Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000-1250 0198875150, 9780198875154

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Maps, Tables, and Graphs 10

Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 2  Lucca and the approximate boundaries of the Sei Miglia

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 3  Florence and the Fiorentino

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 4  The secondo incastellamento in the Fiorentino

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 5  The places of the court cases involving Vitello and Benivieni

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 6  The Chianti region

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 7  The Badia a Settimo: Tigliano and S. Martino alla Palma

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 8  Passignano

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 9  The Chianti region: other case studies

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 10  The Sei Miglia in the central Middle Ages

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 11  The Versilia region

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Map 12  The canons’ lordship in Versilia

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Table 1  Rents in wheat from the donicatum of Tigliano69 Table 2 and Graph 1  Land prices in the Lucchesia 1201–30

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Map 1  The main cities of northern Tuscany in the central medieval period

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Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000-1250 Lorenzo Tabarrini https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198875154.001.0001 Published: 2023

Online ISBN: 9780191987274

Print ISBN: 9780198875154

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Acknowledgements  Published: August 2023

Subject: European History Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

I distinctly remember the strange feeling I began to develop a few years ago while I was working on a list of customary renders owed by a group of tenants to the abbey of S. Michele di Passignano, in central Chianti, towards the end of the twelfth century. I was counting the number of days of labour they had to perform on monastic demesnes, when I started to picture in my head what this actually meant for them: leaving their house; probably being mistreated by the monastic farmer; arguably longing for some well-deserved rest; coming back exhausted for a meagre meal. All that fatigue, all those hopes were reduced to a name and a number. I then realized that I wanted to work on the relations between landowners and highly dependent tenants—with my moral sympathy going decidedly to the latter. But a history book is not about moral sympathy, and I am grateful to the many people who helped me to make a scienti c monograph out of it. I will never be able to repay adequately the supervisor of my doctoral thesis, Chris Wickham, who proved to be an invaluable guide during my PhD at Oxford and then commented on the entire book in draft form; his intelligence and generosity have made him an all-round maestro for me. Special thanks go to Ian Forrest, who was my examiner at the Viva and then, in his capacity as advising editor of this book, endeavoured to teach me how to be clear and concise. Alexis Wilkin was appointed as my second examiner and subsequently supervised my post-doc in Brussels (2019–20), which was nanced by the Wiener-Anspach Foundation. Our countless discussions on the topics of this book greatly contributed to the selection of what made it into the nal text, and I hope he knows how much I owe him. Glyn Redworth commented on the section on Abbot Uberto, and helped me to improve my academic English when it was just not good enough; he was more precious to me than he might be willing to admit. My thanks must go to the anonymous reviewer of the Oxford University Press, too, who carefully read my thesis and recommended it for publication. Taylor Zaneri skilfully produced the maps and forced me to reconsider the virtues of graphs and charts, on which we still like disagreeing every now and then; I thank her for her time and patience. Finally, Giacomo Teti helped me to revise the Index—many thanks to him, too. p. x

The ideas that gave shape to this book were re ned, amended and re-amended many times. It is to the eternal credit of Giuseppe Petralia and Simone Collavini, who rst encouraged me to work on the forms of land management over the central Middle Ages when I was a Master’s student; of Tiziana Lazzari, who keeps challenging me to rethink my assumptions on an almost daily basis—and does so very e ectively; of Giulia Ammannati, an excellent teacher and a bright example of philological and palaeographical rigour; of

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FRONT MATTER

Paolo Tomei, who rst initiated me into the mysteries of the Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca. I have incurred debts of gratitude with numerous friends and colleagues, who may have hardly realized that they were making my certainties crumble—for good—while chatting over a co ee or during the industrious aftermaths of the seminars in Pisa, Oxford, Brussels and Bologna: Irene Bavuso, Lorenzo Caravaggi, Erika Cinello, Alberto Cotza, Fabrizio De Falco, Silvia Della Manna, Evelina del Mercato, Alessio Fiore, Enrico Fusaroli Casadei, Elizabeth Gemmill, Mathieu Harsch, Edoardo Manarini, Daniele Menozzi, Maureen Miller, Giovanni Isabella, Jacopo Paganelli, Filippo Ribani, Mauro Ronzani, Chiara Stedile, Giacomo Vignodelli, and Lidia Zanetti Domingues. This book has been long in the making, and I cannot but think of all the people who have been with me all along. My mother, Silvia, secretly regrets that I did not elect Dante as my subject of research; my father, stubbornly talking about monastic landed estates in the Middle Ages, a huge thank you. A thought goes to my family in Jesi, who never left me despite the physical distance; and to all of my friends, who I cannot list for reasons of space (which I guess is good). To those who are no longer with us, I hope you would have cherished this outcome. Bologna, October 2022

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Francesco, wanted me to study the Cathars, which he is so passionate about. For being so patient with me

Abbreviations

Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASFi) – Diplomatico – Badia – Cestello – Coltibuono – Montescalari – Passignano – S. Vigilio – Strozziane Uguccioni – Compagnie religiose soppresse Archivio di Stato di Lucca (ASLu) – Diplomatico – S. Giovanni – S. Ponziano – Spedale Archivio Storico Diocesano di Lucca (ASDLu) – Diplomatico – Arcivescovile – Capitolare – Biblioteca Capitolare

Editions of Primary Sources Annales Florentini I and II, ed. O. Hartwig, Quellen und Forschungen zur ältesten Geschichte der Stadt Florenz II (Magdeburg, 1880), 3–4 and 40–2 Badia Le carte del monastero di S.  Maria in Firenze (Badia), eds L.  Schiaparelli, F.  Baldasseroni, R.  Ciasca, A.  M.  Enriques, I. Lori Sanfilippo, R. Ninci (2 vols, Rome, 1913–90) CDP Codice diplomatico polironiano, eds P.  Golinelli, E.  Lanza, R. Rinaldi, C. Villani (3 vols, Bologna, 1993–2016) ChLA Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, 108 vols (Dietikon-­Zürich, 1954–) Ciabattus Ser Ciabattus: Imbreviature lucchesi del Duecento I (Anni 1222–1232), ed. A. Meyer (Lucca, 2005) Die Gesta Florentinorum Die Annalen des Tholomeus von Lucca in doppelter Fassung nebst Teilen der Gesta Florentinorum und Gesta Lucanorum,

Annales Florentini I and II

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Manuscript and Archival Sources

xii Abbreviations

Gesta Lucanorum

LEM III/1 Lettere originali MD MDL MGH DD F I MGH DD H II

MGH DD H IV

MGH DD Ko II MGH DD Lo I MGH DD O I

MGH DD O II

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Inventari

ed. B.  Schmeidler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova series, VIII (Berlin, 1930), 243–77 Die Annalen des Tholomeus von Lucca in doppelter Fassung nebst Teilen der Gesta Florentinorum und Gesta Lucanorum, ed. B.  Schmeidler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova series, VIII (Berlin, 1930), 278–324 Inventari altomedievali di terre, coloni e redditi, eds A.  Castagnetti, M.  Luzzati, G.  Pasquali and A.  Vasina (Rome, 1979) Lucensis Ecclesiae Monumenta, eds G. Concioni, C. Ferri and G. Ghilarducci (vol. III/1, Lucca, 2013) Lettere originali del Medioevo latino (VII–XI sec.), eds. A. Petrucci and G. Ammannati (2 vols, Pisa, 2002–8) Memorie e documenti, ed. F. Bertini (vols IV/1 and IV/2, Lucca, 1818–36) Memorie e documenti per servire all’istoria della città e stato di Lucca, ed. D.  Barsocchini (vols V/2 and V/3, Lucca, 1818–36) Die Urkunden Friedrichs  I., ed. H.  Appelt, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser X (5 vols, Hannover, 1975–90) Die Urkunden Heinrichs II. und Arduins, ed. Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser III (Hannover, 1900–3) Die Urkunden Heinrichs IV., eds D.  Von Gladiss and A.  Gawlik, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser VI (3 vols, 1941–78) Die Urkunden Konrads II., ed. H.  Bresslau, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser IV (Hannover-­Leipzig, 1909) Die Urkunden Lothars I. und Lothars II., ed. T. Schieffer, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die Urkunden der Karolinger III (Berlin-­Zürich, 1966) Die Urkunden Konrad  I.  Heinrich  I.  und Otto  I., ed. Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser I (Hannover, 1879–84) Die Urkunden Otto des II., ed. Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser II/1 (Hannover, 1888)

Abbreviations  xiii MGH DD O III

RCL

Settimo e Buonsollazzo

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Regesto di Coltibuono Sanzanomis

Die Urkunden Otto des III., ed. Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser II/2 (Hannover, 1893) Regesto del capitolo di Lucca, eds P. Guidi and O. Parenti (4 vols, Rome, 1910–39) Regesto di Coltibuono, ed. L. Pagliai (Rome, 1909) Sanzanomis Gesta Florentinorum, ed. O. Hartwig, Quellen und Forschungen zur ältesten Geschichte der Stadt Florenz I (Magdeburg, 1875), 1–34 Carte della Badia di Settimo e della Badia di Buonsollazzo nell’Archivio di Stato di Firenze (998–1200), eds. A. Ghignoli and A. R. Ferrucci (Florence, 2004)

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Units of Measurement

Money Both Florence and Lucca used the silver denarius (which I shall abbreviate as d.) as their ongoing currency. Following a traditional relation dating back to the eighth century, 12 denarii were worth 1 solidus (s.) and it took 20 solidi to make 1 libra (£) (cf. Spufford, Money, p. 34). It is important to stress that solidi and librae were units of account, whereas denarii constituted the only ‘real’ circulating money.

Square and Capacity Measures The measure for grain, wine and oil that we shall see most often is the staium or starium (pl. -a, -ora), which I will abbreviate as st., and which existed in many local variants; the city staium was often called rectum or iustum. The st. was used as both a capacity measure and a square measure—­ the latter being equivalent to the extension of soil that could be sown with a st.

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In central-­medieval Tuscany, as well as in most of Europe during that period, there was nothing like a common system of measurement. This means that units of measurement varied greatly, even in places close to each other. Cities, villages, and castles each had their own units, which were in turn a sign of political independence and local authority. Many of those units cannot be converted into modern ones, except approximately (a re­li­ able conversion becomes possible only with the units established in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which are, in most cases, the ones that would survive up until the Napoleonic era). I shall do so chapter by chapter, whenever the argument makes it necessary. Also, I shall propose relative estimates; that is, I will assess whether one medieval measure was different from another medieval measure, or whether a particular type of rent (e.g. a rent in money) was more or less burdensome than another one (e.g. a rent in produce).

xvi  Units of Measurement

Dates The Florentine year started with the feast of the Annunciation (25 March), and the documents were dated accordingly (ab incarnatione). In Lucca, the ab-­incarnatione style was used up until the 1150s, but was substituted almost completely by the Nativity style (25 December) thereafter. I have converted all the dates in the text into the modern style, but each time medieval dates (and as a result the shelf marks of the unedited charters I have read) differ from modern ones, I shall point this out in the footnotes.

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This identity makes it legitimate to use the ratio between the rent and the extension of the soil as an approximate estimate of land productivity—­but ‘approximate’ is the keyword here, as different types of soils required different intensity in sowing. Also, in Lucchese documents one frequently meets the cultra, a unit of square measure which could be divided into 24 or (more rarely) 22 st.—hereinafter I will assume that 1 cultra = 24 st. Arnold Esch has convincingly argued that the cultra was identical to the modius in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (cf. Esch, ‘Lucca’, pp. 22–4; contra Cordero di San Quintino, Delle misure, p. 10 and Bongi, Inventario II, 69–70, who argued that 1 cultra = 4 st., but this seems to apply to the ninth century alone). The modius was a type of measurement employed also in the Florentine countryside, dating back to the Roman age. Both the cultra and the modius could be subdivided into 4 quarre or quarters. Furthermore, it has to be noted that in the Lucchesia 1 st. = 5 scale. These relationships, unfortunately, do not make it possible to be certain of the capacity, and subsequently of the hectarage, which staia had; there is at least one exception, however (that is, the staium of the monastery of S. Michele di Passignano, south of Florence), which will be fleshed out in Chapter 2.

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I have translated the names of kings, emperors, popes and marquises into English, whereas I put into Italian the names of bishops, abbots, lay aristocrats (except for German ones), peasants and everyone else. With regard to patronymics, please note that, for instance, Martino di Pietro means Martin son of Peter, whereas the Latin Martinus quondam Petri is translated as Martino of the late Pietro. Italian place-­names have been kept in roman, including the territories of cities (Fiorentino, Lucchesia, Sei Miglia and so on). Since Firenze has a well-­established English form, I will use it (Florence/ Florentine, as opposed to Lucca/Lucchese). Italicized place-­ names are employed only for disappeared settlements (e.g. Tigliano). Italian technical terms or expressions (such as incastellamento, sistema curtense, mezzadria, Comune di Popolo) have been italicized, except for the adjective ‘signorial’ (an adaptation to English of the Italian signorile). An important note concerns the translation from Latin of granum and frumentum. In Tuscany, medieval notaries mostly used them as equivalent words for wheat, the standard cereal in most of the region. Blada refers instead to all types of cereals. However, since we cannot be completely sure that granum does not include also ‘inferior’ grains, such as spelt (possibly used as a recovery crop), I shall use ‘wheat’ when granum appears together with another cereal; for instance, I translate granum et milium as ‘wheat and millet’ (‘grain and millet’ makes no sense, since the latter is a subgroup of the former). I shall instead use ‘grain’ when granum features alone, and when the context does not allow us to conclude safely that granum really designates wheat.

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  Introduction

Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000–­1250. Lorenzo Tabarrini, Oxford University Press. © Lorenzo Tabarrini 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198875154.003.0001

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The patterns of change in rural societies are complex, as they are deter­ mined by a multiplicity of factors that need to receive the most careful scru­ tiny in order to be properly fitted into an overall picture. Discussing complexity is one of the aims of this book, which examines social and eco­ nomic transformations in the countryside surrounding the Tuscan cities of Florence and Lucca during the central (or high) medieval period—­that is, from roughly 1000 to 1250. We owe to clerics and monks, and indeed to the resilience of the Church as an institution, the preservation of the written documents on which this research is primarily based; archaeological evidence will be taken into account, too. We shall thereby approach socioeconomic history from a par­ ticular perspective, focusing on the changing relations between peasants and the ecclesiastical elite who granted land to them in return for annual renders. Those renders are the main point of reference for an assessment of the nature, the scale and (something that I will discuss at length) the pace of change during the central Middle Ages. Naturally, the overwhelming dom­ in­ance of the Church as our source of information is problematic: peasants who had no links with religious institutions are seldom visible in the docu­ ments; the peasant economy, as the set of activities characterizing peasant households (and the logic underpinning them), can barely be seen behind the veil of signorial exactions, which constitute the bulk of our data; and the management of rural estates on the part of lay aristocrats is equally obscure (this starts to change only towards the end of our period thanks to the appearance of a new type of source, notarial registers, to which I shall turn in due course). In a nutshell, many things are, and will remain, shrouded in darkness. The limits of our knowledge have to be stated as clearly as possible, but they should not discourage historians and their readers from attempting to grasp the main patterns of the social and economic developments that marked the high medieval period. The written documentation of Lucca and Florence is particularly suited to this end. First of all, it is abundant; land

2 Introduction

Economic Growth and Agrarian Economy: A Short Overview of Europe, Italy, and Tuscany Expansion, growth, take-­off, boom, efflorescence—­these are some of the words that are frequently employed in order to characterize the economic history of Europe from the eleventh century until the crisis of the fourteenth century. No one would deny that a process of overall development hap­ pened: population had perhaps tripled over that period; Latin Christendom had widened its political boundaries, thus paving the way for long-­distance commercial activities; land clearances had taken place, and agricultural production had subsequently increased and specialized; cities had grown in size, thus leading to an ever greater division of labour. All this was made easier by favourable environmental conditions in Europe between 950 and 1250: mild and rainy winters, long and warm summers, and the absence of any significant epidemics.1 However, this widely accepted picture hides the many aspects of socioeconomic history that scholars still struggle to explain. To begin with, it is not clear when that expansion really started. The pi­on­ eer­ing studies published by Georges Duby between the 1950s and the 1980s emphasized the role played by local lordships from the 950s onwards as the political and social framework that led to a widespread increase in agricul­ tural exploitation.2 Since the 1980s, however, numerous books and articles 1  I follow here the overview in Wickham, Medieval Europe, ch. 7. Other recent general syn­ theses can be found in Campbell, The Great Transition, ch. 2 (which discusses climate and environment at length); Masschaele, ‘Economic takeoff ’. On environment cf. also Hoffmann, An Environmental History (pp. 318–25 for climatic conditions over the period considered here). Albeit not mainly focused on economic history, Bartlett, The Making, needs to be cited. 2  See in particular Duby, The Early Growth, esp. pp. 172–4.

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transactions have survived in their thousands from the eighth century in the Lucchese archives, and from about the year 1000 in the Florentine ones. And it is rich in content; many sources can significantly contribute to shed­ ding light on the relations between tenants and landowners. Moreover, the extraordinary wealth of archaeological excavations at medieval sites makes Tuscany the best-­studied region in Italy in this respect. It therefore becomes legitimate to investigate those patterns of development on the basis of the extant evidence, to endeavour to mould them into a comprehensive inter­ pretation, and to make hypotheses when necessary. What we need to clarify now is why it might be worth doing so.

Introduction  3

3  Most famously McCormick, Origins. Much more nuanced in its conclusions is Wickham, Framing (which however stops at c. 800). Excellent recent discussions (with an up-­to-­date bibli­og­raphy) are Feller, ‘Changements’ and the conference proceedings gathered in La crescita. 4 Pirenne, Mohammed, esp. pp. 260–5; Violante, La società, pp. 3–165. 5  Cf. the essays gathered in Toubert, L’Europe; the contributions in Delogu, Le origini, are a good example of this historiographical trend. Regional differences are of paramount im­port­ance; just to take one example, cf. the recent contribution by Prigent, ‘La Siberia’ on the economic dynamism of Sicily during the seventh century.

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have argued that the slow take-­off of the European economy is to be found further back in the early Middle Ages—­at the latest in the Carolingian period—­which would consider the decades around 1000 only as part of a much longer path of growth, covering many centuries.3 Second, the causes of economic efflorescence remain unclear. Was it a consequence of demo­ graphic expansion? Was it a product of struggles between lords and peas­ ants, and of the increased pressure on rural production resulting therefrom? Or was it the outcome of the growing scale of commercial activities, which were in turn the precondition (and not the consequence) of the rise in the number of people? Studies of medieval Italy have, for the most part, shared in the same uncertainties as to the chronology of economic development and the hier­ archy of causes that led to it. Henri Pirenne’s thesis, which depicted Carolingian Europe as a world where commerce was almost totally absent and subsistence farming largely prevailed, was challenged in 1953 by Cinzio Violante, who argued for an economic recovery across the northern part of Italy stretching back to the beginning of the eighth century.4 Violante was followed by other scholars, most notably Pierre Toubert, who emphasized the dynamism of large aristocratic landowning in northern and central Italy in the late eighth and ninth centuries—­thus questioning, once again, one of Pirenne’s main assumptions. Regional and local studies discussing the first phase of growth of the Italian medieval economy have multiplied since.5 However, one would struggle to find in the extant bibliography clear ex­plan­ ations of the links between the expansion of the eighth and ninth centuries and that of the period 1000–1250. This is due in part to the generalized decline in the number of written sources that throw light on agrarian econ­ omy over the tenth century, which hampers the full understanding of the transition from the early to the central medieval period. Was there a long, uninterrupted growth? Was there a break? What were the different phases of this growth? Such questions are still debated, thanks to archaeological evidence in the first place—­which does not appear to support, at present, the position of those who advocate the thesis of a gradual efflorescence

4 Introduction

6  See the recent contributions by Cantini, ‘Produzioni’ and Bianchi, ‘Modi’. 7  Exceptions are Palermo, Sviluppo, esp. pp. 161–224; Cammarosano, ‘La situazione’; Id., Economia. 8  On commerce as the main driver of economic change in medieval Italy, the classic point of reference is the (relatively short) book by Lopez, The Commercial Revolution. On the dis­par­ ities between north and south in the high Middle Ages cf. Abulafia, The Two Italies. On the period 1300–1450 see Bresc, Un monde. A different interpretation is offered by Epstein, An Island. A recent overview in Martin, ‘Quelques réflexions’. 9  Bianchi and Collavini, ‘Risorse’. 10 Cortese, L’aristocrazia (cf. for instance p. 346); cf. also Ead., ‘Appunti’. On trade see also Cantini, ‘Reti’. On the subject of economic growth in medieval Tuscany cf. also the observa­ tions made recently by Delumeau, ‘Sur la croissance’.

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starting from around 800.6 Research on the central Middle Ages has often developed from quite different premises, and has seldom engaged with the creation of an economic model that could account for economic growth in its entirety.7 Other themes have taken centre stage, such as the political and commercial prominence of cities in northern-­central Italy and their rela­ tions with the surrounding countryside (some of these studies will be dis­ cussed in the conclusion); or the origins of the economic imbalance between the northern and the southern part of the country, which have sometimes been traced back to the central and late medieval period.8 Finally, a few words need to be said about Tuscany in particular. I can be brief here, but there are at least two recent contributions of very high quality that need to be mentioned. First, an essay published by Giovanna Bianchi and Simone Collavini in 2017 argued that the crystallization of rural lord­ ships across Tuscany around 1100, which emerges from both written and archaeological evidence, is explained by the unprofitability of traditional rents and the subsequent reaction on the part of lords, who endeavoured to sharpen their local power—­and the new forms of surplus extraction con­ nected to it—­in order to compensate for their otherwise meagre income.9 Second, the book published in the same year by Maria Elena Cortese on the subject of Tuscan aristocracies identified the period around 1150 as the veritable economic take-­off of the region—­in terms of both aristocratic demand and long-­distance trade networks—­albeit in the framework of a slow growth dating back to the eighth century and accelerating in the tenth.10 Both these works emphasize the importance of the years around and after 1100 as a moment of socioeconomic change in Tuscany, but they exclude the final quarter of the twelfth century from the analysis—­the first being focused on the late eleventh and the second stopping at c. 1175. One of the objectives of this book is to continue along this path, by focusing on  the decades straddling the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries and

Introduction  5

The Historiography on Estate Management in Medieval Tuscany The history of land management in medieval Tuscany has a long tradition of study, whose zenith can be placed in the thirty years from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. This was part of a scholarly trend in which many Italian medievalists (along with foreign colleagues) focused their intellectual efforts on the documentation that sheds light on the rural history of almost all regions of medieval Italy. At the same time, however, Tuscany remained a privileged area of research, since it was regarded as the homeland of mezzadria or mezzadria poderale, to give it its complete name. The mezzadria poderale is a particular form of share tenancy, mostly—­but by no means exclusively—­applied by city-­based owners to extensive farming units, which were in general suitable for polyculture (i.e., the cultivation of diverse crops

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contributing thereby to further defining the pace of economic expansion in medieval Tuscany. Indeed, the main argument is that the period from c. 1180 to c. 1230 represented a turning-­point for the agrarian economy, as it was characterized in both the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia by a generalized increase of the pressure on the peasantry and its work; this was made neces­ sary by an unprecedented surge in land prices—­determined, in turn, by profound socio-­political transformations. The patterns of lord-­peasant and landowner-­tenant relations (a differ­ ence that I shall clarify in Chapter 1) will thus be the mirror reflecting over­ all socioeconomic change. In this respect, I shall move away from the attempt to identify what the chief mover of change was, for two main ­reasons. First, many elements that contributed to it cannot be quantified, due to the deficiencies of our evidence. Demographic trends, in particular, are extremely difficult to assess, with few exceptions, before 1300—something we shall see later on. Second, and more importantly, to ask what was the chief mover is to ask the wrong question; there is no reason why a monocausal explanation should be preferred over the fleshing out of a collection of causes. The comparison of specific historical contexts, of the processes of decision-­making put in motion by the need to respond to economic stress (and so of the clashes and negotiations resulting therefrom) appears to me a more fruitful line of inquiry. To this end, we now need to frame the problem. We have to look more closely at estate management in Tuscany as it has been outlined in the extant literature.

6 Introduction

11  It is necessary to list the main studies on Tuscan mezzadria and their chronological scope in some detail; this shows that the largely prevailing focusses of the extant literature are the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Cherubini, ‘La ‘ “Tavola delle possessioni” ’ ’; Id., ‘Proprietari’ (which both concern the Sienese Tavola delle Possessioni, redacted between 1316 and 1320); Id., ‘La mezzadria’ (which is focused on the fourteenth century); Pinto, Il libro (research based on the Specchio umano by Domenico Lenzi, better known as Libro del Biadaiolo, which records the prices of wheat and other types of grain in Florence throughout the 1320s and 1330s); Id., ‘La mezzadria delle origini’ (regarding Tuscan farmhouses, and how they were related to the process of appoderamento, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries); Id., ‘Contadini e pro­ prietari’ (where the analysis concerns, for the most part, the late fourteenth, fifteenth and six­ teenth centuries); Herlihy and Klapisch-­Zuber, Les Toscans (the most complete study of the Florentine cadastral survey dating to 1427); Giorgetti, Contadini (regarding ‘relations of pro­ ductions and agrarian contracts from the sixteenth century up to the present day’, as reported in the subtitle); Epstein, Alle origini (which starts from the 1260s, thus excluding the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth century); the conference proceedings in Civiltà ed economia agricola and Contadini e proprietari nella Toscana moderna. Accounts on the central medieval antecedents of mezzadria poderale are far rarer: Cammarosano, Le campagne, esp. pp. 130–1; Id., ‘Le campagne’; Cherubini, ‘Le campagne italiane’. The edition of some high medi­eval charters is included within the three volumes dedicated to the contract of mezzadria in the countryside of Florence and Siena: Pinto and Pirillo, Il contratto I; Muzzi and Nenci, Il contratto II; Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria III. The legacy of these studies has been kept alive by Gabriella Piccinni (‘Le donne’; ‘Mezzadria’; ‘Rubriche’) and Maria Ginatempo (Crisi; ‘La mezzadria’). An overview of historiography until 2001 is Pinto, ‘Toscana’. For a long-­term and European-­wide survey cf. Biagioli and Pazzagli, Mezzadri.

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on the same tenant-­plot) and were known as poderi. It was characterized by the division of the harvest in half between proprietor and tenant, by the joint provision of livestock and seed-­corn and by the short duration of the contract—­which, however, was in general renewed—­and by various clauses strengthening the landowners’ rights to control and supervise the holding. The mezzadria poderale slowly spread over most of the hilly countryside of central Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and survived up to the second half of the twentieth century. It can thus be regarded as an exceptionally large-­scale and remarkably resilient farming regime; indeed, an essential component of Italian agrarian identity.11 During the 1970s and 1980s, a second strand of research focused on the ecclesiastical rural economy of the early Middle Ages, which was often framed by the model of the manorial system—­sistema curtense in Italian. The sistema curtense—­whose name derives from curtis, a word that can be translated as ‘estate’ in this context—­is an organizational form of large farms (above all monastic ones) which was particularly widespread in the core regions of the Carolingian Empire (those between the Seine and the Rhine, such as the Parisian basin, southern Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine) and which consisted essentially in the division of landed properties into two parts: the manorial demesne—­pars dominica, terra salica, mansus indominicatus, sometimes equipped with unfree cultivators fed by the dominus—­and

Introduction  7

12  The bibliography on the sistema curtense is huge. An overview can be found in Verhulst, The Carolingian Economy, esp. pp. 31–60; Toubert, L’Europe, pp. 25–246; Wickham, Framing, pp. 280–302; Devroey, Puissants, esp. pp. 519–83; the essays gathered in Devroey and Wilkin, Autour. On Italy cf. Fumagalli, Coloni; Andreolli and Montanari, L’azienda; Andreolli, ‘Contratti agrari e gestione’; Id., ‘La gestione’; Pasquali, ‘L’azienda’; Mancassola, L’azienda (with particular regard to Emilia-­Romagna). On Tuscany cf. below, note 17. 13  On the fragmentation of farming units see for example Conti, La formazione I, 4 and 135. On appoderamento see the data collected ibid. III/2, 345–94.

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a group of tenant-­plots—­pars massaricia, ideally divided into a series of mansi of the same size—­whose holders were granted land in return for the regular performance of labour-­ services on the demesne, plus rents in money and kind. Labour-­services were the most characteristic element of the Carolingian curtis, as they ensured the existence of a functional link between its two constitutive parts. What is more relevant to our topic is that, after the conquest of the Lombard Kingdom on the part of Charlemagne in 774, a fully formed sistema curtense began to appear in northern-­central Italy too, and thus in Tuscany—­although it should be noted that some of its elements can already be traced in the Lombard period, and that its spread was not uniform across the regions occupied by the Franks. In fact, it needs stressing further that the sistema curtense has to be regarded in the first place as a model (or, if you like, as an ideal-­type) which materialized in different ways depending on local contexts.12 Both the early medieval sistema curtense and the late medieval (and early modern) mezzadria have constituted two strong interpretative frameworks, so strong that they have often been ‘borrowed’ by scholars who tried to characterize the forms of land management of the period 1000–1250. One easily finds expressions like ‘end of the sistema curtense’ and ‘origins of mezzadria’ in the rural historiography on central medieval Tuscany, as is exem­ plified by the seminal works published in the 1960s and 1970s by three of the most distinguished historians of Italian medieval rural history: Elio Conti, Philip Jones, and Ljubov Kotel’nikova. Because of their intellectual legacy and their efforts to build up comprehensive accounts of estate man­ agement and socioeconomic change, it is worth sketching out briefly their views. In Conti’s opinion, the formation of large poderi mezzadrili—­a process called appoderamento—­across the Florentine countryside in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries represented the eventual response to the enduring fragmentation of manorial farming units—­the above-­mentioned mansi—­ which emerges clearly from eleventh-­century charters.13 Jones was, by con­ trast, mainly interested in the birth of the modern bourgeoisie within

8 Introduction

14  Jones, ‘From manor’. 15 Marx, Das Kapital III, ch. XLVII. 16 Kotel’nikova, Mondo, pp. 283–4 and 303–5. 17  On the limits of the manorial model cf. Devroey and Wilkin, ‘Diversité’. On the sistema curtense, its transformations and its alleged end in Tuscany cf. Andreolli, ‘Contratti’; Id., ‘L’evoluzione’; Id., ‘Il sistema’; Wickham, ‘Paesaggi’; Id., The Mountains, ch. 3 and 8; Delumeau, Arezzo I, 133–61; Collavini, ‘La condizione’, esp. pp. 335–50; Tabarrini, ‘La “fine” ’; Id., ‘Détecter’; and below, Chapter  1. On the areas of Tuscany in which mezzadria poderale was absent or rare, the classic point of reference is Luzzati, ‘Toscana’ (see below, note 18 for more).

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Tuscan cities; according to him, this can be traced back to the decades bridging the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, when manorial economies came to an end and urban mercantile classes increasingly resorted to mezzadria as one of their privileged means of leasing out rural estates.14 Finally, Kotel’nikova’s main focus of interest was the transition from feudal to cap­it­ al­ist rent in the countryside, which Karl Marx saw embodied precisely in mezzadria agreements.15 Albeit in the frame of a Marxian perspective, Kotel’nikova did not agree with Marx on that particular point. She argued that the provision of seed-­corn to the lessees on the part of landowners was not intended to increase agricultural production (which would have consti­ tuted a fully capitalist feature) but was simply a form of credit, devoid of any push towards the maximization of profit.16 One can easily notice that, in their discussion of estate management dur­ ing the central medieval period, Conti, Jones and Kotel’nikova largely drew upon two interpretative frameworks—­ sistema curtense and mezzadria poderale—­which had been created on the basis of, respectively, early medi­ eval and late medieval sources; and that, more generally, later outcomes—­ like the rise of bourgeoisie and capitalism—­were used to explain earlier developments. This is problematic. Successive research has shown that it is not possible easily to generalize about either the bipartite manor as the main organizational form of early aristocratic landowning, in Tuscany as elsewhere, or about its decline and subsequent replacement with other organizational forms, whose chronology varies from region to region; suf­ fice it to note that Conti and Jones placed the end of the Tuscan manorial economy in, respectively, the eleventh and the late twelfth centuries. The issuing of mezzadria contracts was very uneven, too, going from in­dis­put­ able prevalence in some areas to virtual absence in some others, as was notably the case with the coastal areas of Tuscany.17 Manor and mezzadria thus turn out to be rather unstable points of reference. It is therefore necessary to analyse estate management during the central Middle Ages in its own right, paying the most careful attention to the choice of words and expressions that we employ in order to interpret the available

Introduction  9

18 On the ‘manorial lexicon’ in the Fiorentino, which survived up to c. 1150, cf. Faini, Firenze, pp. 45–65; on mezzadria poderale cf. the books and articles at note 11. On the sistema curtense in the Lucchesia, see note 17 (the most complete accounts remain Andreolli, ‘Contratti’ and ‘L’evoluzione’, but it is essential to integrate them with Wickham, The Mountains, ch. 3). The absence of mezzadria poderale in the Lucchesia is more controversial – albeit gener­ ally accepted – and deserves some framing. Andreolli, ‘Considerazioni’, concluded that mezzadria had not developed in the fourteenth-­ century Lucchesia. He thus confirmed the assumptions made by Marino Berengo in his landmark book on Lucca in the sixteenth century, arguing for the absence of poderi mezzadrili in that period (Berengo, Nobili, esp. pp. 301 and 307). Through the analysis of numerous fifteenth-­century lease agreements, however, Michael Bratchel wrote that ‘Many of the Lucchese examples embrace so many of the structural features of mezzadria that I am disinclined to withhold use of the term’ (Bratchel, Lucca, p. 187); but Bratchel’s study was not systematic. D.  J.  Osheim argued that, since mezzadria was mainly adopted by urban owners, its absence around Lucca was evidence of the strength of rural ­owners (Osheim, ‘Countrymen’, p. 318); this argument, however, does not account for, but

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evidence. To this end, I will mostly confine the label sistema curtense to the early Middle Ages, opting for ‘manorial forms of land management’ when the sources reveal some type of bipartite organization of farms in the central Middle Ages. I shall be similarly parsimonious with mezzadria, which—­to repeat—­began to be consistently applied to poderi only from the late Middle Ages on. Instead I will speak of sharecropping contracts/share tenancies/ share tenures so as to describe lease agreements in which the rent was fixed as a proportion of the final harvest; more specifically, I shall refer to ‘share­ cropping contracts/share tenancies/share tenures including mezzadria ele­ ments’, or else ‘early mezzadria contracts’, whenever a share tenancy includes at least two of the following three features: the division of the harvest into halves; a clause related to the joint provision of seed-­corn; and one or more clauses strengthening the landowners’ right to supervise regularly the tenants’ work on the holding. These remarks are by no means meant to deny outright the validity of the categories employed to describe the transformations in estate management as outlined above; what seems important to me is to reframe them by avoid­ ing both derivative and teleological explanations. And the most promising way to do so is to examine two areas of Tuscany whose early and late medi­ eval rural economies have been described in very different terms by his­tor­ ians: the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia. In the countryside surrounding Florence, manorial forms of land management are said to have survived possibly up to the middle of the twelfth century, and early mezzadria con­ tracts began to be issued at about the same time; in the Lucchesia, by con­ trast, the sistema curtense seems to have disappeared at the latest in the eleventh century, whereas mezzadria poderale never came to constitute the dominant type of farming regime at any point in the history of the region.18

Map 1  The main cities of northern Tuscany in the central medieval period

Map by: Taylor Zaneri

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Introduction  11

War, Taxes, and the Popolo: The Political History of Lucca and Florence From a political point of view (and almost certainly also from a demo­ graphic one), Lucca was far more important than Florence during the early Middle Ages. It was the seat of the marquis of Tuscia, that is to say, of the highest public officer of the Carolingian administrative district whose boundaries largely overlapped with those of modern Tuscany. Moreover, Lucca was the ‘capital’ of a fairly coherent polity, since the marquises showed a long-­standing capacity to exert their authority well after the crisis of the Carolingian-­style order, which took place in many parts of western Europe at some point between the tenth and the eleventh centuries. There is no trace of an irreversible weakening of their power until the death of Marquise derives from, the alleged absence of mezzadria. Renzo Sabbatini maintained that mezzadria was widespread in the environs of Lucca during the modern age, but cites only a book by the nineteenth-­century erudito Antonio Mazzarosa to support his claim (Sabbatini, ‘Lucca’, p. 155). Future systematic research will certainly stem from Alessandra Potenti’s excellent articles, which show that share tenancies are widely attested around Lucca in the fifteenth century, whereas mezzadria poderale is not (‘Gli estimi’ and ‘Proprietà’).

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This book argues that in the central Middle Ages, and especially over the period 1180–1230, one can spot both similarities and differences in the  transformations of the agrarian economy of the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia; the similarities are explained by the common causes for overall socioeconomic transformations that I shall detail out in due course. The dif­ ferences hinged upon the patterns of landholding and on local ecological factors; these elements can also help to throw some light on the reasons why the slow development of mezzadria suited the Fiorentino more than the Lucchesia. The comparison of these two regions within Tuscany will be carried out through the combination of a long-­term analysis, covering the period 1000–1250 (but in fact stretching back, when possible, to the early medieval period), with a more focused discussion of the late twelfth and early thir­ teenth centuries, for reasons that will become clear as we proceed. In order to start to uncover the matrix of factors that needs to be taken into account, I shall now move on to the political history of Lucca, Florence and their countryside, that is, the institutional background which affected—­ and sometimes probably caused—­socioeconomic developments.

12 Introduction

19  On the boundaries of the March of Tuscia cf. Cori, ‘Geografia’, pp. 12–3 and Ronzani, ‘Dalla regione’, pp. 77–9. On the resilience of the March cf. Wickham, ‘La signoria’. The classic analysis on early medieval Lucca is Schwarzmaier, Lucca, which now needs to be read together with Tomei, ‘Milites elegantes’ (which goes from c. 800 to c. 1100). See also Wickham, The Mountains (esp. the introduction to the Garfagnana region at pp. 15–7); on Matilda of Tuscany and her relations with Tuscan cities cf. Puglia, ‘Beata filia’. 20  The classic study of the early phases of Florentine history remains Davidsohn, Geschichte I. The economic evolution of central medieval Florence has been studied by Day, ‘The early development’; the most complete account on Florentine rural aristocracies (and their relations with the city) between the tenth and the twelfth centuries is Cortese, Signori; that on urban development is Faini, Firenze, which stops at 1211. On the Arno cf. Salvestrini, Libera città.

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Beatrix in 1076 and the revolt of Lucca itself against Bishop Anselmo II, the ally of Matilda of Tuscany in the struggles between the Papacy and the Empire (known as the Investiture Controversy) in 1080.19 Conversely, Florence seems to have been a relatively marginal city right up to the end of the eleventh century, when Matilda started to reside there at a time when Lucca was hostile. Its evolution from a rather unimportant centre, located along the often tumultuous river Arno, to one of the largest economic and cultural poles of Europe remains, to some extent at least, a fascinating mys­ tery even today.20 In this section, I will focus on the birth and development of autonomous urban governing bodies—­ the famous comuni—­in their often hostile relations with the surrounding countryside, in particular, with the areas of local power known as signorie, which are discussed at length in Chapter 1. I shall start my analysis with Lucca before moving on to Florence. The part on Lucca will be more general, as I shall outline some issues regarding the history of Tuscany as a whole (who were the podestà, what was the Comune di Popolo, for instance), so that it will not be necessary to address them again when discussing Florence. The analysis will carry us into the arena of warfare, taxation, fiscal policies, and the development of the secondary sector; these can be regarded as some of the elements that pushed landowners to put pressure on peasant labour in order to increase their profits. From the second half of the eleventh century Lucca exerted a stable political control over the area stretching for six miles around the city, later known as the Sei Miglia; this control was formalized thanks to the diploma issued by Henry IV to the city in 1081, in which the emperor ordered that the Sei Miglia were to be kept free of castles and thus of signorial enclaves—­ although some signorie did exist and some fortifications were in fact built in the late eleventh century (and the Lucchesi thereafter brought them

Introduction  13

21 Cf. the edition of Henry IV’s diploma in MGH, DD H IV/2, 437–8, no. 334. Cf. Schwarzmaier, Lucca, pp. 66–7; Wickham, Community, pp. 15–7. 22  Blomquist and Osheim, ‘The first’; Savigni, Episcopato, pp. 47–8. 23  Conrad’s diploma is edited in Tommasi, Sommario, pp. 5–6, no. 3 (1120 October 3); on courts cf. Wickham, Courts, pp. 31–2 (a synthesis in Id., Sleepwalking, pp. 180–2); the docu­ ment which first cites the penalty inflicted by the consules treguani (the magistrates arbitrating issues related to the Lucchese countryside) is ASLu, S. Ponziano, 1130 June 2 (cf. the regesto in Degli Azzi Vitelleschi, Pergamene I, 127, no. 388); cf. also Savigni, Episcopato, p. 87. 24  On the campaigns undertaken by Henry V cf. Davidsohn, Geschichte I, 363 and follow­ ing; on Lothar III cf. Fiore, ‘L’Impero’, pp. 36–7; on Lucca cf. Wickham, Community, ch. II; Cortese, ‘L’Impero’, pp. 49–50 and note 1.

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down).21 Possibly as a result of the existence of this fairly coherent iurisdictio over the hinterland, the first signs of communal organization in Lucca appeared quite early. Consuls are attested already in the 1080s, but it is hard to determine whether, at that stage, they formed a set of regularly rotating city rulers or not; probably, they were initially judges or legal experts, in a subordinate position to the bishop.22 But this is likely to have changed at the latest from 1120, when a diploma was addressed to the Lucchese consuls by Marquis Conrad, recognizing them as a fully public authority representing the city. From the late 1120s, then, the commune developed independently of the bishopric: a lay cancellarius is recorded for the first time in 1127, and consular tribunals existed by 1130.23 This process is further explained by the need to fill the power vacuum left by German emperors over the first half of the twelfth century. With the par­ tial exceptions of the campaigns of Henry V in 1110 and 1116, and Lothar III in 1132 and 1136, imperial power in northern-­central Italy was hardly effective. Thus, the local jurisdiction of Lucca was left untouched, the main factor of instability being constituted by the low-­intensity wars against Pisa for the control of lands and castles lying between the two cities during most of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.24 This overall pattern, however, was profoundly altered by the Italian expeditions undertaken by Emperor Frederick I between 1154 and 1183—which do need to be dis­ cussed at some length. It has to be emphasized, in the first place, that the relations maintained by Frederick with the cities and the rural lordships of Tuscia were, in general, less hostile and less violent in comparison to the bloody conflicts that took place in Lombardy. Lucca provides a good example of this. To start with, the city was granted a diploma by Frederick I in 1155, in which he prevented Pisa and any other civitas from minting coins similar to those of Lucca. In the same year, however, the emperor allowed the Pisans to mint their own coins, which would be officially distinguished from the Lucchese currency

Map 2  Lucca and the approximate boundaries of the Sei Miglia

Map by: Taylor Zaneri

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Introduction  15

25  Frederick’s privilege for Lucca is in MGH, DD F I/1, 190–2, no. 112 (soon after 1155 June 18); that for Pisa is ibid., pp. 200–2, no. 119 (1155 August 25); on the latter cf. Ronzani, ‘La nozione’, pp. 80–2. 26  Welf ’s diploma is edited in Cianelli, Dissertazioni I, 173–5 (1160 April 13) – it includes an annual tribute of 1000 s.; Frederick I’s in MGH, DD F I/2, 239–41, no. 375 (c. 1162 July 15) – it envisages an annual tribute of £400, to which the 1000 s. owed to the marquis could be deducted, with the consent of the emperor [cf. also ibid., Constitutiones I, 302–4, no. 214 (1162 July 9)]; Henry VI’s in Cianelli, Dissertazioni I, 198–200 (1186 April 30) – it includes an annual tribute of 60 Marks of Cologne, equivalent to c. £300 of Pisan denarii. For the ratio between Marks and Pisan denarii during the first half of the thirteenth century (1 marca = £5.02–5.5) cf.  Davidsohn, Forschungen IV, 316–7. Peter Spufford identified the marcae as silver ingots (Spufford, Money, pp. 209–10); but a careful reading of the primary sources he used (cf. Jesse, Quellenbuch, no. 370, pp. 249–52) makes it more reasonable to translate marcae as Marks of Cologne (as in Baldassarri, Zecca, p. 90). Cf. also Day, ‘The early development’, pp. 525–6, note 20. 27  Cortese, ‘L’Impero’, pp. 69–70.

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only in 1181.25 One can easily see the fairly striking tension between the two measures taken in 1155, which were in fact due to the conciliatory and opportunistic attitude of Frederick towards the two most important cities of Tuscia at that time (and, with regard to Pisa, to the need to secure the sup­ port of its powerful fleet). From the late 1150s, the political landscape of the Kingdom of Italy underwent substantial transformations. During the two Diets held in Roncaglia (1154 and 1158), Frederick I endeavoured to reassert his author­ ity over the by-­then largely independent cities of northern and central Italy. German personnel and indeed Frederick’s own relatives were sent to run the March of Tuscia, as is notably the case with Marquis Welf VI (uncle of the emperor, in charge from 1152 to 1173 or 1174) and minor officers, namely counts and podestà. What is more relevant to our topic is that, start­ ing from 1160, Lucca appears to have been burdened with tributes exacted by the emperor or his delegates; these tributes were not very high, ranging from 1000 s. to £400 per annum, but they did represent a novelty—­no such impositions had been envisaged by Henry IV’s diploma of 1081.26 Another aspect that needs stressing is warfare. During the 1160s and 1170s, Lucca did not expand further into the countryside (unlike Florence, as we shall see in the next section). It was involved, however, in wars against Pisa, Florence and the Aldobrandeschi counts, as it backed (along with Genoa and Siena) the imperial representative in Tuscia, Christian I, arch­ bishop of Mainz, who was particularly hostile to Pisa.27 This matters to us for one reason—­that is, the cost of war. The armies of the Italian communes were, for the most part and at least in this period, paid forces made up of citizens. Foreign troops were hired too, however, and we can get a sense of

16 Introduction

28  Although focused on Florence, cf. for a general overview Waley, ‘The army’. On commu­ nal armies as receiving some salary cf. Id., The Italian City-­Republics, p. 84; Maire Vigueur, Cavalieri, p. 134. A useful handbook is the quite recent Grillo, Cavalieri, esp. pp. 111–6. The text of the oath was edited in Santini, Documenti, pp. 20–4, no. XIV (1184 October 28). 29  On courts cf. Wickham, Courts, pp. 44–5. On the construction of new city walls and the imposition of taxes cf. Savigni, Episcopato, pp. 91–3 and Tirelli, ‘Lucca’, p. 174 and note 56; in particular, the document mentioning datia and prestationes is edited in Tommasi, Sommario, pp. 8–9 (Documenti), no. 6 (1206 August 7). For public deficit cf. ASLu, S. Giovanni and ibid., Spedale, both dated to 1179 July 31 (cited by Tirelli, ‘Lucca’, pp. 196–7, note 116); on the estimo cf. Bongi, ‘Quattro documenti’, pp. 224–7, no. 2 (1182 August 23).

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their salaries by looking at a slightly later document. The text of a military treaty stipulated (probably in 1184) between Lucca and Florence, which were allied at that time, informs us that the daily wage of the Lucchese sol­ diers who would serve in the Florentine armies varied between 12 d. for infantrymen and archers, and 3 s. for cavalrymen (milites). The agreement envisaged (along with other things) that Lucca should provide 150 horse­ men along with 500 infantrymen and archers. Since Lucca promised to pro­ vide military support to Florence from May to October and then for twenty days in a row over a year, this may have resulted in a total annual ex­pend­ iture of £8,217.5 of Lucchese denarii on the part of the Florentine commune. This is of course an estimate, and one that concerns Florence and not Lucca; it conveys, at any rate, an idea of how burdensome the cost of warfare could be.28 In addition to warfare, other expenditure items needed to be covered. The bureaucratic structure of the commune was sharpened, with new courts founded in the late 1160s. Moreover, new city walls were built up during the second half of the twelfth century and the first quarter of the thirteenth. How did the urban government pay for all this? One means was public expenditure; it seems significant that the first—­albeit fortuitous—­mention of a Lucchese public deficit dates to this phase of sustained expansion (1179). Then came, of course, taxes: even though the exactions demanded in return for the access to Lucchese tribunals were fairly low, the growth in the number of court-­cases certainly generated some income for the commune; the circuit of walls was financed through the levy of datia and prestationes weighing on Lucchese lay citizens and clerics; lastly, there is some evidence that the creation of a land-­tax register (estimo) was already being developed by 1182.29 The final twenty years of the twelfth century were marked by further important political changes. The first podestà of Lucca, Paganello, who belonged to the aristocratic family of the Porcaresi, took office in 1187. This fact has to be highlighted, since it testifies to the growing complexity of urban society and the potential conflicts arising therefrom—­which were far

Introduction  17

30  On the first Lucchese podestà cf. Tirelli, ‘Lucca’, p. 185; with particular regard to foreign podestà cf. Ragone, ‘Il reclutamento’. 31 On Henry VI’s death and the societas Tuscie cf. Davidshon, Geschichte I, 614–20; Collavini, ‘Honorabilis domus’, p. 215 and following. 32  On the treaty with Genoa cf. Blomquist, ‘Commercial association’, p. 161, note 16; on that with Modena cf. Del Punta, Mercanti, p. 29. A recent overview of the Comuni di Popolo is Poloni, Potere (cf. on Lucca pp. 9–10 and 15–7); specifically on Lucca cf. Ead., ‘Strutturazione’ and Ead., Lucca (esp. p. 47 for the development of the manufacturing sector).

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from uncommon among Italian communes during the years following the peace agreement with Frederick I (sealed in Constance in 1183). Those con­ flicts were more likely to be prevented if the city was governed by a single ruler, possibly an imitation of the German podestà mentioned above, who substituted for the college of consuls, and who after an initial period was always from a different city.30 Then, at the end of the following decade, the premature death without adult sons of Frederick’s successor, Henry VI (1197) constituted a turning-­point in the history of Tuscany and of Europe as a whole. That year saw the beginning of a long period of political turmoil, in which the authority of the Empire in northern and central Italy began to vanish, and this time definitively; even when Henry’s son Frederick II came out of his minority, the interventions of the imperial representatives there were less effective, consisting basically in the support given to the pro-­ Empire Ghibelline factions of each city. Tuscany provides clear evidence of this upheaval. Soon after the death of Henry, the anti-­imperial forces gath­ ered in the so-­called ‘League of Tuscia’ (societas Tuscie) in November 1197, which included Lucca, Florence, Siena, and S. Miniato—­the main exception being Pisa.31 With specific regard to Lucca, even though annual podestà now ruled, civil strife appears to have grown in intensity from that time on. This can be interpreted as one of the signs of the emergence of the Comune di Popolo, that is, of a specific institutional phase in the history of the com­ munes during which merchants and artisans—­that is to say rich or relatively prosperous people, whom we must not confuse with the lower classes which the word populus might evoke—­became part of the governing bodies of the cities, in the form of societies (mainly military ones) or professional guilds. The progressive institutionalization of artisanal sectors reflected the grow­ ing importance of the cloth industry of silk and wool, which appears to have begun to be important over the 1190s—­although the existence of export activities is first attested by the commercial treaties with Genoa (1153) and Modena (1182) and by attestations of Lucchese merchants in Genoese documentation from the 1150s onwards. The Modena treaty constitutes the earliest evidence of the consuls of Lucchese merchants, too.32

18 Introduction

33 On the siege of Fiesole: Sanzanomis, pp. 3–5; Annales Florentini I, p. 3; Davidsohn, Geschichte I, 393–5 and 397–9; Faini, Firenze, pp. 263–4. The 1138 documents are edited in MD IV/2, 172–3, no. CXXII (1138 March 19) and Santini, Documenti, pp. 2–3, no. II (1138 June 4); cf. also Davidsohn, Geschichte I, 424–5; Collavini,‘Honorabilis domus’, pp. 178–80; Faini, Firenze, pp. 264–6. An overview of Florentine chronicles in Tanzini, Firenze, pp. 104–14. 34  Cf. Wickham, Sleepwalking, pp. 182–4; on the annona see Magni, ‘La politica’, esp. pp. 43–5.

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With the appearance of the Comune di Popolo, some of the major pol­it­ical transformations that are relevant to this book were brought to an end. I will add further details in the following chapters, namely on the first thirty years of the thirteenth century—­with regard, for example, to the development of rural communes. Let us now move on to Florence. Differing from Lucca, communal organization in Florence appeared both surprisingly late and exceptionally suddenly. One may object that consuls are mentioned by the chronicler Sanzanome in his Gesta Florentinorum (written between 1230 and 1231) as already in charge in 1123, when they decided to lay siege to Fiesole (located on a hill north-­east of Florence and seat of a bishop) and to build up an army to this end. Moreover, they appear in two charters dating to 1138 as the representatives of the city in formal meetings with Tuscan aristocracies, in the aftermath of the second military expedition to Italy of Lothar III. But both these testimonies hardly point to the existence of a structured city government: in all likelihood, Sanzanome described the Florentine political organization of the early twelfth century through the lens of the fully institutionalized consulate of his time, whereas the 1138 documents depict the consules simply as ambassadors. As I shall explain in a moment, we need to wait for the 1170s to see Florentine consuls as a group of institutionalized city rulers.33 It is however really hard, as Chris Wickham noted, to think that Florence managed without any formal governing body—­not even an assembly gath­ ering the elite families together—­for most of the twelfth century. The con­ scription of citizens who would serve in the army indicates the recognition of a public authority, as does the provision of grain on the part of the city government (annona) attested in the 1130s and—­with a higher degree of certainty—1180s.34 What is certain, however, is that the elements that prove the existence of a fully institutionalized commune appeared almost all at once in the early 1170s. In 1171, the Pisans swore to stick to the military agreement they had concluded with Florence in the context of the wars among Tuscan cities and rural aristocracies which we discussed in the pre­ vious section; this was the first ‘international’ treaty that Florence stipulated, and which also included some commercial privileges for the Florentines.

Introduction  19

35  On the treaty between Pisa and Florence cf. Santini, Documenti, pp. 5–6, no. IV (1171 July 2); on the first consular judgment cf. ibid., p. 223, no. I (1172 December 30); on the con­ suls during the years 1172–6 cf. Faini, Firenze, pp. 332–5; the first notarial document attesting the consuls’ authority is ASFi, Passignano, 1173 October 14 (cf. also Faini, Firenze, pp. 324–6). 36  On the date of the sack of Figline cf. Wickham, ‘Ecclesiastical dispute’, pp. 12–3, note 11. On the failed rebuilding of Paterno cf. Pirillo, ‘Semifonte’, p. 242 and following; Salvestrini, ‘La guerra’, pp. 179–88. On city walls cf. Davidsohn, Geschichte I, 532–5; Id., Forschungen I, 114; Bigagli et al., ‘La cerchia’. A different interpretation of the institutionalization of the commune has been provided by Faini, Firenze, pp. 361–3. 37  Cortese, ‘L’Impero’, p. 70, note 87.

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In December 1172, then, the first consular court-­case surfaces in the charters of the Badia a Settimo (cf. Chapter  2). From the same year on, consuls appear as an organized and stable office, and their authority started to be regularly stated at the bottom of notarial charters from 1173 onwards.35 The explanation for this sharpening of communal institutions has to be found in the political events of those years. In 1170, the Florentine armies destroyed the castle of Figline (south-­east of the city), where the bishop of Fiesole wished to move his seat with papal consent. Shortly afterwards, the Florentine consuls halted the rebuilding of the castle of Paterno, south of Florence, lest Archbishop Christian of Mainz (who was in Lombardy and Tuscany in 1171 and 1172) could interpret it as a form of hostility towards the imperial army. Such fears were reflected by the construction of a new circuit of city walls over the triennium 1172–5 (and it is worth noting that churches and monasteries probably contributed financially to the wall-­ building). It is likely that the threats posed by the potential retaliations of the Papacy and the Empire, the conflicts involving Tuscan communes and landed aristocrats, and the onerous expenses for the walls played an essen­ tial role in making it necessary to create a set of regularly rotating rulers—­ and thus to imitate the more developed cities of western Tuscany, such as Pisa and Lucca.36 The new institutional structure remained in place after the temporary pacification that followed the intervention of Frederick in Tuscany (1175),37 as it arguably granted a much-­needed stronger political stability—­all the more so if we consider that, by means of an aggressive expansionism into the countryside, Florentine warfare appears to have further scaled up in the following two decades. From the early 1180s, the city armies began to attack repeatedly the castle of Semifonte, in Valdelsa, which the family of the Alberti counts had started to build in 1177. Count Alberto IV eventually had to submit to the Florentines in 1184, even though the conflicts involv­ ing Semifonte would last up to 1202 (cf. Chapter  2). Other communities

20 Introduction

38 On Semifonte cf. the contributions by Pirillo and Salvestrini at note 36. On Empoli, Mangona and Certaldo cf. Barbadoro, Le finanze, pp. 36–7 and more recently Day, ‘The early development’, pp. 101–10. 39  On the first podestà and the appearance of the rectores cf. Zorzi, ‘I rettori’, pp. 484–8; Day, ‘The early development’, esp. pp. 206–8; the treaty with Bologna is edited in Santini, Documenti, pp. 179–82, no. LXIII (1216 February 12); cf. also ibid., pp. 183–7, no. LXIV (1216 February 20) and pp. 187–90, no. LXV (1216 February 29).

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surrendered to the Florentines: Empoli in 1182, Mangona (now located within Barberino di Mugello) in 1184 and Certaldo in 1198.38 Military activity was matched by institutional developments. A podestà is first attested in 1193; from then on, consuls and podestà governed the city—­alternating—­up to 1211, when the last Florentine consul civitatis appears in our documen­ tary record. Again in 1193, we find mention of rectores artium (that is to say of guilds), then of rectores populi in 1197; also, a commercial treaty was stipulated between Florence and Bologna in 1216. Even if the first Comune di Popolo in Florence dates to 1250, all this points to the economic expansion and the aspirations to political representation of mercantile and artisanal urban strata between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries.39 Annona, warfare and bureaucracy had a cost. So, along with the submis­ sion of towns, villages and castles came the payment of tributes, or the takeover by Florence of signorial exactions previously made by local lords; this was notably the case with the datium and acatum that the Alberti counts were used to levying in the area encompassed by the rivers Pesa, Elsa and Arno, half of which—­possibly worth £400 of Pisan denarii—­was conceded to the Florentines in 1184. The first mention of a hearth-­tax in Florence dates to 1198, when Figline subscribed to the societas Tuscie. Apparently, in this early phase taxation was not progressive: the diploma granted by Henry VI to the Florentines in 1187, in which the Emperor acknowledged the jurisdiction of the city over its surrounding territory, included an exemption for aristocrats (nobiles) and people of military status (milites) from every form of levy, and in 1198 all the Figlinesi identified as milites and masnaderii were similarly exempted. According to Bruno Barbadoro, this type of fiscal administration lasted up to the 1220s, when a graduated form of taxation in the countryside was progressively introduced by the commune. We need in fact to wait until the 1230s to see Florentine officials visiting the contado in order to get information on the legal status of people, and it seems sensible to think that the reason for it was an attempt to tax the cultivators according to their wealth; later evidence shows that in  the early 1240s both aristocrats and non-­ aristocrats were taxed at

Introduction  21

Map by: Taylor Zaneri

differential rates, and that in 1259 an estimo based on assessed wealth was finally introduced. Furthermore, from c. 1250 the taxes weighing on ecclesi­ astical assets were increased as well.40 Let us take stock. The issue of economic growth throughout the central Middle Ages will be observed from the standpoint of estate management in 40  On tributes, the hearth-­tax and the progressive introduction of graduated taxation see again Barbadoro and Day (note 38); as to the officials visiting the countryside in the 1230s cf. Chapter 1. For the Alberti’s datium cf. Santini, Documenti, pp. 25–6, no. XVI (1184 November); Davidsohn, Geschichte I, 567–74; Cortese, ‘L’Impero’, pp. 71–2. Henry VI’s diploma is known through a thirteenth-­century copy: cf. Santini, Documenti, pp. XXXVI–­VIII.

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Map 3  Florence and the Fiorentino

22 Introduction

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the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia. Particular emphasis will be placed on the period going from c. 1180 to c. 1230, as those years were characterized by an intense process of change, furthered and probably caused by the socio-­ political context that I have just outlined. The transformations that took place around Florence matched those around Lucca in some respects, but differed from them in others. This interplay of similarities and differences will also manifest in the discussion of manorial economy, share tenancies, and early mezzadria. But these are just parts of the picture: manorial forms of land management did not necessarily represent the starting-­point for change, nor was the development of mezzadria its final end. We now need some more framing before moving on to the case studies of Chapters 2 and 3. It is necessary to sketch out in some more detail the char­ acteristics of the sistema curtense in the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia, and of rural society as a whole—­in particular, the development of signorial powers in the countryside. Once we have done that, all the elements that we must take into account in order to examine the relations between lords and peasants will have been set out.

1

This chapter covers two related topics. It first discusses the characteristics and the development of the sistema curtense in the countryside of Florence and Lucca; it then moves on to outlining the limits of the two cities’ jurisdictions by investigating the inner structures of rural lordships in both the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia. These topics are related to each other in two ways. One is general: they bring us into the arena of agriculture and its socioeconomic relations, thus shifting the focus from the city to the countryside. One is more specific: as I shall suggest in the conclusion of this chapter, and then in Chapters 2 and 3, manorial forms of land management can contribute to explaining the different forms that lordship took in the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia. A short remark on terminology is necessary here. In the rest of the book, I shall employ the words ‘lord’ and ‘landowner’ almost interchangeably to ecclesiastical owners who held some kind of jurisdictional right. The proprietorial aspect is often so profoundly intertwined with political power that the two can hardly be kept separated. Also, I will be primarily dealing with ‘tenants’ rather than ‘peasants’, as lordship in the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia weighed in the majority of cases on those who rented out land from aristocrats. Nonetheless, I shall turn to ‘peasants’ when lordship extended over owner-­cultivators, too, or when I make remarks on rural communities as a whole.

An Overview of the sistema curtense around Lucca and Florence (700–1150) Describing the characteristics of the sistema curtense in the countryside of Lucca and Florence does not require too much space. In fact, the extant documentation allows us to study properly the early medieval manorial Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000–­1250. Lorenzo Tabarrini, Oxford University Press. © Lorenzo Tabarrini 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198875154.003.0002

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Land Management and Rural Society Before and After 1000

24  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

1  For bibliographical references cf. the Introduction, notes 17 and 18. 2 On libelli cf. Ghignoli, ‘Note’, and Ead., ‘Libellario nomine’. 3  On the Lombard contracts cf. Andreolli, ‘Contratti’, pp. 73–91; on ninth-­century rent contracts including corvées cf. ibid., p. 119; for other obligations cf. ibid., pp. 92–3. For an overview cf. Id., ‘L’evoluzione’.

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economy only with regard to the estates of the Lucchese bishops, and some good studies have already done so.1 We need, however, to set out briefly what the sistema was, draw a chronology of its origins and of its—­not always easily demonstrable—­demise in the countryside of both cities. We can study the Lucchese manorial system thanks to two types of sources: the lease charters preserved in the episcopal archives of S. Martino, the cathedral of Lucca, which cover the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries (most of which, from the beginning of the ninth century, go under the name of libelli, the most widespread type of written lease agreement in Tuscany up to the end of the eleventh century);2 and two of the three inventories of lands, tenants and renders of the bishopric redacted in the 890s. Lease charters are of particular interest, in that they are evidence of the existence of demesne farming, and of the demand for labour-­services, already before the Frankish conquest of northern and central Italy (774). It can be argued, however, that Lombard bipartite estates were less coherently organized than their Carolingian successors; indeed, labour was required in only a handful of agreements, and, for the most part, in unspecified quantities. From the final quarter of the eighth century onwards, by contrast, episcopal leases begin to state precisely the number of labour-­services due by tenants on the bishopric demesnes. The most frequent obligation consisted in three days of labour per week, followed by two days per week—­both burdensome workloads. In addition to corvée-duties, there is evidence that the bishops of Lucca were used to collecting a share of the harvest in return for the leasing out of vineyards (a half was the most recurrent fraction), whereas they resorted to both fixed rents and share tenancies for grain-­fields. Rents in money feature in the charters, too, but are sparsely documented.3 So, the Carolingians appear to have turned the demand for labour, which already existed in the Lombard period, into a more structured system of land exploitation. This emerges also from the first of the three inventories redacted in the 890s, known as the inventarium episcopatus. In the inven­ tarium, the most recurrent corvée-obligation weighing on the bishopric’s leaseholders consisted, again, in three days labour per week (fifty-­ five entries out of 155), followed by twelve and seven weeks of work per year (eight entries in total); it needs stressing that the inventarium also testifies

Land Management and Rural Society  25

4  The edition is Inventari, pp. 205–24, no. XI/1. Cf. the relevant table in Andreolli, ‘Contratti’. 5 The breve de feora is edited in Inventari, pp. 225–46, no. XI/2. Cf. the relevant table in Andreolli, ‘Contratti’, and also Cortese, L’aristocrazia, pp. 71–6. The breve de multis pensionibus is edited in Tomei, ‘Un nuovo’, pp. 589–602. 6  Some remarks on tenants’ workloads in early medieval Lucchesia in Collavini, ‘La condizione’, pp. 343–4; on fragmentation cf. Wickham, The Mountains, p. 27; Id., Community, pp.  21–3 and 84–5. 7 Cf. Violante, La società, pp. 91–8; Rossetti, ‘Società’, pp. 259–83; Fumagalli, Coloni, pp. 31–49; Andreolli and Montanari, L’azienda, pp. 201–13; Tabarrini, ‘Détecter’. The edition of the 907 document is MDL V/3, 44–5, no. 1108 (907 July 25).

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to a lasting demand for unspecified quantities of corvée, but only in a few cases (thirteen entries). Other common impositions included the provision of half the wine and cereals produced, some eggs and animals.4 The second inventory, the breve de feora, enumerates the beneficiaries of fiefs ceded away by the bishops of Lucca, which were apparently rent-­free; the information it contains about the renders owed by tenant cultivators to fief-­holders, however, points to the persistent influence of the manorial model among them, especially in the form of annual corvée-duties. The third inventory, the breve de multis pensionibus, is the least useful to our purposes here. It lists people who had managed to obtain substantial grants (including small churches, servants and groups of tenant-­houses) from the bishopric in return for cash rents and, more rarely, oil, half the wine and the third part of every agricultural product. Only one tenant, a certain Roffredo, performed three days’ labour a week on the episcopal demesnes; but we can safely conclude that, except for Roffredo, this list does not cover the strata of the peasantry burdened with corvée-duties, which means that it can hardly be used to track down the evolution of the sistema curtense.5 On top of all this, it has to be noted that none of the three inventories include references to people who resided permanently on manorial demesnes and were exclusively employed in its cultivation. This may depend on the fact that demesnes were small and scattered among many independent properties—­indeed, fragmented patterns of landowning had always been a feature of the Lucchesia, and of the Sei Miglia in particular. As a consequence, the heavy workloads recorded within the inventories and the lease charters must have been sufficient to exploit demesnes fully.6 From 907, contracts envisaging corvée-work abruptly ceased, and the vast majority of episcopal leases from the tenth century to the 1070s were granted in return for rents in money—­a process that has parallels in other areas of Tuscany and in northern Italy as well.7 Moreover, the vast majority of episcopal leases from the tenth century (75–80%) were agreed with

26  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

8 Cf. Endres, ‘Das Kirchengut’, in particular the table at p. 277; more recently Tomei, ‘Milites elegantes’, esp. pp. 372–4 and passim. 9  Andreolli, ‘L’evoluzione’, pp. 119–20. 10  I agree here with Wickham, The Mountains, p. 84, who argues that the Lucchese manor ‘clearly disappears into nothing’. 11  On this political phase cf. Cammarosano, Nobili, pp. 208–9.

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non-­cultivators; in particular, the period stretching from the 940s to the 1020s was marked by the massive leasing out of baptismal churches (pievi), and of the ecclesiastical tithes connected to them, in favour of the members of the lay aristocracy. Those leases can be ascribed to the category of Großlibellen (‘big libelli’) a word coined by Robert Endres to designate the concession of substantial estates to wealthy clients who did not cultivate land themselves.8 It follows that the first thing we need to consider when studying the post-­900 sistema curtense in the Lucchesia is the absence of charters addressed to cultivators over that period, which makes it extremely difficult to examine the evolution of land-­ management patterns. With regard to this, Bruno Andreolli maintained that the disappearance of labour from leases can be explained by the stabilization of manorial estates from 900 onwards. According to Andreolli, ecclesiastical owners had by then absorbed a high number of peasants into the sistema curtense through the concession of land in return for a render (often consisting in the per­ form­ ance of labour-­ services); this process of expansion had al­leged­ly come to an end by the beginning of the tenth century, and tenancy relations had become customary thenceforth.9 To me, it seems difficult to  accept that manorial estates ceased to grow in size because they were (so to speak) already operating at full power; there is no real evidence of it and, moreover, this would have hardly been the case with all the curtes of Tuscany and northern Italy. One can hardly propose any conclusive argument about the fate of the Lucchese bishops’ manors in the tenth century, due to the lack of contracts with cultivators and inventories of renders;10 I would argue, nonetheless, that the very absence of those types of documents is in itself revealing about the evolution in the patterns of landholding. Around the year 900, a phase of political turmoil put the Lucchese bishops in a weak position; they needed to secure the allegiance of their lay clienteles, as is best proved by the leasing out of pievi and ecclesiastical tithes through Großlibellen.11 One can assume that the beneficiaries of Großlibellen came to act as intermediaries between the agriculturists and the prelates; as a consequence, the substantial concession of lands to local magnates is likely to have led to the

Land Management and Rural Society  27

12  Cf. again Kotel’nikova, Mondo, pp. 26–7. As to tenimenta cf. Jones, ‘An Italian estate’. On corvée-work in the Lucchesia cf. Chapter 3.

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dismembering of the bishops’ bipartite estates, thus ending the structural link between tenures and demesnes based on corvée-work. The disappearance of the manorial system emerges unequivocally from the twelfth-­century Lucchese tenimenta—­a new type of contract addressed to cultivators, testifying to the landowners’ renewed effort to exploit directly the food market through the demand for rents in kind—­as well as from the inventories of renders that were redacted from the 1180s onwards—­some of which I shall analyse later on. Indeed, corvée-work was almost completely absent by that point.12 I would suggest that the documentation after 1100 shows the long-­term outcome of the massive leasing out of the prelates’ estates to local magnates, resulting in the decline of the classic manor over the tenth and eleventh centuries. One has to note, at any rate, that this interpretative line applies to the landed estates of the Lucchese bishops alone, the only ones that are continuously documented from the early to the central Middle Ages; that is, it is just a descriptive summary based on imperfect evidence. Other landowning institutions could follow different paths. For instance, we shall observe in Chapter  3 that the canons of S.  Martino came to own bipartite estates only in the early tenth century, when those of the bishops were presumably on the wane; and that the legacy of the manor, if not the demand for corvée-work, was still important at the end of the twelfth century in one of the canons’ landed properties. Besides, the Florentine countryside offers us a totally different picture of these developments. It will take much less space to discuss the sistema curtense in the early medieval Fiorentino. Notarial charters are almost completely absent up to the end of the tenth century, and become really abundant from 1000 onwards—­thanks, in particular, to one single monastic institution, the abbey of S. Michele di Passignano (in central Chianti) which has preserved around a third of the Florentine documents for the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Moreover, we need to wait for the decades after 1150 to find inventories of lands and renders. As a result, the early medieval manorial economy in the Fiorentino is to a large extent a pure matter of guesswork. In his account of the Florentine countryside written in 1965, Elio Conti could hypothesize that the highly fragmented patterns of landowning and landholding, which surfaced from the charters of Passignano after 1000,

28  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

13  ‘As a result of deep and centuries-­long transformations, [the dissolution of the mansus] is veiled by the mystery which characterizes fundamental historical processes’ (Conti, La formazione I, 289). 14  Badia I, 10–7, no. 5 (978 May 31), 24–9, no. 8 (995 April 27), 36–40, no. 11 (997 January); for Bonifacio’s donation cf. ibid. I, 52–5, no. 19 (1009 August 12). On Marturi cf. Cortese, Signori, pp. 3–6. 15 Faini, Firenze, pp. 51–3; his data are based on the charters of Passignano, the chapter house of Florence, S. Lorenzo di Coltibuono, the Badia fiorentina, the Bullettone, San Pietro in Luco di Mugello, S. Cassiano a Montescalari, S. Maria di Vallombrosa.

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were the result of the endless subdivisions of originally coherent manorial mansi. That ancient coherence can be assumed, but hardly demonstrated.13 That said, the scanty evidence from the tenth century does reveal the presence of the manorial model in some parts of the Fiorentino—­although its inner functioning remains obscure. The documentation of the city abbey of S. Maria in Florence, known as the Badia fiorentina, in particular points in this direction. Between 978 and 1009, Countess Willa (wife of the marquis of Tuscia Uberto), Marquis Ugo and Marquis Bonifacio donated to the monastery a series of manorial estates, originally belonging to the public domain, composed of demesnes and tenant-­plots (‘domnicatis quam et massariciis’) and located in the Valdarno and the Chianti region. Also, in 997 Ugo bestowed lands upon the monastery of S. Michele di Marturi, again in Chianti, including the ‘casa et curte domnicata’ of Marturi, together with the castle within which the monastery had been built.14 Our documentary record, thus, seems to suggest that in the outskirts of Florence and south of the city the sistema curtense did exist on the eve of the eleventh century. Do we know if, and when, this model came to an end? We owe to Enrico Faini the most recent and comprehensive analysis of this problem. Faini has shown, convincingly, that the terminology of the ‘classic’ manor (above all, that consisting in the mention of terra dominica, manorial demesne) had almost completely disappeared by 1150; and it should be noted that Faini’s data are particularly meaningful as they are drawn from the notarial charters of all the major ecclesiastical institutions of the Fiorentino.15 I shall express my own view on the subject in Chapter 2. I will argue that during the central medieval period the demand for labour around Florence was confined, for the most part, to customary agreements, which were seldom recorded within notarized deeds; it will therefore be necessary to scrutinize carefully the few records of customary renders that have survived. We can end the analysis of the sistema curtense at this point. We now need to set the discussion on the relations between major landowners and

Land Management and Rural Society  29

The Signorial Mutation around Lucca and Florence In the Introduction I described the break-­up of the March of Tuscia in the 1070s–1080s and the political developments that followed from the standpoint of the cities of Florence and Lucca, by focusing on the emergence of their self-­governing bodies, their military expansion into the hinterland and, at a later stage, the sharpening of an increasingly complex tax system. Here, we need to set out the second main outcome of the collapse of the March: the formation of rural lordships (signorie), that is, in very broad terms, of structures of localized political power across the countryside during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. This process is believed to have taken place, in fact, all over western Europe. It goes under the historiographical labels of ‘feudal revolution’ or ‘signorial mutation’, and has been the object of countless studies and debates. Two grand narratives held sway throughout the second half of the twentieth century. One was elaborated by Marc Bloch in his landmark book, La société féodale (1940). In Bloch’s view, the concept of feudal society could be applied to the entire period stretching from the second half of the ninth century to c. 1200, marked as it was by the utter weakness of the State. Such weakness was the product of a sociopolitical system in which the main source of power was constituted by the ownership of land rather than taxation; this  prevented any public authority from ruling effectively over landed aristocracies.16 The second interpretative line is to be found in Georges Duby’s La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise (1953). Duby showed in a masterly manner how the counts of Mâcon, in Burgundy, endeavoured to keep hold of their jurisdictional territory, while in fact losing it at the hands of an increasingly uncontrollable local aristocracy, towards the end of the tenth century—­and that was the moment in which the ‘revolution’

16 Bloch, La société, esp. vol. II.

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the tenantry against a wider analytical background: the development of local rural lordship, something that can be regarded as the major social and political transformation of the Tuscan—­but one may well say European—­ countryside in the central Middle Ages. Like the sistema curtense, it is essential to get this straight in order to frame properly the case studies of Chapters 2 and 3.

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17 Duby, La société, esp. pp. 137–90. 18  Cf. the essays gathered in Barthélemy, La mutation. 19  Cf. Bisson, The Crisis; Fiore, The Seigneurial Transformation; West, Reframing; Wickham, ‘The “feudal revolution” ’ (among other contributions on this subject by the same author). For an up-­to-­date bibliography (and my own view on the ‘feudal debate’) see Tabarrini, ‘The “feudal revolution” after all?’.

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or ‘mutation’ was said to have taken place. Thus, the Carolingian frameworks of power, revolving around a network of office-­holders, were replaced by smaller-­scale polities (the seigneuries banales) which were usually centred on castles and frequently at war with each other, in a context of endemic violence.17 The impact of Duby’s scholarship was massive, as it provided a model for all the successive regional monographs on the ‘feudal revolution’. But this model was seriously criticized in the early 1990s. Dominique Barthélemy—­ together with other historians, mostly from the USA—­argued that the distinction between the Carolingian ‘public’ order and ‘private’ lordships derived from a cultural bias, since the modern notions ‘public’ and ‘private’ could not define the medieval reality. According to Barthélemy, if a change ever occurred in the passage from the former to the latter, it is to be found in the characteristics of the available evidence. The depiction of violence, which the highly formulaic and relatively irenic documents of the Carolingian period tended to avoid, became widespread and explicit over the tenth and eleventh centuries. No real transformation was happening, though: the basic opposition between lords and peasants as the axis around which the relations of power in the medieval world revolved remained fundamentally unchanged.18 Thus, Bloch’s more ‘continuitist’ view was to an extent restored. A lively debate followed, and Barthélemy’s position was questioned in turn: among the latest to do so we can name Thomas Bisson, Alessio Fiore and, with more nuanced perspective, Charles West and Chris Wickham.19 Barthélemy’s school challenged Duby’s grand narrative by bringing some useful nuances to it. Still, I believe that the ‘mutationist’ model accounts best for the information encapsulated in both the archaeological and written evidence from Tuscany during the central Middle Ages. The construction of previously undocumented fortresses, the subsequent localization of political power, the creation of new frameworks of territorial and personal domination in the countryside can hardly all be ascribed to mere changes in the nature of sources. Up to the ‘Investiture Controversy’ in the 1070s, the marquises of Tuscia were able to administer justice and redistribute landed

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20  Points of reference are Cortese, L’aristocrazia and Tomei, ‘Milites elegantes’; a recent overview in Coss, The Aristocracy, pp. 28–42. 21  Cf. Reynolds, Fiefs, pp. 1–3.

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estates and other resources among their lay and religious clienteles; after the irreversible crisis brought about by the ‘Controversy’, they could not.20 Smaller-­scale aristocrats gradually replaced office-­holders as the foci of political action; it is thus legitimate to say that the private outweighed the public. But, however concrete, change did not happen all at once, and this is why ‘mutation’ appears to me as a better linguistic choice than ‘revolution’. Also, ‘signorial’ (an adaptation from the Italian signorile) works better than ‘feudal’: as Susan Reynolds remarked, in its restricted meaning ‘feudal’ refers to the relations between lords and vassals, which were shaped around the concessions of lands and rights in return for military service that go under the name of feudum or beneficium.21 In short, the feudum is a jur­id­ ic­al tool which involves aristocrats alone. ‘Signorial’ covers instead a wider conceptual and social spectrum, and evokes the range of powers that landowners could come to exercise in different ways—­that is, not necessarily as beneficiaries of a feudum—­over the rural population; and so, ‘signorial’ fits better the topic of this book. We now need to flesh out the signorial order as it slowly emerged in Tuscany from the ruins of the Carolingian hierarchy. I shall begin with castles, the fortified settlements which came to represent the restructuring of political power, and which constituted a visible sign of the growing im­port­ ance of local aristocracies. Castle-­building (incastellamento) in Tuscany is seldom attested in the ninth century, when the Carolingian March framed effectively the landed elite of the region. It happened more often as the recurrent struggles for power in the Kingdom of Italy brought about a fairly high degree of political instability from the first half of the tenth century onwards. However, incas­ tellamento did not necessarily have a massive impact on sociopolitical and economic patterns in the countryside. Medieval Tuscan castelli often were unimpressive structures, sometimes simple fortifications of pre-­existing estate centres, which up to c. 980 were still built, for the most part, on the initiative of marquises, bishops and counts—­that is, the major political players within the Carolingian hierarchy. This surfaces clearly as we look more closely at the Lucchesia and the Fiorentino. In the Lucchesia, twenty-­ two castles are attested for the first time in the tenth century—­one quarter of the total number of Tuscan castelli for the whole period, reflecting the

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22  General overviews of incastellamento in Tuscany are Francovich and Ginatempo, Castelli and, more recently, Bianchi and Collavini, ‘Risorse’; see also Wickham, ‘La signoria’, p. 364; Id., ‘Documenti’; Id., ‘Archeologia’. For castles in Tuscany in the tenth century cf. Augenti, ‘Dai castra’, pp. 38–9 (table 3). For synthetic remarks on the Lucchesia during the tenth and eleventh centuries cf. Quirós Castillo, El incastellamento, pp. 201–5; on the Fiorentino see the complete list in Cortese, ‘Signori e castelli’, Appendice 2; Ead., L’aristocrazia, pp. 145–54 and 219–20. 23  Cf. Settia, Castelli, esp. pp. 161–7.

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greater density of the Lucchese documentation. Nine of those castles can be classified as episcopal, whereas the other ones were private—­which means that their construction can be ascribed to the members of the local lay aristocracy; but just four of those private castelli date to before 950, and it needs stressing that aristocrats could be (and often were) beholden to the bishops. It was only in the eleventh century that rural aristocracies became the undisputedly predominant castle-­owners, as they erected the vast majority of the c. 100 new fortresses in the whole diocese of Lucca (with only a small minority in the city-­controlled Sei Miglia). As for the Fiorentino, the first phase of incastellamento was marked by the construction of fortifications placed on fiscal land, whereas from the 980s onwards castle-­building was largely due to the private entrepreneurship of medium and small aristocracies; this was the case with at least 100 castelli out of the c. 140 fortified settle­ments which are attested up to the 1080s. In the last twenty years of the  eleventh century, then, the erection of fortifications in the Fiorentino underwent a substantial acceleration (c. forty-­four over two decades). In general, in order to get a sense of the scale of the phenomenon, it is worth noting that more than 1,000 castles were built in Tuscany between 900 and 1200.22 Castelli cannot be automatically regarded as a sign of the existence of private signorial powers. As we have just seen, the first castelli may well have been the seats of the traditional—­that is, public and episcopal—­sources of authority, and indeed substantial and explicit mentions of jurisdictional rights deriving from the ownership of fortified settlements mostly date to the twelfth century. It has to be pointed out, however, that for none of the castles founded in Tuscany do we have an imperial or royal grant authorizing their construction; this might of course depend, to an extent, on mere chance, which always plays a role in the preservation of documents, but grants of this type did survive for northern Italy.23 It can thus be argued that Tuscan incastellamento was above all a bottom-­up movement, one which did not require legitimation by any overarching ruler. In this sense, the

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majority of castles can certainly be interpreted as a visible sign of the increasing importance of private powers at the expense of public ones. We now have to turn to the written evidence in order to delve deeper into the possible ways in which incastellamento affected life in the countryside. For a start, it was on the peasantry that the very concrete burden of the construction of fortifications weighed. One of the most famous texts on the birth of the signoria in Tuscany (dating to the years around 1100) informs us about the peasants of Casciavola, in the Pisano, who had been forced by the lords of the neighbouring village of S. Casciano to contribute to the construction of the local castello in return for the shelter provided within the castello itself; at a second stage, the Casciavolesi were required by the S. Casciano to pay rents in money and then, ‘by way of false requests and deceit’, to provide cartloads of wood; but the castle was destroyed at some point and the Casciavolesi assumed that, as a consequence, they were by then free from the services performed in return for shelter. The S. Casciano, however (even before the destruction of the castle), started to perform acts of horrifying violence against the Casciavolesi (for example by beating pregnant women while they were sleeping at night) and this was the reason for the complaint the latter lodged with the cathedral church of Pisa. This text has been regarded, rightly, as one of the most explicit accounts of signorial violence; a violence that has been generally considered typical of the ‘feudal world’ as opposed to the relatively peaceful times of Charlemagne. When interpreting it, however, we need to be cautious at least in three respects. First of all, we only hear one side of the dispute, which was hardly unbiased, and it is thus legitimate to wonder whether what we are reading constitutes a true story or not. Second, the Pisano was one of the least signorialized areas of Tuscany, and this should warn us against regarding the Casciavola account as a narrative of the initial steps of a long-­term change which finally led to the creation of an oppressive local lordship (in fact, there is no evidence of such a lordship in that village). And third, are we really sure that the example offered by the S. Casciano and the Casciavolesi—­true or not—­is a good guide to the patterns of castle-­owning—­and of its effects on the peasantry—­in an entire region? Some scepticism cannot be avoided, but it is nonetheless essential to note that the Casciavolesi had to elaborate a plaus­ible representation of reality in order to make their claims credible to the clerics of Pisa; and that, consequently, their story can be regarded, at the very least, as one possible effect of incastellamento on local societies, which had less explicitly documented parallels elsewhere. To take just one ex­ample, throughout the eleventh century references to the armed clienteles of lords,

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24  See the edition in Lettere originali I, 151–7, no. 18 (after 1098 July 24–before 1106 March 19); for a comment Wickham, ‘Property’, pp. 229–31; Id., ‘La signoria’, pp. 365–7; Fiore, The Seigneurial Transformation, pp. 53–6, 222–3, 229–30; on the formation of masnade see Brancoli Busdraghi, ‘ “Masnada” ’. In the twelfth century, the word masnada could be associated with the status of unfree tenants (although I could find in fact only one example of this, among the charters of the Badia fiorentina; cf. below, note 34); in other contexts it could define the people of minor military status, as in Figline (cf. Wickham, ‘Ecclesiastical dispute’, p. 31). These two meanings are not mutually exclusive.

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composed of people of both free and unfree status—­which went sometimes under the name of masnada, ‘gang’—begin to appear, testifying to the existence of social groups that might have been quite similar to those commissioned to beat up the women of Casciavola.24 It took time, however, for the rather indefinite localized power centred on castles to develop into a set of formalized signorial rights. Sometimes, this process did not happen at all—­around Casciavola, as I have just argued, it did not. But what the complaint of the Casciavolesi reveals is that a connection between castelli and the formation of lordships, whether durable or not, could and did exist. Not by chance, in the city-­controlled Sei Miglia castles were almost totally absent and so were signorie; conversely, the tumultuous construction of fortifications all across the Florentine diocese during the eleventh century led to a higher degree of aristocratic control over some sections of the local peasantry. The differences between the Lucchesia and the Fiorentino, however, will be discussed in detail in the following pages. Let us, then, move on from the problem of incastellamento, as we try to define with precision the set of prerogatives that Tuscan lords came to own. We will first get an overview of the whole region, and then focus on the countryside of Lucca and Florence. According to Chris Wickham, Tuscan lordships after the break-­up of the March can be approximately divided into three main areas. The first one is constituted by the countryside of Lucca and Pisa, where signorial territories were extremely rare—­the main exceptions being represented by the Versilia and Garfagnana regions, stretching north-­west of Lucca. The remaining part of northern and central Tuscany, including Florence, was characterized by generally stronger signorie, albeit not strong enough to develop into ­territorial units. Southern Tuscany, instead, together with some areas in the eastern hilly slopes of the Apennines (such as the Pratomagno and the Romagna Apennines, under the control of the Guidi counts), represents the most signorialized zone of all; in the thirteenth century, when the amount of evidence is considerable, patterns of lordship appear to have been very

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25  Cf. Wickham, ‘La signoria’, pp. 348–51; for a recent overview of the issue (extended also to Umbria and Marche) cf. Collavini, ‘I signori’; on southern Tuscany cf. Id., ‘Il prelievo’. 26  A discussion in Violante, ‘La signoria’; classic pages in Duby, La société, pp. 173–90; see now Fiore, The Seigneurial Transformation, ch. 3.

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oppressive there.25 Another way of framing this tripartition is to refer to two concepts that have been widely discussed by the historiography on the ‘feudal revolution’: those of tenancy lordship (signoria fondiaria in Italian) and of territorial lordship (signoria territoriale). We need to flesh them out before focusing on the Lucchesia and the Fiorentino. With the former expression, historians define a type of signorial authority that could be exerted exclusively over the lords’ tenants. This meant, for example, that rural dependents could not move out of their tenures freely, that they might have been required to perform extra duties at their lords’ will, that they had to pay in order to gain legal freedom, or else that they had to submit to their landowners’ low justice. The signoria territoriale can be regarded instead as the equivalent of the French seigneurie banale described by Duby. It consisted in the exercise of rights over tenants and independent owners at the same time: taxation and high justice over entire villages fall under this category. It is important to bear in mind that both tenancy lordship and territorial lordship are principally ideal-­types, for it is not always easy to tell whether the typologies of local power that our sources unveil can be best ascribed to one model or another. They are however useful descriptive terms, which let us set an indicative scale of the possible developments of signorial powers, and of their impact on local societies.26 Let us get back to Tuscany. The tripartition proposed by Wickham is rele­ vant to us in that the Lucchesia and the Fiorentino were outside the areas in which rural lordship became territorial; signoria fondiaria for the most part prevailed in the countryside of both. What prevented lordship from encompassing entire territories, thus rendering it relatively weak? To start with, one can refer to the scarcity of collective acts of allegiance towards signori in both the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia. Around Florence, in fact, the only large-­scale oath I know of was sworn by the Figlinesi to the city (that is, not to a rural lord) in 1198. Moreover, the most common way to settle disputes was local arbitration. This is all the more telling about the loose nature of lords’ judicial powers when we consider that the full establishment of city rule in some parts of the countryside is clearly visible only in the 1230s—­which means that there could have been room for the creation of formalized signorial courts before that decade (cf. the Introduction).

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27 On justice in general cf. Wickham, Courts, ch. 2 and 5; on the Figline oath cf. Id., ‘Ecclesiastical dispute’, p. 31 ff.; on the Fiorentino cf. Cortese, Signori, pp. 176–90; on the Guidi’s judicial rights cf. Collavini, ‘Le basi’. 28  An overview of the Lucchesia is Wickham, ‘Economia’, esp. pp. 411–2; on collective oaths in Moriano cf. Id., Community, pp. 89–90; on the Versilia region cf. Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, pp. 217–24; the Garfagnana, not too dissimilarly from the Sei Miglia, was mostly controlled by the city even when rights of lordship exerted by local lay aristocrats appeared between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. Cf. Wickham, The Mountains, ch. 1.4. On the Valdarno Inferiore—­ and especially the episcopal stronghold of S.  Maria a Monte—­ cf. Morelli, ‘La “signoria” ’. 29  This is in sharp contrast with one of the regions in which a truly violent turn is believed to have been caused by the signorial mutation: Catalonia, where the class of small and medium-­ size owners was largely absorbed into the group of signorial dependents. Cf. Bonnassie, La Catalogne II, 576–80. On the Lucchesia cf. Wickham, Community, pp. 21–2; on the central Chianti cf. Conti, La formazione I, 4, 135 and passim.

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The exertion of substantial judicial rights, in a form largely modelled on the tradition of the Carolingian placita, appears to have been in the hands of two lay families alone: the Guidi counts, in the Valdarno Superiore, and the Cadolingi counts, whose male branch died out in 1113.27 As to the Lucchesia, consular tribunals existed by 1130 and their authority was largely recognized in the city-­controlled Sei Miglia, thus preventing the formation of signorial courts (cf. again the Introduction). There were in fact some exceptions to the urban rule even in the Sei Miglia: the episcopal jurisdiction over Moriano (for which we have also a couple of twelfth-­century collective oaths to the bishops), that of the cathedral canons of S. Martino over Massa Macinaia, and that of the lords of Vorno, south of Lucca. But signorial justice was only imperfectly formalized, as the holding of arbitrations shows; and, with the partial exceptions of the outer regions of Versilia, Garfagnana and the Valdarno Inferiore, lordship rarely appears to have been very oppressive anywhere in the Lucchesia.28 With regard to Lucca, the centrality of the city for its countryside strongly contributes to explaining the relatively weak prerogatives of local signori. But we can invoke at least two further reasons for the predominance of tenancy lordship around both Lucca and Florence. First of all, the class of owner-­cultivators never disappeared, thus perpetuating the highly fragmented patterns of landowning and landholding that characterized most of Tuscany at least up to the late fourteenth century.29 In principle, this should not have impeded the birth of territorial lordships, which weighed by def­in­ ition on tenants and non-­tenants alike; but in practice, widespread fragmentation certainly made it difficult for rural lords to impose signorial justice and exactions over large numbers of individuals, let alone entire rural communities. Furthermore, the settlement of disputes regarding the

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30  See some early thirteenth-­century examples in ASDLu, Capitolare, 1211 August 12 (I. 74) (this is a judgement given by the consules treguani after which a peasant, Pietro from Marlia, had to give back to the representative of the canons, the advocatus Morroello, one piece of land; Pietro was however exempted from one of Morroello’s claims—­that regarding the removal of a chestnut tree), 1211 December 23 (D. 104) (this is an arbitration in which the priest and camer­ arius of S. Martino, Ubaldo, managed to obtain the two pieces of land he was claiming, but was also ordered to lease them out to his opponent), 1213 September 10 (O. 94) (another arbitration which took place in Massa Macinaia, eventually won by the canons, who however had to pay quite a substantial sum of money—£3 and 20 s.—to their opponent, the peasant Giafferro—­I shall come back to this in Chapter 3). For a court case in the Fiorentino in which a highly dependent tenant partially succeeded cf. below the dispute involving the colonus Vitello. 31  Cf. the genealogical trees in the appendix of Cortese, Signori; for their interpretation see Ead., L’aristocrazia, pp. 219–20 and 289–91.

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duties owed by the tenantry or the tenants’ legal status shows that the lords’ claims were, on more than just one occasion, partially rejected; this is particularly telling, in that our sole evidence consists of the court cases that have been preserved by ecclesiastical owners, who arguably kept only the judgements that were, to a degree, favourable to them. One may guess that tenants won outright in other disputes, and the very least we can say is that the peasantry did have some bargaining power, as well as the capacity to oppose lords—­the access to courts in itself points to this.30 The second reason is the coexistence within rather restricted areas of competing signorial rights—­often side by side—­which seem to have been fairly similar in terms of economic and political power. The Fiorentino provides a clear example of this: castles, with a sometimes related control over parts of the peasantry, were usually so close to each other that none of their owners could have easily extended rights of lordship over the others. Moreover, during the twelfth century, the middle levels of the Florentine aristocracy subdivided among the ever-­increasing number of their male members the originally coherent family assets—­a process that caused the fragmentation of the possibly greater signorial prerogatives that they might have exerted as a collectivity.31 We have dealt with signs, and we have dealt with causes. We now have to investigate how tenancy lordship materialized, that is, what it actually meant for its subjects across the Lucchesia and the Fiorentino. This becomes clearly visible only thanks to twelfth-­century charters, in which jurisdictional rights were written down and thus sharpened and formalized. By and large, we can say that the main feature of signoria fondiaria lay in the possibility, for lords, of controlling subject tenants through the imposition of extra exactions and obligations, and by preventing them from moving out of their holdings. Those tenants experienced substantial limitations to their

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Unfree Tenancy in the Lucchesia and the Fiorentino after 1100 To begin with, we must analyse a few problems of terminology. In the Lucchesia, the word which was most often employed after 1100 to define unfree tenants was manens, ‘one who remains’ on the land he cultivates. Manentes are mentioned already during the early Middle Ages in the priv­il­ eges issued by the emperors, the kings of Italy or else the marquises of Tuscia, as well as within the inventories of lands, tenants and renders of the Lucchese bishopric, which I have discussed earlier on (and also in a letter sent in the first half of the eleventh century by one of the marquis’ officials). At that time, the manentes seem to have been the tenant cultivators most tightly associated with the estates belonging to the kings and with the bulk of episcopal properties—­that is, with the Carolingian sources of public power.32 A change in this pattern occurred over the course of the twelfth century. In the Fiorentino, the most common term used to identify subject tenants from 1100 onwards was instead colonus (often used together with homo in the formulaic expression homo et colonus). Unlike manens, this label was less clearly defined in early medieval sources.33 It was drawn from the Corpus iuris civilis along with other adjectives belonging to the Roman legal tradition, such as adscripticius (or glebae adscriptus, literally ‘listed with the land’ he cultivated), inquilinus (the one ‘stably occupying’ the land) or origi­ narius (‘native’); but we often find also non-­Roman characterizations like villanus, ‘villager’ (or ‘peasant associated with the estate’, villa). It should be noticed, at any rate, that these definitions came to be employed quite often together; notaries endeavoured to avoid any uncertainty about the tenants’

32  On early medieval manentes cf. Tomei, ‘Sulle tracce’. 33  Cf. Devroey, Puissants, p. 282.

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liberty and can therefore be regarded as largely unfree, even though in another juridical sense they were not—­they had access to public courts, for instance. This problem needs to be discussed at length, as it constitutes an important context for the transformations of economic patterns in the countryside.

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34  Statistical remarks on the use of all these labels can be found in Collavini, ‘La condizione’, pp. 352–3, notes 59 and 60. As to the listing of all the possible definitions to qualify unfree tenants cf. some late twelfth and thirteenth centuries Lucchese examples, taken at random: ASLu, S. Ponziano, 1192 June 29 (‘de manentia videlicet omni [alia] colonaria et originaria seu asscripticia’); ASDLu, Capitolare, 1202 December 12 (N.  137) (‘iure manentitie et de omni manentia et qualibet alia colonaria originaria inquilina ascriptitia et omni censita condictione’, and thereafter ‘sicut manentes et coloni’) and 1220 November 7 (M. 38) (‘manens et colonus’). As to Florence cf. ASFi, Badia, 1216 October 13 (‘ab omni vinculo et conditione colonarie, manentitie, adscriptitie, inquiline sive sedentitie aut de masnada’) and 1224 March 3 (‘ius hominagii et totam manentitiam et colonariam et abscriptitiam’); cf. also Wickham, ‘Manentes’, pp. 1069–70. 35  On this document cf. Wickham, ‘Manentes’, p. 1067, note 1; Id., Community, pp. 86–7. 36  Cf. Collavini, ‘Il “servaggio” ’, p. 796; Id., ‘I poteri’, pp. 191–2.

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legal subjection by listing every possible word for that unfreedom, as happened quite often in the thirteenth century.34 After the few mentions in the early medieval sources that we have enumerated above, manentes are attested again in 1075–80 within an agreement between the Lucchese bishop and the aristocratic family of the Montemagno, in which the manentes belonging to the Montemagno in Moriano were excluded from the episcopal jurisdiction.35 The link between manentes and the traditional sources of authority (bishops in that case) appears thus to have been reversed: manentes surface here as the expression of signorial localized power, as they would afterwards, when their mentions steadily increased from the 1140s. The connection with private lordship applies to coloni, too, even though their appearance in the Florentine countryside seems to have been slightly belated in comparison to Lucca; in our sole substantial repository of documents, the archives of S. Michele di Passignano, coloni became a standard feature only from the 1160s onwards.36 The origins of unfree tenancy after 1100 have been widely discussed; there have been, essentially, two major opposing views. Manentes and coloni have sometimes been seen as the heirs of early medieval unfree tenants, whose status is believed to have been left unchanged all through the tenth and eleventh centuries; their almost complete invisibility within the written evidence of this period allegedly depends on the absence of contracts with cultivators before the twelfth century (cf. above). This view undoubtedly has its strengths. It is really hard to believe that highly dependent tenants were completely absent in the long era stretching from c. 900 to c. 1100. After all, incastellamento could imply the subjugation of rural communities and the  creation of harsh ties of personal dependence, as the plea of the Casciavolesi—­however biased and relatively late—­shows. In this sense, the

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37  See for example Vaccari, Le affrancazioni, pp. 29–64; a ‘continuitist’ view in Id., Le affran­ cazioni collettive, pp. 11–15; Jones, ‘From manor’; Cammarosano, La famiglia, pp. 43–61. For an overview on England see Dyer, ‘Villeins’. 38  Cf. Conti, La formazione I, 179–92 and 216–17; Panero, Terre, in particular p. 255 (which is focused on northern Italy) and Id., ‘Il nuovo servaggio’. See also Wickham, ‘Manentes’. 39  RCL I, 304–5, no. 715 (1112 February 8), on which cf. Panero, ‘Libera contrattazione’, p.  291. On the penetration of Roman law into Tuscany cf. Wickham, Courts, Introduction. It has to be noted that colonus does not have here any technical meaning and that maneste is a corruption of manentes.

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documentation of the twelfth century is said to be fleshing out the ancient and long-­ standing relations between some groups of peasants and their lords.37 Other scholars, conversely, have argued that the status of manens and colonus was a new thing—­the main outcome of the progressive sharpening of signoria fondiaria after 1100. Elio Conti, for instance, regarded unfree tenancy as deriving from the fragmentation of the patterns of landownership and landholding, with the subsequent attempt on the part of landed aristocrats to strengthen their control over rural dependents. Likewise, Francesco Panero has maintained, in more recent times, that unfree tenancy was aimed at preventing cultivators from leaving their holdings, particularly as the steadily expanding Italian cities of the central medieval period tended to attract and absorb the lower strata of peasant society.38 These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive. In order to discuss this, I shall first look at the Lucchese evidence, for it provides better insights into the problem of origins; then, I will include the Florentine one. In more detail, a document preserved by the Lucchese cathedral canons and issued in 1112 contains the expression ‘coloni, quod vulgo maneste dicuntur’, which can be translated as ‘peasants, who are commonly called manentes’. Two observations must be made here. First, manentes were for certain customary tenants; no manens ever featured as the addressee of a rent contract over the early decades of the twelfth century. Second, manentes were identified as such before 1112: otherwise, how could they have been ‘commonly called’ that? It is also worth stressing that the 1112 document shows that notaries were thinking in terms of manentia-based agreements before the Roman law developed into a standard feature of their training—­that is, the late twelfth century, when an ever-­growing number of legal experts started to undertake periods of study at the university of Bologna.39 We might thus conclude that, when manentia became more formalized and clearly bounded from the 1140s, this was just a way of sharpening and writing down already existing relations of customary landholding.

Land Management and Rural Society  41

40 A court case dating to 1195 distinguishes between landholding ‘per manentiam’ and landholding ‘per tenimentum’ (RCL III, 184–7, no. 1729, 1195 February 28, cited in Jones, ‘An Italian estate’, p. 25). But there were exceptions, and legislation was rather fluid on this point (cf. the following note). 41  RCL II, 145, no. 1239 (1165 August 17), 201–2, no. 1329 (1174 September 2), 317, no. 1491 (1183 February 16) (this document is not easy to interpret, as it is reported in a shortened ­version within a late regestum, but it probably was an oath), 352–3, no. 1540 (1186 June 25), III, 353–4, nos. 1541 and 1542 (1186 August 11), 195, no. 1737 (1195 May 20), 202, no. 1746 (1195 September 6), 229–30, no. 1774 (1196 September 12). Other references to manentes in the bishopric archives are reported in Wickham, ‘Manentes’, p. 1068, note 3; as to the ‘safeguard clause’ cf. ibid., p. 1069, note 6. Other examples in Conte, Servi, pp. 106–7. Tenimenta addressed to manentes can be read in ASLu, S. Ponziano, 1206 October 22 and 1212 April 7 (original and copy). It is interesting to note that these charters contradict the 1195 judgment distinguishing between landholding ‘per manentiam’ and landholding ‘per tenimentum’ (cf. the note above). For a lease charter addressed to a manens, which is devoid of any references to the tenimentum agreement and envisages the payment of the ‘usual render’ (‘solitum redditum’) cf. RCL III, 171–2, no. 1717 (1194 May 1). 42  Cf. Rolando, Summa, C. 11.50; Wickham, ‘Manentes’, p. 1068; Conte, Servi, pp. 104–11; Collavini, ‘Il “servaggio” ’, pp. 778–9 (a different view is expressed in Panero, Schiavi, pp. 203–60, who believes that the origins of manentia lay in the spread of the manentia lease contract).

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Other clues appear to show that manentia originally belonged to the remit of custom. Even when the documentation on manentes increases, one cannot find many leases addressed to them; and even though the new contract of tenimentum was stipulated with cultivators, it was seldom stipulated with manentes.40 People swore or declared to be manentes, they were condemned to be manentes, they were freed from being manentes, expected to become manentes or their status as manentes became the object of a dispute, but they rarely entered this group as part of a proper tenancy agreement, such as those envisaged by libelli or tenimenta. In fact, many beneficiaries of lease charters in the Lucchesia were explicitly safeguarded from the possibility of being ‘downgraded’ to the level of manentes.41 It appears as if manentes were not ordinarily framed through contracts; rather, they were identified by their visible socioeconomic conditions. These included residence on land that was not their own property and the performance of specific duties for their landowners—­such as cutting wood, digging ditches or providing the albergaria, a signorial obligation consisting in the provision of hospitality to the lord or his representatives, which was sometimes converted into a straightforward rent. According to the Lucchese jurist Rolando, who wrote a legal treatise in the 1190s polemically describing the conditions of local manentes, the main reasons for the limitation of their liberty lay in the tenure of land lasting more than thirty years, a limit beyond which a tenant, his family and his heirs were considered tied to their holding.42

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43 For manumissions in the Lucchesia cf. ASLu, S.  Ponziano, 1192 June 29; ASDLu, Capitolare, 1202 December 12 (N. 137) (cf. above, note 34). For an example of manumission in the Chianti region cf. below the documents regarding Zucco di Artovicco. For early examples of coloni in southern Chianti cf. Cammarosano, La famiglia, p. 56–7; on S.  Michele di Passignano cf. Collavini, ‘I poteri’; for references to unfree tenants in the archives of S. Lorenzo di Coltibuono cf. the documents in Regesto di Coltibuono, p. 233, no. 521 (1193 January) (Bugno trades himself and his family to the monastery of Coltibuono), pp. 237–8, no. 530 [(1196) November], p. 238, no. 531 (1196 November) (the last two are sales of homines to Coltibuono), pp. 238–9, no. 532 (1197 August 30) (pledge of a villanus and colonus, together with the lands he cultivates, and of the services performed by two other people—­although the Latin text is not totally clear in this respect), p. 244, no. 541 (119…) (here Alberto, probably a member of the da Cintoia family, is granted the ‘dominium’ over a house of tenants, the domus Falcinelli). Sales and exchanges of manentes and their lands in the Lucchesia can be found in RCL II, 183, no. 1301 (1172 May 4) and 244–5, no. 1386 (1178 February 19).

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Embedded as it was in customary patterns, it seems reasonable to conclude that the origins of manentia have to be searched for in the elements of ­socioeconomic dependence that could make a tenant look unfree; these elem­ ents, at some point, were crystallized within notarial charters. According to the ‘continuitist’ view, thus, the twelfth century witnessed a purely nominal change in the nature of unfree tenancy. That said, I believe that the ‘mutationist’ theory provides better answers to other questions: is it really thinkable that formalizing the de facto unfreedom of some tenants simply was the result of the notaries’ increased precision? Why was it so important to certify the status of cultivators in the twelfth century? How can we explain the fact that rural lords started to exploit their rights over the tenantry for economic purposes only in the last three decades of that same century? This last point is particularly relevant to my argument, and I shall devote much space to it. Indeed, the economic exploitation of unfree tenancy is barely attested before c. 1170. The documentation of both the Lucchesia and the Fiorentino reveals that landowners began to free their highly dependent tenants over the period 1170–1200—sometimes selling them the lands they had been holding up to that point—­in exchange for quite substantial sums of money; furthermore, highly dependent tenants were sold or pawned, along with the lands they cultivated. This is not to say that the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia were completely identical: the sale and pawning of tenants appear to have been more widespread in the former than in the latter; moreover, the transformations in land-­management forms, which I will examine in Chapters 2 and 3, seem to have primarily involved coloni around Florence, whereas Lucchese manentes were less evidently and less exclusively hit by those changes.43 For now, it is important to stress that both the

Land Management and Rural Society  43

44 Cortese, L’aristocrazia, ch. VI; Wickham, ‘Manentes’, p. 1079. 45  On early medieval manentes cf. above. Remarks on the use of the word fidelis in the Tuscan documentation can be found in Collavini, ‘La condizione’, pp. 354–5, notes 68 and 69. Cf. two examples of this use (taken at random) in ASFi, Montescalari, 1194 March 2 (‘fidelem et hominem’); ASLu, S. Ponziano, 1214 February 23 (‘Gerarduccius qa. Domenichi de Buslagno confessus est quod est manens ecclesie et monasterii Sancti Pontiani. Item idem Gerarduccius iuravit fidelitatem suprascripto monasterio’).

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Lucchese manentia and the Florentine colonatus framed a type of dom­in­ance over the tenantry which was sharpened in the years around 1150 and was consistently exploited by lords towards the end of the same century. In this sense, it was new. We therefore have to wonder whether it was notarial expertise that turned customary unfree tenancy into a fairly uniform code, or whether notarial expertise was required by lords because of the socioeconomic context of the second half of the twelfth century. Again, these two interpretative lines are not necessarily incompatible. I have already emphasized the subdivision of signorial prerogatives among many family branches over the late eleventh and twelfth centuries; here we can add that this process made it necessary for lords to increase pressure on peasant society in order to collect enough revenues to preserve and stabilize their local power. This is consistent with the argument about the Lucchese manentia being an alternative to territorial lordship, which has been proposed by Chris Wickham in relation to the Montemagno manentes in Moriano: when local signori were unable to extend their control over tenants and owner-­cultivators simultaneously, what they could do was to formalize their rights over the tenantry.44 Hence the manentia and the colonatus, which were reinforced by the use of at least three conceptual tools: first, the legal categories provided by Roman law; second, the lexicon employed to identify the tenants settled on episcopal and fiscal lands during the early Middle Ages; and now we need to include the terminology of proper feudal allegiance, based on the values of fidelitas and hominagium. Indeed, local lords adopted sometimes the language of high politics to frame the patterns of landholding in the countryside; and this could have very concrete effects, such as the obligation for leaseholders to swear oaths of fidelity and perform military or quasi-­military services.45 The two following sections will be dedicated to the elucidation of the ­differences between the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia, which I briefly mentioned above. I shall start from the so-­called secondo incastellamento, the second wave of castle-­building which hit Tuscany between c. 1150 and c. 1250 and which was characterized, first and foremost, by the growth in the

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Map 4  The secondo incastellamento in the Fiorentino Map by: Taylor Zaneri

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number of stone fortifications; I will then move on to a couple of Florentine court cases which throw further light on unfree tenancy, and set them against what we know for the Lucchesia. The secondo incastellamento had a notable impact on some areas of the Fiorentino, especially the Chianti region. New castles were built thanks to the investments of the Florentine bishops (S. Pietro in Bossolo, Montacuto-­ Montecampolesi and S. Stefano in Botena, erected in the period 1155–1224 in the context of a wider pattern of land-­purchasing on the part of the bishopric), of monastic communities (as was the case with Poggio al Vento, whose castrum is attested for the first time in a charter of the archive of S. Michele di Passignano dating to 1179) and above all of lay signorial fam­ ilies: the Guidi counts founded the—­now extensively excavated—­castle of Podium Bonizi (now the site of Poggio Bonizio in Poggibonsi) in 1155, and

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46  See in general Cortese, ‘Castra’; Farinelli and Giorgi, ‘Fenomeni’. On Monte Acuto and S. Pietro in Bossolo see Dameron, ‘Episcopal lordship’, p. 144; on Poggio al Vento cf. ASFi, Passignano, 1179 September 29 and Cortese, ‘Castra’, p. 296; on Podium Bonizi see Francovich and Valenti, Poggio Imperiale; on Semifonte the essays gathered in Pirillo, Signori, comunità. The secondo incastellamento appears to have been less pronounced in southern Chianti, where no castle was built after 1150—with the likely exception of Volpaia; on this cf. Wickham, ‘Documenti’, pp. 84–91; on the Sienese countryside cf. Farinelli and Giorgi, ‘Fenomeni di accentramento’.

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the Alberti counts financed the construction of Semifonte in 1177 (on Poggio al Vento and Semifonte see the Introduction and Chapter  2). Conversely, the secondo incastellamento was much less pronounced in the Lucchesia.46 These structures were sometimes imposing structures: Podium Bonizi and Semifonte, in particular, were quasi-­towns, and the influx of people to Poggio al Vento caused the progressive abandonment of the two neighbouring castles of Callebona and Matraio. Naturally, the secondo incastellamento required money, and people to erect all the related buildings. It can be assumed that the construction weighed on the subject classes of the peasantry, as was the case with the inhabitants of Casciavola during the first phase of incastellamento. If this is correct, the intensity of castle-­building in the Fiorentino in comparison to the Lucchesia might testify to a higher level of exploitation of the Florentine coloni on the part of local signorie. I shall try to give further substance to the apparently harsher nature of the colona­ tus by looking at the written evidence, namely to a couple of legal disputes which unveil the obligations that some Florentine coloni were said to be obliged to perform. Like the Casciavola plea, these sources need to be treated carefully; the very enumeration of the colonus’ duties may reflect more the lords’ aspirations to a formalized power than the reality of the situ­ation. Nevertheless, these texts present us with an image of the colonatus that the contending parties could share (albeit with some hesitations, which I shall highlight) as it was built upon the concrete working conditions of some sections of the peasantry. This is why they matter to us. The first text has been preserved in the archives of the Badia fiorentina. It informs us about a court case that was held in S.  Miniato (in the middle Arno valley) in 1213, and constitutes quite a rare account of the activity of the imperial court that was located there. Let us outline its content in some detail. The accuser was the consul of the castle of Lucardo in Valdelsa, Azzo, who was acting on behalf of the local ruling body, identified as a commune, and of the Badia itself. Azzo claimed that a group of more than twelve men—­we do not know exactly how many—­ought to live permanently on

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47  On these exceptiones cf. Wickham, Courts, p. 55. 48  The document is ASFi, Badia, 1212 March 13 (Florentine style). It has been neglected by scholars so far, probably because it was not mentioned in the appendix of the edition of S. Maria charters.

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the estates and the jurisdictional territory of Lucardo; they were also obliged to perform military and castle-­guard services, swear oaths of allegiance and abide by the local customs. The leader of the contending party, Vitello, invoked first some extenuating circumstances (exceptiones), a procedure belonging to the Roman law tradition, which had become widespread by the 1210s.47 He then claimed to have been a homo alterius—­that is, not a man of the commune of Lucardo—‘for a great and longer period of time’. At that point the debate started. Azzo argued that the fathers of the accused lived in Lucardo and performed the aforementioned services, but Vitello and his fellows denied it, with the exception of one peasant whose name was Bertolotto. According to the record of the dispute, Bertolotto declared that ‘his father came from Lucardo and resided there for the commune, but he denies that this applied also to him after he had entered the estate of the village of S.  Donato [the church of Lucardo]’. Vitello and the others then claimed to be homines of the neighbouring monastery of Marturi. Azzo said that this was true for all of them but Vitello, who eventually admitted that he was a homo of Marturi ‘to some extent, but not completely’. Vitello and his fellows said that the emperors Frederick I and Otto IV had exempted the homines of Marturi from every tax (‘ab omni collecta et fodro et exactione’) and, in order to demonstrate that they did not belong to Lucardo, they added that the homines Lucardi had damaged their goods during the conflict which opposed Florence and the Alberti counts for the control of the castle of Semifonte. In the end, Vitello and his fellows stated that the commune of Lucardo had been demanding from them the datium and the col­ lecta for twenty-­five years, but Azzo replied that this had been happening only for ten years; one may guess that Vitello was probably endeavouring to  demonstrate that the commune of Lucardo had been deliberately ignoring, and for a long time, the exemption from the collecta decided by Frederick  I.  The final verdict was complex. On the basis of the privileges issued by Frederick and Otto in favour of the abbey of Marturi, the judge Benedetto exempted Vitello and his fellows from the collecta, the fodrum and the albergaria, but condemned them in relation to the other claims made by Azzo.48

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49  See Santini, Documenti, pp. 240–4, no. 22 (1218 January 1, Florentine style); cf. also Badia II, 336; Wickham, ‘La signoria’, p. 398; Collavini, ‘Il “servaggio” in Toscana’, pp. 789–90.

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The second text concerns another dependent peasant of the Badia ­ orentina, Benivieni, who lived in the village of Novoli, close to the castle of fi Vico l’Abate. In 1219, Abbot Bartolo called to the court of S.  Cecilia in Florence some witnesses in order to prove that Benivieni was a homo and colonus of the monastery. The witnesses, seemingly selected from among local peasants, declared that Benivieni and his father, Rinucciolo, were homines and coloni of the abbey and had their resedium (what we might translate as ‘permanent address’) in Novoli. This was a crucial point for the accusers; Benivieni, three years before, had tried to move to Florence and this had resulted in another dispute. Furthermore, in order to establish whether Benivieni was a colonus or not, the judges asked the witnesses for how long he had been staying on the resedium of Novoli, what kind of services he had to perform in Vico l’Abate, who the owner of the resedium was, and under which category of the colonatus Benivieni fell. Simone Collavini has noted that this last question engendered some interesting answers, since the judges were referring to conceptual distinctions drawn from Roman law, with which peasants were not familiar at all. As a result, three witnesses replied that Benivieni was a villanus of the abbey (a non-­Roman definition, but also an exact equivalent of colonus) and one of them, when asked ‘what kind of colonus is Benivieni?’ said that Benivieni was a colonus—­thus making a perfect tautology. The people questioned by the judges also listed the obligations with which Benivieni was burdened. He and his father used to repair the walls of Vico l’Abate, perform sentry duties and swear loyalty to the abbot; they paid the accustomed tributes (datium), performed labour-­ services, provided meals and supplied chickens and eggs; they had to respect the authority (in terms of both criminal and civil justice, penae, and banna) of the Badia.49 The cases involving Vitello and Benivieni bring to light some clear similarities with the Lucchese manentia: the prolonged residence on a plot of land, the hereditary character of unfree tenancy resulting therefrom, and abidance to a set of due services. At the same time, these texts display a type of socioeconomic dependence that was apparently tighter than that weighing on manentes. The Florentine coloni were burdened with corvée-labour, which seems to have been merely occasional in the Lucchesia and limited to ditches and woodwork; and they had to submit to regular and multiple signorial exactions, which does not appear to have been the case with the

48  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

Map by: Taylor Zaneri

vast majority of Lucchese manentes.50 If we add to this the frequent sale and pledge of coloni, we get a vivid picture of the social class that was involved in all likelihood in the second wave of castle-­building across the Fiorentino. These remarks will underpin the analysis of the case studies of Chapters 2 and  3. But before moving on, we need to further complicate our view of unfree tenancy. I have described hitherto both the manentia and the colona­ tus as the labels for two internally homogeneous social groups. In fact, they 50  The main exception I know of concerns the manentes and fideles in S. Miniato who were sold by the lords of Palaia to the Lucchese bishopric in 1156, and who had to perform operae and provide datia; but S. Miniato is rather distant from Lucca and the Valdarno as a whole was different from the environs of Lucca. The document is ASDLu, Arcivescovile, †† Q 17 (1156 October 24 or 30), which I read in LEM III/1, 326–7; cf. Tomei, ‘Milites elegantes’, p. 74, note 116.

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Map 5  The places of the court cases involving Vitello and Benivieni

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51  On Gianni di Giannello’s family cf. Plesner, L’emigrazione, pp. 133–4; De Rosa, Alle origini, p. 47 and p. 64, note 98. On Zucco di Artovicco and all the related documents cf. Collavini, ‘Signoria ed élites’, pp. 488–9.

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were not; there were exceptions to the pattern I have outlined (which however, as I shall argue, remains the rule). It is essential to set them out in order to fully grasp the complexities of rural society, and to start to sketch out some of the economic factors that will be scrutinized later on. Coloni could be rich; it is the archives of the monastery of S. Michele di Passignano that offer the two clearest examples of this. Gianni di Giannello was a wealthy man from Passignano, to the point that he owned a house in Florence and was a creditor of the abbot of S. Michele in the years straddling the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. Despite this, Gianni was also a colonus of the monastery and was freed in 1202, when he purchased two demesnes of the abbey in exchange for the high sum of £160 of Pisan den­ arii. It is likely that the majority of the money was intended to purchase legal freedom, since the two demesne-­plots were described as being of average size, mediocres (perhaps also less productive) in comparison to other properties of Passignano. A second example concerns Zucco di Artovicco, who lived in the village of Valle, a locality probably close to Passignano. The Florentine family of the Uberti freed him from the colonatus, along with five other people, in return for £228 in the year 1200, but the manumission was in fact a sale to S. Michele and Zucco came to fall, thereafter, under the lordship of Passignano. Despite this, Zucco was far from being a destitute peasant. He himself was, in turn, the lord of some homines residing in Valle, thus sharing signorial rights with the abbot of S. Michele in the surroundings of Passignano; moreover, he actively lent out money and purchased land, and was also able to move out from Valle (presumably quite a marginal place) to the castle of Passignano, where he was granted a building plot (platea) from the monastery. It is notable that Zucco preferred, for some time, to pay for the expansion of his landed properties rather than for his freedom. Only in 1206 was he freed for the second time, together with his wife Contessa, in return for £28. He continued to act as a moneylender thereafter: in 1222 he had to defend himself from the accusation of being a usurer.51 Gianni’s and Zucco’s stories are not isolated, but fit into a pattern of upward social mobility that characterized some Tuscan families of ­dependent status throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—­even

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52  The most recent and complete account on this issue, covering the Valdarno Superiore and the Chianti, is the doctoral thesis by Lefeuvre, ‘La notabilité’ (see for example pp. 62–3). Although it is outside the remit of this book, it is worth recalling the story of Ferretto, a vil­ lanus of the canons of Siena, whose father managed to buy a landed property and tried, thereby, to flee the tenure-­plot he used to live on. It did not end well, unfortunately, and Ferretto was recognized as a villanus of the chapter house; cf. Collavini, ‘Signoria ed élites’, pp. 481–2. 53  The edition is Santini, Documenti, pp. 402–3, no. XXIX (1233 March 16 and 21; 1233 April 9) and ibid., pp. 403–5, no. XXX (1233 May 4). It is worth citing also the census conducted one year before at S. Lorenzo di Coltibuono: ASFi, Coltibuono, 1232 April 26—which however lists only six homines et coloni of the monastery.

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though their economic dynamism was not always appreciated by lords.52 What is relevant to us is that such stories contradict the otherwise gloomy image of the colonatus as it emerges from the disputes involving Vitello and Benivieni. We learn that some coloni were quite rich, and far from landless or harshly dominated by their lords. Indeed, it can be argued that they might have even profited from the signoria, as long as this worked as a form of patronage which helped them to reinforce their social prestige, and perhaps to extend their own webs of clients—­this possibly was the case with Zucco and his debtors, for instance. In other words, the colonatus does not encompass a homogeneous social group; internal differences did exist, and were sometimes substantial. At this point, however, another question arises: were personal experiences such as those of Gianni and Zucco not just compatible with the colonatus, but also common to it? Let us delve into this problem by discussing the censuses of the population residing in the territories of the castles of Poggio al Vento and Passignano, which were conducted by the Florentine commune in March and May 1233—the governing body of the city being in the process of consolidating its political and fiscal control over the countryside. As a result, the inhabitants of both territories were located inside the jurisdiction of the Florentine district (sextus) of Borgo dei Santi Apostoli, regardless of their legal status (‘de quacumque et in quacumque sunt condictione’). These texts provide a snapshot of two entire rural communities of the Fiorentino, and can therefore be used to get a sense of the inner stratification of local so­ci­eties.53 I shall look at them closely before moving on to Lucca and examining the same issue with specific regard to the manentes of the Sei Miglia. In Poggio al Vento, the male members of the twenty-­nine families living there were classified as homines of the monastery, whereas the majority of the Passignanesi (out of a total of sixty-­nine families) fell under the category of fidelis et fictaiolus perpetualis. In Passignano there were also military aristocrats: one miles nobilis and seven milites of the Florentine commune; one

Land Management and Rural Society  51

54  Casini, ‘Signoria’, pp. 83–5. 55 Plesner, L’emigrazione, ch. 3 (p. 88, note 26 on Dietinoro di Bullietto). 56  On Florentine taxation cf. Day, ‘The early development’, p. 101 ff.; for a discussion of the possible connections between the mentions of coloni and the attempt to avoid city taxation (but also on the other reasons that might have pushed people to proclaim themselves coloni) see Lefeuvre, ‘Sicuti’, and the related bibliography at note 4.

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person, Dietinoro di Bullietto, was classified neither as a miles, nor as a dependent of the monastery, and another one, Ricovero di Piero, was defined as a cultaiolus (tenant) of two other people, Silimanno and Filippo; the names of four widows were recorded too. Tommaso Casini has argued that the words homo, fidelis and fictaiolus are unlikely to have implied any real differences.54 The reason for this purely nominal difference between the inhabitants of Poggio al Vento and Passignano is however hard to grasp; we can probably assume that the notary Lotario (who wrote both lists) was trying to distinguish the relatively recent lordship of the abbey over Poggio al Vento from the longstanding power that S. Michele exerted over Passignano. There were, at any rate, some considerable differentiations in social standing at least among the tenantry of Passignano. Johan Plesner observes that, in addition to the milites, at least three other families controlled some portions of the castle in spite of their classification as fideles and fictaioli; in other words, such people were not as dependent as their formal definition would suggest.55 Furthermore, we need to consider that the predominance of seemingly subject tenants might partly have been falsified; to classify rural workers as unfree meant possibly to reduce the quantity of city taxes which could be collected from them, in compliance with the graduated system of taxation being introduced in the same years.56 Thus, we might be in fact looking at a group of freemen in disguise. One cannot but admire Plesner for his effort to highlight the socioeconomic stratification within Passignano; but we need to wonder whether the majority of rural dependents who lived in Passignano and Poggio al Vento were as socially and economically prominent as those he examined in detail. Notwithstanding the exceptional quantity of S. Michele charters, one would struggle to find more than casual mentions of most of the tenants enumerated in the two lists of 1233. In Passignano, around sixty of sixty-­nine fam­ ilies consisted of ill-­documented people, and the same can be said for the twenty-­nine families of Poggio al Vento. This does not automatically prove that those coloni experienced tough limitations of their freedom, or else poverty; but it does suggest that the colonatus was ordinarily composed of tenants who are unlikely to have owned any considerable landed estates,

52  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

57  Cf. Wickham, ‘Manentes’, and for an overview (mostly centred on the eleventh century) Id., ‘Economia’. 58  Cf. again Wickham, ‘Manentes’, pp. 1073 and 1078, note 24 (Wickham cites the example of a manens holding tenures from five people contemporaneously in 1193). 59  The statute is edited in De Stefani, ‘Frammento’; cf. Vaccari, Le affrancazioni, pp. 83–6.

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and who seldom managed to obtain written agreements from their lords. Cases like those of Gianni and Zucco must have been fairly atypical; the widespread depression of the peasantry probably was the rule. Socioeconomic differences certainly existed among Lucchese manentes, too, although two caveats are necessary: we lack examples of substantial concentrations of manentes in one place (one exception is Marlia, north-­ east of Lucca, where the bishops held quite extensive signorial rights);57 and nor do I know of any extraordinary individual careers, such as Gianni’s and Zucco’s. We can formulate only a few general observations about stratification within the world of manentia. The main clue about some manentes’ relative wealth is that they could hold land from many proprietors at the same time, even though they had to reside permanently on just one tenure plot; this implied, in all likelihood, that there were manentes whose overall income was conspicuous and who probably were hard for a single lord to subdue.58 It is thus not surprising that the Lucchese commune had to endeavour to reinforce the manentes’ ties of dependence. The first statute of Lucca, which dates to 1224 and survives in a fragmentary form, excluded manentes from citizenship—­and thus from full freedom—­even though it was aimed at attracting peasants into the city ‘in order to increase the population’ and to demand taxes from them after a five-­year exemption.59 One can see that the city demographic and economic objectives were balanced with the need to protect the rights of local landowners, who clearly struggled to keep hold of some restless tenants. In order properly to understand the tenantry around Lucca and Florence, we would need to determine the proportion of manentes and coloni in the rural population as a whole, which is unfortunately impossible. We get the impression only that the former were less numerous than the latter—­for, as I have just noted, large aggregations of manentes can hardly be spotted. However, as we have seen, our sources are not always indisputably reliable as to the real status of tenants, and moreover they cannot be used for proper quantitative analyses; qualitative ones have therefore constituted—­and will constitute hereafter—­our almost exclusive line of inquiry.

Land Management and Rural Society  53

Conclusion

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The conceptual tools that we need in order to discuss the case studies of Chapters 2 and 3 have been set out, and the following pages will see, to an extent, the conflation of the two topics examined in this section. The reader may have noticed that signorial power appears to have been more oppressive in the Fiorentino, where manorial forms of land management can be detected still around 1150—and in fact afterwards, as we will see—­than in the Lucchesia. I would indeed argue that the enduring influence of man­ orial patterns around Florence contributes to explaining this divergence: the bonds of allegiance encapsulated within the sistema curtense could be one of the bases for relatively harsher forms of lordship in the twelfth century, when local signoria was formalized, tightened, and consistently exploited. This I will start to flesh out in the next chapter.

2 Florence and the Florentine Countryside

Geography, Historical Ecology, and Demography I have hitherto deliberately employed in quite a flexible way the notions of ‘Fiorentino’ and ‘Lucchesia’ in order to describe the countryside of the two cities I am examining. In the Introduction and in Chapter  1 I used those words so as to refer, essentially, to the political and economic remits of the urban governments of Lucca and Florence in their relations with rural signorial powers. Here we need to discuss the physical and ecological characteristics of their geographical space, which is key to understanding land management and the socio-­economic patterns resulting from it. In this section, I shall do this with regard to the Fiorentino, in fairly broad terms, but I will provide some further details on specific localities as the analysis shifts to the case studies which constitute the focus of the chapter. In the early fourteenth century, the chronicler Dino Compagni wrote that Florence was ‘poor in land, wealthy in good fruits’ and ‘rich in illicit earnings’.1 The last sentence probably alluded to usury (a by-­product of the concentration of credit activities inside the city), but what interests us more here is the first part of Compagni’s description, which is quite an accurate snapshot of the main traits of the Florentine countryside as a whole. Compared to the population of the city (to which I shall return in a moment) this was a relatively small countryside, hardly able to feed the citizens of Florence, who had to import grain from other Tuscan cities and from southern Italy as well. After all, a quick look at modern Florence’s ‘metropolitan area’—which largely overlaps with the fourteenth-­century contado—­unveils why this was so; plains represent 5% of the land, and the vast majority of the countryside consists of hills (c. 68%) and mountains (c. 27%).

1 Compagni, Cronica, § I,1. Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000–­1250. Lorenzo Tabarrini, Oxford University Press. © Lorenzo Tabarrini 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198875154.003.0003

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Case Studies (Eleventh–­Thirteenth Centuries)

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  55

2  On all these aspects see Biagioli, L’agricoltura, pp. 148–56; Pinto, Il libro, pp. 73–5. 3 Barbieri, Toscana, p. 95. We lack rainfall data for Tuscany over the period considered here: cf. the list of case studies in Lüning, ‘The Medieval Climate Anomaly’. 4  Cf. Barsanti, ‘Le bonifiche’, p. 71 and following.

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There were few places where peasants could expect significantly high agricultural yields, which were mostly concentrated in the hinterland closest to the city and in the valley floors of the rivers—­this was the case with at least some portions of the lands along the Arno, the Elsa, or the upper reaches of the Arbia and the Ombrone, on the southern edge of the Chianti region. Everywhere else, it was quite hard to ward off the spectre of hunger. Terrains were in general poorly watered because of the absence of water reserves in the subsoil, and were covered at times with protruding rocks; on the hillsides the cultivation of grain, and wheat in particular, was a difficult task and thick sowing was often needed in order to obtain a sufficiently good agricultural output; tree crops such as vines, olive trees, and fruit trees, on the contrary, could flourish more easily—­one may guess that these were Compagni’s ‘good fruits’.2 On the top of this, it is worth noting that Florence’s ‘metropolitan area’ lies today in a climatic zone that is characterized by fairly light rainfall throughout the year, one which does not surpass 1,000 mm in Chianti and stays around 800–900 mm per year (reaching a min­ imum of 700 mm) in Florence, the Valdelsa, and parts of the Mugello; this is certainly good enough for vines, olives, and indeed grain, although wheat farming could be in danger in case of moderate drought.3 This is a very general overview. Let us now have a closer look at physical geography, which has not varied significantly since the Middle Ages—­apart from the notable effects of land reclamation, remarkably intense during the eighteenth century.4 South of Florence, the natural landscape appears as a chain of hills threaded by relatively small watercourses, bounded by the river Elsa in the west and the upper Arno valley in the east. About 20 km east of Bagno a Ripoli, the range of mountains known as the Pratomagno, easy to cross and indeed almost completely devoid of cliffs, gives access to the Casentino region. North-­west of the city a small plain of about 15 km as the crow flies leads to Prato, and one might want then to go through the now heavily-­populated countryside north-­west of the river Bisenzio up to Pistoia, just below the Tuscan-­Emilian Apennines (and politically independent of Florence until the first half of the fourteenth century); north-­ east, behind Fiesole, hills lead to the basin of the upper Sieve valley, the

56  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

5 Plesner, Una rivoluzione, in particular pp. 68–9 and passim; the opposite view, stressing the breakdown of the Roman road system, has been expressed in Szabò, ‘Il controllo’, esp. pp. 28–9; some degree of continuity with the Roman period, at least in the localization of roadways, has however been proposed by Romby and Stopani, ‘Strade’, p. 158; an overview in Rombai, ‘Per una storia’. 6  Cf. La Roncière, Prix, pp. 628–35.

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Mugello, which lies just south of the mountains that separate Tuscany from Romagna (cf. Map 3). Crossing this area during the Middle Ages, until at least the thirteenth–­ fourteenth centuries (we cannot be more precise than that), meant relying on a web of minor roads mostly centred on, and perhaps even maintained by, rural baptismal churches. The main axis inherited from Rome, around which long-­range transports and communications revolved, was the Via Cassia, stretching from Rome itself to Arezzo and then flanked by the Arno until it reached Fiesole—­the Via was thus external to the bulk of what would become the Florentine contado, and this seems to point to the relative isolation of the area. Johan Plesner argued that the pievi carried on—­in some cases at least—­the legacy of the system of local roadways created during the late-­republican and high-­imperial Roman age, but there is little evidence of this, and it appears as if that system was rapidly decaying already in the fourth century; what is certain, instead, is that throughout the thirteenth century Florence became the centre of a new set of arteries which testified to its by-­then indisputable political and economic power.5 It is almost impossible to know how many people lived in Florence and its contado before the first half of the fourteenth century, when the city may have reached the figure of 110,000 inhabitants.6 We can just make hy­poth­ eses. Elio Conti emphasized the overpopulation of the area he was examining in his book—­broadly defined by the valleys of the rivers Pesa and Greve, in the central Chianti region—­already in the eleventh century. According to Conti, this was the major cause for the fragmentation of the patterns of landowning and landholding (cf. the Introduction) and was unveiled by a number of clues: first, the ‘explosion of toponyms’ employed by notaries in order to identify places and plots of land that were close to each other, but had nonetheless to be distinguished because many different proprietors and leaseholders cohabited in the same zone; second, the extremely high number of land transactions preserved in the archives of S.  Michele di Passignano, which Conti interpreted as desperate attempts to boost an other­wise poor agricultural output through the purchase, the lease and the exchange of (often small) rural estates (or even parts of them); third, the

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  57

7 Conti, La formazione I, 124. General remarks on demographic growth in medieval Tuscany (and Umbria too) can be found also in Pirillo, ‘Demografia’. 8  Cf. Day, ‘The population’, p. 22, note 79. This hypothesis implies that the number of male adults who subscribed the oath in 1199 was close to the total number of males living in S.  Pancrazio; that the number of the inhabitants of S.  Pancrazio was similar to that of the ­people living in each of the other five districts of Florence; and that the coefficient used to calculate the members of a single family (3.5) is reliable. It has also been suggested that the male population of S. Pancrazio might have been more than 50% greater than that recorded in the text of the oath (cf. for example Pardi, ‘Disegno’, p. 23). One can easily see how much conjectural these figures are. 9  Cf. Day, ‘The early development’, pp. 120–47; Id., ‘Population’; the most accurate and complete account remains Id., ‘The population’ (see note above).

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construction of many neighbouring castles, probably aimed at implementing the exploitation of local resources; and finally, the thick web of villages threading most of the Chianti region. All this points to a demographic sat­ ur­ation which, without technical improvements or supplies of cereals from external markets, might have easily led to remarkable levels of mortality in years of bad harvests.7 Some increase in the number of people living in Florence may have occurred in the last quarter of the twelfth century, but this can hardly be proved. The evidence is in fact limited to the construction of a new circuit of walls (1172–5; cf. again the Introduction) and to an oath undertaken by 519 Florentine adult males residing in the city district of Porta di S. Pancrazio in 1199. New walls, however, do not allow any safe quantification of urban inhabitants, whereas the number of people subscribing to the oath may possibly suggest a bare minimum of 10,000 Florentine dwellers at the very end of the 1190s—­a figure which could have been easily assumed anyway. In short, neither of the two sources of information is really helpful.8 Calculations for the countryside are pure guesswork, since they can be made only by adding together two hypotheses that are in fact unverifiable. We first need to apply to the Florentine contado the ratio of about nine to one between rural and urban population, which has been regarded as normal for medieval Europe and was employed by Giuliano Pinto in his ana­ lysis of fourteenth-­century Florence (even though, in view of the high levels of urbanization in northern-­central Italy for that period, the ratio must have been more favourable to the city); and then we need to use the figures provided by Giovanni Villani (1276–1348) for the first half of the Trecento, which are however fairly incomplete. On this shaky basis, William Day proposed that demographic growth may have proceeded at a rate of 1% per year in the countryside and of 1.9% in the city between the years 1175 and 1325, but it is again easy to see how much caution is necessary here.9

58  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

Inflation in the Late Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries Through a careful study of the average quantity of cash employed in sales, Enrico Faini has shown that land prices in the Fiorentino increased sharply between 1176 and 1200 in comparison to the previous twenty-­five years, with particular intensity in the hinterland closest to Florence (+330%) and less vigorously in the open countryside (+262%). This trend did not stop. During the period 1200–30, prices continued to go up, albeit at a slower rate

10  Cf. Masschaele, ‘Economic takeoff ’, pp. 93–4, in which the author provides an effective summary of the literature concerning demographic growth in Europe between the late twelfth and the fourteenth centuries. Cf. also Id., ‘The English economy’. On Tuscan urbanization see also cf. Malanima, ‘Urbanisation’, p. 101.

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Overall population certainly did grow, however, throughout this long era, although its scale cannot be tracked down precisely. If we look at Florence alone, the increasing complexity of the communal governing bodies and the expansion of commerce are matters of fact, and have to be explained by postulating the presence of a progressively higher number of people as a premise of their development. That some discrepancy between city and countryside as to demographic growth existed seems equally indisputable. The reason for it is likely to have lain, according to Day, in a massive migration to the city: in the absence of this, fertility rates would have been offset by higher mortality rates—­the latter being probably four times the former. In general, it seems at least plausible that a surge in the overall number of people occurred between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, as part indeed of a fully European trend;10 but we cannot get any further than that. This excursus on demography, albeit seemingly unfruitful, is important as a reminder of the uncertainties we generally face when confronted with the problems related to population growth. We have to assume it happened, but we can hardly characterize it precisely. In view of this, I shall take demographic increase only as a general background of the analysis of social and economic change; and I will focus on factors that can be identified more safely. In this sense, the decades around 1200 appear as a turning-­point when we look at aspects other than demography. I have already argued that tributes and soaring fiscal complexity characterized that period. We now need to add more details to this picture—­what I shall describe, from now on, as the economic conjuncture of the years from c. 1180 to c. 1230.

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  59

11 Faini, Firenze, pp. 111–6. From 1180 prices seem to have gone up dramatically in the Sienese, too: cf. Cammarosano, La famiglia, pp. 335–50. 12  For the pseudo-­Brunetto Latini cf. Schiaffini, Testi, p. 208; then Die Gesta Florentinorum, p. 248 (on this two texts cf. also Faini, Firenze, pp. 21–2); Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, Cronaca, p. 25; Gesta Lucanorum, p. 297; Bongi, Le croniche, p. 9, sections XV and XVI. 13  That food shortages do not necessarily cause widespread famine is now recognized in scholarship; rights to access supplies are equally important. The foundational text is Sen, Poverty.

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(+150% in both the city and the countryside, possibly as a result of the progressive integration of urban and rural markets).11 At least three factors are likely to have contributed to this process. In 1181–2, due to a period of pronounced drought, a great famine is said to have hit Tuscany; as a consequence, the prices of agricultural goods went up. We know this thanks to chronicles: that written by the pseudo-­Brunetto Latini, for example, speaks about a ‘great price increase’ in Florence during the year 1182; a surge in prices, with the wheat peaking at 8 s. per staium, is recorded also in the late medieval translation into the vernacular of the Gesta Florentinorum, under the same year. A similar piece of information (with the difference that 1 st. of wheat was said to be worth 7 s.) can be found in the earliest Lucchese chronicle we have, the Gesta Lucanorum (which however can be read only through two vernacular versions redacted in the fourteenth century), in the Cronaca by Marchionne di Coppo Stefani (fourteenth century) and in the Croniche by Giovanni Sercambi (dating to the first half of the fifteenth century), who used the Gesta as a source. It needs to be stressed that Sercambi mentioned Florence as the other place that was affected by the rise of prices beside Lucca (the vernacular versions of the Gesta Lucanorum, instead, lack this reference to Florence, and it is thus likely that Sercambi and the translators of the Gesta drew from different branches of the manuscript tradition of this text).12 One would need to know the precise, stemmatic relations between these accounts in order to draw safe conclusions. We would also need to know how the effects of famine were governed by urban and rural rulers, so as to understand how they affected different social groups—­which we cannot due to the lack of evidence.13 It can however be observed that famine probably contributed to inflation, as is confirmed by Faini’s figures on land, but also that it was hardly the sole reason for it, as the upward trend started a few years before 1181–2. As an aside, it should be noted that the extant evidence on the price of cereals (that contained in chronicles, but also in no­tar­ ized charters) is scanty and potentially misleading. The price of cereals was volatile, as it was subject to a great elasticity of demand and depended on a

60  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

14  In short, we should not expect all prices to rise equally. Cf. on this Mayhew, ‘Prices’. 15  For the price of wheat in the early Duecento cf. Conti, Le proprietà, p. XIV, note 13. 16 The Lucchese denarius weighed 0.35–0.37 g. over the period 1160–1181/2; the Pisan denarius 0.37 g. in 1164. The former went down to 0.12-­0-­13 g., and the latter to 0.175 g., during the years 1181/2–1200. The basic analysis is Matzke, ‘Vom Ottolinus’, pp. 169–79. I take the data from Day, ‘The early development’, pp. 530–2, Table 22. On England cf. Latimer, ‘English inflation’.

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multiplicity of factors, such as harvests, seasonal variations, or yields in flour—­which the documentation makes impossible to determine.14 Indeed, around Florence the price of wheat was significantly lower (around 2–3 s. per staium) at the beginning of the thirteenth century than in the 1180s.15 Land constitutes a more reliable benchmark. We must now turn to the second cause for inflation, the monetary one—­that is, the debasement of the silver denarii of Lucca and Pisa, both used in Florence. Michael Matzke argued that public expenditure was in all likelihood the reason that pushed the governing bodies of the two cities to reduce the silver content of their denarii over the period 1170–1200, so as to make the public deficit more sustainable. The debasement slowed down slightly after 1200, but did not stop before the 1240s at the earliest. Not only did it bring about a loss in the intrinsic value of coins, but it is also likely to have engendered a crisis of confidence in their purchasing power (as has been proposed as a possible explanation for the almost contemporary English inflation).16 Finally—­and this is the third factor we need to consider—­the surge in the price of lands close to Florence testifies to the role played by urban demand for agricultural goods in triggering the inflationary spiral; owning landed estates in the immediate environs of the city made it convenient to sell foodstuff there, because transport costs were lower. We have thus outlined some further aspects of the economic conjuncture of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries: famine, monetary debasement, and city demand engendered the rise in prices. We now need to analyse how all these elements combined at the local level, and how they led to a period of change in the forms of land management. It needs further emphasis that this chapter, along with Chapter 3, focuses upon the extraction of agricultural surplus on the part of landowners, while the peasant economy is excluded. As I argued in the Introduction, our sources do not allow us to penetrate—­unless occasionally and by means of a sort of reflex—­ into those economic activities that were detached from signorial demand.

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  61

The Case Studies

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The first of my case studies concerns the outskirts of Florence, whereas the other ones regard the major landowning institutions of the Chianti region. This selection has originated from the desire to compare the hinterland of the city—­where urban influence was strongest by the start of the period considered here—­with the slowly-­forming southern Florentine contado, where the first-­ known early mezzadria contracts were stipulated. This seemed to me particularly important, as we need to understand the issuing of early mezzadria agreements as part of a wider process of transformations in the relationships between tenants and landowners. This is the only way to avoid teleology; early mezzadria has to be contextualized and framed in its own terms, without hindsight. I therefore focused on ecclesiastical owners in the Chianti region in order to enlighten different patterns of change and how they came into being. But every selection excludes by definition other options and is in itself imperfect; for example, one could well take into account other ecclesiastical institutions that owned lands in the suburbs of Florence. All the reasonably documented areas for the Fiorentino, however, appear to confirm that the case studies I did pick up cover the range of transformations that took place over the central Middle Ages, especially between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. And the inclusion of Passignano, which has preserved about a third of all the documents from that period, seemed to me the best shelter from the risks of undue generalizations. Before starting off, it is necessary to determine what the Chianti is. It is all the more important to do so because Chianti does not have any fixed geographical or historical delimitations (it has not a ‘main town’ either) and is split, today, between the ‘metropolitan area’ of Florence and the province of Siena. The so-­called League of Chianti, a military alliance which was created by the Republic of Florence in 1384, is evidence of the existence of a local identity during the late Middle Ages at the latest. The League comprised the three terzieri (localities) of Radda, Gaiole, and Castellina along with their hinterlands, and was abolished only in 1774 by the Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo (1765–90). A second way to look at Chianti is to consider the boundaries, as they were established in 1932 by the Fascist government, within which the famous wine, known as Chianti Classico, is produced. This means to widen the area we are examining, which would thus also include the municipalities of Greve, Castelnuovo Berardenga, S. Casciano in Val di Pesa, Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, Barberino Val d’Elsa, and

62  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

Map by: Taylor Zaneri

Poggibonsi. However, neither of these definitions is entirely satisfactory and the boundaries of Chianti are confused even today.17 Here, I shall keep closer to the second definition; I will use quite a generic delimitation, which goes from the town of Impruneta (about 10 km south of Florence) down to the castle of Monteliscai (c. 5 km north-­east of the city centre of Siena) and encompasses the territories between the valley of the rivers Elsa in the west and the range of hills called Monti di Chianti in the east. Not that this def­in­ition is any more precise than the other two; it simply suits better the distribution of our sources. 17  On the League of Chianti cf. Parenti and Raveggi, Lo statuto. A lively description of the Chianti region (which, however, must not be regarded as a scientific account) is Flower, The Land.

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Map 6  The Chianti region

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  63

Close to Florence: The Badia a Settimo

18 Repetti, Dizionario I, 27–8. 19  For the document concerning the church cf. Settimo e Buonsollazzo, Appendice I, pp. 251–5, no. I [988 (March 25–989 March 24)]; for the foundation before 1011 cf. ibid., pp. 8–10, no. 2

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The monastery of S.  Lorenzo and S.  Salvatore a Settimo is located in the town of Scandicci, about 6 km west of Florence, not far from the southern bank of the Arno. Its charters have been preserved in the archive of another abbey, that of S. Frediano in Cestello (which gives its name to a square in Florence city centre, now disgracefully occupied by a parking lot) where the majority of the monks of Settimo had to move after the siege of the city by Charles V in 1529–30.18 This is a composite archive, as it also contains the documentation of a third Florentine monastery, that of S.  Bartolomeo a Buonsollazzo (on the northern flank of Monte Senario, north of the city). The charters of Settimo cover the two areas where the properties of the abbey were located, and on which my analysis will focus: one plain south of Scandicci, and another plain that is more difficult to identify but lay west of Florence, probably in an area now occupied by the town of Lastra a Signa. The monastery was founded by Lotario I, a count belonging to the Cadolingi family, at the beginning of the eleventh century and certainly before 1011, near the church of the same name (first attested in a compendium of a document originally issued in 988–9). The abbey was connected to some kind of fortification, for in 1015 Lotario himself was demanding a rent which had to be delivered in ‘curte et castello meo in loco Septimo’; however, the castle is never mentioned again thereafter and must have soon been destroyed. In all likelihood, Lotario gave Settimo the landed estates that constituted the bulk of the abbey properties in the following centuries, although the text of the donation has not survived—­it is probably referred to, however, in a privilege issued by Emperor Henry II in 1014. In 1048, then, Count Guglielmo (son of Lotario) donated to the abbey another set of properties in the Apennines north of Florence, but the charter appears to have been invalidated at some point and indeed those properties do not feature in later documents as part of Settimo patrimony. At any rate, Settimo can be considered to be the family monastery of the Cadolingi at least up to 1113, when the last member of the family, Ugo III, died without heirs and the abbey could gain a high degree of independence from aristocratic lay families—­although more distant relations with the Alberti, the Adimari, and the Guidi are also documented.19

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(1011 November 20); for the castellum see Strà, I più antichi documenti, pp. 3–4, no. 2 (1015 May); for Henry II’s diploma cf. MGH DD H II, pp. 361–2, no. 295 (1014); for Guglielmo’s donations cf. Settimo e Buonsollazzo, pp. 23–8, no. 9 (1048 December 7) and, for the location of the estates listed within, see Zagnoni, ‘I conti’, pp. 191–2. 20 Cf. Settimo e Buonsollazzo, p. XL, note 120 for bibliographical references. 21  On the history of Settimo cf. Lasinio, Un antico inventario, pp. 3–5; Pescaglini Mnti, ‘I conti cadolingi’; the introduction to Settimo e Buonsollazzo; Cortese, Signori, p. 44 ff.; Faini, ‘Le fonti’, pp. 13–4. 22  Settimo e Buonsollazzo, pp. 214–5, no. 98 and pp. 215–6, no. 99 (both dated to 1190 June 13). 23  Ibid., pp. 152–4, no. 68 (1150 December 30).

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It was argued in the past that the first community of Settimo was organized on the model of Cluny (with priories and dependent abbeys) but there is  no  evidence of this—­Cluniac monasticism was almost totally absent in Tuscany, and its alleged presence at Settimo surfaces only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as part of a rhetorical and polemical scheme opposing the Cluniacs to the Cistercians.20 We do know, however, that Settimo was a stronghold of the eleventh-­century ecclesiastical reform in Tuscia. One of its abbots, Guarino, made a public plea against the bishop of Florence Ildebrando at some time between 1014 and 1020, because the prelate was married and had children; and it was in Settimo that Bishop Pietro ‘Mezzabarba’ (half-­beard), accused of simony, suffered humiliation from a monk belonging to the reformed congregation of the Vallombrosans (another Pietro) who was said to have walked through a trial by fire, set up in 1068 in order to prove the bishop’s sinfulness, completely unharmed. Links with Vallombrosa were particularly strong, as the redaction at Settimo of one of the five known hagiographies of the founder of the Order, Giovanni Gualberto, in the first half of the twelfth century, appears to indicate. It was however the Cistercians who took over the abbey later in time, in 1236, on the initiative of Pope Gregory IX, as was the case with other Tuscan monasteries at that time.21 We now need to get an overview of Settimo documentation. In the archives of S.  Frediano in Cestello there are at most—­for the provenance cannot always be assessed—­sixty-­six charters dating before 1200 that ori­ gin­al­ly belonged to Settimo, so not many. Furthermore, up to the very end of the twelfth century one can find just ten libelli, plus two renewals of libelli,22 issued by the members of the monastic community or by its lay clients (and, in one case, by people ceding an estate to the monastery).23 Libelli only start in 1114 and were granted in return for the payment of low rents in money, arguably little more than a purely symbolic obligation; in only one document do we find mention of a relatively heavy render, consisting in

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  65

24  The papal privilege is ibid., pp. 29–32, no. 10 (1049 April 18), the libellus is at pp. 119–21, no. 51 (1131 May 21). 25  Ibid., pp. 106–8, no. 45 (1122 January 25) and pp. 232–4, no. 107 (1196 January 2) (this is in fact a sale of estates that the sellers had had libellario nomine up to that point; the presence of sub-­lessees can be deduced from the fact that people other than the sellers, ‘alius pro nobis’, were holding some of those lands). 26  Ibid., pp. 229–30, no. 105 (1195 June 27) (precisely an instrumentum venditionis iure libellario, in which priest Angelo buys from Ottobuono and Inghilesca a group of lands which the spouses held as a libellus from Settimo). 27  Ibid., pp. 234–6, no. 108 (1196 March 30). See in general Faini, ‘Uomini’, p. 3, 28  The other libelli are ibid., pp. 103–5, no. 44 (1114 November), pp. 121–3, no. 53 (1131 May 25), pp. 154–6, no. 69 (1154 April 30), pp. 180–2, no. 81 (1172 October 29), One may also want to include pp. 225–6, no. 103 (1194 November 3), which however mentions a servitium which was not owed to Settimo. 29  Indirect references to tenimenta: ibid., pp. 151–2, no. 67, pp. 186–8, no. 84 (1177 March 13), no. 98 and 99 (see note 22; both these renovationes libelli regarded lands bordering on tenimenta) and no. 107 (see note 25; here the concepts of libellus and tenimentum simply overlap: ‘hoc instrumento libellario seu tenimenti nomine vendimus’).

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the demand for the tithe of all the grain cultivated on the land (the right to collect tithes was first conceded to the Badia by Pope Leo IX in 1049).24 We can seldom identify the addressees of libelli, but in some instances they clearly were quite well-­off: in two charters the holdings were cultivated by sub-­lessees;25 among the libellarii of Settimo there is a priest, namely the procurator and administrator of the parish of S. Martino alla Palma (south-­ west of the abbey) who was charged with the administration of a substantial group of estates;26 and we also meet Ugolino dei Nerli, the member of a rich Florentine family of landowners.27 Even though the social status of the other libellarii is hard to grasp, it does seem as if actual cultivators, let alone destitute peasants, were excluded from that group. And the very least we can say is that libelli can hardly be regarded as a reliable and comprehensive guide to land management.28 Tenimenta are barely mentioned at all in the documentation of Settimo, and there is in fact no charter that is explicitly defined as a tenimentum contract.29 We have, however, one document that gives us a sense of the working conditions of the lower strata of the peasantry, a fourteenth-­century copy of a deed dating to 1133, which the editors of Settimo and Buonsollazzo charters have labelled as a ‘notice (scriptum) of colonatus’. Actually, the words colonus and colonatus do not feature in the original text; they are recorded in a note on the left margin of the parchment that was written, in all likelihood, shortly after the copy of the original document had been redacted. This contract is however very different from a libellus; it is much shorter and less elaborated, and the penalty that has to be paid—­should one of the two contracting parties break the terms of the agreement—­is far

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30  Ibid., pp. 126–8, no. 55 (1133 January); the libellus is ibid., no. 53 (see note 28). 31 For Tigliano as lying close to Pontassieve cf. Settimo e Buonsollazzo, p. 323. Evidence showing that Tigliano lay, instead, in the environs of Lastra a Signa can be found ibid., pp. 126–8, no. 56 (1133 May 6) (among the people holding some land in Tigliano we find an Azzetto di Sant’Ilario—­Sant’Ilario is a parish located in Lastra a Signa); pp. 196–7, no. 88 (1181 February 7) (similarly, Tigliano is said to have bordered on the lands belonging to Grullo di Gangalandi and the church of S. Stefano di Calcinaia—­both Gangalandi and S. Stefano are in Lastra a Signa today. It is also notable that the deed was stipulated in ‘Septimo, a Tiliana’, which means that the monastery and Tigliano were close to each other—­whereas Pontassieve is quite distant).

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lower than that mentioned by a libellus issued only two years before (re­spect­ive­ly, 10 s. in the scriptum and 100 s. in the libellus). It can be assumed that the reason for this difference lay in the economic status of the two addressees of the scriptum, Vivolo and his son Martino, who could not have paid a high penalty. They received two lands in the locality of Farnito (close to Settimo) from the dean of the hospital of Curticelle, dependent on the Badia, in return for the performance of one labour service per year, the delivery of a third of the grain, a third of the juice pressed from grapes before and during fermentation (wine must, as I shall call it from here on), 1 d. ‘annuntiatico’ (to be given to the nuntius of the abbey entrusted with the collection of rents) and finally half of the olives.30 This is by no means a symbolic obligation; it is evidence of a burdensome share-­tenancy relationship, weighing on a holding characterized by polyculture (as I remarked in the Introduction, polyculture was typical of the areas in which full mezzadria agreements developed; to this I shall return). However isolated, this document is important. It seems to indicate that, beneath the blanket of apparently unprofitable libelli, probably aimed at reinforcing the web of the abbey clients rather than maximizing agricultural profit, the lower strata of rural society could pay quite high rents. In the absence of further documentation, this remains speculation based on scarce available evidence. Luckily, the years around 1200 witnessed the sudden appearance of a completely new set of sources in the archives of the Badia a Settimo, which help us throw some light on the patterns of landholding. I shall start from the westernmost estates of the monastery, namely in the plain of Tigliano, and then I will move back towards Florence. Tigliano has been identified as lying within the comune of Pontassieve, about 13 km north-­east of Florence; but the places mentioned in the charters of the Badia as being close to Tigliano relocate it in the Valdarno, somewhere around (perhaps just north of) the town of Lastra a Signa, in the small but fertile plain on the southern bank of the river.31 I would guess that

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32  Cf. again no. 56 (a vineyard in Tigliano is surrounded by ‘terra de suprascripto monasterio’, which is divided in turn into the ‘donicatum monasterii’ and the monastic vineyard held by Azzetto di Sant’Ilario); pp. 172–4, no. 77 (1160 May 3) (a piece of land in Tigliano is surrounded on three sides by ‘terra predicte ecclesie et monasterio’, and by a road on the fourth side); and again no. 88 (there is in fact an isolated mention of monastic land: ‘…huiusmodi sunt confines: ex uno latere est predicti monasterii. . .’).

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the toponym has disappeared because it was incorporated, at some point, into Lastra and Ponte a Signa—­this is indeed one of the most densely in­habit­ed areas along the Arno. Up to the very beginning of the thirteenth century, Tigliano is barely mentioned at all in Settimo charters, but the scattered evidence at our disposal reveals that it was the seat of a monastic demesne. One ‘donicato’ is cited for the first time in 1136; moreover, every time a land parcel in Tigliano became the object of a transaction it appears to have bordered on, or even to have been completely surrounded by, ‘land of the monastery and the church of Settimo’, terra ecclesiae et monasterii (or other equivalent expressions).32 This is an important piece of information and it is worth discussing its meaning, even though we have to set aside Tigliano for a moment—­the terra ecclesiae will be taken into account again in the section on the abbey of S. Michele di Passignano. What is the meaning of terra ecclesiae, without further specifications, in a list of the borders of a piece of land which was in the process of being (for instance) sold or rented out? That is, how can we interpret the fact that only the full property is mentioned? We could think that notaries simply did not know the names of leaseholders in some circumstances, and thus avoided writing them down. I doubt, however, that this occurred very often. It is sufficient to consider that the witnesses of a notarial deed often came from the villages closest to the estates which were being transferred, and this made it relatively easy to trace back the names of local tenants. I also doubt that uncertainties could be simply ignored by using quite ambiguous formulae like ‘land of the church’—notaries were used to leaving a blank space whenever it was not possible to pin down the name of a person or an estate. I would argue, instead, that the mentions of terra ecclesiae and the like are a good guide to the presence of estates which, in general, were not held by any tenants, or which at least had not been granted permanently to anyone—­that is, which had not been ceded away libelli style. Just to make one example, notaries might have thought that there was no point in recording the ­lessees’ names if their tenure was only temporary and possibly short-­term.

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33  The identity of full property and demesne farming was proposed by Conti, La formazione I, 112 and 149–50. 34  Settimo e Buonsollazzo, pp. 241–4, no. 112. 35  Cf. the inventory of Settimo estates redacted in 1338 and published by Philip Jones, in which Tigliano consisted of 251 st. of land (Jones, ‘Le finanze’, p. 339, no. 30); in 1200, instead, the parcels of the donicatum amounted to a total of 66 and a half st. (cf. Table 1). 36  Cf. again Jones, ‘Le finanze’, p. 320 and 339.

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We can thus conclude that references to the full property can be taken as potential evidence of the existence of demesne farming.33 Coming back to Tigliano, the presence of terra ecclesiae et monasterii standing just next to the donicatum indicates that Tigliano was indeed a place where the monastic community did not usually rent out the bulk of its landed properties, or—­more cautiously—­where land was managed in a different way than that which seems to surface from the series of libelli. We have, in fairness, no idea about the characteristics of estate management at Tigliano before 1200, when Abbot Ambrogio issued nine leases, all meant to last seven years and all regarding pieces of the donicatum of the abbey, on 6 and 7 October of that year.34 They need to be scrutinized at some length. Was the grant of temporary leases the long-­standing farming regime at Tigliano, with the difference that that grant was written down this time (or, at least, that the related charter has been preserved in the archive)? Or was it, on the contrary, a form of land management that was introduced in 1200 for the first time? There is no definitive answer to these questions due to the lack of evidence; we do not even know whether the nine leases covered the whole extent of the demesne or not, although a comparison with later sources suggests that the donicatum at Tigliano—­provided that its overall size stayed more or less the same, which is far from clear—­was much bigger than the parcels involved in the early-­thirteenth-­century leasing out.35 What we can say is that no corvée obligation is ever attested at Tigliano, nor do we have clues to the existence of wage labour, which is indeed very rare in Tuscany up to the fifteenth century and even then quite marginal (to this I shall return in Chapter  3). All in all, I am inclined to think that the demesne at Tigliano may well have been cultivated ordinarily through the concession of some type of temporary lease agreements (this will still be the case in the 1290s).36 The reason for their recording in 1200 may have lain in the remarkably burdensome renders that were requested on that occasion, as well as in the need to secure their regular delivery. Rents were indeed heavy in 1200. All the nine locationes were granted in exchange for a fixed rent in wheat, and each of them indicates the precise size of the demesne plot which was in the process of being rented out. By

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  69 Table 1  Rents in wheat from the donicatum of Tigliano Rents in wheat (ad rectum st. florentinum)

Ratio between rents and the seed-­corn that could be sown on each plot

16 7½ 12 5 4 6 6 4 6

55 24 45 15 10 24 24 14 24

3.4 3.2 3.7 3 2.5 4 4 3.5 4

comparing these two data, it is possible to make an estimate of the average agricultural output of the donicatum at Tigliano. Let us have a look, first, at Table 1 which summarizes the content of the locationes: With all the caveats that we need to bear in mind when estimating land productivity (cf. above, Square and capacity measures), it can still be proposed that Abbot Ambrogio demanded from tenants between two and a half and four times the quantity of seed-­corn that could be sown on each plot of the donicatum. We would need to know how much of the overall produce a tenant could keep for himself after paying rent—­which we cannot, unfortunately, for the gross yield of the single parcels of Tigliano is totally unknown. But there are at least two points that can be made. First, it is likely that tenants were left with a very small fraction of the harvest, and that most of the produce of the donicatum went to the domini, the monastic community. Let us assume, for instance, that the gross output of the donicatum was twice the rents demanded, so that it was split in two equal parts between the landlord and the leaseholders; this would indicate a seed-­yield ratio between 6:1 and 8:1—far too high a return by early-­thirteenth-­century standards. Yields were probably lower, and the landowner’s share higher; after all, this was not uncommon in medieval and early modern Tuscany.37 All the same—­and this is my second point—­it can be proposed that yields were not low around Tigliano; otherwise, one would struggle to believe that Settimo tenants, however destitute they might have been, were prone to accept working conditions that were so unfavourable to them; and the land in the area around Lastra is good land by Tuscan standards. All in all, a 37  Examples in Berengo, Nobili (cf. the Introduction, note 18 and below).

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Size of the pieces of donicatum in Tigliano leased out in 1200 (ad rectum st. florentinum)

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38  A recent overview (albeit focused on the early Middle Ages) is Jarrett, ‘Outgrowing’. For yields being above 3:1 in the Duecento cf. Montanari, ‘Rese’; Menant, Campagnes, pp. 341–3; Cortonesi and Piccinni, Medioevo, p. 26; Panero, ‘Rese’. I first discussed yields at Tigliano in Tabarrini, ‘Monastère’ and I now believe I overestimated them. 39 I detailed all this in Tabarrini, ‘Monastère’ and in Cella, Mastruzzo and Tabarrini, ‘Elenchi’.

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seed-­yield ratio of 4:1 or 5:1 (the best-­case scenario one could generally hope for in the central medieval period) seems plausible.38 Tenants at Tigliano appear to have been under much pressure in 1200; it can be thought that they might have resorted to credit in order to pay rent, by adding to the harvest of their holding(s) the wheat they had borrowed, or an equivalent sum of money. Credit constitutes an important matter, and I shall flesh it out in the next section and in the general conclusion. For now, it is sufficient to note that the risks entailed by years of bad harvest must have appeared negligible; otherwise, the demand for high fixed rents would have soon proved unsustainable. It follows that Tigliano suited well the intensive cultivation of wheat—­quite an exception in the panorama of the Florentine countryside. The particular type of tenancy relation emerging here was thus clearly determined, or at least strongly influenced, by the conditions of the soil: evidently productive, well watered by the Arno but arguably protected from its floods as well. Finally, it needs stressing that at the beginning of the thirteenth century we are able to see in more detail the social group to which people like Vivolo and Martino, the peasants of the above-­cited scriptum colonatus, probably belonged. The reforms did not stop at Tigliano. We now need to go back along the Arno in the direction of Florence, and then move south for about 2 km until we reach the already-­cited parish of S. Martino alla Palma, west of Scandicci, whose curtis constituted an ancient fiscal domain. It was first conceded to  the imperial abbey of S.  Clemente a Casauria, close to Pescara on the Adriatic coast, in the mid-­ninth century and was then taken over by the Badia at some point between the tenth and the eleventh centuries. The monastic community of Settimo was entitled to collect tithes there and to exercise signorial rights over its tenants, who had to abide by the abbot’s justice, swear allegiance to him, probably perform military obligations and—­as we shall see—­days of labour.39 From an ecological point of view, S. Martino is a prevalently woodland area, undoubtedly less productive in comparison to the terrains bordering on the Arno at Tigliano, and more suitable for tree crops (fruit trees and vineyards are clearly dominant even today) than for wheat.

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

We come to know about the forms of land management that were adopted at S. Martino alla Palma only in the first half of the thirteenth century. The reason for this quite sudden unravelling lies in the debts of the abbey, which we need to frame as clearly as possible for they constitute an important element of my overall interpretative scheme. In 1202 Abbot Ambrogio abolished for ten years the renders due by a group of peasants ‘de villa et cappella Sancti Martini’, who gave in return £255 in denarii (minus 3 s. and 6 d.) with which Ambrogio was supposed to pay off the debts of the monastery. Ambrogio reserved for the Badia the rights to high justice, the entry costs of new contracts, plus the tithes and offerings delivered by the local tenantry. It was also specified that nobody at S. Martino was allowed to sell or pledge any holdings to Florentine citizens.40 That is significant; it testi­fies to the rising economic power of 40 ASFi, Cestello, 1201 March 6 (Florentine style).

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Map 7  The Badia a Settimo: Tigliano and S. Martino alla Palma

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41  On the Liber Censuum cf. the Register in Volkert-­Pfaff, ‘Der Liber Censuum’, pp. 345–51. On taxes imposed by the Papacy see variously Gottlob, Die Servitientaxe, chapter 3; Lunt, Papal Revenues I, 10–2; D’Haenens, L’abbaye, pp. 124–39 (which is focused, however, on the fourteenth century); a fairly recent overview (which is based, however, only on secondary literature) is Simonnot, Les papes, pp. 432–40 and 464–81. 42 Dameron, Episcopal Power, pp. 85–9. 43  Cf. Faini, ‘Uomini’, p. 23 and 49.

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urban classes, which the religious elite was endeavouring to stem—­in vain, as we shall see in a moment. The cause of indebtedness is not stated. The main factor that is likely to have contributed to it—­ and that is positively attested—­ was monetary debasement, as it lessened the value of cash rents and, subsequently, the purchasing power of at least some of the renders collected by the Badia. It can be assumed, too, that Settimo contributed financially to the construction of the new circuit of city walls over the final quarter of the twelfth century, as other Florentine churches did (cf. the Introduction). We can exclude, on the contrary, that the Papacy imposed any taxes on Settimo: the collection of papal revenues redacted in 1192–3, the Liber Censuum, does not include the Badia, and in general exactions from Rome became regular and substantial only over the course of the thirteenth century.41 Finally, the Florentine bishopric does not appear to have taxed local monasteries.42 I would thus propose that the combination of debasement and taxation from the commune created a debt spiral from which the monastic community was not able to escape (and to which interest rates are most likely to have contributed, as we will see). In September 1212, so a few months after the expiration of the ten-­year exoneration we have just discussed, the new abbot of Settimo, Martino, pledged, for six years, around seventy people who cultivated the monastery lands at S.  Martino alla Palma, along with their holdings and renders, in order to pay off the debts of the Badia. The beneficiaries were Ubertino, son of Guido Guernieri, and Bernardo, son of Gianni della Filippa—­both members of the Florentine consular elite43—who gave Martino £300. The Badia kept the church of S.  Martino and reserved some signorial rights; furthermore, it was allowed to collect half of the renders that had been pledged, but that half had to be diminished by the money necessary to redeem those same renders, ‘in readquirendo’. After six years, the Badia would retrieve what had been ceded out, and be freed—­through a notarized charter—­from any obligations towards Ubertino and Bernardo; the profits earned by the two of them during that period were regarded as an adequate

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44 ASFi, Cestello, 1211 September 14 (this is the archival shelf-­mark; but the year recorded on the parchment is 1212). A transcription of the document in Tabarrini, ‘Monastère’. 45  An overview of implicit interest rates in Gaulin and Menant, ‘Crédit’. 46  For mentions of servi et ancillae within diplomas cf. Collavini, ‘La condizione’, pp. 338–40.

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pay-­off. The pledge is followed by an inventory of the peasants and the ­renders involved.44 This lengthy text is complicated and in one point even contradictory. Why was the monastery required to redeem its tenants, if the earnings cumulated by Ubertino and Bernardo over six years were said to be sufficient to pay off any outstanding debts? It can be proposed that the money sum ‘in readquirendo’ was supposed to cover implicit interest rates, or maybe the costs of the improvements which the two creditors of the Badia may have decided to make to the landed estates that Settimo gave them out as a pledge, so that they could increase their revenues.45 What is more important to us, however, is that this document uncovers the obligations of some strata of rural society that had been up to then almost completely invisible. Settimo tenant cultivators are all presented in 1212 as highly dependent: homines, coloni and even servi et ancillae, that is, slaves. In all likelihood, servi et ancillae constitutes a formulaic expression modelled on imperial diplomas, with little descriptive value—­it is not evidence of the existence of actual slaves at S.  Martino.46 At any rate, it is beyond doubt that those homines were burdened with dues that were significantly different from those owed by libellarii. In addition to small money rents, pork shoulders, poultry and bundles of twigs (scope) the list that follows the pledge mentions 1,490 corvée-duties, operae, in all likelihood days of labour that the tenantry had to perform on the monastery demesnes (the absence of fortifications around S. Martino alla Palma makes it unlikely that they were castle-­linked duties). Labour was subdivided among tenants in different quantities, from seven annual operae per person to fifty-­two. Peak demand was arguably reached during harvest season, but we can assume that some dues were spread over the year more regularly: that must have been the case with the cultivation of grapes and olives, which require almost-­daily care (cf. below). Corvées could be fairly heavy, therefore, and their total sum was remarkably high. But the 1212 document shows us only the duties that were pledged to the Florentine Ubertino and Bernardo, and we have reasons to believe that the monks of Settimo could count on a larger workforce in the early Duecento. The archives of S.  Frediano in Cestello have preserved

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47 ASFi, Cestello, ‘Sec. XIII’ (ph. 27,400). A transcription of the document in Tabarrini, ‘Monastère’. 48  Cf. Tabarrini, ‘Monastère’; Cella, Mastruzzo and Tabarrini, ‘Elenchi’. 49  Cf. the inventory of monastic charters redacted between the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries: Lasinio, Un antico inventario. 50  The first list is ASFi, Cestello, ‘Sec. XIII’ (ph. 27403), recto; the second list is ibid., verso; the third one is ASFi, Cestello, ‘Sec. XIII’ (ph. 27405), recto. They are edited and discussed in Cella, Mastruzzo and Tabarrini, ‘Elenchi’.

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another inventory of dues and renders owed by the tenantry of the Badia at S. Martino alla Palma. It has no date, no preamble and no notarial subscription. It looks like a comprehensive list, whose entries are divided into three sections in decreasing order of scale: the first enumerating the duties expected from the mascie (a vernacular word for the Latin mansus), so from extensive farming units; then from tenant households, casae; and finally from single cultivators. We find the same type of agricultural renders observed in the 1212 inventory, but in larger quantities: from each mascia the monastery received 156, seventy-­ eight, or fifty-­ two annual operae manuales—­that is, respectively, 3, 1.5, and 1 days of labour per week. Casae and single cultivators provided 104, fifty-­two, and twenty-­five annual workdays. The total sum is 1,995 corvées.47 Some of those tenants were pledged in 1212, together with roughly three-­ quarters of the services they owed to the Badia. On these grounds, I have proposed elsewhere that the inventory was redacted shortly before 1212 and was probably part of a general survey of Settimo lands at S. Martino alla Palma, which was aimed at collecting the information necessary to choose what should be included in the pledge.48 The big question that would need to be answered now is—­were tenants and renders actually returned to the Badia when the pledge expired? One could think that this certainly was the case, since the 1212 document mentions—­as we noted above—­the profits made by Ubertino and Bernardo as the sole compensation for the money the two had lent to Abbot Martino. But other clues point in the opposite direction. The notarized charter that was supposed to ratify the restitution of the pledge has not been preserved in the archives of S. Frediano in Cestello; this does not prove that it never existed, however, for many parchments have been lost.49 But we do find three further lists of the renders owed by some tenants at S.  Martino alla Palma, which—­again—­have no date, but were probably redacted after the arrival of the Cistercians at Settimo, around 1236–7 and between 1245 and 1250.50 They register only a handful of peasant households, who were demanded to perform light dues, including a few

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51  On all this cf. again Cella, Mastruzzo and Tabarrini, ‘Liste’. On the investments made by the Cistercians towards the mid-­thirteenth century cf. Pirillo, ‘Il fiume’. On the fourteenth century cf. Jones, ‘Le finanze’; La Roncière, ‘A monastic clientele’. Examples of mezzadria contracts at S. Martino alla Palma can be found in ASFi, Compagnie religiose soppresse, no. 480, fols. 67v and 68r (1320 November 24), 133r and 133v (1326 December 14), 168r (1332 November 10); no. 482, fol. 114r (1334 June 29).

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operae. But those operae had been converted into money rents, and the ­second and third lists are concerned with the collection of withheld renders, so with renders that the monastic community was endeavouring to retrieve. I have thus proposed that the 1212 pledge had turned into an outright sale, and that these three inventories constitute the surviving evidence of a general survey that the Cistercians took in order to make an assessment of the assets that Settimo still owned at S. Martino alla Palma. Indeed, during the 1240s and the 1250s many charters attest the purchases of land at S. Martino on the part of the Cistercians, mostly from small local landowners. As a result, what was left of the ancient curtis after 1212 was incorporated, around the middle of the century, into a new extensive estate, which was not composed of the same plots of land that the curtis still possessed in the early Duecento. That we are dealing with a new farm seems to be further confirmed by the forms of land management that the Cistercians adopted; labour-­services are no longer attested after the 1230s, and in the first half of the fourteenth century S.  Martino alla Palma was structured as a large podere mezzadrile.51 The debts of the abbey in the early thirteenth century produced a change in the characteristics of the documentation. One can posit that indebtedness was the reason for the issuing, and the writing down, of the burdensome short-­term leases of the monastic demesne at Tigliano; and it certainly caused the pledge of a large fraction of tenants and renders at S. Martino alla Palma. That way, we can observe in great detail the obligations of tenant cultivators, those who belonged to the lower rungs of peasant society. The case of S.  Martino can get us also a little further. Even though we do not know when corvée-duties had been imposed for the first time, I would assume that the inventories redacted in 1211–2 and 1212 witness to the survival of the early medieval bipartite estate well into the central medieval period; this farming regime is all the more likely to have been present from the earliest times as S. Martino was part of the Carolingian fiscal domain and was then administered by the imperial abbey of Casauria—­that is, the typical context in which the sistema curtense was adopted.

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The Chianti Region: S. Michele di Passignano The archives of S. Michele di Passignano have preserved more than 1,000 parchments for the twelfth century alone and more than 500 for the first thirty years of the thirteenth century, which makes them the richest repository of Florentine documents for the period that we are investigating (cf. also Chapter 1). That is important; unlike other archival sets—­including Settimo—­Passignano allows us to build up some arguments on statistical grounds, with particular regard to the analysis of the documentation that can fully reveal the characteristics of peasant obligations—­but the same can be said for the indebtedness of monastic institutions, and its size. We do not know much about the origins of the monastery of S. Michele (c. 20 km south of Florence, although at least twice that by road), traditionally placed in the late ninth century. The number of its documents sharply

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By the middle of the thirteenth century, however, the classic manor had disappeared. It was impossible to cultivate the demesne through the per­ form­ance of labour-­services that had first been suspended (in 1202), then pledged (in 1212) and finally lost—­probably—­to the Florentines Ubertino and Bernardo. The fate of the monastic demesne at S. Martino alla Palma is somewhat obscure, as we are only informed about the pledging away of the tenants’ dues. I would assume that the farming units that composed it were leased out in exchange for a rent, possibly the sort of share tenures that in the fourteenth century took on the shape of a fully-­formed podere mezzadrile; this contributes to explaining, moreover, why the residual corvées had been converted into the delivery of cash by the 1230s. Also, the dis­ mant­ling of demesnes must have been important in terms of cost-­saving and therefore of reduction in the size of debts, as the direct exploitation of an estate means that maintenance fully weighs on landowners. A final note regards the environment. Obvious as it may seem, it needs further stressing that environmental conditions determined productive decisions (monoculture of wheat vs. polyculture) and subsequently impacted on the choice of the forms of land management: fixed rents at Tigliano, corvée-duties and—­later on—­mezzadria agreements at S. Martino alla Palma. The logic underpinning these choices will become clear as we proceed, and I shall try to set out a comprehensive explanatory model in the general conclusion. For now, it is time to leave the surroundings of Florence and head south, to the heart of the Chianti region.

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52  Cf. Kurze, ‘Passignano’ and Salvestrini, ‘San Michele’. On Abbot Gregorio as the likely author of one of Giovanni Gualberto’s hagiographies cf. Angelini, ‘Gregorio’. 53 Cortese, Signori, p. XVII; Conti, La formazione III/2, 143–4. 54  Cf. Conti, La formazione I, 125–33.

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increases only from the 980s; we need to wait until 1049 to find mention of the Vallombrosans at Passignano, that is, of the congregation that has held the abbey up to the present day. Passignano played a central role within the Order, as it was richer than the head monastery of S. Maria di Vallombrosa and in a sort of spiritual competition with it, since the mortal remains of the founder of the Order, Giovanni Gualberto, are at S. Michele. Moreover, it was one of the abbots of Passignano, Gregorio (1191–7) who actively promoted the cult of Giovanni, probably wrote one of his five known Vitae, and finally managed to obtain his canonization from Pope Celestine III in 1193.52 The documentation of Passignano covers, for the most part, the areas corresponding to the pievi of Sillano and Campoli, plus the valleys of the rivers Pesa and Greve and a small section of the Valdarno between Incisa in Val D’Arno and Pian Alberti (S. Giovanni Val D’Arno). We shall concentrate above all on the territory falling under the remit of the parish of S. Biagio, just below the monastery; a zone of c. 730 ha, occupied by the south-­western slopes of the hills separating the basins of the Pesa and the Greve; and a zone where terrains are mostly calcareous, and therefore suitable for vineyards and olive-­trees but generally poor in nutrients. Arable lands are—­as is indeed typical of the Florentine countryside as a whole, as we have seen—­ confined to the valley floors of the rivers.53 Passignano has attracted over the years the attention of many important scholars, but the one whose studies are most relevant to this section is Elio Conti. His analysis focused on the relations between tenants and land­ owners in the eleventh and—­albeit in less detail—­twelfth centuries. One of his findings needs stressing here—­that is, the strikingly low level of the renders demanded by the abbey from its tenants in surviving contracts over the period he examined. These were mostly mixed rents, consisting in a few staia of grain, wine, and a handful of denarii, along with the performance of some labour-­services. This was part of Conti’s pessimistic view of Chianti medieval peasantry, who could not have complied with any heavier demands, if they were to stay above the line of self-­subsistence.54 Conti had the merit to highlight the negative effects of overpopulation during a historical phase in which the Smithian division of labour still was

Map 8  Passignano

Map by: Taylor Zaneri

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55  Cf. Wickham, ‘Vendite’. 56  See the charters in ASFi, Passignano, 1151 March 10, 1151 September 20, 1154 January 24, 1158 June 12, 1166 February 12, 1168 October 18, 1195 January 12, to which we can add the four labour-­services that are listed in an inventory written at the bottom of a sale: ibid., 1178 February 13. 57  Tabarrini, ‘Le “operae” e i giorni’.

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minimal, probably because the city manufacturing sector was not developed yet and the connections between Florence and its countryside remained relatively weak. It is however important to make at least two general remarks. First of all, as Chris Wickham argued, leasing out land did not necessarily serve an economic—­that is, profit-­oriented—­purpose, but possibly a primarily social and/or political one, namely the creation of clienteles and the reinforcement of signorial authority (in fact, the history of Passignano’s ‘feudal’ networks is neglected in Conti’s book).55 As a consequence, we need to wonder—­again—­whether libelli, and even tenimenta addressed to cultivators, are a good guide to the patterns of land management. I shall try to provide an answer by focusing on the second half of the twelfth century, the period in which the monastic community of Passignano began to modify the obligations of its tenants, and I shall take the demand for corvée-work as my standpoint. That way, we will be able to observe that different types of sources provide different types of information, and that only some of those sources are a point of entry into the working conditions of the lower strata of rural society. Among the 500-­plus charters in the archives of Passignano from 1150 to 1199 we can find eighty-­four libelli and tenimenta; only seven of them include a demand for labour. The total quantity of days resulting from these contracts is 30 and a half, an average of roughly a third of a day per lease.56 Therefore, we could easily conclude that corvée-duties represented a very marginal form of exploitation of the rural workforce. But again, similarly to Settimo, Passignano has also preserved a couple of inventories of customary rents and services which change the picture displayed by libelli and tenimenta. Let us now examine these two inventories in detail. I shall basically summarize here the observations I made in an earlier article regarding their palaeographical characteristics, and how these were related to their content.57 On 19 September 1179, Rinaldo di Malapresa (member of the Firidolfi, a family of local lords) and his wife Berta sold to the abbot of S. Michele, Ugo, the holdings of two people, Boncio and Rognoso, located in the village of Rovenzano, together with other lands nearby. Rinaldo and Berta promised

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58 ASFi, Passignano, 1179 September 29. On this document cf. Collavini, ‘I poteri’, pp. 185–6. 59  On the Figline disputes cf. Wickham, ‘Ecclesiastical dispute’, pp. 7–93; on the other conflicts see Id., Courts, pp. 201–2 (see in particular note 77). The document concerning the murder is ASFi, Passignano, 1193 June 30. Chris Wickham doubted that this was a murder, and read ‘propter necē’ as propter necessitatem (cf, Id., Courts, ch. 5, note 83); I am inclined to agree with Simone Collavini, who read propter necem (cf. Collavini, ‘I poteri’, p. 200, note 49). For the 1197 creditors cf. the list of credits and debts published in Tabarrini, ‘When’, Appendix, pp. 423–34 (cf. below).

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not to cause damage to the castle of Poggio al Vento, to respect the rights of the abbot in the curia of Passignano and to compensate for the damages already caused by their men from the castrum of Roffiano; the document ends with the return promises made by Ugo to Rinaldo.58 This charter constitutes the first extensive agreement between S. Michele and its aristocratic lay neighbours for the control over landed estates and the exercise of signorial rights in the area encompassing the Val di Pesa and the Val di Greve—­ indeed, this is the first document unequivocally pointing to the existence of a fully-­formalized signoria held by the monks of S. Michele. There is more to that. Like Settimo, Passignano appears to have been highly indebted towards the end of the twelfth century. The abbey had to spend a lot of money for various reasons. It was involved in an exhausting dispute with the bishop of Fiesole and the parish church of Figline over the ownership of two Figlinese churches (1170–95); the contrasts with the lay rivals of the monastery escalated, thus becoming what Passignano charters overtly (and quite unusually) call guerra (‘war’) in the years 1192–5; and in the period 1195–8, Passignano had to deal with another dispute, this time with a local landowner named Borgnolino di Borgno, over the restitution of money loans and the ownership of lands and cattle. Here we are not concerned with the details of these conflicts, which have been investigated by Chris Wickham; what we know is that they cost money. It is significant that in 1197 three of the main opponents of S. Michele featured as its creditors; and indeed we know that in 1193 Passignano had to pay a very high fine for the murder of one member of the Firidolfi, amounting to £430.59 If we also consider that this was the period in which prices were rising, it becomes easy to see that all those factors rendered it necessary to survey the annual rents and services owned by the monks, particularly in the area where the competition with the Firidolfi was strongest. This is the context in which our two inventories were redacted. The first one is a folder made up of six parchments, with no date (which may have been written on the initial folium, or else on one of the initial folia that have got lost); an analysis of the

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Mancone [must give] 9 d. and one offering [oblia] and one barrel of wine, three loaves of bread and one labour-­ service with oxen. Vivolo Boccacampana [must give] 3 d., one loaf of bread and half a barrel of wine. The sons of Giovanni the blacksmith [must give] 10 d., three loaves of bread and a pair of chickens.62

This exemplifies the very moderate requirements that the main writer of the inventory registered; they were a substantial source of income for S. Michele only when all put together. But even then—­and even though the folder is incomplete and does not encompass all of S. Michele properties—­the monastery could not have relied only on those rents. It remains close to impossible to think that the monastic community collected only 20 st. of cereals (a sum that can be obtained by putting together the renders in wheat, barley, and spelt mentioned in the folder) and little more than thirty barrels of

60 See the regestum in Conti, La formazione I, 277–82 and the remarks in Tabarrini, ‘Le “opere” ’, p. 386 and note 15. The folder is in ASFi, Strozziane Uguccioni, a quaderno, ‘Sec. XII’ (cited henceforth as Quaderno). 61  Tabarrini, ‘Le “operae” ’, p. 386 and following. 62  Quaderno, fol. 1v, lines 10–11.

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names included within, however, indicates that it was written down at some point during the 1180s, and probably not after 1190.60 The folder constitutes an exceptional documentary type in the panorama of Passignano twelfth-­century sources. Because of the loss of one or more opening folia we do not know whether it was validated by any notaries, but I would assume it was not; the entries abruptly stop on the verso of the final page, without either a subscription or a list of witnesses, and in general the mise-­en-­page of the text is accurate but informal. The handwriting shows that it was redacted, for the most part, by a single scribe—­perhaps the ‘treasurer’ (camerarius) of the abbey, Olivo—­who was however helped by other people, arguably five or six monks. Moreover, the text was double-­ spaced, so that extra information could be added between the lines—­as it often was, as we shall see. All this appears to demonstrate that the folder was the result of local surveys taken by different members of the monastic community, who were in all likelihood entrusted with the collection of different pieces of information on the behalf of the abbot, and with their successive gathering on a single document. The folder enumerates c. 250 individuals and families.61 Let us have a look, first, at one of the entries recorded on the lines of the list:

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63  The ‘ancient staium of Passignano’ was c. 8 kg. Cf. Conti, La formazione I, 101–2. 64  It can be assumed that monks were between 1/7 and 1/10 of the total population of the castle of Passignano, which can be estimated in c. 210 people in 1233; cf. Plesner, L’emigrazione, pp. 87–8. 65 Conti, La formazione I, 125–6, note 3. The leases including high rents in kind mentioned by Conti are in ASFi, Passignano, 1134 July 21 (24 st. of cereals), 1144 June 18 (28 st.) and 1170 January 30 (28 st.), to which we can add 1192 March 15 (33 st.) and 1194 January 21 (33 st.). This means that rents swung between 192 and 264 kg of cereals. 66  Quaderno, fol. 1v, line 1 (Brunetto), line 4 (sons of Giovanni di Domenico), fol. 2v, line 1 (Martinello), fol. 2r, line 9 (Alfieri).

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wine and c. twenty-­six urcia (jars) of wine must from what certainly constituted an important part of its landed properties. 20 st. with the staium of Passignano (= c. 160 kg)63 was a quantity with which one could feed a single person for about three months and, although we do not know the dimensions of barrels and urcia, it seems really unlikely that less than sixty containers per year were enough to provide nourishment to a monastic community composed, hypothetically, of twenty to thirty people. Sale on the market, moreover, would have been effectively impossible, so far from the city.64 This confirms Elio Conti’s remarks—­that is, twelfth-­century leases from the archive of Passignano seldom included high rents (he also noted, nevertheless, that when renders were indeed burdensome they were exclusively in kind; this is a point I shall come back to).65 If we turn to the text written on the spaces between the lines, however, the picture we have drawn so far changes, and the pressure that the monks put on the tenantry looks heavier. Those spaces were filled with mentions of labour-­services. Their total sum was quite remarkable, consisting in 832 and a half days of labour per year. It is not easy to tell whether these corvées consisted in agriculture-­linked duties or else signorial ones (such as castle defence, guard service, wall maintenance). It is beyond doubt, however, that at least a part of them was intended for the cultivation of monastic demesnes. One hundred and twenty-­two and a half days of labour had to be performed with oxen, cum bovis, an explicit reference to the use of draught animals. One can reasonably argue, as a result, that tenants contributed to land preparation, tilling and ploughing by hand, too (all these operations were probably part of the operae manuales mentioned in the text), during the most intense months of the agricultural year. This was true, in all likelihood, for the most-­burdened tenants of all: just to make a few examples, Brunetto di Rappolo and a certain Alfieri had to provide seventy-­two workdays each (of which six cum bovis), the sons of Giovanni di Domenico 106 (seven cum bovis) and Martinello from Rovenzano fifty-­two (four cum bovis).66

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67 ASFi, Passignano, ‘Sec. XI’ (ph. 2902). The total number of workdays has been calculated by Conti, La formazione I, 278; for the dating of the two lists (those on the recto and the verso of the parchment) see Tabarrini, ‘Le “operae” ’, pp. 394–5.

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The second inventory that we are to examine tells us a similar story. It is undated, but was certainly redacted during the twelfth century; the names of two tenants seem indeed to suggest that the list was more or less contemporary to the folder we have just discussed. On the recto of the parchment we find mention of thirty-­nine individuals or groups of people (to which we have to add seven further entries that were cancelled) who lived in or close to Monteficalle (now Montefioralle), the core of the Firidolfi’s signoria, not far from the source of the river Greve. They all had to deliver low rents in money and kind, which resemble the renders enumerated on the lines of the folder. The verso, instead, matches the text written between those lines. It contains a short note regarding the operae that had to be performed at the monastic estate-­centre (curia) of Sillano, north-­east of S. Michele, by three tenant-­houses and by nine people gathered in three groups. Each of these units had to provide thirty-­six days of manual labour plus two with oxen, except for the ‘house of Martignone’, who owed only four days. The total number of workdays was 194.67 The problems we discussed while examining the folder are relevant here too—­apart from ploughing services, how many of those manual operae were destined for agriculture? Again, the most sensible answer is that some of these certainly were. It is worth noting that each of the tenant-­units recorded on the verso of the parchment was supposed to perform services for little more than one month; one can assume that workdays were concentrated during the weeks straddling May and June, when the harvesting of wheat takes place. However uncertain the ratio between ‘manorial’ and ‘signorial’ dues is, the two inventories allow us to make some significant insights concerning the patterns of lord-­peasant relations. Corvée-labour can be detected only through documents redacted at exceptional times—­in this case, when signorial conflicts made it crucial to survey the customary obligations of the tenantry. The numerous libelli and tenimenta preserved in the archives of S.  Michele are thus misleading, as they can induce us to think that the request for workdays was marginal: thirty and a half days of labour in eighty-­four leases against 1,026 and a half in only two lists. This remarkable quantity of corvée-work reveals that the monastic community relied on demesne farming as its major source of agricultural produce for

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68 For the gastaldus cf. ASFi, Passignano, 1182 April 5 (ph. 6310). The two documents regarding monastic full property at Rovenzano and Matraio are ibid., 1195 April 8 (ph. 7083) and 1195 April 8 (ph. 7084).

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consumption and sale; as a result, the demand for labour is crucial to fill out the picture of the abbey incomes as a whole. Despite this centrality of demesne farming, Passignano demesnes appear to have been fragmented; indominicata and terrae monasterii often bordered on lands owned or held by other people. There were only few places in which the demesne might have been fairly compact, and it is worth discussing two examples of this. One of the tenants recorded in the folder whom we met before, Martinello, had to perform fifty-­two days of corvée per year. Martinello came from the village of Rovenzano, which was involved in the agreement between S. Michele and the Firidolfi in 1179. At least one document informs us about the presence of an administrator of the monastic estates at Rovenzano—­a gastaldus—­and this is significant, as gastaldi were often entrusted with the supervision of corvée-work. Safer evidence comes from a charter dating to 1195, in which a parcel of land was said to be located ‘under the road of the donicato of the afore-­mentioned monastery’ and was surrounded on three sides by land of the abbey (the fourth boundary is not stated). The second example is related to the operae to be performed at the curia of Sillano. The curia included the curtis of Matraio, where two representatives of S. Michele managed to obtain (again in 1195) ‘all the land and the landed goods [. . .] in the culto donicato of Matraio, in the place called Campomagio’, surrounded on every side by the ‘land of the afore-­mentioned monastery’.68 These two examples not only confirm that the mentions of full property can correspond to demesnes, as was the case with Settimo; what is more, they suggest that the operae recorded on the folder and the verso of our second inventory encapsulated some agricultural duties, since demesnes overlapped with the places for which we have evidence of the demand for labour-­services. The years straddling the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries were not just a phase of surveying; surveys were the ground on which reforms of land management were built. In Settimo, it seems more appropriate to speak—­at least until the Cistercians—­of a forced change that resulted from the enduring state of indebtedness that affected the abbey. In Passignano, instead, there are unequivocal signs that the monastic community strove to actively modify the extant patterns of landholding. This will be fleshed out in the following pages.

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69  Cf. Kotel’nikova, Mondo, p. 68 ff.; Conti, Le proprietà, pp. XVIII–­XIX. 70  Faini, ‘Passignano’, p. 140 and 142.

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It is only over the thirteenth century that Florentine ecclesiastical land­ owners started to demand rents in kind more consistently than rents in money, but the first signs of this development can be traced back to the 1190s.69 This applies to Passignano, too, and it is evidence of the monks’ desire to take part directly in the market of agricultural products. As a result of the price surge analysed at the beginning of this chapter, selling grain was certainly becoming increasingly profitable. Enrico Faini has estimated that the abbey of S. Michele di Passignano spent £1,400 on the purchase of land over the last quarter of the twelfth century; since the monastery could collect £150 in a single year from the sale of wheat, it becomes plausible to predict an income of £3,750 in twenty-­five years, with a return on the invested capital of +63.7% (c. 2.5% per year). We need to be cautious with these figures, as the variability in the number of purchases of land from year to year (and, subsequently, of the potential sales of the produce) and the instability of prices make it difficult to assess the real incomes of S. Michele. Nevertheless, Faini’s figures do demonstrate that land was a good investment; not as good as credit (with interest rates at 20% per year, as we shall see), but still a profitable one—­all the more so for a rural monastery owning many landed properties.70 I have argued that the community of S.  Michele collected marketable grain from its demesnes. Demesne farming still was used in the 1180s, and there is no reason to believe that this was unprofitable or even irrational, as manorial organization has sometimes been labelled. Why so much care in writing down corvée-dues, otherwise? Why not lease out the lands that notaries defined as terrae monasterii? Nor should we forget that labour was a very concrete representation of signorial subordination—­briefly, it was something that landowners would have not ceded away happily. But they did, as we shall see, and the explanation of this fact will be at the core of this section—­and this book in general. The first commutations of labour into new types of renders date to the early 1190s, and involved people living close to Poggio al Vento. In 1191, Diotaiuti and Olivieri di Grigotto agreed to give 33 st. of grain per year in substitution of the previous rent of 10 and a half d., four loaves of bread, a small quantity of wine, four operae manuales and two cum bovis, plus a donkey-­load of grapes in the period of vine-­harvest. In return for this commutation, Abbot Alberto received 40 s. In 1193, then, Domenico,

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71  It is impossible to know how much grain could be contained in one emina in twelfth-­ century Passignano. The term, which appears in the Regula of St Benedict, is discussed by many interpreters of the rule itself. See Du Cange, Glossarium IV, col. 183b. It is likely that its capacity was around a third of a single staium. 72  The two documents are in ASFi, Passignano, 1192 March 15 (but the archivists got the date wrong; this is in fact 1190 March 14, which becomes 1191 in the modern style) and 1193 June 23. 73  For the price of grain in the early Duecento cf. Conti, Le proprietà, p. XIV, note 13.

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Albertinello, Consiglio and Ugieri, sons of Cillone, were exempted from a rent consisting in the performance of seven annual workdays and the delivery of a pair of chickens; from then on, they had to give the abbey 3 st. and one emina (probably a third of a single staium)71 of grain. They also gave Abbot Gregorio 20 s. for the stipulation of the contract. The beneficiaries of both deeds, despite the change in their tenancy agreements, would remain homines and coloni of S. Michele.72 These documents are not so easy to interpret. It is certain that the abbots of Passignano were collecting, via the entry-­fines, money that could be used to pay off a part of the debts of S. Michele; to this end, Alberto and Gregorio appear to have thought it rational to abolish the traditional dues owed by some tenants, and to free them from a handful of labour-­services that forced them to leave their holdings and work on the monastery demesnes. But the abbots of S.  Michele did not give up tenancy lordship, since the addressees of these two commutations kept their status as highly-­dependent tenants of the abbey; in other words, the signoria was simply diminished, not cancelled. This is important for our understanding of corvée-work, which was a significant marker of social subordination; it was necessary to specify that the colonatus would last even if labour was no longer required. What about the economic implications of this shift to new renders? In the first contract, Abbot Alberto seems to have obtained a higher rent. 33 st. means c. 264 kg of cereals, definitely much more than what was necessary to make the four loaves of bread demanded in the preexisting agreement (Conti estimated that one staium of Passignano might have been sufficient to make ten average-­size loaves). The monastery renounced, it is true, money, wine, and operae, but all of them were demanded in remarkably small quantities; it is sufficient to consider that in the early-­thirteenth-­ century Fiorentino a single staium of wheat appears to have cost 2.2 s. (which means that 33 st. = 72.6 s. vs. the 10 d. demanded in the older lease of Diotaiuti and Olivieri).73 Briefly, the disproportion between the old renders and the new ones is evident. As to the second commutation, it is more difficult to determine whether the newly-­introduced obligations were more

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burdensome than the traditional ones, as we do not know what precisely the seven days of labour were for, and also the size of the holdings of Domenico and his brothers. Nonetheless, we can say that this second document, too, testifies to the push, on the part of the monastic community, toward the collection of readily available marketable wheat from rents, and not from demesne farming. And this is part of an overall trend whose explanation will emerge as we move on to the years bestriding the two centuries. The two commutations constitute a clear example of the use of signoria as an economic tool—­signorial power was consciously lessened so that some debts could be paid off. It can be thought that such a solution would have never been adopted if the financial disarray of Passignano had never occurred, and that the changes in the forms of land management that we are beginning to observe were a simple reaction to contingent difficulties. I am not against this view, but one can assume all the same that those difficulties represented an opportunity for landowners to rethink the way their estates had been managed up to that point, and therefore to maximize agricultural profit. Indeed, new agreements were hardly negotiated on equal terms. It is likely that the abbots of Passignano imposed on their coloni—­whose bargaining power must have been quite limited—­disproportionate renders in comparison to what they had demanded up to that point; and in fact, the abolition of the most humiliating request, that concerning corvée-work, may have even been a pretext to justify the imposition of high fixed rents in kind. Two commutations are too few to speak of a pattern of change; but it was necessary to sketch out the logic underpinning them, as it frames the pages that follow. I shall focus on the new abbot of Passignano, Uberto, who intervened in land management with distinct vigour—­a vigour which engendered massive opposition from a part of the monastic community of S. Michele. His story is embedded in the political context of the time, which will be fleshed out so as to display the full array of factors that coalesced in the years bestriding the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, and eventually affected the patterns of landholding in the countryside. In May 1197, Uberto became the new abbot of Passignano; seven years later he was brought to trial with the accusation of having incurred too many debts, thus ruining the monastery; in 1205 he was removed from office and, as a result of papal intervention, even excommunicated. His abbatiate is of particular interest because some of the depositions against him have survived, along with a list of the credits and debts with which the monastery was burdened at the beginning and the end of Uberto’s office.

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74  What follows is taken, for the most part, from Tabarrini, ‘When’ (although here I pay more attention to the commutation of renders). That article includes an edition of the trial roll (made up of four parchments) at pp. 423–34, which I will refer to as Appendix (followed by the number of the parchment). 75  Faini, ‘Passignano’, pp. 141–2. The documents are in ASFi, Passignano, 1198 February 15 (Florentine style) and 1200 October 25.

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This provides us with an exceptional account of a single abbot’s activities, as well as with an insight into the political and economic conjuncture of the years straddling the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. But it has to be stressed that the trial record contains only the declarations of the people accusing the abbot, and we never hear Uberto’s voice, the other side of the story. There are indeed reasons to believe that Uberto’s removal did not depend on debts, but rather on the political and social struggles among which he held office; and this position, albeit from different perspectives, has been advocated in the historiography. Even though the role of non-­ economic factors has to be taken into account, I will argue that Uberto actually was responsible for the financial disarray of S. Michele. This section will therefore discuss at some length the sociopolitical context of Uberto’s abbatiate and will frame it only as an element of the story, not as the cause for it; I shall then move on to monastic finances and how they affected the reforms to land management.74 We do not know anything about Uberto’s election, but it is likely that the competition for the abbatiate had been tough in 1197, since the retiring abbot, Gregorio, had left behind him a long shadow, as can be deduced from his high level of education and his commitment to the promotion of Giovanni Gualberto’s cult (cf. above). Uberto’s background is quite obscure. Enrico Faini suggested that he may have belonged to the rich Florentine family of the Uberti, whose most famous member, Farinata, is well-­known as the protagonist of the tenth canto of Dante’s Inferno. Faini has good ­reasons to claim this. Even the abbot’s name may point to a family link with the Uberti; but what is certainly more significant is that the Uberti re­appeared within Passignano charters in the years 1199 and 1200, right after Uberto’s election and following a century-­long absence from the documents of S.  Michele. The deed dating to 1200, moreover, is of particular interest, as the Uberti sold some of their tenants to the monastery in exchange for the very high sum of £228; the rather unusual quantity of money involved in this transaction perhaps testifies to some sort of alliance between the abbey and the aristocratic family.75

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76  See Faini, ‘Firenze’. 77  On the Macci and the Ubriachi cf. ASFi, Passignano, 1203 May 29. The filii de Ebriaco were also creditors of Abbot Gregorio, i.e. Uberto’s predecessor; Gregorio owed them £6 and 40 s. Cf. Appendix III, line 12; for the Scolari and the Lamberti cf. ibid. II, line 9. 78  Faini, ‘Passignano’, pp. 146–7. 79  See again ASFi, Passignano, 1203 May 29.

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The years around 1200 marked a phase of political turmoil in Tuscany, and probably represented a bad moment for the Uberti family. We have discussed in the Introduction the death of Henry VI in 1197 and the subsequent formation of the anti-­Empire League of Tuscia weakened substantially the authority and effectiveness of the imperial power in the region, thus favouring a reconfiguration of local political factions and also, with regard to Florence, a renewal of the city’s military expansionism into the countryside. One of the outcomes of the creation of the League was the siege of the castle of Semifonte, in Valdelsa, which was captured and destroyed in 1202. This was bad news for Passignano. Abbot Gregorio had made an important investment there in 1192, which was probably aimed at eroding the influence of the patrons of the castle, the Alberti counts, and—­in the long run—­at replacing them with Passignano.76 But there is more to that. Enrico Faini has shown that the Florentine families who lent money to Uberto or acted as his guarantors in the first years of the thirteenth century—­Scolari, Lamberti, Macci, Ubriachi77—would all join the pro-­Empire Ghibelline party in the following decades—­as indeed did the Uberti—­when the fracture with the Guelf bloc, traditionally dating to the year 1216, was formalized. Faini argued that such a fracture may have existed de facto also at the very beginning of the thirteenth century, when Uberto was taking out money loans from this ‘pre-­Ghibelline’ group.78 It would not be surprising if the capitulation and destruction of Semifonte, an act of overt defiance to a seemingly collapsing imperial authority, resulted in a de-­legitimization of Uberto; his creditors were the pro-­Empire families who, arguably, did not share the benefits of the victorious siege. At any rate, Semifonte certainly engendered new economic losses for S. Michele, and has to be added to the matrix of guerre and trials that I mentioned above. Not only did Passignano lose a conspicuous investment there, but—­according to a charter dating to 1203—Uberto was also forced to contract new debts, as he owed money to Uguccione degli Ubriachi ‘in order to pay the libbra to the commune of Florence for the restoration [which, however, was never completed] of Semifonte’.79

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80  On Alberto di Cintoia see Appendix III, lines 15–17 and cf. Plesner, L’emigrazione, p. 110; on the family ‘da Cintoia’ see Lefeuvre, ‘La notabilité’, pp. 207–15. On Gianni di Giannello see Appendix II, line 3 and line 6; see also De Rosa, Alle origini, p. 47 and p. 64, note 98. 81  The estimate cannot be completely exact, as we cannot always distinguish between urban and rural creditors. Cf. Tabarrini, ‘When’, p. 406, note 21. 82 Cf. Appendix I, lines 2–3, for the acattum worth £700; the figure of £617 is recorded ibid., lines 16–18; III, line 33. On signorial powers in Passignano see Collavini, ‘I poteri’; on the 20% annual rate see the document in ASFi, Passignano, 1201 May 5; and cf. Faini, ‘Passignano’, p. 142.

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It seems reasonable to conclude that Uberto’s political relations, rather than his allegedly unwise administration, determined his removal; indebtedness looks like an excuse. Yet this can be doubted. Uberto was able to keep his position for about three years after the end of the siege, which is quite a long time; this suggests that the effects of the war of Semifonte on his position as abbot should not be overestimated. Even more telling, however, is the analysis of his web of creditors. This was not exclusively composed of citizens, and we may well say that the abbot’s fate did not only depend on Florence, nor on one of the urban political factions. Uberto’s main moneylenders were two rural creditors: Alberto di Cintoia, who gave Uberto £600, and Gianni di Giannello, whom we met in Chapter  1. It is notable that Gianni expected to receive most of his money back (£370) in Passignano and only a smaller amount (£100) in his city house; he was probably planning to spend or reinvest the bigger part of his credit in Passignano or its surroundings, which is a revealing piece of evidence about the economic vitality of the castle.80 Furthermore, the list of credits attached to the witnesses’ depositions shows that the money loans granted by Florentine citizens might have been worth at the most £480—less than a third of the total quantity of debts, as we shall see. According to the testimonies of the trial, moreover, Uberto also imposed a datium or acattum on the inhabitants of the castles of Passignano and Poggio al Vento, as well as other neighbouring localities, so as to collect money to pay off the debts of the monastery.81 The datium was worth £617, according to the list of Uberto’s incomes during his first year as abbot, or £700, according to one of the witnesses (the lay brother Tignano). The latter figure is one of the many round numbers with which the depositions are filled, and it is sensible to put more trust in the former; but what is crucial is that a signorial exaction appears to have been more profitable than Florentine credit, all the more so if we consider that interest rates implied by money loans were 20% per year.82 In a nutshell, we should look at Passignano local society as much as we should look at Florence in order to understand Uberto’s story.

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83  Appendix I, lines 29–30, 45–6. 84 ASFi, Passignano, 1192 December 21; cf. Wickham, Courts, p. 202. 85  For the money loan cf. Appendix, line 51. As for the horse, see the copy of the third manu­script which is part of the trial roll ibid., III, critical apparatus, note as and also III, line 34. 86  Salvestrini, ‘San Michele’, p. 122.

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It is possible to deconstruct Uberto’s connections with Florentine politics a bit further, as his links with Siena appear to have been equally important. Two of Uberto’s accusers maintained that Uberto was responsible not just for the financial disarray of S.  Michele, but also for that of the abbey of S.  Donato di Siena, which was one of the Passignano dependencies.83 Among the arbiters of a legal dispute in which Passignano was involved in 1192 we find indeed one Uberto, abbot of S.  Donato di Siena; since Uberto is quite an uncommon name within Passignano documents, we can conclude that we are dealing with the same person.84 Other smaller clues (a money loan taken out in Siena, the sale of a horse)85 go in the same direction: even though the Sienese connections do not rule out the possibility that Uberto came from a Florentine family, they appear to suggest that the abbot’s ousting cannot be seen as a mere reflection of Florentine political history. An important part of Uberto’s career took place elsewhere. But Abbot Uberto may be understood in another way, too. Francesco Salvestrini has emphasized the changing relations between the abbey of S. Michele and S. Maria di Vallombrosa, the head-­monastery of the congregation to which Passignano belonged, and particularly with Abbot Benigno. Benigno was a cleric from Figline who became first the abbot of the Vallombrosan monastery of S. Salvi and then the abbot major of the whole congregation between the end of 1201 and the beginning of 1202. From then on, Benigno endeavoured to reassert the authority of S. Maria over the dependent abbeys of the congregation, so as to strengthen the already existing—­ but in fact unstable—­ hierarchy of the Order. According to Salvestrini, Uberto was the—­ultimately innocent—­victim of this policy. Benigno is believed to have exploited the indebtedness of Passignano as a mere excuse to remove the abbot of the rich, and so relatively independent, monastery of S.  Michele, thus paving the way for his substitution with a more easily-­manageable person.86 I will myself stress later on the role played by Benigno in determining Uberto’s removal. But again, I doubt this was the main reason for it, as the opposition to Uberto and his financial management preceded Benigno. Between 1197 and 1205, Uberto had to take three oaths in which he promised

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87  The oath in front of the monastic community is in ASFi, Passignano, 1199 November 20; that in front of Benigno is ibid., 1204 July 6. The one before Abbot Martino, instead, has not survived; we learn of it thanks to the trial record and to a letter sent by Pope Innocent III. For references to the oath sworn in front of Martino within the trial record see Appendix I, lines 5, 12, 20, 36, 53; for Innocent’s letter see the edition in Alberzoni, ‘Innocenzo III’, Appendice, no. 2 (the original document is in ASFi, Passignano, 1205 April 1). 88 Cf. Appendix I, lines 2, 14, 32, 47, 57. 89  The figure which is reported in Appendix III, line 14, is the result of a rounding (maybe not by chance): £660. The sum I wrote in the text is the one I calculated by adding up the figures of each entry.

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not to exceed a maximum budget for his expenses; he swore first in front of Abbot Martino (Benigno’s predecessor at Vallombrosa), then in the presence of the monastic community of Passignano in 1199 and finally before Benigno himself in 1204.87 It seems thus reasonable to assume that, even though Benigno is likely to have tried to take advantage of the monastic discontent towards Uberto, such a discontent had deeper roots, which must be searched elsewhere. In conclusion, Uberto’s trial was certainly influenced by politics and factional struggles—­between Florentine families or within the Vallombrosan Order; yet politics do not suffice to explain it. This brings us, in the end, to the analysis of Uberto’s management of the finances of Passignano, and to the main question of this section—­ were Uberto’s ac­cusers right? To provide an answer, let us look first at what his accusers claimed with regard to the size of the debt of S. Michele. They gave very discordant figures. The aforementioned Tignano said that the initial deficit was £760; another lay brother, Rodolfino, reported the figure of £700, but he admitted that he had only heard about it (‘ut audivit’). By 1204, about seven years since Uberto had become the abbot of Passignano, the debt of S. Michele had increased substantially, but—­ again—­ its exact quantity remained unclear. According to the lay brother Buongianni, Uberto ruined the assets of the abbey ‘for £1000 and more’; the priest and monk Angelo raised the bar (‘more than £2000’), whereas the monk Ranieri was halfway between the two (‘the monastery is burdened with a new debt of £1500 and more’).88 Due to such evident inconsistencies, one cannot but feel distrustful when reading the depositions. There are however two ways to test their reliability. One is to look at the list of credits and debts attached to the trial record, which reports a debt of £653 and 55 s. in 1197 and of £1169, 2 s., 5 d., 125 modii and 10 st. of wheat, plus 6 st. of barley in 1204 (the presence of debts in kind is important, and I will discuss it in a moment);89 briefly, the debt of Passignano certainly increased (by £516 in seven years), but not as much as

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90  For the sale of Piscille see ASFi, Passignano, 1201 May 16; on the missing subscription of the charter see ibid., 1206 November 20. Cf. Faini, ‘Passignano’, pp. 142–3. It is worth noting that in the fourth manuscript of the trial roll (Appendix III, p. 434, note bi), there is mention of the sale of an ‘estate in Panzano in exchange for £800’—a clear reference to Piscille. I would suggest that the writer was working with the archival documents of Passignano and thus came across the charter concerning Piscille, without knowing that it had not been validated.

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the abbot’s accusers maintained. The second way is to resort, again, to the charters of Passignano in order to calculate whether Uberto actually spent more than he earned. The answer is yes: −£489 and 14 s. due to the purchase of lands and tenants over (approximately) seven years and ten months. It is worth noting that, during an equivalent period of time, Uberto’s successors (Otto, 1205–1207/8, and Geronimo, 1207/8–1219) later made a profit of £345 and 5 s. out of sales. One could object that £489 is far less than £1,169, and that therefore the figures provided during the trial were biased, if not simply invented. But we should not expect the two figures to coincide, as some charters are likely to have got lost, and those that did survive doubtless did not cover the full spectrum of transactions that Uberto was making. We can look at them only with a less pretentious aim—­to confirm or deny the general trend surfacing from the trial record, that is, Uberto spent more than he earned, thus increasing the debt of S. Michele. And they confirm this trend. In at least one case, in fact, Uberto tried to pay off the debts of Passignano by simply selling off its landed properties. In 1201 he issued a sale charter to the pievano of Panzano concerning the vast estate of Piscille, which he was planning to cede away in exchange for the very high figure of £820. The operation, however, was not validated within the prescribed time. One can put forward two explanations for this: either Abbot Benigno refused to subscribe to the charter, or else it was Uberto who changed his mind as to the advisability of actually selling Piscille. The latter possibility looks more plaus­ible, unless we assume that Benigno’s desire to strengthen the political control of Vallombrosa over Passignano was so great that he was ready to let Passignano sink into debt; as we shall see, moreover, Uberto’s character was indeed prone to policy reversals.90 What is certain is that Piscille did not save Uberto from the fierce opposition of some monks and their criticisms about his debt-­spending policy—­which both preceded the sale of Piscille (as is shown by the oaths before Martino and the monks of Passignano) and followed it (for Uberto also had to take an oath in front of Benigno). If we do not want to believe that Uberto became somehow the victim of a real conspiracy, orchestrated by different people over many years, we do have to

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91  Cf. again Faini, ‘Passignano’. 92  See Alberzoni, ‘Innocenzo III’, pp. 298–301; Salvestrini, ‘San Michele’, p. 122.

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give some credibility to his accusers, and accept that he actually increased the debt of Passignano by way of purchasing lands and tenants. What remains to be explained is why he behaved like that and whether he really was a squanderer, as is claimed in the witness record. The answer lies in the economic context in which Uberto operated: selling agricultural products on the market delivered good margins on the purchase of land during the decades straddling the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. Uberto may have tried therefore to pay off the debts of S. Michele by investing money rather than by cutting the abbey’s assets. This is consistent with the fact that, unlike his predecessors, Uberto also took on a conspicuous quantity of debts in kind; this means that he was buying grain on credit, or else that he was granting future harvests in security for money loans. That could be regarded as the reason for the opposition he faced inside Passignano, but also for the support he must have earned—­after all, someone backed his election as abbot in 1197. Nonetheless, the opposing party, which probably judged Uberto’s investments—­we can now use this word—­ too risky, which was reinforced in its claims by the defeat of Semifonte, by Benigno’s ‘interventionist’ approach and—­as Faini rightly argued—­by the spiral of debts created by the high interest rates implied by loans, prevailed in the end.91 In 1204 Uberto was called to S. Maria di Vallombrosa by Benigno, who wanted to supervise his management personally. Uberto went there and apparently promised to follow the orders of the abbot major—­we do not know what their content was. On his way back from Vallombrosa to Passignano, however, Uberto stopped at the monastery of S. Salvi, where he decided not to honour his commitments and instead to appeal to a papal tribunal. A few days later, Benigno went to S. Salvi, where Uberto seemed to regret his own change of mind. Pope Innocent III entrusted the settlement of the dispute to Benigno and two other abbots belonging to the Vallombrosan Congregation; but Uberto asked for a deferment and, after that, he did not show up (these are the reversals I was referring to above). Therefore, on 1 April 1205, in the cloister of S. Michele, Uberto was condemned, removed from the office and then excommunicated.92 To conclude, Uberto’s investments were the cause for his removal. It was easy for his opponents to depict them as a mere expression of squandering, made further worse by political failures. There was however one aspect of

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93  For Alberto and Gregorio cf. above. Uberto’s commutations: ASFi, Passignano, 1198 May 27 (ph. 7311, original and 7312, copy), 1201 November 11 (ph. 7624, original and 7623, copy), 1202 January 28, 1202 March 10, 1202 July 28, 1202 November 18, 1203 January 8, 1203 February 15 (ph. 7759, original and 7758, copy), 1203 December 21, 1204 March 17 (ph. 7865, original and 7866, copy). Geronimo’s: ibid., 1212 December 10, 1213 December 11 and 1214 December 10 (ph. 8927). Otto’s: ibid., 1206 June 29 and 1207 May 30 (although the Latin text is a bit tricky; cf. Tabarrini, ‘When’, p. 418, note 56).

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his economic strategy that would last well beyond his office, and which indeed was not the object of the same sort of contempt that some monks showed towards Uberto’s spending politics. I am speaking of the reforms in monastic land management, which we will look at now. Uberto furthered and hastened the commutation of old renders into new ones, which had started under his predecessors Alberto and Gregorio; he did so more intensely than his successors Otto and Geronimo, too. Between 1198 and 1204, he issued ten charters in which operae, antiqua servitia and pensiones were abolished in return for a fixed rent in kind, which was always constituted by staia of wheat. The addressees of those charters were all to remain homines et coloni of the monastery, except for one document which does not include this clause—­but which still testifies to quite a high level of subjection, as the tenants involved were required to build their new per­man­ent house, the resedium (one of the markers of the colonatus, as we have seen in Chapter  1). In three agreements the beneficiaries were demanded to pay an entry-­fine, introitum (of, respectively, 40, 4 and 10 s.).93 Unfortunately, some essential pieces of information are missing, like the size of the holdings, the quantity of labour or what a pensio precisely consisted of, and it is therefore difficult to assess whether the new renders were more burdensome than the old ones—­but sometimes we do get the impression that this was the case, for the rent was quite high (15, 12, and 16 st.). Uberto’s strategy is nonetheless clear and consistent with his spending policy; the abbot was endeavouring to intensify the collection of marketable grain, even at the expenses of some signorial prerogatives, as financial needs were pressing and some obligations had to be suppressed as a result. In order to do so, he exploited the lower ranks of the tenantry, those who arguably enjoyed only little bargaining power. It is easy to object—­as I mentioned earlier—­that agricultural com­mod­ ities could have been collected from monastic demesnes—­as they were for a long time. In the conclusion, I shall posit that this shift from corvées to rents was mainly due to the will to give tenants incentives to supply more labour by providing them with a stake in the quality and the quantity of the

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94  Appendix I, line 33, 48–9 and 63–5 and the related comments in the text of the article. 95 ASFi, Passignano, 1208 September 13 is to my knowledge the last monastic document in which labour-­services were quantified (two corvées with oxen were recorded at the bottom of a donation made by Priest Simeone to Passignano). On the surveys of the 1260s–1280s cf. Casini, ‘Signoria’, pp. 71–5.

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prod­uce of their holdings. In a corvée-based farming regime, the agricultural output of the demesne all went to the landowner, and this was a disincentive to peasant productivity; in a rent-­based one, instead, the tenantry could keep for itself what was left after the delivery of the rent. As was the case with Settimo, moreover, one can assume that the abolition of labour-­ services entailed the progressive leasing out of the monastic indominicatum and thus the slow dismantling of demesne farming. It can be maintained that some of the lease charters that Passignano has preserved are evidence of this process, for they testify to the ceding away of land plots located in places that comprised monastic demesnes (we shall see an example of this in the next section). It needs further stressing that, with regard to land-­management reforms, the difference between Uberto and the other abbots was only one of intensity. None of Uberto’s accusers cited the transformations of lease agreements as evidence against him; on the contrary, they even admitted that Uberto did something good for Passignano by leasing out the tenants of the monastery—­in fact a likely reference to the use of those tenants as a pledge for money loans—­even though any improvement was obscured by the damage he had caused. Those reforms, then, never appear to have been contentious.94 It is true that Alberto, Gregorio, Otto and Geronimo were probably more reluctant to lose a considerable part of their signorial authority, which was more difficult to wield once corvées and other servitia had been abolished. The process thus accelerated under Uberto and then slowed down a bit. But it hardly stopped; by the beginning of the rule of Abbot Rodolfo (1219), corvée-work appears to have disappeared from S. Michele estates, and the surveys that were carried out later in time (between the 1260s and the 1280s) in the territories of Poggio al Vento and, to a lesser extent, Passignano, confirm this.95 One can propose that the commutations that have been preserved in the archives of the monastery constitute the surviving evidence of a wider trend, one which may not have been put down in writing consistently, but was however under way and concluded by the 1220s. We can summarize the two major changes that we have met so far as follows. Rents in kind prevailed over cash from the 1190s onwards in the

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The Infancy of Mezzadria in the Chianti Region through the Evidence of Passignano The division of the harvest in two halves, or in shares, as a way to shape the relations between landowners and tenants was quite common during the early and central Middle Ages; this is the kind of situation that I will refer to with the expressions sharecropping contracts/share tenancies/share tenures (cf. the Introduction). In northern Italy these agreements can be traced back to the ninth century (cf. the example of eastern Lombardy in the general conclusion). In the archives of Passignano, sharecropping is documented only very occasionally, and does not seem to have represented anything like a preferred option either for the monastic community of S. Michele or for the lay aristocrats who were part of its clientele during the eleventh century and most of the twelfth. This largely applies to the Fiorentino as a whole: Robert Davidsohn found only fourteen share tenancies for the Florentine countryside over the period 1030–1170 (nine of which are among the charters of Passignano).96 While examining those contracts, Elio Conti put emphasis on the presence of some of the clauses that would characterize mezzadria in later centuries, such as the joint provision of seed-­corn on the part of landowners and tenants and the obligation for leaseholders to manure the land in order to improve its productivity.97 Other mezzadria elements can be spotted in the documentation of the Fiorentino: in a lease from S. Miniato al Monte, dating to 1149, there is a clause regarding cost-­sharing for livestock, quite a

96 Davidsohn, Forschungen I, 150–2.

97 Conti, La formazione I, 131–2.

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Fiorentino; and corvée-work appears to have been replaced with fixed rents in wheat from the same decade in Passignano. The wish to exploit directly the demand for cereals and benefit from the rise of prices leaves one major question open, however. We have observed that wheat-­growing fields constituted a minor part of the Florentine countryside as a whole, and that tree crops, such as vines and olive-­trees, still were the most suitable to the soils of the Chianti region. We now have to divert our attention from wheat and focus on polyculture, which was affected, too, by the reforms that we have been outlining hitherto. This will lead us to the analysis of the slow crystallization of mezzadria agreements.

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98  Cf. on this Muzzi and Nenci, Il contratto II, 95–9 and Faini, Firenze, p. 99. 99 On the word podere see Muzzi and Nenci, Il contratto II, 55; see also Leverotti, ‘Scomposizione’.

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common practice in the context of mezzadria poderale.98 It needs stressing, moreover, that from the late twelfth century on the word podere progressively substituted mansus; at that stage, however, the use of podere emphasized the proprietorial rights, and indeed the power (potere in Italian) that the landowner wielded over his land; the word did not label yet the farming unit of late medieval mezzadria.99 To sum up, some of the elements typical of late medieval mezzadria do feature in the Tuscan documentation of the central centuries, but they are very scattered and incoherent. We now have to wonder whether it is pos­ sible to identify a moment in which such an incoherence began to fade—­a moment that might be placed in the decades straddling the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. I shall do so by focusing on the archives of S. Michele, as they constitute the sole repository in the Fiorentino which has preserved a documentation that is not intermittent, and which is therefore suitable to a proper contextualization of those agreements. We shall try to understand how this particular type of lease fits into the matrix of the transformations in land management that we have discussed. To this end, it will be necessary to dedicate much space to the analysis of the single clauses of each lease contract, since it is there that we need to look for the progressive development of mezzadria. I hope that readers will bear with me, but those who prefer to skip the lengthy analysis of contract clauses and focus on my overall interpretative framework may decide to start from p. 105. I have stressed in the Introduction that scholars have mostly focused on mezzadria as applied to poderi—­understood, here, as the vast and concentrated tenant-­plots created throughout the late Middle Ages which could guarantee self-­sufficiency to a peasant and his family. As a consequence, the examples of early mezzadria in the central Middle Ages have been relatively less debated; and when they have, the discussion has mostly been orientated toward the outlining of the high-­medieval precursors of mezzadria poderale. An exception to this approach, indeed an attempt to explain the origins of mezzadria in their own right (that is to say, not teleologically), was made recently by Enrico Faini, who emphasized another important aspect of mezzadria contracts—­that is, their short duration. According to Faini, the antecedents of mezzadria can be found in the money loans granted in return for pledges of land, which generally lasted only a few years and entailed, as a

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  99

100 Faini, Firenze, pp. 97–109. 101  Such as southern Latium (cf. Toubert, Les structures I, 608–19), but it is worth also citing eastern Lombardy, where peasant indebtedness, which is documented from the middle of the twelfth century, did not pave the way for mezzadria (cf. Menant, Campagnes, pp. 301–7 and also below, the general conclusion).

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form of interest, the provision of the harvest collected annually from the estate that had been pledged; importantly, the interest consisted sometimes in half of the harvest, that is, the ordinary mezzadria rent. Cultivators thus started accumulating debts and therefore became increasingly dependent on the landowners who lent them money; and this, Faini argued, laid the basis for the development of mezzadria contracts, in which proprietors were in a particularly strong position towards their tenants, as the former exerted a tight control over the holdings and the latter were forced to accept short-­ term agreements.100 Faini is certainly right when he stresses the connections between peasant indebtedness and mezzadria, and I will myself argue that the choice of early mezzadria over other types of leases and the availability of credit are strongly intertwined. Yet I am more hesitant to look at mezzadria as the by-­ product of money loans. Examples of cash granted in exchange for land pledges can be found in regions where mezzadria did develop, as well as in regions where it did not.101 This suggests that they cannot be automatically considered as the ancestors of a particular type of tenancy agreement. Furthermore, temporary leases were not necessarily sharecropping ones (see the example of Tigliano above); they characterized late medieval farming regimes in general, and we would thus need to conclude that the pledges of land were the ancestors of almost all late medieval lease contracts. Finally, the provision of half of the harvest in interest seems incidental; it features in c. fifteen contracts out of a total of 120 documents mentioning land pledges between 1000 and 1200 in the Fiorentino, as Faini himself shows, and this is probably explained by the need to provide the beneficiary of the loan with a part of the harvest he could make a living on. All the same, even though I am inclined to deconstruct the nexus between money loans, land pledges, and mezzadria, I do agree with Faini when he stresses that the origins of mezzadria have to be located in the attempt to strengthen control over land and cultivators. This is the line of analysis I shall stick to in this section. Let us focus now on Passignano. The main problem with the evidence from S. Michele, and from the Fiorentino of the central Middle Ages in general, is that it comes from a religious institution; lay estates remain out of

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and from the other piece half of the cereals [‘medietatem de blada’] which the Lord will give each year on this land, so that the aforementioned men [Carpapallia and Corso] will provide half of the seed-­corn, whereas the other half will be provided by Traino.102

In 1189 two other landowners, Olivieri and Bonisiro (together with their wives) leased out to a certain Gerardino one piece of land in Aialta, near Poggio al Vento again. In return for this, Gerardino had to sow this land every year, and at the time of harvesting he must collect the seeds in advance. Then, they [the landowners and the tenant] must split the harvest into halves. [Olivieri, Bonisiro and their wives] must be present during threshing and harvesting, and for this [lease agreement] they receive 12 d.103

These two contracts are consistent with the arguments put forward by Conti, Oretta Muzzi, Maria Daniela Nenci, and Faini with regard to the Fiorentino in the central Middle Ages; one can here find only scattered and piecemeal examples of the clauses that would make up the late medieval mezzadria contract. We are indeed quite distant from the mezzadria ideal-­ type: in the second document seed-­corn was provided by the tenant alone

102 ASFi, Passignano, 1174 August 28.

103  Ibid., 1189 March 30.

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our scope. We might want to look at the first Florentine notarial protocols (dating to 1237–8), that is, at the books in which notaries recorded legal deeds in an abbreviated form, and which usually include more information about the laity than single-­sheet charters (I shall discuss this at length in the next section); but unfortunately, they do not contain many references to share tenancies—­in fact, they do not contain many lease agreements at all, and so they cannot be used as anything like a full guide to the patterns of landholding. The documents from Passignano can only suggest that, in the last quarter of the twelfth century, some lay people resorted to share tenancies including clauses that would be part of the later mezzadria contracts. In 1174 two local landowners, Carpapallia and Corso, granted to Traino di Giraldo two pieces of land located, respectively, in Summovico and Ruscillo, both close to the castle of Poggio al Vento. Carpapallia and Corso demanded 1 st. of wheat from Summovico

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  101

Every year, at the time of sowing, they [the landowner and the tenant] must provide half of the seed-­corn each, and at the time of harvesting they must give half of every type of cereals [‘medietatem de quacumque blada’] that the Lord will give on this land. If olive-­trees are planted, they must share them and their fruits; and they must provide the manure. And the representatives of the monastery must be present during harvesting and threshing.106

104  Carpapallia—­who is easy to identify thanks to the atypicality of his name—­owned some other land and featured as a witness in some transactions. His social and economic prestige, however, does not seem to have gone further than that: cf. ibid., 1204 March 17, 1205 June 16, 1205 July 22, 1207 March 24, 1207 June 27. 105  Share tenancies: ibid., 1199 June 30 and 1201 March 18 (ph. 7585, original and 7586, copy). For the share tenancies including mezzadria elements cf. below. 106  Ibid., 1198 August 18.

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and the text does not even specify what the rent was, as the 12 d. constituted an entry-­fine. Mezzadria clauses did exist, however, and the four land­ owners (possibly small ones, given the scarcity of references to them within the archives of Passignano)104 made arrangements for the joint provision of seed-­corn, or secured the right to control directly some important phases of the agricultural work (here, harvesting and threshing). Let us turn our attention to ecclesiastical owners. We need to await Uberto’s abbatiate to observe the first signs of a slight acceleration in the issuing of sharecropping contracts containing mezzadria clauses. It is important to stress, however, that such an acceleration was by no means as pronounced as that regarding the commutation of labour into fixed rents in wheat; and this is a discrepancy which is key to the understanding of the economic conjuncture of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries in Tuscany as a whole (as we shall see in the general conclusion). Uberto issued only four share tenancies, two of which encapsulated mezzadria elem­ents.105 Not many, but still a high number if compared to the nine Passignanese share tenures for the entire period 1030–1170. It is worth looking more closely at the two deeds including mezzadria clauses. The first of them was addressed to Gianni di Giannello, the wealthy colonus we have already encountered twice (cf. Chapter 1 and above). Not surprisingly, Gianni did not himself work the holding, but was stipulating the contract (1198) on behalf of Ricciolino di Riccio di Raulino, the real cultivator. Here are Ricciolino’s dues:

102  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca The second agreement dates to 1202, and was addressed to Buonaccorso and his heirs, who had to

It is important at this point to focus on two aspects that are crucial for the understanding of the rationale underpinning early mezzadria contracts. First, the mention of olive-­trees in the 1198 document shows the existence of polyculture; second, all the contracts examined so far regard lands in which cereals were cultivated, but in a different way than fixed-­rent agreements, which were issued in return for granum/frumentum. Here, the demand for granum/frumentum is replaced with that for the more generic blada, which designates all types of cereals, arguably including ‘minor’ ones. The fields, for which share tenures with mezzadria elements were adopted, were not destined to the exclusive cultivation of wheat. It can be guessed that this depended on the quality of the soil, which could deliver good yields only if sown with a variety of grains. Hence mixed cropping—­that is, different grains are mixed before sowing, and then grown together on the same land. Let us now discuss the agreements issued by Uberto’s successors. The first one dates to 1206, under Otto’s abbatiate, and was issued by Truffetto di Signorello (a long-­standing small-­scale lay patron of the abbey) in favour of a certain Ildebrandino di Gianni (Gianni Malavacca, as later documents reveal) in exchange for ‘half of the cereals [‘medietatem de blada’], the tithe, half of the olives and of the fruits of the trees’, together with the promise to manure the land. The estate was located in the ‘Culto Burati’ (‘the land of Burato’), not far from Passignano—­as we will see in some detail in a moment.108 As to Geronimo, one can find two share tenancies including mezzadria elements during his abbatiate, although both of them do not 107  Ibid., 1202 October 10. 108  The document is ibid., 1206 April 3; cf. Muzzi and Nenci, Il contratto II, 16. To my knowledge, Burato is mentioned for the first time in ASFi, Passignano, 1181 February 4.

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provide twelve loads of manure, and the two of them [the landowner and the tenants] must provide half of the seed-­corn [each]. And at the time of harvesting they [Buonaccorso and his heirs] must collect the seed-­corn in advance. And half of what remains must be given to the representative of the monastery, whereas they can keep the other half for themselves. And the representative of the monastery must be present during threshing and harvesting.107

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  103 entirely fall under this category and it is worth discussing why. On 19 July 1211, Geronimo granted the brothers Talento and Ubaldo, sons of Rodolfino from Monteficalle (another member of the Firidolfi family) a piece of land in the locality of Lacu (Sillano). The brothers had to

This contract resembles the 1189 charter addressed to Gerardino of Aialta, in that seed-­corn was to be provided only by the leaseholder, and not by both the contracting parties; as a consequence, this can hardly be con­ sidered as an early mezzadria agreement. All the same, it can be placed in a context in which the attention to seed-­corn was gaining space within leases. Maybe Lacu had particularly bad land, which needed thick sowing in order to be productive, and this explains the putting aside of seed-­corn before the delivery of the produce. More probably, however, the reserving of seed-­corn represented a gracious gift to the Firidolfi; on the same day as this lease, S. Michele reached quite a complex agreement with the family regarding the exchange, the restitution and the leasing back of many landed properties.110 Last but not least, it needs stressing that in the deeds dating to 1206 and 1211 polyculture starts to surface in ever-­increasing clarity from the contracts, as results from the references to olives, fruits and de omnibus that God will concede. There is not only grain, here. The second share tenure issued under Geronimo’s abbatiate dates to 1215. The abbot gave to the just-­cited Ildebrandino di Gianni Malavacca a piece of land located in a place called ‘Vignale quondam Buratti’ (‘the vineyard of the late Buratto’), which probably was close to the Culto Burati granted by Truffetto nine years before; the Vignale bordered on Ildebrandino’s lands on two sides, and it can be guessed that at least one of those lands was close to the Culto, if not the Culto itself. This lease has the same clauses as that of 1211, with the difference that manure had to be provided every three years and that one representative of S. Michele had to supervise both harvesting

109  Cf. ibid., 1211 July 19 (ph. 8570). 110  Cf. ibid., 1211 July 19, three charters (ph. 8567, 8568, 8569).

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give twenty-­five bags [‘sacca’] of good manure every year and every year, after putting aside the seed-­corn, they must provide half of everything [‘de omnibus’] God will give on this land and of all cereals [‘medietatem postea de omnibus quod Deus ibi dederit et de tota blada’], which has to be de­livered to the monastery or its representative.109

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so that every year, of all the seed-­corn (should he provide all of it or just a half), he will give half of the cereals [‘medietatem blade’] and the tithe to the monastery and its representative Bonaguida, the blacksmith, who has the right to collect it all; and he [Ildebrandino] must invite the monastery during the phases of harvesting and threshing, and give half of the fruits from all the trees; in addition to this, by order of the abbot himself, the monastery will collect figs and pears at the abbot’s will; and so that he [Ildebrandino] cannot sell or grant this land to other people; and if Ildebrandino dies without any sons or male heirs, [the land] must return to the monastery; and so that the land must never be divided among heirs through hedges, moats or walls; and so that [Ildebrandino] has no power or will on this land which is not aimed at serving the monastery in Poggio al Vento and Passignano; and so that he provides eighteen loads [salma] of manure on that land; and so that, if he decides not to keep it, he should leave it to the monastery for free.113

The level of detail in the fleshing out of Ildebrandino’s dues is striking. Not all the clauses we might expect to find feature here, though: the lease has no expiry date, and there were no clear instructions as to the provision of seed-­ corn. One may guess that the monastery contributed to it only when the

111  Cf. Muzzi and Nenci, Il contratto II, 125, no. 1 (1215 September 29; this charter included also the lease of another piece of land, called podere, in exchange for a fixed rent consisting in little more than 10 st. of grain). 112  As seems to be suggested by the fact that both deeds were copied down on the same parchment. Cf. the edition ibid. II, 125–6, no. 2 (1220 December 15). It has to be noted that the holding was identified in 1220 as ‘Campum qui dicitur Burati’, and not Vignale, as in 1215. But the fact that those two leases were copied together and that the land boundaries were not specified in the second agreement (since they could be easily read in the 1215 text?) makes it plausible to conclude that we are dealing with the same tenant-­plot. 113  See note above for the reference.

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and threshing.111 Here, the setting aside of seed-­corn before rent was de­livered constituted a way to secure the substantial yields that only thick sowing could guarantee; and this was all the more necessary since Ildebrandino, as we shall see, probably was quite a destitute peasant. This leads us, in the end, to the first contract that really gets closer to the ideal-­type of mezzadria, and which was issued by Abbot Rodolfo in 1220. It was in all likelihood, as its editors noted, the renewal of the 1215 agreement, and was addressed again to Ildebrandino di Gianni.112 The charter was granted to him

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  105

114  Ibid., 1206 June 29.

115  Ibid., 1215 August 10.

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harvest had been very bad and Ildebrandino was in need for an extra provision. However, it is control over the holding, and the increased emphasis on it from 1215 to 1220, which stands out as the most important prerogative that the abbey was trying to secure, with regard not just to harvesting and threshing, but also to sale, inheritance and division among heirs. The collection of the tithe, too, seems to suggest that the monks of Passignano held various rights over the land—­even though it is hard to tell whether what we are observing here is an ecclesiastical tithe or else a tenth of all the produce (we shall see another example of this in the next chapter). In both cases, Ildebrandino’s overall rent appears to have been remarkably burdensome. Finally, the coexistence of blada-growing fields and fruit trees needs to be highlighted; it does look as if polyculture, a distinguishing feature of the late medieval podere mezzadrile, was already in place. We can stop here with the analysis of contract clauses. The further development of share tenures with mezzadria elements in the following decades would take us outside the scope of this book and of the economic conjuncture of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. It is worth repeating that some elements of fully-­formed mezzadria are missing: the expiry date of the contracts is barely established, and the podere as a large farming unit that can guarantee self-­sufficiency to peasant families is equally hard to spot. Nevertheless, the clauses that we have examined so far are sufficiently innovative to conclude that, from the 1210s at the latest, we are no longer dealing with simple sharecropping tenures, and this is a change that deserves an explanation in its own right. For a start, it can be argued that the early mezzadria contracts that have been preserved simply represented the fixing in writing, and possibly the restatement, of pre-­existing customary sharecropping agreements. A charter dating to 1206 informs us that a certain Bonifacio di Bernardino owed to S. Michele a rent of 20 st. of grain collected from various estates, including his ‘terre driterite et mezericie’, which we can translate as ‘lands from which a third or a half of the produce was demanded’.114 In 1215, another son of Gianni Malavacca, Angiolieri, was granted by Abbot Geronimo some lands close to Passignano and Poggio al Vento in return for a fixed rent in wheat, but the charter specifies that Geronimo had excluded from the agreement all the estates that Angiolieri ‘holds in return for a half or a third of all the products [‘de omni eo’] that God will give there every year’.115 These casual references to customary share tenancies suggest that the written deeds we

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116  Ibid., 1214 December 10 (ph. 8927). 117  For Raulino cf. Quaderno, fol. 3r, line 6; Riccius Raulini is mentioned in ASFi, Passignano, ‘Sec. XI’ (ph. 2909) (which however can be dated to the second half of the twelfth century due to the handwriting and the people listed within, including Riccio; I shall cite it henceforth in this note simply as ‘Sec. XI’), line 18. The last mention of Ricciolino’s father is ibid., 1197 August 8. Ricciolino is mentioned also ibid., 1190 August 18 and ibid., 1193 June 30 (this is the deed which lets us know where his father lived; the charter was redacted ‘in loco Buecotto, prope ubi quondam habitavit Ricius Raulini’). For the ‘Filius Malę Vaccę’ cf. Quaderno, fol. 2v, line 4 and again ‘Sec. XI’, lines 14 and 20. For Gerardino from Aialta cf. Quaderno, fol. 2r, line 5 (here he is identified with the equivalent diminutive Gerarducius). For Traino di Giraldo cf. ‘Sec. XI’, line 8.

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have been discussing hitherto were the tip of an iceberg, what has survived of a process of putting into writing—­and probably tightening via the add­ ition of mezzadria clauses—­ a type of tenancy relations characterizing polyculture-­ oriented tenures—­ either because of the mixed cropping of cereals or because fruit trees were part of the holding. The obligations for the tenantry were burdensome, due to the high proportion of the harvest that was demanded and the rights exercised by the landowner over the tenure. This raises a further question: who was willing, or forced, to subscribe to such unfavourable lease agreements? All the addressees of early mezzadria charters seem to have belonged to quite low strata of the peasantry. Gianni di Malavacca and his brother Rodolfo were explicitly described as homines and coloni of Passignano in a charter dating to 1214, in which the traditional services (‘usitata servitia’) they owed to the abbey were converted into the substantial demand for just over 31 st. of grain (this was one of the three commutations issued under Abbot Geronimo).116 Since the colonatus was a hereditary status, it can be safely argued that Ildebrandino and Angiolieri, Gianni’s sons, were coloni too. The extant evidence about the other early mezzadri is not as straightforward, but it can be reasonably proposed that they were highly-­dependent tenants of S.  Michele. The majority of them were mentioned in lists of Passignano dependents: Ricciolino, for example, was the nephew of a Raulino who featured in the 1180s folder that we have discussed above. In the same inventory, we can also find one of the sons of Malavacca (without further specifications) and Gerardino from Aialta. Traino di Giraldo features in a short list containing the names of some of the abbey tenants (renders were not specified), in which it is also possible to identify Riccio’s father.117 In general, it does appear that the social milieu to which early mezzadri belonged was largely the same as that of the coloni whose obligations were turned into the delivery of fixed rents in grain—­and in at least one case, that of the Malavacca family, we can be certain of that.

Florence and the Florentine Countryside  107

118 ASFi, Passignano, 1188 September 19. 119  According to the Quaderno, Gerardino of Aialta had to provide just one labour-­service cum bovis and the ‘son of Malavacca’ one labour-­service cum bovis and four manual corvées (see note 117).

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There is also another aspect that connects Passignano coloni, and the changeovers in their obligations, with the issuing of sharecropping contracts including mezzadria elements. This brings us back to the already cited Vignale and Culto Buratti. This place-­name probably derives from a certain Buratto, who appears in a charter dating to 1188 in the act of purchasing a piece of land from the monastery ‘in fundo et donicato de Curteveckia’ the ‘old curtis’, perhaps one of the old estate-­centres of Passignano; importantly, that plot of land was completely surrounded by terra monasterii.118 One may suggest that, in the area where the estates of Buratto are likely to have lain, S.  Michele had demesnes, even if fragmented ones (the agreements from 1215 and 1220 show that there were other owners there). It can thus be argued that the attention to seed-­corn, which is one of the elements marking the passage from simple sharecropping to mezzadria, suggests a link with demesnes. Demesnes were the only type of land for which the provision of seed-­corn certainly weighed on landowners; we can thus propose that early mezzadria agreements testify to the leasing out of demesnes, as this can explain the necessity to clarify who was to be in charge of seed-­corn after the shift from demesne farming to rent collection. This is guesswork to a large extent, for there is not enough evidence to further corroborate this point. We cannot even be sure whether early mezzadria agreements replaced labour-­service obligations; a couple of early mezzadri do appear to have been required to perform corvée-work for the monastery—­although only for a few days per year.119 Still, it is plausible guesswork that they were such replacements when we consider that this type of contract is above all found in the heartland of Passignano estates, that is, the areas closest to the abbey itself and Poggio al Vento, where monastic demesnes certainly existed; and it is therefore plausible to see early mezzadria as the second outcome of the abolition of labour—­that concerning the mixed cropping of cereals and polyculture, as opposed to the monoculture of wheat, usually demanded in fixed quantities. As a final point, it has to be noted that we have not met so far share tenancies with mezzadria elements as applied to vineyards (if the vineyard of Buratto actually included vines, they were not the object of the lease); but this was going to change. A reference to vineyards seems to surface from a contract from

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The Chianti Region: Other Case Studies In this section, I shall gather all the other pieces of information which survive concerning reforms of land management in the Chianti region between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. I will be more schematic here, either because the case studies have been already investigated by other ­people or, quite simply, because the documentation is not as substantial or illuminating as that of Settimo and Passignano as to estate management and  its change. This relative lack of evidence is important in itself: 120  Muzzi and Nenci, Il contratto II, 127, no. 4 (1235 January 27, Florentine style). 121  Cf. Faini, ‘Passignano’, p. 147.

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Passignano dating to 1236, in which a land close to Pian Alberti, called Vignali, was leased out in return for ‘half of cereals and of the fruits’ (‘mediam partem totius blade et fructuum’); the place-­name (‘vineyard’), together with the mention of blada and fructuus, makes it sensible to assume that grain crops and tree crops coexisted on the same holding.120 We have observed, too, that the poderi mezzadrili at S. Martino alla Palma included vineyards in the fourteenth century. It looks as if the late medieval poderi mezzadrili represented the transformation of a rent contract, which was tailored from the start to polyculture, into a coherent farming regime. Land management was in the process of being transformed in the decades across the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries in the environs of Passignano; these transformations were largely due to the indebtedness of the monastery, from which S. Michele seems to have partly recovered only from the mid-­1210s.121 Unlike Settimo, the rich documentation of Passignano allows us to witness the active role played by some abbots in implementing the reforms. But similarly to Settimo, one can observe that choosing one option instead of another, when it came to the type of lease agreement that could be adopted, was hardly a matter of chance. Labour was replaced with fixed rents in wheat, and early mezzadria was applied to polyculture-­oriented lands. Demesne farming was progressively abandoned, and signorial prerogatives were diminished. The lessening of the signoria was the bargaining chip that allowed landowners to increase the extraction of the agricultural surplus. We now need to place Settimo and Passignano in the context of the Chianti region as a whole, in order to test whether and how they fit into an overall trend of change in the forms of estate management.

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trans­form­ations were not uniform, and local patterns tend to contradict—­as they often do—­attempts to establish overall explanations. Still, we will be able to spot, albeit with varying degrees of clarity, the same sorts of developments that we have been scrutinizing hitherto. The example that best fits the matrix of the transformations in the patterns of tenancy agreements concerns the Florentine episcopate and its Chianti estates. In 1236 the bishop of Florence, Ardingo, issued a series of lease contracts whose addressees were the dependent tenants of the bishopric who lived in two villages, Ripoli and Montecampolesi, which both lie within today’s municipality of S. Casciano in Val di Pesa, about 20 km south of Florence. Ardingo’s move was the eventual response to an enduring state of episcopal indebtedness that dated back to the 1150s; it was backed by the pro-­episcopal podestà of Florence, Rubaconte Rossi, who had been appointed just that year. The original documents of those contracts were destroyed by a fire in the sixteenth century, but we can read them in a shortened version in the Bullettone, the fourteenth-­century register of all the charters preserved by the bishops of Florence from the late ninth century to 1321. The Bullettone reveals that Bishop Ardingo converted the ancient dues (antiqua servitia) and the labour-­services (operae) owed by tenants into a demand for fixed rents in grain, from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 28 st. per person every year, and for a total of fifty-­three commutations. It is really unfortunate that the brevity of the deeds recorded in the Bullettone does not allow us to know what the servitia and operae actually were. What we can say for certain is that the archives of the bishops of Florence must have displayed the same sort of discrepancy between the content of libelli and tenimenta on the one hand, and customary duties on the other, which we have observed at Settimo and Passignano; there is not a single mention of labour within the Bullettone before 1236. Corvée-dues surfaced from darkness only when they were in the process of being abolished. If we assume—­as seems reasonable—­that at least a part of servitia and operae was constituted by agricultural work, it follows that Bishop Ardingo was doing very much the same thing that the abbots of Passignano had done between 1191 and 1215; customary corvée-work was replaced with the demand for rents in cereals, and one has as a result to assume that demesnes were slowly broken up. This did not happen without some degree of resistance, or at least disobedience, on the part of the peasant community, as is suggested by the oaths of allegiance demanded by the bishop in Monte Campolese in 1238. George Dameron, to whom we owe the best study on the Bullettone, maintained that those commutations responded to the need for the

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122 Dameron, Episcopal Power, pp. 114–5; cf. also Id., ‘Episcopal lordship’. 123 Cf. Badia I, 144, no. 53 (1060 May 22), II, 18–20, no. 157 (1112 June 19); we may want to add the document ibid. II, 57–9, no. 178 (1154 September), which is a donation made by Rodolfo di Azzone to the monastery of S. Salvatore and S. Giovanni del Sasso in which ‘operas’ are mentioned as part of the duties in the process of being granted. 124 ASFi, Badia, 1208 February 22 (Florentine style). For another mention of operae and servitia see ibid., 1224 March 3.

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collection of readily available cereals, which could then be sold on the city markets.122 One may wonder, again, why grain could not have been collected via the ancient servitia and operae with which demesne farming had been carried out up to that point. It is thus worth recalling the framework that I have outlined with regard to Settimo and Passignano, which can be applied here too: first, the abolition of demesnes entailed a cut in maintenance costs—­ which was all the more necessary during a period of indebtedness; second, the shift from the direct exploitation of demesnes to a system of rent-­ collection gave the tenantry a stake in the quality and the quantity of the agricultural output of the land—­something they did not have in a corvéebased regime; third, the lessening of signorial power that derived from the abolition of labour was compensated for with a demand for quite high rents—­and the imposition of oaths of fidelity was probably aimed at holding back the peasant disobedience resulting from that. So, the commutations from Ripoli and Montecampolesi probably display the same patterns that we have observed at Settimo and Passignano. We must now look at the exceptions to this pattern. Where agricultural labour-­services appear to have been absent in the twelfth century, reforms of land management were less radical—­although, even then, the decades bridging the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries testify to the widespread need on the part of landowners for some type of interventions in doubtless long-­established tenancy patterns. Let us start with the Benedictine monastery of S.  Maria in Florence—­that is, the Badia fiorentina. There are only two charters in the archives of the Badia for the whole eleventh and twelfth centuries that record labour.123 In a list of servitia owed in 1209 by some tenants who lived in Vico l’Abate and Novoli, there is mention of purely symbolic labour-­services cum bovis (four in total, three of which to be performed every four years) and only one manual corvée. All the other renders in the same text were also low, consisting in small quantities of eggs, wine, olives, cash and some flax.124 The demand for labour was not totally absent, for the court-­cases involving the coloni of S.  Maria in 1213 and 1219

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125 Cf. Badia II, 144–5, no. 228 (1189 May 24), 149–51, no. 232 (1192 February 8); ASFi, Badia, 1214 August 2. References to the debts of other churches in the archive of the Badia are ibid., 1218 July 27 (S. Martino di Maiano), 1221 July 1 (S. Nicolò di Campochiarenti), 1224 April 1 and 1225 August 7 (ph. 10227, S. Bartolomeo di Ripoli). 126  On the foundation cf. Cortese, Signori, pp. 94–7; on the submission to Florence cf. Day, ‘The early development’, p. 113, note 201. 127  Regesto di Coltibuono, pp. 195–6, no. 434 (1155 February 1). 128  Ibid., pp. 230–1, no. 515 (118…) [L1], pp. 245–6, no. 545 (‘Sec. XII’) [L2], p. 248, no. 549, (‘Sec. XII’) [L3]. I excluded the inventory ibid., pp. 184–5, no. 409 (114…) as it enumerates the clients of a certain Bernardino di Benno, and says little about the obligations of the local tenantry. Cf. Lefeuvre, ‘La notabilité’, pp. 297–9. 129  On this cf. again Faini, Firenze, p. 98. See Regesto di Coltibuono, pp. 127–8, no. 278 (1113 April 17), p. 129, no. 280 (1113 June), p. 136, no. 296 (1118 May 17), pp. 142–3, no. 311 (1121 May), pp. 144–5, no. 315 (1123 May), pp. 145–6, no. 317 (1123 December 23), pp. 147–8, no.  321 (1125 January), pp. 150–1, no. 329 (1127 April), pp. 157–8, no. 348 (1131 March),

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(see Chapter 1) mentioned the operae as part of the highly-­dependent tenants’ obligations; but one cannot assess the ratio between castle-­linked duties on the one hand and agricultural dues on the other, nor the overall weight of labour. In one respect, however, the Badia fiorentina clearly resembled Settimo and Passignano—­it had debts to pay back in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. It seems to have done this by collecting high entry-­fines in return for the concession of libelli, or else by renouncing some of its claims in legal disputes in exchange for the cancellation of debts—­so, not by modifying the patterns of estate management.125 Almost no references to labour-­dues surface from the documentation preserved by the Vallombrosan abbey of S. Lorenzo di Coltibuono, located in southern Chianti, on the north-­eastern border of today’s province of Siena. The monastery was founded in the first half of the eleventh century by the Firidolfi and by another family of local aristocrats, the nepotes Rainerii. In 1239, the monastic community submitted voluntarily to Florence.126 Only one labour-­service, ‘operam unam’, in a charter dated to 1155, features among all the c. 550 documents of the period from the late tenth century to 1200.127 The absence of corvée-work is confirmed, im­port­ ant­ly, by three inventories of customary rents and services which have been studied by Philippe Lefeuvre. As Lefeuvre noted, two of them were redacted toward the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth (I will call them L1 and L3 hereinafter) and one over the second half of the twelfth century (L2).128 The reason for their redaction may have lain, once again, in the indebtedness of S. Lorenzo and thus in the need to record the incomes on which the abbey could count. This can be inferred by the fact that the monks were quite consistently committed to money-­lending in exchange for land pledges between 1113 and 1177,129 an activity that suddenly

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pp. 164–5, no. 363 (1136 July 19), p. 167, no. 371 (1137 July), pp. 168–9, no. 374 (1138 March), p. 171, no. 379 (1139 February), pp. 171–2, no. 380 (1139 March), pp. 175–6, no. 390 (1144 May), pp. 178–9, no. 397 (1146 February), p. 180, no. 400 (1146), pp. 182–3, no. 405 (1148 April 13), pp. 186–7, no. 412 (1150 December 18), p. 196, no. 436 (1156 January 26), p. 217, no. 483 (1172 April 21), pp. 220–1, no. 492 (1177 February). Money-­lending in exchange for land pledges is  attested at Vallombrosa, too, over the twelfth century: cf. Salvestrini, ‘Sacri imprenditori’; Id., ‘Disciplina’. 130  Cf. Majnoni, La Badia, pp. 43–6. 131  On the early history of the abbey see Santos Salazar, ‘Nascita’; and for the thirteenth century cf. Lefeuvre, ‘La notabilité’, passim.

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stopped in that year; this might suggest that the abbey was no longer in the position to grant loans because it needed money itself. And indeed, Coltibuono had to take out quite a high number of loans between the 1230s and the 1260s.130 As to rents, those in grain largely dominated. In L1 renders had to be delivered with the st. Florentinum, whereas L3 mentions rents to be given with local staia. This testifies to a largely imperfect market integration at a regional level, with the urban units of measurement struggling to reach the southern part of the later contado; still, the consistent use of the st. Florentinum in L1 points to the attempt on the part of the abbey to meet city demand—­a city that, significantly, was quite distant from Coltibuono and yet influential upon its economic dynamics. The tenants in L2 had to provide mixed rents in cash and kind, in remarkably different quantities—­they shifted from a minimum of 1 st. to a maximum of 2 modii (that is, 48 st.) of grain. If one puts together the data from all the three inventories, it can be seen that in twenty-­five entries out of 228 a single tenant had to deliver quite a burdensome rent, consisting in more than 10 st. (although the impossibility of determining the size of the local staia listed in L3 makes any attempt to assess the weight of tenants’ dues highly risky). So, as was the case with the Badia fiorentina, the absence of corvée-work goes hand in hand with the absence of any significant evidence of reforms in land management. Still, the debts of S. Lorenzo and the subsequent recording of the tenants’ obligations fit into the pattern that I have described; writing down the renders due by the tenantry meant attempting to enforce their exaction. No traces of corvée-duties can be found in the documentation of another Vallombrosan monastery, that of S.  Cassiano di Montescalari, located on the eastern edge of the Chianti region, within the range of hills known as the Monti di Chianti, and founded by the ‘da Cintoia’ family in the first half of the eleventh century.131 Its rather isolated position is likely to have kept the monks away from major grain-­market networks for a long time, and

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132 Examples of lease charters (one per decade) from the archives of S.  Cassiano di Montescalari which were granted in exchange for cash rents can be found in ASFi, S. Vigilio, 1114 May 31, 1123 February 6, 1132 April, 1145 March 18, 1155 April 23, 1163 May 5, 1175 May 4, 1181 March 21. The only exception is represented by the charter ibid., 1176 October 10. The sharecropping agreement is ibid., 1237 November 15. For the short-­term lease cf. ibid., 1245 February 2. 133  The edition is Mosiici and Sznura, Palmerio.

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this may explain the remarkable endurance of small rents in cash, with just one lease agreement granted in return for kind during the entire twelfth century (the charter is significantly labelled as fictum, ‘rent’, and not as libellus). The turn towards kind dates as late as the 1230s, and it can be argued that it was only from then on that the monastic community started to exploit directly the growing demand for agricultural commodities: one sharecropping agreement, without mezzadria clauses, was issued in 1237; and a short-­term lease (lasting six years) granted in exchange for the very high rent of 3 modii and 4 st. of grain was made in 1245.132 This shift to kind may have been due to the fiscal impositions of the Florentine commune, which was extending its authority over the Chianti throughout the 1230s, as we have just seen, thus making traditional renders increasingly unprofitable and prompting a reaction on the part of the monks. We lack, however, positive evidence here, nor are we able to ascertain the discrepancies between the content of lease charters and customary renders because of the absence of inventories. Much of what we can say is informed speculation. Finally, let us have a look at the first notarial protocols we have for the Florentine countryside, those redacted by the notary Palmerio di Corbizo from Castello Uglione (halfway between S.  Casciano in Val di Pesa and Tavarnelle), including 275 deeds dating to the years 1237 and 1238, and stipulated at Uglione or in other neighbouring villages and castles of the Valdelsa.133 Notarial protocols were books with full legal validity, which notaries usually kept at home and in which they recorded deeds in abbreviated form (indeed, these deeds are referred to as imbreviature in Italian). This way of validating legal transactions constituted a turning-­point in the history of notarial documentation, which had been preserved and selected up to that point by religious institutions alone. With the imbreviature, the notaries themselves became repositories of documents, and their books were filled with the activities of their clients; in other words, imbreviature allow us to shift away from the social networks centred on clerics. Furthermore, the content of our records change. The single-­sheet charters that we have been examining so far mostly covered permanent rights over

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134  The basic book on imbreviature, and notaries in medieval Italy in general, is Meyer, Felix, esp. pp. 119–75. 135  Credit operations involving grain: Mosiici and Sznura, Palmerio, pp. 62–3. Manumissions of coloni: ibid., pp. 29–30. 136  Cf. ibid., pp. 163–7, no. 102 (1238 March 26).

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landed properties; in their own registers, instead, notaries began to write down short-­term transactions and, in general, a wide variety of matters of legal and economic relevance that one could seldom find on individual parchments.134 This informative potential of notarial registers will be developed in Chapter 3, in an analysis of the protocols by the Lucchese notary Ciabatto. Palmerio’s imbreviature are far less numerous than Ciabatto’s and contain very few lease agreements, which means that they cannot easily be used for the study of land management. Still, they are relevant to some of the main points of this section. Quite a high number of deeds concerned the purchase of grain on credit—­something that Abbot Uberto is also likely to have done at the beginning of the thirteenth century, as I have proposed earlier on—­or payments in kind in return for money loans. There are also four manumissions of coloni, which entailed the abolition of their traditional dues, usaria and servitia, in exchange for extremely high sums of money: respectively £45, £72 and £102 of Pisan denarii (the fourth deed was apparently for free), including the price for the sale of the holdings, which had been cultivated by the coloni up to then, to the coloni themselves. We can include in this array of operations the receipt of payment for the manumission of one colonus, amounting to £30.135 It seems striking that highly-­dependent tenants had so much money of their own, but one imbreviatura informs us that they had to find suitable guarantors;136 one can therefore assume that coloni may have had no other choice but taking out money loans so as to pay for their freedom. This appears to echo the socioeconomic dynamics that we have been observing at Settimo and Passignano. The signoria could be a real business, and economic ties of dependency engendered by credit could substitute for the preexisting forms of servitude—­in a way that recalls what happened to Afro-­American slaves after the end of the US Civil War. Unfortunately, Palmerio’s imbreviature do not allow us to link this process to a change in the forms of land management: there are only two short-­term contracts (three years each) that the editors have labelled as mezzadria agreements, but which are in fact sharecropping deeds deprived of any clause regarding the joint provision of seed-­corn and simply granted in return for half of all

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Map by: Taylor Zaneri

the produce (here called logoria, the vernacular for the Latin lucrum, profit). To them, we need to add two further short-­term agreements (four years each) given in return for 4 and 8 st. of grain respectively. It should be noticed that even this very scanty evidence confirms that share tenures were applied to polyculture-­oriented environments. The use of the vague term logoria recalls the words and expressions, such as fructus and de omni eo quod Deus dederit, which we met in Passignano and which were meant to encompass the various agricultural products cultivated on the holding and demanded as rent. Fixed rents, on the contrary, prevailed in the context of wheat-­farming, and this point I shall further develop in the next chapter and the general conclusion.137 137  Cf. respectively ibid., p. 92, no. 27 (1238 January 12) and p. 298, no. 254 (1238 August 30) for sharecropping deeds, and pp. 308–9, no. 264 and p. 310, no. 267 (both dated to 1238 August 24).

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Map 9  The Chianti region: other case studies

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Conclusion

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The wind of change blew over some major ecclesiastical institutions of the Fiorentino, albeit with different levels of intensity. Some common factors can be easily discerned: the overall upward trend of prices, the scattered but unequivocal signs of growing taxation in the last phases—­and then the aftermath—­of Barbarossa’s wars, the effort to write down inventories of the tenantry dues, and debts—­which can be regarded as a defining feature of society in the decades bestriding the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. Debts may have originated from the general context (wars and taxes) or else from more localized dynamics (such as the costly legal disputes in which Passignano was involved): either way, and on the the top of that, indebtedness certainly became endemic as a result of the high interest rates that debtors had to pay. The ecclesiastical institutions that preserved the bulk of our evidence all had to react, and those that enjoyed the most substantial signorial powers—­ mostly in the form of tenancy lordship, signoria fondiaria—­eventually renounced a considerable part of such powers, in the form of labour-­duties, in order to increase their extraction of the agricultural surplus. Those powers appear to have been built up on the enduring manorial forms of land management, in which the demand for labour encapsulated both economic exploitation and social subjection. Although poorly documented, the Badia fiorentina is a good example of this. Its estates were characterized by demesne farming in the early medieval period and by a rather imposing form of colonatus in the central Middle Ages. I would assume that the same pattern of evolution, in which the old manorial structure paved the way for the development of quite a tight local lordship over individuals, can be extended to Settimo, Passignano, and the Florentine bishopric. There is however one missing piece of evidence in the narrative of the slow fading of the sistema curtense and of the signoria resulting therefrom—­that is, the leasing out of demesnes. Except for the Settimo estate at Tigliano, we cannot easily pin down this process. Nonetheless, there can be little doubt that it did take place, for the very tasks through which demesnes were supposed to be cultivated were abolished or ceded away, as was the case with S. Martino alla Palma. One can assume that some lease charters, even though they did not mention the indominicatum explicitly, concerned in fact the land plots the indominicatum was made of. As a final point, it needs further stressing that landowners chose how to reform land management. Their first option was the demand for fixed rents

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in wheat; but the increasing number of references to sharecropping including mezzadria elements suggests that, at Passignano and possibly at Settimo and Montescalari, ecclesiastical owners were experimenting with new ways to cultivate holdings characterized by the mixed cropping of cereals and by polyculture, showing a concern for control over leaseholds which has no parallels in other types of lease agreements. We now need to see how all these elements played out in the Lucchesia.

3 Lucca and the Lucchesia

Geography, Historical Ecology, and Demography The political and economic territory of Lucca varied substantially during the medieval and modern era. For example, the political control of Lucca over the Garfagnana—­the name which was used to define, in broad terms, the basin in the upper reaches of the river Serchio, north of the city, and which came to comprise the whole Serchio valley in the twelfth century—­ dates to the early medieval period; the Garfagnana, however, fell under the rule of the Estensi of Ferrara in 1429 and was reunited with the province of Lucca only in 1923. In a similar way, the diocese of Lucca, along with the proprietorial and signorial rights of the bishops, stretched down to the Valdarno Inferiore, including the estate centre of S. Maria a Monte, which now lies within the province of Pisa and has been part of the diocese of S.  Miniato since 1622.1 I shall examine the geographical and ecological characteristics of each of the areas that will be taken into account in the sections of this chapter. Even though none of my case studies concerns Garfagnana, I will describe it too, as it contributes to outlining the economic context of the Lucchesia after 1150; and I shall provide further particulars on specific localities as I get down to individual case studies. Before starting off, a short remark on climate is needed; indeed, this is an element that gives unity to the whole region, apart from the mountain ranges in the north. The Lucchesia lies in a climatic zone that suffers less from the temperature shifts which are typical of inland Tuscany—­including Florence—­ because of its proximity to the sea; in comparison to the Fiorentino it is also more rainy. The maximum level of annual precipitation is around 1,500 mm per year in the north, on the boundary between 1  On the Garfagnana cf. Barbieri, Toscana, pp. 359–60; Wickham, The Mountains, pp. 16–39. On S. Maria a Monte as part of the diocese of S. Miniato cf. Ughelli and Coleti, Italia Sacra III, 269–78. Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000–­1250. Lorenzo Tabarrini, Oxford University Press. © Lorenzo Tabarrini 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198875154.003.0004

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Case Studies (Eleventh–­Thirteenth Centuries)

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2 Barbieri, Toscana, p. 95.

3 Onori, L’abbazia, p. 41.

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Tuscany and Liguria, and it is only a little lower when we move south and get closer to Lucca; annual rainfall is as low as 1,200 mm only south of the Arno.2 All this means that, in normal conditions, a regular provision of water benefited the entire countryside of Lucca, and this was matched by a hydrogeological setting which was very favourable to agriculture—­at least in the immediate environs of the city. It seems reasonable to start our excursus from the Sei Miglia, the plain of c. 300 km2 that rings Lucca and is crossed by the Serchio, in that it has constituted the stable political ambit of the city—­formally from Henry IV’s diploma of 1081 (but a more informal political control had probably been established earlier; see the Introduction) up to the present-­day provincia. The Sei Miglia was a major centre of communication, since it is located on the route of the Via Francigena, the main road from France to Rome. It is, today, quite a densely inhabited and industrialized area; one can get a glimpse of that, for example, by simply looking out of the window on a train from Prato to Lucca just after the town of Altopascio, on the south-­eastern edge of the plain. The Sei Miglia, moreover, also appears to be unusually clearly bounded. If we follow the river course of the Serchio northwards we end up amid the mountain ranges of the Garfagnana, which are separated from the sea by the steep Alpi Apuane raising abruptly on the west (the highest mountain of the Apuane, the Monte Pisanino, is 1,946 m high). South of the city, right after Verciano, a landscape made of woodland and low hills extends to the slopes of the Monte Pisano, on the boundary between the provinces of Pisa and Lucca. East, vine- and olive-­bearing hills mark the end of the Sei Miglia, and indeed of the province of Lucca; the plain used to be further defined by the Lago di Bientina, which lay south-­ east of the city and was surrounded by the most extensive marshy area of the whole Lucchesia before a massive drainage scheme took place in the middle of the nineteenth century.3 West, finally, the range of low hills known as the Monti d’Oltre Serchio divides the Sei Miglia from the Versilia region. The Sei Miglia is small, but very fertile; indeed, it appears to have always been intensively cultivated. Very little of the area was waterlogged during the medieval period; marshland and woodland are almost completely absent from our documentation; and land clearance never surfaces as an important part of the agricultural works that tenants were required to

Map 10  The Sei Miglia in the central Middle Ages

Map by: Taylor Zaneri

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Lucca and the Lucchesia  121

4 Wickham, Community, p. 49. 6 Porisini, Produttività, pp. 11–12. 8 Bratchel, Lucca, pp. 209–10.

5 Berengo, Nobili, p. 307. 7 Barbieri, Toscana, p. 221.

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perform.4 It is likely that the peasantry had always tended to exploit heavily the productive potential of the plain, as will emerge from the examples I discuss later on; it is only from the modern age, however, that it becomes possible to get a more vivid picture of such an intense exploitation. Marino Berengo wrote that in the sixteenth century it was absolutely normal, in the Sei Miglia, to cultivate wheat for three years in a row, and to sow seeds suitable to the recovery of the soil (such as turnips and lupins) only in the fourth year—‘an effort’, in Berengo’s words, ‘to tear out from the land as much produce as possible’.5 And an effort that could have easily exhausted the soil. In the nineteenth century, the Giornale agrario toscano (a peri­od­ ic­al that was published in Florence from 1825 to 1867, and was aimed at educating rural communities in an attempt to modernize agriculture in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and then in the Italian State) lamented that Lucchese peasants were used to ringranare, that is, to sow grain for two consecutive years. This practice was condemned by the Giornale as it could have compromised the productivity of the soil in the long run;6 but it also testifies to the confidence—­perhaps excessive, but not groundless—­in the rapid restoring of land fertility on the part of the peasants living in the Sei Miglia. With regard to this, it is notable that the cultivation of rice—­which requires much water, and never took off in Tuscany—­developed throughout the nineteenth century only in the province of Lucca, namely in the Sei Miglia and on the northern edge of the Lake of Massaciuccoli (west of Lucca) and covered almost 600 ha at the beginning of the twentieth century.7 Wheat was mostly sown on the plain, vineyards and olive trees mostly planted on the hill slopes; combined together, the two of them formed a tight economic unit which had its centre in the city of Lucca, the main market for the sale of agricultural products (rural markets being, on the contrary, quite unimportant in the Sei Miglia). It needs stressing all the same that Lucca, like Florence, could hardly rely on its contado alone for food self-­sufficiency, and depended also on grain imports from southern Italy during the early modern and modern period (at the latest). Between the 1440s and the 1480s, the city government imposed restrictions on, and also prohibited, the export of grain outside the jurisdictional territory of Lucca.8 In the sixteenth century, the Ufficio dell’Abbondanza, the competent body

122  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

9 Berengo, Nobili, pp. 292–3. 10  On the Versilia region cf. Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, pp. 187–9. On Motrone cf. Pelù, Motrone, particularly pp. 37 and 194–5; and also Wickham, Community, p. 13. A recent overview of Lucchese geography in the medieval period is Zaneri, ‘Rural production’, pp. 30–3.

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for food supply in Lucca and its State, was massively buying Sicilian wheat (from Ragusa in particular) which reached the city via the port of Viareggio, in the Versilia region—­thus proving that the Lucchesi needed to be fed also through long-­distance imports of grain. But the choice of Sicily was also (and perhaps mainly) due to political reasons, as Lucca refused to rely on its rival neighbouring States for food supplies. So, those imports do not invalidate the overall picture of a small but rich countryside. And indeed, many Lucchese mercantile families of the modern age invested part of their cap­ ital in landed estates located within the Sei Miglia and in the building up of rich villae there—­which were both a safe source of revenue and a representation of social status.9 Viareggio takes us on to Versilia, which owes its name to the river flowing through the provinces of Lucca and Massa-­Carrara; this is the coastal region standing just on the western side of the Alpi Apuane, which separate it from the Garfagnana, and of the Monti d’Oltre Serchio, which separate it from the environs of Lucca. The Versiliese territory varied greatly in size during the Middle Ages, and apparently the term was used in the early medieval period to denote a wide area stretching from the diocese of Luni to that of Pisa; it is now encompassed by the municipalities of Seravezza in the north, Viareggio in the south, and Camaiore in the east. Versilia was in the Lucchese political orbit from the early Middle Ages; a late confirmation of this comes from the privilege issued by Henry IV in 1081, in which we find mention of the now-­disappeared port of Motrone (west of Camaiore) and the prohibition, for everyone doing business there, to damage the Lucchesi and their activities. In a similar way to the concession of the city jurisdiction over the Sei Miglia, it is likely that Henry’s diploma was in fact ratifying the already existing Lucchese control over the port.10 The presence of the Lucchesi in inland Versilia preceded the development of Motrone, however, as shown by the rural lordship wielded by the city canons over the estate centre (and later on the castle) of Massarosa and some neighbouring localities. Massarosa was ceded to the cathedral chapter of S.  Martino by King Hugh and his son Lothar in 932, and will be at the core of the next section. It had belonged to the royal domain and was largely made up of marshlands and woodland. It was (and is) located right above a small plain

Map 11  The Versilia region

Map by: Taylor Zaneri

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124  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

11  On tithes cf. below. Very small clues about land-­clearances in Massarosa and the neighbouring localities between the tenth and the twelfth centuries are discussed in Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, pp. 206–7. 12  I summarize here Wickham, The Mountains, pp. 22–5 and 131–7.

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where it is at least rational to assume—­in view of the absence of positive evidence—­that the canons promoted land clearance, as the heavy tithes in kind owed to the chapter in the late twelfth century probably also imply.11 This excursus ends with a brief description of the already mentioned Garfagnana region, the upper basin of the river Serchio, north of Lucca. As I said before, none of the case studies I have used for this book concern the Garfagnana, essentially because the documentation of the cathedral chapter of the city is poor in references to it, and the episcopate did not own any substantial manors there during the central centuries of the Middle Ages—­ the only partial exception being a portion of the village of Gragno. Nonetheless, a few remarks need to be made. For a start, the Garfagnana was a land of inferior grains, rye in particular, and wheat was extremely marginal; this was due to the rather colder temperatures characterizing the valley in comparison to the rest of the Lucchesia. Unlike wheat farming, the silvo-­pastoral economy was very important. Chestnut trees were abundant already in the ninth century, as the inventories of the episcopate (cf. Chapter 1) show; but we need to wait until the last thirty years of the twelfth century to see the first clues pointing to the use of chestnuts as a cash crop, and the plantation of chestnut trees would become a systematic profit-­oriented business only in the later Middle Ages. A similar pattern appears when we look at the transhumance of sheep from the valley southwards. It was practised already during the early medieval period, but it escalated—­indeed turning into an institutionalized economic system—­after 1150. The transhumance of sheep is a consequence of the development of wool production, documented after 1200 as important in the city; it therefore is further evidence of the growth of overall demand taking place between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries.12 As a final point, demography needs some discussion here. One might reasonably think that the high number of charters preserved within Lucchese ecclesiastical archives for the early medieval period could be of some help in shedding light on population trends, but this is not the case. The best we can say is that the documentation of the Lucchese episcopate seems to suggest that the Sei Miglia were quite densely populated already during the early Middle Ages, but this is mainly a plausible impression

Lucca and the Lucchesia  125

13  Figures about fourteenth-­century population have been discussed by Meek, Lucca, pp. 21–7; on the 1331–2 estimo, and for a comparison between Lucca and the rest of Tuscany, cf. Leverotti, ‘La crisi’ and also Ead., Popolazione; a recent overview is Ammannati, ‘La Peste’, pp. 29–33. The whole issue remains controversial and needs to be reconsidered. Meek and Leverotti provided different interpretations as to the number and the categories of people who took the oath in 1331. Meek proposed 4,746 people and Leverotti 4,083 as the number; more­ over, Meek wrote that the subscribers were ‘adult sons as well as fathers, groups of brothers and some widows, not just heads of households’, whereas Leverotti reports only ‘adult male dwellers’ (see Meek, Lucca, p. 24 and Leverotti, ‘La crisi’, p. 75, note 29). Also, Leverotti does not make an estimate of the sum total of Lucca inhabitants for the first half of the fourteenth century—­neither on the basis of the oath, nor of the estimo. On the top of all this, it is not even clear what multiplier would be best to adopt to calculate the whole population of the Lucchese State. For my own calculation I have taken into account the number of people recorded in the estimo (4,929 according to Leverotti) because the oath does not register individual oath-­takers for some pivieri; and I employed two different multipliers: a small one (3.5), which appears to be justified by the fact that the estimo reports not only the heads of households, but also the names of wives, sons, brothers, widows, mothers-­in-­law and nephews—­so that not many ­people are likely to have been excluded from the tally; and a bigger one (4.5) which appears to be equally justified by the fact that the exact number of members composing some of those groups is not specified (for instance, we find mentions of filii or heredes without further clarifications). By and large, I tend to think that the rather pessimistic view of Lucca population expressed by Beloch, Bevölkerungsgeschichte II, 165–6, is the most convincing; for a different opinion cf. Russell, Medieval Regions, p. 45 (who, however, resorted to unreliable data on annual wine consumption); Ginatempo and Sandri, L’Italia, p. 106 and p. 260; and Pinto, La Toscana, p. 77, note 350 (but none of them took into account the estimo—­this was discovered by Leverotti later in time). As to the ratio of 45:55 between city and urban inhabitants in the fourteenth century cf. Wickham, Community, p. 17 and note 16.

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derived from the apparent intensity of land exploitation—­as results, for example, from the inventories of the bishopric. If we jump to the late twelfth century (the moment from which we start to have some figures for Florence, thanks to the oath subscribed by the dwellers of the Florentine district of S. Pancrazio in 1199, which we analysed in Chapter 2) the sole clue pointing to an increase in the number of people living in Lucca is represented by the construction of a new circuit of city walls (cf. the Introduction). We need in fact to wait for the first half of the fourteenth century to get some numbers on demography in Lucca before the Black Death; they come from an estimo, referring to the years 1331–2 and covering Lucca and its entire jurisdiction (that is, including both the Sei Miglia and the vicarie, subject territories which preserved a certain degree of autonomy), and from an oath sworn by  all the people living in the Lucchese State to John of Bohemia, son of Emperor Henry VII, in 1331. Both these sources require further investigation, since scholars have provided profoundly diverging interpretations of the data they contain. All the same, the estimo and the oath make it likely that the population of the region was around 17,200–22,000 people, with c. 9,400–12,000 residing in the Sei Miglia and c. 7,700–10,000 in the city.13

126  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

Inflation in the Late Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries I have discussed in Chapter 2 the famine that appears to have hit Florence and Lucca in the early 1180s, and we have seen how the price of land surged in the Fiorentino from that period on. The matrix of explanations for this process—­including monetary debasement, taxation from the comune and urban demand, with the increased pressure on peasant production resulting therefrom—­can be applied to the Lucchesia, too, but we need to add something more here. It has to be noted, first of all, that for Lucca we can resort to an extremely precise and complete analysis of inflation from 1100 to 1200, by Arnold Esch in his (unfortunately unpublished) Habilitationsschrift regarding the city and its countryside throughout the twelfth century. Drawing from all the Lucchese documents of that period, Esch demonstrated that a slow increase in the price of land was already under way in the mid 1160s; in the 1170s, then, grain shortages due to a series of local wars probably pushed up the prices of cereals—­even though, as in the Fiorentino, data on the cost of agricultural commodities are quite scanty. A notable (and sudden) upsurge in the price of land took place in the early 1180s, thus pointing to a direct connection with the famine of 1181–2. Esch, furthermore, showed that land became particularly expensive in the countryside closest to the city, within a radius of 1.5 km from its walls: +125-­150% of 14  On Pisa cf. Salvatori, La popolazione, pp. 119–20.

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Such low figures are consistent with the fact that Lucca certainly was, by the early Trecento, far smaller than Florence (possibly peaking at 110,000 inhabitants by 1300, as we have seen in Chapter 2) and Pisa (perhaps larger than Lucca already at the beginning of the twelfth century, with 24,000–27,000 people in 1228).14 The question of the number of inhabitants in Lucca and the Lucchesia during the central centuries of the Middle Ages thus remains open, as we do not have anything like even the uncertain figures that can be drawn from the Florentine oath of S. Pancrazio. Despite this lack of positive evidence, the late medieval demographic disproportion between Lucca and Florence makes it plausible to propose that, even if there can be little doubt that Lucca took part in a general trend of demographic growth which was almost fully European on the eve of the Duecento, this almost certainly was not as pronounced here as elsewhere—­not as in Florence, at least.

Lucca and the Lucchesia  127

15  Esch, ‘Lucca’, ch. 1. 16  Ibid., p. 83; cf. also Wickham, Community, pp. 23–4. 17  Esch, ‘Lucca’, pp. 45–51, 77, 83–6.

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real increase, and another +150% due to the debasement of coins, over the years 1165–95 in comparison to the average price of the first half of the century. It can be argued, as we saw for Florence, that the possibility of cutting transport costs to the urban market, the dominant market of the region, raised the price of land in the immediate environs of Lucca.15 Esch examined rents, too. If one follows the evolution of rents in kind during the second half of the twelfth century, it is easy to notice that its upward trend was very similar—­indeed, nearly identical—­to that of the prices of land and agricultural goods. The two phenomena were inter­ related. According to Esch, prices began to be calculated according to the size of rents that could be really (‘wirklich’) extracted from the land; that is, rents began to reflect the real productive potential of the soil. Moreover, the rents that could be really demanded were calculated on the basis of the possible rise in prices in the near future more than on current prices; for ex­ample, when the price of grain fell temporarily down in 1184, rents in grain remained high, as if that drop did not occur at all. All this means that inflation had long-­lasting effects on the relations between tenants and land­ owners; indeed, Esch argued that ecclesiastical institutions (the only ones whose landed properties can be studied in some detail before the Duecento) started for the first time to invest in land, and to exploit it ‘economically’— that is, as part of a profit-­oriented attitude.16 That same type of attitude we have observed in Chapter  2 when discussing the investments in landed estates made by Abbot Uberto in the early thirteenth century, but in the environs of Lucca the annual margins on the capital invested in land, around 4–6%, appears to have been higher than Florentine ones (2.5% per year can be suggested; cf. again Chapter  2), thus making that type of investment ­possibly even more attractive.17 In the following sections, I shall extend parts of Esch’s analysis up to the 1230s; indeed, each of the case studies discusses agricultural renders and their weight. It would be desirable to build up a proper table of prices also for the first thirty years of the thirteenth century—­a huge task, which is outside the scope of this book, since it could be carried out only through the complete reading of all the charters of the bishopric and of the State archives. All the same, I have collected a few benchmark prices of land over the period 1201–30 (cf. Table 2 and Graph 1 at the end of this chapter). They are insufficient to demonstrate overall trends; but they do show (consistently

128  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

18  Ibid., p. 18. 19  References to, or judgments on, afficta retenta in the twelfth century have been listed in Wickham, Community, p. 27, note 32 (it is important to stress that all the references recorded by Wickham date to the period between the 1170s and the 1190s). Cf. also Id., Courts, pp. 45–7, notes 60 and 69; Kotel’nikova, ‘Le operazioni’, p. 73. For the thirteenth century cf. some examples in ASDLu, Capitolare, 1201 April 13 (R. 47), 1203 March 20 (E. 171) (here the rent is reduced because the leaseholder is unable to deliver what he was initially demanded to), 1207 May 12 (R. 206) (idem), 1213 April 16 (I. 6), 1214 May 2 (D. 182), 1217 November 12 (S. 83) (here the rent in grain is reduced, because the tenants were not able to deliver it), 1220 November 7 (M.  38) (the document about Uguccione and Gherardino), 1222 October 10 (D.  154), 1228 May 9 (D. 72); ASLu, S. Ponziano, 1212 April 4, 1219 March 29; Ciabatto, p. 251, C 131 (1230 February 10), p. 286, C 202 (1230 March 30), p. 295, C 216 (1230 May 3). Cf. for other ex­amples the section on Massarosa and Massa Macinaia, and that on S. Ponziano. 20  Esch, ‘Lucca’, p. 22 (‘to this lease agreement [that is, short-­term mezzadria contracts] belonged the future’).

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with Esch’s tables) that land prices were high during those three decades, averaging at £1.6 per st. Prices peaked in the 1210s, whereas in the 1230s they seem to have settled at a lower level, although by no means as low as it was before 1150 (when most of them stayed in the range of 5–10 s. per st.);18 furthermore—­and this is an important point—­there was quite a significant degree of instability from year to year, and variability from place to place. I shall develop Esch’s argument by focusing on one question—­how could economic change be reconciled with social stability? Rents could not just be increased without engendering disobedience or resistance on the part of the peasantry. In fact, disputes did arise. The trial records from the period 1170–1230 show a concern—­which was not attested before—­for failure in the provision of rents, called afficta retenta (withheld rents). Cultivators did not manage—­or perhaps refused—­to meet the increasingly harsh requirements of landowners, who were subsequently entitled by judges and arbiters to dispossess them of their holdings until all the pending rents were returned (one tenant was sentenced to unfreedom for being in arrears: a certain Gherardino of the late Omicciolo, who became manens et colonus of the cath­ edral canon Uguccione because he ‘maliciously ceased to pay rent’).19 This is the background against which the forms—­and reforms—­of land management, and the wider social context in which they were placed, need to be set. This is worth doing since existing studies of the later part of the central Middle Ages have not delved into the specific shapes that the relations between landowners and tenants could take: Esch, for instance, argued that the economic growth of the late twelfth century was a premise to the development of mezzadria; but he obviously could not take into account all the studies that would stress, in later decades, how controversial the existence of mezzadria in medieval Lucchesia is.20 I will frame and clarify this matter in the following pages.

Lucca and the Lucchesia  129 5

2.5

1.25

12 01 12 03 12 06 12 08 12 12 12 13 12 17 12 19 12 21 12 23 12 24 12 24 12 25 12 26 12 26 12 27 12 28 12 28

0 Year

The survey has been carried out on all the parchments of the Archivio di Stato di Lucca redacted between 1201 and 1230. I have taken into consideration only the documents that mention the size of the land, or which specify the rate (ratio) to be paid for each cultra or modium, so that the price per st. could be calculated thereof. Future research will have to take into account the charters of the Archivio Storico Diocesano, too, which lack adequate summaries—­the two volumes of the Lucensis Ecclesiae Monumenta being incomplete. I have included all the same two sale charters preserved in the ASDLu which I found during my research, but there is no doubt that more of them can be found. I have considered the cultra or modium as equivalent to 24 st., not 22 st. (cf. Square and Capacity Measures) in order to obtain the lowest £/st. ratio; this way, the risk of overestimating the increase of prices is avoided. Finally, I have included only the prices expressed in boni denarii Lucenses, as the exchange rate with the Pisan denarii or the imperial librae is unknown.

The Case Studies I begin with the canons of the cathedral chapter of S. Martino, and I discuss, in a comparative perspective, the reforms of land management they promoted in the Sei Miglia and in the Versilia region, namely in the two lo­cal­ ities where they owned their most substantial estates and held signorial powers (in very different degrees, as we shall see): Massa Macinaia and

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Price (£/st.)

3.75

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The Canons of S. Martino: Massa Macinaia and Massarosa Massa Macinaia is now a frazione of the town of Capannori, about 5 km south-­east of Lucca, whereas Massarosa lies c. 10 km north-­west of the city, beyond the Monti d’Oltre Serchio. The two of them fell under the signoria of the canons of S. Martino, but in different ways and as part of different ecological and proprietorial settings. Massa Macinaia is representative of the fragmented patterns of landowning and landholding characterizing the Sei

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Massarosa, respectively south-­east and north-­west of Lucca. The documentation on Massa Macinaia and Massarosa is sufficiently rich to allow us to pin down the evolution of the two settlements from the early Middle Ages to the decades bridging the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries; from this, we can draw a comparison between the Versilia and the Sei Miglia as a whole. Then, I shall take into account the rent contracts from the richest city abbey, S. Ponziano, which are now preserved in the State Archives of Lucca, in order to elucidate how the monastic community adapted to the changing economic context of the period 1180–1230. Finally, I will focus on the four published registers written by the notary Ciabatto, which will let us penetrate the social milieu of his clients; more specifically, this will give us a glimpse of the landed properties owned by some members of the urban lay elites, a social stratum barely visible in the documents of ecclesiastical owners. S. Ponziano and Ciabatto will also enable us to observe share tenures and early mezzadria contracts in the Sei Miglia—­and Ciabatto will allow a brief discussion of wage labour, too. Distinct from Florence, the Lucchese case studies are city-­centred and reflect the early dominance of Lucca over its surrounding countryside. Future research will have to take into account all the charters of the Lucchese bishops, for lands further away from the city—­but I have at least looked at those concerning the episcopal castle of S.  Maria a Monte, in the Valdarno Inferiore, the best-­documented episcopal estate outside the Sei Miglia, on which I will make some remarks in the conclusion of this chapter. Similarly, the complete study of other archival sets of the State Archives could well modify the overall picture. Nonetheless, the spectrum of situations analysed here covers an ample set of relations between landowners and tenants, so that, I hope, inappropriate generalizations can be avoided.

Lucca and the Lucchesia  131

21  RCL I, 4, no. 6 (898–925). The chronological range is defined by the year in which Bertha is first attested as wife of Adalbert, and by her death. The cartulary preserving the donation of Massa Macinaia is ASDLu, Capitolare, LL. 1. The same cartulary records a purchase of three mansi close to S. Petronilla on the part of Bertha from a certain Giovanni, son of the late Teuzo; like the donation, this purchase has no date (RCL I, 4, no. 5, 898–925). It can be guessed that Bertha purchased the three mansi just before donating them to the canons of S. Martino. The church of S. Petronilla has been restored in recent times; a picture taken prior to the res­tor­ ation can be seen in Dinelli, E., ‘Massa Macinaia’, p. 13. 22  On the measure of a mansus in the Carolingian period cf. Verhulst, The Carolingian Economy, p. 45.

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Miglia as a whole, whereas Massarosa stands at the opposite end of such patterns, in that the canons appear to have been, by far, the major land­ owners in the area; and this is a crucial point for understanding wider socioeconomic change. Let us start from the beginning; that is, from the moment the estate-­ centres of Massa Macinaia and Massarosa were donated to the canons of S. Martino. At some time between the end of the ninth century and 925 (it is unfortunately impossible to be more precise than that because the original document has not been preserved; it has survived in abbreviated form in a cartulary that was probably redacted in 1216 or 1217), Bertha ‘of Tuscany’, mother of the future king Hugh of Arles and wife of the marquis of Tuscia Adalbert II, donated to the canons of Lucca twenty mansi ‘in Massa Macinaria’, two in ‘Colognora’ (Colognora di Compito, south-­east of Lucca and more distant from Capannori than Massa Macinaia), some pasture land, and the church of S. Petronilla inside Massa Macinaia.21 This appears to have been quite a substantial block of landed properties, all the more so if we consider that, as noted above, landowning and landholding in the Sei Miglia are likely to have been fragmented already in the ninth century. We do not know, it is true, the precise size of the tenant-­plots here defined as mansi—­indeed, mansi never had a fixed size. Since a common measure of a Carolingian mansus was, at least in northern Europe, 16.5 ha, it could be proposed that Bertha donated to the canons an area of very roughly 330 ha (= 3.3 km2).22 However impressionistic, this figure appears to show that the estate-­centre of Massa Macinaia was meant to constitute the bulk of the canons’ landed properties in the Sei Miglia; at the time of the donation, the twenty mansi of Massa Macinaia must have represented an exception in the panorama of the heavily fragmented rights of ownership in the plain of Lucca.

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23 Schiaparelli, I diplomi, pp. 94–8, no. XXXI (932 July 1). The centrality of Massarosa for the other localities emerges from two expressions: that referred to the manentes ‘qui omnes iam dicte corti vicini esse videntur’, and that introducing the list of manentes scattered over the Lucchesia, who were said to come from ‘aliis locis et villis’ which however were ‘ad ipsam cortem pertinentes’. Cf. Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, pp. 203–4. 24 Leicht, Studi, p. 136; on Lucca cf. Jones, ‘An Italian estate’, p. 19; for an overview of Tuscany in the tenth century cf. Ronzani, ‘Vescovi’, particularly pp. 7–13.

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Much the same function was fulfilled by Massarosa in the Versilia region. The curtis of ‘Massa Grausi’ had been first purchased by Bertha, and was then donated to the church of S. Martino by King Hugh and his son Lothar in 932. In this case, the text of the donation gives us more information about tenants than about tenures. As part of the concession, the document lists a group of forty-­five manentes, highly dependent cultivators—­who cannot, however, be safely considered as the ancestors of the twelfth-­century coloni and manentes (cf. Chapter 1 and below). Ten of those manentes were associated with Massarosa itself, three with neighbouring villages (Montigiano, Cerri, and Panicale), whereas the rest of them resided in other localities of the Lucchesia. Massarosa, however, was explicitly labelled as the estate-­ centre on which even the most distant places mentioned in the document depended. The donation also includes the concession of some pieces of land located along the rivers Versilia and Serchio; it ends with the guarantee that, if the bishops tried to put in danger the canons’ rights of ownership, thus violating the king’s will, Massarosa would return to Hugh’s relatives until a more obedient prelate was found.23 The deeds of donation of Massa Macinaia and Massarosa are of particular importance, as they testify to the creation of a landed patrimony that the canons were supposed to hold independently from the bishopric. This was part of a more general process in which the priests of the cathedrals of Tuscany became, in the first half of the tenth century, the beneficiaries of generous cessions of land made by King Hugh (and sometimes also by lay people, under the impulse of Hugh’s politics), who was attempting, thereby, to counterbalance the power wielded locally by hostile bishops.24 The fact that both the estates had been ceded out by members of the reigning family implies that they were part of the fiscal domain, and were considered as such over time, as I shall further discuss later on. What interests us more, here, is that even the very scattered information about Massa Macinaia and Massarosa, as it is recorded within the surviving texts of the acts of donation, may point to a difference in the type of control that the canons were able to exert over the two localities. Namely, we come

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25  Cf. Schiaparelli, I diplomi, pp. 166–9, no. LVI (941 March 26); MGH DD O I, pp. 330–1, no. 238 (962 March 13); MGH DD O II, pp. 340–2, no. 289 (982 December 31); MGH DD O III, pp. 726–7, no. 301 (998 September 1). 26  MGH DD Ko II, pp. 359–61, no. 260 (1038 February 23). 27  Stumpf-­Brentano, Die Reichskanzler III, 103–4, no. 92 (1123 February 10). 28  RCL II, 109–10, no. 1186 (1160 April 11). 29  RCL II, 338–9, no. 1521 (1184 November 20).

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to know that the canons had manentes in and around Massarosa, and quite a high number of them, which means in turn that the sum total of people with some ties of dependency (and plausibly tight ones) towards S. Martino may have been c. 200 (if we use the prudent multiplier of 4.5 for each manens). It cannot be completely excluded that highly dependent tenants were residing on the mansi of Massa Macinaia, too—­to repeat, we can read the act of donation concerning Massa Macinaia only in abbreviated form. But one can safely assume that the compiler of the thirteenth-­century cartulary was unlikely to miss such an important piece of information. The absence of the chapter manentes at Massa Macinaia, at least during the early medieval period, is best shown by the privileges issued by kings and emperors in the second half of the tenth century, in which all the concessions previously made to the canons were confirmed, and in which no manens was associated with Massa Macinaia.25 There was however, later in time, an attempt on the part of the Lucchese canons to level off the structural differences between their two major curtes. In 1038 twenty-­one manentes, who were said to reside in Massa Macinaia and close to Compito, were associated with the curtis of S. Petronilla in a diploma issued by Conrad II,26 and then in two privileges granted, re­spect­ ive­ly, by Emperor Henry V in 112327 and by Marquis Welf VI in 1160.28 A similar number of manentes in S. Petronilla (twenty-­five) was the object of a legal dispute with the lords of Vorno during the 1180s.29 It can be ­proposed that in the first half of the eleventh century the canons claimed, successfully, that some of the cultivators who worked their lands around Massa Macinaia were manentes—­maybe on the grounds that the curtis of Massa Macinaia, like Massarosa, was located on the lands of the fiscal domain (on the connection between early medieval manentes and fiscal lands cf. Chapter  1). This contributed to the claim of a high level of social subjection of the tenantry, possibly higher than that that actually existed—­as will be detailed in the following pages—­and which the canons tried to use to their advantage in the signorialized political context of the twelfth century.

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30  RCL I, 35, no. 96 (1018 February 12). 31  I could find only two references to donicati in the documents concerning Massa Macinaia, respectively a donation and a sale, made by small owners in favour of the canons in the second half of the twelfth century. Those references, however, feature within purely formulaic lists of the landed goods composing the estates in the process of being ceded away: ‘cultis et incultis, donicatis et massariciis, mobilibus et inmobilibus’ (cf. RCL II, 84, no. 1143, 1156 February 22, and ibid. II, 110, no. 1187, 1160 June 5); by no means do they point to the existence of a bipartite manor.

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We can try to get a little further with Massarosa manentes. The presence of manentes in a web of settlements scattered over the Versilia region, and the Lucchesia as a whole, all linked to the estate-­centre of Massarosa, may recall a fairly classic manorial type of organization, in which tenants were required to move from their houses and to perform labour-­services on the canons’ demesnes; but, of course, this is guesswork to a large extent. The earliest piece of evidence which may point to the existence of this farming regime is late, for the definition of Massarosa as a curtis dominicata dates to 1018,30 and there is no mention at all of corvée-work among the charters regarding Massarosa (although this silence fits a more general scarcity of documentation for this locality, as we will see in a moment). As a result, we cannot be sure that any form of the sistema curtense was already (or still) in place here in the tenth century, nor indeed that labour-­services framed the relations between the canons and their manentes at any point in the history of medieval Massarosa. But it is interesting to note that Massa Macinaia was never associated with a demesne—­significantly, it was never called curtis dominicata—­whereas further clues about the existence of a bipartite estate at Massarosa, however late, do exist, and I will discuss them. It can be concluded that Massarosa is definitely more likely to have been a ‘classic manor’ during the early medieval period than Massa Macinaia. On the contrary, no document suggests that the manentes of S. Petronilla were ever employed in demesne farming, and their role in the development of the canons’ signoria at Massa Macinaia must not be overestimated; but again, this will be fleshed out in the following pages.31 What is certain is that the control of the canons over Massarosa—­ probably favoured by an ancient and long-­standing provision of highly dependent tenant families, and possibly reinforced by some kind of ‘man­ orial framing’ of the tenants’ work—­appears to have been remarkably stable throughout the central centuries of the Middle Ages. If one simply skims through the charters of the cathedral chapter of Lucca of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries (and the same goes for the first half of the thirteenth century), it is easy to notice the low number of documents regarding

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32  Cf. notes 27 and 28 for the references. 33  RCL I, 104, no. 270 (1058 May 4), 169, no. 423 (1077 January 27), 170, no. 424 (1077 January 27) (this is the donation). On the hospital of S. Martino cf. its first mention ibid. I, 164, no. 414 (1076 March 12). To these deeds we can add those ibid. I, 178, no. 434 (1077 December 10), which is a donation involving lay people and concerning landed goods in Massarosa; and ibid. I, 208–9, no. 494 (1087 March 27), which is a donation of a casalinum located in Massarosa in favour of the monastery of Quiesa. Probably, these goods came to be part of the patrimony of the cathedral chapter later in time, and this is why the corresponding documents ended up in its archives. 34  Purchase of land: RCL I, 232, no. 547 (1097 February 7). Donations to the hospital of S. Martino: ibid. I, 183, no. 445 (1078 July 2), 198–9, no. 473 (1084 March 23). To these, we can add two sales involving only lay people: ibid. I, 55–6, no. 147 and 56, no. 149 (1034 November 18).

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Massarosa and, as a consequence, the extremely low level of land mobility. Indeed, it can be said that the history of Massarosa is, for a very long time, a history marked by the absence of any substantial documentary record. One might presume that the environs of Massarosa hardly attracted many people who were willing to buy or rent, for there probably were not many arable lands in that area; in the early 1120s and in the 1160s, the diplomas issued by Henry V and Welf VI still described the landscape as mostly composed of ‘woods, pastures, marshlands and lands close to the sea [marinis]’, along with ‘fish-­weirs [piscariis]’.32 But we have good reasons to think that the canons were also endeavouring to preserve the coherence of their estate while land-­clearance was underway; so the lack of land mobility did not depend exclusively on a lack of demand. Let us proceed chronologically, setting out a comparison with Massa Macinaia. It is legitimate to examine the second half of the tenth century and the eleventh century altogether, since they offer us a fairly homogenous picture of both Massarosa and Massa Macinaia. One can find a little information on the surroundings of Massarosa throughout this period, whereas the estate itself is almost invisible: namely, a donation of a tenant-­plot in Montigiano in favour of the canons dating to 1058, plus a purchase of land made by the canons in 1077, regarding another tenant-­plot in Montigiano, and finally the donation of a casalinum (the space on which a house can be built up), in Montigiano again, to the hospital of S.  Martino, owned by the canons.33 Sales on the part of the cathedral chapter are, instead, totally absent. When we turn our attention to Massa Macinaia, the situation appears to have been fairly similar: one purchase of land by the canons, and two donations, both in favour of the hospital of S.  Martino, over two centuries.34 The major divergence between the two villages emerges when we turn to leases ­conceded through libelli. Up to 1100, only five libelli concerning landed

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35  Libelli conceded by the canons regarding Massarosa, or its environs, during the tenth and the eleventh centuries: RCL I, 11–12, no. 29 (982 May 28), 12–13, no. 31 (986 June 9), 35, no. 96 (1018 February 12), 48–9, no. 130 (1031 November 20). 36  The Cunimundinghi’s manentes are mentioned in the breve de feora (cf. Chapter 1); see Cortese, L’aristocrazia, p. 123; on the ‘da Bozzano’ cf. Tomei, ‘Milites elegantes’, in particular p. 204. 37  Cf. Collavini, ‘I beni’; MGH DD Ko II, pp. 106–9, no. 80 (1027 April 6); CDP II/1, 131–3, no. 27 (1068 March 7). 38  Libelli conceded by the canons regarding Massa Macinaia during the tenth and the eleventh centuries: RCL I, 3, no. 2 (possibly first half of the ninth century), 5, no. 8 (before 918 September), 13, no. 34 (987 December 21), 18, no. 50 (tenth century?), 19, no. 52, 53 (this is the lease regarding the ‘masio Berte’), 55 (tenth century?), 25, no. 74 (1008 December 2), 141, no. 359 (1069 November 2), 179, no. 439 (1078 March 16), 199–200, no. 475 (1084 July 8), 250, no. 584, 251, no. 589, no. 591, 255, no. 610 (second half of the eleventh century?). See also the note below.

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properties in Massarosa or its environs were granted by the priests of S. Martino, all to people who cannot be ascribed to any major landowning family or religious institution of the Lucchesia (it can be hypothesized that they were medium-­size owners);35 to take just one example, the aristocratic family of the Cunimundinghi, who were said to own thirty manentes near Massarosa in the 890s (presumably as a result of a concession of other fiscal properties in Versilia) never entered the canons’ clientele; only one branch of them, the ‘da Bozzano’, did, but later in time (the 1070s) and not in return for lands in Massarosa.36 The libelli parceling out the canons’ estates at Massa Macinaia were more numerous—­sixteen in total. Furthermore, this second group of libelli seems to have entailed in practice the ceding away of properties, including one masium Berte (presumably one of the twenty mansi originally part of the donation by Bertha ‘of Tuscany’), to which we can add another cession of landed goods and other mansi close to the churches of S.  Petronilla and S.  Lorenzo (the second church of Massa Macinaia). It is also worth noting that Massa Macinaia lease charters show that the social profile of the ecclesiastical institutions and lay families receiving landed goods from the canons of S. Martino (or else owning alongside them, as displayed by the lists of land-­boundaries) appears to have been high; we find among them the abbey of S. Salvatore di Sesto (for which see the section on S. Ponziano)37 and three important families of Lucchese legal experts: the sons of Leo iudex, those of Flaiperto and those of Rolando.38 In  both Massarosa and Massa Macinaia rents were in cash, sometimes added to by purely recognitive renders such as one pork shoulder, and a pair of chickens during Easter. The presence of sub-­tenants, and the frequent references to the right of possession and usufruct over land (potestas habendi et usufructuandi, as opposed to the expression ad laborandum,

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39  Rents in wine must (sometimes together with money): RCL I, 250, no. 585-­6-­7-­8 and no. 590 (all recorded within the cartulary in ASDLu, Capitolare, LL. 1, and probably dating to the second half of the eleventh century). 40 Kotel’nikova, Mondo, p. 28; on tenimenta cf. Jones, ‘An Italian estate’. 41  For the first mention of the castrum cf. Fiorentini, Memorie, p. 432 (letter dating to the period 1004–1052). For the donation, cf. the relevant document at note 33.

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usually employed in contracts addressed to cultivators), further suggest that the beneficiaries of libelli were, in most cases, at least medium owners. As a conclusion, it needs noting that in Massa Macinaia there appears to have been a slight turn to rents in produce—­wine must in particular—­towards the end of the eleventh century.39 This development matches the pattern described by Kotel’nikova for the Lucchesia as a whole. Kotel’nikova argued that rents in money prevailed throughout much of the eleventh century; the documentation, then, attests to a conversion to kind from the end of the same century, which would become stable after 1100 as is evidenced by the spread of tenimenta contracts.40 For us, here, it is particularly important to observe how the canons’ landed properties in Massa Macinaia were soon divided among a numerous group of tenants, in a context in which other rich proprietors (S. Salvatore di Sesto in the first place) were likely to challenge the local hegemony of the chapter, or at least to prevent its further expansion. With regard to farming regimes, one can conclude that the coherence of any ‘classic’ bipartite model of land management in Massa Macinaia—­if this ever existed, which I doubt—­ was soon compromised by the leasing out of the mansi owned there by the clergy of S.  Martino. In Massarosa, on the contrary, this process hardly happened; and indeed, the almost complete absence of evidence concerning the ceding away of the estate-­centre in Versilia is matched by another clue pointing to an effort, on the part of the canons, towards the preservation of their patrimony: the construction of a castle. A castrum in Massarosa was built over the first half of the eleventh century. At that stage, the castrum probably was a just a fortification surrounding the curtis of the canons, but including also some private properties; in one of the donations I have discussed above, dating to 1087, the donors excluded from their concession some small pieces of land (petiolae) located within the castle.41 Considering that Massarosa constituted the major estate-­centre in Versilia of the clerics of S.  Martino, it is easy to understand why they sought to fortify it; but the efforts of the Lucchese canons were directed towards other Versiliese localities, too. A document dating to 1099, well-­ known to the historians of medieval Tuscany, informs us that the canons

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42  RCL I, 238–40, no. 562 (1099 June); for comments on this text cf. Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, p. 224; Wickham, ‘Economia’ pp. 391–3 and 418–20; Tomei, ‘Milites elegantes’, pp. 283–6; Cortese, L’aristocrazia, p. 302. 43  Bianchi and Collavini, ‘Public estates’, p. 149.

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tried to build a castle on the hill of Licetro, about 1 km north of Massarosa. Apparently, they had to do so because the neighbouring aristocratic family of Montemagno was responsible for assaults and thefts in Licetro, Gualdo, and Montigiano. The text, which describes the terms of the agreement between the cathedral chapter and the Montemagno, is certainly biased—­it is sufficient to consider that the canons’ attempt to create a castle in Licetro was flanked with the adverbs ‘fortissime mirifice’. But, as we saw in relation to the plea of the Casciavolesi the overall picture offered by the document had at least to be plausible, and this is why it is legitimate to follow the main lines of its narrative. We come to know, as a result, that the Montemagno strongly opposed the construction of a castrum in Licetro, and appealed to Matilda of Tuscany for help in stopping it. Matilda indeed sided with the Montemagno, provided that they agreed to cease the assaults on the canons’ landed properties. In the end, the priests of S. Martino agreed to take down the castle, and the pact was further sealed through the concession, on the part of the guarantors of Ildebrandino II ‘da Montemagno’, of some pieces of land which were given to the priests of S. Martino as pledges.42 This document is interesting in many respects. It is evidence of the signorial mutation in Versilia, with local aristocratic families attempting to seize the estates of ecclesiastical institutions; but it is also evidence, almost contradictorily, of the authority still wielded by the marquise in Tuscia at the end of the eleventh century. What is more important for us, however, is that this document further confirms that the canons did appear to have put considerable efforts into the preservation and defence of their Versiliese estates; and there is more evidence to this effect. About twenty years after the agreement concerning Licetro, in July 1123 we discover that they had built a castle in Fibbialla, now a hamlet of Camaiore located on the hills east of the Monte Ghilardona, within an area where the fiscal domain was substantial in the tenth century and was then partly ceded away.43 The priests of S.  Martino divided the expenses for the construction with Gualando of Vorno, probably the co-­ owner of signorial rights over the settlement in the early twelfth century (see below). The—­still apparently unfortified—­curtis of Fibbialla had been donated to the canons at the beginning of 1123 by Waldo III and his wife

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44  Cf. in general Dinelli, ‘Il castello’. The mention of Fibbialla as a curtis is contained in the diploma issued by Henry V (cf. note 27); the word castrum appears in RCL II, 344, no. 800 (1123 July 20). Not all the lords of Vorno must have agreed on a policy of collaboration with the church of S.  Martino. Another member of the family, Enrico di Sigefredo (cf. below), reached an agreement with the canons in 1126; he promised to cease to lay claims over Fibbialla and to provide military aid to the canons, in return for lands and an annual render of £10 of denarii. Cf. ibid. II, 357, nos. 826–7 (1126 April 3); cf. Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, p. 207 and 211; Id., ‘La origine’; Tomei, ‘Milites elegantes’, p. 125, note 292.

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Ghisla, members, respectively, of the Lucchese families of the Rolandinghi and the ‘da Bozzano’; this implies that the fortification was erected quite fast.44 Not all of the canons’ estates in Versilia, it is true, were involved in this process of incastellamento—­in particular, Gualdo and Montigiano never had a castle. All the same, it can be argued that the low level of land mobility, as it emerges from the documentation of the cathedral chapter of Lucca regarding the Versilia region, was consistent with incastellamento. The priests of S.  Martino could have chosen to concede libelli to the lay landowning families who lived not too far from Massarosa, who would have thereby entered the canons’ clientele. This, however, would have led to the parceling out of the canons’ Versiliese estates. So, on the contrary, they consciously endeavoured to preserve the coherence of their landed properties there, and were able to do so to an extent that was probably unattainable in the plain of Lucca. This was a rational way to allocate resources; Henry IV’s diploma of 1081 had explicitly prohibited the construction of castles within the Sei Miglia (cf. the Introduction), which means, for instance, that the workforce of the manentes attached to the church of S. Petronilla in Massa Macinaia from the 1180s could have not been employed to this end, and, more in general, that the priests of S.  Martino were in theory prevented from defending their Sei Miglia properties with any type of castrum. By contrast, the heirs of the early medieval manentes in Versilia must have constituted the group of highly dependent tenants who actually built the castles of Massarosa and Fibbialla, and who attempted to do the same in Licetro. Finally, one may guess that in the Sei Miglia the higher level of leasing out was due to the pressure of a dense stratum of aristocratic and medium owners with whom the priests of S.  Martino had to establish good relations by way of alienating part of their properties through libelli; the documentation of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries will shed further light on this pattern. In conclusion, it is definitely significant that some of the canons’ estates in Versilia were involved in the process of incastellamento between the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth; incastellamento

Map 12  The canons’ lordship in Versilia

Map by: Taylor Zaneri

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45  RCL I, 379–80, no. 877 (1131 March 26), II, 5, no. 1004 (1146 February 6), 25–6, no. 1043 (1148 July 19). 46  Ibid. I, 292, no. 690 (1109 February 14), 350, no. 812 (1124 April 5) (this is the document with the entry-­fine), 426, no. 970 (1143 February 20). There is also one purchase of land on the part of the canons: ibid. I, 373, no. 863 (1129 September 13). Donations: ibid. I, 427–8, no. 973 (1143 October 13), II, 24–5, no. 1041 (1148 May 23). 47  Ibid. I, 259, no. 619 (1102 March 27). 48  Ibid. I, 421, no. 959 (1142 March 21), 441, no. 996 (1145 May 14), II, 33–4, no. 1058 (1150 May 13).

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signals where the canons could (and wanted to) build up a cohesive control over lands and people. If we move on to the charters of the first half of the twelfth century, we immediately notice that such a policy had not changed over that period; land mobility was still almost non-­existent. There are just three documents mentioning Massarosa up to 1150: a purchase of land between lay proprietors; another purchase on the part of the canons; and an exchange involving the pievano of Elici (Elici was the pieve whose bound­ar­ ies included Massarosa) and the canons of S. Martino.45 No libelli or tenimenta regarding Massarosa or its environs can be found amid the charters of the Lucchese cathedral chapter between 1100 and 1150. In Massa Macinaia, by contrast, a higher number of transactions can be tracked down over those fifty years. We find three leases addressed to cultivators and granted in return for rents in kind (namely oil and wine), and in one case added to by the demand for a substantial entry-­fine (48 s.).46 In addition to this, the charters of that period show that other religious institutions, such as the monastery of S. Pietro di Pozzeveri (close to Altopascio) came to own land in Massa Macinaia;47 and also that quite a large group of lay owners was buying, selling, and renting out olive- and vine-­growing estates there.48 One does not have to go too far to guess that this sort of overcrowding was setting the stage for the development of conflicts over the ownership of men and lands, and such conflicts did break out between 1150 and 1230; the same goes in fact for Massarosa, but in a very different way, as we shall see. This context made the patterns of land management more visible than in previous periods, accompanied as it was by the spread of tenimenta contracts and the writing down of inventories of rents and services. Let us start with a short political narrative. One branch of the family of Leo iudex, whom we met as part of the group of libellarii holding land from the canons of S. Martino at Massa Macinaia, moved out of Lucca in the late eleventh century and by the 1120s was in control of the castle of Vorno, south of the city. The lords of Vorno remained in good relations with the canons for some time; indeed, we have seen that they contributed to the

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49  Wickham, ‘Property’, pp. 233–4; Id., Community, p. 107; cf. note 29 for the 1184 document; on the 1188 document cf. RCL III, 32–3, no. 1575 (1188 March 18). 50  RCL II, 110–13, no. 1188 (1160 June).

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construction of the castle in Fibbialla. But in the 1140s they decided to side with Pisa in one of its many wars with Lucca. This was not a wise choice. The Lucchesi managed to destroy the castle of Vorno in 1150, after having besieged it three times. In the end, the lords of Vorno agreed to return to Lucca, but they promised not to rebuild their castrum. In return, the commune of Lucca confirmed to them the signorial rights they owned over some of the tenants in Massa Macinaia. It is likely that the members of the Vorno family came to exert this lordship over time, by virtue of their pos­ ition as libellarii of the canons of Lucca. Such lordship, however, would from now on slowly slip away from the Vorno family, along with the political power they wielded locally; their local dependents came to be manentes of the priests of S.  Martino from 1184, and in 1188 another Gualando of Vorno—­probably the nephew of the Gualando we met above as the financier of the Fibbialla castle—­was ordered to give up his claims over Massa Macinaia (I will return to this).49 This political framing shows how the fragmentation of the patterns of landowning and landholding at Massa Macinaia was matched by a similar fragmentation of lay lordship, in the age in which (in the Lucchesia as well as in the rest of Tuscany) the contours of the signoria came to be defined with ever-­increasing precision. For the historian, this context is particularly fruitful; the re-­allocation of the tenants’ dues, and their takeover by the Lucchese canons, meant that these dues had to be recorded and preserved. We thus become able to understand what the signoria could actually imply for the peasantry in this area of the Sei Miglia over the second half of the twelfth century. Let us look at all this in more detail. In 1160, thirty-­seven tenants at Massa Macinaia declared what services they owed to Enrico di Sigefredo, member of the Vorno family (these were, presumably, the same services that tenants would owe to the canons about twenty-­five years later or so). They consisted in the performance of guard-­duties and transport-­services, the requisition of animals, the provision of flax and of a small quantity of money, plus the obligation to abide by the private justice of the lords of Vorno. All in all, they appear to have been fairly heavy, but also highly individualized. Some tenants said that they were not burdened with the same dues as their peers; and in one case, we learn that guard-­duties had been ‘gracefully’ abolished, ‘ob amorem’.50 This is very telling about the nature of

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51  Jones, ‘An Italian estate’, p. 24. 53  Jones, ‘An Italian estate’, p. 25.

52  Cf. Wickham, Community, ch. 2.

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lordship around Massa Macinaia—­the same applies in fact to the Sei Miglia as a whole. It appears as if the signoria was imposed, and possibly negotiated, on an (almost) individual basis, for the fragmentation of landowning prevented the development of any territorial control over the totality of the rural population. We are a long way from Georges Duby’s seigneurie banale. It is worth noting, however, that this signoria was very clearly distinguished from pure tenancy relations; agricultural works and agricultural products are almost completely absent in the 1160 list, except for flax—­which, significantly, was not part of the typical renders in kind demanded in the Lucchesia. Before getting down to a comparison with Massarosa, we need to briefly outline the general characteristics of the documentation of the cathedral chapter of Lucca for the period we are going to examine, and shift from political to economic aspects. The inventory of signorial dues belongs to the period that Esch identified as marked by an increase in the extraction of agricultural surplus in the whole Lucchesia. Philip Jones observed that, between 1150 and 1200, the number of libelli issued by the canons of S. Martino started to go down; contemporarily, the number of purchases of land went up. Then, in the last twenty years of the twelfth century, the cath­ edral chapter issued more than forty tenimenta, for the most part in return for fixed rents in kind.51 One can assume that the progressive abandonment of libelli and the parallel increase in the number of tenimenta responded to a  precise policy, on the part of the canons, aimed at establishing direct relations with cultivators; and this means that the medium owners and magnates who used to be the holders of libelli were no longer the main interlocutor of the priests of S. Martino. It needs stressing that already in the early twelfth century the growing demand for kind showed the landowners’ attempt to participate directly in the food market;52 what characterized the sudden increase in the number of tenimenta between 1180 and 1200, however, was that tenimenta had sometimes become temporary leases, and that they were accompanied by the exaction of entry-­fines in some cases. ‘These practices were new’ in Jones’ words.53 It is in this context that the takeover from the lords of Vorno of the signorial rights over the highly dependent tenants of Massa Macinaia in the 1180s can be fully understood; this was part of a more general process in which the canons of Lucca were investing in land and making tenancy agreements more demanding. The signoria

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54  RCL II, 287, no. 1442 (before September 1181?).

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over cultivators, it is true, was apparently unrelated to the extraction of the agricultural surplus, and I will argue that it did not necessarily put land­ owners in the condition to impose harsher working conditions on their subjects than those weighing on completely free peasants; but the signoria could at least create the personal ties of dependence laying the ground for such a harshening, and trying to get hold of it was certainly considered as useful. That the canons began to survey the renders they were entitled to collect, from the 1180s onwards, is consistent with this pattern—­and it must be remembered that, by and large, the same process was taking place in the Fiorentino at about the same time. I will take into account three lists of rents in this section, two regarding Massarosa (1183) and another one concerning the Sei Miglia as a whole (1187). I shall start from the first two, for they will allow us to flesh out the characteristics of signorial powers in Versilia, as opposed to the plain of Lucca; and we shall outline, in this way, the patterns of relations between tenants and landowners. Withheld renders were one of the reasons for the redaction of in­ven­tor­ ies. In 1181 (probably), the bishop of Lucca Guglielmo (1170–94) stated that the people (homines) of Massarosa and Gualdo had ceased to pay the tithes, consisting in bread, wine, chestnuts, and other fruits, which they owed to the canons of S.  Martino. As a consequence, Guglielmo reconfirmed to the clergy of the cathedral church its right to collect the tithes coming from the two localities.54 The document claims that the homines of Massarosa and Gualdo had kept on refusing to abide by their obligations for a long time, but I doubt this. The chronological correspondence between the bishop’s privilege and the breakout of the famine in Tuscany makes it plausible to discount the canons’ claims about their homines having for long been in arrears as a mostly rhetorical tool. But even if we want to believe the priests of S. Martino, it can still be assumed that the peasants’ unwillingness to comply with their requirements was fostered by the early 1180s famine. Bishop Guglielmo’s privilege is interesting in another respect too; it testifies to the collection of tithes in Massarosa and Gualdo. We do not know when this started, nor on what grounds tithes were exacted. Giovanni Dinelli proposed that these might have been the so-­called ‘manorial tithes’; that is, not the ordinary, ecclesiastical tithes paid to the pieve, but a simple tenth of agricultural produce that was demanded in return for the (customary) lease

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55 Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, pp. 219–20. We read the expression decimales affitales in ASDLu, Biblioteca Capitolare, no. 24, fol. 234 (cf. below) as probably referred to Versiliese tenants. 56 ASDLu, Capitolare, cod. P † XXXI, fols 6 and 7; cf. the regestum in RCL II, 321–3, 1497 (1183 May 9). 57  On rural communes in the Lucchesia see Wickham, Community. 58  Or 999.5 d. The rent of Martino di Grimaldo was 4 d., but ‘octo’ has been written right above ‘quatuor’ (cf. RCL II, 323, note 1).

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of land.55 This suggests that the relations between tenants and landowners, which we are not able to observe because of the lack of lease charters, might have been framed exactly in this way; and the two inventories redacted in 1183 appears to give further confirmation to such a hypothesis. The first of them has been preserved in a fourteenth-­century book in which various deeds concerning the landed resources of the cathedral chapter were copied (accurately, as an examination of the deeds whose original documents still exist, shows).56 It contains a list of renders owed by the homines of Massarosa, in view of the signorial rights held by the canons over the jurisdictional territory (districtus) of the castrum: those rights consisted in the exercise of high justice (placitum), in the collection of revenues deriving from justice (banna), in the possibility of exacting entry-­fines (masciamenta) and leasing out lands (locamenta), and finally in the jurisdiction over common lands (boschi and paludes). The homines of Massarosa had to declare their rents in front of five local notables, who swore on the Gospels before the whole populus of the castle, and who can be considered as the first example of a rural commune in Massarosa—­that is, of a group of local representatives who had the right to mediate between lords and peasants.57 It is of particular interest for our argument that rent-­payers were subdivided into two groups: those ‘de donicato’ and those ‘de alia parte’. This is the clearest indication of the existence of a bipartite estate at Massarosa, indeed the first (and only) piece of evidence about the inner structure of the curtis dominicata already attested in the eleventh century. The donicatum, moreover, appears to have been big; seventy-­four people were said to reside there, against twenty-­three living on the alia pars. As I said before, there is no trace of labour-­services linking demesne and tenures; one can hypothesize that corvée-work had been demanded from the canons’ tenants up to a certain point in the history of Massarosa, but that it had disappeared by the time the inventory was redacted. All the people listed in the inventory had to deliver small rents in cash, ranging from a minimum of 1 d. to a maximum of 5 s. per person. The total sum was high, amounting to 995.5 d. (= £4.1).58 Rents were far lower for the people on the donicatum (seventy-­four people

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59  Esch, ‘Lucca’, p. 76 (on cereals) and p. 77 (on wine). 60  RCL II, 323–5, no. 1498 (1183 May 9). Examples of people mentioned in both the in­ven­ tor­ies are ‘Veghius de Mallio’, ‘Ubertellus de Debbio’, ‘Martinus de Rio’, ‘Guido Marcolfi’, ‘Grancius’, ‘Manente’, ‘Dominicus Taffani-­Taffata’, ‘Ubertellus de Podio’ and ‘Perusius’.

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owing, as a whole, 577 d.) than for those on the alia pars (twenty-­three ­people owing 418.5 d.), possibly pointing to the humble origins of the former group of cultivators—­maybe composed of the heirs of the early medieval manentes? The most substantial render collected from the homines of Massarosa, however, was tithe. It consisted in 100 st. of grain in August and 100 st. of wine must in September, to be delivered with the iustum starium of Lucca. The tithes of chestnuts and fruits recorded in Bishop Guglielmo’s privilege do not feature here; one can presume that they had been abolished between 1181 and 1183, in order to make the canons’ homines more willing to deliver the highly marketable renders in cereals and wine. We cannot convert, unfortunately, the Lucchese staia of that period into modern units of measurement. It can be observed, however, that individually rents did not appear to have been particularly high—­little more than 2 st. per person; but as a whole, they did represent an important source of income for the cathedral chapter of S. Martino. Considering that the price of cereals was between four or six solidi per staium between 1182 and 1184, it follows that the canons could have earned at least £20 from the sale of grain alone (and they could also sell wine, although we do not have data on its price for the early 1180s).59 The second Massarosa inventory requires only a short description. It was redacted the same day as the first one (May 9), but in Lucca, inside the cloister of S.  Martino itself. One can imagine that the first document was solemnly written down early in the morning, and that then a group of Massarosesi followed the canons along the Via Francigena and reached Lucca. Indeed, this list includes only some of the people who were recorded in the first charter as rent-­payers of the cathedral chapter of S. Martino; in other words it concerns, for the most part, another group of Massarosa villagers, amounting to c. 100 people (the frequent references to unspecified groups of consortes do not allow any safe quantification). These were ­subdivided according to the single priests they owed services to, which can explain why it was rational to undertake the survey inside S. Martino. Such services were hospitality services, albergariae, going from a minimum of half an albergaria (meaning, in all likelihood, the provision of half of the supplies needed by a single person for one day) to three albergariae per person.60

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61  The list is in RCL III, 18–24, no. 1568 (1187).

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We need here to step back and look at the two inventories as a whole, so as to flesh out what they can tell us about the characteristics of lordship and the relations between landowners and tenants at Massarosa in the final twenty years of the twelfth century. A certain level of individualization in the dues with which the inhabitants of Massarosa had to comply existed; some had to give rents in money, some had to provide hospitality, some had to do both—­and everyone in different degrees. In general, however, rents were highly standardized, and tithes—­the most substantial exaction—­were recorded in the first list as a collective obligation, together with the canons’ rights of placitum, districtus, masciamenta, and locamenta. It must be noted that none of the people who were required to pay rent were any longer labelled as manentes, and this is all the more significant when we consider that manentes were indeed attested in and around Massarosa during the early tenth century. Back then, however, they were cultivators tied to fiscal properties; in the twelfth century, manentes appeared instead where rights of lordship were heavily fractioned, and this is consistent with the fact that the priests of S. Martino owned manentes in Massa Macinaia over that century. It can be concluded that what we are seeing in Massarosa is a form of territorial lordship, as is further confirmed by the standardization of rents and the exertion of justice over the entire populus of the castle. Finally, it is worth noting that the quite high quantity of agricultural produce encapsulated in the provision of tithes may testify to the efficacy of land-­clearance in an area which, according to imperial diplomas, had been occupied (and in fact still was, up to a point) by marshlands and woodlands. We can now return to Massa Macinaia, to see how land management and signorial powers developed in the context of the Sei Miglia. A few years after the redaction of the two Massarosa inventories, in 1187, another list of the canons’ renders was written down. It was the result of a survey that concerned, for the most part, the immediate environs of Lucca and the Sei Miglia—­even though there are two sections dedicated, respectively, to the Versiliese localities of Quiesa and Licetro—­and was made village by village.61 One might presume that the survey was promoted by Bishop Guglielmo after King Henry VI had issued his diploma for Lucca the year before, acknowledging the urban jurisdiction over the Sei Miglia, in exchange for  the quite heavy annual payment of sixty Marks (= c. £300; see the Introduction, note 26). There is reason to think that this exaction partly

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62  On taxes cf. again Savigni, Episcopato, pp. 91–4. 63  That is ASDLu, Capitolare, LL. 1; the other one is LL. 2. 64  Cf. RCL III, 18–24, no. 1568 (1187), p. 24, namely the section concerning the locality of Scopiccio (probably close to Vaccoli), where the same people seem to have been demanded to pay two rents in grain. This was probably due to the fact that they owed such rents from two different holdings; still, it is not clear why the compiler decided not to write them as one single render, considering that the number of the leaseholds held by a single tenant was never specified within our list. One could formulate other hypotheses; for instance, that the afficta written between the lines were paid by other members of the family to which the person recorded on the main lines of the text belonged. This is, however, pure guesswork.

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weighed on ecclesiastical assets, for, from the mid twelfth century onwards, churches and monasteries in and around Lucca were required to pay the datium to the city and, on a general level, to contribute to its financial needs.62 This list is incomplete; the surviving parchments were employed as ­flyleaves for one of the two thirteenth-­century cartularies in which many deeds of the cathedral chapter archive were copied or registered.63 The dismembering of the original document probably came about in the seventeenth century, when the rearrangement of the archival material entailed the reuse of medieval documents for book-­binding on quite a large scale; lists of customary rents were regarded as particularly suitable to this end. Furthermore, the text is difficult to read sometimes; the margins of the parchments have been cut out in order to adapt them to the size of the codex, and there are extensive humidity stains here and there. The insertion of some of the rents that tenants had to pay between the lines of the main text creates, in a few cases, uncertainties about who had to pay what.64 Despite all this, the 1187 inventory remains a very important source; it lists around 300 people, and provides us with a clear snapshot of the patterns of customary landholding in the Sei Miglia, at least among the estates owned by the canons of S. Martino. I shall first discuss it as a whole, and then look more closely at Massa Macinaia. First of all, no collective obligations—­that is, services performed by all the dependents of S. Martino—­can be found in this list. It is interesting to consider that we do in fact read here the names of three groups of people paying tithes (they were called ‘decimales’); in view of the absence of any positive evidence regarding the collection of ecclesiastical tithes by the ­canons of S. Martino, it is likely that the decimae recorded in this inventory were, as in Massarosa, ‘manorial’ ones—­that is, they simply indicated the provision, on the part of some tenants, of the tenth of agricultural produce

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65  This tenurial regime may have taken different shapes at a local level; also, it may have applied to all the holdings of a single tenant, or just to some of them. For instance, one of the sections of the inventory listing people labelled as decimales includes men who had to pay an individual fixed rent in wheat, millet and broad beans; one may guess that this rent was added to the demand for the tenth of all the agricultural produce, or else that the two rents (the individual one and the tithe) were supposed to come from two different holdings. 66  The villages where the decimales resided are not specified, but it can be proposed that they lived close to the localities mentioned in the sections of the list coming right before, or right after, the decimales themselves. This would point to the immediate environs of the city (the porte of S.  Donato and S.  Frediano) or the Sei Miglia (possibly Arquata, certainly the localities of S. Pietro and S. Cassiano a Vico, north-­east of Lucca) as their places of residence. Cf. ibid., p. 18 and 20. 67  Cf. ibid., p. 20 and the Introduction. 68  When the type of staium used to pay rent was not indicated, it can be safely assumed that this was the rectum Lucense; the compiler specified if tenants were supposed to employ the staium antiquum, and so to deviate from the norm.

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in return for the lease of land.65 But this is where the similarities between the Versilia and the Sei Miglia stop. These decimales were apparently scattered over different areas of the plain of Lucca, as is suggested by their grouping in three different sections of the inventory;66 it is thus reasonable to assume that ‘manorial’ tithes represented an individual duty, by no means weighing on the entire population of a territory. Nor were tithe-­payers ­necessarily cultivators, if we consider that we find among them also Paganello da Porcari, the first Lucchese podestà.67 More in general, the subdivision of the inventory into groups of leaseholders, on the basis of the locality where they resided, suggests that those who were in charge of surveying and recording rents registered the canons’ tenants village by village, and that, at a later stage, the compiler of the list gathered together the pieces of information at his disposition. In view of all this, it seems possible to argue that even the layout of our document points to a context of fragmented rights of landholding. Rents consisted, for the most part, in the delivery of a fixed quantity of wheat, legumes and millet. Importantly, this is the same type of demand recorded in the majority of Lucchese rent contracts: the discrepancy between inventories of customary renders on the one hand, and lease charters on the other—­which we discussed in relation to Passignano and Settimo—­does not apply here. In particular, no corvée-work is attested. Furthermore, in general, rents were not burdensome. For instance, one tenant-­plot located in Savalliana (possibly not far from Altopascio), measuring one cultra (= 24 st.) was supposed to provide the canons with 12 st.—four of wheat, four of millet and four of broad beans. This is not an extremely high demand.68 There were, however, some exceptions to this pattern. Cash was also delivered,

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69  See for instance ibid., p. 21 (20 s. in the place of 10 st. of millet). 70  See below, note 73 for the list of the names’ correspondences.

71  Ibid., p. 24.

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and it is interesting to note that it was even preferred to inferior grains, such as millet.69 Moreover, it has to be noted that rents in kind looked high in a few cases. The rent from Ardiccio from S. Bartolomeo in Gello (Moriano) consisted in one modius of grain (= 24 st.); Angiorello from the Via Mezzana (the road running close to the boundaries of the medieval city) owed 16 st. of broad beans and 21 st. of wheat; in Turingnana (not far from Massa Macinaia) Pucus was required to give 38 st. of grain to the priests of S.  Martino. Even if we do not know, here, the size of tenures, we get the impression that the canons could sometimes be extracting a substantial part of the agricultural surplus from their leaseholders. Finally, it can be thought that sharecropping was hardly widespread among the tenantry of the 1187 inventory: only two people were said to hold lands, respectively, ad medium and ad tertium, and one should have reasonably expected to find those expressions more frequently had ad medium and ad tertium agreements been numerous. This leads us to a closer inspection of Massa Macinaia. We do not know whether the canons had already reestablished their signoria over local manentes in 1187, for the dispute with Gualando of Vorno would be settled only in the following year; but we do know that some of the people that had been reassigned to the church of S.  Martino in 1184 as manentes of S.  Petronilla feature in our list.70 This is important, as the rents owed by some of the canons’ highly dependent tenants at Massa Macinaia can be pinned down; and there does not seem to have been a great difference between Massa Macinaia and non-­signorialized areas of the Sei Miglia with regard to agricultural renders. These consisted in the provision of fixed quantities of wheat and millet—­apparently small ones (one or two staia of cereals per person, with two exceptions of respectively 6 and 11 st.). As the 1160 list of signorial dues appeared to suggest, lordship was a simple addition to the already-­existing patterns of landholding, and an addition which did not necessarily entail a worsening of the tenants’ working ­conditions. It needs stressing, however, that the canons had a mill there, which does point to some form of investment. Moreover, they were expecting small rents in cereals from it: mixed grains (mixture)—possibly paid in flour after grinding—­sorghum and alfalfa (medica)—the last two mostly used as fodder.71

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72  RCL III, 32–3, no. 1575 (1188 March 18).

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Let us look again at the overall picture emerging from this inventory. It is striking that customary rents consisted for the most part in the provision of fixed quantities of cereals, whereas wine and oil never feature, although they were certainly part of the agricultural landscape of the Sei Miglia. One may presume that the canons were exclusively interested in surveying their renders in cereals, and this might show, in turn, their particular concern for the sale of grain, in much the same way as around Florence, where most interventions in estate management on the part of ecclesiastical landowners were aimed at boosting the collection of wheat from tenures (rents in wine and oil did exist, but they appear to have been regulated through the issuing of tenimentum charters, as we shall see in a moment). Moreover, two elements need to be further emphasized: the complete absence of references to labour-­services and coherent bipartite estates (whose somewhat obscure legacy survived in Massarosa), which implies that the traditional picture of the ‘manorial system’ having completely vanished from the Lucchesia in the central centuries of the Middle Ages holds; and the rarity of share tenancies. Except for the presence of one mill, there does not seem to have been much difference between Massa Macinaia and the non-­signorialized areas of the Sei Miglia. We have to wonder, however, whether the priests of S. Martino deemed this situation irreversible. Is it possible that the 1187 list was intended as a basis for the subsequent creation of a territorial power? This leads us back to the agreement between the priests of S. Martino and Gualando of Vorno, in which the latter was enjoined not to hinder the ­canons’ lordship over Massa Macinaia. The pact was sealed in March 1188, so not long after the general survey of the revenues of the cathedral chapter; it is worth analysing it in detail. On that occasion, the consules treguani of Lucca invested the representative of the cathedral chapter, Schetta, with the power to ‘rule over [distringere] all the people [homines] of Massa Macinaia, males and females’, and to wield a power that was defined as almost ter­ri­tor­ ial (‘quasi de placito et districtu’); Gualando, who did not show up in court, was prevented from interfering with this.72 We may think, therefore, that Massa Macinaia was becoming similar to Massarosa, or at least that these were the canons’ intentions. But on closer inspection, we notice that the Lucchese magistrates intended their concession to the priests of S. Martino as only temporary. Had Gualando come to court, this investiture would have reverted to him; and the use of quasi on the part of the notary is t­ elling,

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73  Ibid. III, 37, no. 1582 (1188 December 31). Here is the list of the names’ correspondences between the three deeds dating, respectively, to 1184 (one) and 1188 (two). I cite them in abbreviated form (cf. above for full references): RCL II-­III, nos. 1521–78-­82: Guidotto, Orsello, Guittone, Aldebrandino/Ildebrandino; 1521-­78: Fridiano, Fieri, Geminiano; 1521–82: Viviano, December, Bellando, Ruspilio. 74  Ibid. III, 79–84, no. 1627 (1191 February 8) and 209–13, no. 1755 (1195 December 31). On Spina as a medium owner cf. ibid. II, 137–8, no. 1228 (1165 January 20–30), 208–9, no. 1337 (1174 December 1); ibid. III, 357–8, no. 1549 (1186 December 10), 12–13, 1561 (1187 August 28); on Arrigo/Arrighetto cf. again no. 1627 (p. 80).

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for it must be considered as a mitigating expression, the acknowledgment that the power to distringere all the villagers was incomplete in reality; nobody could effectively hold territorial rights over Massa Macinaia. It is no surprise, thus, that when the priests of S. Martino managed to make fifteen people from Massa Macinaia take an oath on the Gospels, some months after the 1188 agreement, these were for the most part the same tenants who were taken over from the Vorno family in 1184 and in March 1188.73 So, even if there is no evidence that Gualando claimed back his lordship at any point, the canons’ signorial jurisdiction was restricted to groups of tenants; the exact opposite of the territorial powers they wielded over the populus of Massarosa. There was only one way to try to extend lordly authority over the inhabitants of Massa Macinaia: by purchasing land, so as to lay the ground for an extension and maybe a standardization of signorial exactions over the local tenantry. There is evidence of this. In 1191, the canons purchased from Spina of the late Bambacello, probably a medium owner, thirteen pieces of land in exchange for £83; and five years later they bought from Arrigo of the late Onesto, a substantial landowner, of the Sei Miglia, thirty-­eight tenant-­ plots in Massa Macinaia and its surroundings, along with the rents coming from them, paying the unprecedentedly high sum of £200.74 These purchases certainly represented an attempt to make the scattered landowning of S. Martino in Massa Macinaia more coherent, in order to achieve that sort of control quasi de placito et districtu that Lucchese judges had granted to the canons in 1188. The takeover of renders that local tenants originally owed to other landowners of the Sei Miglia was matched by the stipulation of tenimenta and other lease charters, and was consistent with this policy. Let us have a look at them before focusing again on signoria. For a start, it must be observed that in comparison with the customary rents in grain recorded in the 1187 inventory, the charters of the 1190s including information on renders at Massa Macinaia testify to polyculture and the demand for mixed rents: the provision of fixed quantities of wine, oil, chestnuts and

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75  Examples of share tenancies (ad medium and ad tertium) are ibid. III, 138, no. 1680 (1193 April 11) and can also be found in the sale ibid., no. 1755 (see note above). Other lease charters: ibid. III, no. 1556, no. 1700 (1193 November 4), 275, no. 1827 (1200 April 16) (this is the lease issued by the monastery of S.  Pietro di Pozzeveri). Will in favour of the priests of S. Martino: ibid. III, 1698, 153–4 (1193 November 4). Investiture, again in favour of the priests of S. Martino: ibid. III, 154–5, no. 1699 (1193 November 4). 76  On the presence of independent owners cf. for instance ibid. III, 87–8, no. 1631 (1191 April 5), 89–90, no. 1633 (1191 June 5), 90–1, no. 1634 (1191 June 5), 257, no. 1810 (1199 March 6). Legal disputes: ibid. II, 316, no. 1488 (1182 December 30), III, 33–4, no. 1512 (1184 April 34), 67, no. 1614 (1190 August 22).

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fruit, together with small sums of money, is largely prevalent. Rents do not seem to have been high, but it has to be noted that in two charters fixed-­ term agreements (one of which was stipulated by the abbot of S. Pietro di Pozzeveri) make their appearance; these can be regarded as the early signs of an attempt to tighten control over land, preventing tenants from becoming de facto proprietors (S. Ponziano will offer better evidence of this trend). Finally, there are also three cases in which share tenancies (ad medium and ad tertium) are mentioned, and in one document it is explicitly stated that the delivery of half of the harvest applied, like in Florence, to all the products of the land (‘medietatem totius fructus’).75 One may doubt whether the attempt to render lordship territorial (to some degree, at least) was successful. Not only do the documents of the cathedral chapter itself show the enduring presence of independent owners in Massa Macinaia, who were not absorbed into the group of leaseholders and clients of S. Martino; but the canons of the cathedral church of Lucca were also involved in legal disputes concerning the retrieval of lands and rents—­an effort that does show that it was close to impossible to tame a peasantry which, for the most part, had landed estates of its own. The endurance of the long-­standing patterns of fragmentation of landholding ultimately impeded any evolution towards the territoriality of signorial powers, even when the threat posed by the Vorno family had vanished, and even if the canons did endeavour to become the hegemonic landowners at Massa Macinaia.76 The documentation about legal conflicts at Massa Macinaia is interesting also in another respect; it shows that court-­cases concerned this or that tenant, or else this or that tenure; like signorial rights, they appear to have been highly individualized. This is the point at which it might be useful to move back to Massarosa and draw a comparison with Massa Macinaia. We saw earlier on that peasant resistance towards the canons’ tithes was collective at Massarosa, as indeed was the obligation to pay them. Later documents

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77  Ibid. III, 85–6, 1629 (1191 February 28); cf. Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, pp. 233–4. 78  Ibid. III, 98–100, no. 1642 (1191 August 23).

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reveal that the recording of the duties weighing on the peasants of Massarosa in 1183 was not enough to end their opposition to the exactions imposed by the clergy of S. Martino. In February 1191, Henry VI addressed a letter to the canons of Lucca, in which he stated that the homines of Massarosa had repeatedly sought Emperor Frederick I’s help against the obligations they were burdened with, but he added that they had done this mendaciously. Therefore, Henry abrogated all the privileges that his predecessors had conceded to the people of Massarosa, and acknowledged the signorial rights of the canons over the castle and its surroundings.77 It is understandable that these privileges have not survived (if the priests of S. Martino were entrusted with their preservation, they might have been particularly eager to destroy them at some point), but the very fact that they existed testifies to the presence of conflicts between the population of Massarosa and its lords after 1181–3, and to the attempt, on the part of the canons’ dependents, to appeal to the imperial authority. What is more, this resistance must have been strong and effective, for, despite Henry’s intervention, the canons apparently surrendered to their dependents’ demands only a few months after the king’s letter. In August 1191, the canons of S. Martino freed four people of Massarosa, who acted on the behalf of the whole community (three of them were the same persons entrusted with the recording of the Massarosesi’s dues in 1183), from the collection of the tithes destined to the canons; the tithe was indeed abolished, except for the ancient one (‘excepta antiqua’), arguably the one that the clergy of the cathedral used to demand before trying to increase it in order to offset the effects of inflation in the late twelfth century. That the priests attempted to do so appears to be proved by other sections of this document itself; they promised not to demand what they could have demanded from the people of Massarosa ‘in view of the debasement of the Lucchese coin’, and declared they would collect rents only ‘on the basis of the ongoing currency’. One might conclude, at this point, that the abolition of tithes meant a full victory for the inhabitants of Massarosa, but the agreement informs us that they had to pay the canons the high sum of £200 and that, moreover, this money would be used to purchase lands in and around Massarosa, whose rents would compensate for the loss of tithes.78 It seems thus reasonable to argue that the canons were attempting to turn this loss into a new opportunity to raise their revenues. This ­compromise appears to have led, for some time, to a peace between the

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79 ASFi, Strozziane Uguccioni, 1197 July 23; Dinelli, ‘Una signoria’, p 234; Wickham, Community, p. 173. 80 Wickham, Community, p. 98. 81 ASDLu, Capitolare, 1207 April 27 (N. 177) and 1211 January 9 (N. 179).

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c­ anons and their Versiliese dependents, which materialized in the sharpening of the communal institutions of the castle: consuls existed by 1197.79 To conclude, it can be argued that the attempts to extend the signoria at Massa Macinaia were not effective. The fragmented patterns of land­ ownership forced the canons to interact with local society on a case-­by-­case basis. Similarly to the bishop in the Morianese, the chapter of S.  Martino was more a wealthy neighbour and a patron than a ruler and a lord—­in fact less than the bishop, as Massa Macinaia could be never treated as a subject community, nor be developed into an episcopally controlled commune.80 As a result, the increase of agricultural renders was a difficult process, and the absence of labour-­duties whose abolition could be offered as a bargaining chip to tenants is likely to have made changes even harder. Increases certainly were under way, however. Evidence to this end is provided by the stipulation of fixed-­term agreements and share tenancies ad medium and ad tertium. Massarosa provides us with the clearest example of the attempt to raise rents, and the collective negotiation resulting from this ensured better documentation than at Massa Macinaia. The outcomes of this phase, marked as it was by a generalized surge in signorial demands, can be identified during the early thirteenth century as well. This point will be further developed in the following section. An almost absolute silence falls over Massarosa in the early Duecento. No signs of conflicts emerge up to the end of the period considered here. The castle is mentioned only twice in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, on the occasion of the leasing out of a house with an oven to a local baker, named Bifolco, and of the subsequent dispute which arose between Bifolco and the canons when the former refused to pay rent after a fire had destroyed the house.81 One may think that we simply lack the relevant sources about wider conflicts with the priests of S. Martino, but this seems unlikely; conflicts will indeed be documented again in the late 1220s, thanks also to the direct interventions of Emperor Frederick II in 1226 and Pope Honorius III in 1227. Also, the rivalry with the Montemagno family revived over exactly the same period, for the first time since 1099. It can be concluded that the 1191 agreement does appear to have worked well for a long time—­more than thirty years. In view of this, I now shift my focus to the other localities of the Versilia region where the cathedral chapter of

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82  RCL III, 217–18, no. 1352 (1175 October 24); Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, pp. 221–2.

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S.  Martino owned substantial landed properties, for the early thirteenth century saw the slow construction of the Iura, the signorial territory centred on Massarosa, which would remain the jurisdictional territory of the ­canons up to the rule of the French Revolutionaries over northern and central Italy (1796–9); and I will then set out a comparison with the Sei Miglia and Massa Macinaia. The basic features of the interplay between the structures of land management, the characteristics of signorial power and overall economic change did not vary much with the passage to the new century, at least up to the late 1220s. All the same, the general socio-­economic processes of the period deserve to be discussed in order to get a full picture of the relations between tenants and landowners over the first thirty years of the thirteenth century; this will get us further into the arena of local politics, in that they appear to have been inextricably linked to the ways in which agricultural surplus could be extracted from rural communities. Let us start with the Versilia region, and with Fibbialla, which we discussed as an example of rapid incastellamento taking place in the early 1120s. In the last quarter of the twelfth century, the canons divided their judicial rights over the people of Fibbialla with the Vorno family, as revealed in the text of an arbitration held in 1175; in that year, the priests of S. Martino and the three sons of Tignoso of Vorno agreed not to purchase land in Fibbialla, unless they decided to split it into two; moreover, the collection of signorial dues had to be similarly shared. These dues consisted of the datum/datium, the signorial exaction on landed properties, which we already met when discussing Florence; the bandum/bannum, held by the canons in Massarosa too, as we saw in the previous section; and finally the toltum, probably a form of personal taxation.82 The balance of local political power, as outlined in the text of the 1175 agreement, remained stable for almost thirty years. But it was going to change in the early thirteenth century. In 1203, the priests of S. Martino endeavoured to render their Versiliese lordship more coherent by buying out the signorial rights owned on the hill and the castle of Fibbialla by one of the three sons of Tignoso whom we met in 1175, also named Tignoso. The text of the purchase informs us that Tignoso ‘junior’ controlled watercourses and mills; he was also the recipient of rents in wine must (plus one rent in money), and had nine decimales paying tithes to him; in addition to this, the representatives of the local

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83  Ibid., 1203 February 24 (A.9); Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, p. 222. 84 ASDLu, Capitolare, 1204 July 29 (A. 1); cf. Dinelli, G., ‘La origine’, pp. 140–2. 85 ASDLu, Capitolare, 1204 December 1 (A. 10).

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community of Fibbialla, the comune, were required to collect a small rent in cash, amounting to 17 d., on the behalf of Tignoso. What interests us more, however, is that the canons paid £70 to purchase this array of rights and rents, the highest sum for a single transaction in Versilia throughout the first three decades of the thirteenth century.83 It can be argued that the priests of S. Martino were trying to achieve the same degree of control they had managed to obtain in Massarosa—­that is, a territorial lordship centred on a castle and based on the extensive, albeit not exclusive, ownership of land. This engendered resistance, however, even if on a smaller scale in comparison to Massarosa. In July 1204, the consuls of Fibbialla and the canons appointed two arbiters in order to settle the disputes between the priests of S. Martino and the community of the castle.84 Some months later, in December, the dispute was indeed settled, and we come to know what was at stake. The canons had  demanded feudal allegiance (fidelitas) from the whole community of Fibbialla, and the right to run justice (‘causas seu placita’) over the jurisdictional territory of the castle; they had also claimed that the homines of Fibbialla should perform duties linked to the maintenance and defence of the castle, and that they should cease to league together and to conspire against the cathedral chapter of Lucca (the words employed in the document are coniuratio and conspiratio). The representatives of the community of Fibbialla argued that the canons’ claims were groundless, and asked for a compensation of £100 for the damages caused by the chapter house. After hearing both sides, the arbiters deliberated that the priests were entitled to wield signorial powers over Fibbialla and accepted all their requests, but postponed the decision about the compensation owed to the rural commune (and we do not know how this ended). It is interesting to note  that this sentence was motivated by the acknowledgment of the ancient proprietorial rights exerted by the canons over the estate-­centre of the castle, ‘maxime ex antiquo usu curtis eiusdem castri’, here regarded as the basis for the subsequent holding of judicial—­we can also say signorial—­prerogatives.85 Why did the commune of Fibbialla oppose S. Martino only at the beginning of the thirteenth century, just when the lords of Vorno ceased to be the co-­owners of signorial rights over the castle? Probably because, thanks to

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86  Cf. Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, pp. 249–52. 87 Licetro: ASDLu, Capitolare, 1206 December 12 (R.  209), 1207 January 2 (R.  195). Montigiano: ibid., 1214 June 5 (C. 31) and 1214 December 1 (C. 31). Gualdo: 1217 November 12 (N. 137). Quiesa: ibid., 1220 February (L. 128). An oath on the Gospels is recorded also in Fibbialla (ibid., 1216 March 10, A. 22), but this is by no means an act of allegiance—­it concerns the payment of a debt.

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the buying out of the rights and the lands owned by the Vorno family, the cathedral chapter was in the position to become the sole signore of Fibbialla, and by far the major landowner. Through the extension of the canons’ prerogatives of justice and proprietorial rights, by then weighing on the majority of the population of the castle, room was made for the standardization of the various exactions to which the chapter house had access; in turn, this standardization lay the ground for the overall increase in signorial demand, as happened—­albeit not peacefully and by means of a compromise—­in Massarosa. The people of Fibbialla were well aware of this, as the need for an arbitration shows. It can however be proposed that the priests of S. Martino were intelligent enough not to overexploit their newly acquired signorial powers, since the social equilibrium reached in 1204 appears to have held: there is no document unveiling further disputes between the rural commune of Fibbialla and the canons during the whole thirteenth century.86 Outside their castra of Massarosa and Fibbialla, and so outside their lar­ gest landed estates and their most coherent lordships in Versilia, the clerics of S. Martino could tighten their control over the peasantry only on an individual basis—­not just in the Sei Miglia, as we already saw in the previous section, but also in the Versiliese localities which the canons did not manage to fortify. It is likely that they tried to impose high rents sometimes, as can be inferred by two charters informing us about afficta retenta at Licetro, dating to 1206 and 1207. Later in time, the priests of S. Martino demanded oaths of fidelity and vows of obedience from single persons—­to be taken, in one case, by touching the Gospels—­in Montigiano (1214), Gualdo (1217), and Quiesa (1220).87 Despite being only a few, these examples seem to show  that the canons could only act at the level of single dependents ­outside the two castles of Massarosa and Fibbialla; that was the real extent of their power. Not surprisingly, the Sei Miglia and Massa Macinaia were much more similar to Licetro and Montigiano than to Massarosa and Fibbialla. Let us flesh this out by having a look at the only extensive inventory of customary rents and services I know of that dates to the first thirty years of the

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88 Its folia have been used as flyleaves for two codices: ASDLu, Biblioteca Capitolare, no. 24, fols III, IV and 233–4 (the latter are modern page numbers); no. 25, fols III, IV, I* and II* (hereinafter BC 24 and BC 25). The date can be read in BC 25, fol. IVr. It is worth pointing out that a complete survey of all the books preserved in the ‘Archivio capitolare’ and the ‘Biblioteca capitolare’ of the diocesan archives of Lucca would probably bring to light other inventories of rents and services; they would need a specific research project to be fully exploited. I owe these findings to the archivists Valentina Cappellini, Tommaso Maria Rossi and Elisabetta Unfer Verre, whom I warmly thank for their help. 89  Loaves of bread: BC 25, fol. IIIv. Tithes: BC 25, fol. II*r. Ad medium agreements: BC 24, fol. IVr (this is the second rent paid by ‘Guido de le Mura’, cf. note 92) and BC 25, fol. II*r (‘Bonamicus’). 90 Kotel’nikova, Mondo, p. 45, calculated that average rents per cultra in the Lucchesia were 9 st. of cereals at the end of the eleventh century, and 12.5 st. of cereals between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. So, if a rent in wheat alone (the most expensive of cereals) is +10 st., this is a good indicator of a high rent. Two caveats are necessary, however: Kotel’nikova, as she herself acknowledged, did not take into account a high number of charters for these calculations (ibid., pp. 115–16, note 61); and she got the cultra wrong (12 st. instead of 24 st.; cf. above, Square and capacity measures). Luckily, rents are ordinarily expressed in staia, and so her estimate of average rents—­which cannot be easily checked, as she did not cite the documents she used—­is likely to be correct. 91  As is the case with BC 24, fol. IVr (rent paid by ‘Deotisalvi’). 92 BC 25, fol. I*r (‘Michele filius Aldibrandini quondam Ugolini’) and BC 24, fol. IVr (‘Bonacursus Agnelli’ and ‘Guido de le Mura’).

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thirteenth century—­precisely, to 1228.88 It enumerates the dues owed to the canons by their tenants living, for the most part, in the Sei Miglia. The vast majority of leaseholders owed to the cathedral chapter of S. Martino a fixed quantity of wheat, millet, and broad beans—­again, similarly to rent contracts. To them, we need to add a group of peasants who were required to give loaves of bread, the tithe-­payers who lived ‘extra civitatem’, and two people who were to deliver half of the products (ad medium) from their holdings.89 It needs stressing that, even though the type of tenancy relations emerging from this inventory resembles closely that of 1187, rents were seemingly higher. Out of c. 200 legible entries (some of them were written on the margins of the parchments that have been cut out; cf. also below) about one fifth of tenants supplied more than 10 st. of wheat—­which can be taken as a good benchmark for a high rent90—with the rectum staium Lucense (again, the unit of measurement can be inferred from the fact that the use of the staium antiquum had to be specified because it represented an anomaly).91 One tenant was required to give 48 st. alone, and if we take into account also millet and broad beans, we find out that some others owed large quantities of cereals and legumes altogether, amounting to 41 st. or 54 st. per person.92 A comparison with the late twelfth century list cannot be but impressionistic, not least because the size of holdings is not stated here either. However, it does look as if high demand was becoming increasingly

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93 ASDLu, Capitolare, 1212 January 30 (E. 131) and 1213 August 17 (F. 160). 94  Ibid., 1212 July 30 and 1213 April 16 (I. 6).

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less episodic in the early thirteenth century—­in other words, the extraction of agricultural surplus was slowly intensifying. It is also worth stressing that the canons continued to prefer fixed rents in kind to share tenancies; and that corvée-work was completely absent. Let us now turn to lease charters. At least in bad years, it looks as if tenants could be left with a relatively small fraction of the harvest. Just to make two examples, in 1212 the monastic community of Pozzeveri was collecting 32 st. of wheat and millet from a holding in Lunata (now a frazione of Capannori) measuring two cultrae (= 48 st.), and in 1213 the clergy of S. Martino issued a contract lasting seven years, demanding three modii of grain and millet (= 72 st.) from three cultrae (= again 72 st.) of arable land in Silice (just outside the medieval walls of the city):93 these are, respectively, two thirds and the entirety of what could be sown. Assuming that yields were 4:1, which is a reasonable guess for the Sei Miglia in the thirteenth century, it follows that rents were, respectively, less than one fifth and one fourth of the overall output. Not very high, but potentially burdensome if yields went down to 3:1 or 2:1. Fertility had to be generally high to make this demand sustainable, and one can think that, in bad years, tenants were forced to borrow grain in order to pay rent; in this sense, the two contracts fit the context of slow intensification as outlined above. Furthermore, agricultural profit was becoming a matter of interest. In 1212, the canon Tolomeo paid, respectively, £10 for a rent increase of 4 st. of wheat and millet (so that the total rent went from 2 st., plus the purely recognitive delivery of one chicken, to 6 st. of cereals alone) and £8 for another increase of 2.5 st. of wheat and 1.5 st. of millet (from 5 st. to 9 st. in total). Less than one year later, in April 1213, the same Tolomeo imposed a very small increase (amounting to 0.25 st. of millet) on a render collected from Marlia, in return for which the two leaseholders, Vitale and Ventura, were freed from their pending rent, the affictum retentum—­whose equivalent in cash was estimated as 4 s.94 I could not find data about the prices of cereals for the years 1212–3, but one can reasonably suppose that Tolomeo was paying sums of money that were higher than the then-­current market value of the two increases of renders he managed to obtain. Arguably, Tolomeo had to compensate tenants for an increase that was set to be perpetual with an adequate one-­off payment.

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95  Cf. the first of the two documents cited at note 93. 96  Cf. Pescaglini Monti, ‘Le dipendenze’, p. 41. 97 ASDLu, Capitolare, 1218 September 12 (F. 156) and 1218 September 13 (F. 156/1). 98  Ibid., 1219 August 8 (O. 28).

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The use of larger staia was another way to increase demand. The document from Pozzeveri cited above reveals that tenants were safeguarded from the possibility that the render they had to give to the monks could be calculated with a bigger unit of measurement, should this unit be adopted at some point by the commune of Lucca.95 The importance of Lucca as the main market for the agricultural produce of the Sei Miglia must have pushed landowners towards the progressive abolition of ancient and local staia, since the use of the Lucchese units of measurements made the sale of grain easier, and defused the potential controversies arising from the coexistence of many capacity measures within the same area. In 1218, the legal representative of the canons of S.  Martino, Morroello, demanded from a tenant of Silice various rents he owed to the local monastery of S. Bartolomeo (which was under the jurisdiction of S. Martino from the ninth century)96 and wanted to have them delivered ‘ad presens starium Lucense’. In order to make the contending parties reach an agreement, the consules treguani of Lucca had to compare the ancient staium of Silice with the one employed in Lucca (and they did this ‘with great care, and establishing the ratio precisely’); once this had been done, the dispute was finally settled.97 After all, in this respect, the interests of the city governing bodies and those of land­ owners coincided. In August 1219, Armanno di Portante, notary and chancellor of the Lucchese podestà Rodolfo, was entrusted with the recording of the ‘ancient and various’ units of measurement used inside the jurisdictional territory of the city, in order to convert them into the ‘rectum Lucensem starium’ employed for wine, cereals, and oil;98 this was an important step towards the full integration of the city market with its contado. This array of examples shows that individual landlord-­tenant relationships constituted the only space that landowners could exploit in order to increase their revenues in the Sei Miglia; no collective obligations, such as  those performed by the communities living in the Versiliese castelli of Massarosa and Fibbialla, can be found here. Let us take Massa Macinaia as an example. As a first point, it is notable how the canons’ developing signoria had hardly ensured any stable dominance over local society. The documentation of the early thirteenth century mostly revolves around the recurring disputes between the legal representative of the chapter, the

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99  Ibid., 1207 August 21 (S. 91), 1209 May 2 (S. 12), 1209 August 19 (O. 82), 1213 May 20 (O. 82), 1214 September 23 (O. 18), 1218 August 6 (O. 3). 100  Ibid., 1213 September 10 (O. 94). 101  BC 24, fol. 233v.

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already-­cited Morroello, and two local landowners, Ranieri di Primicerio and Gonnella, over rights of property and the exaction of rents at Massa Macinaia, lasting for more than a decade (1207–18).99 Furthermore, unpaid rents occurred there too, as in most of the Sei Miglia; in more detail, we come to know that the canon Tolomeo, whom we met before while discussing rent increases, was involved in 1212 in an arbitration with a local tenant, Giafferro from Verciano, accused of having fled his maseum in Massa Macinaia, thus ceasing to deliver what he owed. Eventually, Giafferro was condemned to come back and pay rent, but it has to be noted that Tolomeo was required to give him, in two tranches, a sum total of £4, so that Giaffero could ‘have and collect all the products of the maseum’ and then pay rent.100 The provision of capital is important, in that it testifies to the canons’ interest in the quality and the quantity of the final agricultural output; moreover, it has to be emphasized that the affictum retentum suggests that some rents had been increased at Massa Macinaia, thus making their payment more difficult. Let us look more closely at tenancy agreements around Massa Macinaia in the early Duecento. Customary rents in wheat, millet, and broad beans were recorded in the 1228 inventory that we discussed at the beginning of this section; unfortunately, the margin of the parchment containing the staia of cereals and legumes demanded from tenants has been cut out, and we cannot get a sense of their average quantities.101 Only individual rent contracts can help us to fill in the gap. It needs stressing, for a start, that some rents in money were collected in peripheral areas by both the canons of S.  Martino and lay owners, namely in the portions of woodland surrounding the village and the neighbouring arable lands; cash also featured as part of mixed renders—­that is, money and kind together, indeed the prevailing form of tenure at Massa Macinaia. The main difference between cash and kind regarded quantity, as money rents were always low. Let us take the years from 1213 and 1219 as the period of reference, for we can read seven rent contracts involving Massa Macinaia and conceded in exchange for cash, or cash and kind: in those contracts, cash rents averaged at 61 d. per year, whereas 1 st. of land cost £1.8 (= 432 d.) over the 1210s, as results from the data collected in Graph 1. As to rents in kind, these consisted in wheat, millet, wine must, and oil for the most part; in one case we find chestnuts,

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102  Cash rents: ibid., 1213 March 27 (O. 36), 1214 February 27 (O. 109), 1217 July 30 (O. 98), 1219 July 7 (S. 102). Mixed renders: 1212 August 14 (O. 15), 1214 June 23 (S. 97), 1215 May 16 (S. 98) (preceded by an oath of fidelitas; cf. ibid., 1215 April 21, S. 98), 1229 April 8 (S. 110), 1233 April 23 (O. 62), 1233 May 10 (two charters, G. 6 and O. 12; the second one mentions also sub-­tenancies). Rents in wine must: 1213 September 28 (O. 100). Other rents: 1213 March 27 (two charters, O. 41 and S. 13) (in this document, the tenant could choose to deliver 1 st. of chestnuts or, alternatively, 1 st. of millet). 103  Huillard-­Bréholles, Historia diplomatica II/2, 672–4.

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in another one grapes. They were always collected in fixed quantities, and they were almost always demanded as part of perpetual leases, except for two contracts (lasting, respectively, twenty-­ eight and twenty years).102 Furthermore, it appears as if rents in wheat and millet had become quite high in comparison with the 1180s; except for two documents, they were all above 10 st. I conclude that, because of the impossibility of turning Massa Macinaia into a territorial lordship, intervening at the level of individual tenures continued to be the only way in which the canons could increase their income, and this they did. There are two further issues that need to be sketched out before we move on to the other case studies of the Lucchesia. The first regards tenancy relations around Massarosa: it is only after the interventions of Frederick II and Honorius III that written lease agreements begin to feature in our documentary record. With the 1226 diploma, Frederick took a different stance than his father towards the inhabitants of Massarosa. Indeed, Frederick renewed the ‘good customs’ and the ‘liberties’ that Henry VI had abolished, and granted to the Massarosesi the right to elect their consuls. He ac­know­ ledged, it is true, the canons’ rights over the castle and its district; but he also prevented the priests of S.  Martino (as well as any lay people) from burdening their subjects with heavy demands (‘gravare’ is the verb used in the diploma) and from bringing any type of damages to them (‘molestare’, ‘perturbare’).103 One year later, in March, Pope Honorius III sent a letter to the Lucchese church of S. Michele, in order to ask the local clergy to settle the disputes between the commune of Massarosa and the canons of S.  Martino; those disputes regarded the impositions of undue exactions on the part of the canons. In July 1227 the arbitration took place. Honorius had died in the meantime, but Gregory IX committed to continuing the work of his predecessor and bringing the dispute to an end. Unfortunately, we only know the claims made by the representatives of Massarosa to the clergy of S. Martino, which are however enough to get a sense of what was at stake. Among other things, the Massarosesi claimed their rights to jurisdictional autonomy

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104  Cf. on all this ASDLu, Capitolare, 1227 March 21 (N.  190); Dinelli, G., ‘Una signoria’, pp. 237–40 and the transcription at pp. 276–8. 105  Cf. Tomei, ‘Milites elegantes’, p. 297. 106 ASDLu, Capitolare, 1225 December 23 (N. 123) and 1228 July 1 (A. 36)—the latter also mentioning some signorial rights, namely the ‘ghiforos personarum et equorum’, then ‘opera et servitia’.

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(with regard to the election of consuls and castellans, as well as to the ­exercise of justice) and to the use of common lands, namely woodland; they also demanded that the priests of S.  Martino ceased to impose undue rents and taxes, among which we find mention, for the first time, of a toll (pedagium); and finally they asked for compensation for damages.104 Imperial and—­possibly—­papal support, with the augmented bargaining power of the rural commune resulting from this, forced the canons to begin to write down—­although very slowly, as we shall see—­some of the tenancy agreements that had been kept customary up to that point, and to demand oaths of fidelity from their dependents in Massarosa. The renewed clashes between the lords of Montemagno and the priests of S. Martino, concerning rights of lordship over Montigiano and Licetro, must have further contributed to this; they lasted for more than a decade (1225–36) and—­even though Massarosa was not directly involved—­are likely to have destabilized the canons’ signorial authority in Versilia.105 Hence the need to reframe some of the customary relations with the local peasantry, and the subsequent redaction of lease charters. I would place in this context the first tenimentum ever addressed to a Massarosese, a certain Accorso di Simone Bambella, in December 1225, as also the rent contract for a ‘podere seu maseum’ in Fibbialla in 1228.106 It needs stressing that such a reframing does not seem to have occurred very often, for tenimenta are few in the period considered here. All the same, they had never been stipulated before in Massarosa; they were a new thing. Paradoxically, rent totals were not the core interest of some lease charters: in three documents out of five, redacted over the years 1228–37, tenants were demanded to deliver their ‘usual renders’, consueta reddita, without further specifications. On the one hand, this is evidence of the stability of the canons’ rights of ownership in and around the castle of Massarosa, since rents and services were arguably passed on from one generation to the next and neither the notaries nor the contracting parties felt the need to clarify precisely what they were; on the other, one can deduce that individual rents may not have been so important eco­nom­ ic­al­ly. Indeed, when the rent is specified, we notice that it was extremely low (respectively, 6 d. and 1 and a half st. of barley in two documents out of

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107  Cf. ASDLu, Capitolare, 1228 December 31 (N.  117), 1229 February 20 (N.  185), 1230 May 30 (N. 158), 1234 October 3 (N. 118) and 1237 January 6 (N. 134); see also ibid., 1237 July 29 (N. 144) (this is the rent of the oven). Another lease charter conceded in return for ‘consueta reddita et servitia’ concerns Licetro (ibid., 1232 March 7, C. 17). 108  Ibid., 1213 August 17 (F. 160).

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five), and it appears to have been high only on the occasion of the leasing out of an oven (£7 per year) located inside the castle, possibly the one already rented out in 1207 and 1211, which we discussed at the beginning of this section. What seems to have mattered most for the canons was the oath of allegiance and the exaction of entry-­fines demanded in return for the issuing of the contract—­which, contrary to rents, were high, amounting respectively to £4 and £14 in the two agreements where they are mentioned. In a nutshell, although some changes in the patterns of landholding at Massarosa certainly were under way, it can still be argued that the rights connected to territorial lordship constituted the main source of revenue for the chapter of S. Martino: the tithes were added to by the pedagium.107 The second aspect that needs further discussion concerns share ­tenancies. As we have seen, some mentions of ad medium agreements can be found in the two inventories (1187 and 1228) that we have examined, but by no means do we get the impression that share tenures were widespread, let alone that mezzadria elements were starting to be included within them. There is however one exception to this, and it is worth mentioning it because it sets the ground for some of the themes I will touch upon in the next case studies. One of the lease charters analysed above108 included a section concerning three cultrae of land, which were additional to the three other cultrae that the canon Tolomeo had leased out in return for fixed renders in wheat and millet. The leaseholder, Bonamico, was required to provide ‘medietatem totius blave’ and two thirds of the wine, to manure (‘sucerare’) half of those three cultrae and to plant vines there (‘pergolare’) for three years. Two observations must be made. For a start, even though this part of the contract does not include clauses explicitly related to cost-­ sharing, it is evidence of the need to clarify how some resources should be provided (manure in this instance), and what improvements had to be made (namely, the plantation of new vines), in a way that resembles the early Florentine share tenancies including mezzadria elements. Second, the ad medium agreement is applied to polyculture-­ oriented lands—­ blava, so mixed cereals, and wine—­as opposed to the fixed rents in wheat and millet coming from the first three cultrae recorded in the contract. Some of these

166  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca characteristics will surface, in greater detail, from the archives of S. Ponziano and from the notarial protocols of Ciabatto.

The fondo of the city monastery of S. Ponziano is the richest among those housed by the State archives of Lucca. The abbey, which had been founded as a nunnery in the southern part of the city by the deacon Iacopo of the late Teutperto (brother of the bishop of Lucca Giovanni I, 791–800, and himself a future bishop) at the end of the eighth century, was converted into a male monastery, and reconstructed in the western suburbs of the city, in the late tenth century—­when Marquis Ugo of Tuscia and his mother Willa endowed it with new landed estates belonging to the fiscal domain. Then, from 1158 to 1378, S. Ponziano was a dependency of the Cluniac abbey of S. Benedetto in Polirone, located near Mantua, thus coming to constitute one of the few examples of Cluniac monasticism in Tuscany; indeed, the others were equally concentrated within the diocese of Lucca, which seems to have favoured the gathering of Cluniac communities from the mid eleventh century thanks to Bishop Anselmo II (1073–86).109 In 1513, S. Ponziano took over the monastery of S. Salvatore di Sesto and preserved the documents of the latter up to 1801, when S.  Ponziano was suppressed and its entire archival patrimony moved to the State archives of Lucca. Overall, however, the number of charters from Sesto—­which can be found not only among the documents of S. Ponziano, but also within other archival groups of the Lucchese State Archives—­for the period analysed in this book is quite restricted; and this is all the more disappointing given that Sesto was the greatest ecclesiastical landowner of the whole Lucchesia in the tenth century, and probably one of the richest in the whole of northern and central Italy.110 For these reasons, I will not examine its documentation here; quite simply, it does not allow us to discuss land management and its change between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. We can refer, however, to the very detailed analysis by Alberto Maria Onori on Sesto centred on the period 1250–1300, when Lucchese notarial registers do

109  Cf. Collavini and Tomei, ‘Beni fiscali’; on Cluniac monks at S. Ponziano cf. Pescaglini Monti, ‘Le dipendenze’. 110  Vignodelli, ‘Berta’, pp. 274–5.

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The Monastery of S. Ponziano (Tenth Century–1230s)

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111 Onori, L’abbazia. 112 ASLu, S. Ponziano, 1202 August 12 (in which, however, it is only stated that the addressee of the rent contract, Abbracciabene, may have been a manens, and was at any rate freed from that status), 1203 December 24 (on which cf. Conte, Servi, p. 116, note 73), 1206 October 22, 1212 April 7, 1214 February 23 (cf. Chapter 1, note 45). 113  See ibid., 1022 November 12, 1026 September 7, 1030 January 23, 1031 March 6, 1045 August 26, 1048 May 26, 1048 November 10, 1050 September 19 (cf. the regesti of the documents in Italian in Degli Azzi Vitelleschi, Pergamene I, 39, no. 54, 48–9, no. 68, 52, no. 72, 53, no. 74, 86, no. 121, 95, no. 133, 96, no. 135, 99, no. 139); there is also one case in which the abbot of S. Ponziano is the beneficiary of the libellus, granted in exchange for an annual rent of 2 d. (ibid., 1040 November 10; Degli Azzi Vitelleschi, Pergamene I, 70, no. 97). See also the libellus stipulated by lay people (in return for a rent of 24 d.) ibid., 1040 December 27 (Degli Azzi Vitelleschi, Pergamene I, 70–1, no. 98). Exceptions to rents in money: ibid., 1022 May 12 and 1022 October 3 (Degli Azzi Vitelleschi, Pergamene I, 37, no. 51, 38, no. 53). Cf. Stoffella, ‘Il monastero’ and Id., ‘Riforma’. 114  Libelli given in exchange for a rent in kind: ASLu, S.  Ponziano, 1062 August 31, 1066 December 6, 1067 January 18, 1068 December 24, 1071 September 17, 1071 October 18, 1072 September 16, 1075 March 22 (two documents), 1076 September 8, 1076 November 11 (Degli

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permit us to look at the relations between tenants and the monastery—­ indeed, I will take into consideration Onori’s findings in my general conclusion.111 The documents of S. Ponziano are fairly consistent with the overall picture surfacing from the charters of the cathedral chapter of S. Martino, at least in the Sei Miglia, where the abbey owned all its landed estates. One of the main differences in comparison to S. Martino regards signorial powers; except for some—­rather rare—­records of manentes belonging to the monastic community of S.  Ponziano,112 a signoria was almost completely absent, and does not appear to have played any crucial role in shaping tenurial relations. As a result, my analysis will be mostly centred on the extraction of agricultural surplus alone, devoid as it was of any signorial framing. But this type of analysis has its problems as well; here too, it is almost impossible to study estate management until the twelfth century, when the increased number of rent contracts and the presence, among them, of tenimenta allow us to get some information on the relations between tenants and land­ owners. Previously, the beneficiaries of libelli were, as elsewhere, almost exclusively the members of a second-­or-­third-­level urban elite, mainly judicial experts and clients of the Lucchese bishops. Rents in money largely prevailed throughout the first half of the eleventh century113 and a move towards rents in kind—­however partial at that stage—­began only during the 1060s and the 1070s; the demand for agricultural produce became increasingly frequent throughout the twelfth century, whereas renders in money were confined, by then, to leases of urban properties or portions of forests.114 This shift towards kind shows that the monks of S.  Ponziano

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Azzi Vitelleschi, Pergamene I, 121, no. 184, 129, no. 202, 130, no. 203, 133, no. 210, 138, no. 224, 139, no. 227, 142, no. 235, 149, no. 248, 150, no. 249, 154, nos. 260 and 261). Examples of twelfth-­century leases (not just libelli at this stage, but also tenimenta and investitiones) granted in return for an annual rent in kind: ibid., 1154 February 4 (Degli Azzi Vitelleschi, Pergamene II, 230, no. 672), 1164 May 8, 1186 September 4, 1194 July 10. Rents in money: ibid., 1179 October 18 (libellus concerning a portion of a forest) and 1189 May 19 (lease concerning a casa solariata near the church of S. Genesio in Lucca). 115  Ibid., 1168 December 1. 116  Ibid., 1186 September 4, 1189 October 1, 1191 November 9, 1192 March 25, 1193 May 2, 1193 September 5, 1194 July 10, 1194 September 29, 1194 November 5 (1), 1194 November 12, 1201 June 9, 1203 October 26, 1205 January 1, 1206 October 22, 1208 December 14, 1210 December 3, 1210 December 4, 1210 December 14, 1211 March 19, 1211 August 28, 1211 November 22, 1212 October 22, 1213 February 12, 1213 February 12 (1), 1213 July 21, 1214 May 25, 1216 April 13 (‘suos heredes primos tantum’), 1216 May 9 (‘suos heredes primos tantum’, two documents), 1218 February 28, 1222 January 26, 1223 August 11, 1224 November 11, 1225 April 13, 1225 September 14, 1225 September 17, 1226 February 1, 1226 October 28. I included lease-­back contracts, as well as leases involving only lay people and leases stipulated by members of churches dependent from S. Ponziano; I exclude, conversely, the rents we know of because they were mentioned within sale charters or exchanges—­ since, in this case, S. Ponziano was not issuing new leases, but only writing down the renders which came along with the land.

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wished to dismiss the medium-­elite intermediaries who used to be the ­typical beneficiaries of libelli in the early eleventh century, and to exploit a growing city market through the supply of agricultural products. Another major change in tenancy relations is recognizable from the 1190s onwards. This consisted in the issuing of a high number of fixed-­term leases, which points to the attempt, on the part of the monastic community of S. Ponziano, to strengthen control over land. It has to be emphasized that fixed-­term leases are completely absent from the monastery’s documentary record up to the second half of the twelfth century. The first contract with an expiry date (it was set to last twenty-­four years) was issued in 1168, but it seems to have been an isolated exception in a panorama of perpetual grants.115 The situation changed radically from the year 1186, since fixed-­ term leases came to constitute 57.8% of all the tenancy agreements stipulated over the period 1186–1200, 26% during the years 1201–10, 50% between 1211 and 1220 and reached the peak of 75% in the decade 1221–30. The average duration was twenty years, from a minimum of two to a maximum of thirty—­plus three contracts addressed ‘only to the first heirs’, heredes primi tantum, i.e. for two lives.116 I am disinclined to attach too much importance to fluctuations in percentages from one decade to another, for they may well have depended on pure archival chance and cannot be ascribed—­for instance—­to the personal initiative of this or that abbot. What is significant is the general trend, with fixed-­term contracts becoming increasingly numerous over the fifty years

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117  Debts: ibid., 1203 December 4, 1218 January 26, 1224 December 30. 118  For example, cf. for wine ibid., 1203 April 8. Figs and spelt: ibid., 1203 September 2. Oil and chestnuts: ibid., 1208 December 14. 119  Rent increases: 1211 March 13 (39 st. of wheat, millet, and broad beans; it is specified that a previous charter, including a rent of 27 st., had been abolished) and 1224 November 11 (from 8 st. of wheat and 16 st. of millet to 14 st. of wheat and 14 st. of millet). On afficta retenta at S. Ponziano cf. above. 120  Please note that in the main text I converted the units of measurement recorded in the documents into staia. Cf. ibid., 1213 February 12 (1) (size of the holding: six cultrae minus one quarra. Rent: five modii and 8 st. of wheat and millet) and 1213 February 12 (2) (size of the holding: three cultrae. Rent: 16 st. for each cultra). Other examples: ibid., 1224 November 11 (size of the holding: 22 st. Rent: 14 st. of wheat, 14 st. of millet, plus £10 of oil) and ibid., 1226

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going 1180 to 1230. This trend can be partly explained by the overall ­instability of prices, which made it convenient for landowners to take back their holdings and lease them out anew in return for higher rents—­or else sell them in exchange for higher prices. It is consistent with this hypothesis that some fixed-­term agreements were explicitly linked to the need to improve landed estates—­by building a new house or planting trees. To this, we can add the pressure put on the monastic community by the accumulation of debts117 and—­to repeat—­the absence of signorial powers, with the subsequent impossibility of raising the exactions connected to them (as had happened in Massarosa and Fibbialla). Let us focus on the type of rents collected over the decades straddling the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. S. Ponziano fits, on a general level, the pattern of the whole Sei Miglia, characterized by the prevalence of fixed rents in wheat, millet, and broad beans (sometimes together with a small quantity of money); wine, oil, chestnuts, as well as figs and spelt, are sometimes documented.118 I could find only two rent increases over the first thirty years of the thirteenth century, and this is matched by the almost complete absence of afficta retenta during the same period (two again).119 One can assume that the monks did not have enough economic and signorial power to impose increases outright, and that the slow process of reforms of land management encapsulated by the issuing of fixed-­term agreements remained their only option; this, in turn, may explain the relatively small amount of resistance on the part of peasants. But some rents could become high. In 1213, Abbot Ugo II of S. Ponziano was expecting to get 128 st. of wheat and millet from 138 st. of land; in another charter, he demanded 48 st. of wheat, millet, and broad beans from 72 st. of land. Assuming, as I did before, that the overall output was four times the soil that could be sown, it follows that rents were one fourth or one sixth of the crop, and far more in bad years.120 An exception to this pattern is represented by the southern

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December 4 (size of the holding: one quarra. Rent: 2 st. of grain, that is, a third of what could be sown). Another seemingly high rent (but we do not know the size of the holding here) is ibid., 1223 August 11 (28 st. of grain, 36 st. of broad beans and 37 st. of millet). 121  Ibid., 1225 September 14 (size of the holding: 25 st. Rent: 14 st. of wheat, 3 st. of millet and 3 st. of broad beans). 122  Esch, ‘Lucca’, p. 17. 123 ASDLu, S. Ponziano, 1092 January 18 (Degli Azzi Vitelleschi, Pergamene I, 21, no. 61). On the location of Fondalliore cf. ibid., S.  Giovanni, 1124 March 30 (Degli Azzi Vitelleschi, Pergamene II, 108, no. 327).

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section of the Sei Miglia, close to the former castle of Vorno: in one contract, the number of staia demanded from tenants was inferior to the extent of the  soil.121 The geographical location of this relatively unprofitable agreement was no chance, for in the region of Vorno and Vaccoli, as Esch demonstrated, land prices grew the least during the final quarter of the twelfth century. Demand was scarce, possibly because the soil was not very pro­ duct­ive there, as this contract appears to suggest; but there might have been further reasons for this, as we are about to see.122 This is the background against which we need to set the analysis of the main alternative to fixed rents, that is, share tenancies—­not by chance do I avoid the expression early mezzadria, for mezzadria elements, as we shall see, are absent. Let us start by clarifying that, unlike fixed-­term leases, the number of share tenancies never appears to have been high at S. Ponziano over the period considered here, and their issuing seems to have always remained occasional. Landowners resorted to them when they could not predict, with a reasonable degree of certainty, the agricultural output of their holdings; therefore, they demanded a fraction of the final harvest, no matter to what it amounted. The division of seed-­corn—­and, in general, forms of cost-­ sharing between tenants and landowners—­never feature in the documents of S. Ponziano. We now need to examine some of those agreements, so that we can begin to set the stage for a comparison with the Florentine countryside; the pages that follow, together with the next section on Ciabatto, are indeed intended to mirror those on share tenancy and early mezzadria agreements at Passignano. Readers may again decide to skip the detailing out of contract clauses and focus on the syntheses at pages 173–4 and 183. The first surviving evidence for share tenure dates to 1092, when Abbot Leo of S. Ponziano granted a piece of land in Fondalliore (Vaccoli, south of Lucca) to Bellone di Rustico in return for an annual fixed rent of 32 st. of wine must. However, if the armies of the King or the Marquis devastated the land, or if a storm ruined the crops, Bellone should deliver just half of what was left.123 The same logic underpinned another lease stipulated in 1102

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124 ASDLu, S. Ponziano, 1102 October 13. 125 Wickham, Community, p. 20. 126  On the pascioraticum cf. Kotel’nikova, Mondo, p. 48.

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and concerning, this time, a vegetable garden, an arable field and a vineyard in Vicopelago, in the southern suburbs of Lucca; this was a fixed-­rent agreement, ‘except for the year in which [the land] will be damaged by an army or by a storm, since in that year [you will deliver] half of what will be left according to the customs of that place’.124 These ‘devastation clauses’ became quite common throughout the twelfth century, and are evidence, as Chris Wickham argued, of both legal precision and a desire to calculate carefully agricultural profit.125 They seem to have been associated with exceptional (and unfortunate) events, and to have worked as a safeguard against them; even if something bad happened, land­owners could get part of the harvest. In other instances, share tenancies were stipulated in order to begin a lease—­perhaps associated with re-­ clearing the land—­and were not supposed to be permanent. In 1157, the abbot of S. Ponziano Enrico stipulated four contracts on 1 December—­two concerning Vaccoli and two Busdagno (which is located in a hilly area in the north-­western environs of Lucca). Three of those contracts ruled out the possibility that tenants could be regarded as manentes (the fourth one was instead silent on that point). This clause must have been particularly im­port­ant for one of the lessees, a certain Barile, who was required to reside on his holding even if he was not a manens, and could not leave it ‘unless a war breaks out between Lucca and Pisa’; in view of these obligations, Barile could have been easily mistaken for a manens, and it was thus necessary to specify that he was not. As to his rent, Barile had to give S. Ponziano 2 s. of Lucchese denarii, 4 st. of figs and half of the wine must for two years; the rent would remain the same afterwards, too, except for the must, which would then be delivered in the quantity of seventeen donkey-­loads per year together with the pascioraticum, a tribute paid to lords in exchange for the use of pastures.126 Another leaseholder of S. Ponziano in Vaccoli, Ugolino, had to give the monastery half of the produce for the first two years of tenancy before switching to a mixed rent, and was also supposed to build a house on the field he was granted. As for the two rent contracts regarding Busdagno, share tenancy was regarded as an emergency solution. ‘For every year in which the afore-­mentioned lands will be devastated by bad weather [“celi furore”] or by any earthly power [“per potestatem”], we will deliver

172  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

127 ASLu, S.  Ponziano, 1157 December 1 (cf. the edition of one of them in Imberciadori, Mezzadria, pp. 82–3). There is also a fifth contract in the archives, which is the copy of the fourth one. 128 ASLu, S. Ponziano, 1158 March 6 (two documents). 129  Ibid., 1168 December 1. 130  Ibid., 1184 June 3.

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half of the fruits that God will give on those lands.’127 The two-­year duration of share tenancies occurs also in another lease granted by Abbot Enrico in 1158, concerning seven pieces of land in Vorno; the leaseholder was required to give half of the agricultural produce until 1160, then Enrico could decide whether to keep up this obligation, or else shift to the delivery of a fixed render of £7 of oil.128 It appears that Enrico himself was quite committed to share tenures, but by no means did he trigger a trend; we need to wait ten years to find another contract of this type in the archives of S.  Ponziano. Moreco, rector of the hospital of S.  Ponziano, on behalf of Abbot Giovanni, leased out three pieces of land in Vaccoli for twenty-­four years, in return for a rent consisting in half of the wine must, half of the young wine (picciolo) and of the chestnuts, the third part of the barley and half of the oil, plus 3 s. and 2 d. for each cart of must. The addressee, Rosignolo, had to rebuild a rural house and to deliver the third part of all the cereals (‘de omni blava’) harvested in the second piece of land he had been granted. Moreover, the charter included a clause—­which we will find also in Ciabatto’s notarial registers—­concerning melioramenta and peioramenta; if the land was improved, Moreco would compensate Rosignolo, whereas Rosignolo would compensate Moreco if the land deteriorated.129 As we move into the final twenty years of the twelfth century, the number of share tenancies does not increase—­quite the opposite, in fact. In 1184, Abbot Ugo I leased to Riccio of the late Volta three pieces of land in Plagia (which is impossible to identify) in return for an annual rent of 13 st. of wheat, 12 st. of broad beans and 12 st. of millet; however, ‘was the land to be devastated by the army of the Emperor or by bad weather, which must be real and credible [“per furorem celi iustum et credibile”]’, Riccio would deliver only ‘half of all the fruits of lands and trees’.130 That the damages caused by unfavourable climatic conditions had to be proved true is im­port­ ant, since it testifies to the risk that tenants could cheat on the quantity of the harvest; they might have lied, in other words, about the agricultural produce they had managed to obtain, claiming that heavy rains destroyed the crops. Landowners were thus entitled to verify that the fraction of agricultural products they were about to collect was calculated based on the real annual output of the holding.

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131  Ibid., 1194 September 29. 133  Ibid., 1212 December 4.

132  Ibid., 1210 January 21. 134  Ibid., 1212 November 22.

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This pattern characterizes the years straddling the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, too. In 1194, Abbot Guinizo issued a short-­term lease in favour of a certain Panuccio, who was granted a field in Ripaia (whose meaning is roughly ‘river bank’, which makes it impossible to identify the locality) for thirteen years, in return for a fixed rent consisting in 12 st. of wheat, broad beans and millet; during the first year of tenancy, however, Panuccio would deliver only ‘medietatem de omnibus fructibus’.131 In 1210, a masium in Carignano (now a frazione of Lucca, which borders on Busdagno) was leased out ‘in return for the third part of all the cereals [“blave”] and half of all the other products’, plus 10 s.; after one year, however, the rent would be commuted into a fixed render consisting in 4 st. of grain, 4 st. of broad beans, 4 st. of millet, 10 s. and one cart of wine must.132 The same logic recurs in a perpetual lease issued in 1212 and regarding three land-­plots in Cantignano, close to Vorno. The tenant, a certain Piero, was required to provide a mixed render in kind and money, but, as was written on the text right after the notarial completio (that is, the notary’s signature), he was supposed to deliver only ‘medietatem et non plus de fructibus’ from two of the three pieces of land he had been granted for the first year of tenancy.133 Here, the status of share tenure as a temporary solution was in a way mirrored by its unusual location in the margin of the charter; clearly, the contracting parties were above all interested in securing the fixed render that would be delivered perpetually from all the plots of land included in the tenimentum. Finally, an agreement of 1212 concerns Moriano. Abbot Ugo II gave two Morianesi, Bonasera and Orsello, all the pieces of land that the monastery owned in the nearby locality of Settoia for six years, in exchange for one staium in four of all the grain harvested there—­which is quite an unusual formula, showing that the produce that landowners could collect was here rather difficult to predict. Uncertainty was hovering, as seems to be confirmed by a clause freeing tenants from rent-­paying for the part of the holding that may have been seized by other people.134 No sharecropping contracts survive for the 1220s, and this further demonstrates that share tenures were far from being the first choice for the monastic community of S. Ponziano. To conclude. With the exception of Moriano, share tenures came from a relatively infertile area of the Sei Miglia (the slopes around Carignano and Busdagno), from the southern suburbs of the city (Vicopelago) and from

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The Notarial Protocols of Ciabatto (1222–32) This section is dedicated to the published registers of the best-­documented notary of thirteenth-­ century Italy, the Lucchese Ciabatto. He was the ­compiler of twenty-­seven books redacted between 1222 and 1272, which have been preserved in the archives of the cathedral chapter of Lucca; Ciabatto died without heirs, and it is likely that the canons of S.  Martino were particularly interested in buying up his protocols in view of the high number of deeds regarding the chapter assets, which he wrote down over the years.135 I have already outlined the reasons that make notarial protocols a peculiarly precious type of source in the chapter on Florence, when I discussed the registers of Palmerio di Uglione. The main difference between Palmerio and Ciabatto is that the latter has left us much more documentation. Andreas Meyer published four registers and fragments of registers—­so only a small part of Ciabatto’s overall production—­covering the years 1222–32, and devoted to the businesses of diverse Lucchese clients; they contain 927 deeds, against the c. 200 we have for Palmerio. It has to be noted, nonetheless, that Ciabatto, like Palmerio, recorded a relatively small number of lease charters (some fifty) by comparison to notifications of debts or payment

135  For a complete list of Ciabatto’s registers cf. Meyer, Felix, 199–202; Ciabattus, p. 84. For an overview of their content cf. Id., ‘I registri’, ‘Charters’ and ‘La critica’. Notarial registers have been studied by Thomas  W.  Blomquist, as results from his ‘Variorum’ collection of studies, Merchant.

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the hilly countryside between Pisa and Lucca (Vaccoli, Vorno), ravaged by the endless frontier wars between the two cities (cf. the Introduction). The long-­term plan in the mind of the monks of S.  Ponziano was to demand fixed renders from their holdings; they opted for a share of the harvest only temporarily, until the final agricultural output could be reasonably predicted. No cost-­sharing ever surfaces from these documents. This does not imply that the community of S. Ponziano had no interest in improving its holdings and therefore in increasing its incomes, as can be inferred by the clauses regarding the rebuilding of a rural house, or else the melioramenta and peioramenta; but it certainly did not regard share tenures as a stable framing for its tenants’ working obligations. This array of issues will be further developed as we move on to the notarial registers by Ciabatto.

Lucca and the Lucchesia  175

136  Some examples taken randomly: Ciabattus, pp. 111–12, A 28 (1225 February 9), p. 119, A 43 (1224 October 27), pp. 169–70, B 79 (1227 March 31), p. 173, B 84 (1227 November 20), pp. 314–15, C 253 (1230 July 22), p. 352, C 352 (1230 October 8), pp. 417–18, D 64 (1231 March 5), pp. 488–9, D 212 (1231 November 23).

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receipts—­which make up a big part of his books. Those leases will be the core of my analysis, but it has to be hoped that the unpublished registers will be equally addressed one day (they would need specific research, mostly postdating 1230, and are therefore outside the scope of this book; but I will discuss one of them shortly in the general conclusion). In doing so, I will put particular emphasis on early mezzadria contracts. Not because they were widespread—­quite the contrary, for there are only six of them—­but because they contrast with the prevailing pattern of fixed rents as has been outlined until now. It is only by looking closely at exceptions that we can get a proper understanding of the general rule. In respect of this, the pages that follow will be to a large extent a continuation of the previous section. A few words on fixed rents: they consisted for the most part in wheat, millet, and broad beans, and were demanded by both clerics and laymen; cash rents were confined to the leasing out of rural houses and their annexes. The majority of leases lasted only a few years, but this is not surprising. People were likely to prefer single-­sheet parchments—­the kind of document that I have almost exclusively focused on throughout this book—­ over imbreviature whenever they had to seal perpetual agreements; the former remained the most detailed form of recording for permanent rights of usufruct or ownership.136 By and large, the overall picture emerging from the charters of S. Martino and S. Ponziano does not change. What changes is the pattern of share tenancies, which—­according to the definition that I gave in the Introduction—­can be classified as early mezzadria agreements (but it has to be noted already that, for reasons that will be clarified later on, those agreements can be hardly considered as the equivalent of Passignano contracts). Ciabatto’s share tenures with mezzadria elements were all issued by lay landowners, although this might possibly depend on the fact that Ciabatto mostly used other registers—­still unedited—­ in order to record the majority of rent contracts granted by the Lucchese canons; as a result, the laity may simply be overrepresented in Meyer’s ­edition. Notwithstanding this important caveat, that the laity stands out as a group highly committed to early mezzadria is a significant piece of information: the historiography on mezzadria has largely stressed the pivotal role played by non-­clerics in adopting and extending the use of this type of

176  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

137  Cf. Meyer, ‘Der Luccheser Notar’, pp. 199–200, note 152. 138  Ciabattus, p. 139, B 18 (1227 March 27) and cf. also p. 140, B 19 (same date). 139  Ibid., p. 149, B 38 (1227 April 11). 140  Ibid., p. 146, B 33 (1227 April 9). 141  Ibid., p. 152, B 44 (1227 April 11).

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agreement (see again the Introduction), and the Lucchese evidence fits that. Furthermore, the richness of information encapsulated by Ciabatto’s books allows us to get a sense of the status of the people who issued those contracts. I will first sketch out the landowners’ social and economic profile, then single out the most important clauses of the deeds they stipulated, make some remarks on the tenantry, and finally consider the general implications of this discussion. One of those landowners was Francesco of the late Cacciaré, who appears twice as a lessor in Meyer’s edition. He belonged to a well-­off family who lived in Lucca137 and was involved in commercial activities. His brother, named Buongiorno, is mentioned for the first time in a deed dating to 1227, when he declared that he owed, together with Rinaldino of the late Lamberto, £24 of Genoese denarii (Genovini) to three money lenders who gave them £41 of Lucchese denarii; Buongiorno promised to return the money ‘safe and sound in Genoa’ and pledged ‘all his weapons and horses and all his goods’138—indeed, in another contract Buongiorno features as the buyer of a horse.139 As to Francesco, one may hypothesize that he was involved to some degree in the Lucchese food market, as he is recorded purchasing ten pounds of olive oil in 1227 (this quantity, however, could have been consumed within the Cacciaré’s household alone, and it is impossible to know whether it was marketed or not).140 What we know is that Francesco and Buongiorno were endeavouring to live up to their elite-­status aspirations. One document reveals that they were indebted because of the expenses they had to meet ‘for the members of their house’ (‘pro comunitate sue domus’, an expression that will have included domestic servants too), and that some of those expenses concerned the dowries of their wives and daughters.141 Even though we cannot uncover the characteristics and the scale of the Cacciaré’s commercial network—­nor can we tell whether landed wealth or commerce was their main source of income—­it is clear that Francesco and Buongiorno were part of a prosperous urban milieu. In this sense, they fit into the image of a burgeoning bourgeoisie which, when it came to land management, opted for mezzadria. The Cacciaré are not the only lessors for whom we have some information. Domina Lucia, wife of a certain Malagallia, belonged to a family of

Lucca and the Lucchesia  177

142  For Lucia cf. Ciabattus, pp. 356–7, C 333 (1229 October 24) and Concioni, ‘Aspetti’. For money-­changers in thirteenth-­century Lucca the most complete account is Blomquist, ‘The dawn’. For Melanese cf. Ciabattus, pp. 304–5, C 305 (1230 September 15); for Riccomanno cf. ibid., p. 183, C 11 (1229 October 28); for Soldano cf. ibid., p. 184, C 13 (1229 October 28), p. 250, C 130 (1230 February 8), pp. 379–80, C 374 (1230 December 5), p. 424, D 80 (1231 March 13–1232 January 7), p. 464, D 167 (1231 October 31). 143  It is not possible to locate precisely the estate mentioned ibid., pp. 551–2, D 336 (1231 April 26) ‘quem tenuit Michele et que fuit S. Michaelis’ (probably the church of S. Michele in Foro). But the deed was ‘Actum Luce in suprascripto loco terris’, so the estate must have been very close to the city boundaries. One may want to add to this list p. 231, C 90 (1230 January 17), which concerns a portion of woodland in Vorno rented out for half of the chestnuts. This cannot be regarded, however, as a sharecropping or early mezzadria agreement; it simply regulated the tenant’s access to pasturing in that part of the silva.

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money changers who apparently owned more than one bureau de change in Lucca, and indeed were able to lease them out in return for rent. Another lessor, Melanese, was an artisan—­he is defined as arcorarius, literally arch-­ maker, probably a sculptor; Riccomanno was a legal expert (advocatus); and Soldano of the late Gerardo was a landlord of some importance, as he was collecting rents from four different houses in and outside Lucca between 1229 and 1231. Unfortunately, we cannot get any further than that, but a preliminary conclusion can be already proposed: the lessors of share-­ tenancy agreements, except for Soldano, were involved in non-­agricultural activities, thus benefiting from sources of income other than land.142 Let us now look at the content of our contracts, starting from the location of early mezzadria holdings. All of them lay in the hinterland of the city, mostly to the south (Vicopelago, Sorbano del Giudice and possibly Via Mezzana),143 with the exception of a podere in Matraia, north of Lucca, on the slopes of Monte Pizzorne. Those deeds did not appear to involve lands in the central and eastern part of the Sei Miglia, where wheat-­and-­millet-­ growing fields tended to prevail. As with S. Ponziano, in Ciabatto’s registers share tenancies with mezzadria elements were always applied to polyculture-­ oriented lands—­and especially to vineyards, a constantly recurring element. All the contracts were short-­term, lasting from a minimum of four to a maximum of twelve years. In addition to this, early mezzadria agreements displayed a great concern for the improvements, melioramenta, that had to be made on lands, and we can even say that melioramenta played a crucial role in determining the preference for early mezzadria over other types of lease contracts. It is thus useful to analyse melioramenta in some detail. One tenant of Francesco of the late Cacciaré, Michele of Vicopelago, was required to manure (sucerare) his lands with dung and lupins; at the same time, Francesco had to cover all the costs due to the plantation of new

178  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

144  For these three contracts cf. ibid., pp. 151–2, B 43 (1227 April 14) and the already-­cited C 11 and D 336. 145  Cf. ibid., D 336: ‘et si seminaverit blavam in vinea, debet esse per medium, et si seminaverit lupinos [the same will apply to lupins]’. 146 Cf. again ibid., D 336: ‘teneantur ipsi iugales inquirere suprascriptum Soldanum, ut veniat ad videndum battere blavam et calcare vinum’.

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vineyards (mallioli), if he decided to do so (si. . . vellet). The advocatus Riccomanno and his brother Paganello had to provide their tenant, Orsello di Masseo, with timber to be used to repair (aptare) the farmhouse; Orsello also had to prepare and/or repair (conciare) the casks, provided that the two lessors gave him the hoops. Two other tenants, Guido and his wife Matilda, had to cultivate a piece of land where other mallioli had been placed, retaining its usufruct for three years and then sharing it per medium with the landowner Soldano. As was in fact quite normal with new vineyards, Guido and Matilda were allowed to keep all their output when vines were young, before starting to deliver their product as rent. In addition to this, Guido had to sow a third of the vineyard with lupins and put manure, to plant there four novellas—­again, young vineyards—­and to roof and repair the farmhouse.144 Cost-­sharing thus features in these contracts as part of melioramenta. It is notable, however, that the joint provision of seed-­corn on the part of landowners and tenants only surfaces in the agreement between Soldano and Guido: ‘and if he [Guido] sows cereals [“blavam”] in the vineyard, this must be per medium, and the same applies to lupins’ (as an aside, this may be an example of intercropping, with cereals and vines cultivated on the same plot in row patterns).145 Moreover, Ciabatto’s share tenancies with mezzadria clauses display the same concern for control over leaseholds that was so evident in the Chianti region. When a fraction of the final harvest is demanded, tenants are in a position to cheat; and this risk had to be forestalled, especially over a period in which landowners were endeavouring to collect from tenures the prod­ uce that could be ‘really’ collected, in Esch’s words (cf. above). This was why Guido and Matilda had ‘to ask the afore-­mentioned Soldano to come in order to oversee the threshing and the pressing of grapes’,146 a measure which was clearly intended to avoid fraud over the quantity of grain and grapes, and which recalls similar regulations included within Passignano charters, with the monastic nuntius holding the right to supervise threshing. But control over land could simply consist in the right, for proprietors, to claim back the holding they had previously leased out. For example, Riccomanno and Paganello were authorized to take back the podere given

Lucca and the Lucchesia  179

147  Cf. ibid., C 11 and C 305. 148  Cf. ibid., B 43 (Francesco di Cacciaré—­the lessor—­will keep for himself 8 st. of wine), C11 (Riccomanno and Paganello—­the lessors—­will keep 8 st. of wine must and £2 of oil), C 23 (Francesco di Cacciaré—­the lessor—­will keep one asinata consisting in 8 st. of wine and cereals), C 305 (Bonaccorso and Salvetto—­the lessees—­will keep 8 st. of wine must, then Melanese will have two third of wine must), D 136 (Bonaccorso and Salvetto—­the lessees—­will keep 8 st. of wine and half of the vinum piccolum). In two contracts the ‘insurance’ is absent: ibid., pp. 317–18, C 259 (1230 July 25) and D 336.

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to Orsello before the end of the contract, provided that they compensated him for the melioramentum; and the same clause recurs in the contract issued by Melanese arcorarius.147 This brings us to the analysis of rents themselves, which is in turn linked to the issue of control. All the early mezzadria deeds recorded within Ciabatto’s registers were granted in return for half of the products—­cereals, legumes, fruit, oil, wine, and also timber, although we find rents consisting in two third of the wine in two documents. In addition to this, the lessees or the lessors could be entitled to set aside a part of the agricultural output (mostly wine, but also olive oil), which was thereby excluded from the rent. This clause probably worked like a ‘deposit’ or ‘insurance’: for the lessors, it was perhaps aimed at limiting potential cheating on the part of leaseholders; for the lessees, at balancing the effects of poor harvests, which could have left them with very little produce.148 The social and economic status of tenants is likely to have been important in determining the terms of the agreements; I will try to sketch it out, although the available evidence is scarce. Half the tenants are only documented in the contracts which we have just discussed and—­even though research should be extended to the unpublished registers—­it still can be suggested that they were not owners of importance. Their bargaining power must have been limited, and this explains why they accepted deals that essentially were unfavourable to them. The other half, however, did feature in our documentation; and it is interesting to note, in this sense, that the ‘deposit’ or ‘insurance’ was destined to tenants only when they seem to have been slightly better off—­in other words, when their bargaining power was probably higher than that of the poorest early mezzadri. This was the case with Salvetto di Pugnetto, who is mentioned three times as a moneylender and was allowed, along with his brother Buonaccorso, to keep 8 st. of (respectively) must and wine in addition to ‘his’ half of the harvest in two contracts. Two other tenants, Bonomo and Guido, are both recorded as small moneylenders; neither had to deliver any extra-­rent, any ‘deposit’ to

180  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

149  ‘Invisible’ tenants: ibid., B 43 (Michele di Vicopelago), C 11 (Orsello di Masseo) and C 23 (Giunta di Inghilego). On Salvetto di Pugnetto as money lender cf. pp. 156–7, B 54 (1227 April 17), p. 182, C 8 (1229 October 23), p. 198, C 34 (1229 November 24); see also p. 451, D 141 (1231 October 2). On Bonomo of the late Baroncio cf. p. 317, C 258 (1230 July 24). On Guido di Lombardo cf. p. 277, C 183 (1230 April 2), pp. 478–9, D 191 (1231 November 13) and also p. 391, D 8 (1231 January 4), in which Guido shares a horse (‘in accomandisia’) with Buongiorno of the late Cacciaré. For the ‘deposits’ or ‘insurances’ cf. the note above. 150  Ibid., pp. 158–9, B 59 (1227 April 27), pp. 219–22, C 73, 74, and 75 (1230 January 4), pp. 289–90, C 208 (1230 April 24), pp. 305–6, C 237 (1230 October 10), pp. 307–8, C 241 (1230 June 28), pp. 513–14, D 262 (1231 December 16), pp. 527–8, D 288 (1231 April 4), p. 544, D 321 (1231 April 21) and pp. 549–50, D 333 (1231 April 26).

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their landlords. Naturally, the absence of the ‘insurance’ might have depended on factors, such as the size and the productivity of the single tenures, that the texts of our documents do not clarify; but it is likely that the leaseholders’ status played some role in the negotiation of the terms of their contracts.149 Let us summarize the content of the contracts that we have examined so far. Share tenancies with mezzadria elements represented a very small portion of the lease agreements that have been preserved in Ciabatto’s published registers, and were mostly applied to lands that needed improvements over a relatively restricted number of years; not by chance, we find again the fairly infertile and war-­ravaged lands in Vicopelago or Sorbano del Giudice, in the southern outskirts of Lucca. By no means did early mezzadria appear as a best-­possible option for those who decided to rent out their landed estates. Landowners seem to have belonged to the middle-­upper strata of urban society, including artisans (such as Melanese) or businesswomen (such as Lucia). Tenants were, in half of the contracts at least, apparently poor. As a conclusion to this section, one further aspect needs to be emphasized. Ciabatto’s registers allow us to get a glimpse of the great unknown of Tuscan farming modes during the thirteenth century, that is, wage labour. Wage labour is in fact recorded in eleven imbreviature, but—­importantly—­it never frames agricultural work. Salaries were paid in return for specific jobs: in Ciabatto’s protocols we meet three bakers, three carpenters, the representative (procurator) of the cathedral chapter of S. Martino, a wetnurse and a tailor. Two contracts, however, do not specify the activity that was to be performed; we only know that the addressees had to stay at their employers’ service (‘ad serviendum’) in the house or outside it (‘in domo vel [“et” in  the second contract] extra’).150 Even then, we can safely exclude that these two documents concerned rural labour. The only clue we have in this respect is the generic expression ‘in the house vel/et extra’, which, however,

Lucca and the Lucchesia  181

Conclusion The legacy of the manorial system in the Sei Miglia during the central medieval period was certainly not as strong as it was in the Fiorentino, for one simple reason. The demand for labour-­services as a way to frame the relations between tenants and landowners was completely absent, as is best shown by the lists of customary renders redacted in 1187 and 1228. Indeed, the discrepancy between the content of rent contracts and that of in­ven­tor­ ies, which was crucial to the understanding of change in the forms of land management across the Fiorentino—­for it revealed that corvée-work was fairly widespread—­is not a feature of the plain surrounding Lucca. Tenimenta and lists offer a fairly homogeneous picture. Jointly, the rights connected to tenancy lordship, signoria fondiaria—­which encapsulated the demand for labour around Florence—­appear to have been relatively weak in the Sei Miglia. As we move outside of the Lucchese plain, however, we do find some exceptions. At S. Maria a Monte, the episcopal castle located in the Valdarno Inferiore, the local peasantry was burdened with 349 and a half workdays, to be performed on the bishopric demesnes, according to another inventory

151  Cf. Luzzati and Simonetti, ‘Un “sommerso” medievale’.

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is a purely formulaic one; it occurs also in the deeds regulating domestic or artisanal jobs. We cannot rule out completely the possibility that seasonal rural work was carried out in the form of customary agreements, entailing perhaps the payment of a small salary to cultivators—­this would happen for certain in the fifteenth century.151 Nonetheless, since notarial protocols contain many short-­term agreements, the complete absence of holdings cultivated by sal­ ar­ied workers can be taken as good evidence of the extreme marginality of wage labour as a way to organize estate management. The reason for this is likely to have lain in the purchasing power embodied by Lucchese denarii, subject as it was to a high degree of volatility. The crisis of confidence that followed makes it easy to understand why peasants were reluctant to accept, and why landowners were unable to impose, contracts in which the workers’ real income was impossible to predict with a reasonable degree of certainty.

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152 ASDLu, Arcivescovile, * N 92 (1187 August 23) an edition (which, however, is full of inaccuracies) can be found in LEM III/1, 387–91. 153  As results from ASDLu, Arcivescovile, †† E 1 (1201 April 17). 154  Cf. Morelli, ‘La “signoria” ’; Tabarrini, ‘Le dimensioni’.

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dating to 1187.152 For reasons of space, I cannot discuss S. Maria at length here. Furthermore, the available documentation does not allow us to say with certainty whether those corvée-duties had been completely abolished or not in the Duecento; the only thing we know is that they could be ­converted, sometimes, into cash rents.153 The court cases of the thirteenth century regarding S. Maria testify, at any rate, to the conflicts between the bishops and the local lay aristocracies over the control of resources other than corvées: namely the transport toll, pedagium, which was particularly profitable in the Valdarno (an area of major trade networks) and which appears to have weighed on all the villagers of S.  Maria.154 Otherwise, S.  Maria a Monte looks similar to Massarosa (and, to a lesser extent, Fibbialla). By Lucchese standards, the two of them were compact landed properties, which may have been structured at some point as bipartite manors, and which were turned into castles. Extensive landownership was the basis upon which the exaction—­and later on the attempted increase, which however had to be negotiated—­of collective obligations, manorial tithes and pedagia, rested. It is not chance that Massarosa and S. Maria were both situated outside the orbit of the Sei Miglia. There, the fragmentation of the patterns of landowning and landholding made it impossible to build up any form of ter­ri­ tor­ial lordship, and thus to exact any form of collective dues, as is well displayed by the documentation on Massa Macinaia. Landowners could only endeavour to heighten individual rents: by issuing fixed-­term leases, buying out rent increases, imposing the use of larger staia—­or simply purchasing more land so as to raise their overall income. This process is somehow more obscure in comparison to the Fiorentino and it appears to have happened at a slower pace: there was no corvée-work that could be abolished in exchange for the delivery of high rents, and the pressure of indebtedness seems to have been less—­only S. Ponziano was burdened with debts, and not many of them. But there can be little doubt that it again happened over the decades bridging the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. The withheld rents, afficta retenta, which have been preserved in Lucchese ecclesiastical archives from the 1170s onwards, and the overall increase in

Lucca and the Lucchesia  183

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exactions that can be noticed through a comparison between the inventories of 1187 and 1228, provide further evidence for this. Finally, it should be noted that Lucchese landowners consciously made a choice as to the type of lease agreements they adopted—­opting, in most cases, for fixed rents in kind, very much like the Florentine ones. This applies to the canons of S.  Martino, the monks of S.  Ponziano and the clients of Ciabatto. In the Fiorentino, however, sharecropping may have been more widespread—­as can be inferred by the occasional mentions of terre driterite et mezericie—­and early mezzadria contracts were somewhat less marginal—­ applied as they were to tenures close to the major estate-­centres of Passignano. In the Lucchesia, instead, share tenures and early mezzadria were regarded as a temporary and emergency solution, and appear to have been confined to a few peripheral and polyculture-­oriented areas of the Sei Miglia. Mezzadria clauses do not feature in the charters and inventories of S.  Martino (with the partial exception of the 1213 contract issued by the canon Tolomeo) nor in S. Ponziano charters, whereas they can be spotted within Ciabatto’s imbreviature—­although the joint provision of seed-­corn was almost totally absent. Wage labour was never employed, apparently, on rural estates. In conclusion, substantial changes were happening across the Lucchesia, but they took on different shapes than in the Fiorentino. The two cities and their countryside shared in the general economic and political context of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries: war, inflation and communal taxation were common to both. But the ways this context impacted on the dynamics of land management depended on preexisting proprietorial patterns and ecological factors; it is now time to explain the rationale of those patterns and those factors.

£1.9

£0.4

«in loco Gattaiola ubi «pretium recepisse ad dicitur Petroio» raccionem cultre libras quadragintaseptem» «in loco ubi dicitur £31 and 10 s. ad pontem Broccardi iuxta ecclesiam Sancti Allexii vel in illius confinibus»

/

«tres cultre parum plus vel minus»

ASLu, S. Giustina, 1203 November 9 ASLu, Fiorentini Francesco Maria, 1204 January 9

«in loco Spinatico»

£40

£1.6

£3

«una cultra parum plus vel minus»

«ad rationem cuiusque cultre de terra librarum septuaginta tres lucensis monete»

«unam videlicet petiam de terra qui est campus cum arboribus» «unam videlicet petiam de terra que est vinea et olivetum cum arboribus» «campus cum arboribus et pergolis»

«in confinibus Stermalliatichi ubi dicitur a le mura»

«una cultra et dimidia et stariora quinque minus una scala»

«campus cum arboribus et cum capanna»

The currency is not specified, but it can be assumed that it consists of Lucchese d.

 

 

 

 

£2.3

£54 and 10 s.

«unam cultram «Litiana, prope minus unum stario» Pontetectum»

«campus cum pergoris [sic]»

Price Notes (£) per st.

Price (£)

ASLu, S. Giovanni, 1201 February 26 ASDLu, Capitolare, 1202 June 10 and October 5 (P. 44) ASLu, Serviti, 1202 November 1

Location

Size

Description of the land

Document

Table 2  Land prices in the Lucchesia 1201–30 and Graph 1, with the accompanying text

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ASLu, S. Nicolao, 1208 December 7 ASLu, Altopascio, 1212 April 19

ASLu, Fregionaia, 1204 May 12 ASLu, Spedale di S. Luca, 1206 September 11 ASLu, Fregionaia, 1207 marzo 27 ASLu, S. Ponziano, 1207 May 15 «in confinibus Sancti Leonardi . . . in loco ubi dicitur in Cammarella» «in confinibus Comane, in districtu Montefalconis»

£0.3

£2.8

«ad rationem cuiuslibet stariori solidos quinquaginta quinque denariorum lucensium»

£4

 

Continued

The currency is not specified, but it can be assumed that it consists of Lucchese d.  

 

 

£4.1

£2.3

 

£0.7

110 s.

«prope pontem £33 Sancti Petri. . . in loco ubi dicitur Insula» «unam . . . cultram et «prope civitatem £149 mediam» Lucam ubi dicitur al Corsus sive a la Piestra» «una cultra et quarra «in confinibus Navis £70 et una scala et media prope ponte vel si plus aut minus Marchionis» est» [= 30.37 st.] «staria duo» «in confinibus plebei £8 Sancti Pauli»

«cultre due»

«ad iustam perticam mensuratoriam stariora decem et octo» «duas videlicet petias / de terris que sunt campi cum uno puteo»

«unam . . . petiam de terra mensuratam»

«unam petiolam terre que est campus cum arboribus»

«campus cum arboribus et vitibus super se»

«una petia de terra que est campus cum arboribus» «una petia de terra mea»

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Description of the land

Size

ASLu, S. Agostino, 1212 August 31 ASLu, Fregionaia, 1213 June 21

«unam . . . petiam de «media cultra» terra que est vinea et campus cum ficubus et persicis super se» «unam petiam de «ad iustam perticam terra que est pratum» mensuratoriam cultra una vel si plus est»

ASLu, Spedale «duas / di S. Luca, integras. . . petias de 1212 June 14 terris. . . que sunt campi cum arboribus et pergulis»

Document

Table 2  Continued

«in villa de Paganico in loco ubi dicitur Mordecciana sive Lerice»

«ultra Freddanam in loco et finibus Cerbaiole»

«parum longe a Lucana civitate et prope pontem Formice»

Location

£7.5

«libras centumquinquagintaocto et solidos novem et denarios tres bonorum denariorum Luce expendibilium et hoc ad rationem octuagintaquinque librarum per cultram» £21

Price (£)

£0.3

£1.8

£3.5

As part of the price «sunt et computantur illi solidi centum quos ego Ubertus pro mea parte tibi Glandoni dare debebam de illa summa librarum decem denariorum quos ego Ubertus et Guilelmus germanus meus tibi dare debemus»

 

 

Price Notes (£) per st.

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«duas videlicet petias «media cultra» de terris…. . . prima quarum est campus cum quercis. . . Secunda est similiter campus sine arboribus»

«unam. . . petiam de «cultra una vel si terra que est pratum» plus est»

ASLu, Fregionaia, 1213 November 9 ASLu, S. Giustina, 1214 May 31

«cultre due parum minus»

«unam petiam de terra que est campus»

ASLu, S. Giustina, 1213 June 28

«in villa de Paganico in loco ubi dicitur Mordecciana sive Lerice» First piece: «Villa Saltocchio ubi dicitura Capanna». Second piece: «in eodem loco»

«in loco Casale»

£19

«pretium recepisse libras centum quadragintaquinque. . . ad raccionem de singula cultra libras septuagintaquinque denariorum lucensium» £7.5

£1.5

£0.3

£3.1

 

 

 

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Continued

Description of the land

ASLu, S. Giovanni, 1217 February 9

«media cultra. . . vel si plus est»

Size

«campi cum «Prima est una arboribus et vitibus» cultra et plus. . . Secunda petia est tertia pars unius cultre parum plus vel minus. . . Tertia petia est media quarra et plus» [sum total is 35 st.]»

ASLu, «unam petiam de S. Maria terra. . . que est vinea Forisportam, et olivetum» 1215 March 5

Document

Table 2  Continued

£1.5

£54.5

«in confinibus Lunate», loci of Tebaldino, Granaiolo and Livellaria

We cannot be 100% certain that the price reflects market value, as a part of the money was donated to two widows: «de quibus denariis dedit et solvit tibi domina Meliana, relicta quondam Benectonis de Lischia, pro salute et remedio anime sue. . . solidos quinquaginta et otto et denarios sex» and an equal sum «solvit tibi Accolta relicta quondam Guilielmi»  

Price Notes (£) per st. £0.4

Price (£)

«Ville Orbane in loco £5.8 ubi dicitur in Valle seu a la Piletra»

Location

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ASLu, Spedale «petiam de di S. Luca, terra. . . que est 1220 campus» September 13

ASLu, Spedale «petiam de di S. Luca, terra. . . que est 1219 campus» November 11

ASLu, Spedale «medietas de una di S. Luca, petia de terra que est 1217 May 4 campus cum arboribus et vitibus et casa et medietate unius tini et palmenti» ASLu, «unam petiam terre S. Ponziano, mee que est campus» 1219 October 22

«in loco Pulia extra «per mensuram ad Lucanam civitatem» iustam perticam mensuratoriam mensuratam stariora novem et scale quattuor et medium» «media cultra» «in confinibus Farnete in loco ubi dicitur nel Bucino» £10 and 12 s.

«pretium. . . libras viginti ad rationem quarre de tanta quanta inventa fuerit, de quibus. . . clamo me pagatum et solutum. . . et sic collegit libras tredecim et solidos sedecim» «libras trigintaquattuor bonorum denariorum lucane monete ad rationem librarum quadraginta pro media cultra»

«terra fuit inventa viginti una scala»

«in confinibus Guindolfi, loco ubi dicitur in Casciano»

£50

«inter totam stariora «prope Piccioranum triginta et medium» in loco ubi dicitur Villa nova sive in castangneto»

 

£3.3

 

 

£3

£0.8

 

£1.6

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Continued

 

 

£0.7

£7.6

«nomine certi pretii libras £3.3 ducentas bonorum denariorum. . . ad rationem octuaginta librarum bonorum denariorum lucensium per cultram»

First piece is «supra plebem Sancti Macarii ubi dicitur ad Sancto». Second piece is «in corpore suprascripte plebis, scilicet in confinibus Ponpiani ubi dicitur al Colle» «prope Lucanam civitatem ubi dicitur alle Mura»

First piece «est stariora octo et scala una et media». Second piece «est staiora duo et media scala» [= 10.04 st.]

«nostra portio est cultre due et media et si plus vel minus est»

«petia de terra que est campus cum arboribus et vitibus et pergolis et casa»

ASLu, Spedale di S. Luca, 1221 November 18

ASLu, S. Agostino, 1221 February 5

 

£1.3

£30

«in confinibus Flexi in loco ubi dicitur Colle»

«due cultre»

«duas videlicet suas petias de terris. . . prima quarum est boscus. . . Secunda petia est campus» First piece «est vinea cum oliviis et aliis arboribus». Second piece «est vinea cum olivi et aliis arboribus»

Price Notes (£) per st.

ASLu, Miscellanee, 1220 November 16

Price (£)

Location

Size

Description of the land

Document

Table 2  Continued

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«in Litiana prope Pontetectum» «in loco et finibus Nothani ubi dicitur Campo Donico vel si aliter ibi dicitur»

«unam. . . petiam de «una cultra» terra que est campus cum arboribus»

«una petia de terra que est campus»

ASLu, S. Giovanni, 1224 August 22 ASLu, Miscellanee, 1224 September 26

«in confinibus Vivinarie in loco Silvasalese» «prope Lucanam civitatem in loco ubi dicitur ad Sanctum Vitum»

«mediam videlicet cultram terre»

«ad iustam perticam «in plagis et finibus stariora sex vel Paterni in valle Arni quinque» et est in loco ubi dicitur a le Prata»

«cultre novem et quarta pars unius cultre» [= 222 st.] «unam cultram a parte orientis et strate ad rectam cultram lucanam

«unam petiam de terra que est campus et boscus» «una petia de terra que est campus cum arboribus et vitibus et pergolis et casa terrestri et catro super se» «unam meam terre petiam»

ASLu, Altopascio, 1222 April 27 ASLu, Altopascio Dep. Orsetti Cittadella, 1223 March 22 ASLu, Altopascio, 1224 June 21

£33

£43

£2.8

£1.7

£1.1 or £1.4

£1.3

£36

£7

£0.1

£31

 

Continued

The currency is not specified. We cannot completely rule out that we are dealing with Pisan d., as the land was located in the Arno valley.  

 

 

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«petia terre est cultre duodecim et medium ad iustam perticam mensuratam» «per mensuram quarra una et tantum plus quod colligit solidos trigintasex ad rationem quarre terre libras sedecim et solidos decem» «octo stariora»

«campus et boscus»

ASLu, Spedale «una petia de terra di S. Luca, mea que est campus 1225 cum pergolis» January 9

«unam. . . petiam de terra mea que est campus»

«tres. . . partes unius cultre» [= 18 st.]

«unius nostre petie terre que est vinea cum casa»

ASLu, Spedale di S. Luca, 1224 December 18 ASLu, Altopascio, 1224 December 28

ASLu, Miscellanee, 1224 December 31

Size

Description of the land

Document

Table 2  Continued

£10

£18.03

«in loco et finibus Nothani ubi dicitur Campo Donico vel si aliter ibi dicitur»

«in plano de Moriano»

£39

£20

Price (£)

«in loco ubi dicitur Silvasalese»

«de loco Lama»

Location

£1.3

£2.8

£0.1

£1.1

 

 

 

 

Price Notes (£) per st.

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ASLu, Altopascio, 1225 April 18

ASLu, S. Giustina, 1225 January 11 ASLu, Altopascio Dep. Orsetti Cittadella, 1225 April 10

«loco ubi dicitur Silvasalese»

Continued

«unum quarterium et medium et due scale»

«unam. . . petiam terre»

 

I have calculated the price per st. on the basis of the ratio, as the sum total appears to cover also some extra land – the starioli and the scale. The Latin is not very clear, and from pro onwards the ink changes: it looks like a later addition.

£2 «libris quinquagintaseptem et soldis quactuordecim et denariis septem denariorum lucensium quos dictus donnus Henrigus pro ipso hospitali inde eis pretium dedit pro viginitiquinquem stariolis et duabus scalis terre ad rationem quinquaginta librarum cultra [sic]» «libras opto minus solidos £0.8 quattuor bonorum denariorum lucensium» [£7.8]

«ad iustam perticam mensuratoriam due cultre minus uno stariolo»

«unam. . . petiam de terra que est campus cum arboribus et vitibus et capanna omnique suo hedificio»

«non multum longe a Lucana civitate in vicinia cappelle Sancti Viti»

 

«libras vigintiquattuor et £2.6 solidos decem et denarios sex» [= £24.52]

«stariora novem et «ad Flexo ubi dicitur sexta unius scale» [= in Campo Mattei» 9.16 st.]

«unam petiam de terra»

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«in villa de Tassignano»

Location

First piece: «stariora «in territorio de decem et septem et Flexo ubi dicitur Vingnalliore» scale tres et quarta pars unius scale». Second piece: «scale novem, unde est inter totam summa [sic] quarre tres et dimidia»

«ad iustam perticam «in loco et finibus mensuratoriam due Sancti Viti» cultre»

/

«omnes terras cultas et incultas atque agrestas»

ASLu, Altopascio Dep. Orsetti Cittadella, 1225 October 13

ASLu, «unam meam petiam Altopascio, terre que est campus 1226 March 1 cum arboribus et vitibus et tino et palmento» ASLu, «duas petias de terris S. Giustina, nostris. . . quarum 1226 April 10 prima est campus cum arboribus et vitibus et pergolis et est per mensuram. . .  Secunda petia. . . est campus»

Size

Description of the land

Document

Table 2  Continued

£40.2

£1.9

 

 

 

Price Notes (£) per st.

«libras centum quindecim £2.1 et solidos decem et denarios quinque bonorum denariorum lucane monete ad rationem librarum quinquaginta unam [sic] et solidos [sic] decem denariorum per modium» £100 £2

Price (£)

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ASLu, «unam meam petiam «cultra una et si S. Croce, 1226 de terra que est esset plus unius May 12 campus et pratus» cultre debet remanere mihi qui Folcherado et si non esset cultra una tanto minus debes michi de pretio infrascripto ad rationem unius cultre» ASLu, «campus cum «una quarra vel si S. Ponziano, arboribus et vitibus» plus aut minus est» 1226 December 4 ASLu, «petiam de terra que «media cultra» S. Giovanni, est campus» 1226 December 17 ASLu, Spedale «medietatem pro «petia tota est una di S. Luca, indiviso unius petie cultra parum plus 1227 de terra que est vinea vel minus» March 25 cum olivis» £0.3

£0.4

«in confinibus £5 Capannore in loco ubi dicitur Libellaria» £7 and 10 s. and 4 d. [= £7.71]

£0.8

£5

«in Capannore in loco ubi dicitur in Lappata»

«in confinibus s. cappelle [Villaurbana?] in loco ubi dicitur Caparotho»

£0.7

«in confinibus plebis £19 de Lunata, in loco ubi dicitur in Casalino»

 

 

 

 

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Continued

Price (£)

£15

£28.5

«in villa de Lunata ubi dicitur in Vicinato» «in villa Sancti Cassiani de Vico prope ipsam ecclesiam»

«stariora septem et medium ad iustam perticam mensuratoriam» «stariora tredecim ad iustam perticam mensuratoriam»

£1.25

£20

«in confinibus Sulgromineo ubi dicitur im pratis»

«Sancto Angelo in Campo ubi dicitur Casale»

«in confinibus Lunate £36 prope hospitale de Lunata»

Location

«media quarra vel si plus aut minus»

«unam cultram et mediam minus uno starioro vel si plus est» «tres partes unius cultre»

«campus cum arboribus et vitibus super se»

ASLu, Archivio di Stato, 1227 April 6 ASLu, Spedale di S. Luca, 1227 June 2

«una petia de terra que est campus cum arboribus et vitibus et pergolis» ASLu, Spedale «unam petiam de di S. Luca, terra que est 1227 campus» September 8 ASLu, «unam petiam terre S. Croce, 1228 que est campus cum March 19 arboribus et vitibus et ficubus» ASLu, «unam petiam terre Miscellanee, que est campus cum 1228 arboribus et vitibus March 28 super se»

Size

Description of the land

Document

Table 2  Continued

£2.1

£2

£1.1

£1.1

£1

 

 

 

 

 

Price Notes (£) per st.

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ASLu, Altopascio Dep. Orsetti Cittadella, 1228 July 18 ASDLu, Arcivescovile, 1229 June 1 († T 13) ASLu, S. Nicolao, 1229 June 17

ASLu, Fregionaia, 1228 June 1

«duas cultras terre»

«media quarra»

«campus cum arboribus et vitibus super se»

«unam petiolam terre. . . que est cum duabus capannis . . . et cum putheo et pila»

«quarra una ad iuxtam Lucensem cultram» [then called «perticam»] «unam petiam de «et que est per terra que est campus mensuram cultre cum arboribus et quactuor et vitibus super se» stariorum unum»

«canpus»

£10

£62

£3.3

£1.2

£0.4

«in confinibus Sancte £220 Margarite in loco ubi dicitur Capannale» «in confinibus Toringhi in loco ubi dicitur Ponte Ferrato» «in confinibus Carraie ubi dicitur a Roppiana»

£2.3

£14

«in confinibus Nothani in loco Canpidonichi»

 

 

 

 

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  Conclusion

The European economic growth of the central Middle Ages has sometimes been regarded as an axiom, the unquestioned background of wider sociopolitical transformations. That an overall process of growth was under way is not in question; but in order to understand it, one needs to combine a long-­term perspective with a close look at more circumscribed periods of time, in which economic transformations appear to have been fast-­paced. In this respect, I focused in Chapter 1 on two enduring structures of medieval society and economy in Tuscany: the early medieval manor and the later development of signorial powers; and I then explored the interconnections between the two in Chapters 2 and 3. These elements are crucial, in that they define the starting pattern for the changing dynamics of economy and tenancy relations, which underwent a significant acceleration between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. Indeed, the phase from c. 1180 to c. 1230 saw the relatively sudden emergence of a set of new factors that could propel, and did propel, substantial socioeconomic changes, including in the forms of land management. No single factor alone would suffice to explain this. Let us summarize them. First of all, the state of almost constant warfare that marked the early history of Tuscan communes, and was exacerbated by Barbarossa’s wars (1154–83), entailed that the cities’ governing bodies had to meet seemingly huge expenses for the maintenance of armies (and of their own population through the annona system); they had to pay salaries, too, to mercenary troops and their own citizens; new circuits of walls were built up, encompassing an enlarged urban territory. As a result of this overall increase in public expenditure, the mints of Lucca and Pisa—­whose currencies were employed all across Tuscany—­began to cut the quantity of silver within coins, at the latest from the 1170s, in order to make their payments more sustainable. Debasement is likely to have engendered a crisis of confidence in the value of money, which pushed up the prices of agricultural goods. Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000–­1250. Lorenzo Tabarrini, Oxford University Press. © Lorenzo Tabarrini 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198875154.003.0005

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The Economic Conjuncture of 1180–1230 in a Comparative Perspective

Conclusion  199

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The inflationary trend resulting therefrom was reinforced by the apparently severe famine that took place in 1181–2, which made landed estates and foodstuffs more expensive. In 1183, the peace of Constance put an end to the conflicts between the Italian communes and the Empire. The influence of the latter over Tuscany, however, was far from negligible. In the wake of the policies pursued by Frederick I and Marquis Welf, Henry VI imposed annual tributes on Lucca (1186) and redefined the jurisdictional remit of the Florentine city government (1187). The administrative, judicial and fiscal structure of the communes became increasingly complex; the secondary sector gained economic and political traction, as is shown by the commercial treaties and the slow emergence of the Popolo in Lucca and Florence from the late twelfth century. Moreover, the political crisis that followed Henry VI’s death in 1197 renewed the conflicts between city factions and, with regard to Florence, made it possible for the urban government to further expand into the countryside; this prepared the ground for taxation of the rural communities of the Chianti region, as is testified by the lists of rural dependents written down at Coltibuono, Passignano, and Poggio al Vento in the early 1230s. One may conclude that the total amount of demand (what the economists call aggregate demand) grew remarkably over the decades straddling the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. To this, an overall trend of demographic expansion must have contributed, too, although I have stressed how much caution is necessary in speaking of rising population over the period considered here: in all likelihood it was occurring, but by no means can we assess its scale. This is the matrix of factors that accounts for economic growth—­the context which explains, in turn, the surge in the extraction of agricultural surplus by means of a growing pressure on peasants’ work. The reader may wonder, at this point, whether this framing applies to the countryside of Florence and Lucca alone, or has parallels elsewhere. We need to provide at least a short answer to this, before moving on to the second section of this conclusion—­the choices related to land management. Other regions in Italy and Europe can provide a point of comparison with the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia; let us discuss some of those that have been best studied, paying special attention to the agrarian economy. Rome, to start with, showed a significantly high degree of economic dominance over its surrounding countryside (the Agro romano, extending c. 20–25 km outside the city) from the early Middle Ages, due to the extensive ownership of land on the part of Roman churches. In the early eleventh century signs of economic specialization appeared, in the form of a

200  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

1 Wickham, Medieval Rome, pp. 86–7 and 108–9. 2 Violante, La società, pp. 100–10 on prices; Rapetti, Campagne, pp. 57–9; Chiappa Mauri, Terra, pp. 29–33; Grillo, Milano, pp. 91–3. 3 Menant, Campagnes, pp. 333–4, 363–6, and 385–8.

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belt of orchards and vineyards surrounding the city; but the agrarian economy then seems to have moved on quite slowly and the twelfth century was, in comparison to the previous period (and to Tuscany as well), more stable. It is only from c. 1185 that some change in the relations between tenants and landowners becomes visible; thenceforth, large portions of ecclesiastical lands, called tenimenta or casali, began to be leased out in return for increasingly substantial fixed rents in kind.1 As to Milan, which was, in the twelfth century, the largest city of Latin Europe, it needs stressing that its economic development appears to have stretched back at least to the late tenth century, when a rise in the prices of land and urban houses took place; by the ­beginning of the twelfth century, then, chestnut woods were significantly reduced in size and converted into arable lands. It was only in the years after 1150, however, that systematic irrigation in the countryside—­an unequivocal sign of the need for a more pervasive form of agricultural exploitation—­ began to appear, along with short-­term leases, high rents, land-­clearances and the plantation of new vineyards.2 The contadi of Bergamo, Cremona and Brescia, in eastern Lombardy, were marked by two major moments of transformation throughout the twelfth century: the first occurred over the years 1110–30, and was characterized by the creation of the first coherent irrigation systems; the second dates to the period 1170–1200, when extensive land-­clearances began—­and would be further developed in the thirteenth century. According to François Menant, however, this expansion did not cause any substantial change in the relations between tenants and landowners: share tenures, mostly applied to vineyards, were a Carolingian legacy, and no mezzadria elements can be spotted over the Duecento; corvée-work was marginal in the twelfth century, and was progressively abandoned; short-­term leases were extremely rare; the only real novelty was represented by the demand for fixed rents in grain proportional to the extent of the land (the same occurred with money rents), which became increasingly common between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. Menant even speaks of désengagement to describe the attitude of Lombard landowners towards the management of their estates, and ascribes the intensification in the extraction of the agricultural surplus mostly to independent peasants.3 Further east, the countryside of Padua, which has been

Conclusion  201

4 Rippe, Padoue, pp. 464–72, 489 (where the author mentions burdensome corvée-­work abolished in 1116), and 561–9. 5 Racine, Plaisance II, 549–63. On the Bolognese cf. Palmieri, ‘Lotte agrarie’ and Pini, ‘Forme di conduzione’. The agrarian economy of the Pisano requires further study. So does the Sienese, all the more so as it saw an early development of mezzadria. But it could not easily have been used as a case study here, because Sienese documentation does not begin to be strong until as late as c. 1200. Cf. Cammarosano, ‘Le campagne’; on the political history Redon, Uomini; Pinto and Pirillo, Il contratto; and recently, on the origins of mezzadria, Ascheri and Dani, La mezzadria. 6  For instance, Nicolas Schroeder has argued that manorial forms of land management can be identified among some estates of the abbey of Stavelot-­Malmedy, in the Ardennes region, up to the middle of the twelfth century; from then on, they were progressively transformed. Cf. Schroeder, Les hommes, pp. 267–78 and passim. As for England, it is generally accepted that the period between 1000 and 1180 was marked by an overall shrinkage of demesne farming across the Kingdom, but the final fifth of the twelfth century witnessed a revival of direct management. Cf. among others Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society, ch. 6; Dyer, Lords and

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studied by Gérard Rippe, appears to have had quite a different history from eastern Lombardy. Rippe attributes a pivotal role to urban capital as the propeller of a veritable economic take-­off after the peace of Constance in 1183; sums of money were spent, for instance, on irrigation canals and bridges. Over the same period, commercial crops and agricultural spe­cial­ iza­tion surface from the available evidence, in the form of the plantation of vineyards and olive trees. As to the tenancy agreements that were adopted, labour-­services had almost completely vanished by the end of the twelfth century—­although corvée-work could still be burdensome at the beginning of the same century. Proprietors were used to demanding a share of the harvest in return for the lease of vineyards and olive trees, whereas fixed rents, as in Tuscany, tended to prevail on grain-­fields.4 Finally, Piacenza needs a short mention, in that sharecropping contracts including mezzadria elem­ ents (in particular, the joint provision of seed-­corn on the part of landowners and tenants) started to become increasingly common from the 1240s onwards; they were largely applied to lands including vineyards—­both close to and far from the city—­but there are also many examples of share tenures for grain and flax. Early mezzadria seems to have spread among the vineyards planted across the southern outskirts of Bologna, too, during the thirteenth century—­but the Bolognese case requires further study.5 The Fiorentino and the Lucchesia were participating in a wider process of change involving the agrarian economies of many regions of Italy over the period 1100–1200, although its pacing was different from place to place. During those decades many European regions witnessed substantial transformations, too, which again varied greatly given the contingent historical and ecological factors operating in each of them.6 Two observations must

202  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

Responding to Change: Credit to Agriculturists, Ecology, and Estate Management At the outset it is worth stressing the similarities between the countryside of Florence and that of Lucca during the period 1180–1230; it can be argued that similarities were more important than differences. Both Florentine and Lucchese ecclesiastical owners (and, as far as we can tell, also lay ones) mostly resorted to fixed rents, especially when collecting cereals. In the Fiorentino, the demand for fixed quantities of wheat seems to have arisen from the widespread indebtedness of ecclesiastical institutions, and was the replacement for the performance of labour duties. It can be assumed that, being the staple crops par excellence, cereals were most coveted and heavily sold on the expanding city markets. Early mezzadria and share tenures appear to have been comparatively less employed in both the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia. Moreover, by 1230 agricultural renders seem to have become generally higher than they were before 1180. This could not happen without engendering opposition and disobedience—­if not overt peasant resistance: the Lucchese withheld rents, the conflicts between the canons of S. Martino and the Massarosesi, or the oaths demanded by Bishop Ardingo at S. Casciano in Val di Pesa point in that direction. One factor that contributed to establishing a fairly stable equilibrium between the landowners’ demand and the tenants’ labour was the development of credit markets. Lending out cash and produce to cultivators was an increasingly common practice throughout the central medieval period in both the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia. In the twelfth century, the monastic Peasants, pp. 61–4; Britnell, Britain and Ireland, p. 297; Masschaele, ‘The English economy’, p. 153. Examples of the transformations of old renders into new ones in medieval lordships are in Feller, Calculs.

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be made. First, the conjuncture of the late twelfth and early thirteenth ­centuries appears to have represented for Florence and Lucca a moment of acceleration. Second, change in the countryside took different forms and led to many different outcomes at the local level. It is those forms that we need to focus on in the second section of this conclusion; we have to discuss the similarities and differences in the transformations of land management in the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia, and throw light on their underlying rationale.

Conclusion  203

7 ASDLu, Capitolare, LL 4; cf. Meyer, Felix, pp. 300–2, 343–5, and passim. I have presented the preliminary results of my study on Usacco’s register in a conference paper: ‘Small-­scale credit activities and the integration of urban and rural economy: The register of Usacco of the late Simeone (Lucca, 1230–1242)’. International Conference on Food Economies in Pre-­Modern Europe: Food Markets Development and Integration (Eleventh-­Eighteenth Centuries) (University of Lleida, 17–18 April 2020). 8  Galassi, ‘Tuscans’; Epstein and Galassi, ‘A Debate’; Epstein, ‘Moral hazard’.

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community of S. Lorenzo di Coltibuono granted loans in exchange for land pledges; between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, the colonus of Passignano Zucco built up a career as a local money lender; and credit operations in general surface from the registers of the notary Palmerio (1237–8). As to Lucca, it is worth mentioning here the protocol that the notary Ciabatto kept for one of his clients, Usacco of the late Simeone, which covers the period 1230–42. Usacco’s numerous clients were peasants from the Sei Miglia who borrowed small quantities of produce and cash from him on quite a regular basis.7 One can hardly think that those small loans could be reinvested; it seems more reasonable to propose that they funded consumption, or the part-­payment of a high rent—­the part for which the annual harvest of a holding was not sufficient. Such debt accumulated by defaulting tenants was probably carried over to the following year, thus strengthening the ties of economic dependency between cultivators and their creditors. But credit to agriculturists does not suffice as an explanation alone. The fact that credit was available does not mean that all tenants, in particular the most destitute ones, could easily obtain it. The explanation for the choice of a particular form of land management over another one has to start from here; access to credit is one of the elements of the picture, in that it could orientate the landowners’ preference for fixed rents or share tenures (with or without mezzadria elements). The following discussion of the problem owes much to the debate over the rationale of mezzadria poderale conducted between Francesco Galassi and Stephan Epstein,8 and to some other authors whom I will cite in the footnotes. They bring us into the arena of theoretical modelling, which is necessary as a conclusion of this book, and which is intended to provide the reader with a framework in which to place the dynamics of decision-­making discussed in earlier chapters. Let us assume that the cultivators of the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia were in general regarded as creditworthy. In this case, fixed rents were likely to have been the best option. They gave an incentive to work hard, because tenants could keep for themselves all the income that exceeded the rent.

204  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

9  On the tendency to undersupply labour cf. Reid, ‘Sharecropping’. 10  Cf. Herlihy and Klapisch-­Zuber, Les Toscans, p. 274. 11 That mezzadri were used to hiding part of the agricultural produce was a Leitmotiv of the satira del villano, the literary genre which spread across modern Italy and France after the Black Death (cf. Ribani, ‘Il contadino’). The satira can be considered as an ideological reaction, due to the relatively high bargaining power of the peasantry after 1350; still, it is certainly true that sharecropping and mezzadria did make cheating on the harvest possible. Cf. also Hoffman, ‘Sharecropping’.

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The monitoring of the tenants’ work, and the cost it implied, ceased to be a problem: cheating on the harvest was automatically prevented, as there was no way for tenants to deliver anything less than the agreed rent—­unless by overtly refusing to do so and possibly by fleeing the holding. As an option of last resort, cultivators could take out loans of cash and produce (the type of scenario that Usacco’s register displays) if the harvest was not abundant enough to pay rent and to make a living out of what was left. Incentives to supply more labour and supervision costs have been regarded as two of the shortcomings of share tenures and mezzadria. Since a remarkably high fraction of the harvest went to landowners—­particularly when it was divided into halves—­tenants were pushed to fully exploit their holding only if they had no other source of income than the holding itself.9 Otherwise, they might have sought to hire themselves out to cultivate further plots of land, thus neglecting perhaps their sharecropping/mezzadria tenure (there is evidence that this did happen in the fifteenth-­century poderi of the Fiorentino).10 I have discussed the supervision problem when describing the clauses concerning the monitoring over the tenants’ work in the early mezzadria agreements from Passignano, and also in the share tenures of S. Ponziano. If a fraction of the harvest was to be given as rent, tenants could tell lies on the final agricultural output of their holding, thus delivering less produce than they were supposed to.11 At this point, one might conclude that fixed rents should have always been preferred to share tenures, early mezzadria agreements and mezzadria poderale. But this was not the case—­neither in the case studies of this book, let alone in medieval Tuscany as a whole. In order to deconstruct the apparent superior profitability of fixed rents we need to get back to the issue of credit. Contrary to the assumption employed just now, let us assume that peasants were in general credit-­averse. In fact, this is likely to have often been the case. With few exceptions, the manentes and coloni that we have met throughout this book seldom owned any lands; they hardly had anything to offer as a security for a loan: how could they find people who were willing to lend them money or cash? In view of this, it can be argued that

Conclusion  205

12  Cf. Galassi, ‘Tuscans’, esp. pp. 81–2.

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sharecropping, early mezzadria and mezzadria poderale could be preferred to fixed rents as tenants no longer needed to resort to credit to pay rent, which was fixed as a proportion of the harvest. As a result, in no case was a cultivator placed in the position of being unable to pay the agreed share. But again, access to credit does not suffice as an explanation alone. We now need to include a further element in the picture, that is, the ecology of the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia and therefore the type of crops that were cultivated. I have observed in Chapters 2 and 3 that both share tenures and early mezzadria contracts were mostly applied to lands characterized by the mixed cropping of cereals, and by polyculture in general. This is best demonstrated by the terms employed within these agreements in order to describe the rent: blada (which refers to all types of grains), fructus and logoria (which encompass all the products of the land); and also by the frequent mentions of fig trees, olive trees, and vineyards as part of sharecropping and early mezzadria holdings. Conversely, fixed rents were mostly, albeit not exclusively, employed on wheat-­fields (as indicated by the words granum and frumentum) or else on fields in which different crops were cultivated separately, in specific patterns: this is the so-­called intercropping, which emerges with distinct clarity from Lucchese rent contracts and inventories of renders—­often involving the delivery of fixed quantities of frumentum, milium, and fabae. Mixed cropping and polyculture reflected uncertainty about overall agricultural yields, which could be forestalled only by diversifying the risk and thus by cultivating different crops on the same tenant-­plot. Here is another reason why sharecropping, early mezzadria and mezzadria were preferred to fixed rents by landowners: delivering a fraction of the output meant solving the uncertainty problem, thus warding off the scenario of tenants being unable to pay their renders.12 It is at this point that the differences between the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia have to be fleshed out. Tenants and landowners in the countryside of Florence and Lucca were forced to deal with different ecological constraints. The Florentine contado is suited for the most part to the ­cultivation of tree crops, and cereal yields are, on a general level, relatively low. This explains why Florentine early mezzadria (and, later on, mezzadria) agreements included clauses related to the joint provision of seed-­corn. Thick sowing and the mixed cropping of various types of grains were needed in order to increase the soil productivity; this goal must have been

206  Estate Management around Florence and Lucca

13 Onori, L’abbazia, p. 50.

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particularly urgent over the period 1180–1230, when landowners endeavoured to increase the extraction of the agricultural surplus. In most of the Lucchese countryside, by contrast, soil productivity was high: as a result, the joint provision of seed-­corn was hardly regarded as a necessity, and it is indeed almost completely absent from the documentary set that I have examined; the same marginality applies to mezzadria clauses in general. Consequently, high yields allowed landowners to ‘bet’ on fixed rents, as the risk of failure was much less pronounced. Here lies the reason why Lucchese ecclesiastical landowners do not appear to have ever conceived of sharecropping agreements in terms of a systematic partnership between leaseholders and proprietors. Alberto Maria Onori, who studied the Lucchese abbey of Sesto between the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, defined the share-­tenure agreements sealed there as ‘robbery’ sharecropping. Most Sesto estates were located in the Valdarno, in an area frequently crossed by the armies of Lucca and Pisa. ‘Robbery’ sharecropping was thus aimed at tearing out as much as possible from lands that were potentially fertile, but exposed to the floods of the Arno and ravaged by recurring local wars. Sharecropping was thus a second-­best choice, the form of land management the monks of Sesto adopted in order to deal with uncertainty; and this appears to have been, by and large, the function fulfilled by sharecropping in the Lucchesia.13 The combination of those three elements (a credit-­averse peasantry; the coexistence on the same tenant-­plot of the mixed cropping of cereals with tree crops; and a relatively unproductive environment) helps to explain why landowners could opt out of fixed rents and adopt share tenures in the Lucchesia and early mezzadria in the Fiorentino over the period 1180–1230. The ecological factors, moreover, can also shed some light on the success of mezzadria poderale in the Fiorentino over the late Middle Ages and the early modern era. The formation of the large farming units known as poderi between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries had to suit the agrarian characteristics of the Florentine region and its productive potential. In view of what I said before, it does not appear surprising that the mezzadria poderale saw the generalization of rents consisting in half of the harvest. That way, landowners could strike a balance between two goals they endeavoured to achieve: imposing high rents on tenants while dealing with generally low yields in cereals, and with the unpredictability of the output of tree

Conclusion  207

14  See the books and articles cited in the Introduction, note 11.

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crops—­again, with uncertainty. But this is just a small window opened on the late Middle Ages, not an explanation for the development of mezzadria poderale. Mezzadria poderale belongs to a period that I do not examine in this book, and which would call for a different matrix of causes—­including the political context of late medieval Tuscany and the role played by lay urban investments in the creation of poderi.14 Instead, the rural society of the Fiorentino and the Lucchesia during the central Middle Ages, in its relations with the cities, has been examined here in its own right and illuminated by its own light. The phase between 1180 and 1230 presents the historian with a complex set of responses to a radically changing social, political, and economic situation. If the reader has gained a sense of this complexity, of the contingency of the period, and of its significance, I will be happy.

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Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000-1250 Lorenzo Tabarrini https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198875154.001.0001 Published: 2023

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Subject: European History Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

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Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000-1250 Lorenzo Tabarrini https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198875154.001.0001 Published: 2023

Online ISBN: 9780191987274

Print ISBN: 9780198875154

Search in this book

Index  Published: August 2023

Subject: European History Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

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END MATTER

227Index For the bene t of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. acattum, acatum 9090n.82see also datium Accorso di Simone Bambella, tenant 164–165 Adalbert II, marquis 131131n.21 Adimari, family 63 a cta retenta 74–75128128n.19144–145158160–162169–170182–183202 Agro romano 199–201 Alberti, family 19–2121n.4044–466389 Alberto IV, count 19–20 Albertinello, son of Cillone 85–86 Consiglio, Domenico and Ugieri–’s brothers 85–86 Alberto, abbot 85–8795–9695n.93 Alberto di Cintoia, moneylender  See ‘da Cintoia’ Aldobrandeschi, counts 15–16 Al eri, tenant 8282n.66 Alpi Apuane 119122–124 Alsace 6–7 Altopascio (Lucca) 119139–141149–150 Ambrogio, abbot 68–72 ancillae 7373n.46 Andreolli, B. 25–26 Angelo, priest and monk of Passignano 92–93 Angiorello from the Via Mezzana, tenant 149–150 annona 18–1918n.34198–199 Anselmo II, bishop 11–12166 Arbia, river 55 Ardiccio from S. Bartolomeo in Gello, tenant 149–150 Ardingo, bishop 109–110202 Arezzo 56 Armanno di Portante, notary 161 Arno, river 11–1212n.2020–212835–3636n.2845–4648n.5050n.5255–566366–677077118–119130181– 182205–206 Arrigo of the late Onesto, landowner 152152n.74 Azzo, consul 45–46 Bagno a Ripoli (Florence) 55–56 Barbadoro, B. 20–21 Barbarossa  See Frederick I Barberino di Mugello (Florence) 19–20 Barberino Val d’Elsa (Florence) 61–62 Barile, tenant 171–172 Barthélemy, D. 30–31 Bartolo, abbot 47 Beatrix of Tuscany, marquise 11–12 Belgium 6–7 Bellone di Rustico, tenant 170–171

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albergaria 4145–46146

Benedetto, judge 45–46 bene cium 30–31 Benigno, abbot 91–9492n.87 Benivieni, tenant 47–50 Berengo, M. 9n.18119–121 Bergamo 199–201 Bernardo di Gianni della Filippa, moneylender 72–7476 Bertha ‘of Tuscany’, queen 131–132131n.21135–137 Bertolotto, peasant 45–46 Bianchi, G. 4–5 Bifolco, baker 155–156 bipartite estate, bipartite manor, bipartite model, bipartite organization 6–97n.128n.1722– 295375116134137145–146151181–182 Bisenzio, river 55–56 Bisson, T. 30 blada, blava 100–105107–108165–166171–172177–178205 Bloch, M. 29–30 p. 228

Bologna 19–2020n.3940199–201 Bonaguida, blacksmith 104 Bonamico, tenant 165–166 Bonasera, tenant 173 Boncio, tenant 79–80 Bonifacio di Bernardino, tenant 105–106 Bonifacio, marquis 2828n.14 Bonisiro, landowner 100 Bonomo of the late Baroncio, tenant and moneylender 179–180180n.149 Borgnolino di Borgno, landowner 80 Borgo dei Santi Apostoli, Florentine district 50 Brescia 199–201 breve de feora 24–25136n.36 breve de multis pensionibus 36–37 broad beans 120149–150149n.65158–160162–163169–170169nn.119120170n.121172–173175 Brunetto di Rappolo, tenant 8282n.66 Bullettone 28n.15109–110 Buonaccorso, tenant (Fiorentino) 102 Buonaccorso, tenant (Lucchesia) 179–180179n.148 Buongianni, lay brother of Passignano 92–93 Buratto, tenant see Culto Burati Busdagno (Lucca) 171–174 Cadolingi, counts 35–3663 Callebona (Florence), castle 45 Camaiore (Lucca) 122–124138–139 Campoli (Florence), pieve 77 Campomagio, locality 84 Cantignano (Lucca) 173 Capannori (Lucca) 130–131160 Carignano (Lucca) 173–174 Carpapallia, landowner 99–100

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Bientina, former lake 119

Casciavola (Pisa) 33–3445 Casciavolesi 33–3439–40137–138 Casentino, region 55–56 cash rents 6–724–2633–3464–6572–76838596–97110–113113n.132135–137145–150156–157162– 163163n.102167–168167n.114175182–183199–201 Casini, T. 50–51 Castellina in Chianti (Siena) 61–62 Castelnuovo Berardenga (Siena) 61–62 Celestine III, pope 76–77 Cerri (Lucca) 132 Charlemagne 6–733–34 Charles V, emperor 63 chestnut, chestnut trees, chestnut woods 37n.30137144–146152–153162–163163n.102169–172177n.143199– 201 Chianti League of 61–6262n.17 wine 61–62 Christian I, archbishop 15–1619 Cistercians, congregation 6474–7575n.5184 Cluny, abbey 64 Collavini, S. M. 4–547 collecta 45–46 Colognora di Compito (Lucca) 131 colonatus 42–434547–5265–667086–8795106116 colonus, coloni 37n.3038–4039n.3440n.3942–4342n.4345–5250n.5351n.5665–667385–8795101106– 107110–111114–115114n.135128132144–146151–155157202–205 communal taxation 1620–21183 commutation of renders 85–8788n.7495–96101106109–110 Compagni, D. 54–5554n.1 Comune di Popolo 11–1216–20 contado 20–215456–5761112121–122161205–206 Conrad II, emperor 133 Conrad, marquis 12–1313n.23 Constance (peace of) 16–17198–201 consules, consuls 12–1316–2019n.3545–46153–155157163–164 consules treguani 37n.30151–152161 Conti, E. 7–827–284056–5777–7981–8286–8797–98100–101 Corpus iuris civilis 38–39 Corso, landowner 99–100 Cortese, M. E. 4–5 corvées, corvée-dues, corvée-duties, corvée-work 6–724–2824n.327n.1247–4848n.5065–66687073–7981– 8795–9796n.95101107–113107n.119110n.124116134145–146149–151155158–160164n.106181–183199–202 cost-sharing 97–98165–166170173–174177–178 Cremona 199–201 Culto Burati, estate 102–104102n.108104n.112107–108 p. 229

cultra 129149–150159n.90160165–166169n.120 Cunimundinghi, family 135–137136n.36 Curteveckia, estate 107

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Certaldo (Florence) 19–2020n.38

Curticelle, hospital 65–66 ‘da Cintoia’, family 42n.439090n.80112–113 Dameron, G. 109–110 Dante 88 datium 1616n.2920–2121n.4045–4748n.5090147–148156see also acattum Day, W. 57–58 debasement 6072126–127198–199 decimales 145n.55148–149156–157 demesne, demesne farming 6–724–284966–7067n.3268n.337375–7682–8795–96107–110116134145– 146181–182201n.6 Dietinoro di Bullietto 50–5151n.55 Dinelli, G. 144–145 Diotaiuti di Grigotto 85–87 Olivieri, –‘s brother 85–87 donicatum, donicato, indominicatum, indominicata  See demesne Duby, G. 2–329–3135142–143 early mezzadria 8–1121–226198–99101–103105–108116–117129–130165–166170174–180177n.143183199– 202204–207 Elsa, river 19–2145–4655–5661–6289113–114 Emilia-Romagna, region 7n.12 Empoli (Florence) 19–2020n.38 Endres, R. 25–26 Enrico, abbot 171–172 Enrico di Sigefredo, lord 139n.44142–143 entry costs, entry- ne 71–7286–8795100–101110–111139–141141n.46143–146164–165 Epstein, S. 203 Esch, A. 126–128143–144169–170178–179 estimo 1616n.2920–21124–126125n.13 Faini, E. 2858–608588–899498–101 Farinata degli Uberti 88 Farnito, locality 65–66 Ferrara 118 Fibbialla (Lucca) 138–139139n.44141–142156–162158n.87164–165168–169181–182 Fiesole (Florence) 18–1918n.3355–5680 Figline (Florence), Figlinesi 19–2119n.3634n.2435–3636n.278080n.5991 Filippo, landowner 50–51 Fiore, A. 30 Firidol , family 79–8183–84103111–112 Rodol no from Monte calle 102–103 Talento and Ubaldo, sons of Rodol no 102–103 scal domain, scal land, scal properties, royal domain 31–32437075122–124132–133135–139147166 xed rents in kind 2468–707681–8382n.658795–97101–102104n.111105–110112116–117143–144149– 153158–160162–163165–166169–175183199–207 xed-term rents 152–153155168–170182–183 See also short-term leases Flaiperto, judge 135–137 fodrum 45–46 Fondalliore (Lucca) 170–171170n.123 Francesco of the late Cacciaré, landowner 176–178179n.148

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devastation clauses 171–172

Frederick I, emperor 13–1715nn.252619–2045–46116153–155198–199 Frederick II, emperor 16–17155–156163 fructus 107–108114–115152–153205 frumentum  See wheat full property 66–6867n.3268n.3384–8584n.68107 Gaiole in Chianti (Siena) 61–62 Galassi, F. 203 Garfagnana, region 12n.1934–3636n.28118–119118n.1122–124 gastaldus, gastaldi 84 Gello (Moriano) 149–150 Genovini 176 Gerardino from Aialta, tenant 100103106106n.117107n.119 Geronimo, abbot 92–9395–9695n.93102–106 Gherardino of the late Omicciolo, tenant 125n.13128 Ghibellines 16–1789 Ghisla ‘da Bozzano’ 138–139 Gia erro from Verciano, tenant 37n.30161–162 Gianni di Giannello, colonus and moneylender 49–5249n.5190101 p. 230

Giornale agrario toscano 119–121 Giovanni, abbot 171–172 Giovanni, bishop 166 Giovanni, blacksmith 81 Giovanni di Domenico, tenant 8282n.66 Giovanni Gualberto, monk 6476–7777n.5288 Gonnella, landowner 161–162 Gragno (Lucca) 124 Grand Duchy of Tuscany 119–121 granum  See wheat Gregorio, abbot 76–7777n.5285–8989n.7795–9695n.93 Gregory IX, pope 64163–164 Greve, river 56–5761–627779–8083 Großlibellen 25–27 Gualando of Vorno, lord 138–139141–142 Gualando ‘junior’ of Vorno, lord 141–142150–152 Gualdo (Lucca) 137–139144–145158158n.87 Guarino, abbot 64 Guelfs 89 Guglielmo, bishop 144–148 Guglielmo, count 6363n.19 Guidi, counts 34–3636n.2744–4563 Guido, tenant 177–179 Guido di Lombardo, tenant 179–180180n.149 Guinizo, abbot 173 Henry II, emperor 6363n.19 Henry IV, emperor 12–1313n.2115119122–124138–139 Henry V, emperor 1313n.24133–135139n.44 Henry VI, emperor 15n.2616–1717n.3120–2121n.4089147–148153–155163198–199 Henry VII, emperor 124–126

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Genoa 15–1717n.32176

homo, homines see coloni Honorius III, pope 155–156163–164 Hugh of Arles, king 122–124131–132 Iacopo of the late Teutperto, deacon 166 Ildebrandino II ‘da Montemagno’  See also Montemagno137–138 Ildebrando, bishop 64 Impruneta (Florence) 61–62 incastellamento 31–3432n.2239–40138–139156 secondo – 43–4545n.46 Incisa in Val d’Arno (Florence) 77 indominicatum, indominicatus, indominicata  See demesne Innocent III, pope 92n.8794 inventarium episcopatus 24–25 Investiture Controversy 11–1230–31 John of Bohemia, king 124–126 Jones, P. J. 7–8143–144 Kotel’nikova, L. A. 7–8137159n.90 labour, labour-duties, labour-services see corvées Lacu  See also Sillano102–103 Lamberti, family 8989n.77 Lastra a Signa (Florence) 6366–6766n.3169–70 League of Tuscia 16–1717n.3120–2189 Lefeuvre, P. 111–112 legumes 149–150158–160162–163179 Leo, abbot 170–171 Leo, iudex 135–137141–142 Leo IX, pope 64–65 libellarii 64–6573141–142 libellus, libelli 2424n.24164–6865nn.24–26282966n.3077–7983–84109–113135–1344136nn.35, 38167– 168167nn.113, 114 Liber Censuum 7272n.41 Licetro (Lucca) 137–139147–148158–160158n.87164–165165n.107 Liguria 118–119 logoria 114–115 Lorraine 6–7 Lotario I, count 63 Lotario, notary 50–51 Lothar III, emperor 1313n.2418 Lothar, king 122–124132 Lucardo (Florence), castle 45–46 Lucia, domina 176–177177n.142180 Lunata (Lucca) 160 Luni (La Spezia) 122–124 Macci, family 8989n.77 Malavacca, family 102–106107n.119 p. 231

manens, manentes

38–4338n.3239n.3440n.3941nn.414242n.4343n.4547–45048n.505252n.58128132–

9132n.23136n.36141–142145–147150167–168167n.112171–172204–205see also colonus, coloni Mancone, tenant 81

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indebtedness 727684919999n.101108–112202

Mangona (Florence) 19–2020n.38 mansus, mansi 6–728n.1373–7497–98131–133131n.21135–137 masium 135–137173 Marlia (Lucca) 37n.3052160 Martignone, tenant 83 Martinello from Rovenzano, tenant 8282n.6684 Martino, abbot of Settimo 72–74 Martino, abbot of Vallombrosa 91–9492n.87 Martino, tenant 65–6670 Marx, K. 7–8 Massaciuccoli, lake 119–121 Matilda of Tuscany, marquise 11–1212n.19137–138 Matilda, tenant 177–179 Matraia (Lucca) 177 Matraio (Florence) 458484n.68 Melanese, arcorarius 176–180177n.142179n.148 Menant, F. 199–201 Meyer, A. 174–176 Michele of Vicopelago, tenant 177–178 Milan 199–201 mill, mills 150–152156–157 millet 149n.65149–150150n.69158–160162–163163n.102165–166169nn.119120170n.121172–3175177 mezzadria, mezzadria poderale, full mezzadria 5–116n.118n.179n.1821–2275n.517696– 10199n.101101n.105104–107112–115128128n.20165–166170175–176183199–201201n.5203–207204n.11 See also early mezzadria money rents  See cash rents Montacuto (Florence), castle 44–45 Montecampolesi (now a street in S. Casciano in Val di Pesa) 44–45109–110 Monte oralle (Florence, former Monte calle) 83 Monte Ghilardona 138–139 Monteliscai (Siena) 61–62 Montemagno, family 3943137–138155–156164–165 Monte Pisanino 119 Monte Senario 63 Monti di Chianti, ridge 61–62112–113 Monti d’Oltre Serchio, ridge 119122–124130–131 Montigiano (Lucca) 132135–139158–160158n.87164–165 Moreco, rector of the hospital of S. Ponziano 171–172 Moriano (Lucca) 35–3636n.283943149–150173–174 Morianese 155 Morroello, advocatus 37n.30161–162 Motrone, former port 122–124122n.10 Mugello, region 55–56 Muzzi, O. 100–101 Nenci, M. D. 100–101 nepotes Rainerii, family 111–112 Novoli (former parish in S. Casciano in Val di Pesa) 47110–111 Olivieri di Grigotto, tenant 85–87

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Massa-Carrara 122–124

Olivieri, landowner 100 Olivo, camerarius 81 Ombrone, river 55 Onori, A. M. 166–167205–206 operae see corvées Orsello, tenant 173 Orsello di Masseo, tenant 177–179180n.149 Otto, abbot 92–9395–9695n.93102–103 Otto IV, emperor 45–46 Padua 199–201 Paganello, landowner 177–179179n.148 Palmerio di Uglione, notary 113–115174–175202–203 Panero, F. 40 Panicale (Lucca) 132 Panuccio, tenant 173 Panzano, pieve 93–9493n.90 papal taxation 7272n.41 Parisian basin 6–7 pascioraticum 171–172171n.126 Paterno, castle 1919n.36 pedagium 163–165181–182 Pesa, river 20–2156–577779–80 Pescara 70 Piacenza 199–201 p. 232

Pian Alberti (Florence), castle 77107–108 Piero, tenant 173 Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke 61–62 Pietro ‘Mezzabarba’, bishop 64 pievano 93–94139–141 Pieve a Elici (Lucca) 139–141 pieve, pievi 25–275677139–141144–145 Pinto, G. 57 Pirenne, H. 3–4 Pisa 13–1715nn.25261919n.3533–3560118–119122–126126n.14141–142171–174198–199205–206 Piscille, estate 93–9493n.90 Pistoia 55–56 Plagia (Lucca) 172 Plesner, J. 50–5256 podere, poderi 5–99n.1874–7697–9998n.99104–105104n.111107–108164–165177–179204206–207see also mezzadria poderale podestà 11–1215–1717n.3019–2020n.39109–110148–149161 Podium Bonizi  See Poggio Bonizio Poggibonsi (Siena) 44–4561–62 Poggio al Vento (Badia a Passignano, Florence) 44–4545n.4650–5285–86909699–100104–108198–199 Poggio Bonizio (Florence) 44–4545n.46 polyculture 5–665–667696–97102–108114–117152–153165–166177183205 Pontassieve (Florence) 66–6766n.31 Ponte a Signa (Florence) 66–67

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Paganello da Porcari, podestà 16–17148–149

Prato (Florence) 55–56119 Pratomagno, ridge 34–3555–56 pseudo-Brunetto Latini 5959n.12 Pucus, tenant 149–150 Quiesa (Lucca) 135n.33147–148158158n.87 Radda in Chianti (Siena) 61–62 Ragusa 121–122 Ranieri di Primicerio, landowner 161–162 Ranieri, monk of Passignano 92–93 rents in money  See cash rents Reynolds, S. 30–31 Rhine, river 6–7 Ricciolino di Riccio di Raulino, tenant 101106106n.117 Riccio of the late Volta, tenant 172 Riccomanno, advocatus 176–179177n.142179n.148 Ricovero di Piero, tenant 50–51 Rinaldo di Malapresa (Firidol family) 79–80 Berta, –’s wife 79–80 Rinucciolo, tenant 47 Ripaia (Lucca) 173 Ripoli  See S. Casciano in Val di Pesa109–110 Rippe, G. 199–201 Rodol no, lay brother of Passignano 92–93 Rodolfo, abbot 96104 Rodolfo, podestà 161 Ro ano, castrum 79–80 Ro redo, tenant 24–25 Rognoso, tenant 79–80 Rolandinghi, family 138–139 Rolando, judge 135–137 Rolando da Lucca, jurist 41 Rome 5672119199–201 Roncaglia, Diets 15 Rosignolo, tenant 171–172 Rovenzano, village 79–80828484n.68 Rubaconte Rossi, podestà 109–110 rural commune 18145n.57157–158164–165 Salvestrini, F. 91 Salvetto di Pugnetto, tenant and moneylender 179–180179n.148180n.149 S. Bartolomeo a Buonsollazzo (Florence), abbey 6365–66 S. Benedetto in Polirone (Mantua), abbey 166 S. Biagio (Florence), parish 77 S. Casciano family 33–34 village 33–34 S. Casciano in Val di Pesa (Siena) 61–62109–110113–114202 S. Cassiano di Montescalari (Florence), abbey 28n.15112–113113n.132 S. Cecilia (Florence), church 47

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resedium 47

S. Clemente a Casauria, abbey 7075 S. Donato di Siena, abbey 91 S. Donato (Lucardo, Florence), church 45–46 S. Frediano in Cestello (Florence), abbey 63–6573–75 S. Lorenzo di Coltibuono (Siena), abbey 28n.1542n.4350n.53111–112198–199202–203 p. 233

S. Maria a Monte (Pisa) 118118n.1130181–182 S. Maria di Vallombrosa (Florence), abbey 28n.156476–7791–94 S. Maria in Florence (Badia orentina) 2828n.1534n.2445–46110–112111n.125116 S. Martino alla Palma (Florence), church 64–6570–7675n.51107–108116 S. Michele (Lucca), church 163–164 S. Miniato (Pisa) 16–1745–4648n.5097–98118118n.1 S. Petronilla (Lucca), church and curtis 131131n.21133–139150 S. Pietro di Pozzeveri (Lucca), abbey 139–141152–153153n.75160–161 S. Pietro in Bossolo (Florence), castle 44–45 S. Salvatore di Sesto (Lucca), abbey 135–137166–167205–206 S. Salvi (Florence), abbey 9194 S. Stefano in Botena (Florence), castle 44–45 Savalliana (Lucca) 149–150 Scandicci (Florence) 6370 Schetta, advocatus 151–152 Scolari, family 8989n.77 seed-corn 5–969–7097–98100–105107114–115170177–178183199–201205–206 See also cost-sharing Sei Miglia, region 12–1424–2531–323435–3636n.2850119–126129–131138–139141–144147– 1452149n.66155–156158–162167–1670173–174177181–183202–203 Seine, river 6–7 Semifonte (Barberino Val d’Elsa, Florence) 19–2044–4645n.4689–9094 Seravezza (Lucca) 122–124 Serchio, river 118–119122–124130–132 servi 73 servitium, servitia 65n.2895–96106109–111110n.124114164nn.106, 107see also corvées Settoia (Lucca) 173 sharecropping 5–68–99n.1821–22249799–100105–107112–115113n.132115n.137149–153153n.75155158– 160170–173177n.143183204–206 share tenancies, share tenures  See sharecropping share tenures, share tenancies, sharecropping contracts with mezzadria elements  See early mezzadria short-term leases 68–6975112–115113n.132128n.20173177181199–201 See also  xed-term rents Sicily 3n.5121–122 Siena 6n.1115–1750n.5261–6291111–112 Sieve, river 55–56 signoria 120–2229–54607072–7377–8082–879090n.8295–96108110114–116118129–131133–134137– 139141–148150–158161–162164–165167–169181198 signorial exactions, signorial powers, signorial prerogatives see signoria Silice (Lucca) 160 – S. Bartolomeo in –, abbey 161 Silimanno, landowner 50–51 Sillano (Florence), curia and pieve 7783–84102–103 sistema curtense  See bipartite estate societas Tuscie  See League of Tuscia

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S. Michele di Marturi (Florence), abbey 2845–46

Soldano of the late Gerardo, landowner 176–179 Sorbano del Giudice (Lucca) 177180 Spina of the late Bambacello, landowner 152 Stavelot-Malmedy, abbey 201n.6 Summovico, locality 99–100 Tavarnelle Val di Pesa (Florence) 61–62113–114 tenimentum, tenimenta 2727n.124141nn.40, 4165–6665n.2977–7983–84109–110137137n.40139–141143– 144151152164–165167–168167n.114173181199–201 terre driterite et mezericie 105–106183 terra ecclesiae/monasterii  See full property Tignano, lay brother of Passignano 9092–93 Tignoso of Vorno, lord 156–157 Tignoso ‘junior’ of Vorno, lord 156–157 tithes 25–2764–6570–72102–105122–124124n.11144–149149n.65153–160159n.89164–165181–182 Tolomeo, canon 160–162165–166183 Toubert, P. 3–4 Traino di Giraldo, tenant 99–100106106n.117 transhumance 124 p. 234

Tru etto di Signorello, patron of Passignano 102–104 Turingnana (Lucca) 149–150 Uberti, family 4988–89 Ubertino di Guido Guernieri, moneylender 72–7476 Uberto, abbot 2887–9689n.7795n.93101–103114127 Ubriachi, family 8989n.77 U cio dell’Abbondanza 121–122 Ugo, abbot of Passignano 79–80 Ugo I, abbot of S. Ponziano 172 Ugo II, abbot of S. Ponziano 169–170173 Ugo III, count 63 Ugo, marquis of Tuscia 28166 Ugolino dei Nerli, landowner 64–65 Ugolino, tenant 171–172 Uguccione, canon 128128n.19 Uguccione degli Ubriachi, moneylender 89 urcia 81–82 Usacco of the late Simeone, moneylender 202–204 usaria 114 Vaccoli (Lucca) 148n.64169–174 Valdarno  See Arno, river Valdelsa  See Elsa, river Val di Pesa  See Pesa, river Ventura, tenant 160 Verciano (Lucca) 119161–162 Versilia, region 34–3636n.28119121–124121n.5129–130132134–141143–144148–149155–158164–165 Versilia, river 122–124132 Via Francigena 119146 Via Mezzana (Lucca) 149–150177 Viareggio (Lucca) 121–124

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Tigliano 66–7166nn.313268n.3570n.3875–7699116

Vico l’Abate (church in S. Casciano in Val di Pesa, Florence) 47110–111 Vicopelago (Lucca) 170–171173–174177–178180180n.149 Vignale quondam Burati, estate 103–104104n.112107see also Culto Burati, estate Vignali, estate 107–108 Villani, G. 57 Violante, C. 3–4 Vitale, tenant 160 Vitello, tenant 37n.3045–50 Vivolo, tenant 65–6670 Vivolo Boccacampana, tenant 81 castle 141–142169–170 lords 35–36133139n.44141–144151–153156–158 See also Gualando of Vorno, lord See also Gualando ‘junior’ of Vorno, lord See also Tignoso of Vorno, lord, See also Tignoso ‘junior’ of Vorno, lord wage labour 68129–130180–181183 Waldo III of the Rolandinghi 138–139 See also Rolandinghi, family Welf VI, marquis 15133–135 West, C. 30 wheat 6n.115559–6060n.1568–6707681–8792–9395–9799–102105–108114–117119–122124149n.65149– 151158–160159n.90162–163165–166169–170169nn.119120170n.1211723175177202205 Wickham, C. 18–193034–364377–8080n.59171–172 Willa, countess 28166 wittheld rents see a cta retenta yields (agricultural) 5559–6069–70102–104160205–207 Zucco di Artovicco, colonus and moneylender 42n.4349–5249n.51202–203 Contessa, –’s wife 49

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Vorno (Lucca) 169–174177n.143