteristics according to the particular inclinations of their authors: remaining rather dry, or being more expansive as the author’s characteristics and sensitivities require. In this way, depending on the case, each of these remains either a more patrimonial account, or would become a recounting of the author’s personal life story, reconstruction of the genealogy and history of the family, travel diary, or chronicle of the more important civic events in which he participated. These will continue to have some common traits, not always present together, but anyway present: the need to pass on the family memory and the intention of transmitting useful information and behavioral models to future generations, with a pedagogic and utilitarian purpose. Within this last aspect is located the desire to express social and political attainments, and to provide elements with which descen- dants may claim their due role in the community.10 Up until thirty years ago the family book was thought to be an almost exclu- sively Tuscan phenomenon, but more recent studies have shown that it is a genre whose formal characteristics extend over all Italy (though unevenly), and continue up to the 20th century.11 The unparalleled large number of family books in Florence compared to the rest of Italy has been attributed by some to the level of exceptional literacy compared to other places, and by others to an unusual Florentine tendency to conserve this kind of document. In truth, there were comparable levels of literacy, or a strong tendency to conserve private documents even elsewhere, at least in Venice, where, nevertheless, these texts almost do not exist. I think that this difference may be explained by a variety of reasons that rely strongly on the concepts of “function” and “tradition.”12 “Function” is I believe tied to the responses that a family elaborated to satisfy the need to establish the legitimacy of its place in the political life of the city, in this case owing to the especial mobility of Florentine Renaissance society. There was not a formally defined élite in Florence, and the proofs of participation in the city’s political life (the payment of taxes which was neces- sary to citizenship, public offices held, ties with elite families) indicated the level gained and were the instrument with which future generations could lay claim to commensurate roles. In Venice instead, after the closure of the Great Council at the beginning of the 14th century, the elite was officially defined and families had no need to keep private records attesting to their
9 See above, chap. 8. 10 See above, chaps. 1 and 7. 11 Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II. 12 I am reworking here arguments already followed above, chap. 7.
13 Grubb, “Memory and identity”; Id., “I libri di famiglia a Venezia.” 14 Specifically treated in Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili.
15 Mordenti, I libri di famiglia in Italia, II; above, chap. 9. Even though, even in this case, a family book can represent a sort of compass which enables one to retrieve data which are scattered in the official archives. 16 Mouysset, Papiers de famille. 17 Torres Sans, Els llibres de família de pagès. 18 See for example the “Memòries” by Perot de Vilanova (1551–1573) and the “Memòries” by Jeroni Saconomina (1572–1602), in A. Simon I Tarrés (ed.), Cavallers i ciutadans a la Catalunya del Cinc-cents (Barcelona, Curial, 1991); or the “memories” by Francesc Gelat (1687–1722), or by the Bellsolell family (1666–1838), in A. Simon i Tarrés (ed.), Pagesos, capellans i industrials de la Marina de la Selva (Barcelona: Curial, 1993). See moreover Miquel Parets, Dietari d’un any de pesta. Barcelona 1651, éd. par J. Amelang et X. Torres Sans
This is the state in the Romance language area. In the German-speaking regions one also finds family books: the German Haus- und familienbucher studied above all by Pierre Monnet and Birgit Studt are primarily urban (merchants, professionals, minor nobles) and begin in the second half of the 14th century.19 In other places this kind of text seems to be less present, as far as we can tell from data bases or recent censuses of autobiographical types of texts from Holland, Switzerland, and Great Britain.20 The existence of common formal and functional characteristics must make us look at the reasons for these similarities. There may be similarities or forms of imitation owing to contact (diffusionist hypothesis). It would seem to be important that many of the areas of greater production of these texts had, at least from the thirteenth century, strong commercial ties (Tuscany, Provence, Catalonia, certainly in southern Europe, with a tradition of com- merce by land and by sea; northern cities, where there were often fairs and commercial exchanges, like Frankfurt or Nuremberg in Germany). Or one could suppose, as a functional explanation, an independent evolution in each of the production areas, owing to the presence of a certain number of basic conditions (the notary model that had a strong tradition in Italy, or the mercantile model), and to the special functionality of this kind of writing in relation to a series of aims: where the claim to status in cities characterized by strong political autonomy seems equally important. In the countryside the motives are different: here it is probably necessary to look at the prevalent agrarian system, and for example in the spread of the stem family, in which
(Barcelona: Eumo, 1989) [Engl. transl.]: Amelang (ed.), A journal of the plague year; Amelang, “The Mental World”; J. Peytaví Deixona, “Les dietaris catalans: de l’écrit intime à la renaissance d’un pays,” in Mouysset, Bardet, Ruggiu (eds.), “Car c’est moi que je peins”, pp. 53–72. 19 P. Monnet, Les Rohrbach de Francfort. Pouvoirs, affaires et parenté à l’aube de la Renaissance allemande (Génève: Droz, 1997); B. Studt (ed.), Haus- und Familienbücher in der städtischen Gesellschaft der Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit (Wien: Bohlau, 2007); C. Ulbrich, “Libri di casa e di famiglia in area tedesca nel tardo Medioevo: un bilancio storiografico,” in Ciappelli (ed.), Memoria, famiglia, identità, pp. 39–61. 20 For databases see the following websites: www.egodocument.net/egodocument/index .html for Holland (Center for the study of Egodocuments and History, Rotterdam), selbstzeugnisse.histsem.unibas.ch/for Switzerland (Selbstzeugnisse Datenbank, Basel), www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/jancke-quellenkunde/einleitung/index.html for the German speaking area (Selbstzeugnisse in deutschsprachigenraum, Berlin). A recent synthesis on English sources is A. Smyth, Autobiography in early modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), which in spite of its title considers every kind of self-representation.
21 See above, chap. 9, pp. 206–207. 22 This happens in almost all the mentioned situations, and especially in Italy, France, Spain, Germany. 23 See above, chap. 12. 24 Amelang, The flight of Icarus, pp. 253–350. 25 See above, note 4, with the addition of www.ecritsduforprive.fr/accueilbase.htm. 26 P. Burke, “Representations of the Self from Petrarch to Descartes,” in R. Porter (ed.), Rewriting the Self. Histories from the Renaissance to the present (London–New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 17–28: 22.
27 Paredes: 1533; Gaytán: 1588; see A. Cassol, Vita e scrittura. Autobiografie di soldati spagnoli del Siglo de Oro (Milan: LED, 2000). 28 For example, this is the case at least of the texts by Johannes Aventinus (1477–1534), Johannes Cuspinian (1473–1529), and Peter Krafft (1470–1530) in the Swiss database mentioned above, note 20. On the influence of almanacs and calendars on French livres de raison see Mouysset, Papiers de famille, p. 238. 29 Smyth, Autobiography in early modern England, pp. 15–56. 30 K. von Greyerz notes that the private diaries written by the Puritans Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward, of the years 1587–1630, are the first autobiographical examples of the spiritual genre in the period which follows the Reformation: see von Greyerz, “La vision de l’autre,” p. 60. On the relationship between pietism and autobiography see G. Niggl, Geschichte der deutschen Autobiographie im 18. Jahrhundert. Theoretische Grundlegung und literarische Entfaltung (Stuttgart: Klett, 1977), and among the most recent studies
U. Gleixner, Pietismus und Bürgertum. Eine historische Anthropologie der Frömmigkeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005). 31 On spiritual autobiographies, see in general Amelang, The flight of Icarus, pp. 178–181 and 410, which recalls the discussion on the autonomy of the autobiographical subject in this case. For a rather rare case of spiritual diary by a layperson, in his turn inspired by his confessor, see the case of Filippo Baldinucci analyzed above, chap. 12, pp. 251–252. 32 Y.N. Harari, Renaissance Military Memoirs: war, history, and identity, 1450–1600 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004), p. 4 and ff. See also N. Kuperty, Se dire à la Renaissance. Les mémoires des XVIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1997).
33 See above, chap. 12. 34 It is the case of Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni’s (1759–1808) Efemeridi in 80 volumes. The edition of Efemeridi, directed by Renato Pasta, is now partially available on line (http://pelli.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/), and still in progress. See on it above, chap. 10.
35 Above, chap. 7, pp. 153 and 158–159. 36 See also the considerations in Burke, “Representations of the Self,” pp. 24–28. 37 See for France the data base www.ecritsduforprive.fr/accueilbase.htm; for Italy “Carte di donne. Per un censimento regionale della scrittura delle donne dal XVI al XX secolo” (http://www.archiviodistato.firenze.it/memoriadonne/cartedidonne/index.html); “Scritture di donne (secc. XVI–XX). Censimento degli archivi romani” (and now also M. Caffiero and M.I. Venzo [eds.], Scritture di donne: la memoria restituita, Atti del Convegno [Roma, 23–24 marzo 2004] [Rome: Viella, 2007]). See also, for the lay part of egodocuments written by women, and other indications on the publications emerged from this research group, M. Caffiero, “Textes et contexts. Les écrits féminins privés à Rome au XVIIIe siècle: journaux intimes et autobiographies entre subjectivités individu- elles et appartenances socioculturelles,” in “Car c’est moi que je peins,” pp. 145–162. 38 M. Caffiero, “Le scritture della memoria femminile a Roma in età moderna: la produzione monastica,” in Ciappelli (ed.), Memoria, famiglia, identità, pp. 235–268.
In all, however, one can perceive a strong sensitivity of genre which is now under investigation in all its complexity. The other category which has been made more accessible, naturally, is the common people of the lower classes of both sexes that normally did not conceive of writing a memoir of their lives, especially with the aim to publish it, but in a series of cases this has happened, in particular circumstances or contexts: these have the special attention of the work of James Amelang’s work on popular autobiography.39 There are of course also limits and risks for historians in using these sources. I will mention only two. The first is in taking self-representation literally, whether it be individual or collective. An individual or a social class will present itself in the best possible way, or anyway improving itself in respect to reality, especially if writing in a time distant from the facts and if the text can have an self-legitimizing aim. The second is the possibility of falling in some anachronisms, or errors in methodological approach. Until the later times, for example, diaries were never intimate, in which the author thinks about himself, confesses and reflects on his own personality. And even when we find this in later examples, we must continue to ask ourselves questions. Every type of writing must respect the conventions of its genre. The page of the intimate diary has as its filter at least the dialogue of the author with himself when he reviews it. And there is always the thought in the back of the author’s mind that the communication will not end here, that he will not be the only one to read what he has written: that others today or tomorrow, the family or descen- dants, may read those lines.
39 Amelang, The Flight of Icarus.
Index of Modern Authors
Abulafia, D. 58n Bec, C. 30–34n, 35–38n, 39n, 41n, 43n, Adorni Braccesi, S. 269n 46n, 48, 49n, 50–52n, 55n, 60n, 91n, 212n, Agazzi, E. 147n 265n Aiazzi, G. 65n Becagli, V. 214n, 216n, 228n, 235n, 252n Airaldi, G. 269n Becchi, E. 99n Alberigo, G. 234n Belegni, A. 269n Albertini, R. von 127n, 137n Bencini, M. 210n, 251n Allegrezza, F. 14n, 35n, 67n Benigni, P. 132–133n Amelang, J. S. 4n, 6n, 161n, 163n, 204n, Bergson, H. 149n 206n, 207n, 259n, 284–286n, 288n Bernardini, S. 168n Amiel, H.-F. 209n Berr, H. 149n Anderson, M. 206n, 260n Berti, G. 267n Angiolini, F. 192n, Bertoli, G. 181n 198n, 201n, 235n, 252n Betri, M.L. 164n, 209n, 223n, 276n Anselmi, G.M. 5n Bettini, M. 153n Antoniella, A. 18n Biagianti, I. 269n Arcangeli, B. 149n Biasci, G. 270n Ariani, M. 248n Bicchierai, M.T. 268n Ariès, P. 20n, 161n Bini, A. 65n, Arnoul, É. 7n Binni, W. 210n Arrighi, V. 134n, 136 n, 193n Biondi de’ Medici Tornaquinci, G. 23n, Asor Rosa, A. 4n, 17n, 212n, 242n 74n, 265n Assmann, A. 147n Bizzocchi, R. 5n, 152n, 160n, 163n, 189n, Assmann, J. 146–148n, 149, 150–155n, 162 192–193n, 213n, 228n, 270n, 283n Augé, M. 151n Black, R. 7n Avellini, L. 5n Blanchard, J. 160n Bloch, M. 149n Baggerman, A. XII, Bogaert, C. 3n 7n, 10n Bolognani, M. 5n, 14n, 159n, 163n Baggio, S. 200n Bolzoni, L. 2n Bähr, A. 10n Bordini, S. 268n Baldini, U. 252n Bortolami, S. 157n Balduino, A. 248n Bourcier, É. 161n Balestracci, D. 18–19n, 268n Boutier, J. 189n, 191n, 193–194n, 199n, Barbagli, M. 205–206n, 226n, 257n 202–203n, 216n, 235n Bardeschi Branca, V. 16n, 45n, 54n, 93n, 98n, 102n, Ciulich, L. 265n 211–212n, 243n, 265n, 267n Bardet, J.-P. 7–8n, 199n, 210n, 241n, 285n Braunstein, P. 161n Barocchi, P. 251n, 265n Broomhall, S. 269n Baronti, G. 269n Brucker, G.A. 38n, 62n, 115n, 124n Barrière, P. 32n, 34n Bühler, C. 33n Bartoli Langeli, A. 266 Burckhardt, J. 227n, 242n, 289 Bastia, C. 5n, 14n, 159n, 163n Burguière, A. 206n Battista, G. 267n Burke, P. 286n, 290n Beaurepaire, P.-Y. 273n Burschel, P. 10n
Caffiero, M. 8n, 227n, 290n Compagnon, A. 258n Callard, C. 199n, 231n Cometa, M. 147n Calonaci, S. 203n Connell, W.J. 89n Calvani, C. 38n, 120n Constable, G. 89n Calvi, G. 173n, 185n Conti, E. 77n Camesasca, E. 241–243n Conti, G. 210n, 251n Cammarosano, P. 18n, 155n Corazzini, G.O. 75n, 83n Cannarozzi, C. 84n Corbinelli, J. 202n Cantarella, R. 152n Corni, G. 1n Cantini, L. 190n, 193n Corsi, P. 2n Capecchi, S. 222n, 224n, 254n, 256n, Corsini, A. 209n, 252n 258n, 271–272n Corti, G. 59n Capitanio, A. 18n, 268n Coser, L.A. 2n Capponi, G. 71n, 230n, Cotta, I. 136n Capra, C. 239n Caramagno, A. 165n, 213n D’Adda, G. 36n Carbone, L. 269n Danti, V. 242n Cardini, F. 87n Da Pozzo, G. 248n Carnesecchi, C. 42–43n, 67n Davidsohn, R. 57–59n, 84n, 176n Caroti, S. 36n Davis N. Z. 227n, 242n Cassan, M. 7n, 210n Dekker, R. XII, 3n, 7n, 10n, 163n, 207n, Cassol, A. 287n 227n, 263n, 281n Castellani, A. 12–13n, 20n, 57n, 110 De La Mare, A. 36n Cazalé Berard, C. 7n, 173n, 175n, 179n, Del Badia, I. 75n 245n Del Lungo, I. 74n, 211n Ceccherelli, A. 124n Del Piazzo, M. 71n, 134n Cecchi, E. 50n, 212n, 241n, 264n Del Treppo, M. 157n Chabot, I. 64n, 167n, 267n De Maddalena, A. 265 Chartier, R. 223n De Robertis, D. 212n, 264n Cherubini, G. 14n, 18n, 268n De Roover, R. 14n, 125n Chéruel, M. 210n De Rosa, R. 199n Ciappelli, G. 5–7n, 14n, 19–21n, 27n, De Vecchi, B. 36n 35–39n, 41–42n, 51n, 54n, 65n, 82n, 88n, Diaz, F. 175n, 192n, 194n, 214n, 215–216n, 96n, 108n, 111n, 114n, 146n, 151n, 158n, 160n, 229n, 234n, 237n, 239, 252n 163–164n, 168n, 170n, 182–183n, 187–188n, Dilthey, W. 2, 10 203n, 211n, 226n, 242n, 257n, 263n, Di Pino, G. 38n 266–267n, 270n, 277n, 285n, 290n Di San Luigi, I. 39n Cicchetti, A. 4–5n, 12n, 16, 17n, 25n, 54n, Domandi, M. 104n 57n, 61, 75n, 83n, 131–132n, 133, 150n, 163n, Donati, C. 193–194n, 198–199n 186n, 188n, 211n, 228n, 242n, 244n, 246n, Doni Garfagnini, M. 79n 264n, 266n, 276n, 281 Dorez, L. 36n Cirault, Y. 210n Duby, G. 20n, 155n, 160–161n Clanchy, M.T. 80n Cochrane, E. 209–210n, 214n, 216n, 229n Eckstein, N. 230n Coglitore, R. 147n Eisenstein, E.L. 30n Cohen, M.R. 227n Elam, C. 29n Coleman, P. 259n Emlen, J. 19n Colnaghi, D.E. 44n Erikson, E.H. 10n
Fabroni, A. 68n, 71n, 126n, 131n, 134n Halbwachs, M. 1–2n, 10, 148–150n, 151, 155n Fachard, D. 267n Harari, Y.N. 288n Falletti, F. 269n Hay, D. 76n Fanelli, V. 36n Herlihy, D. 18n, 32n, 46n, 51n, 91n, 156n, Fantoni, M. 193n, 252n 230n, 260, 261n Febvre, L. 30n Hirschfeld, G. 1n Fiocco, G. 36n Hlawitschka, E. 148n Flower, H.I. 158n Holmes, J.S. 277n Foà, S. 186n Horne, P. 176n Foggi, R. 251n Huizinga, J. 277n, 279 Foisil, M. 161n Hülsen-Esch, A. von 159n Folena, G. 246n, 264n Franceschi, F. 54n, 268n Imbert, G. 250n Francovich, C. 209n Immel, A. 10n Fritzsche, P. 239n Innocenti, P. 138n Furet, F. 30n Insabato, E. 109n, 199n Irace, E. 159–160n, 175n, 188n, 191n, 205n Gaeta, F. 230n Isnenghi, M. 1, 2n Gai, L. 195n Garavini, F. 258n Jacobson Schutte, A. 234n Gargiolli, C. 91n Jancke, G. 10n, Garin, E. 43n, 50n Jedlowski, P. 148n Geary, P. 151n Johnson, G.A. 88n, 158n Gennarelli, I. 165n, 213n Jones, P.J. 110n Gensini, S. 22n Judde de Larivière, C. 227n Gentile, R. 267n Julia, D. 99n Gentile, S. 46n Giangiulio, M. 152n Kagan, R.L. 161n Giorgi, P. 45n Kent, D.V. 68n, 80n Gleixner, U. 288n Kent, F.W. 102n, 109n, 133n Goldthwaite, R.A. 21n, 272n Kertzer, D.I. 154n Goody, J. 156n Kieckhefer, R. 87n Gori, O. 209n Kirshner, J. 32n Grafton, A. 241n Klapisch-Zuber, C. 5n, 7n, 18, 19–22n, 32n, Graglia, R. 218n 43n, 50n, 54n, 76–77n, 88–89n, 91n, 95n, Grazzini, G. 65n 97n, 99n, 109n, 113n, 119n, 163n, 170n, 173n, Greci, R. 35n 175n, 186n, 211n, 242n, 245n, 260–261n, 263n Grendler, M. 34n, 52n Klein, F. 134n, 136n, 193n Greyerz, K. von 161n, 207n, 249n, 287n Koselleck, R. 239n Griffey, E. 207n Kovesi, C. 173–174n, 201n, 245n, 267n Grubb, J. 87n, 159n, 185–188n, 205n, 283n Kristeller, P.O. 46n, 52n Guasti, C. 22n, 66n, 117–119n, 121 Kuehn, T. 120n, 272n, 279n Guelfi, C. 270n Kupery, N. 288n Guglielminetti, M. 132–133n, 242–243n Guglielmotti, P. 148n Landi, S. 254n Guidi, G. 44n Lane, F.C. 187 Gusdorf, G. 280n La Roncière, C.M. de 265n Gutkind, C. 127n Latham, R. 210n
Lazzi, G. 45n Momigliano, A. 146n Le Goff, J. 146n Monnet, P. 285n Le Play, P.G.F. 206n Monnier, P.M. 209n Lebrun, F. 206n Montesano, M. 268n Lejeune, P. 3n, 164n, 275n Mordenti, R. 4–7n, 12n, 16–17n, 25n, Lemaitre, N. 166n, 205n, 207n 54n, 57n, 61, 75n, 82–83n, 131–132n, 133, Lerz, N. 117 150n, 159n, 163n, 165n, 170–171n, 186n, Levi D’Ancona, M. 44n 188–189n, 191n, 205n, 207n, 211n, 228n, Litchfield, R.B. 190–191n, 194n, 229–230n, 242n, 244n, 246n, 263–264n, 266n, 276n, 260, 261n 281–282n, 284n Liverani, M. 146n Morelli Timpanaro, M.A. 132n, 134n, 210n Lorenzoni, A. 246n Moreni, D. 126n, 197n Lussana, F. 1n Mosse, G. 1n Luzzati, M. 59n Mouysset, S. 6n, 8n, 241n, 248n, 284–285n, 287n Maggini, F. 60n Müntz, E. 131n Majnoni, S. 179n Muzzi, O. 35n Malanima, P. 198n, 201n Maldini Chiarito, D. 164n, 209n, Nakam, G. 258n 223n, 276n Newbigin, N. 267n Mallett, M.E. 117n, 134n Niccoli, S. 46n Mancini, S. 258n Niggl, G. 287n Manno Tolu, R. 132n, 134n, 269n Nigro, S.S. 241n, 267n Maracchi Biagiarelli, B. 36n Nora, P. 1, 2n, Marchi, P. 200n Nouts, Michiel 11 Marini, A. 2n Novati, F. 36n, 45n Martelli, M. 136n Martin, H.-J. 30n, 32n, 34n Oexle, O.G. 147n, 155n, 159n Martin, J.J. 226n Olschki, C. 66n, 264, 267n Martines, L. 48n, 50n, 76n, 186n, 230n Ortalli, G. 54n Marzi, D. 121n Orvieto, P. 40n, 43n Mascuch, M. XII, 7n, 10n Mastrogregori, M. 146n Pampaloni, G. 137n Mastruzzo, A. 146n Pandimiglio, L. 4–5n, 13–14n, 19n, 35n, Matteoli, L. 118–119n 54n, 59n, 61, 72n, 74–75n, 79n, 109n, 163n, Matthews, W. 210n 170n, 186n, 189–191n, 197–198n, 211n, 216n, Mazzara, F. 147n 220n, 242n, 263n, 267n Mazzi, M.S. 21n Paoli, M.P. 218n, 253n Megli, L. 195n Paradisi, P. 18n, 268n Melis, F. 66n, 125n, 265 Paravicini, W. 159n Merlo, G.G. 82 n Parigino, G. 250n Mezzanzanica, M. 2–3n Parker, G. 161n Miglio, L. 22n, 34n Pasta, R. 8n, 223n, 225n, 254n, 271–272n, Milan, G. 210n, 250n 288n Millefiorini, F. 209n Perosa, A. 79n, 264 Misch, G. 2n, 10, 241n Petrocchi, G. 212n, 264n Molho, A. 19–22n, 32n, 63n, 86n, 109n, Petrucci, A. 7, 15–16n, 22n, 30n, 33–34n, 261n, 267n 68n, 265n
Pettas, W.A. 51n Scholar, A. 259n Peytaví Deixona, J. 285n Schulze, W. 3n, 163n, 206n, 227n, 278n, Pezzarossa, F. 5n, 16n, 19n, 21–22n, 26n, 281n 34–35n, 54–56n, 57, 61, 68n, 71n, 127n, Sclavi, S. 36n 159n, 163–164n, 169n, 177n, 181n, 185n, Screech, M.A. 241n 186n, 188–189n, 211–212n, 213, 242n, Sebregondi, L. 105n 244n, 264n, 266 Seidel Menchi, S. 7n, 168n, 213n, 244n, Phillips, M. 79n 262–263n Piccone Stella, S. 3n Sestan, E. 17n, 186n Pinto, G. 21n Sforza, G. 268n Pirolo, P. 167n Shaw, B. 154n Polizzotto, L. 173–174n, 201n, 245n, 267n Signorini, R. 63n, 76n Pomian, K. 73n Sillano, M.T. 70n, 93n, 135n, 265n Porter, R. 286n Simon I Tarrés, A. 284n Presser, J. 3n Smyth, A. 285n, 287n Sosnowski, A. 234n Quaglioni, D. 168n, 262n Spallanzani, M. 131n Quondam, A. 30n Spinella, M. 92n Strocchia, S. 100n Raaflaub, K. 19n Studt, B. 285n Rhodes, D.E. 36n Sznura, F. 20n, 63n, 86n, 267n Ricci, A. 272n Ricuperati, G. 210n Tanturli, G. 36n Ridolfi, R. 35n, 60n, 121–122n, 127n Tassi, F. 243n, 258n Ruggiero, G. 226n Tellenbach, G. 148n Ringwalt Thompson, C. 100n Teuscher, S. 7n Rodolico, N. 62n, 64n, 111n Thomas, K. 152n Rolih Scarlino, M. 45n Thomas, R. 152n Romanelli, R. 176n, 179n Tiraboschi, G. 197n Rossetti, G. 157n Toccafondi, D. 132–133n Rossi, P. 2n Tonelli, G. 268n Rossi, V. 45n Torres Sans, X. 206n, 284n Rubin, P.L. 5–6n, 88n, 146n, 163n, 272n, Trexler, R.C. 86n, 97n 277n Tribe, K. 239n Rubinstein, N. 127n, 133n, 136n, 176n, Tricard, J. 72n, 160n 230n Truci, I. 167n Ruggiu, F.-J. 7–9n, 183n, 199n, 210n, 241n, Tucci, U. 15n 285n Ulbrich, C. 10n, 285n Saller, R.P. 154 Santi, B. 23n, 265n van Marle, H. 277n Sapegno, N. 50n Vannini, F. 165n, 213n Sapori, A. 59n, 62n, 64n, 265 Vansina, J. 152n Sapori, G. 195n Varese, C. 59n Sauzet, R. 249n Ventigenovi, A. 116n Schachermeyr, F. 152n Venturi, F. 229n Schiaffini, A. 12n Venturi, G.A. 45n Schmid, K. 147n Venzo, M.I. 8n, 290n
Verde, A.F. 31n, 34n, 38n Whitehead, A. 280n Verga, M. 190n, 204n, Winn, C.H. 269n 235n, 252n Winter, J. 1n Visceglia, M.A. 190n Witmore, M. 10n Viti, P. 46n, 132n, 134n, 194n Wollasch, J. 147n Viviani, U. 250n, 270n Volpe, F. 207n Yates, F. 2n Volpi, G. 74n, 211n Yerushalmi, Y.H. 151n Vovelle, M. 223n Zaccaria, R.M. 194n Waldman, L.A. 242n Zambelli, P. 247n Walter, I. 118n Zamponi, S. 36n Ward, M. 209n Zanato, T. 71n, 131n, 133n, 137 Weissman, R.F.E. 106n Zapperi, R. 217n, 236n, 254n Welch, E. 272n Zarri, G. 262n
Acciaiuoli, Agnolo, bishop 61 Augustine, St. 227, 253n, 257, 259 Acciaiuoli, Agnolo, messer 139, 143 Aventinus, Johannes 287n Aghinetti, Lena di Tano 103 Avignon 113 Aghinetti, Tano 103 Agli, Antonio degli 42, 46–47 Bagnesi, Bartolomea 102 Alamanni, Andrea di Boccaccino 41, Bagno di Romagna 69 48n, 50n Baldassarre d’Antonio di Santi 143 Alamanni, Boccaccino 42 Baldinucci, Filippo 250–252n, 288n, 291n Alamanni, Lena di Boccaccino 37, 41n Baldovinetti, family 177, 179n, 180, 192n, Alamanni, Piero di Boccaccino 42 202n Alberti, family 201n Baldovinetti, Alessio (Alesso) Alberti, Niccolaio 114 di Baldovinetto 176n Albizzi, family 27, 37, 63n, 120–121 Baldovinetti, Alessio Albizzi, Luca di Maso 117–118 (Alesso) di Borghino 59, 177n Albizzi, Niccolaio di Pepo 118 Baldovinetti, Francesco di Borghino 59, Albizzi, Ormanno di Rinaldo 144 177n Albizzi, Piero 114 Baldovinetti, Francesco di Giovanni 177n, Albizzi, Rinaldo di 178–180, 192 messer Maso 117, 118–119n, 121n, 139, Baldovinetti, Giovanni di Bernardo di 144–145, 230 Giovanni 179 Aldobrandini, Roberto di Piero 114 Baldovinetti, Giovanni di Francesco 178 Alessandri, Francesco 43 Baldovinetti, Giovanni di Iacopo (called Alessandri, Nicolao di Ugo 43 Poggio) 179n Alessandrini, family 195n Baldovinetti, Giovanni di Niccolò 179n, Alexander VI, Pope 107n 180 Alighieri, Dante, see Dante Baldovinetti, Mariotto di messer Allori, Alessandro 242n Niccolò 139, 142 Alphonse of Aragon, king 69, 73n, 118 Baldovinetti, Niccolò d’Alesso 63, 65, Altopascio 60n 72–73n, 75, 177n Amadi, family 159n Baldovinetti, Niccolò di Giovanni 179n, Ambrosini, R 269n 180, 202n Ammirato, Scipione 121n, 193–194n, 195, Baldovinetti, Vincenzo di Giovanni di 197, 199 Iacopo 179n, 180, 202n Ammirato, Scipione, the Younger, see Del Bandinelli, Baccio 242n Bianco, Cristoforo Bandinelli, Bartolomeo 242n Ancona 141 Bandini, Anton Maria 131n, 253n Antella 234 Barbaro, Francesco 39n, 40, 47 Antonino (Pierozzi), St. 90, 97n Barberini, family 199 Aretino, Pietro 248n Barcelona 4 Arezzo 18n, 58, 65, 106, 190n, 195n, Bardi, family 62n 268–269 Bardi, palace 62n Arfaioli of Pistoia, family 202n Bardi, Larione 125 Arnolfi, Nofri di Giovanni 114 Bartolini, Neri di Domenico 143 Arringhieri of Peretola 57 Bartolini Salimbeni, Leonardo 63n, 64, Athens, Duke of, see Walter of Brienne 75n, 77n
Bartolomea, widow of Girolamo di Buonsignori, Francesco 181n, 267n Domenico 22n Burgundy 160–161 Bartolomei, family 202n Burlamacchi, Vincenzo 269n Bassompierre, François de, Marshal of France 255n Caesar 253n Bellacci, Antonio 40, 42 Cafferecci, Giovanni 50, 118n, 120n Bellsolell, family 284n Cafferecci, Matteo 42 Benci, Giovanni d’Amerigo 125 Calcondila, Demetrio 135n Bencivenni, family 223n Cambi, Giovanni 39n Bencivenni, Bene 57–58, 83 Cambini, Bernardo 136n Benedetto di Salvestro da Pistoia 43, 44n Campaldino 58 Benedict XIII, Pope 215n, 232 Capponi, Francesco 127n Benevento 58 Capponi, Gino di Neri 55n, 92, 97, Benintendi, Teofilo 247n 264–265 Benivieni, family 230 Capponi, Giovanni di Mico 143 Benoist, Étienne 72n Capponi, Neri 93–94 Benvenuti, Bernardo 299n Capponi, Piero di Giovanni 102n Benvenuti de’ Nobili, Guccio 65n Capponi, Tommaso di Gino 97 Berlinghieri, Lapo 139 Capponi, Uguccione di Mico 68n Bernardino da Siena, St. 84n Cardano, Girolamo 227, 241n, 255n, 286 Berti, Giovanni di Simone di Cassi, family 202n Francesco 137 Castellani, family XI, 12n, 20n, 26–27, 40, Bibbona 89 42, 109, 112–113, 120, 122, 123n Biliotti, Sandro di Giovanni 145 Castellani, palace 29n Biscioni, Anton Maria 200n Castellani, Antonia di Michele 114, 115n Boccaccio, Giovanni 46–47, 102n, 212n, 246 Castellani, Antonio di messer Michele 119 Bologna 101, 119n, 188 Castellani, Antonio di Niccolò 29, 44n Bonavere, Bindo 62n Castellani, Caterina di Michele 114 Bonavere, Tura 62n Castellani, Francesco di Matteo 12n, 14n, Bondeno 142 20n, 27–28, 29n, 36–37n, 39, 40–48n, 49–51, Bordeaux 241 69n, 73n, 76n, 78n, 84n, 87n, 93–94n, 96n, Borghini, Vincenzo 181n, 186n, 193n, 102–103n, 109n, 114, 116n, 120n, 266n 199n, 246–247n Castellani, Giovanni di Michele 40n Borgo San Sepolcro, see Sansepolcro Castellani, Leone di Antonio 29n, 44n Bracali, Cipriano 269 Castellani, Lotto di Vanni 112 Bracci Cambini, family 228 Castellani, Lotto, messer 120n Bracci Cambini, Leonardo 213, 270n Castellani, Margherita 29n, 114 Bracciolini, Poggio 136n Castellani, Matteo di Michele 27, 32n, Brandini, Ciuto 62n 37–39n, 41, 78n, 114, 116n, 120n Brunetto, butcher 145 Castellani, Michele di messer Vanni, Bruni, Leonardo 121 messer 12n, 27, 79n, 103, 117, 118–119n, Bueri, Piccarda (called Nonnina) 126 120–122 Buonaccorsi, Biagio 267n Castellani, Michele di Vanni di ser Buonaparte, Ottavio 195n Lotto 12n, 20n, 26, 40n, 65, 96, 110, 112, Buonarroti, Michelangelo, see 113n, 114, 115n, 116, 122 Michelangelo Castellani, Niccolò di Antonio 44n, 103 Buonarroti, Michelangelo, the Castellani, Niccolò di Leone 29n Younger 197n Castellani, Niccolò di Michele 113n, Buonsignori, Buonsignore 181n, 247 114, 115n
Castellani, Otto di messer Michele 119 Dati, Goro 55n, 66, 75n, 91–92n, 107, 108n, Castellani, Rinieri di Michele 112 267 Castellani, Stefano di Vanni 115n Dati, Stagio 92 Castellani, Vanni di ser Lotto 110–112, Datini, Francesco 55n, 66, 97n 114–115n, 122 Da Tolentino, Niccolò 144 Castracani, Castruccio 59n Da Uzzano, Antonio 113 Catalonia 161, 206 Da Verrazzano, Lodovico 145 Cavalcanti, Giovanni 38n, 230n Da Verrazzano, Piero 60 Cegia, Francesco 137n David, king 152n Cei, family 195 Dei, Giovanni Battista 200n Cellini, Benvenutino 258n Del Benino, Pietro di Bartolomeo 145 Cellini, Benvenuto 227, 241n, 242, Del Bianco, Cristoforo 243n, 244, 246, 255n, 257, 258–259n, (called Scipione Ammirato the 286 Younger) 199n Cenni, Piero di messer Marco 139 Del Chiaro, Cristofano 142 Cerchi, family 60 Del Corazza, Bartolomeo 267n Cerchi, Bindaccio 60 Del Giocondo, family 202n Cerretani, Bartolomeo 267n Dell’Antella, Alessandro 114n Charles of Anjou, king 57n Dell’Antella, Guido di Filippo 13n, 20n, 58 Charles of Calabria 58n, 59 Dello Scelto, Giovanni di Matteo 139 Chelli 224 Del Migliore, Ferdinando Leopoldo 219n Chellini da San Miniato, Giovanni 70, Del Pace, Francesco 196 94n, 96–98n, 100n, 103n, 107n, 135n, 265 Del Pace, Francesco di Cristofano 195n Ciamagnini, Teresa 223n, 224, 225n Del Pace, Francesco di Cristofano di Cicero 37, 39–41, 43, 47, 48n, 51n Rinieri 197n Ciurianni, Lapo 64 Del Pace, Ricciardo di Francesco 196–197, Ciurianni, Valorino di Barna 64, 66, 72n 201n Clement VII, Pope 106, 178 Del Palagio, Niccolò di Andrea di Neri di Cocchi, Antonio 209n, 210, 241n, 249n, Lippo 114 252n, 253–254, 256n, 259, 274 Del Rosso, family 202n Colle Val d’Elsa 190 Del Sega, Lippo di Fede 265 Contrari, Uguccione (Antonio Del Vigna, Bartolomeo di Antonio 53n Uguccione) 142–143 Dominici, Giovanni 88, 89n Coppoli 217n Donà (Donato), Andrea 143 Corsi, Corso di Lapo 139 Donà (Donato), Iacopo 142 Corsi, Tommaso di Lapo 139 Donati, Niccolò di Cocco 143 Corsini, Matteo di Giovanni 68 Doni, family 195n Cortona 104, 190n Duke of Athens, see Walter of Brienne Cristofano di Gano di Guidino, ser 268n Cuspinian, Johannes 287n Edom, kings of 152n Cutigliano 142, 144 Egypt 146 England 117, 161, 249, 252, 276 Da Bisticci, Vespasiano 40, 48n, 50 Erasmus, Desiderius 100n D’Anghiari, Giusto, see Giusti Giusto Esau 152n Dante Alighieri 44, 46n, 212n Este, family 192 Da Panzano, Luca di Matteo 20n, 63n, Europe XI–XII, 206n, 208, 252, 281, 286 66n, 67, 68n, 73n, 75–76n, 86n, 88n, 91–92n, 94, 95n, 98n, 99, 101n Fabbroni, Giovanni 224, 255 Da Panzano, Matteo di Matteo 68n Fabroni, Ignazio 181n
Faenza 118 Santa Reparata 145 Fagiuoli, Giovan Battista 210n, 249–250n, San Zanobi 105n 251, 274n Tempio 105n Falloppio, Gabriele 245 Virgin Mary 105n Fanano 142 Florence, convents Fazzi, Francesco 199n Murate 93n Ferdinand III of Habsburg-Lorraine, Grand San Giovanni di Dio 216 Duke of Tuscany 228 Santa Maria degli Angeli 231n Ferrara 118, 119n, 144 Santissima Annunziata 233 Ferrara, Marquis of 141–142 Florence, palaces Ferrucci, Bartolomeo 120n Giudici di Ruota 29n Ficino, Marsilio 51, 46n Podestà 29n Fiesole 103 Florence, piazzas confraternity of Santa Cecilia 105n de’ Castellani 29n Filippo di Sanguineto, messer 58n dei Giudici 29n Finiguerri, Stefano 42, 46–47, 48n Florence, hospitals Fioriti, Maddalena 224n Santa Maria Nuova 141 Flanders 76, 117 Florence, Villa of Careggi 145 Florence XI–XII, 4, 12–19, 30, 38n, 48, 51n, Foresi, Bastiano 45n, 47, 51 52, 58–60, 61n, 65–67, 68n, 70n, 72, 74, Forlì 101, 118 76–77, 84, 89, 95, 100–101, 103–104, 106–107, France 30n, 132, 160–161, 166, 205, 252, 117, 119, 123, 128, 130, 136–137, 139–140, 271, 276, 286n, 290 142–144, 150, 157, 159, 164–165n, 173, 175n, France, king of 71, 137n 176, 184–185, 186n, 187–188, 192, 194, 196n, Francesco di Giovanni di Durante 61, 73n 201n, 203–205, 207, 211–213, 216, 228, 230, Francesco di ser Palmeri, ser 115n 234, 236, 246, 248–250, 251n, 252, 254, 259, Franchi, Pompilio 195n 263, 266, 268, 270–271, 282 Francolino 142 Florence, Altafronte Castle 115n Frankfurt 285 Florence, churches Freschi, family 159n Carmine 89 Frescobaldi, family 62n Orsanmichele 137n Frescobaldi, palace 62n San Giovanni 95, 253 Frignano 144 San Lorenzo 126, 241n Friuli 17 San Marco 70, 136, 137n Santa Croce 101n Gaddi, Francesco 35n, 49n S. Reparata 96n Gaddi, Niccolò 197 San Simone 103 Gambacorti, family 69 Santissima Annunziata 101 Gambacorti, Gherardo 69 Santo Stefano 224 Gambacorti, Giovanni 118n Florence, confraternities Gamurrini, Eugenio 199 Crocetta 105n Gaytán, Pedro 287n Gesù Pellegrino 105–106 Gelat, Francesc 284n San Giovanni Evangelista 105n Geneva 269 San Michele Berteldi 89 Genoa 159, 228, 236 San Niccolò 215n Genovesi, Vese 13n San Procolo 97 Germany 7, 160–161, 271, 276, 285, 286n San Paolo, flagellant society 105n Gervase of Canterbury 80 Santa Margherita 105n Gherardi, Simone 64 Santa Maria Novella 144 Gherardini, family 223n
Gherardino da Subiglia 141 Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, see Medici Ghiberti, Lorenzo 242 Giovanni di Giovanni Gianfigliazzi, Giovanni di messer Giovanni da Volterra, see Cafferecci Giovanni Rinaldo 139 Giovanni di Bruno 62, 72–73n Gianni, family XI, 182n, 208, 214, 216, 219, Giovanni XXII, Pope 59 230, 236, 239 Giudici, family 269 Gianni, Anna Maria Maddalena di Francesco Giugni, Domenico 80 Maria 216n, 235n Giugni, Niccolò 120n Gianni, Astorre di Niccolò 230 Giusti, Giusto (Giusto Gianni, Francesco Maria di Niccolò di d’Anghiari) 89–90n, 108n, 267n Ridolfo XI, 213, 214n, 215–217, Gondi, family 202n, 203 229n, 231, 233–234, 235–236n, Gondi, Jean-François Paul, cardinal de 237–238 Retz 255n Gianni, Giovanni Maria di Niccolò di Gondi, Niccolò 202 Ridolfo 234–235n Great Britain 285 Gianni, Giuseppe Maria di Niccolò di Greece 146, 150, Ridolfo 216n, 232, 233–234n Gregorio da Spoleto 135n Gianni, Lorenzo Maria di Ridolfo 215n, Gregory the Great, St. 102n 231–232, 235n Griselli, Grigio di Giovanni 117 Gianni, Luigi Maria Grosseto 269 see Gianni Giuseppe Maria Guadagni, Bernardo di Piero 139, 142 Gianni, Maria Elisabetta di Ridolfo di Guadagni, Francesco 128, 145 Niccolò 231n Guadagni, Vieri 119n Gianni, Maria Francesca di Ridolfo di Guadagnino, see Soldi Guadagnino Niccolò 231n Guarino Veronese 42, 46–47 Gianni, Maria Maddalena di Ridolfo di Guasconi, Biagio 119n Niccolò 231n, 233n Gucci, ser Niccolò di ser Piero 115n Gianni, Niccolò di Ridolfo di Guicciardini, Francesco 92–94n, 96–98n, Tommaso 214–215, 229, 231 99n, 104n, 121n, 122, 127n, 128, 131n, 244n, Gianni, Niccolò (Maria) di Ridolfo di 248n Niccolò 214–215n, 216, 231–232, 233n, Guicciardini, Iacopo di Piero 122n 234–235, 237 Guicciardini, Luigi 127n, 128, 137–138 Gianni, Ridolfo di Niccolò di Ridolfo 215, Guicciardini, Giovanni, messer 139 231–232, 233n Guicciardini, Piero 96, 99, 127n Gianni, Ridolfo Maria di Francesco Guicciardini, Piero di Luigi 117, 121n Maria 214, 216, 235n Guicciardini, Rinieri 104 Gianni, Ridolfo di Tommaso 214–215, Guidi, Guido Novello, count 57 230–231 Guiducci, Simone di Francesco 143 Gianni, Tommaso di Ridolfo di Tommaso 214n Habsburg-Lorraine, family 190 Gigliolo da Padova 58n Hecataeus 152n, 153 Giordani, Giordano 269 Helvétius, Claude-Adrien 255n Giovanbattista da Radicondoli 270n Henry VII, emperor 59 Giovanna II, queen of Naples 67, 118 Hesiod 152–153 Giovanni, family 112 Hohenstaufen, family 58 Giovanni, Francesco di Tommaso 69–70, Holland 263n, 271, 285n 107n Homer 152–153 Giovanni, Gilio di Zanobi 112 Huet, Pierre-Daniel, bishop of Giovanni Antonio da Faie 268n Avranches 255n
Iberian, peninsula 161 Malta 181, 198n, 202, 233n, 234 Impruneta 89 Malta, Knights of 190 Incisa 59, 114 Manetti, Filippo 99 Israel 146 Manetti, Giannozzo 117 Italy 205, 208, 249, 259, 282, 286n, 290 Manfred of Swabia 57–58 Mannelli, Anna Clarice di Iacopo 215n, Jerusalem 247 232–233 Justin 40, 41n, 42–43, 47 Mannelli, Iacopo 232 Manovelli, Terrino 67, 73n, 75n, 77n Krafft, Peter 287n Mantegazza, Paolo 209n Mantua 70n, 118 Lami, Giovanni 68n, 126–127n, 138–139, Mao Tse Tung 154 210n, 218–219n, 249n, 253n, 254, 258 Marchi, Marco di messer Francesco 44, 51 Landucci, Luca 25n, 75n, 86–87n, Mariani, Lorenzo Maria 200n 89–90n, 107–108n, 137n Marseille 57 Lapi, Nicola 112 Martelli, family 69, 94n, 158 Lascaris, Giovanni 135n Martelli, Antonio 143 Lastra 140 Martelli, Antonio di Niccolò 68 Lastri, Marco 210n, 249n, 253n, 254, 258 Martelli, Carlo 104 Lazio 17 Martelli, Ludovico 104n Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) 154 Martelli, Ugolino di Niccolò 16n, 20n, Leo X, Pope 134, 135n, 137n, 244 26n, 54n, 68, 69n, 73n, 75–76n, 91–94n, Limoges 161 96–98n, 104n, 145, 266n Lippa, monna, widow of Bernardo Martin V, Pope 66n, 118 Sassetti 102 Martini, Feltriano di Antonio 143 Livorno 190n, 262n, 269 Marucelli of Ferrara, family 202n Lodi, peace of 25n, 70, 73n, 76, 79 Marx, Karl 154 Lombardy 247n Masi, Antonio di ser Tommaso 143, 145 Loreto, sanctuary of 107n Masi, Bartolomeo 25, 75n, 83, 84n, Louis III of Anjou 118 90–91n, 93–94n, 97–99n, 101n, 104, Louis XI, king of France 132 105–107n Low Contries 276 Masi, Matteo 104 Lucca 18n, 230, 262n, 268–269, 271 Masi, Romolo 104–105 Ludovico del Ronco da Modena 141 Massa 268 Lugghiara 60n Maximilian, Archduke 225n Luigi da Orvieto 41n Mazzei, Lapo 55n, 66n, 97n Lusignani, Stefano 193n Medici, bank 124–125 Lyon, 193 Medici, family XI, 25, 27, 57, 67–71, 75, 123–124, 129, 131–132, 135–138, 141, 175–176, Machiavelli, Bernardo 66n, 84n, 88n, 188, 191–194, 202n, 204, 230–231, 243n, 245 97–98n, 103n, 264n, 267n Medici, palace 69, 72 Machiavelli, Boninsegna di Giovanni 103 Medici, Alamanno, messer 141 Machiavelli, Lorenzo di Giovanni 103 Medici, Antonio, maestro 103 Machiavelli, Niccolò 195, 230n, 267n Medici, Antonio di Giovenco 141 Machiavelli, Primavera 88, 97 Medici, Averardo called Bicci 124 Macinghi Strozzi, Alessandra 14n, 22n Medici, Averardo di Francesco di Maffei, Scipione 218–219n Bicci 125, 140–141, 143 Magalotti, Bese 63n Medici, Bernardo (Bernardetto) di Antonio di Magni, Girolamo 269 Giovenco 141
Medici, Bernardo di Alamanno 141 Medici, Piero di Cosimo 70–71, 94n, Medici, Caterina, queen of France 193n, 129–130, 131n, 132–133, 135, 158 247n Medici, Piero di Lorenzo Medici, Cosimo I, di Piero 123, 135–137, 178 Grand Duke of Tuscany 29n, 136, Medici, Piero di Pierfrancesco 129 175, 192, 194–195, 245 Medici, Rosso di Niccolò 125n, 126, 133 Medici, Cosimo III, Medici, Salvestro di Alamanno 64, 124 Grand Duke of Tuscany 199–200, Medici, Vieri di Cambio, messer 123, 141 232–233, 252n Mesopotamia 146 Medici, Cosimo di Giovanni 125–126, 132, Michelangelo Buonarroti 242n, 265 144, 230 Micheli, Ventura 62n Medici, Cosimo di Giovanni di Bicci, il Michiel, Tommaso 141 Vecchio 12, 37, 40, 41n, 45, 60n, 67, Milan 70n, 72n, 120n, 132, 159 68n, 71, 73n, 124, 127n, 128–129, 133, 135, Milan, duke of 72 136–137n, 138–139, 267n Miletus 152 Medici, Ferdinando, prince 200n, 231 Minerbetti, Giovanni 145 Medici, Filigno di Conte 23, 73–74, Mini, Paolo 193n 77n, 265 Minutoli, Antonio 269 Medici, Filippo 202n Modena 142–144, 244n Medici, Francesco di Averardo 124 Mogliana 103 Medici, Francesco I, Monachi, Niccolò di Ventura 63n Grand Duke of Tuscany 193n Monaldi, Piero 199 Medici, Francesco Maria, cardinal 251n Monluc, Blaise de 255n Medici, Francesco Rosso del cavalier Montaigne, Michel de 226–227, 241n, Niccolò 202n 253n, 255–256n, 257, 258–259n Medici, Giovanni di Andrea di messer Montaperti 60 Alamanno 141 Montecatini 60n Medici, Giovanni di Averardo called Bicci Montemurlo 175 (Giovanni di Bicci) 124–125, 126n, Montepulciano 190n 129n, 133 Montesenario 233 Medici, Giovanni di Cambio 124 Montespertoli 93n Medici, Giovanni di Giovanni (Giovanni dalle Morelli, family 173, 211n Bande Nere) 136 Morelli, Alberto di Giovanni 85 Medici, Giovanni di Lorenzo di Piero, see Leo Morelli, Bartolomea 99–100 X, Pope Morelli, Giovanni di Pagolo 16n, Medici, Giovanni di Pierfrancesco 129 54–55n, 56, 73, 83n, 85, 86n, 87–88, Medici, Leopoldo, cardinal 251n 92–93n, 94, 95–96n, 99–101n, 108, Medici, Lorenzo di Giovanni 68, 125–126, 212n, 264n, 265 129n, 137n, 140–143, 145 Morelli, Pagolo 93 Medici, Lorenzo di Piero di Lorenzo, Duke of Morigia, Iacopo Antonio, archbishop of Urbino 135 Florence 251n Medici, Lorenzo di Piero di Cosimo, the Muffel, Nicolas 161n Magnificent 42n, 45, 51–52, 53n, Mugello 139–140, 144 71–72n, 86, 128–129n, 131–134n, 136–137n, 138, 144, 155n, 176, 267n Naldi, Naldo 136n Medici, Maria Alessandra 214n Nanni di Cece 67 Medici, Nicola 141 Naples 70, 118, 141 Medici, Orlando 141 Naples, king of 71 Medici, Pierfrancesco di Lorenzo 42, 129 Naples, kingdom of 67
Nardi, family 201 Paris 193n Nardi, Andrea 145 Pazzi, conspiracy 71, 73n Nasi, family 195 Pelli, family 217–220 Nasi, Lionardo di Lionardo 195n Pelli, Andrea di Giovanni di Piero 220n Nay, Emmanuel de, count of Pelli Bencivenni, Giuseppe XI, 204n, Richecourt 234 209n, 210–211, 213, 216–218n, 219, 221, Neri di Bicci 265n 222n, 223–225, 236n, 239, 249n, Nerli, Francesco di Filippo 92n 253–256n, 257–258, 259n, 271n, 274, Nerli, Maddalena 173n, 185 288n Neroni, family 158 Pelli, Giovanni di Andrea 197, 198n, Neroni, Dietisalvi di Nerone di Nigi 25n, 219–222, 248 60n, 69n, 72n, 76 Pelli, Giovanni di Piero 220n Neroni (or Dietisalvi Neroni), Pelli, Pietro 217, 222–223 Francesco 131 Pepys, Samuel 210, 250n Nestor, Jean 193n Perot de Vilanova 284n Netherlands 286 Persius 48n Niccolini, family 65, 102 Perugia 175n, 188, 191, 205 Niccolini, Antonio, Marquis Abbot 234 Peruzzi, family 68n Niccolini, Giovanni 63n Peruzzi, Arnoldo di Arnoldo 59, 73n Niccolini, Lapo 60n, 63n, 65n, 72n, 91n, Peruzzi, Filippo 84n, 121 93n, 96n, 102–104n, 265 Peruzzi, Giovanna (Nanna) di Giovanni di Niccolini, Lena 102 Rinieri 22n, 27, 116n Niccolini, Lorenzo 231 Peruzzi, Luigi 316n Niccolini, Matteo di Bernardino 29n Peruzzi, Ridolfo 139, 144–145 Niccolini, Michele 224 Peruzzi, Simone di Rinieri 64n, 77n Niccolini, Niccolaio 63n, 65 Peruzzi, Tommaso 59, 73n Niccolò da Tolentino 140 Pescia 101, 190n Niccolò di Andrea di Neri di Lippo, see del Peter Damian, St. 156n Palagio Niccolò Petrarch 212n Nicola di Lippo 115n Petrini, Giulio, abbot 224 Nuremberg 161n, 285 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio, see Pius II Picozzo, ser 113 Orsini, Clarice 132 Piero di Antonio di Piero 143 Ostia 57n Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany XI, 228–230 Padua 141–143, 175, 245 Pigli, Giovanni Battista 195n Palafox y Mendoza, Juan, Pisa 57, 66, 140, 175, 190n, 193n, 202n, bishop 253–254n 213, 232, 234–235n, 245, 252, 262n, Palmieri, family 158 270–271 Palmieri, Matteo 26, 76, 77n Pistoia 52–53, 58–59n, 144–145, 181, 190, Panciatichi, family 202n 195, 269, 271 Panciatichi, Alessandra 119 Pitti, Bonaccorso 55n, 77n, 93n, 211–212n, Panciatichi, Niccolò 200n 243n, 264n, 265 Pandolfini, family 202n Pitti, Luca di Bonaccorso 143 Paolo da Certaldo 55n, 98n Pius II, Pope 70n, 136n Paredes, Diego Garcia 287n Pliny the Elder 153n Parenti, Marco 24n, 70, 73n, 76n, 79n Poliziano, Angelo 135–136n Parenti, Piero di Marco 76n Pollini, Domenico 105, 106n Parets, Miquel 284n Polybius 153n
Pompeius Trogus 41n Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 3, 164, 204, 210, Ponte al Lago, see Pontelagoscuro 225, 238, 254, 255–257n, 259n, 275, 288 Pontelagoscuro 143 Rucellai, Giovanni di Pagolo 48n, 79n, Pontormo, Iacopo 241n, 264n, 267n 131n, 264, 267n Portigiani di San Miniato, family 202n Portinari, Gilio 125n Saconomina, Jeroni 284n Portinari, Pier Francesco 49n Segaloni, Francesco 196, 197n, 199 Porto Venere 57n Saint James of Galicia, see Santiago Prato 178, 190n, 269, 271 Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy de 209, Prosper of Aquitaine, St. 37, 41n, 46–47 210n Provence 161, 285 Salamone da Lucca, friar 83n Pucci, family 195n, 202n Salerno 207n Pucci, Giovanni di Antonio di Puccio 143 Salimbeni, family 63 Pucci, Puccio di Antonio di Salutati, Antonio 125, 144 Puccio 142–143 Salviati, family 199n Puglia 219 Salviati, Alamanno 99 Pulci, Bernardo 136n San Gimignano 106 Pulci, Luigi 42n, 48n, 50, 136n San Lorenzo a Cappiano 103 San Michele a Mogliana 103 Raffaello da Montelupo 181n, 242n San Miniato 190n Razzi, Serafino 181n, 247–248n convent of Sant’Iacopo 103 Recanati 144 San Piero in Mercato 103 Redditi, Tommaso 143 Sannini, Donato di Cristofano 139 Redi, Francesco 249n, 250n, 258, 269 Sansepolcro 68n, 190n Rétif de la Bretonne, Nicolas-Edme 259n Santiago of Galicia, sanctuary 107n Retz, cardinal de, see Gondi Jean-François Sarzana 132 Paul Sarzanello 132 Ricasoli, Bettino 114 Sassetti, family 102, 158 Ricasoli Baroni, Caterina 214n Sassetti, Paolo di Alessandro 64–65, 72, Ricci, family 63n 73n, 97n, 102n Ricci, Giuliano 195n Sassetti, Bernardo di Anselmo 102 Ricci, Guido 215n, 231n Sassetti, Bernardo di Alessandro 65 Riccomanni, Lapo 13n, 83 Sassetti, Federigo di Pierozzo 65 Richecourt, see Nay Emmanuel de, count of Sassetti, Frondina 120 Richecourt Sassetti, Gentile 83n, 84n Ridolfi, Bartolomeo 116n, 139, 143 Sassetti, Rinaldo 65 Rimini 117, 141 Savonarola, Girolamo 191 Rinaldeschi, Antonio 89 Scala, Bartolomeo 42, 136n Rinieri, Bernardo 14n, 70n, 72, 73n, Scambrilla, Mariotto 143 75n, 76 Scarperia 269 Rinuccini, Filippo 65n Seir 152n Robertello, Francesco 245 Seravezza 230 Rogers, Richard 249n, 287n Sercambi, Giovanni 55n Romagna 118, 140, 144 Servius 53 Rome 57n, 65, 67, 71, 90, 106–107, 118, 124, Sforza, Francesco 70n 132, 146, 153, 158, 199n, 251n Sforza, Galeazzo 70n, 132 Rossi, Bocchino di Bandino 53 Sforza, Galeazzo Maria 72 Rossi, Raffaello 195n Sforza, Gian Galeazzo 72n Rossi, Tribaldo 88, 90n, 108n Sforza, Muzio Attendolo 67
Siena 18n, 106, 190n, 268, 270 Tucher, Anton 161n Simeoni, Gabriele 181n, 247n Tuscany 18, 57, 66, 161, 164, 175n, 184n, Simo d’Ubertino d’Arezzo 18n, 268n 190, 205, 207n, 208, 228, 241, 252n, 260, Sinibaldi, Raffaello, see Raffaello da 262n, 266, 270, 273, 285 Montelupo Sixtus IV, Pope 71, 132 Uberti, Farinata 84n Soderini, Francesco 142 Uguccione see Contrari Uguccione Soldi, Guadagnino 57 Uguccioni, family 202n Spain 276, 286n Umbria 175n Spini, Bartolomeo di Bartolomeo 139 Urban V, Pope 65 Spulcioni, family 182n Statius 37, 39, 47 Valdinievole 93n Stendhal (Marie-Henry Beyle) 259n Valori, family 173–174, 245, 267 Stolardo, Luigi 141 Valori, Baccio 175 Strozzi, family 40, 50, 73n, 127n, Valori, Baccio di Filippo di 173, 202n Bartolomeo 176 Strozzi, Carlo di Tommaso 199n, 231n Valori, Bartolomeo 174, 245 Strozzi, Filippo di Matteo 71 Valori, Bartolomeo di Filippo 175, Strozzi, Francesco di Palla 111n 245–247 Strozzi, Ginevra di Palla di Nofri 37, 40, Valori, Bartolomeo di Niccolò di 41n Bartolomeo 174 Strozzi, Giovanni di Palla 111n Valori, Filippo 125n, 245 Strozzi, Iacopo di Palla 111n Valori, Filippo di Bartolomeo di Strozzi, Lena di Nofri di Palla 40n Filippo 176 Strozzi, Lionarda di Carlo 40n Valori, Filippo di Bartolomeo di Strozzi, Maria di Carlo 214n Niccolò 174, 175n Strozzi, Matteo di Simone 39–41, 48, 50 Valori, Francesco di Niccolò di Strozzi, Nofri di Palla 111n Bartolomeo 174 Strozzi, Palla di Nofri 48 Valori, Niccolò di Bartolomeo 174 Strozzi, Pazzino 114n Valori, Niccolò di Bartolomeo di Strozzi, Rossello d’Ubertino 111n Niccolò 174 Strozzi, Rosso 111n Varchi, Benedetto 243, 245 Strozzi, Simone di Palla 111n Vasari, Giorgio 242n, 243 Suetonius 40, 41n, 42–43, 47 Vasto 247 Switzerland 285n, 286 Vecchietti, family 64 Velluti, family 211n Taddeo d’Andrea 53 Velluti, Donato 55n, 74n, 77n, 212n, 264n Tavanti, Angelo 238 Veneto 87n, 159, 188 Teglia, doctor 219n Venice 19, 70, 117, 119n, 140–144, 186–188, Teresa of Avila, St. 255n, 288 205, 219, 245, 282–283 Thomas Aquinas, St. 92n Verino, Ugolino 136n Tinucci, Niccolò 119n Verna 106 Titian (Tiziano Vecellio) 245 Vernacci, Francesco 88 Tornabuoni, Cosimo 173, 185n Vespucci, family 196 Tornabuoni, Maddalena, see Nerli Maddalena Vespucci, Guglielmo 196 Toscanelli, Paolo 48n Vespucci, Tommaso 196 Trent 164 Vettori, Piero 127n, 245 Trent, Council of 91, 95, 188, 201, 212, 234n Vieri, Francesco the Younger (Verino Tucci, Agnolo 116n secondo) 193n
Vignali, Orazio 251n Vitelleschi, Giovanni 144 Villani, Giovanni 18n, 37, 42, 46–47, 59n, Volterra 106, 117n, 190n, 270 78n, 186n Villani, Niccolò 113 Walter of Brienne, duke of Athens 61, Villedieu, Alexandre de 43, 46–47 62n Virgil 40–42, 47, 48n, 53 Ward, Samuel 249n, 287n Visconti, Giovanni 77n Warsaw 251n