| dc.description.abstract | Economic contraction, war, and above all the effects of the Black Death characterized the economic environment of Europe during the latter half of the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century. Though the relative effects of these situations have been the subject of some debate, historians have reached a consensus concerning mortality in the fourteenth century, during which the Black Death claimed between one-third and one-half of the population. Such a great number of deaths had numerous effects on European society, among them: a redistribution of wealth, social dislocation leading to rural and urban revolutions, and altered patterns of consumption. These events also had a significant influence on the woolen and silk textile industries, which were among the most important commercial gilds in Europe. As a result of the plague and its impact on society, the silk industry became more profitable than the production of woolens as consumers with greater percentages of disposable income turned to luxury products in preference to woolens. By 1427 this trend had become evident in Florence, though the transition from woolen to silk production was still incomplete. During the first quarter of the fifteenth century the Florentine silk merchants were on the average younger and wealthier than their counterparts in the woolen gild, which resulted in a greater potential for increased wealth in the silk gild. Unlike others who became gild merchants for political reasons yet kept most of their wealth in land or the public debt, the silk merchants invested heavily in commerce, and in order to expand textile production they recruited skilled labor from Italy and Europe. In 1427 these immigrant laborers were the youngest and poorest textile workers in Florence, but by the mid-1400s their economic situation had substantially improved as the Florentine silk industry matured and these workers assimilated into their new society. In contrast, the woolen gild suffered from a surplus of labor due to a lessened demand for its product, and the proportion of young men who became gild merchants in the fifteenth century was significantly less than among those in the silk gild. These circumstances were indicative of a change in Florentine society away from medieval toward modern institutions, and would be replicated elsewhere in western Europe, particularly Lyons, France, as a result of events that took place in the fourteenth century. The woolen gild, though in a state of decline in 1427 as compared to the silk gild, was still an influential political and economic force with a long and illustrious history. Even without its own port during the thirteenth century, Florence possessed a large woolen gild that bought cloths woven in Flanders and finished them for export. Due to the quality of its textiles, this gild, the Arte di Calimala, established Florentine commercial connections throughout Europe. During the early fourteenth century, though, the Florentines produced more woolens from raw wool than they imported to finish, and thereafter the Arte della Lana which produced these cloths became the most important textile gild in the city. During the 1330s, according to the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani, this gild produced between 70,000 and 80,000 cloths and employed over 10,000 persons. However, when the woolen workers revolted and gained control of Florence forty years later, they mandated a production quota of 24,000 cloths per annum in order to keep their fellow laborers in the city employed. This decline continued through the early fifteenth century, when the household heads involved in the woolen industry numbered less than 1,400 people. In contrast, the Florentine silk gild was far younger than the woolen gild, and due to the nature of its product never employed many people. Florence did not even pioneer silk manufacture in Italy; the Lucchese were credited with its founding. Due to civil strife among the Lucchese, the town did supply the Florentines with much of their early labor force and skills in silk manufacture. During the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, as the amount of silk textiles produced in Florence increased, the city attracted labor from places beyond Tuscany, like Germany and Flanders. These immigrants, most of whom were young men, brought their skills to an expanding craft and by 1427 the Arte della Seta was one of the wealthiest gilds in Florence and also was one of the youngest in terms of its members' ages. Like others of the seven merchant gilds in Florence, the silk merchants financed the construction of public buildings in order to demonstrate their affluence. The Hospitale degli Innocenti, built in the early fifteenth century, was a testament to the new wealth of these merchants. Although very little research has been conducted on how the Black Death affected these textile gilds, sources are plentiful concerning the general conditions of Florentine society during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Among the most important of the contemporary accounts of events in Florence was the Chronica of Giovanni Villani. Villani was a lanaiaoulo, a woolen merchant, who also had served in the Florentine government as an officer of the city's bureau of provisionment and supply, which gave him access to many statistics concerning the city's trade and needs. As a result, Villani's work contained much detailed information concerning the population of Florence, its size, requirements, and employment. Gregorio Dati's history of Florence and the histories written by Niccolo Machiavelli and Giovanni Guicciardini also provide important insights into Florentine society. Gregorio Dati was an active silk merchant during the time of the Ciompi revolution, and was among the household heads listed in the Catasto census. Like many of the wealthier Florentines, Dati had to support very heavy taxes. Possibly as a result of the taxes he had to bear, Dati's history closely detailed the expenses of war and the huge sums the Florentines paid to finance these conflicts. While Villani and Dati were tradesmen, Macchiavelli and Guicciardini were members of the Florentine bureaucracy in the late 1400s. Due to their participation in politics, their histories were more devoted to the political activities of the Florentine state than to its commercial or fiscal activities, though their works demonstrate the close connection between wealth and political power that existed in fourteenth and fifteenth century Florence. Apart from the history of their city, family life and lineage were important to the Florentines, who devoted a wide range of literature to this topic. Dante's Divine Comedy contained references to contraception in Florence, and to the Florentines' pride in their family and civic history. Also concerned with domestic life were the sermons given to the Florentines by Saint Bernardine of Siena, which chided the Florentines for their small families. Among the lay population of Florence there were numerous authors of books devoted to family life and child reaiing. Leon Battista Alberti's book, ll Libro della Famiglia, involved among other topics how to manage the household, rear children, and maintain a family that would not become so small as to become extinct. This was a great concern to the Florentines in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, for Alberti's book was one of many such texts authored in this period. A great many texts concerning social, political, and economic conditions in Europe have been written, and among these, four books have proven to be particularly useful in understanding conditions in late fourteenth and early fifteenth century Europe. Two books focused on this time period were James Westfall Thompson's Economic and Social History Qf Europe in the Later Middle Ages and Wallace K. Ferguson's Europe in Transition, both of which were good descriptive texts. The book edited by William M. Bowsky entitled The Black Death, ~Turning Point in History?, was a collection of monographs concerned with the impact of the plague in fourteenth century Europe. The articles contained in this book discussed the significance of the plague in a variety of locations in Europe and presented a broad range of theses on the topic. One book, The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe by Harry A. Miskimin, provided a good overview of the European economy and was one of the few works that discussed the effects of events in fourteenth century E urope on the woolen and silk industries. Among the general histories of the Florentine state in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the text written by Ferdinand Schevill provided a good overview of the city from its founding through the fifteenth century. Marvin Becker's viii two volume history entitled Florence in Transition discussed the development of Florence in the fourteenth century from a town to a territorial state. This book also related the transition in Florentine administrative policy from that of a resticted, but benevolent, aristocracy to an impersonal government administered by merchants who lacked the social traditions of those they replaced. This, according to Becker, was both a result and a requirement of territorial expansion. Gene Brucker's The Civic World Qf Early Renaissance Florence and Lauro Martines' The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390-1460 discussed Florentine affairs after 1382, when the gild merchant oligarchy overcame the Ciompi regime. Brucker's work discussed the political and economic aspects of this period in Florentine history while Martines' book was primarily concerned with the social aspects of humanism in Florence and the lives of those men who were among the Florentine humanists. Two other books were of a broader scope, but they were able to provide connections between events in Florence and adjacent states in Italy. Daniel Waley's The Italian City Republics and Gino Luzzatto's An Economic History Qf Italy from the Fall Qf the Roman Empire in the Sixteenth Century rendered an account of events in the Italian peninsula, which helped to integrate events in Florence with the broader areas in Italy and Europe. However, the most important secondary source was David Herlihy's Tuscans and Their Families, a Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427. This text, and the many articles on this topic authored by Herlihy and his colleague in the compilation of the Catasto Survey, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, have been most valuable concerning the Catasto itself and Tuscany in the early fifteenth century. Works such as these, in conjunction with the Catasto Survey itself, have presented a view of European and, in particular, Florentine society in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, as Europe recovered and adjusted to the depopulation it experienced as a result of the Black Death. However, the Catasto Survey itself, the main source of this study, was the most detailed document on the lives of the Florentines in the early fifteenth century and through the wealth of information this source has provided it is possible to accurately recreate the families, occupations, and wealth of those who lived in the province of Tuscany. Concerning the woolen and silk gilds of Florence, the Catasto Study is the best source of information on their lives and wealth. Gild statutes, merchant reference texts, and private ledgers are able to give information in limited areas, but the comprehensive nature of the Catasto Study permits a fairly detailed study of these and other occupations in their totality, and through its information allows the researcher to analyze the ways these merchants adapted to the changing circumstances in late fourteenth and early fifteenth century Europe. | |
