Downloads provided by UsageCountsThe Florentine Archives in Transition: Government, Warfare and Communication (1289–1530 ca.)
Copyright policy ) Andrea Guidi;
Andrea Guidi;
The Florentine Archives in Transition: Government, Warfare and Communication (1289–1530 ca.)
A turning point in European administrative and documentary practices was traditionally associated, most famously by Robert-Henri Bautier, with the monarchies of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By summarizing previous research in this field, as well as by using both published and unpublished sources, this article intends to underline an earlier process of transition connected to the development of significant new techniques for the production and preservation of documents in Renaissance Italian city-states. Focusing on the important case of Florence, the administrative uses of records connected to government, diplomacy and military needs will be discussed, and evidence will be provided that such documentary practices accelerated significantly during the so-called Italian Wars (from 1494 onwards). A particular reason of interest for Florence at this time is that a major role in the production and storage of a large quantity of state papers was played by Niccolò Machiavelli, one of the outstanding political thinkers of the age. This was especially true in connection to the new militia which he himself created in 1506. By stressing the role of information management and the importance of correspondence networks at a time of war and crisis, this article also contributes to recent scholarship which has focused on the growth of public records relating to diplomacy in Italy during the second half of the fifteenth century, as well as to a recent field of historiography which has lately gained importance: namely the ‘documentary history of institutions’.
Italy
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Microsoft Academic Graph classification: Fifteenth media_common.quotation_subject Politics Monarchy State (polity) Economic history Sociology Diplomacy media_common Government Historiography Scholarship Law
Cultural Studies, Italian wars, History, Machiavelli, record-keeping, Storia degli archivi, Cancelleria, Florence, Archives, Storia degli archivi; Cancelleria; Machiavelli, Articles, diplomacy, Renaissance Italy, hca, warfare
Cultural Studies, Italian wars, History, Machiavelli, record-keeping, Storia degli archivi, Cancelleria, Florence, Archives, Storia degli archivi; Cancelleria; Machiavelli, Articles, diplomacy, Renaissance Italy, hca, warfare
Microsoft Academic Graph classification: Fifteenth media_common.quotation_subject Politics Monarchy State (polity) Economic history Sociology Diplomacy media_common Government Historiography Scholarship Law
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1. The Filza was the most common system of binding documents in medieval and early modern Italian chanceries. The documents were sewn together after their administrative function was complete with a thread spiked through a bundle of papers.
2. 'Instructio data Officiali Reformationum nuper electo in anno 1498', published in Demetrio Marzi, La Cancelleria della Repubblica fiorentina (Rocca San Casciano 1910), 619 ff.: 'Quando entra la nuova Signoria [. . .] tutti e Cancellieri et Coadiutori, si rapresentano, et prima pel Cancelliere delle Tratte si da` un altro giuramento a' Signori particulare. [. . .] Fatto questo, el primo Cancelliere presenta alla Signoria certi brievi ricordi, con dua filze, dove sono notati gli effetti delle provisioni, che dispongono circa allo scrivere delle lettere; et le filze, o vero agetti [i.e. 'aghetti', 'filze'], si danno 1 per infilzare quelle lettere che vengono di fuori della iurisdictione; nell'altra quelle che vengono da' subditi. Dipoi el Cancelliere delle Riformagioni ha in mano 1 certo quardenuccio, dove sono notati brevemente gli effecti d'alchune provisioni e leggi appartenenti alla Signoria, el quale si chiama ''quadernuccio de' brevi ricordi''; et dice come egli e` di consuetudine antiqua observato che per lui si presenti tale quadernuccio accio` che le loro Signorie possino facilmente vedere sotto brevita` quello che per loro s'abbi ad observare nelle cose che occorressino al loro Uficio'. See also Alison Brown, Bartolomeo Scala, 1430-1497, Chancellor of Florence: The Humanist as Bureaucrat (Princeton, NJ 1979), 137.
3. See for instance, Gene Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society 1343-1378 (Princeton, NJ 1962); Anthony Molho, 'Politics and the Ruling Class in Early Renaissance Florence', Nuova rivista storica, LII (1968), 401-20.
4. Useful research, in connection with the process of documentary production, has been done by Andrea Zorzi and Piero Gualtieri, 'Pratiche politiche, scritture documentarie e costruzione identitaria della comunita` cittadina. L'esempio di Firenze in eta` comunale (secoli XII-XIV)', Scrineum Rivista, 6 (2009), 1-9, 2.
5. Giuseppe Biscione, ed., Statuti del Comune di Firenze nell'Archivio di Stato: tradizione archivistica e ordinamenti: saggio archivistico e inventario (Rome 2009), 185, 139. For a survey of the archival history of this kind of instrumenta in late medieval Italy, see Paolo Cammarosano, 'I 'libri iurium' e la memoria storica delle citta` comunali', in Il senso della storia nella cultura medievale italiana (1100-1350), Acts of a conference, Pistoia, 14-17 May 1993 (Pistoia 1995), 309-25 (also in Le scritture del comune, amministrazione e memoria nella citta` dei secoli XII e XIII (Turin 1998), 95-108).
6. See Biscione, Statuti, 153; Bernardino Barbadoro, Le finanze della Repubblica fiorentina. Imposta diretta e debito pubblico fino all'istituzione del Monte (Florence 1929), 564 passim; Guidubaldo Guidi, Il governo della citta` repubblica di Firenze, 3 vols (Florence 1981), Vol. II, 269-70; 275-80; Alessandro Gherardi, 'L'antica Camera del Comune di Firenze e un quaderno d'uscita de' suoi camarlinghi', Archivio Storico Italiano, s. IV, XVI (1885), 313-61; Demetrio Marzi, 'Notizie storiche intorno ai documenti ed agli archivi piu` antichi della Repubblica fiorentina (Sec. XII-XIV)', Archivio Storico Italiano, s. V, XX (1897), part I, 85 ff.; part II, 316-35: 318 ff.
7. Francesca Klein, 'Costruzione dello stato e costruzione di archivio: ordinamenti delle scritture della Repubblica fiorentina a met a` Quattrocento', Reti Medievali Rivista 9 (2008), 1-31: 8. On this subject see also Marzi, 'Notizie storiche', 330. Now also Gian Maria Varanini, 'Public Written Records', in Andra Gamberini and Isabella Lazzarini, eds, The Italian Renaissance State (Cambridge 2012), 385-405, 392.
8. Paul Dover, 'Deciphering the Diplomatic Archives of Fifteenth-Century Italy', Archival Science, 7 (2007), 297-316.
9. Brown, Bartolomeo Scala, 183-4.
10. Lorenzo Tanzini, Il governo delle leggi. Norme e pratiche delle istituzioni a Firenze dalla fine del Duecento all'inizio del Quattrocento (Florence 2007), 112.
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- Universidad de Londres Mexico
- Sapienza University of Rome Italy
- Birkbeck, University of London United Kingdom
- University of London United Kingdom
- BIRKBECK COLLEGE - UNIVERSITY OF LONDON United Kingdom
A turning point in European administrative and documentary practices was traditionally associated, most famously by Robert-Henri Bautier, with the monarchies of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By summarizing previous research in this field, as well as by using both published and unpublished sources, this article intends to underline an earlier process of transition connected to the development of significant new techniques for the production and preservation of documents in Renaissance Italian city-states. Focusing on the important case of Florence, the administrative uses of records connected to government, diplomacy and military needs will be discussed, and evidence will be provided that such documentary practices accelerated significantly during the so-called Italian Wars (from 1494 onwards). A particular reason of interest for Florence at this time is that a major role in the production and storage of a large quantity of state papers was played by Niccolò Machiavelli, one of the outstanding political thinkers of the age. This was especially true in connection to the new militia which he himself created in 1506. By stressing the role of information management and the importance of correspondence networks at a time of war and crisis, this article also contributes to recent scholarship which has focused on the growth of public records relating to diplomacy in Italy during the second half of the fifteenth century, as well as to a recent field of historiography which has lately gained importance: namely the ‘documentary history of institutions’.
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