Premodern European Capitalism, Christianity, and Florence

William Caferro

The essay examines the role of Christianity in premodern Euro- pean capitalism, with regard to the city of Florence. It traces the formation of the historical construct and the influence of Werner Sombart’s Der moderne Kapitalismus, a work much neglected nowadays in the Anglophone academy. The article seeks to historicize and contextualize faith and economy, to stress their fundamentally intertwined nature and more specifically how notions of “negotiation” and diriturra (moral Chris- tian rectitude) connect the seemingly antagonistic sides, and connect also Florentine finance and business history, which are too often studied independently. It argues that Christian rectitude and service to the church (a noncynical quid pro quo) were conjoined with a calculated, reasoned profit motive–evident especially among papal bankers, a key sector of the Florentine economy.

Keywords: Florence, Italy, early capitalism

distinguishing feature of the vast literature on premodern Euro- Apean capitalism is its disparate nature. Scholarly debates have focused on a wide variety of issues, from accounting techniques to “tran- sitions,” and the establishment of proto-industries, the role of capital cities, and world systems, to name a few.1 The discourse has been

I wish to thank the organizers of the conference, Sophus Reinert and Bob Fredona, and the participants, John Brewer, Maria Fusaro, Lauren Jacobi, Elizabeth Mellyn, Jeff Miner, Dan Smail, Corey Tazzara, and Francesca Trivellato, for their comments and critique. I am grateful to Steven Epstein and Julius Kirshner for their critical readings of the essay. The faults are decidedly my own. 1 For a basic outline of the various debates for Europe in the period, see William Caferro, Contesting the Renaissance (Cambridge, U.K., 2011), 126–55. Maurice Dobb, Paul Sweezy, and others debated the nature of “transition” from feudalism to capitalism, with emphasis on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See Rodney Hilton, ed., The Transition from Feu- dalism to Capitalism (London, 1976). Franklin Mendels and others have investigated the role

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characterized not only by the force of argumentation of the participants but by an often startling lack of awareness of the alternative lines of inquiry. The state of affairs is perhaps inevitable for a subject that has engaged scholars from across ﬁelds, including sociologists, economists, historians, and political scientists. A singularly enduring approach to premodern capitalism has been that which has focused on its developmental/evolutionary nature, expressed in stages, linked to a metaphysical “spirit.” The scholarship draws implicitly and explicitly on Voltaire and the Enlightenment (Whig) tradition of “history as progress” and on Hegelian notions of a purposeful unfolding of events guided by a Geist. The durability of the construct owes both to its amorphous quality and its inherent utility. The study of premodern economic history holds little value if it is not sit- uated in terms of the present. And as the renowned scholar John Hale has argued, the urge to divide history into stages may well be rooted in a basic human psychology that inclines us to align the contours of our lives—youth, maturity, and old age—with the historical past.2 In any case, few economic historians of the early period have shown interest in Kuhnian “paradigmatic shifts” or a Foucauldian “episteme” that would disconnect prior events from those that follow and render the premodern era, in Gregory Clark’s recent formulation, one of prolonged and relentless stagnation.3 Focus on capitalism provides a means of cutting through the layers of the past, functioning, to paraphrase William Bever- idge in another context, like the headlights of a car, illuminating a narrow strip that obscures the periphery while offering an escape from antiquar- ianism and irrelevance.4

of proto-industry in the countryside. See Mendels, “Proto-Industrialization: The First Phase of the Industrialization Process,” Journal of Economic History 32 (1972). For capital cities, see Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, trans. by Sian Reynolds (New York, 1981– 84), 396, 400, 621; and “world systems” in Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World- System, 3 vols. (New York and London, 1974–1989). The work on double entry includes, among others, Basil S. Yamey, “Scientiﬁc Bookkeeping and the Rise of Capitalism,” in T. A. Lee, Ashton C. Bishop, and R. H. Parker, eds., Accounting History from the Renais- sance to the Present: A Remembrance of Luca Pacioli (New York and London, 1996); Chris- topher Nobles, ed., The Development of Double Entry: Selected Essays (New York and London, 1984). 2 J. R. Hale, “The Renaissance Label,” in Background to the English Renaissance, ed. J. B. Trapp (London, 1974), 30–42. 3 Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton, 2007), 1–2. See also Karl Gunnar Persson, Pre-industrial Economic Growth, Social Organiza- tion and Technological Progress in Europe (Oxford, 1988). A recent exception to the developmental/evolutionary model (using the methodology of Foucault) is Germano Maifreda, From Oikonomia to Political Economy: Constructing Economic Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Scientiﬁc Revolution (Burlington, VT, 2012). 4 William H. Beveridge, “Wages in the Winchester Manors,” Economic History Review (1936): 22; see William Caferro, Petrarch’s War: Florence and the Black Death in Context (Cambridge, U.K., 2018), 147–48.

The discourse on premodern capitalism is compartmentalized and characterized by often stark oppositions and casual assumptions. A basic term like “feudalism” functions for economists, especially those of a Marxist turn, as a synonym for medieval “unfree” labor that is antithetical to capitalism.5 At the same time, medievalists question whether feudalism existed at all and, if so, what its essential features were and where to place treatises like Walter of Henley’s On Husbandry that provide evidence of rational economic calculation in the countryside.6 Most problematic of all has been the role of the church. Teleological notions of evolution of capitalist practice along with a metaphysical spirit have posed particular problems with regard to religion. They encourage the portrait of a monolithic medieval church that is a synonym for “traditionalism,” which enforced the feudal landed structure of social stratification and unfree labor that were the opposite of capitalism. For Max Weber and R. H. Tawney it was the “spirit” of reform religion—Calvin- ism and Puritanism, respectively—that overturned traditionalism and facilitated the advent of capitalism.7 The aim of this essay is to look more closely at the role of Christianity in premodern capitalism, with particular attention to Florence, an “epicenter” of capitalist activity, famously associated with modernity. Florence has a privileged place in discussions as a locus of modernity and capitalistic practice with regard to not only trade and merchant activity (commercial capitalism) but also accounting technique (double-entry bookkeeping), business organization, and public finance (funded debt, or monte)—the latter associated with “financial capitalism.” Raymond de Roover declared in his classic study in 1966 that “modern capitalism” had “its roots” in Florence, and a recent comprehensive study of the Flor- entine economy affirms that the enduring “romance” of the city is “that of

5 The so-called transition debate sought to locate the point at which merchant capitalism transformed into industrial capitalism, focusing on free labor and commercialization of the countryside. Rodney Hilton, ed., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London, 1976). 6 Jacques Heers calls feudalism “a real custard pie of a term,” one that is weighed down with “every implication of evil” and is “difficult to define and varied from place to place.” Heers, “The ‘Feudal’ Economy and Capitalism: Words, Ideas and Reality,” Journal of Euro- pean Economic History 3, no. 3 (1974): 625. For the classic critique of the term, see Susan Rey- nolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994). 7 Max Weber, The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York, 1958); R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London, 1922). An interesting, provocative teleological take on the medieval church is in Robert B. Ekelund, Robert F. Hebert, Robert D. Tollison, Gary M. Anderson, and Aubrey B. Davidson, eds., Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm (Oxford, 1996). The volume’s contributors treat the church in modern corporate terms as a “multidivi- sional firm.”

emergent capitalism.”8 The connection between Florentine capitalism and the church is conspicuous because of the city’s role in papal banking, which was a focal point of economic activity, most notably with regard to the Medici family, which itself has stood at the center of discussion. The modest goal here is to look more closely at the relation between economy and faith, to historicize and contextualize the role of the church, which, owing to a deeply embedded long-term developmental/evolutionary view of capitalism, has been distorted and, worse, separated into separate spheres. The essay self-consciously eschews the vertical approach in favor of a more horizontal one that seeks to better under- stand the complicated and intertwined relationship and, in the process, to connect the discourse on Florentine business history with that on public ﬁnance—discourses that have been curiously detached from each other. It follows recent studies that emphasize the symbiotic relationship between the Florentine church and society, and the negotiation attendant to the famous disputations regarding the monte, adding another layer to the discourse, notably the importance of Christian notions of diriturra that underlay both Florentine public ﬁnance and private business.9 The article treats the church not as a monolith but as multifaceted like the society it served.

Florentine Individualism/Merchant Capitalism and Sombart’s Der moderne Kapitalismus

Mentalité—religious, economic, or otherwise—is notoriously difﬁ- cult to assess for the distant past. The obstacles are many, and for historians the task is further complicated by periodization. Premodern

8 Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494 (New York, 1966), 2; Richard Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, 2009), esp. 35. 9 On Florentine society and the church, see, among others, Roberto Bizzocchi, Chiesa e potere nella Toscana del Quattrocento (Bologna, 1987); Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renais- sance Florence (Ithaca, 1991); John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Oxford, 1994); David S. Peterson, “Out of the Margins: Religion and the Church in Renais- sance Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 53, no. 3 (2000): 835–79; and George Dameron, Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante (Philadelphia, 2005). For discussion of the Florentine monte, see Julius Kirshner, “‘Ubi est ille?’: Franco Sacchetti on the Monte Comune of Flor- ence,” Speculum 59, no. 3 (1984): 571; Lawrin Armstrong, Usury and Public Debt in Early Renaissance Florence: Lorenzo Ridolﬁ on the Monte Comune (Toronto, 2003); and Arm- strong, The Idea of a Moral Economy: Gerard of Siena on Usury, Restitution, and Prescrip- tion (Toronto, 2016). Odd Langholm examines the attitudes regarding economy of forty seven theologians, using many unpublished manuscripts. Langholm, Economics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money and Usury according to the Paris Theological Tra- dition, 1200–1350 (Leiden, 1992); “Monopoly and Market Irregularities in Medieval Economic Thought: Traditions and Texts to AD 1500,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 28, no. 4 (2006): 395–441.

merchants dwelled not only in the distant past but in a differentiated past for which historians erected signposts. Among the most formidable of these is that which separates the Middle Ages from Renaissance Italy. The scholarly distinction predates the discussion of capitalism and is the work of Jacob Burckhardt, who in the mid-nineteenth century famously contrasted a “corporate” Middle Ages that lay “half awake” and hidden “beneath a veil, woven of faith” with an “individualistic” Renaissance Italy, where man was the measure of all things and inclined to follow his egoistic impulses, which was the hallmark of modernity.10 Burkhardt was not interested in the economy, but the financial implications of his thesis were fleshed out by a cadre of subsequent writers including the German scholar Alfred von Martin, who equated Burckhardt’s “individualism” with the “spirit of capitalism” that was evident in Florence, the prototype of the modern world.11 Von Martin made a sharp distinction between a Middle Ages whose “center of gravity” was land, characteristic of a “static order, sanctioned by the church,” and the Renaissance, whose emphasis was the town, which was the changing element” of society.12 “Individualism” was a secular urban force that stood in opposition to the landed and religious sector and therefore “deprived the world of the divine element in order to make it more real.”13 The American scholar H. M. Robertson, following von Martin, posited a similar contrast, portraying the Middle Ages as “a divine ordering of . . . a graded society” that was the opposite of individualism, which instead signified “free action,”“free trade, competition and private property.”14 It did not seem to matter to these scholars that Burckhardt’s examples of individualism were lords, petty aristocrats/mercenaries, who in fact represented the “ordered,”“graded,” church-sanctioned landed sector of society.14 In any case, there is for Florentine economic historians an embedded tradition of equating the church with a feudal/medieval noncapital- istic order that was liberated by its antithesis: a secular individualism. A subsequent “revolt of medievalists,” led by a generation of archivally trained scholars, brought the search for modernity and capitalism to an earlier period but did little to change the basic opposition.15 Henri

10 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middle- more ( New York, 1954), 100. 11 Alfred von Martin, Sociology of the Renaissance (London, 1944), originally published as Soziologie der Renaissance (Stuttgart, 1932), 2. 12 Von Martin, Sociology of the Renaissance,1. 13 Von Martin, Sociology of the Renaissance,2. 14 H. M. Robertson, Aspects of the Rise of Individualism: A Criticism of Max Weber and His School (New York, 1959), 34. 15 N. S. B. Gras, Business and Capitalism: An Introduction to Business History (New York, 1939).

Pirenne applied the term “capitalist” to medieval Flemish merchants and described them and urban merchants in general as constituting a “fringe” of a medieval society that otherwise remained feudal and landed. For Pirenne the church was the epitome of feudalism, representing “an idle fortune” that was “fixed motionless in the hands of an aris- tocracy, priestly or military.” Monasteries were the central feature of landed accumulation and an anticapitalist spirit.16 Pirenne’s highly influential construct appears in the work of R. H. Tawney, who took a more nuanced view of the medieval church but ultimately saw the institution as enforcing an “unalterable” social system external to “pecuniary transactions” that occurred in an urban world, “at the fringe of a world of natural economy.”17 Pirenne and his contemporaries worked under the Marxian label of “merchant” or “commercial” capitalism, to distinguish their period from the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century.18 “Capitalism in the age of the Medici,” wrote de Roover, was “commercial capitalism.” The label de facto reified the distinction between the feudal/church/medieval sector of society and its urban/secular/capitalist counterpart. It allowed for a reduction of the scale of economic activity and discussion of a few enterprising men, who served as examples of capitalism and thus part of an evolutionary process.19 It did not help that the scholars used the term “capitalist” loosely, nay, rhetorically. The great French historian André Sayous applied “capitalist” to the merchants at the great fairs of Cham- pagne in the twelfth century.20 Yves Renouard referred to fourteenth- century merchant bankers at the papal court of Avignon as “capitalist men of affairs,” as did Armando Sapori in his extensive studies on Flor- entine merchant bankers of that era.21 Even the most recent study of the Florentine economy refers to the merchants of the era as “proto- capitalists.”22

16 Henri Pirenne, “The Stages in the Social History of Capitalism,” American Historical Review 19, no. 3 (1914): 500. 17 Tawney, Religion,25,28–29, 56. 18 F. L. Nussbaum, “The Economic History of Renaissance Europe: Problems and Solutions during the Past Generation,” Journal of Modern History 13, no. 4 (1941): 527. 19 De Roover, Medici Bank,7. 20 “Des reports d’échanges furent pratiqués aux Foires plus largement que dans le passé par l’intervention de capitalistes.” André Sayous, “Le capitalisme commercial et financier dans les pays Chrétiens de la Mediterranée occidentale, depuis la première croisade jusqu’àlafindu moyen-âge,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 29, no. 3 (1936): 295. 21 Yves Renouard, Les relations des Papes ďAvignon et des Compagnies commerciales et bancaires de 1316 à 1378 (Paris, 1941), 41; Armando Sapori, La crisi delle compagnie mercantili dei Bardi e dei Peruzzi (Florence, 1926), 147. A particularly forceful argument for the genesis of capitalism in the Middle Ages is in Jacques Heers, La Naissance du capitalisme au Moyen Âge: Changeurs, usuriers et grands financiers (Paris, 2012). 22 Goldthwaite, Economy, 238.

Of critical importance to the construct—and too often ignored in the discussion of it—is the influence of Werner Sombart’s Der moderne Kapitalismus (1902). Sombart (1863–1941) is less known in the Ameri- can academy than his famous contemporary, fellow sociologist and scholarly interlocutor Max Weber. Sombart’s connection to Nazi politics and ideology did much to discredit him, and Der moderne Kapitalismus remains untranslated into English. Sombart is best known in the Anglo- phone academy for his Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (1911), written in opposition to Weber’s Protestant Ethic and translated into English in 1925 as Jews and the Rise of Capitalism. The book, which argued for a Jewish “unlimited desire for gain” against Weber’s Protes- tant self-denial as the wellspring of capitalism, has been the source of much dispute.23 But Sombart was a product of the German historical school of economics that had an important impact on the field. It favored historicizing trends over theoretical models and stressed “stages” of development of capitalism. Der moderne Kapitalismus was Sombart’s hauptwerk, which he returned to often, revising it three times during his career— with a significant revision, 1916/19. The most comprehensive treatment of capitalism in its day, it profoundly influenced the foundational generation of premodern European economic historians. Der moderne Kapi- talismus offered a detailed, if at times rambling, portrait of European economic history, backed up with a dizzying array of examples and sta- tistics and frequent quotes from Goethe.24 Like Weber, Sombart treated capitalism as a distinctly European phenomenon that manifested itself as “a spirit.” Sombart saw the premodern period as a preliminary stage in the development of capitalism characterized by Bedarfsdeckung- sprinzip (pursuit of one’s needs), as opposed to Erwerbsprinzip (pursuit of gain), which was the ethos of full capitalism that did not arrive until the modern era. The medieval merchant was thus for Sombart an adventurer, who carried out trade on a small scale and whose profits inevitably returned to land, which represented the antithesis of capitalistic investment. Trade had a transformative effect only when it was freed from landed investment and “the disastrous circle of

23 Die Juden was Sombart’s answer to Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic (1904–1905), a debate begun by Sombart himself in 1902, with the publication of Der moderne Kapitalismus. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Religion and Capitalism Once Again? Jewish Merchant Culture in the Seventeenth Century,” Representations 59 (Summer 1997): 56–84. 24 Werner Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, revised, 2 vols. (Munich, 1919–c. 1916). Max Weber had earlier written about medieval commerce, partnerships, and Italian mercantile practices. Weber, Zur Geschichte der Handelsgesellschaften im Mittelalter: Schriften 1889–1894, ed. Gerhard Dilcher and Susanne Lepsius (Tübingen, 2008).

low turnover, high expenses, [and] low profits.”25 Sombart reiterated these ideas in his Der Bourgeois (Quintessence of Capitalism [1911]), referring to the premodern economy as traditionalist—the term used also by Weber.26 Sombart devoted special attention to the importance of double-entry accounting technique, which he described in a long section of book two of Der moderne Kapitalismus. He saw double entry as the essence of the capitalist secular spirit, behaving “like form and content to each other.”27 It is important to stress that the comprehensive nature of Der moderne Kapitalismus did much to set the modern terms of discussion. The work of the early pioneers like Pirenne and Sayous can only be prop- erly understood in terms of Sombart.28 Pirenne pointedly titled his famous synthesis “The Stages in the Social History of Capitalism” (1913) in response to Der moderne Kapitalismus and the whole German historical school.29 Pirenne modified Sombart’s approach, arguing that rather than a “gentle ascent” in the history of capitalism, there was a more awkward “series of lifts.”30 “There are as many classes of capitalists as there are epochs in economic history,” he wrote, “each distinct and separate.” He accepted, however, Sombart’s basic distinction between capitalists and landed aristocrats, noting that merchants of each era inevitably retreated “from the [capitalist] struggle,” invested in land, and then became aristocrats. It was for this reason that “the capitalists of one era do not bring forth those of the next era” and a straight forward evolution did not occur.31 Sayous’s response was more direct. He argued that “le capitalisme commercial e financier” was present in the Middle Ages despite the asser- tions in “the big book” of Sombart, whose thesis Sayous called stimulating and “audacious.”32 Meanwhile, N. S. B. Gras, a founder of the modern

25 “Der Handel wird erst in großem Stile vërmogenbildend wirken können, wenn er erst einmal aus dem verhängsnisvollen Zirkel; kleiner Umsatz, hohe Spesen, geringe Profitmengen, keine Accumulation, in dem wir ihn eingeschlossen fanden, herausgehoben ist.” Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 1:319. 26 Werner Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism: A Study of the History and Psychol- ogy of the Modern Business Man, trans. and ed. M. Epstein (New York, 1915), 13, 20. 27 “Man kann schlechthin Kapitalismus ohne doppelte Buchhaltung nicht denken: sie ver- halten sich wie Form und Inhalt zueinander.” Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2:118. 28 Sayous, “Le capitalisme commercial et financier,” 271, 274. 29 Pirenne, “Stages.” 30 Pirenne responded also to Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft (1893) by Karl Bücher, another proponent of the German historical school, translated as Industrial Evolution (New York, 1901). Pirenne, “Stages,” 494. See also Peter Koslowski, ed., The Theory of Capitalism in the German Economic Tradition: Historism, Ordo-Liberalism, Critical Theory, Solidarism (Berlin, 2013). 31 Pirenne, “Stages,” 495, 497. 32 “Les historiens ont considéré comme audacieux et, en certains points, même fantaisiste, le gros ouvrage sur les origines du ‘capitalisme moderne’ paru au début de ce siècle.” Sayous cites a French translation of the book published in Paris in 1936. Sayous, “Le capitalisme commercial et financier,” 270.

discipline of business history, credited Sombart’s Der moderne Kapitalis- mus with influencing a “whole school of writers on the rise of capitalism” and “fertilizing” his own field.33 Indeed, Gras’s Business and Capitalism closely follows Sombart’s method of tracing stages from “nomadic to petty capitalism,” from the traveling merchant to the sedentary one.34 In a review of the scholarship on premodern European economic history prior to World War II, F. L. Nussbaum pointed to the “encyclopedic” Der moderne Kapitalismus as having “a privileged place” in the discourse on capitalism. Accordingly, Nussbaum, in an oft-cited observation, stated that economic history “knew no Renaissance” but was subsumed under the Sombartian category of early capitalism.35 Sombart’sinfluence has been particularly strong among accounting historians, who focus on his lengthy discussion of double entry. Bert Yamey devoted his career to modifying Sombart’s analysis, arguing for the importance of other accounting methods.36 Eve Chiapello’s more recent essay systematically traces the influence of Sombart on a generation of accounting historians, who continue to argue in terms laid out by the German sociologist.37 For our purposes here, Der moderne Kapitalismus is important because it was also highly influential among Italianists. It was published in Italian as Il capitalismo moderno in 1925, translated by the distin- guished economic historian Gino Luzzatto, who was himself a major force in the study of premodern trade and business.38 Sombart touched a singular nerve when he denigrated Florentine economic development, calling into question Giovanni Villani’s famous figures (1338) that highlighted the potency of the city and arguing more generally that Florentine business remained small in scale and that its commercial investments invariably returned to land. He reinforced the interpreta- tion with a quote from Leon Battista Alberti—whom Alfred von Martin would later cite as a proponent of capitalism—about the profligacy of priests: how they desired “to surpass all men in splendor and

33 N. S. B. Gras, “Business History,” Economic History Review 4, no. 4 (1934): 390. 34 Gras, Business and Capitalism. 35 Nussbaum, “Economic History,” 529–32. Nussbaum also helped introduce an American audience to Sombart’s work. Nussbaum, A History of the Economic Institutions of Modern Europe: An Introduction of ‘Der moderne Kapitalismus’ of Werner Sombart (New York, 1933). 36 Basil S. Yamey, “Scientiﬁc Bookkeeping and the Rise of Capitalism,” Economic History Review, n.s., 1, no. 2–3 (1949): 99–113. 37 Eve Chiapello, “Accounting and the Birth of the Notion of Capitalism,” Critical Perspec- tives on Accounting 18, no. 3 (2007): 263–96. 38 Werner Sombart, Il Capitalismo Moderno, trans. Gino Luzzatto (Florence, 1925). On Luzzatto’s career and difﬁculties with Fascist authorities, see Reinhold C. Mueller, “Per ragioni di ordine generale: Gino Luzzatto vittima delle leggi razziali, 1938–1945,” Venetica 55 (2018): 153–68.

ostentation.”39 Church-related profligacy was the antithesis of the pursuit of gain and the apotheosis of the return of capital to land. It is notable that Sombart fashioned his portrait at approximately the same time that his German contemporary Alfred Doren depicted the Floren- tine woolen cloth industry as a capitalist enterprise, stressing the size of the firms, which he called Riesenateliers (giant plants), and compared them to modern factories led by industrial magnates.40 Meanwhile, Sombart’s older contemporary Heinrich Sieveking found fiscal modernity in Genoese public finance and in the practices of the Medici bank.41 As late as the 1950s, Italian economic historian Enrico Fiumi was still situating his work on Florence in terms of Sombart, taking issue with his figures, which Fiumi called “tutto incoerente.”42

A Problematic Narrative: God, Trade, and Double-Entry Bookkeeping

In any case, consideration of Sombart’s Der moderne Kapitalismus is critical to understanding the scholarly tradition of study of premodern economic history, the deep roots of the developmental/evolutionary (stage) approach and the association of landed wealth with the church as an antipode of capitalism. This has been true despite the fact that the scholarly construct renders problematic and contradictory even the most basic narrative of premodern economic history. The starting point of the traditional narrative is the “take off” of the medieval economy during the Commercial Revolution (1000–1300), when Europe’s population increased and commercial fairs in Champagne were established, as were long-distance trade routes, aided by commercial instruments such as commende and partnership agreements that helped manage risk. But the Commercial Revolution coincided with the Crusades to the Holy Land (1095–1291), which brought men, often landed aristocrats and churchmen (the antagonists of capitalism), along roads and seas, helping establish trade routes and create demand for Eastern high-priced goods. The Crusades famously facilitated the growth of commercial cities like Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, which served as middlemen in travel and trade. Indeed, Sayous began his account of the “rise of capitalism” precisely with the First Crusade,

39 Quoted in Sombart, Quintessence of Capitalism, 15. 40 Alfred Doren, Die Florentiner Wollentuchindustrie (Stuttgart, 1901), 25, 34, 202, 249. 41 Heinrich Sieveking, Die Handlungsbücher der Medici (Vienna, 1905); Sieveking, Gen- ueser Finanzwesen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Casa di S. Georgio (Freiburg, 1898–1899). 42 Enrico Fiumi, “Fioritura e decadenza dell’economia ﬁorentina,” Archivio storico italiano 115 (1957): 387–88.

and modern textbooks on the Middle Ages continue to elide crusade with commerce without any sense of ambiguity.43 Meanwhile, the details of the economic effects of the “unholy” Fourth Crusade that led to the conquest of commercially rich Constantinople have still not received the scholarly attention in the Anglophone academy that they deserve. And for all the emphasis on the role of coastal Italian cities in the crusading adventure, there remain curiosities for Italianists, such as the use, since the twelfth century, of the term “Biccherna” in Siena for communal budgets, taken after the Blachernae district of Constantinople.44 The great Champagne fairs that brought merchants together from throughout Europe were the work of feudal aristocrats, who sought commercial gain. Count Henry of Champagne (1127–1181) had in fact been on the Second Crusade, which stimulated his interest in promoting the region. And the church’srolein the fairs is evident from the fact that they purposefully coincided with religious feast days to take advantage of pilgrim traffic. Lagny, Bar-sur-Aube, Troyes, and Provins hosted events on the major holidays of St. Croix Day, Toussaint, Fête, and St. Ayoul Day, respectively.45 In short, the church was so deeply woven into the system that it is impossible to graft it out. The pilgrim, soldier, and merchant trod the same roads, stayed at the same inns, and were sometimes, indeed, the same person. The economic importance of pilgrim “tourist” trafficis well known to medievalists. The famous English merchant Godric of Fin- chale (1065–1170), whom Pirenne singled out as the very first to possess the “spiritus capitalisticus” and who is a staple of evolutionary/developmental narratives of capitalism, combined his merchant affairs with his pilgrimages to holy shrines.46 As Robert Lopez argued for Italy, it is impossible at the outset of the Commercial Revolution “to tell apart merchants who bought real estate” from “noblemen who sold their estate and invested in trade.”47 Indeed, the major medieval road, the via Franci- gena, which linked Rome to Paris and facilitated the early commercial activities of merchants from Asti, Piacenza, and other cities that lay on

43 André Sayous argued that European capitalism came to America as a result of Spain’s conquest of the New World. Sayous, “Le capitalisme commercial et ﬁnancier.” In modern textbooks, see Wim Blockmans and Peter Hoppenbrouwers, Introduction to Medieval Europe, 300–1500 (London, 2017). Even the steadfast proponent of individualism H. M. Robertson believed that the Crusades deserved “prominence in the history of capitalism.” Robertson, Aspects, 44. 44 William M. Bowsky, The Finance of the Commune of Siena, 1287–1355 (Oxford, 1970), 2. 45 Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (Oxford, 1989), 60, 70, 61; Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World (New York, 1955), 81. 46 Pirenne, “Stages,” 503; Reginald of Durham, “Life of St. Godric,” in Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, ed. G. G. Coulton (Cambridge, U.K., 1918). 47 Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Cambridge, U.K., 1976), 67.

the road, was not a secular highway but a pilgrimage route in the first instance, established and maintained by the church, which had organized a “rete” (network) of hostels (ospedali) by the twelfth century, built by the Templars to facilitate pilgrimage to Rome.48 The road diverged up north to the shrine of Santiago Compostela in northwestern Spain. And Florence, which was not on the road and whose trade and economic development was therefore not directly linked to it, nevertheless saw its merchants invest in property along it. The Franzesi merchant bankers of the thirteenth century, who played a key role in financial affairs of France’s King Philip the Fair, purchased the town of Staggia and other properties along the via Francigena in the Valdelsa. Merchant bankers of the Alberti family bought possessions at Poggibonsi, also along the via Francigena.49 Nowhere has the discussion of premodern capitalism been more sec- ularized and distorted than with respect to double-entry bookkeeping, a subject that constitutes its own subfield.50 Both Weber and Sombart associated the practice with the type of rational abstraction and system- atic analysis that was an essential feature of capitalism.51 Sombart devoted much space to the subject in Der moderne Kapitalismus,as noted above.52 He described double entry as part of the same “spirit” that “first gave birth to capitalism.”53 The spirit was not only secular but scientific. Sombart asserted that “double accounting was born of the same spirit as the system of Galileo and Newton, as the teachings of modern physics and chemistry.”54 The pull of teleology is particularly forceful here. Jane Gleeson- White’s popular 2011 book credits double entry with nothing less than giving birth to modern finance.55 Jacob Soll argues that double entry not only represented a systematization and abstraction that was impor-

48 Renato Stopani, La via Francigena: Una strada europea nell’Italia del Medioevo (Flor- ence, 1992), 72–74, 87–88. 49 Stopani, La via Francigena,88–89. 50 Yamey, “Scientiﬁc Bookkeeping”; Chiapello, “Accounting.” 51 Weber saw a rational capitalistic system as one with “capital accounting and calculation according to the methods of modern bookkeeping and the striking of a balance.” Weber, General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Black (New York, 1927), 275. 52 The discussion is in book 2, section 2.3. Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2:110–24. 53 “Die doppelte Buchhaltung erst den Kapitalismus aus ihrem Geiste geboren habe.” Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2:118. 54 “Die doppelte Buchhaltung ist aus demselben Geiste geboren wie die Systeme Galileis und Newtons, wie die Lehren der modernen Physik und Chemie.” Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2:119. 55 Jane Gleeson-White, Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance (New York, 2011).

tant to capitalism but, alongside financial accountability, applied also to the realm of political economy and helped determine the success of early modern states.56 The hero of the narratives is the mathematician and erstwhile “father of modern accounting” Luca Pacioli, whose birthday is celebrated yearly in his native San Sepolcro by accountants from all over the world. Pacioli wrote in Tuscan vernacular to describe the Vene- tian bilateral method (alla veneziana) of double entry, with debits facing credits, which he saw as the best system. He devoted book nine, tract eleven of his Summa de arithmetica, a treatise on mathematics (1494), to careful description of double entry. Sombart called Pacioli “der Erster Systematiker des Buchhaltung” and described his method as the first scientific and coherent expression of capitalism. Sombart ultimately judged the accomplishment incomplete insofar as Pacioli did not discuss balance sheets, which, according to Sombart, did not come into use until the seventeenth century. Scholars have engaged in seemingly endless debate about the origins of and the basis upon which to assess double entry. They generally agree that the Genoese government accounts of 1340, rendered in bilateral form, as advocated by Pacioli, are an indisputable early example.57 Cases have also been made, however, for the priority of the account books of the Florentine Fini and Farolfifirms in the early fourteenth century, as well as the Gallerani firm of Siena and others.58 Italian scholar Federigo Melis believed that double entry was widely used in Florence after 1380, most strikingly in the books of the famous merchant of Prato, Francesco Datini, for whom a mountain of archival material remains.59 Raymond de Roover argued that the lack of a complete set of surviving account books made it difficult to know for sure. Neverthe- less, de Roover was certain that Florence’s “business organization” allowed for its economic hegemony, which in turn laid “the foundation of most institutions of today.”60

56 Jacob Soll, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (New York, 2014), xv; John Padgett, “Transposition and Refunctionality,” in The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, John Padgett and Walter W. Powell (Princeton, 2012), 203. 57 Soll, Reckoning,12–14. 58 Geoffrey A. Lee, “The Coming of Age of Double Entry: The Giovanni Farolﬁ Ledger of 1299–1300,” Accounting Historians Journal 4, no. 2 (1977): 79–95; Christopher W. Nobes, “The Gallerani Account Book of 1305–1308,” Accounting Review 57, no. 2 (1982): 303–10; Carlo Antinori, “La contabilità pratica prima di Luca Pacioli: Origine della partita doppia,” De Computis: Revista Española de Historia de la Contabilidad 1 (2004): 4–23. 59 Federigo Melis, Storia della ragioneria: Contributo alla conoscenza e interpretazione delle fonti più signiﬁcative della storia economica (Bologna, 1950); Melis, Aspetti della vita economica medievale (Florence, 1962). 60 De Roover, Medici Bank,1–2.

Florentine Double Entry and Mentalité

Accordingly, the first studies of the Medici account books in the Self- ridge collection at the Harvard Business School’s Baker Library focused on accounting technique and business organization. Florence Edler de Roover used the collection to trace the stages of Medici bookkeeping methods to the “perfection” of double entry, that is, the bilateral, alla veneziana style, with debits across from credits, as advocated by Pacioli. Edler de Roover outlined an evolutionary process, starting with “paragraph form” in an account book belonging to Giovenco di Giuliano de Medici (1406–1418; MS 492), with credits in the front of the book and debits at back of the book, to bilateral form in another account book belonging to Giovenco di Giuliano (1417–1428; MS 493), with debits facing credits, to cross referencing of accounts in an account book belonging to Giovenco di Giuliano and his cousin Giovenco di Antonio (1431–1434; MS 496). The last account book had “many characteristics of double entry in rudimen- tary form,” she found, but it lacked the “most outstanding feature”: debits on left and credits on right. Finally, an account book belonging to Averardo Bernardo di Medici (1441–1444; MS 498) combined all the features of double entry, in bilateral form, debits on the left-hand side, credits on the right, and cross referencing to other books.61 Edler de Roover was careful to restrict her conclusions to the mate- rials she examined. But more recent studies trace Florentine double- entry accounting practice into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and equate it with a distinct mentalité,a“culture of precise quantifica- tion,” that was unique to the city and that connected to, and helped explain, the broader cultural/Renaissance achievements for which Flor- ence is famous.62 By the seventeenth century, double entry was fully developed in bilateral form and widely diffused, appearing not only in merchant books but also in private household accounts, which survive in conspicuously large numbers and, according to the argument, reflect cultural sensibilities.63 The logic is convincing and fits well with the established view of the city. But the logic is also uncomfortably familiar, retaining a distinctive Enlightenment/Whig and Burckhardtian aspect. An “ethereal” notion of spirit is here replaced by an equally “ethereal” notion of culture. Accounting method still represents, as in Sombart, a distinctly secular mindset. What is obscured, however, is historical context. If accounting

61 Florence Edler de Roover, Glossary of Medieval Business Terms (Cambridge, MA, 1970), 348–49. The subsection is entitled “Medici Methods of Bookkeeping.” 62 Richard Goldthwaite. “The Practice and Culture of Accounting in Renaissance Florence,” Enterprise and Society 16, no. 3 (2015): 611–47. 63 Goldthwaite, 619, 641–42.

technique is evidence of a unique Florentine way of thinking, linked to the city’s economic and cultural success, then it is unclear why the wide- spread diffusion and perfection of the technique occurred in the seventeenth century when the city was largely in economic decline, with many of its most noteworthy “cultural achievements in the past,” embarking upon what Eric Cochrane famously called the “Forgotten Centuries.”64 More important, it is necessary to ask whether the examples adduced by scholars regarding double entry are in fact equivalent and comparable, such that extrapolation of a distinct mentalité is war- ranted. In this regard it is troubling that the bilateral double-entry account book from Genoa in 1340 is a state account book, representing the method employed for public finance. The account books for Florence and Tuscany are those of private merchants and individuals. The examples are not the same. Indeed, at the time that Florentine merchants appear to have turned to double entry in their private account books in the fourteenth century, the city itself, unlike Genoa, does not appear to have used double entry in its public account books. State budgets, managed by the camera del comune, the chief fiscal office of the commune, recorded income and expenditure separately in the middle of the trecento and employed separate accountants (ragionieri) to oversee each side of the ledger. Inter- estingly, the accountant in charge of expenditure earned twice the salary of the accountant in charge of income.65 The reason is unclear, but budgetary evidence suggests that the latter had a helper. Florentine budgets became more complete by 1384, as Anthony Molho has shown, and began listing all communal income and expenses, including those that went directly to specific costs and bypassed the camera altogether. Molho argues persuasively that the budgets represented a “new sense of order and discipline” in terms of the bureaucracy of the city. Neverthe- less, the accounting technique itself remained the same as earlier.66 The basic point is that the double-entry accounting innovation in the private sector in Florence did not have an immediate analog in the public sector. And during times of heavy expenditure, large turnover of funds and fears of fiscal confusion, Florence did not alter its accounting methods but instead hired committees of additional accountants (rivedi- tori/regolatori) to oversee and review the work of the prior ones. The recourse to auditors was a common expedient throughout Tuscany at

64 Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800 (Chicago, 2013). Origi- nally published in 1973 65 Caferro, Petrarch’s War, 55, 88. 66 Anthony Molho, “The State and Public Finance: A Hypothesis Based on the History of Late Medieval Florence,” in The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300–1600, ed. Julius Kirshner (Chicago, 1995), 110–15.

this time, including in neighboring Siena, where the state instituted a permanent office of regolatori in 1362 to review, and rewrite in summary form, all communal budgets.67 But little evidence has emerged thus far of innovation in public accounting technique, a subject that requires much more research. What do we then say about a distinct Florentine “spirit” or “culture?” Why would Genoa, a city rarely associated with a “Renaissance,” arrange its public finance more “rationally”? The question is all the more intrigu- ing given that both Florence and Genoa ultimately instituted public debts that have been associated with “modern” financial capitalism.68 What, if anything, does the difference say about the political nature of the states, their business communities, and the relation between that community and the fisc? Did Genoa have its own unique mentalité that was fundamentally different from Florence’s, and did that mentalité differ with respect to the public and private sphere?69 Or did the two states simply use different accounting systems for different types of public fiscal activities and organization? And, still more fundamentally, does a single Genoese budget suggest a continuous practice? The surviving budgetary evidence for the city is fragmentary and difficult to generalize from.70 Such questions are important. If double entry invariably means a “rationalization” and “abstraction” that carried over to the culture or spirit of a people, then it is unclear why Genoa was so unsuccessful at politically disciplining itself. The city was often sold in the fourteenth century and subject, on and off, to the hegemony of Milan. Genoa would appear in this respect a cautionary tale about the dangers of apply- ing the rationalization of accounting method to politics that were in that city anything but rational. In any case, it is critical to stress that the rationalization attributed to double entry was not secular. Sombart argued that the “order” required of the method revealed its “power.”71 But the Franciscan friar Luca

67 William Caferro, Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena (Baltimore, 1996), xviii–xix, 102–55. 68 On public debt, see, among others, the following important studies: Luciano Pezzolo, “Government Debts and Credit Markets in Renaissance Italy,” in Government Debts and Financial Markets in Europe, ed. Fausto Piola Caselli (London, 2008), 17–32; and Maria Gina- tempo, “Il finanziamento del deficit pubblico nelle città dell’Italia centro-settentrionale (XIII– XV secolo),” in Debito pubblico e mercati finanziari in Italia: Secoli XIII–XX, ed. Giuseppe De Luca and Angelo Moioli (Milan, 2007), 39–82. 69 Yoko Kamenaga Anzai discusses “the utilization of public debt for the salvation of souls” in Genoa, as churches, hospitals, and monasteries held shares (compera) of the public debt that they received from bequests, through donations, and in wills. Kamenaga Anzai, “Attitudes toward Public Debt in Medieval Genoa: The Lomellini Family,” Journal of Medieval History 29, no. 4 (2003): 260–63. 70 Steven Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 958–1528 (Chapel Hill, 1996). 71 Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 2:118.

Pacioli, the most famous advocate of the method, stated specifically that the “order” of the system was a reflection of God, who embodied perfection. The connection is no surprise to students of medieval and early modern Europe, who know well the association between the Christian God and order and symmetry. Pacioli states the point at the very outset of his discussion, arguing that the qualities necessary for a successful merchant were the same as those required for Christian redemp- tion.72 Pacioli’s “advice to the merchant” in chapter 4 of his treatise focuses on the hardships endured “at sea” and “on land,” as well as during “war, famine, health and pestilence,” which required that the merchant resemble a rooster (gallo), the “most alert of animals,” keeping vigil at night, not resting in winter or summer.73 “The Law helps those who do not sleep,” Pacioli wrote. And “God promises the crown to the watchful ones.”74 He quoted St. Matthew, a tax collector for Herod: “Seek you Christians first the kingdom of God and then all other spiritual and temporal things will be obtained.”75 Pacioli exhorted merchants to meditate on God each morning, give to charity, and begin entries in their account books with the name of God. The last has received substantial scholarly attention, particularly with regard to Francesco Datini, whose account books began with “in the name of God and profit.” The famous phrase has become a shorthand formula for the connection between the merchant and God. But as a shorthand and a formula, it has been easy for modern scholars to dismiss it as a sort of lip service, associated with notions of merchant guilt, or as a “motto” that brought together two concepts (God and profit) that fundamentally did not go together.76 Scholars (most notably economists) have made too much of the “God and profit” motto. If we follow Edler de Roover’s lead in examining Medici account books from the Selfridge collection, focusing not on the evolution of double entry but on the religious invocations in the accounts, we do not

72 “La fede di real mercantante ...inlafede catolica ognuno si salve.” Luca Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica geometria: proportioni: Et proportionalita: Nouamente impressa (Tosco- lano, 1523), 416. See also Luca Pacioli, Trattato di partita doppia, ed. Annalisa Conterio (Venice, 1994); and Pacioli, Rules of Double Entry: Particularis de computis et scripturis, trans. John B. Geijsbeek (Denver, CO, 2016), 16. 73 “Ora per mare, ora per terra, ora a tempi de pace e dabondantia. Ora a tempi de guerre e carestie, ora a tempi di sanita e morbi . . . e pero ben se figura e asimiglia el mercatante al gallo ...elpiuvigilante animale.” Later, Pacioli suggests that a merchant needs one hundred eyes but that even this was not sufficient. Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica geometria, 416, at 199v. 74 “Ben dicano le legi municipali . . . videlicet vigilantibus et non dormientibus iura subve- niunt cioe a chi vegghia e non a chi dorme le leggi sovengono . . . e cosi neli divini officii se canta da la Sancta Chiesa che idio ali vigilanti a promesso la corona.” Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica geometria, 416, at 199v.; Soll, Reckoning,19–22. 75 Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica geometria, 416–17. 76 Gleeson-White, Double Entry,23–24.

in fact find a simple formula. The oldest book in the collection, the ricordanze of Giuliano di Giovencho de Medici (1375–1376; MS 491), begins with the following: “In the name of God and the Virgin Mary and the most blessed saints Peter and John the Baptist and Saint James, Saint Anthony and Saint Julian and all the other saints of Paradise . . . and Saints Reparata, Lucia and Caterina.”77 Why this specific set of saints? John the Baptist was the patron saint of Florence, and the cathedral was named for Reparata. But it is unclear why Giuliano also invokes Saints Peter, Anthony, Julian, Lucia, and Caterina. Do they have a personal meaning to the author? Are they intrinsic to the meaning or purpose of the account book? Why is there no reference to Saint Matthew, whom Pacioli cites on biblical grounds? The questions are worthy yet are not part of the current discourse. Interestingly, Giuliano de Medici qualifies each male saint with the term messer—“messer San Piero, messer Gio- vanni Batista, messer San Jacopo,” etc.—used for earthly beings of knightly status. The female saints are introduced as madonna. The invocations cannot be lightly discarded. The personal memo- randa book of Giuliano’s son, Giovencho (1439; MS 497), begins thus: “In the name of God and the most glorious mother, Madonna Saint Mary, and John the Baptist, ‘padrone’ and protector of this city and the rest of the celestial court of Paradise.”78 Giuliano, unlike his son, includes only God, the Virgin Mary, and St. John the Baptist, the “padrone” of Florence. Giovencho follows a Tuscan linguistic tradition in transposing the r and l, such that he speaks of the groliosima madre instead of gloriossima madre. And, like his father, he introduces John the Baptist, patron of Florence, as messer. But the references to Anthony, Julian, Reparata, Lucia, and Caterina are gone. Why? In another of Giovencho’s account books, a ricordanze from 1444 (MS 500), the dedication is to God, the “groliosa vergine” and “sempre vergine” Mary, and the saints Peter, Paul, John the Baptist, and the entire “Celestial Court of Paradise.” The male saints are again introduced with the term messer. Although the alteration is less dramatic here, it is unclear why Giovencho decided to add the saints Peter and Paul.79

77 “In nome di dio e dela vergine Maria e de suoi benedetti santi di messer San Piero e di messer Giovanni Batista e di messer San Jacopo and di Messer Santo Antonio e di Messer Santo Giuliano e di tutta gli altri sancti di Paradiso et di Madonna Santa Reparata e di Madona Santa Lucia e di Madonna Santa Caterina e di tutta la chorte di paradiso.” MS 491, f. 2r, Selfridge collection, Medici Collection, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Boston (hereafter SC). 78 “Al nome di dio e dela groliosima madre Madonna Santa Maria e di messer San Giovanni Battista padrone e prottettore di questa citta e di resto l’celestial corte di paradiso.” MS 497, f. 1r, SC. 79 “Al nome di dio e dela groliosa vergine Madonna santa madre sempre vergine e di messer San Piero, e messer San Pagholo e messer San Giovanni Batista . . .,” MS 500, f. 1r, SC.

The point is that account books used a variety of invocations, which not only reveal something about them and their authors but also deserve attention from scholars. Some indeed have no invocation at all (perhaps also revealing something about the transmission of the text, which is still another issue). But “God and proﬁt” does not capture the complexity of the relationship between the merchant and faith, economy and religion, and should not be taken as emblematic of the genre. There were, as with accounting method, choices made, conscious Christian choices. As John Padgett eloquently argues, Florentine accounts are best read not in terms of “an impersonal spirit of capitalism” but with an understanding that beneath the “dry entries” lay “multivocal relationships” and networks that helped determine the social/political realities of the city.80 I would add that they also reveal that the networks and relationships were tied to the church, which cannot be factored out of the equation.

Merchants, Clerics, and Diriturra

What has I hope been clear so far is that God was woven into the economic system, and in ways that the current discourse has not accounted for. A secular reading of business organization and accounting technique is prima facie impossible. And this is particularly true of Florence, whose prosperity, as noted above, owed greatly to papal ﬁnance, the business in which the city’s merchant bankers took the lead for two centuries. It was the connection to the papacy and the need to remit funds from all over Christendom that necessitated the type of multibranch setup that was characteristic of Florentine ﬁrms and allowed their growth into “super companies,” as Edwin Hunt calls them, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.81 The size and scope of the Bardi, Peruzzi, and Acciaiuoli “super companies” is well known. The Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani’s oft-quoted description of them as the “pillars of Christendom” should be read with stress on the last word. Armando Sapori, who went the furthest in studying them, provided considerable evidence of their commitment to the faith. Indeed, Sapori spoke of the often “dramatic contrast” between the “seemingly audacious and bold lives” of the merchants and their surviving account books, in which the obligation to God was systematized and piety blended into their business practices.82

80 Padgett, “Transposition and Refunctionality,” 37–38. 81 Edwin Hunt, The Medieval Super-Companies (Cambridge, U.K., 1994). 82 Armando Sapori, “La beneﬁcenza delle compagnie mercantili del trecento,” Archivio storico italiano 83, ser. 7, no. 4 (1925): 254; Sapori, The Italian Merchant in the Middle Ages (New York, 1970), 21–28.

Charity to the poor and alms to the church were dispensed in a “pro- portional” way, funneled through the Florentine bishop and pious institutions.83 The libri segreti of the firms, the internal books that contained investments and the profits of partners, included an account to God, who was treated the same as an earthly living partner. The language of debits and credits in the account books is consistent: “avemo dato per Dio” and “dovemo dare a Dio.”84 Meanwhile, Florentine silk merchants, who grew to great prominence in the fifteenth century, systematically set aside a portion of their profits for charity to the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the Florentine orphanage, in whose archives their account books now reside. In this sense, Francesco Datini’s oft-cited legacy to the Ceppo poorhouse in Prato and for foundlings at Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, attributed to his own personal experience (as a child without parents), should be contextualized as a more general practice. When the great pillars of Christendom famously failed in the 1340s, the poveri of God were compensated like other creditors. The money owed them was settled specifically through confraternities such as Orsan- michele, which was a great beneficiary of the bank failures, receiving much of the rural patrimony of Bardi merchants in the Mugello.85 As Sapori makes clear in a less-cited part of his work, the Florentine banking crisis of the 1340s created a moral/religious crisis. A surviving testament of the merchant banker Bartolomeo Cocchi-Compagni, whose firm failed along with the others and whose reputation for lending was dubious, shows that he decided to compensate in full all “victims” of usury.86 Bar- tolomeo consigned his books to the archbishop, and after the funeral, as requested in his will, he sent banditori (criers) throughout the city and contado to alert creditors to make claims against his inheritance, which he promised to settle quickly, in fifteen days for citizens and thirty days for contadini. Sapori admits that the act demonstrated more than a dose of egoism on the part of Bartolomeo, but it also represented a sincere commitment to God.87 There are many additional examples of restitution of usury and ill-gotten gains by prestatori su pegno such as Agostino Miglior- etti and Angelo Corbinelli in Florentine notarile and church documents. And the clients of Agostino, a manifest usurer known as “il cane,” included the religious houses of Santa Maria Maggiore, the abbeys of San Salvi and Santa Trinita and the bishop of the city.88

83 Sapori, “La beneficenza delle compagnie,” 254–56. 84 Sapori, 256. 85 Sapori, 259–60. 86 Armando Sapori, “L’interesse del denaro a Firenze nel Trecento: Dal testamento di un usuraio,” in Studi di storia economica (secoli Xlll–XIV–XV) (Florence, 1955), 225. 87 Sapori, “La beneficenza delle compagnie,” 242. 88 Sergio Tognetti, “‘Aghostino Chane a chui Christo perdoni’:L’eredità di un grande usuraio nella Firenze di fine Trecento,” Archivio storico italiano 164, no. 4 (610) (2006):

The evidence emphasizes the inherent tensions between merchants and their faith, but it also lends support to Giacomo Todeschini’s important assertion that modern scholars have exaggerated the notions of “inevitable” and “everlasting conflict” between the two.89 Todeschini has stressed the overlap between the language of Franciscan theologians and that of merchants. The Franciscan emphasis on poverty, which seems antithetical to commercial practice, maintained at its core a similar ethos, first articulated by the Franciscan theologian Peter John Olivi (1248–1298) and plainly evident in Luca Pacioli.90 Christian virtue involved “indefatigable commitment” to a task, a willingness to endure hardships and assume risk for the utility of society.91 Todeschini adduces an array of writers, who compared monks to merchants in their willingness to suffer anxiety and deprivation to free their soul for the sake of family and society.92 With Pacioli firmly in mind, Todeschini asserts that “between the 1400s and 1500s merchants, businessmen and the governors of cities spoke the language of Franciscan economic ethics and implemented forms of association and economic networks that were able to synthesize private profit, public usefulness, and virtuous practices in Christian cities.”93 Indeed, as we have seen, the Franciscan friar Pacioli stressed in his discussion of double entry the hardships attendant to the life of the merchant and moral Christian rectitude that was requisite for success that also benefited society as a whole. The same language, however, appears also in the commercial manual of the Florentine merchant from Ragusa, Benedetto Cotrugli, who wrote about double entry in 1458, before Pacioli, but whose work was not published until later. Cotrugli was not a Franciscan and his treatise, On Commerce and the Perfect Merchant, aligns more with the humanist tradition, containing

667–712; Lawrin Armstrong, “Usury, Conscience and Public Debt: Angelo Corbinelli’s Testa- ment of 1419,” in A Renaissance of Conﬂicts: Visions and Revisions of Law and Society in Italy and Spain, ed. John A Marino and Thomas Kuehn (Toronto, 2004), 173–200. See also the detailed study in Sylvie Duval, “L’argent des pauvres: L’institution de l’executor testamen- torum et procurator pauperum à Pise entre 1350 et 1424,” Mélange de l’École Française de Rome – Moyen Âge 125, no. 1 (2013), https://doi.org/10.4000/mefrm.1157. 89 Giacomo Todeschini, “Theological Roots of the Medieval/Modern Merchants’ Self-Rep- resentation,” in The Self Perception of Early Modern Capitalists, ed. Margaret C. Jacobs and Catherine Secretan (Hampshire, 2009), 19. See also Todeschini, Ricchezza francescana: Dalla povertà volontaria alla società di mercato (Bologna, 2004). 90 For disagreement with Todeschini’s reading of Olivi, see Julius Kirshner and Kimberly Lo Prete, “Peter John Olivi’s Treatises on Contracts of Sale, Usury and Restitution: Minorite Economics or Minor Works?,” Quaderni Fiorentini per la Storia del pensiero giuridico moderno 13, no. 1 (1984): 233–86. 91 Todeschini, Ricchezza francescana, 129; Todeschini, “Theological Roots,” 27. 92 Todeschini, Ricchezza francescana, 22. 93 Todeschini, 181.

many classical references that do not appear in Pacioli.94 Cotrugli’s merchant, like Pacioli’s, endured physical hardship and “gran fatiga.” Like Pacioli, he was ever vigilant, working “day and night,” traveling “on foot and on horse” and “by land and by sea.” The merchant “set aside all other concerns,” including those things “necessary for the conserva- tion of life,” such as “eating, drinking and sleeping.”95 This, along with dedication to the Christian faith, allowed the merchant to succeed, and his success contributed to the public welfare. Cotrugli goes so far as to compare the merchant to a soldier in order to underscore the degree of endurance necessary to handle the hardships. The comparison appears also in Pacioli, who employs decidedly martial imagery when describing the task of merchants. “Mars never gave victory without a battle,” he wrote, and “the Apostle Paul said that no one is worthy of the crown who does not do battle for it.96 Like Pacioli, Cotrugli also stressed that merchants had to keep correct books and that double entry was an important component of this.97 The parallels are not, however, restricted to manuals or fifteenth- century Italy. A similar ethic can be found even in the story of Godric of Finchale, the eleventh-century English merchant whom Henri Pirenne highlighted as the first to possess the “spiritus capitalisticus.” Godric lived before St. Francis and the Franciscans. But a close reading of Godric’s life reveals correspondences with Pacioli and Cotrugli. Pirenne stresses the hardships Godric endured, “trudging many hours from village to village” and “traveling long distances by sea” to fairs and pilgrimage sites. Godric was “assiduous above all men”; he suc- ceeded by the “sweat of his brow,” which was reflected in his physical appearance: his skin made “rough” from perpetual labor.98 Pirenne argued that Godric possessed all the elements of a capitalist if one

94 For an assessment of the genre, see Marcello Fantoni, ed., Il “perfetto capitano”: Imma- gini e realtà (secoli XV–XVII), Atti dei seminari di studi, Georgetown University a Villa Le Balze (Rome, 2001). 95 “È hordinata questa arte mercantile, è necessario, postposto ogni altra cura, vacare con gran diligentia ad tute quelle cose le quali in qualche modo possen fare utile et giovare ad tal professione. Unde si convene a le volte durare gran fatica di giorno et di nocte, caminare per- sonalmente a piè et a cavalo, per mare e per terra, e così afaticarsi nel vendere et nel comperare et adestrar le cose vendute et comperate, et usare in tucti simili faciende quanta diligencia è posibile, postponendo, como ò decto, ogni altra cura non solamente ...maancora di quele sono necessarie a la conservacione de la humana vita. Et però ne occore alguna volta el differire lo mangiare e lo bevere e lo dormire, ançi è necessario di tolerare fame, sete e vigilie et simili altre cose che sono noiose et contrarie a la quiete del corpo.” Benedetto Cotrugli, Libro de l’arte de la mercatura (Venice, 2016), 37–38, 51. 96 Cotrugli, Libro de l’arte de la mercatura, 53. “Non te para strana la fatiga che Marte non concesse mai la battaglia . . . e Paolo Apostolo dici che niun degno di corona salvo che hara . . . combattuto.” Pacioli, Summa de arithmetica geometria, 416. 97 Cotrugli, Libro de l’arte de la mercatura,35–38, 51. 98 Reginald of Durham, “Life of St. Godric,” 415–20.

omitted “the pious conclusion of his biography” in which Godric, grown old, withdrew from the world to a monastery, giving his money to the poor. But Pirenne’s desire to omit the pious conclusion is impossible because Godric’s biography is a Vita Sancti, a medieval saint’s life, a genre intended to demonstrate the Christian virtues of its subject, which exists only because of its pious conclusion. Pirenne’s assertion is thus striking evidence of a basic misapprehension of the medieval church that influenced much of the subsequent scholarship. Read criti- cally and in context, Godric’s decision to become a monk, which has been taken as an example of the fundamental opposition between religion and economy, is better understood as the natural conclusion of a career as a Christian merchant, whose duty to the church and pious commitment reached a natural if seemingly contradictory conclusion. The connection between the cleric and the merchant went beyond language. Indeed, it is in the perception of the two as representing separate spheres that the compartmentalization of study and the ghost of Sombart have cast their longest shadow. Rather than occupying a core and periphery, the merchant and the monk shared the same space and worked closely together.99 Throughout Italy, state funds were handled by monks, who served as communal chamberlains and treasurers alongside merchants. Since the thirteenth century, Florence employed members of the Cistercian order of San Salvadore in Settimo and the Umiliati of Ognisanti as chamberlains of the camera del comune, the city’s chief fiscal office.100 Neighboring Siena relied on monks from San Galgano, a brother house of San Salvatore, as treasurers of its main fiscal office, the Biccherna. One of the earliest of the famous painted Biccherna covers depicts a monk/treasurer from San Galgano, holding an account book.101 Frances Andrews has pointed out the singu- larity of the portrait: a Cistercian with an account book rather than a bible. She argues that that there is nothing in the rule of St. Benedict, which governed the Cistercian order, that would suggest monks should serve as treasurers for states. Nevertheless, it was a reality, not only in Siena and Florence but also in Parma, Piacenza, Cremona, and elsewhere in Italy. Monks were good candidates for the job because they had significant financial experience, buying and selling property, collecting rents, and investing money.

99 Todeschini, Ricchezza francescana,8. 100 Bowsky, Finance,7. 101 Frances Andrews, “Living like the Laity? The Negotiation of Religious Status in the Cities of Late Medieval Italy,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 20 (Dec. 2010): 28–29; Andrews and Maria Agata Pincelli, eds., Churchmen and Urban Government in Late Medieval Italy, c.1200–c.1450 (Cambridge, U.K., 2013).

The financial sophistication of the Cistercians is indeed well known to medievalists.102 They possessed large landed estates throughout Europe, performed sophisticated financial transactions, and carefully organized their patrimonies into “granges” that allowed for specializa- tion, technical innovation (mills, water power) that reduced labor costs and created surplus for sale. Cistercians provided credit, took deposits, and were by necessity skilled in mathematics.103 They played a prominent role in raising sheep on their granges for the wool cloth trade in England, where they dealt directly with Florentine merchant bankers who dominated the export business there. Florentines thus worked extensively with monks in both public finance and private business, two economic worlds that were connected. And it is worth noting that the Cistercians and monasticism more generally have been the subject of study of premodern capitalism, a discourse that Florentinists have paid little attention to.104 The movement of personnel went in both directions. Monasteries employed merchants to help with their accounts. The priors of San Lorenzo in Florence hired members of Frescobaldi, Peruzzi, and Bardi merchant-banking families to handle their finances; secular abacus teachers served as managers of the monastery at Santa Croce.105 Yves Renouard, in his study of bankers in Avignon, stressed the social and political embeddedness of the merchants, noting in particular that family members of the major Florentine firms were directly involved in the church. Bartolo Bardi of the eponymous banking clan was the bishop of Spoleto, and Angelo Acciaiuoli was bishop of Florence. The connection is most obvious with regard to the Medici family, which not only did extensive business with the papacy but brought forth several popes.106 I would go still further and argue that the connection was systemic. Business and public finance were connected by similar Christian

102 Sister James Eugene Madden, “Business Monks, Banker Monks, Bankrupt Monks: The English Cistercians in the Thirteenth Century,” Catholic Historical Review 49, no. 3 (1963): 341–64; Peter King, The Finances of the Cistercian Order in the Fourteenth Century (Kalama- zoo, 1985); Andrews, “Living like the Laity?” 27–56; Constance B. Bouchard, Holy Entrepre- neurs: Cistercians, Knights and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century Burgundy (Ithaca, 1991); William Day, “Cistercian Monks and the Casting Counter,” in Andrews and Pincelli, Churchmen and Urban Government, 251–67. 103 P. J. Jones, “Le ﬁnanze della Badia Cistercense di Settimo nel XIV secolo,” Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 10 (1956): 106–7; Day, “Cistercian Monks,” 263. 104 For a useful review of the historiography, see Lutz F. Kaelber, Schools of Asceticism: Ideology and Organization in Medieval Religious Communities (University Park, PA, 1998). 105 Elisabetta Ulivi, “Gli abacisti ﬁorentini delle famiglie del maestro Luca,” in Calandri e Micceri e le loro scuole d’abaco (secc. XIV–XVI) (Florence, 2016); Ulivi, Benedetto da Firenze (1429–1479), un maestro d’abaco del XV secolo: Con documenti inediti e con un’Ap- pendice su abacisti e scuole d’abaco a Firenze nei secoli XIII–XVI ( Rome, 2002), 26–28. 106 Renouard, Les relations des Papes ďAvignon, 77.

principles. Julius Kirshner, Lawrin Armstrong, and others have outlined the forceful theological debates in Florence about the funded public debt (monte), which, in Kirshner’s sonorous phrase, “was contested in city council halls, among theologians and in the streets.”107 An important and overlooked communal tax imposed by Florence was the dirittura gabelle, levied on all financial transactions including payment of salaries and transfers of money from one communal office to another.108 The impost received little attention in Bernardino Barbadoro’s classic study of Florentine finance, which focused more on direct taxation and the foundation of the communal monte, the subject of numerous subsequent studies.109 Nevertheless, the dirittura tax was imposed since at least the early trecento and provided a steady and substantial source of revenue. The word itself is noteworthy: it was used by Dante in Convivio (4.17.6) to signify justice and moral Christian rectitude and by Boccaccio in the Decam- eron for “uprightness” and “honesty/fidelity.”110 Accordingly, the gabelle was specifically intended to raise money for the public good, to convert public spending and financial dealings into beautifying the cathedral, the symbol of civic Christian pride. Soldiers comprised the largest part of Florence’s workforce, and thus the return from that sector, the most morally dubious, was the greatest. Notions of dirittura were also operative among merchants and applied directly to their activities. The famous Florentine merchant manual of Balduccio Pegolotti (Pratica della Mercatura [1340]) starts with a much-overlooked poem about the virtues of the merchant. The poem refers in its first line to dirittura (“Dirittura sempre usando gli conviene/lunga provedenza gli sta bene”), a moral/Christian rectitude that was a requisite for a successful career as a merchant.111 The rest of the poem corresponds to the portrait of the merchant in the works of

107 Kirshner, “‘Ubi est ille?’” 557; Armstrong, Usury and Public Debt; Armstong, Idea of a Moral Economy; Gerard of Siena on Usury, Restitution, and Prescription (Toronto, 2016). 108 Caferro, Petrarch’s War, 20, 104–7. The tax in the early trecento is mentioned in Ales- sandro Gherardi, “L’antica camera del comune di Firenze e un quarderno d’uscita de suoi camarlenghi del anno 1303,” Archivio storico italiano 43 (1885): 320–21. 109 Bernardino Barbadoro, Le finanze della repubblica fiorentina: Imposta diretta e debito pubblico fino all’istituzione del Monte (Florence, 1929); Anthony Molho, Florentine Public Finances in the Early Renaissance, 1400–1433 (Cambridge, MA, 1971); Roberto Barducci, “Politica e speculazione finanziaria a Firenze dopo la crisi del primo Trecento (1343–1358),” Archivio storico italiano 137, no. 2 (1979): 177–219; Giovanni Ciappelli, “Il cittadino fiorentino eilfisco alla fine del trecento e nel corso del quattrocento: Uno studio di due casi,” Società e Storia 46 (1989): 823–72. 110 The money was paid through the Arte della Lana, which did the actual spending. A portion of the proceeds was sometimes also spent on bridge repair, the university, and other public projects, but the cathedral was always the priority. Caferro, Petrarch’s War, 105. 111 “Dirittura sempre usando gli conviene/ lunga provedenza gli sta bene . . . Fuori di ram- pogna con bella raccoglienza/ la Chiesa usare e per dio donare, crescie in pregio, e vendere a

Cotrugli and Pacioli. It counsels him to maintain a good reputation and to always work hard, give to the church, and keep account books free from error. The same poem, in slightly different form, appears in Dino Compagni’s earlier work, Song of Worthy Conduct (La canzone del pregio), in a larger discussion of the virtues of various professions.112 Compagni also applies dirittura (“dritura sempre usare a lui conviene/ lunga provendenza li sta bene”) to the merchant, underlining the utility of it, as we have seen in public finance. That Pegolotti likely copied the poem from this earlier work emphasizes the Florentine merchants’ commitment to the practice. The point here is that the Christian principles that lay behind proper merchant practice and profit were operative also in Florentine public finance. And it is in this respect that Andrews’s conclusion with regard to the secular participation of prelates in Florentine finance is most applicable. A basic tie between the Cistercian monastery and the state was an economic quid pro quo—a fiscal negotiation and accommodation—that Andrews views as a much-neglected “service for financial reward” embedded in church-state relations. In Florence, the Cistercians received tax immunities in return for their service.113

Papal Banking and Pious Service

The connection returns us to papal banking, the business that gar- nered so much profit for Florence and so much scholarly attention with regard to premodern capitalism. Apart from a brief period during the War of Eight Saints (1375–1378) and its aftermath, Florence dominated papal banking from the second half of the thirteenth century through the fifteenth century.114 Raymond de Roover’s discussion of Florentine capitalism focused squarely on the Medici, as have subsequent scholarly critiques.115 And it is here that notions of negotiation and accommodation, of financial quid pro quo, were writ large and scholarly assumptions have in many ways been most rigid, the

uno motto, usura e guoco di zara vietare . . . scrivere bene la ragione e non errare.” Francesco Pegolotti, La Pratica della mercatura, ed. Allan Evans (Cambridge, MA, 1936), 20. 112 “Dritura sempre usare a lui conviene e lunga provendenza li sta bene . . . fuor di rampo- gna con bell’accoglienza la chesa usare e per dio donare.” Isidoro del Lungo, Dino Compagni e la sua Cronica (Florence, 1879), 389. Robert Lopez freely translates this as “a merchant wishing that his worth be great must always act according to what is right.” Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, 425-426. 113 Andrews, “Living like the Laity?” 35–45. 114 Arnold Esch, “Florentiner in Rom um 1400,”Quellen und Forschungen aus italieni- schen Archiven und Bibliotheken 52 (1972): 496–525. 115 Richard A. Goldthwaite, “The Medici Bank and the World of Florentine Capitalism,” Past and Present, no. 114 (Feb. 1987): 3–31.

developmental/evolutionary model most problematic, and the need to contextualize the greatest. De Roover stressed that despite the modern capitalistic bearing of its bank, the Medici remained steadfast in their commitment to the Chris- tian faith. An important revision of Medici capitalism written after de Roover’s death, however, took a decidedly more secular and skeptical view. It dismissed notions of a “spirit” of capitalism as “ethereal” and “disembodied” and favored measuring the Medici capitalism with more “standard” yardsticks such as “competition” and “power.”116 Fol- lowing a line of reasoning similar to that of Werner Sombart, the Medici bank fell short. Its operations were small scale, the market in which it operated was “fragmented,” and there was little competition among firms, little use of political “power” or an “urge for self- aggrandizement.”117 The problem of context is manifest here. What does “commitment” to the Christian faith look like for a papal banker? And what do “competition” and “power” look like in the distant past? It is anachronistic to imagine that merchant banks “competed” in a modern way to reduce transactions costs by finding new and better methods of transporting goods, in a world where transport was inherently uncertain and merchants knew well that the best expedient was to ship goods together. Competition and power had a decidedly personal aspect in the premodern world. Personal relations with lords and kings were essential for gaining access to the markets they controlled. This was particularly true of papal bankers, who, as Renouard noted, became, by necessity, deeply embedded in the social and political milieu in which they worked and developed personal relationships with pontiffs. The personal nature of the relationship was in fact written into the papal banker’s “job description,” which referred to the men in Latin as romanam curiam sequentes, or in Italian as quelli che seguono la corte di Roma, that is, “those who follow the Roman Curia/Court.”118 Papal bankers traveled alongside the pontiff on his many journeys, to church councils, to visit dioceses, and so on. Popes were among the most mobile men in all of Europe, and those who serviced them were similarly mobile, muddy- ing the distinction between N. S. B. Gras’s traveling and sedentary merchants. The rise of the Medici in the early fifteenth century resulted, as George Holmes has shown, from their ability to obtain the office of the

116 Box 85, folder 1615, Spinelli Archive, Yale University, New Haven (hereafter SA). 117 Goldthwaite, “Medici Bank,” 19, 23–24. 118 Melissa M. Bullard, “‘Mercatores Florentini Romanam Curiam Sequentes’ in the Early Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1976); de Roover, Medici Bank, 194.

depositary—a lay office begun in the early fifteenth century, equivalent to the chief treasurer of the pope—at the top of the institutional hierarchy of the church.119 The Medici gained this position by cultivating close personal relations with Baldassare Cossa. Giovanni Bicci de Medici, the “father” of the Medici bank, befriended Cossa when he was a papal legate in the Romagna. When Cossa became Pope John XXIII (1410), he gave the post of depositary to the Medici.120 Medici profits grew dramatically, and they dominated the office for much of the rest of the century. The close connection with the pope opened markets throughout Europe in ways that association with no other lord or ruler could. The pontiff gave access to the critical and lucrative high-end luxury market among clerics throughout Europe. And the pontiff had unparalleled clout, as association with him made customers more likely to heed their obligations to bankers. An extant balance sheet from the Medici branch at Basel shows that the bank threatened a client with excommunication by the pope if he did not pay.121 The pope offered spiritual sanc- tion to enforce market rules for his bankers. One could perhaps argue that the personal aspect of commercial competition is not without modern parallel insofar as playing golf with a prospective client is a common business strategy today. But it should be stressed that premodern merchants cooperated with one another out of necessity, particularly in distant markets, where they arranged themselves into “nations.” Given the insecurity of travel, mutual ship- ping of goods helped to reduce transaction costs. But firms, including the Medici and their competitors, had their own trademarks, written into their articles of agreement and stamped onto their goods. There was thus a species of brand recognition. Buyers associated a trademark with the quality of the goods, and extant merchant letters frequently speak of this and the need to sell cloths of brilliant color and fine detail that appealed to customers. And Christianity was woven into the trademarks, which were variations of Christian crosses, making clear to customers the intersection between the faith and commerce. The above point brings us to the question of the Christian commitment of the bankers. Crucial insight into this, and papal banking more generally, comes from the Spinelli archive at Yale University. The archive has not had the same impact on scholarly study as the Selfridge collection at Harvard. It was held privately by the Spinelli family until sold illegally in 1987 to Yale University; consequently, the Spinelli

119 George Holmes, “How the Medici Became the Pope’s Bankers,” in Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, vol. 1, ed. Nicolai Rubinstein (London, 1968), 357–80. 120 Holmes, “Pope’s Bankers,” 361–66. 121 De Roover, Medici Bank, 213.

have not been well integrated into the overall literature. Their banking activities are further obscured by the fact that they were not, strictly speaking, a Florentine firm insofar as they were for a time part of the Bor- romei banking network, a family associated nowadays with Milan but originally from the Tuscan town of San Miniato.122 The focal point of the family archive is the merchant banker Tommaso Spinelli (“Tommaso il grande”), who established the family fortune during the time of Medici ascendency. Spinelli is particularly useful for the discussion here because his business, more so than that of the Medici, focused squarely on the church. Spinelli himself made this clear, proclaiming in a surviving fragment of his ricordanze (1454) that he was “the oldest merchant at papal court,” having serviced the court for a full thirty-two years.123 Spinelli’s career confirms the personal nature of the premodern capitalist world of papal banking. Like all papal bankers, he followed the pope in his travels. He began his career with the Alberti bank, representing it in August 1419 in Florence, where Pope Martin V temporarily established court (at Santa Maria Novella) on his way to Rome. Spinelli left the Alberti bank in 1433 and joined its competitor Galeazzo Borro- mei, who had branches in London, Bruges, and Venice and sought, through Spinelli, an entrée into papal banking. Spinelli followed Pope Eugenius IV to the Council of Basel in 1435 and serviced him even while his legitimacy as pope was being called into question. He made little profit, but in 1443 Eugenius, who had been friends with Spinelli before he was pope, chose him as depositary general. Here issues of “political power” indeed played a role, as Eugenius opposed Medici/Flor- entine support for Francesco Sforza’s military expedition into papal ter- ritory in the Marches in 1442, which induced Eugenius to cease employing a member of the Medici bank as depositary. As with the Medici, Spinelli’s business grew dramatically after his appointment. An extant account book from November 1444 shows that Spinelli’s profits more than doubled and that he did business with prelates and their families from throughout Europe, including bishops, cardinals, the personal doctor of the pope, and the pope’s personal tailor. Spinelli lost the position as depositary when Eugenius died in 1447 and his suc- cessor Pope Nicholas V chose Roberto Martelli, the manager of the Medici papal branch (and Medici politics were more in line with the

122 William Caferro, “L’Attività bancaria papale e la Firenze del Rinascimento: Il caso di Tommaso Spinelli,” Società e storia 55 (Summer 1996): 717–31. The Borromei banking enter- prises are the focus of an early and underappreciated study of double entry bookkeeping; see Tommaso Zerbi, Le origini della partita doppia: gestioni aziendali e situazioni di marcato nei secoli XIV e XV (Milan, 1952). 123 Box 85, folder 1615, SA.

papacy).124 Spinelli then withdrew from his partnership with the Borro- mei and set himself up as an independent merchant in Rome, opening up a fondaco in the city from which he sold high-priced cloth.125 A few years later Spinelli set up a silk firm and a wool cloth firm in Florence that marketed goods—high-priced cloths, linens, silver utensils, and other luxury goods—in Rome through the web of correspondents he had set up through the papal curia.126 It is important to emphasize the degree to which Spinelli owed his earnings to the church. The lack of libri segreti makes it difficult to assess the overall profits and structure of Spinelli’s banking operations, which were in any case less diversified and on a smaller scale than those of the Medici.127 Nevertheless, by 1458, after establishing his silk firm in Florence, Spinelli was importing more goods into Rome than the Medici.128 Spinelli’s statement in a letter that year that “there was not a cardinal that he had not served” was not idle talk.129 His connections allowed him to evade even the guild restrictions of the Hanseatic league and sell silks among the clergy in the city of Lübeck. And like the Medici, Spinelli did not “compete” with other firms in the modern sense. He shipped his wares with others to reduce transaction costs and marketed his goods through some of the same intermediaries as his competitors.130 Competition lay in jockeying for closeness to the pope and clerics and their substantial retinues. Spinelli, like his counter- parts, marked his goods with the trademark of his company and, like the Medici, used his standing at the papal court to keep his clients in line. Spinelli boasted openly of this power in a letter to a factor, instructing him to threaten a recalcitrant lender with excommunication, which Spinelli could obtain from the pope.131 Spinelli emerges from the documents as a merchant in the mold of Pacioli and Cotrugli, who behaved according to the principles of diriturra. He followed the now familiar routine of systematically giving to charitable causes, donating a portion of his earnings from his silk business to the Ospedale degli Innocenti, and spending generously on the neighborhood church of Santa Croce to build a new infirmary and cloi- ster. When Spinelli was depositary, he requested and received a portable

124 Caferro, “L’Attività bancaria papale,” 734. 125 Caferro, 737. 126 William Caferro, “The Silk Business of Tommaso Spinelli, Fifteenth-Century Florentine Merchant and Papal Banker,” Renaissance Studies 10, no. 4 (1996): 417–39. 127 Caferro, “L’Attività bancaria papale,” 731–32; Holmes, “Pope’s Bankers,” 376–79. 128 Caferro, “L’Attività bancaria papale,” 737. 129 Caferro, 728. 130 Caferro, “Silk Business,” 438. 131 Philip Jacks and William Caferro, The Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family (University Park, PA, 2001), 47; de Roover, Medici Bank, 213.

altar so that he could have mass said for him as he moved about with the pope.132 Meanwhile, an extant legal disposition by an employee, Gabri- ello Falcone, echoes Pacioli and Cotrugli in describing Spinelli as merchant always at work, “sitting fixed over the ledger books,” night and day, and demanding the same from his employees.133 The description may easily be dismissed as the complaint of an unhappy worker, but it takes on greater significance because Spinelli was a close personal friend of the Dominican friar and archbishop of Florence, Antoninus (Antonio Pierozzi), author of Summa theologica moralis, a treatise that Joseph Schumpeter lauded for its economic sophistication and that Raymond de Roover called the work of a “great economic thinker.”134 Spinelli and Antoninus became friends when the latter was still a monk in Rome. Spinelli served Antoninus when he became Florentine bishop as collector of the papal tenth and collector of money for Pope Calixtus’s crusade in 1453 against the Muslim infidel at Varna. Spinelli valued his correspondence with Antoninus so much that before Spinelli died in 1472, he arranged to have the letters buried with him.135 When Antoninus died years earlier, in May 1459, Spinelli had helped pay for his funeral, hiring the gravediggers, bell- ringers, and monks of San Marco for singing the requiem.136 Parallels exist between Spinelli’s commercial career and Antoninus’s portrait of the merchant in Summa theologica moralis, particularly in the second and third sections of the work relating to matters of economy and faith.137 Antoninus applied Christian ethical principles to real-life issues and argued the now familiar point that the acquisition of wealth was not displeasing to God provided that it was done in a prin- cipled, measured, and Christian way, such that earnings were moderate and spent in a manner that would be “virtuous.”138 Antoninus offered examples of “virtuous” spending: providing relief to the poor, providing support for one’s family according to social status, and, more broadly, providing for the welfare of the community. Although a Dominican, his notions are similar to those outlined by Todeschini connecting the

132 Caferro, “Silk Business,” 433. 133 William Caferro, “Tommaso Spinelli: The Soul of a Banker,” Journal of the Historical Society 8, no. 2 (2008): 303–22. 134 Raymond de Roover, San Bernardino of Siena and Sant’ Antonino of Florence: The Two Great Economic Thinkers of the Middle Ages (Boston, 1967), 1–43; Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York, 1954), 95–107. 135 Caferro, “Tommaso Spinelli,” 313–14. 136 Box 24, folder 625 bis, SA. 137 There is no modern edition of the Summa. I have used St. Antoninus, Summa theologica moralis, 4 vols., ed. Pietro Ballerini (Verona, 1740). See also John T. Noonan, The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge, MA, 1957), 77–80, 188–90. 138 Antoninus, Summa theologica moralis, rubric IV, 5, 17 column 254; rubric II, 3, 4 column 120; rubric IV, 12, 3 column 623.

Franciscans to merchants and were clearly broadly operative. Indeed, in his legal deposition Gabrielle Falcone described Spinelli as not only always vigilant and at work but concerned, during the papal jubilee in 1450 when business was excellent and profits high, that Falcone abandon his lucrative speculation in gold because, Spinelli told him, “I do not have such great need nor such great desire to earn as you may think. It is enough that I preserve myself.”139 The statement not only corresponds to Antoninus but also matches Cotrugli, who in the section of his work on the merchant and religion stressed the importance of “moderato guadagno” (moderate gain) in business, directly quoting Antoninus’s Summa.140 There are, to be sure, important theological distinctions and the aim of this essay has not, as stated at the outset, been to minimize them. But what seems clear from the example of Spinelli is that he equated his financial service to the church with a sense of Christian duty. In this respect, he lends support to Andrews’s assertion about a fundamental financial negotiation between the church and commerce, monk and merchant. Spinelli wrote in his ricordanze, “I have tried to lead an exemplary life and can say truthfully that . . . the highest pontiffs and the exalted cardinals never requested any service which I did not render.” The statement conjoins Christian moral rectitude with economic service to the church and an essential and noncynical quid pro quo that was prominent in the world of papal banking.141 Pope Eugenius IV, who launched Spinelli’s career, was himself a major holder of shares in the Florentine public debt who, when the city was slow in paying interest, moved to sequester the goods of Florentine merchants in Rome and in the papal states 142 And as the Cistercians received tax privileges from the Florentine state for public service, Spinelli and papal bankers received tax breaks for service to the pope. Items that Spinelli sold directly to the apostolic chamber were exempt from the usual import duty, including expensive silk brocades for Pope Nicholas and mourning cloth for the funerals of Pope Eugene IV and Calixtus III.143 Spinelli, like other bankers, received

139 “Ghabriello, io nonn òsi gran bisogno né òsı̀grande ansietà di guadangnare chome tu credi; bastami ch’io mi conservi e non faccia adrieto, non ne volere più di me, non conperare più oro.”Box 86, folder 1626, SA. 140 Cotrugli, Il Libro dell’arte di mercatura, 198, 203–4. 141 “Credo essere lo piu antico merchatante che ci sia, et sono ora may stato in corte circha ad anni XXXII; posso dire questo chon verità, che in questo tempo may fu’ richiesto ńeda’ sommi ponteﬁci ńe Signori chardinali d’alchuna chosa ch’io non li abbi serviti.” Box 85, folder 1615, SA. 142 Julius Kirshner, “Papa Eugenio IV e il Monte Comune: Documenti su investimento e speculazione nel debito pubblico di Firenze,” Archivio storico italiano 127 (1969): 339–53. 143 Caferro, “L’Attività bancaria papale,” 738.

highly lucrative tax farms including the gabelle of Ripa and Ripetta, an impost on all goods that came to Rome by sea in return for loans.144 The rewards further explain the otherwise unwise decision of bankers to issue large loans to pontiffs. The large sum that Spinelli lent to Pope Calixtus III in 1457 constituted Christian service in the strictest sense, because it was raised for a crusade against Muslim infi- dels and enemies of the Christian faith. Calixtus pawned his papal tiara as surety, but he did not repay the loan. Crusades had proved unsuccessful since the thirteenth century, a fact that Spinelli undoubt- edly knew. Pious service was the only way to do business in the context of the papal court, which was still the largest market in Christen- dom. Christian rectitude and service to the church, were conjoined with a calculated, reasoned profit motive.145 It is important to stress again, by way of conclusion, that the purpose of the foregoing discussion has been to add nuance to the discourse on premodern capitalism and Christianity, to expose the limits of an embedded developmental/evolutionary model, and to show that the two “spheres” were connected in intricate ways. There are no simple binaries or stark oppositions. There was conflict and debate, but the church was not monolithic, nor did it stand apart for the world of the merchant. An integrated approach to study is, to co-opt a phrase, the most “useful category” for future analysis. This is particularly true of Florence, for which the tendency to compartmentalize, secularize, and generalize has been most forceful and, ironically, reified by archival research in the Anglo- phone academy that has added vital detail but has left long-standing and outdated scholarly constructs alone. Even Renouard, who stressed the embedded nature of Florentine merchant bankers in their political/religious milieu, ultimately posited a “peculiar mentality” that was distinctly “rational” and “individualistic” to describe the Florentine commercial world.146 But, to paraphrase Thomas Kuhn in another context, assimilating new facts “demands more than an additive adjustment of theory.”147 It requires that historians examine their assumptions more cautiously, sift carefully through the various layers, and accept the

144 Sigismondo Malatesta, Statuti delle gabelle di Roma (Rome, 1885), 57–59; Peter Partner, The Papal State under Martin V (London, 1958), 168. 145 Caferro, “Tommaso Spinelli,” 321. 146 Yves Renouard, “Affaires et Culture à Florence au XIVe et au XVe siècle,” in Il Quattro- cento: Libera Cattedra di Storia della Civiltà Fiorentina, vol. 2, ed. Jean Boutier, Sandro Landi, and Olivier Rouchon (Rennes, 2004), 169. 147 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientiﬁc Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago, 1996), 52.

possibility that instead of a single origin or trend they may discover several patterns that are so interwoven they may be difﬁcult to extricate from one another.148

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WILLIAM CAFERRO is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History and Interim Director/Professor of Classics and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. He has written on public ﬁnance and the business history of medieval Italy. His most recent book is Petrarch’s War: Florence and the Black Death in Context with Cambridge University Press (2018).

148 Caferro, Petrarch’s War,8–10; Joan Scott, “Gender as a Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91 no. 5 (1986): 1067.