L’articolo analizza due elenchi di censi dovuti all’abbazia di San Salvatore e San Lorenzo a Sett... more L’articolo analizza due elenchi di censi dovuti all’abbazia di San Salvatore e San Lorenzo a Settimo (Firenze) in volgare fiorentino ad oggi non noti agli studi storico-linguistici. La collocazione storica dei pezzi nel contesto della documentazione latina e l’analisi della scrittura e della lingua permettono di datare gli elenchi al più tardi alla prima metà degli anni Cinquanta del Duecento.
L’articolo esamina la documentazione relativa alle curtes fiscali di Guastalla e Luzzara ne... more L’articolo esamina la documentazione relativa alle curtes fiscali di Guastalla e Luzzara nel periodo compreso tra IX e XIII secolo. Guastalla e Luzzara furono concesse dall’imperatrice Angelberga al monastero di San Sisto di Piacenza nell’877; sul finire del XII secolo divennero oggetto di una disputa, conclusasi nel 1227 a favore del comune di Cremona. L’articolo sostiene due tesi principali: che le più sostanziose fonti di introiti garantiti dal possesso delle due curtes trovassero la loro ragione nell’origine fiscale di Guastalla e Luzzara; e che la tenacia con cui i Cremonesi cercarono di sottrarle a San Sisto si spiega con il mutato contesto economico dei decenni a cavallo tra XII e XIII secolo.
L’articolo affronta da un punto di vista storiografico e teorico il problema delle possibili rela... more L’articolo affronta da un punto di vista storiografico e teorico il problema delle possibili relazio- ni che intercorsero tra le diverse forme di gestione regia dei beni fiscali sul lungo periodo (secoli IX-XII) e le vicende della storia economica medievale. Il patrimonio fiscale, data la sua enorme estensione e la sua pervasività capillare, è, nella visione degli autori, un protagonista ineludibile per ricerche che vogliano comprendere appieno i cambiamenti economici che avvennero tra alto e pieno Medioevo. L’articolo analizza piste di ricerca già avviate che vanno in tale direzione e, contestualmente, propone ulteriori possibili indagini.
Royal government and especially the "March of Tuscany" (the main 'public' power of the region) pl... more Royal government and especially the "March of Tuscany" (the main 'public' power of the region) played a crucial role in the political, social and economical development of Tuscany in the Early and High Middle Ages, as scholars have already showed it in the last decades.
Up today scholarship focused above all on political institutions, justice and administration. By contrast, we will try to explore the material bases of these political powers. This aspect hasn't been recently so much analysed. Our interests are focused on the modes of constitution of 'public' fisc and the forms of its administration in a long chronological span, thus identifying phases of continuity and rupture.
As a first step, we will create a database to collect all the references of 'fiscal' land in private and public charters, and we will supply a graphic visualization of the results. Then, we will tackle the most promising dossiers and we will extensively investigate the areas where were centered major fiscal complexes. Finally, we will compare results coming from written sources with archaeological evidences. Therefore, the comparison could point out worthwhile cases of study.
To sum up, our aim is to study the landed basis of 'public' power in a specific region of Italian peninsula from Early to the High Middle Ages, in view of a comparison with other European regions.
Notarial registers are the books with full legal validity that notaries kept at home, and in whi... more Notarial registers are the books with full legal validity that notaries kept at home, and in which they recorded various deeds of legal and economic relevance from the 13th century onwards. As to the quantity and the early date of registers, Lucca, in northern Tuscany, is the second most important city in Italy after Genoa; and, what is more, the documentation of the Lucchese archives from 1200 on remains largely unexplored. This paper aims to outline the first results of the post-doc project I am currently undertaking at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In particular, I would like to discuss the problem of small-scale credit to agriculturists in the Lucchesia between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries through the analysis of the register that the notary Ciabatto devoted to the deeds of a certain Usacco, a small money lender of Jewish origins.
L’articolo analizza due elenchi di censi dovuti all’abbazia di San Salvatore e San Lorenzo a Sett... more L’articolo analizza due elenchi di censi dovuti all’abbazia di San Salvatore e San Lorenzo a Settimo (Firenze) in volgare fiorentino ad oggi non noti agli studi storico-linguistici. La collocazione storica dei pezzi nel contesto della documentazione latina e l’analisi della scrittura e della lingua permettono di datare gli elenchi al più tardi alla prima metà degli anni Cinquanta del Duecento.
L’articolo esamina la documentazione relativa alle curtes fiscali di Guastalla e Luzzara ne... more L’articolo esamina la documentazione relativa alle curtes fiscali di Guastalla e Luzzara nel periodo compreso tra IX e XIII secolo. Guastalla e Luzzara furono concesse dall’imperatrice Angelberga al monastero di San Sisto di Piacenza nell’877; sul finire del XII secolo divennero oggetto di una disputa, conclusasi nel 1227 a favore del comune di Cremona. L’articolo sostiene due tesi principali: che le più sostanziose fonti di introiti garantiti dal possesso delle due curtes trovassero la loro ragione nell’origine fiscale di Guastalla e Luzzara; e che la tenacia con cui i Cremonesi cercarono di sottrarle a San Sisto si spiega con il mutato contesto economico dei decenni a cavallo tra XII e XIII secolo.
L’articolo affronta da un punto di vista storiografico e teorico il problema delle possibili rela... more L’articolo affronta da un punto di vista storiografico e teorico il problema delle possibili relazio- ni che intercorsero tra le diverse forme di gestione regia dei beni fiscali sul lungo periodo (secoli IX-XII) e le vicende della storia economica medievale. Il patrimonio fiscale, data la sua enorme estensione e la sua pervasività capillare, è, nella visione degli autori, un protagonista ineludibile per ricerche che vogliano comprendere appieno i cambiamenti economici che avvennero tra alto e pieno Medioevo. L’articolo analizza piste di ricerca già avviate che vanno in tale direzione e, contestualmente, propone ulteriori possibili indagini.
Royal government and especially the "March of Tuscany" (the main 'public' power of the region) pl... more Royal government and especially the "March of Tuscany" (the main 'public' power of the region) played a crucial role in the political, social and economical development of Tuscany in the Early and High Middle Ages, as scholars have already showed it in the last decades.
Up today scholarship focused above all on political institutions, justice and administration. By contrast, we will try to explore the material bases of these political powers. This aspect hasn't been recently so much analysed. Our interests are focused on the modes of constitution of 'public' fisc and the forms of its administration in a long chronological span, thus identifying phases of continuity and rupture.
As a first step, we will create a database to collect all the references of 'fiscal' land in private and public charters, and we will supply a graphic visualization of the results. Then, we will tackle the most promising dossiers and we will extensively investigate the areas where were centered major fiscal complexes. Finally, we will compare results coming from written sources with archaeological evidences. Therefore, the comparison could point out worthwhile cases of study.
To sum up, our aim is to study the landed basis of 'public' power in a specific region of Italian peninsula from Early to the High Middle Ages, in view of a comparison with other European regions.
Notarial registers are the books with full legal validity that notaries kept at home, and in whi... more Notarial registers are the books with full legal validity that notaries kept at home, and in which they recorded various deeds of legal and economic relevance from the 13th century onwards. As to the quantity and the early date of registers, Lucca, in northern Tuscany, is the second most important city in Italy after Genoa; and, what is more, the documentation of the Lucchese archives from 1200 on remains largely unexplored. This paper aims to outline the first results of the post-doc project I am currently undertaking at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In particular, I would like to discuss the problem of small-scale credit to agriculturists in the Lucchesia between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries through the analysis of the register that the notary Ciabatto devoted to the deeds of a certain Usacco, a small money lender of Jewish origins.
Lo studio dei beni fiscali in Italia tra alto e pieno Medioevo interseca diversi temi di storia e... more Lo studio dei beni fiscali in Italia tra alto e pieno Medioevo interseca diversi temi di storia economica, che saranno al centro del seminario, sviluppati su una lunga diacronia. Diverse le domande cui gli interventi proveranno a dare risposta: in che modo e in quale misura il fisco incideva sulla struttura della domanda e dell’offerta e, in generale, sui circuiti di produzione e scambio nei secoli XI e X? si riescono a individuare cause economiche della ‘mutazione’ o ‘rivoluzione’ signorile fra i secoli XI e XII, connesse alla sfruttamento delle risorse del fisco? e, infine, è possibilie esplorare possibili legami tra beni fiscali e trasformazioni economiche generali tra la seconda metà del XII secolo e l’inizio del XIII?
During the last four centuries of Middle Ages rural economy and society observed radical changes ... more During the last four centuries of Middle Ages rural economy and society observed radical changes across Europe. In this regard, the role of institutions and socio-property relations such as seigneurial powers, leasing system, credit market and peasant agency have been extensively researched by rural historians and medievalists, renovating the fields and its agenda during the last three decades. Such achievements, however, have not always been homogeneous across European historiographies. The Italian one, for instance, albeit a rich tradition in rural studies, have been scarcely challenged by the current agenda in rural history, apart from themes such as commons and economic inequalities (Alfani 2014). In this respect, however, a comparative exploration embedding institutions and socio-economic change in late medieval rural Italy within a European perspective is also missing. This panel contributes to fill this gap by addressing the role of institutions and the dynamics of social changes in rural countryside through case-studies and comparisons from the Italian peninsula and western Europe (France, England). More specifically, it aims to question and to explore, first, the role of seigneurial powers and credit market in shaping overall growth in 1100–1200 and, second, the impact of leasing system such as sharecropping as well as urban and seigneurial power relations and law enforcement in shaping economic inequalities and peasant resistance in rural society. For instance, research on the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is often rife with the narrative of the expansion of urban mercantile classes into the countryside as one of the main factors of economic development – in both Italy and Europe. In this regard, however, several questions can be asked: what was the role played by rural aristocracies? Were they backward, ‘feudal’ lords? Or did they share the entrepreneurial attitude of the bourgeoisie? Similarly, Italian and European scholarship on the central and late Middle Ages has mostly focused on large-scale credit activities – the bedrock on which international networks of trade were built; petty credit to agriculturists has been comparatively less studied. Is the evolution of small-scale rural credit a symptom of economic growth? And how is it related to the transformations of land management? Finally, inequalities represent one of the major fields of investigation of current economic research, and the way these were shaped by – or else adapted to – extant ecosystems and farming regimes is of paramount importance for the understanding of society and economy as a whole. The wealth of information enshrined by late medieval sources does make room for new research: what was the interplay between different farming regimes (sharecropping, leasehold, seigneurial domain) and socio-economic inequalities in the countryside? And how did the institutional structures of urban governing bodies contribute to shaping debt relations between landlords and tenants? Addressing these questions, moreover, will contribute to throw light on how inequalities could lead to social unrest and peasant resistance.
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Up today scholarship focused above all on political institutions, justice and administration. By contrast, we will try to explore the material bases of these political powers. This aspect hasn't been recently so much analysed. Our interests are focused on the modes of constitution of 'public' fisc and the forms of its administration in a long chronological span, thus identifying phases of continuity and rupture.
As a first step, we will create a database to collect all the references of 'fiscal' land in private and public charters, and we will supply a graphic visualization of the results. Then, we will tackle the most promising dossiers and we will extensively investigate the areas where were centered major fiscal complexes. Finally, we will compare results coming from written sources with archaeological evidences. Therefore, the comparison could point out worthwhile cases of study.
To sum up, our aim is to study the landed basis of 'public' power in a specific region of Italian peninsula from Early to the High Middle Ages, in view of a comparison with other European regions.
Conference Presentations
Up today scholarship focused above all on political institutions, justice and administration. By contrast, we will try to explore the material bases of these political powers. This aspect hasn't been recently so much analysed. Our interests are focused on the modes of constitution of 'public' fisc and the forms of its administration in a long chronological span, thus identifying phases of continuity and rupture.
As a first step, we will create a database to collect all the references of 'fiscal' land in private and public charters, and we will supply a graphic visualization of the results. Then, we will tackle the most promising dossiers and we will extensively investigate the areas where were centered major fiscal complexes. Finally, we will compare results coming from written sources with archaeological evidences. Therefore, the comparison could point out worthwhile cases of study.
To sum up, our aim is to study the landed basis of 'public' power in a specific region of Italian peninsula from Early to the High Middle Ages, in view of a comparison with other European regions.