Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790 9781400858262, 1400858267

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EMERGENCE OF A BUREAUCRACY

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EMERGENCE OF A BUREAUCRACY The Florentine Patricians

1530-1790 R. BURR LITCHFIELD

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

1986

COPYRIGHT © 1986 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 WILLIAM STREET

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES vu LISTS OF FIGURES AND ILLUSTRATIONS ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS x1 ABBREVIATIONS AND UNITS OF MEASUREMENT Xi

INTRODUCTION 3

PARTI: THE PATRICIANS AS A SOCIAL GROUP FROM THE

REPUBLIC TO THE HAPSBURG-LORRAINE II

1. The Legacy of the Renaissance Republic 13

Medici Court 24

2. Adaptation to the Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century

Hapsburg-Lorraine 52

3. The Eighteenth-Century Libri di Oro of the

PARTII: THE NEW BUREAUCRACY OF THE MEDICI DUKES IN

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 63

4. From Magistrates to Functionaries 65 5. The Expansion of the Central Bureaucracy 84

6. Central and Provincial Offices 110 PART III: THE PATRICIANS IN THE BUREAUCRACY 127

7. Theory and Practice of the Mixed State 129 8. The Relocation of Patricians by Type of Office 141 PART IV: THE PATRIMONIALISM OF PATRICIAN

FUNCTIONARIES 155

9. Training and Appointment 1$7

10. Careers and Salaries 182 PART V: PATRICIAN WEALTH AND DUCAL POLICY IN THE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 201

11. The Changing Fortunes of the Patricians 203 12. The Economic Policy of Patrimonialism 233 Vv

CONTENTS

PART VI: THE REMAKING OF THE BUREAUCRACY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BY THE HAPSBURG-

LORRAINE 263

13. The Regency for Francis Stephen, 1737-65 265

14. The Leopoldine Reforms, 1765-90 283 15. The Exit of the Patricians from Office 313

CONCLUSION 336

APPENDIX A Tables on Offices, Officeholders, and Salaries 339 APPENDIX B Summary Information about Patrician Houses 362

BIBLIOGRAPHY 383

INDEX , 397

v1

TABLES

1.1 Fifteenth-Century Priors 19

I1§00—-1750 35

2.1 Ennobling of Fifteenth-Century Florentine Houses,

1751-1800 58 15$1-1604 74

3.1 Houses Registered in the Florentine Libri di Oro,

4.1 Distribution of Offices in the Florentine Magistracies,

7.1 Characteristics of the Identified Patrician Elite 136

1§$1-1736 160

g.t Permanent Offices Occupied by Lawyers and Notaries,

10.1 Age, Marital Status, and Careers of Patrician Functionaries 184

10.2 Mean Salaries: Status, Training, and Type of Office 196

11.1 Investment in Accomandite, 1604-1736 208 11.2 Development of Patrician Decima Accounts, 1534-1776 218

12.1. Wool and Silk Production in Florence, 1553-1760 241 14.1 Functional Divisions within the Bureaucracy in 1784 289

1551-1784 340

A.I Development of Offices in the Florentine Bureaucracy,

A.2 Distribution of Offices by Social Group, 1551-1784 352

A.3. Mean Provvisioni, Incerti, and Total Salaries, 1551-1784 358

Vil

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FIGURES

Florence, 1500-1800 47

2.1 Index of Population, Baptisms, and New Citizens in

12.1 Grain Prices in Tuscany, 1546-1766 247 ILLUSTRATIONS (following p. 178)

1. G. Zocchi, View of the Uffizi (Houghton Library, Harvard University) 2. G. Vasari, Cosimo I De Medici (Alinari) 3. J. Callot, Ferdinando I De Medici (Soprintendenza Beni Artistici e Storici di Firenze) 4. F. Palma, Pietro Usimbardi (Alinari) 5. Vincenzo Da Filicaia (Soprintendenza Beni Artistici e Storici di Firenze)

6. Marchese Carlo Ginori (Uffizi, Gabinetto di Disegni) 7. Pompeo Neri 8. Pietro Leopoldo (Uffizi, Gabinetto di Disegni) 9g. Central Italy and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the Eighteenth Century

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study received early support from a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies in 1971-72, and then continuing support

in computer time and other matters from Brown University. I owe much to the directors and staff of Florentine libraries, and of the Archivio di Stato, initially Dott. Guido Pampaloni and more recently Dott. Giuseppe Pansini, whose expertise in the history of Tuscan administration was invaluable. During the years of elaboration of this study, I have become indebted to many friends and colleagues who have offered valuable assistance. Professors Giorgio Spini and Sergio Bertelli of the University of Florence, Eric Cochrane of the University of Chicago, Robert Forster of Johns Hopkins University, and David

Herlihy of Harvard encouraged me in early stages of the study. My trips to Florence were made pleasant by the hospitality of Margherita and Rosalia Pepi, who also permitted me to make use of their family archive. My colleagues at Brown were also of assistance. W. F. Church,

L. P. Curtis, F. Fido, B. Lyon, A. Molho, D. Underdown, and G. Wood read parts of the manuscript at different stages of its elaboration and made helpful suggestions. A. Molho, particularly, was helpful through his expertise in Florentine history and his many contacts in Florence. Professor Furio Diaz of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and Professor Giuseppe Ricuperati of the University of Turin also offered assistance and advice. Finally, but not least, my mother, Susan Burr Litchfield, was a source of continual support and encouragement. Providence, Rhode Island DECEMBER 1985

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ABBREVIATIONS ASA_ Archivio di Stato Arezzo

ASF Archivio di Stato Firenze ASP Archivio di Stato Pisa BNF Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze BR Biblioteca Riccardiana, Firenze

UNITS OF MEASUREMENT Until 1751 the Florentine year was reckoned to begin on March 25th. Thus, by modern reckoning, dates in January through March were ascribed to the preceding year. Whenever possible dates have been expressed according to the modern system. Florentine currency stabilized in the first years of the Duchy with two gold moneys of account: the Florin (which was divided into 20 Soldi of 12 Denari), and the Scudo valued at 7 Lire of silver (the Lira was likewise divided into 20 Soldi of 12 Denar). In the mid-sixteenth century the Florin was worth about 7 percent more than the Scudo. Monetary values have been expressed throughout in the two moneys of account, which remained unchanged

through the eighteenth century, although the gold/silver parity of minted currency became increasingly inflated in terms of silver. (On Tuscan currency under the Duchy, see A. Galeotti, Le monete del Granducato.)

In Florentine territory the unit of dry measure (for grain) was the Staio, which was equivalent to approximately 24 liters, or 0.68 bushels. The unit of surface measure (for land) was the Stioro, which was equivalent to approximately 0.06 hectares, or 0.14 acres.

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EMERGENCE OF A BUREAUCRACY

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INTRODUCTION

In the eighteenth century, Florence still looked much as it did during the Renaissance, appearing immobile through the vicissitudes of time. Yet as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries it had undergone an important evolution in government. The end of the Republic in 1530 marked the beginning of a new stage in Florentine history. The Medici dukes preserved the independence of the Florentine state and extended the territory of the Republic to include the state of Siena to the south. They also adapted the institutions of the Republic to the government of a regional Duchy, so that in 1737, when the Medicis were replaced by the dynasty of Hapsburg-Lorraine and Tuscany became attached to the Hapsburg Empire, Florence was the regional capital of the fifth largest Italian state. Foreign travelers visited the public buildings: the Palazzo Vecchio with its imposing tower, the squares, churches, monasteries, ducal palaces, galleries, and gardens. They also visited the palaces of patrician nobles along the narrow streets. Some of these dwellings seemed relics of a long-gone age of opulence. But the involvement of the Florentine patricians in the commerce and industry that had created the city’s medieval wealth had persisted, their landed estates were scattered through the countryside, and despite the transition from city Republic to regional Duchy they had kept control of the local government. Notaries, lawyers, and petitioners, who came in from the lesser towns to do business 1n the law courts and magistracies of the capital, waited for patrician functionaries in anterooms and corridors of the Palazzo Vecchio, Uffizi, and other buildings used as offices for the bureaucracy of the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century dukes. During his visit to Florence in 1728, Montesquieu noticed the extent to which old families dominated offices in the Florentine bureaucracy: “There is hardly a family that does not have some small place that earns 15, 20, 30, or 50 Scudi a month. The most menial jobs in France, even places in the customs house, are exercised [1n Florence] by nobles, and often only by them.” ' Montesquieu, Voyages de Montesquieu, 1, 174. 3

INTRODUCTION

This study focuses on the growth of bureaucracy in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Tuscany, and on the changing role of the Florentine patricians as functionaries of the ducal state. Relatively few studies have been made of the relationship between social groups and institutions in this period of Italian history, which one important recent book about Florence has called “the forgotten centuries.”? Anglo-American historians particularly tend to focus attention either on the Renaissance or on

contemporary Italy after the Risorgimento. In this they follow the judgments of nineteenth-century Italians echoed in Benedetto Croce’s Storia dell’ eta barocca in Italia more than a generation ago, which pictured the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries as a period of weakness, foreign domination, and moral decline.? The fortunes of Italy changed significantly in this period. But the excessive focus on Renaissance or Risorgimento obscures the sequence of developments in time by claiming for the earlier period a tao-early point of arrival, or for the later period too much of a break. The evolution of the form of government in the regional states of Italy, which underlay emergence of the modern state, is an important development of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries that has been insufficiently understood because of this bias. In an important article, Federico Chabod once posed the question,

“Was there a state of the Renaissance?” He answered the question largely affirmatively in consideration of the Visconti-Sforza Duchy of Milan, which by the mid-fifteenth century had developed a staff of officials of a roughly modern type.+ Florence under the Republic had acquired many of the same characteristics by the same date.5 But one should not overemphasize the modernity of the city-states of fifteenth-

century Italy. No one could deny the overwhelming importance of Renaissance statecraft in such areas as law, public finance, administrative practice, and the development of political thought. Later experience built upon the strengths of Renaissance statecraft, but also inher2 Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries. For a discussion of this problem in Italian historiography, see Musi, ed., Stato e pubblica Amministrazione, 121-53. 3 Croce, Storia dell’ eta barocca.

4 Chabod, “Y a-t-il un état de la Renaissance?” 57-74, commenting on Santoro, Gli uffici del dominio Sforzesca. See also Santoro, Gli uffici del comune di Milano.

’ Marzi, La cancelleria della repubblica fiorentina; Rubenstein, Government of Florence; Martines, Lawyers and Statecraft, and most recently, Guidi, II governo della citté-repubblica di Firenze.

4

INTRODUCTION

ited its weaknesses, including the failure to achieve a unified Italian national state. The new developments in the regional states of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries consisted partly of greater centralization of authority through local forms of absolutism, partly of new institutions, and partly of an evolution of more advanced administrative procedures and personnel. They instilled new political habits and made a lasting contribution to the character of modern Italy. Much attention has been given to the nature of absolute monarchy in northern Europe during these centuries, following insights of Weber and his precursors and the works of Mousnier, Hartung, Rosenberg, and others.°® It has been recognized that absolutist states developed not only through the exercise of kingship and theories of sovereignty, but also through the steady growth in number of officials who made up the new royal bureaucracies. Initially recruited to aid in the extention of the

authority of the king, these corps of functionaries developed a life of their own, reflecting the interests of the social groups from which they were appointed, expectations for performance in office, and other habits of administration that strongly affected the nature and aims of politics. It has been perceived that the patrimonial character of early officialdom differed significantly in discipline from the rational-legal organization that appeared in more modern bureaucracies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”? Bureaucratic elites have emerged as key groups, not only in France, where monarchical absolutism reached its fullest development, but also in England, Germany, and Russia.*® However, despite the early guidance of Chabod, less attention has been given to these developments in Italy of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.° What was the character of officialdom in Italian regional states? The ° Mousnier, La venalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XVIII, Mousnier and Hartung, “Quelques problémes,” tv, I-55; Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy. 7 Note the discussion of this matter in Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autoc-

racy, 1-25, and more recently in R. E. Giesey, “State Building in Early Modern France,” I9I-207. ®’ Among more recent studies, for England, see Aylmer, The King’s Servants, for France, Harding, Anatomy ofa Power Elite; for Germany, Vann, The Making of a State; for

Russia, Pinter and Rowney, eds., Russian Officialdom; and in general the works cited in Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States.

9 But note Berengo and Diaz, “Noblesse et administration dans I’Italie de la Renaissance,” 1, 151-63, and particularly the studies cited in Fasano Guarini, ed., Potere e societd. 5

INTRODUCTION

Grand Duchy of Tuscany is offered here as a case example, and there

were some significant differences from developments north of the Alps. In northern Europe, bureaucracy is generally considered to have been an outgrowth of feudal monarchy: royal officials were employed in the task of curbing feudal nobles, administering justice, and levying taxes over an extensive territory, which furthered development of na- ' tional states within still predominantly agrarian economies. Feudalism and absolutism were closely linked, while capitalism and the monied middle class developed dialectically within this underlying structure of land-based relationships. Although royal officials were often bourgeois, ennobled bourgeois, or tamed service nobles, the social effect of absolutism was to stabilize social relationships temporarily within late feudalism.'° In northern Italy, however, regional states and bureaucracies developed directly out of communal institutions of the medieval city, and the ruling elites continued more persistently to be mercantile and capitalist in character.'! Feudal states did not develop on a national scale, a problem that some writers have interpreted to mean that Italy had a false, or imperfect, state-building experience. Perry Anderson writes: “The diversity of towns produced a kind of ‘micro-absolutism’ only—a proliferation of petty princedoms that crystallized the divisions of the country. . . . Unable to produce a national absolutism from

within, Italy was condemned to suffer an alien one from without.” After languishing under dominance of more successful feudal state builders—the French, Spanish, and Austrians—it was left in the nineteenth century to the more “feudal” Savoy dynasty and Piedmont to unify the peninsula. Developments in Tuscany confirm the commercial and urban, rather than feudal and rural, character of Italian regional absolutism, and also show that rather than being a dead-end route from which Italy was finally rescued by Piedmont, the transition from city-state to regional state in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries produced a technically ad0 The Marxist position on this issue is synthesized in Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State. With a quite different intellectual perspective, the recent more Weberian synthesis of R. Bendix also emphasizes the close relationship between Absolutism and Feudalism; see Bendix, Kings and People, 247-49.

1 But in southern Italy, developments were more similar to those of northern Europe; see V. I. Comparato, Uffizi e societa a Napoli. 2 Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, 166-67.

6

INTRODUCTION

vanced bureaucracy that made a legitimate contribution to Italian tradition. In this change the Florentine patricians had an important role, and thus they have been given a central place in this study. It was once thought that Cosimo I De Medici, who effected the institutional transition from Republic to Duchy in the 1530s to 1560s, ended the political dominance of the mercantile dynasties that had ruled the Renaissance Republic, and that the economic fortunes of these families were then reversed by precipitous economic decline."3 In the long run this view has proved difficult to sustain. The ruling class of the Florentine Republic acquired a veneer of noble titles at the ducal Court, and there was clearly a commercial and industrial crisis in the urban economy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries during what has been called the economic “decline of Italy,” which saw a growth in landed patrimonies of the elite. But one should not make a too-hasty connection between “refeudalization” and the development of regional absolutism. Instead, the seventeenth-century crisis produced a defensive stabilization of existing social relationships. The patricians, who became the dominant group in Medicean officialdom, remained a predominantly mercantile elite, and acted through the ducal bureaucracy to defend traditional urban interests of Florentine society through the seventeenth-century crisis. Despite the feudal veneer of the Court, there was no true backward step in class relationships. The ducal bureaucracy continued to reflect the established mercantile and urban bias of Tuscan society. Still, the bureaucracy of the patricians and Medici dukes was not yet that of a modern state. It remained a type of patrimonial admuinistration. A modern bureaucracy emerged more clearly in the eighteenth century when the patricians were pushed out of office by the Hapsburg-Lorraine and replaced largely by middle-class functionaries. In this later transition there was, to be sure, ultimately a debate about the ideal form of the state, but there was no bourgeois revolution of the French type directed against an absolutistic and feudal order. Instead, other middle-class groups in ascent imitated the earlier tactics of the pa-

tricians themselves. They gained power by infiltration behind the 13 Antonio Anzilotti, La costituzione interna dello stato fiorentino, 154. This 1s not, how-

ever, to deny the importance of works of Anzilotti for understanding the institutions of the Medici Duchy. Note particularly his “I] tramonto dello stato cittadino,” 72~105. 7

INTRODUCTION

scenes. Such oblique tactics of assimilation later were of key importance in the Risorgimento, and after 1860 they contributed to habits of political behavior in the Italian unified state, helping to produce the tendency, in Gramsci’s terms, for Italian social revolutions to be in retrospect rivoluzioni mancate. In short, the capitalist development of Renaissance Florence gave the ducal bureaucracy of the sixteenth to eight-

eenth centuries a precocious character, affected the composition of officialdom, and left its mark on the habits of local politics. Late Renaissance state building left a long-term but direct legacy to state builders of the Risorgimento. The exposition of this theme for the long time period of the early six-

teenth to late eighteenth centuries has required a topical ordering of chapters in this book. The method employed borrows techniques of prosopography, and what has sometimes been called “serial history,” in which one attempts to trace developments systematically over a long

period of time. Since the relationship of the Florentine patricians to offices in the ducal bureaucracy has been of primary interest, Part I traces the continuity and coherence of the patricians as a social group from the fifteenth century through the eighteenth. Part II traces the emergence of the new bureaucratic officialdom of the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century dukes, the institutional innovation of this period. Part II traces the infiltration of the patricians into the new offices. Parts IV and V set forth the patrimonial character of officialdom in the areas of training, appointments, careers, and salaries, and the relationship of the private fortunes of the patricians to the economic policy of the ducal regime. Despite a shift of investments from commerce to land, the pa-

tricians and the dukes persisted in a strongly mercantilist policy designed to protect traditional urban interests of the capital. Part VI traces the evolution of Florentine officialdom in the eighteenth century under the new dynasty of the Hapsburg-Lorraine, when the bureaucracy was

rebuilt along more modern lines. Also in the eighteenth century, the Duchy began to be absorbed into a larger political entity, a development not resolved until 1859-60, in favor of Piedmont and a united Italy rather than of Austria and the Hapsburg Empire, as was the initial '4 See Stone, “Prosopography,” and Furet, “Quantitative History.” 8

INTRODUCTION

direction. When this happened, the hegemony of the patricians had already ended; but even after absorption of the Grand Duchy into the Italian monarchy, underlying habits of political behavior from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries that had emerged from the marriage of patrician interests and ducal absolutism remained.

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PART I

THE PATRICIANS ASA SOCIAL GROUP FROM THE REPUBLIC TO THE HAPSBURG-LORRAINE

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I

THE LEGACY OF THE RENAISSANCE REPUBLIC

To see the development and particular character of the Florentine elite through time, one must consider its medieval and Renaissance origins and the changes that affected it under the sixteenth- to eighteenth-cen-

tury dukes. Although never a legally closed body like the nobles of Venice or Genova, and still less a feudal class like the magnates of Sicily

or the Kingdom of Naples, the Florentine patricians were nonetheless similar to urban nobles elsewhere in Italy.' The term “patrician” is what the Florentines ultimately adopted to evoke their own particular character. The feudal nobility of Tuscany had lost most of its importance in the commercial expansion of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. In the eighteenth century some surnames survived from the clans that had controlled the region before emergence of the city, and a few feudal dynasties still had fiefs in the Apennines to the north and west of the city, or in the hills of Pisa and Volterra to the south and east. But the commercial development of Florence gave the patricians their special character. Some popolani among the consuls and priors of the communal government were of feudal origin, but the wealth of others was formed in the city’s cloth industry and merchant ventures. At the end

of the thirteenth century control was secured by merchants of the guilds. The feudal nobles of the countryside and their allies in the city were branded as magnati. They were excluded from office and withdrew to their distant holdings or continued to live in Florence as powerful families prohibited from active participation in politics. Many ' The Florentine patricians were like those of Milan; see Calvi, “Il patriziato Milanese,” 101~47; Arese, “Nobilta e patriziato dello stato di Milano.” For Lucca, see Berengo, Nobili e mercanti a Lucca nel ’500. For Genova and Venice, see Nicora, “La nobilta genovese dal 1528 al 1700,” u, 219~310; J. C. Davis, The Decline of the Venetian Nobility. For con-

trasts with “feudal” nobles of Piedmont and Sicily, see Woolf, Studi sulla nobilta piemontese, and Pontieri, II tramonto del baronaggio siciliano.

13

PARTI

renounced their origins, matriculated into the guilds, and were assimilated into the political elite.? Florence continued its rapid growth in the fourteenth century, and its population was partly replenished after the Black Death through immigration from the smaller towns and the countryside. Rapid but uneven growth created tensions between old and new families 1n the ruling group, and between the merchants and masters of the major guilds and the artisans and workers in the cloth shops and minor trades. As the city confronted the economic crises of the fourteenth century and expanded territorially, its institutions grew in complexity, and access to offices was defined in a more regular manner. The fourteenth-century regulations defining citizenship and eligibility for office had a lasting importance in distinguishing the patrician class as a whole. The electoral procedures continued into the eighteenth century. Citizenship of Florence, which required residence in the city, matriculation into one of the guilds, and inscription into the militia, was only the first step toward selection for the councils and magistracies. The highest offices of the Republic, the Tre Maggiori, were the Signoria (the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia and eight priors) and the councils of the Collegi (the sixteen Gonfalonieri of the militia and twelve Buonomini). The Gonfaloniere

and priors assumed executive authority. In the fourteenth century, these highest offices became more differentiated from the growing number of less important administrative ones and from the Vicariati and Capitanati, judgeships in the towns of the territorial dominion. Officeholders cnanged every few months. After 1328 they were selected at all levels by lot from men passing the scrutinies of citizens inscribed in the guilds in accordance with the procedures of the Tratte.3

After the failure of the Ciompi uprising of minor guildsmen and unorganized workers in 1378, families in the major guilds acquired permanent control of the executive councils. First, two-thirds and then three-quarters of the places in the Signoria and two Collegi were reserved for men passing the scrutinies of the Arti Maggiori, as were a majority of places in such other important magistracies as the Otto di 2 On the elite in the thirteenth century, see Fiumi, “Fioritura e decadenza”; Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 1, chap. 12; u, chap. 7; m1, chap. 14. 3 Guidi, Governo della citta-repubblica di Firenze, 1, §—15; Marzi, La cancelleria della repub-

blica fiorentina, 106-109. On the constitution in the fourteenth century in general, see Brucker, Florentine Politics; Becker, Florence in Transition, 1.

14

LEGACY OF THE RENAISSANCE REPUBLIC

Guardia e Balia, which provided for internal security, and the Dieci di Guerra, which was charged with war and defense.‘

Thus the full exercise of citizenship was unequally distributed among the different groups that made up the Renaissance city’s social hierarchy. At an upper level a few ancient feudal houses and popolani

who had been branded as magnati in the previous century were excluded from active participation in government. At a lower level, men inscribed in the minor trades were accorded only a limited participation. The mass of workers in the unorganized trades and the miserabili who paid no taxes were excluded from offices. The ruling group was recruited among men in the middle and upper strata of wealth from the

major guilds: wool and silk merchants, merchant bankers, and lawyers. The preservation of the Republic required their continual vigilance, both against the feudal lords of the Dominion who might act in concert with neighboring states against the common interest, and against the popolo minuto whose egalitarian tendencies might prove to be equally ruinous to the regime.> Florentine politics in the fifteenth century thus reflected a delicate balance among groups. This equilibrium contributed to the vitality of the Renaissance city, but also left it in peril of political crisis. Newcomers and men from the minor guilds could gain admission to the scrutinies for offices and to the borse for the Maggiori, yet the electoral pro-

cedures favored the more established families.© After 1412 these families further protected their influence by admitting men whose fathers or grandfathers had been selected for the Maggiori for consideration automatically in the scrutinies as benefiziati. Only a limited number of newcomers could be admitted when the lists were renewed. The ascendancy of the Medici after 1434 depended on the support of this more established group. The Medici then influenced the composition of the political elite through accoppiatori who managed the scrutinies, ¢ On the officeholding group at the end of the fourteenth century, see Brucker, Florentine Politics, chap. 8; Molho, “Politics and the Ruling Class,” 442-62; and the full study of this matter by Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus.

5’ Note the discussion in Rubinstein, “Florentine Constitutionalism,” 442-62, and in Bertelli, Il potere oligarchico, 117-68.

° On the restriction of the effective officeholding group at the end of the fourteenth century, see Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus, 276-300. T$

PART I

made up the borse, and arranged the drawings of officeholders.” Despite the regulations that prohibited successive or simultaneous tenure of office by the members of a single casata or consorteria, a relatively small number of names appeared frequently among the priors of the Signo- _ ria. At the time of the reaction against the Medici and creation of the broader-based Consiglio Maggiore of Savonarola in 1494, only some I,500 men, in a total urban population of 50,000 to 60,000, claimed admission to the new council, either because of their own selection for the highest offices or that of their fathers or grandfathers. The restricted size of the officeholding group becomes understandable when one considers that males twenty-five to seventy years of age, the customary age for officeholding, might normally have comprised 15 to 20 percent of the total population. It is estimated that the number of males eligible for offices in Florence at all levels in a given year during the fifteenth century was 2,000 to 2,500, 4 percent of the total population, although

this number may have risen to 3,200 to 4,000, 6 percent, under the more egalitarian practices of the revolutionary regimes of 1494 and 1$27.°

The identity of families in the fifteenth-century officeholding elite can be discovered from prioriste, lists of priors by family or casata, many

of which were compiled at the time of the Republic or after its collapse.? The prioriste, however, do not necessarily show the changing in-

ner groups who actually controlled power, and whose influence depended on personal influence, political circumstance, and other factors. Still, family names have an important place in Florentine history and had a particular significance for the officials of the Tratte who supervised the drawings of priors. This is because the rights of the benefiziati who were to be included in successive scrutinies and the divieti, which excluded members of the same family from simultaneous or successive tenure of certain offices, depended on a conventional definition of the family and kinship group. The household living arrangements of Florentines in the upper strata of wealth do not appear to have differed con7 For the fifteenth-century electoral procedures, see Rubinstein, The Government of Florence, 30-67 et passim. ® Martines, Lawyers and Statecraft, 388-89. On the reforms and number of benefiziati at

the time of the Savonarolian Republic, see Rubinstein, “I primi anni del consiglio maggiore,” 151-94, 321-47. 9 ASF, Inventario Manoscritti, passim.

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LEGACY OF THE RENAISSANCE REPUBLIC

siderably from those of a later age. The patrician household was predominantly nuclear, although it might be augmented with servants or

retainers.'° Immigration to the city had tended to break down the larger households of the countryside, but had not destroyed a sense of kinship among households. Sons continued the traditions of the paternal house or established independent but linked collateral branches. Such lineages might seem to have had little in common other than a single ancestor or a common surname, yet cousins preserved a sense of identity with the larger group. For the purposes of the scrutinies and drawings for offices, kinsmen were considered to be common members of a casata or consorteria, a group of common paternal descent. The officials of the Tratte determined membership in a casata by three or four degrees of male consanguinity: great-grandfather, grandfather, father, and sons.'! Being a member of this line could confer admission of the benefizio to the scrutinies, while more distant relatives might be assumed to belong to different casate and thus be designated as distinct by an adjunct to their surnames or by a precise indication of the gonfalone of the city in which they were inscribed. Like the Roman gens, a casata might include cousins, and except for families with very many branches, it might approximate an entire group of common genealogical descent. Casate of older establishment tended to be larger than more recently established ones, although entirely new casate, with new surnames, might break off from older ones and be declared separate and distinct.'* Careful distinctions were made by the officials of the '© Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 251-58 et passim. Yet it would appear that the households of wealthier Florentines, at least at the time of the 1427 Catasto, were larger than those of the less wealthy and were more likely to include both kin and servants; see Klapisch, “Household and Family in Tuscany,” 272-81. More diffuse kinship relationships among households than are apparent from internal household organization linked together members of casate. On this, see Kent, Household and Lineage, passim. t See Rubinstein, “I primi anni del consiglio maggiore,” 178-93, for the problems that arose when determining the membership of the Consiglio Maggiore of 1494. The legislation most frequently cited in later disputes regarding membership in casate was the law of 1 February 1497; see ASF, Tratte, F 1167, 391ff. Thus in ASF, Tratte, F 1101, “Registro legale ossie repertorio di massime relative alle tratte ed a tutti gli uffizi,” 8, “1l Benefizio de seduti e veduti a uno de tre maggiori si riconosca da Padre, Auolo o Bisauolo.” 12 Among old casate from which new casate broke off were the Tornaquinci, declared magnati in 1293. The house of the Popoleschi was declared distinct from the Tornaquinci in 1364, the Giachinotti in 1380, the Mirabottini in 1386, and the Tornabuoni in 1393; see

17

PART I

Tratte among casate with similar surnames. A family connection was valuable and the use of surnames was defended with care. Legislation prohibiting fraudulent claims of family affiliation later became a source of litigation, as established houses attempted to prevent newcomers to the city or distant poor kinsmen from entering the scrutinies through the use of their names." The continuity of casate is clear from the prioriste, which also make it possible to estimate the size and composition of the fifteenth-century officeholding group. The surnames of nearly a thousand casate appear among men who were selected as priors during the fifteenth century. The eight priors, forty-eight in a year, were selected every two months, and at each selection included six men from the major and two from the minor guilds. The most complete list of Republican priors is the priorista compiled from different sources by Abate Lorenzo Mariani in the early eighteenth century." Selection was made from Mariani’s list of the 426 casate appearing as priors four times or more between 1400 and 1494. This group has been taken as representative of the fifteenth-century elite.* Pampaloni, “I Tornaquinci, poi Tornabuoni,” 331~62. Of these, the Popoleschi, extinct in 1778, survived into the eighteenth century, as did the original house of Tornaquinci whose fortunes revived at the Medici Court in the seventeenth century; see ASF, Deputazione sopra la nobilta Toscana, F 10, ins. 18; F 11, ins. II. 3 The law of 1 February 1497, cited in note 11, directed against “tutti quelli cittadini i quali furono imborsati nella borsa del Consiglio Maggiore di gennaio o febbraio 1494 . . .enon havevano il benefizio de seduti a tre maggiori nella loro consorteria o famiglia.” It was cited in a case of the Calderini in 1561 against a provincial family falsely claiming to be Calderini in 1561; see ASF, Consulta, F 22, 261f. For similar cases of the Cambi in 1§82, see ibid., 285f., Donati in 1595; Consulta, F 23, 13f., and Bruni in 1604, ibid., 24f. 144 ASF, Manoscritti, FF 248-53.

's Distinctions of casate are those of Mariani. His grouping of priors is not a grouping of persons with the same surnames, but of persons with distinct lineages. Thus, for instance, there were three distinct casate of Ridolfi, the “Ridolfi del Ponte” (Mariani, 164), first priors in 1287 and extinct in 1758, the “Ridolfi di Borgo” (Mariani, 208) first priors in 1290 and extinct in 1654; and the “Ridolfi di Piazza” (Mariani, 535), first priors in 1321,

the line that continued through the eighteenth century and still exists. The casate derived from Mariani are more numerous than those contained in a list of 325 casate from the scrutiny for the tre maggiori of 1433 published by D. Kent, “The Florentine Reggimento,” 575-638, although most of the same names appear in both, and the characteristics of the group in 1433 are very similar to the one used here. Partly because of the varying number of lines of casate there was wide range in the number of priors per house; the 25 percent

18 ,

LEGACY OF THE RENAISSANCE REPUBLIC TABLE 1.1 FIFTEENTH-CENTURY PRIORS Hundred

Priors Four Wealthiest

Date Times or More Highest 8% Households

Before 1300 $4(38) 21 (16)70 (27)

1300-49(22) 93(25) §0 (28) 15

1350-99 (36) 153 (29) 58 (12) (22) 1400-49 96(17) 33(9) 5 (23)

1450-94 14 (2) 5I . (3) (3) TOTAL (N) 426 200 $4

TOTAL (%) (100) (47) (13) NoTEs: Distribution by date of entry into the priorate of Casate that were priors four times or more between 1400 and 1494; with households in the

highest 8 percent of wealth in the Catasto of 1427; and with households among the 100 wealthiest in 1427. Numbers in parentheses are percentages.

These names indicate that the families who ruled fifteenth-century Florence varied considerably in length of establishment in the priorate and, when their names are compared with the tax assessments from the 1427 Catasto, in wealth; but old habilitation for office and a degree of wealth were both important for success (Table 1.1). There were some exceptions, however. One notes the absence from the priorate of feudal nobles like the Barbolani di Montauto, Bourbon del Monte, Gherardesca, Ubertini, or Malaspina, who never entered the councils of the Republic, as well as of such older families like the Broccardi, Gherardini, Franzesi, or Ubaldini, whose fiefs had been absorbed by the Republic, although the families were still excluded from the scrutinies as magnati. Some older popolani such as the Cerchi, Mozzi, and Tornaquinci, who had been barred from offices for various reasons, are also missing.'© The electoral procedures of the Republic discriminated of houses with twelve priors or more accounted for more than half of the offices occupied by the whole group during the century. ‘6 The Cerchi (Mariani, 564) first appeared as priors three times in the thirteenth cen-

tury and once thereafter, in 1480; the Mozzi (Mariani, 139) appeared five times in the

19

PARTI

among houses, but old establishment was still important. Of the 426 casate appearing four times or more during the fifteenth century, 316 (three-fourths) had first appeared as priors before 1400; 163 (more than a third) before 1350; and 70 before 1300. These families entered the ruling group at the time of the city’s early expansion, before its population

growth was checked in the mid-fourteenth century. They included such names as Acciaiuoli, De Ricci, Guicciardini, Della Stufa, and Gi-

nori, all of whom had appeared as priors before 1350. To be sure, a large number of houses had first appeared in office at the end of the © fourteenth century. But by the mid-fifteenth century, newcomers such as the Corsi, Niccolini, Nasi, Morelli, and Serristori were beginning to be thought of as older houses and no longer the gente nuova they had been three generations earlier. Many fewer newcomers had made their first appearance among the priors after 1400—49 between 1400 and 1433, and 56 between 1434 and 1494. Three to four generations of habilitation for the Maggiori was typical of the political group.

Old establishment in the city was one characteristic of the elite; wealth was another. The great survey of wealth of fifteenth-century Florentines was the Catasto of 1427, from which assessments were renewed periodically until 1480. This has been prepared for reference and analysis by D. Herlihy and others.” Using their transcription, it is possible to check the names of casate appearing more frequently as priors against the households with the greatest assessed wealth in 1427 and 1428. The distribution of wealth in fifteenth-century Florence had the shape of a long reclining “L”: a very small number of households with considerable or comfortable fortunes, and a very large number with very small or no means. According to this ranking, out of the 8,300 or

more households that were taxed, 686 had assessments among the fourteenth century, beginning in 1334, and twice at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but never in the fifteenth century; and the original Tornaquinci appeared four times in the thirteenth century (Mariani, 119). Other families of magnati of which secondary, but not primary, branches appeared occasionally as priors include the Bardi, counts of Vernio (Mariani, 1, 4) and Ricasoli—not the Ricasoli Baroni, but a related though distinct house (Mariani, 1440). '7 1 am grateful to Professor David Herlihy for providing me with an alphabetical printout of households listed with family names in the 1427 Catasto, and for other preliminary information concerning his ranking of households by wealth on which the following observations are based. For further discussion, see Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans et leurs familles, 241-60.

20

LEGACY OF THE RENAISSANCE REPUBLIC

highest eight percent with 3,200 Florins or more, while the median wealth of all taxed households was only 325 Florins. The hundred households (one percent) with the greatest wealth each had assets of 13,000 Florins or more. It is not possible to locate all of the casate appearing frequently as priors in the Catasto returns of 1427-28, since some families were probably absent from the city during those years or did not yet appear in the tax books with the surnames they would later adopt. Some linkages are tentative because of the difficulty of distinguishing precisely among casate with similar surnames. Of the 340 casate that can be located, 204 (more than half) were in the wealthiest 8 percent in 1427, and $4 (seventy-five households) were in the wealthiest one percent. Wealth was well represented in the highest offices. Although households belonging to casate that appeared frequently in the priorate amounted to only about 25 percent of the households assessed

in the Catasto, they were more than twice as likely to be among the wealthy and nearly four times as likely to be among the very wealthy than assessed households with no kin in the officeholding group. Among the very rich were houses with surnames of continuing im- © portance in Florentine history. Six of the one hundred wealthiest families were in the quarter of Santa Maria Novella: two branches of Ardinghelli, with a total of ten households in the Catasto and four priors during the century; one Compagni (six households, twelve priors); one Gianfighiazzi (fourteen households, eight priors); one Della Luna (three households, five priors); one Strozzi (forty-nine households, twentyseven priors); and one Tornaquinci (one household, eight priors). No fewer than fifty-four households of Strozzi were listed separately in the Catasto, with the forty-nine households in Santa Maria Novella ranging in wealth from the 162,906 Florins of Palla di Nofri Strozzi, the richest man in the quarter and in the entire city, to the 71 Florins of Mea di Nanni Strozzi, a widow living alone with two children. Fifteen of the wealthiest households were in the San Giovanni quarter. These in-

cluded one Albizzi with thirty-four households and twenty-nine priors; one Alessandri (three households, fourteen priors); three Medici

(twenty-nine households, sixteen priors); three Pazzi (eight households, eight priors); one De Ricci (five households, five priors); one Rinieri (three households, four priors); and Valori (three households, five

priors). In the Santa Croce quarter were the Alberti (sixteen households, eleven priors); Giugni (four households, six priors); Sacchetti 21

PARTI

(five households, nineteen priors); and Zati (five households, twelve priors). The concentration of wealth was greatest in the San Giovanni and Santa Croce quarters, but also in the Santo Spirito quarter south of the Arno, where streets such as Borgo Santo Spirito, Borgo S. Jacopo, Via Maggio, and Via Guicciardini were crowded with patrician palaces. Here, the wealthy members of the elite included the Bini (three households, eight priors); Bonsi (two households, fifteen priors); Manetti (five households, eight priors); Ridolfi (seventeen households, twenty-five priors); Serragli (fourteen households, thirteen priors); and Soderini (five households, thirteen priors). These houses set the tone of Florentine society in the last period of the Republic. Secure in their political influence, they had begun to depend for their status less on a large following of kinsmen and supporters than on outward signs of display, and their opulence was increasing.

The more severe thirteenth- and fourteenth-century palaces in which several related households had lived together were being redecorated or

rebuilt in the new classical style to serve the needs of a single family rather than of a larger group."® The palace built in the 1420s by the architect Bicci di Lorenzo in Via De Bardi for Niccolo’ Da Uzzano, a prominent member of the ruling group during the early years of the century, was one of these new constructions. Other palaces followed: — by Michelozzi for Cosimo De Medici (1425), by Rossellino for the Rucellai (1446-51); and by other architects for Filippo Strozzi (from 1489). These buildings were an indication of distinct social standing and were a preview of further building by patricians in the following centuries:

the palaces designed by Ammannati and Buontalenti in the sixteenth century, and those in the seventeenth century by the Silvani and by the Roman architect Fontana. 9 The fifteenth-century palaces were usually built for one household and its servants and retainers. When brothers married they were likely to arrange separate establishments. Marriages were contracted with the diplomatic care of political alliances, and dowries befitted rank and re"8 Note the discussion in Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 251-75 et passim, and also his “The Florentine Palace,” 977—1012.

19 On the Strozzi palace and patrician building practices in the fifteenth century, see Goldthwaite, “The Building of the Strozzi Palace,” 99-194. On the sixteenth century, see Spini, “Architettura e politica,” 792-845.

22

LEGACY OF THE RENAISSANCE REPUBLIC

flected family standing.*° Furniture, plate, and trappings were commissioned and displayed, and entertainment was offered. Family standing was further flaunted in the city’s churches and monasteries, where the patricians served as Operai and had their burial places. Their charity

to churches beyond the city walls gave them patronage in appointments to rural benefices. The patricians were at the center of Florentine economic life and controlled huge financial resources. Their merchant companies and wool and silk shops employed scores of artisans and ad-

vanced aspiring clerks and managers into a business world that extended from Antwerp to Rome and beyond, and their commercial profits filled the coffers of the Republican treasury.?! Under guidance of the

Medici, these families secured the stability of the fifteenth-century government. They forecast the drawings of officeholders and placed relatives and clients into lesser offices of the chanceries of the magistracies, into offices as notai who accompanied Florentine justices to the subject towns of the Dominion, or as secretaries to patrician ambassadors abroad. They provided patronage for humanists and scholars, and their conversations could turn from business and politics to ancient literature and history.” Beyond the city walls, the clusters of farms that their prudent reinvestment of profits had gradually enlarged extended the patricians’ interests well into the surrounding countryside. ?3 The extent to which the elite was resented by humbler Florentines, who might have preferred a broader-based and more popular govern-

ment, is sometimes revealed in the debates of the fifteenth-century councils. Resentment culminated in a revolt against the Medici and against oligarchic rule in 1494.74 The Savonarolian Republic developed as a reaction against the patrician Ottimati, a reaction that reemerged

in 1527. But the patricians’ deep roots in the city sustained them through such temporary reversals. 0 On patrician marriages, see Klapisch, “Parenti, amici e vicini,” 953-82; Cohn, The Laboring Classes, 43-63.

21 On the economy of Florence in the fifteenth century, see Fiumi, “Fioritura e decadenza”; de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank. 22 Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 263-303 et passim.

23 Note the discussions in Jones, “Florentine Families and Florentine Diaries,” 183205; Fiumi, “Fioritura e decadenza”; and Goldthwaite, Private Wealth. *4 Rubinstein, Government of Florence, 136-73; idem, “I primi anni del consiglio maggiore.”

23

2

ADAPTATION TO THE SIXTEENTH=- AND SEVENTEENTHCENTURY MEDICI COURT

Some fifteenth-century houses disappeared from Florence in the crisis that marked the end of the Republic. The fortunes of others were reversed in the establishment of the Duchy, and many died out or disappeared from the city. Also, newcomers rose to prominence at the ducal Court in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and feudal nobles and houses branded as magnati, which the Republic had kept at a distance, returned to influence. Yet many houses of the fifteenth-century elite endured through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and trans-

formed themselves into nobles of the Medici Court. Their survival owed much to the politics of the Medici during the wars that began with the French invasion of Italy in 1494 and ended with the collapse of

the Florentine Republic in 1530. Successively exiled, recalled, and again exiled, the Medici were able to preserve their influence partly through the patronage of two Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII.! Patrician Ottimati in the Medici faction identified Florentine liberties with the Medici ascendancy and promoted a new arrangement of the constitution. The outcome was the establishment of Alessandro De Medici as ruler in 1530 and the new constitutional settlement of 1532, which changed the Republic into a hereditary Duchy. The assembly that changed the constitution was filled with families with office before 1494.7 In a difficult political and diplomatic situation, this attempted to create a mixed constitution that would complete the fifteenth-century trend of restricting political influence to a select

, 24

' On the crisis of the Republic, see Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic. On relationships between Florence and Rome, see Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici. * Names of the riformatori and members of the Balia are in Cantini, Legislazione To-

scana, 1, §—17.

ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT

group. A new executive body, the Magistrato Supremo, replaced the priors and Gonfaloniere di Guustizia of the Signoria, and two councils—the 48 or Senate and the Council of 200-—replaced the more egalitarian Consiglio Maggiore of 1494 that had been revived in 1527. The

duke was to share power with the Magistrato Supremo. The initial Senate was made up of the select group of riformatori who wrote the constitution, while the remainder of the Balia became the Council of 200. The members of both councils held office for life. Their successors were appointed by the dukes, the 200 from among citizens made eligible through the scrutinies for the magistracies, and the Senate in turn from the 200.4 The reform also changed the method of selecting citizens for offices

in the magistracies. This, at first appearance, might seem to have enlarged the officeholding group, since in 1532 the last vestiges of guild membership disappeared from the regulations of the Tratta, and newcomers admitted to the scrutinies since 1494 retained their rights.’ Yet access to offices under the Duchy was as carefully regulated as it had been under the Republic. The benefiziati for the Maggiori of the Republic became benefiziati for the magistracies of the Duchy, and important offices in the magistracies were reserved for members of the Senate and Council of 200. The houses of 90 percent of the 261 men who were

made senators between 1532 and 1604 were among the group frequently priors in the fifteenth century, as were $7 percent of the houses of the 1,204 men appointed to the Council of 200.° The sixteenth-century dukes respected the new constitutional settlement to the extent that it restricted access to office to a limited group. Relatively few newcomers were made eligible for offices in the 1540s and 1550s. Yet as the Medici established their authority, the political in3 On the political circumstances of the establishment of the principate, see von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato, 179-279.

4 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1, 5-17. The constitution envisioned in 1532 is described in Anzilotti, Costituzione interna, 25-40.

’ On the change in the guild requirements, see Doren, Le Arti Fiorentine, u, 294-95; Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1, 5-17.

6 For the names of senators in the sixteenth century, see Mecatti, Storia genealogica, 125-34. For members of the Council of 200 before 1604, see ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 53-86, “Consiglio de Dugento. . . et le casate della citta di Firenze col numero notato da banda di quante persone hanno havuto detto consighio. . . .”

25

PART I

fluence of the patricians inevitably decreased. Before 1494 the Medici had accepted a relative parity with other Florentine houses, but in the sixteenth century the situation truly changed. The new reality began to emerge in the 1540s and 1550s under Cosimo I De Medici, who was made duke by the Senate in 1537 after the murder of the first duke, Alessandro.’ The prospect of continued Spanish occupation after the defeat in 1530 helped to resign the city to more authoritarian rule. It was not until the conclusion of the War of Siena and Philip II’s investiture of Cosimo with Siena in 1557 that the independence of the new regime seemed secure. To secure his control, the duke depended on men in the Medici faction who were loyal to him, and on the commanders of troops in the Bande who had served him at the moment of his accession and later during the Sienese War. At Montemurlo in 1537 the faction of fuorusciti who opposed the new settlement was defeated. Yet the threat of conspiracy still seemed sufficiently great ten years later for the enactment of a law against rebels, the Legge Polverina of 1547, which imposed harsh penalties for crimes of lesa maestd against the ducal house. Condemnations of rebels continued in the following decades. The last plot against the Medici, staged by Roberto Pucci and his followers, was directed against Cosimo and his son Francesco in 1572.8 Florence began to have two governments, one composed of the intimates and agents of

the duke, and the other composed of the councils and magistracies sanctioned by the Reform of 1532. During his first years, Cosimo lived in the Palazzo Medici, where the first duke had lived before him. He

then transferred his residence to the Palazzo della Signoria, the old rooms of the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia and priors. In 1549 he acquired the palace of the Pitti family south of the Arno. It was enlarged and later connected by an enclosed gallery across the Arno to the new structure of the Uffizi, which was begun in 1560 to house the new bureaucracy, and to the Palazzo della Signoria, which now assumed the name Palazzo Vecchio. The Palazzo Pitti became the center of the Medici Court, and lists of 7 On the politics of the first years of Cosimo, see Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato, 280-305; Spini, Cosimo De Medici.

’ Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1, $4-75. Note the lists of “Cittadini admoniti, banditi, confinati e ribelli,” in ASF, Tratte, FF 1026, 1027. Most recently on the Pucci conspiracy, see Berner, “Florentine Society,” 203-46.

26

ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT

the duke’s salariati begin to include the names of some of the Court

functionaries. In 1543 men paid by Cosimo were commanders of troops in the Bande, and served as functionaries in the permanent staff of the magistracies and as diplomatic agents abroad. They were certainly only a small part of the Court retinue, including three secretaries,

Pierfrancesco Ricci, Cristofano Pagni, and Niccol6 Campana, and Luigi Ridolfi “Gentiluomo di Sua Eccelenza,” and Capitano Lione Da Carpi “Cameriere.”? The list for 1550 included ten secretaries; twelve

Coppieri, Scalchi, and Camerieri of the chamber and table; and twenty-five others, including Marzio Marzi, the bishop of Assisi; a physician; Gentlemen of the Stables; eleven Damigelli of the duchess; and two artists, Benvenuto Cellini and Agnolo di Cosimo (Bronzino).

A large number of lesser men and servants brought the size of the duke’s household to about 280.'° The Court preserved essentially this staff during the remaining years of Cosimo, but then grew considerably in size under his two successors, Francesco I in 1574 and Ferdinando I in 1587. It became still larger at the beginning of the seven-

teenth century under Cosimo II, who succeeded in 1609, and Ferdinando II in 1621. In 1588, at the beginning of the reign of Ferdinando I, there were thirteen secretaries; eighteen Camerieri, Scalchi, Coppieri, and Gentiluomini; and sixty-four others who were important enough to be provided with horses by the duke. If one includes artists, musicians, lackeys, servants, gardeners, cooks in two kitchens, grooms, and beaters who followed the hunt, the household of Ferdinando I numbered some four hundred." Places of honor at the Medici Court assumed great importance, and at first the Gentiluomini, Camerieri, Scalchi, and Scudieri were chiefly commanders of troops in the Bande, feudal nobles from the periphery of the Florentine Dominion, and foreigners. The establishment of the new regime marked a definite change of tone. The Court imposed a military and feudal facade upon the city. Cosimo’s associates included men such as Ridolfo Baglioni and Sforza Almeni, exiles from Perugia after its conquest by Pope Paul II in 1540; Luigi Dovara, a noble of Cremona; and Antonio da Aldana, Fabio Mandragone, and Antonio 9 ASF, Manoscritti, F 321, “Cariche d’onore concesse da S. Ser/ GG. Duchi, Tomo

secondo che contiene gli arruolati della corte,” 17f. , '° Tbid., 43f.; D’Addario, “Burocrazia,” 379, n.15. '' ASF, Depositeria, F 389, “Libro di provvisionati, 1588-1614.”

27

PARTI

Ramirez da Montalvo, Spanish noblemen uprooted in the Italian wars who found a livelihood in the service of the rising Medici.” The Court was clearly of importance in the control of the Florentine Dominion. The Republic had never entirely reduced to submission the more distant towns of its region, which at the moment of Cosimo’s accession were embroiled in the turmoil that had developed since 1494.

In addition, Florentine territory was bounded by feudal enclaves, which were troublesome to security and order, and after the War of Siena the duke was obliged to control the partly independent lords in the State of Siena. An accomplishment of the dukes was the formation of more regular control over this outlying region, but in the first period of the Duchy this relationship was exercised more in a military and personal manner than in an institutional and administrative one. Cosimo’s policy required contingents of troops, personal visitations, and the ability to bind feudal nobles and the prominent families of towns in the Distretto to the Court in Florence through bonds of obligation, honor, and service. The War of Siena had barely ended when the duke granted citizenship and the right to enter scrutinies for Florentine offices to fifty-one families in thirteen different towns of the Dominion." Feudal nobles from the periphery of the state appeared regularly on the Court rolls: the Malaspina, lords in Lunigiana north of Pisa; the Bourbon Del Monte, Marchesi of Monte Santa Maria along the eastern border with the Papal States; the Bardi, since 1332 the counts of Vernio in the Tuscan Romagna to the northeast; and the Ricasoli, once magnati and lords of Broglio, whose ancient barony at Trappola and Rocca Guicciarda, near the border with Siena, which had been confiscated by the Republic, was restored in 1564. Cosimo also granted fiefs to men among commanders of his troops: to the Musefili at Sassetta in the Maremma of Pisa in 1543; to the Vitelli at Cetona near the eastern boundary of Siena, and to the Ascani at Rocca Albegna in the Maremma." At the Court the remaining feudal nobles of the Dominion, which the Repub2 On members of the Court, see Astur, I Baglioni, 393-405; Pincenardi, “Luigi Dovara,” 49-129; Winspeare, Isabella Orsini. 3 Their descendants continued to be admitted to the Florentine scrutinies into the eighteenth century; see Anzilotti, Costituzione interna, 64-65; ASF, Tratte, F $45, “Squit-

tinio generale dell’ anno 1734.” |

14 On the sixteenth century fiefs in general, see Fasano Guarini, Lo stato Mediceo di Cosimo I, 63-73.

28

ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT

lic had kept at a distance, reappeared in a new situation of prominence, and the thirteenth-century prohibition barring families of magnati from office in the magistracies of Florence was finally withdrawn through a decree of Cosimo II in 1622.15

Thus the Court provided a political and ceremonial focus for the Duchy. Both the patricians and foreign ambassadors watched arrivals and departures from the Palazzo Pitti with apprehension, and the etiquette of the ducal household and cavalieresque spectacles imitated those of Madrid or Paris. Cosimo himself lived without conspicuous ceremony, maintaining a private table and a familiar demeanor toward the city, but still he made a show of grandeur. In 1570 he was crowned in Rome by Pius V as Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his burial in 1574 was a spectacle copied from the funeral of Charles V.'° The Order of St. Stephen, which he founded in 1562, also helped to legitimate the new regime. This was similar to the Order of St. John of Malta, witha fleet of galleys intended to protect the Tuscan coasts fromTurkish incursions.'? The imposing residence was at Pisa, but admission to the Order and to the ducal Commende, benefices that supported knights, _ were clearly honors of the Court in Florence. Like Knights of Malta, the Knights of St. Stephen were nobles, and the proofs for admission to the Order required sixteen quarterings of noble lineage. However, non-nobles could be ennobled by the dukes, or they could purchase ad~ mission to the Order through the foundation of a Commenda. The Order of St. Stephen thus became a step in the social ascent of new men. The first knights were selected among younger branches of the Medici house and among nobles of the ducal Court, but knights were recruited broadly. Sons of established families in the provincial towns of Tuscany became Knights of St. Stephen. Important provincial names such as Piccolomini of Siena, Lanfranchi of Pisa, Sozzifanti of Pistoia, Incontri and Inghirami of Volterra, Albergotti of Arezzo, and Passerini of Cortona appeared for generations as commanders of the ducal fleet." 's The law of 1622 is printed in Neri, “Sopra lo stato antico e moderno,” 598-99. ‘6 On the very important symbolic aspects of this ceremony, see Borstook, “Art and Politics at the Medici Court,” 31-54. ‘7 For the statutes of the Order and its internal organization, see Guarnieri, L’Ordine di Santo Stefano, 1, 114f.

‘8 Between 1562 and 1600, seventy-three Knights of St. Stephen were recruited from Siena, thirty-six from Pisa, thirty-six from Pistoia, thirty-one from Volterra, twenty-

29

PARTI

In these ways, the first dukes tested the adaptive abilities of the Florentine patricians, a challenge that not all houses among the priors of the fifteenth-century were able to meet. Some houses had identified their fortunes with the Medici before 1530, and thus anticipated the Court before its creation, but others had not. Still, most of the inner group of

houses from the fifteenth-century priorate survived the transition to the Duchy. Genealogies are not always trustworthy, and it is difficult to trace the continuity of houses in every case with absolute confidence.

Yet by comparing the names of casate prominent as priors in the fifteenth century with names of casate considered able to hold office in 1$51 and 1604, members of the Council of 200, and senators, it 1s possible to make an approximate accounting of houses that were still present in the mid-to-late sixteenth century.’ Of the 426 casate who were frequently priors in the fifteenth century, 273 were represented at one time or another in the Council of 200 or the Senate before 1604, and 99 others, although never appointed to the Council of 200, appear in lists

of casate di Firenze eligible for offices. Fifty-four houses cannot be traced, eleven are known to have died out before the mid-sixteenth cen-

tury, and twenty had not appeared as priors between 1485 and 1530, which suggests that they too may have disappeared from the city.?° The 372 houses that can be traced to the sixteenth-century councils or lists

of citizens include most of the fifteenth-century houses that had appeared in the priorate before 1350 and almost all of those with the highest assessed wealth in the Catasto of 1427. Houses of old establishment, greater wealth, and relatively more representation in the priorate were

well represented. Now, confronted with the ducal Court, they began to transform themselves from citizens into nobles able to exercise influ-

ence at a new level of importance. , The transformation of citizens into nobles was not an entirely new development in sixteenth-century Italy. It had progressed from the three from Arezzo, and nine from Cortona; see Guarnieri, “Elenchi di Cavalieri appartenenti all’ Ordine con riferimenti cronologici, di patria, di titoli, di vestizione d’abito, 1562-1859,” in L’Ordine di Santo Stefano, tv. 19 The lists of casate and casate di Firenze in BNF, Manoscritti Palatino, 756; D’ Addario,

“Burocrazia”; and ASF, Manoscritti, F 223, §3-68, are casate with the benefizio of the scrutinies.

20 Notices of extinction of families from ASF, Manoscritti, FF 248-53, Priorista Mariani.

30

ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT

time of the communes, with their mixture of feudal and mercantile elements; but the change became more pronounced in the sixteenth century when the new involvement of France and the Spanish Hapsburgs in the politics of Italy, gave the status of personal nobility a heightened

significance. The change had more political than economic importance. Landholders and merchants were intertwined in Florence from the twelfth through the nineteenth centuries. Still, it is clear that the transformation was furthered by the long economic recession of the seventeenth century, when social stratification became more rigid, calling for new justifications of inherited wealth and standing. Titles and

lineages were of most importance at princely courts, but the citizen elites of republics also sought new justifications for the exaltation of standing. The patricians of Venice and Lucca had begun to call themselves nobles before the sixteenth century, while at Milan this tendency advanced under the Sforza dukes and was completed under the Spanish viceroys. The Florentine Republic had not given its citizens a legal status of nobility, for although magnati were sometimes employed as commanders of troops or fortresses or as ambassadors abroad, nobles were politically suspect.*? Fifteenth-century humanists generally used the term “noble” in a general, moralized sense. As evidence of the city’s worth, they praised the nobility of Florence as a city and the accomplishments of individual Florentines in the arts and letters, in their piety, skill as orators, knowledge of law, or prominence in politics.” Ingenious Latin poems set forth the antiquity of family origins, but in the civic conception, “nobility,” as applied to citizens, seems to have been thought of more as individual virtue and valor than as the dominion over land and subjects that marked “nobility” in a feudal sense.?3 There are many sixteenth-century Italian treatises that discuss the

nature of nobility, manners, and Court etiquette, and some of these treatises were written by Florentines. The Medici court became one of the testing grounds for the new style of honor. Nobility began to be thought of as an inherited quality, and families long eligible for the highest offices of the Republic began to call themselves nobles as a *t On the decline of knighthood as an honor of the Republic, see Salvemini, La dignita cavalleresca.

22 Vallone, “Il concetto di nobilta e cortesia,” 8-20. 23 Thus in Verino, De illustratione urbis Florentiae.

31

PART I

group. This title appeared in the sixteenth century and persisted through the eighteenth. Prominent Florentines had long shown an interest in their family origins, but now their interest grew, and genealogies and family histories traced distant ancestors with fantastic elaboration to the Court of Charlemagne, or to ancient Rome or Egypt. The new literature began to appear in the 1570s.?4 Within a generation, Francesco De Vieri wrote his Primo libro della nobilta (1572), and Lorenzo Giacomini presented his treatise Della nobilta delle lettere e delle armi (1576) to the Accademia Fiorentina. A heraldic treatise of Vincenzo Borghini, Delle armi delle famiglie fiorentine, was published in 1585, followed by Paolo Mini’s Discorso della nobilta di Firenze e dei fio-

rentini, which was dedicated to Niccolé Capponi, “Gentiluomo Fiorentino,” in 1593. Scipione Ammirato, the Court historian of Ferdinando I, displayed the family trees of prominent Republican houses alongside those of feudal nobles of the Medici Court in a collection of genealogies, Delle famiglie nobili fiorentine, that was published in 1615.75

The seventeenth-century genealogical works culminated with the monumental work of Eugenio Gamurrin1i, Istoria genealogica delle famiglie nobili Toscane et Umbre, which was published in four volumes between 1668 and 1673.° In these works, to have had ancestors among priors of the Republic became a matter of first importance, and gave rise to the compilation of new family prioriste, one of the last and most elaborate of which was compiled by the Abate Mariani for the use of the Medici Court in the 1720s. The claims of Florentine citizens to be considered of equal rank with feudal nobles was expressed succinctly in Scipione Ammirato’s work of 1615: How mistaken are those who distinguish between the nobility of a gentleman born in a Kingdom or other Principate and that of a Republic. . . . Nobility consists of antiquity and splendor . . . and it is easier for those of a Republic than for others to demonstrate the span of their continuous succession, since they are assisted by such documents as the Florentine priorists. . . . If one looks well at great Republics, as was that of Florence, it will be seen that its noble 4 On this literature, see Diaz, “L’idea di una nuova ‘Elite,’ ” 572-87. 25 De Vieri, Primo libro della nobilta; Giacomini-Tebalducci, Della nobilta delle lettere e

delle armi; Mini, Discorso della nobilta; ASF, Manoscritti, F 425, Monaldi, “Istoria delle famiglie fiorentine” (1607); Ammirato, Delle famiglie nobili fiorentini di Scipione Ammirato. 6 Gamurrini, Istoria genealogica.

32

ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT families had no reason to compare themselves slightingly to [seigneurs, barons, counts, marquises, and the like]. . . for although they had no Seigneuries, and have not lived in quite such a cavalieresque manner as is usual in the Court of a king or a great prince (for public order under the Republic would not permit such inequalities of titles or manners of living), yet they have been Gonfalonier1 di Giustizia, Priori, Commissar of the Ten of War, in the Balie, and other similar positions hardly inferior to seigneurs with authority over non-noble persons.” 27

But in practice the new style of the patricians had begun to emerge well before the publication of these works. Assertion of noble status might require some document or patent, and patents in the form of attestations of nobility were granted by the dukes, in some instances when Florentines were sent as ambassadors abroad.” From the Foundation of the Order of St. Stephen in 1562, the dukes had recognized as “noble” the intermarriages of families who had occupied high offices of the Republic as proof of nobility for admission to the Order. Ultimately it became a short step from a few houses in the Medici faction of the elite to citizens with the benefizio of the scrutinies for offices generally. Gradually families of even modest means began to display coats of arms and referred to themselves as “noble citizens” or “noble patri-

cians” in their marriage contracts and wills. Among the Ginori, Gino di Agnolo Ginori, “Cittadino Fiorentino,” married in 1583, while his son Agnolo di Gino was described as “Nobile Fiorentino” upon his marriage in 1618. Among the Altoviti, Guglielmo di Francesco Altoviti was described as a “Cittadino Fiorentino” on his marriage in 1594, while his son was a “Nobile Fiorentino” upon his marriage in 1627.

Among the Pepi, a more modest family, Ruberto di Ruberto Pepi, “Cittadino Fiorentino,” married in 1608, while his son Francesco who

married in 1649 had also become “nobile.”?? Old admission to the 77 Ammirato, Delle famiglie nobili fiorentine di Scipione Ammirato, “A \ettori.”

8 The patents were registered in the Libri di Privilegi of the Pratica Segreta; there were relatively few in the 1530s to 1550s, but thirty or more in the 1560s and 1570s. These included attestations of nobility for the Antinori, Gondi, Pazzi, Ridolfi, Strozzi, and Soderini. See ASF, Pratica Segreta: ten patents in the years 1539-61 (F 186), twenty-three in 1561-70 (F 187), thirteen in 1571-82 (F 188), and eleven in 1582-94 (F 189).

2? Summaries of marriage contracts from the Provvanze di Nobilta of the Deputazione created in 1750; see Ginori, ASF, Deputazione Nobilta, F 14, ins. 4; Altoviti, F 8, ins. 3; Pepi, F 7, ins. 2.

33

PARTI

priorate acquired a special significance. Newcomers to the city, even newcomers who enjoyed the honors of the Court, attempted to prove that they were the long-lost descendants of ancient houses that were long extinct.3° In counterattack, houses of the elite attempted to protect themselves against false use of their names. Thus the Calderini brought suit in 1561 against “Gio Antonio and Silvestro, brothers and sons of Ser Lorenzo di Biagio di Jacopo di Calderino di Antonio from Figline (or rather Castelfranco) [who have usurped] the name, family and casata of the true and noble Calderini of the city of Florence.” There were sim-

ilar cases involving the Cambi in 1582, the Donati in 1595, and the Bruni in 1604.3!

The growing sensitivity to social standing is an indication of the adaptation of the patricians to the ducal Court. One can trace the external signs of their progress in the Senate, in the Order of St. Stephen, and in the acquisition of fiefs and titles (Table 2.1). Patricians appeared consistently as senators of Florence, gradually appeared in the lists of salariati of the Court, and then acquired fiefs or titles in the Order of St. Stephen. In 1550 Count Pandolfo De Bardi was among the Gentiluomini di Camera, but the Bardi with their fourteenth-century fief at Vernio were considered magnati and had not held office in the fifteenth century.3? None of the other gentlemen of the chamber or table of Cosimo [in 1550 can be identified in the inner group of fifteenth-century priors, and there were none in the duke’s close household in 1560.33 But patrician names appeared on the Court rolls with greater frequency under Francesco I and Ferdinando I in the 1580s and 1590s; and under Cosimo I] and Ferdinando II in the 1610s to 1650s, they figure quite conspicuously. In 1621, during the first year of the Regency for Ferdinando II when the Court reached its largest size in the seventeenth century, Pi30 Among false attestations of the antiquity of families, the Usimbardi, newcomers from Colle and favorites of Ferdinando I in the 1590s, who became extinct in the 1740s, associated themselves falsely with the ancient Florentine Usimbardi, who were long ex-

tinct; see ASF, Carte Sebrigondi, No. 5359. The Donnini, Court functionaries of Ferdinando II in the 1640s who were ultimately registered as nobles in 1763, did the same : with the ancient house of Donnini, which had become extinct in the fifteenth century; ASF, Carte Sebrigondi, No. 1969. 31 ASF, Consulta, F 22, 261, 285; F 23, 13, 24. 32 The Bardi in the priorate were of a different casata. 33 ASF, Manoscritti, F 321, 39ff., 71ff.

34

ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT TABLE 2.1 THE ENNOBLING OF FIFTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENTINE HOUSES

1§00-1750

1§§0 1600 1650 1700 1750 Uncertain Total % A % B Date

A. Houses frequently priors in the

fifteenth century 426 B. Surviving in the

sixteenth century 372 ~=— (87)

Senators* 47 32 21 19 5 124 (29) (33) Order of St. Stephen* 90 37 21 8 16 = (37) (42)

Fief, title 11 6 3 12 33 (8) (9) Extinct 36 A4 68 19 79 246 (58) (66) of Mariani 150 ~— (35) (40) Surviving at time

di Oro 133, (31) (35)

In eighteenthcentury Libri

*Indicates first appearance only. NOTES: Percentage surviving at the time of Mariani in the 1702s who had had senators, 62%; Knights

of St. Stephen, 76% fiefs or titles, 20%. Percentage with no senators, Knights of St. Stephen, fiefs or titles, 19%. Numbers in parantheses are percentages.

ero Guicciardini and Francesco Dell’ Antella were the Maggiordomo Maggiore and Maggiordomo, and among the names of Gentlemen of the Chamber were Giugni, Niccolini, De Nobili, Dell’ Antella, Gianfigliazzi, Alamanni, Della Stufa, Sacchetti, and Rinaldi. In 1652 there were three patricians among the eight Maggiordomi and Maestri di Casa, and thirteen more among the Gentlemen of the Chamber.34 Gradually patricians acquired feudal titles appropriate to the Court setting. There were few fiefs in sixteenth-century Tuscany. In 1604 fifteen fiefs between Florence and Siena depended on ducal investiture, and nineteen others claimed a partial independence through old treaties of accomandaglia made with the Republic.35 The number of Tuscan fiefs 34 [bid., F 321, 485ff., 673 ff.

35 For a partial list of fiefs in 1604, see ASF, Manoscritti, F 223, 90-91, “Feudatari dello stato di Firenze e di Siena et raccomandati a Sua Alt/a Ser/ma.” On the sixteenth-century fiefs in general, see Fasano Guarini, Lo Stato Mediceo di Cosimo I, passim. For a list and description of the new fiefs in the order of their creation, see ASF, Riformationi, F 288.

In the 1640s, 4 percent of the population of the Duchy as a whole lived under existing 35

PARTI

increased in the seventeenth century partly through the infeudation of communes that had previously been under ducal administration, and partly through the regranting of older fiefs to new families. But Tuscany was a scarcely infeudated region. In the Duchy of Milan to the north, more than a thousand communities were under feudal jurisdiction 1n this period, and the contrast with the kingdom of Naples is still more striking.3° The new fiefs were created chiefly during the regencies of Christine of Lorraine and Maria Maddalena d’ Austria for Cosimo II and Ferdinando II (1609-36). They were carved out of rural communities or ducal estates, and their distribution evoked a willing response from the Florentine elite. There was a scramble to acquire honors. By 1621 the number of fiefs had grown from fifteen to twenty-three. In 1650 there were forty-seven, of which fourteen were in the hands of Florentine patricians. Vincenzo Salviati bought the commune of Montieri, south of Siena, as a marquisate from Ferdinando I in 1621 for 7,230 Scudi, to which his family was able to add a second fief at Boccheggiano in 1637. Lorenzo di Girolamo Guicciardini acquired the marquisate of Montegiovi in 1639, which Filippo Niccolini, who had possessed it since 1625, exchanged for the marquisate of Ponsacco and

Camugliana. The Giugni, Della Stufa, Capponi, Albizzi, Corsini, Guadagni, and Ridolfi soon followed.37 These were mostly depopulated villages in the hills south of Pisa and Volterra, or in the lower reaches of the territory of Siena. Despite the sonorous legal phrases in the patents of investiture, the dukes conferred very limited rights of administration. The purchases marked a shift in patrician investments toward land, and helped to round out and secure control over landed estates. But the advantages of titles were chiefly political; they secured one a permanent place at the ducal Court. feudal jurisdictions or in communities that were later infeudated, although there was a difference between the Florentine Dominion (where the proportion of population was only 3 percent) and the State of Siena, where it was 14 percent; see Pansini, “Per una storia del feudalesimo,” 131-47. 36 Sella, Crisis and Continuity, 151.

37 The Giugni at Camporsevoli in the State of Siena in 1630; the Della Stufa at Calcione

in 1632; the Capponi, first at Magliano in 1635 and then at Montecchio in 1641 and at Loro in 1646; the Albizzi at Castelnuovo in 1639; the Corsini at Laiatico in 1644; the Guadagni at S. Leolino del Conte in 1645; and the Ridolfi at Montescudaio in 1648; see ASF, Riformagioni, F 288.

36

ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT

Admission to the Order of St. Stephen became a usual point of contact of a patrician house with the Court, and the Order, like possession

of a distant fief, was less incompatible with the customary habits of

Florentines than one might think. Unlike Knights of Malta, the Knights of St. Stephen could marry, and expeditions of the ducal fleet into the Mediterranean were not so frequent as to inhibit the activity of knights at home. The statutes of the Order did not permit Knights of St. Stephen to engage actively in commerce or practice mechanical trades, but management and investment in merchant companies does not seem to have given cause for concern.?* More than one thousand knights were created by the first three dukes, and in their attempt to attract a glittering following, half were nobles from elsewhere in Italy or foreigners, chiefly Spaniards. Another quarter came from provincial Tuscan towns. But the remainder of the knights were Florentines, who appeared quickly after the founding of the Order, and then persistently. Some of these families founded Commende, endowments that provided a livelihood for sons from generation to generation. Of the 370 houses frequently priors in the fifteenth century that survived into the sixteenth, 156 ultimately presented proofs of nobility for admission to the Order of St. Stephen, 90 before 1600, 37 more before 1650, and 29 others before 1750. Of the 159 families that survived in the 1720s, 76 percent had presented proof for admission to the Order of St. Stephen at one time or another.3° To be sure, some older Republican houses that survived in the eighteenth century had never appeared as Knights of St. Stephen, and one suspects that many of them were houses of quite modest standing, without the resources required by the Court. The adaptation of the elite can be followed more closely through different lines of some representative houses, for distinct branches of casate

had different experiences, and it is clear from genealogies that some lines were more successful than others. There were five lines of Nic38 In the statutes of the Order, the Knight was to be “. . . eglistesso, padre, madre, avi e auole dal lato paternoe materno. . . disceso da casate nobili,. . . attia. . . godere nella patria loro quelli maggiori dignita e gradi che solo i pit nobili gentiluomini sogliono haver. . . . Sieno nati di legittimo matrimonio, non habbiano esercitato arte alcune, ma vissuti da gentiluomini. . .”; see Guarnieri, L’Ordine di S. Stefano, 1, 119. There are examples of Cavalieri registered as investors in business firms through accomandite of the Mercanzia, and even occasionally as managers of negozi di banco and negozi mercantili. 39 Families were identified from Guarnieri, L’Ordine di S. Stefano, tv.

37

PARTI

colini in the sixteenth century, with fourteen sons who married in the generation born between 1500 and 1550. All were common descendants of Lapo di Giovanni Niccolini (1356-1429) and stood together in scrutinies for offices in the quarter of Santa Croce, although not all households of the family still lived in that quarter.4° Two other casate, the Alberti and the Guicciardini, were more compact. There was only one line of Alberti in the first generation after 1500, with four married sons in the Santa Croce quarter, and one line of Guicciardini, with five married sons who lived close together in the quarter of Santo Spirito. The Rucellai, a more complex group, were more numerous with eighteen married sons, most of whom lived in the quarter of Santa Maria Novella. These four houses had been liberally represented among the priors of the fifteenth century, and all had a member among the original senators of the Duchy in 1532. But later, other branches were not equally fortunate in their relationship to the Court. Among the Niccolini, the first two lines contented themselves with the ordinary round of offices in the magistracies, as did the third and fourth lines, which became extinct in 1612 and in 1645. Only the fifth line—the descendants of Ottobuono di Lapo—clearly succeeded at the Court. This line had produced nine senators by the mid-seventeenth century. Agnolo di Matteo di Ottobuono Niccolini was later an intimate councillor of Cosimo I. He was educated in law at Pisa, and like his father was closely associated

with the Medici in the transition to the Duchy. He was employed by Cosimo I in diplomatic missions in 1537 to Paul III in Rome, and in 1540 to the court of Charles V in Flanders. He was made a senator in 1541, a Gentleman of the Court in 1544, and was employed in further diplomatic missions in the 1550s at the time of the conquest of Siena, of which he was made governor in 1557. He was a man of letters and one of the founders of the Accademia Fiorentina. A widower, he entered holy orders in order to be made archbishop of Pisa in 1564, a move that helped to secure ducal control of the Tuscan clergy; he was made a cardinal by Pius IV. His brother Piero was made a senator in 1564; Piero’s son was also sent on diplomatic missions and was made a 4 On the Niccolini, see Passerini, Famiglia Niccolini. In the list of casate published by D’ Addario for 1551, there was a single casata of Niccolini in the Ruote Maggiore gonfalone

of the Santa Croce quarter; see D’Addario, “Burocrazia,” 389.

38

ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT

senator by Francesco I in 1587. He served as ambassador in Rome under Ferdinando I. In the next generation Francesco Niccolini (1584-1650) grew up at the Court, having been made a Knight of St. Stephen 1n 1598 at the age of fourteen. He accompanied his father to Rome, where he was made ambassador in 1621. His life ended at the Court of Ferdinando II. His

brother Filippo (1586-1666) was appointed as a Gentleman of the Court in 1610, and was sent as an ambassador to Mantova and Parma before receiving the Court office as tutor to Prince Giovan Carlo De Medici. He was made Marquis of Montegiovi, south of Siena, in 1625, and later bought the large Medici estate of Camugliano, in the territory of Pisa, with which the neighboring commune of Ponsacco was made intO a marquisate in 1637. Here he enlarged the existing villa, built towers at its four corners, commissioned rich frescoes for the hall, and constructed a chapel inlaid with marble and semiprecious stones.4! The Alberti, with only one line in the sixteenth century, were similarly fortunate, as were the Guicciardini. The Alberti had produced five senators before 1650. Daniello Alberti (1503-73), the eldest son of one of the original senators in 1532, succeeded his father in the Senate in 1553. His younger brother Albertaccio, in the words of a nineteenthcentury genealogist, was “not remembered for the heroic defense of his fatherland against the forces of Charles V and Clement VII, but instead [was] with the many who crowded into the antechambers of Palazzo Medici as soon as Duke Alessandro was seated on the ruins of Florentine liberty. Thus he was not left out in the distribution of offices. . . under Cosimo I.” He served the duke during the Sienese War and was sent as ambassador to Constantinople. In 1565, Leon Battista Alberti, a son of Daniello, was inscribed in the first group of Knights of St. Ste-

phen, while a brother became a Knight of Malta. Both the son and grandson of Albertaccio were senators, and in the next generation Braccio Melchior Alberti (1603-56) was made a Gentleman of the Court of Ferdinando II and Cosimo III.42 Among the Guicciardini in the generation born after 1500 were nephews of the senator and historian Francesco Guicciardini, who had no sons. They were the children of his brothers Luigi, Jacopo, and Girolamo. The Guicciardini brothers 4t Passerini, Famiglia Niccolini, 53-65. 42 On the Alberti, see Passerini, Gli Alberti di Firenze, 1, 225-41.

39

PARTI

had quietly favored the creation of the Duchy, and Luigi and Girolamo were both made senators by Cosimo. In the sixteenth century the Guicciardini had large interests in banking in Rome, but they were also familiar with the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, to which their own palace was contiguous. They were often employed as ambassadors. By 1650 six

other members of the family were made senators, another became a Knight of St. Stephen, and one, Piero di Agnolo Guicciardini, had acquired the title of Marchese of Campiglia from Ferdinando II. The experience of the Rucellai was more complex. The eighteen married sons of this house in the first generation after 1500 were divided into three lines that descended from Bernardo di Giunta Rucellai in the fourteenth century. One line remained in the ordinary circle of

offices and became extinct in the 1620s. The second line remained largely in the magistracies and ultimately died out in 1708, while the third line became the more prominent one. In the first years of the Duchy this included the nephews of Bernardo Rucellai, the patron of the Orti Oricellari gatherings after the Medici restoration of 1512, where Machiavelli’s Discorsi were first read, and the cousins of Palla di Bernardo Rucellai, who was one of the first senators in 1532, although

he opposed the election of Cosimo in 1537. This line ultimately produced two more senators. The remaining line of Rucellai shows the divisive effect of the politics of the sixteenth century on family cohesion. Luigi di Cardinale Rucellai (1495-1549), an opponent of the Medici, emigrated from Florence in the first years of Cosimo I and died in exile in Rome. His son Orazio was brought up in France at the Court of Catherine De Medici and ultimately returned to Florence as an agent in negotiating the marriage of Ferdinando I with the French Guise princess, Christine of Lorraine. Other kinsmen were early supporters of the Medici, but political division and exile in the sixteenth century reduced the Rucellai in numbers. Considering all lines together, from the eighteen married sons in the generation after 1500, only seven were produced in the first generation after 1600. Still, of these, one was a senator, two were Knights of St. Stephen, one was ambassador to Venice, and another was a Gentleman of the Court.“ 43 On the first generation of Guicciardini in the sixteenth century, see Starn, “Francesco Guicciardini,” 411-44. For their later history, see notices in Litta and Passerini, Famiglie celebri, 0, fasc. XXI.

44 On the Rucellai, see Passerini, Famiglia Rucellai, 122-58.

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ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT

Thus the officeholding elite of the fifteenth-century Republic retained a vitality in the sixteenth century. But their conquest of the Medici Court was only a part of their success. A community of Florentine

merchants continued at Lyon until the 1560s, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century merchant companies were still in operation as far away as Cadiz, Lisbon, London, Antwerp, and Nuremberg.* Sons disappointed by prospects at home sought their fortunes abroad in foreign Courts. Antonio Gondi, who started his career among the Florentine merchants at Lyon in the mid-sixteenth century, received the Barony of Perron from Francis I in 1544, to which his son Alberto, who lived through the reign of Henry IV, added the Duchy of Retz, establishing this branch of the Gondi in France permanently.* Baldo di Giovanni Corsi bought the fief of Cajazzo in the Kingdom of Naples from Philip III of Spain in 1617, and the Pucci became Marchesi of Barsento, at Bari, in 1664.47 Florentine bankers continued to be important in Rome through the first decades of the seventeenth century.+* Many sons of wellborn families found employment in the Church in Tuscany or at Rome. The Strozzi obtained the title of Counts Palatine from Ur-

ban VIII in the 1630s, fiefs and titles in the Kingdom of Naples, and then the title of Prince in 1722 from Innocent XIII.49 Lorenzo Corsini, elected in 1730 as Clement XII, was the last Florentine pope, and in the 1730s the Corsini, too, were made princes in Rome.*° Such dynasties did not have difficulty establishing themselves at seventeenth-century Courts. The GENTE NuUOVA of the Seventeenth Century

The initial success of the patricians rode the wave of an upswing of the Florentine economy in the middle to last decades of the sixteenth century. This recovery was followed by a depression in the first decades of the seventeenth century. The reversal brought new problems of preserving family fortunes in a period of declining opportunities. In ad45 See Part V, chap. It. 46 On the French branch of the Gondi, see Corbinelli, Histoire généalogique;, Litta and Passerini, Famiglie celebri; Tiribilli-Giuliani, Sommario storico, u, ins. 95. 47 On the Corsi and Pucci, see Spreti, ed., Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare. 48 On Florentines in Rome, see Delumeau, Vie économique et sociale, 1, 845-937; Delumeau, L’alun de Rome, 98—103.

49 On the Strozzi in Naples and Rome, see Litta, Famiglie celebri. so Passerini, Famiglia Corsini, 131-212.

41

PARTI

dition, newcomers had to be accommodated, not only at the ducal Court, but also in the offices of the magistracies of Florence, where a horde of gente nuova who had immigrated into the city sought full rights of citizenship through admission to the scrutinies of officeholders. One would have expected stability at the upper level of Florentine society, but there was also fluctuation and mobility out of and into the elite. Here two factors were in operation. On the one hand, the number of houses in the elite decreased through misfortune and the gradual extinction of families. On the other hand, new families became established in the scrutinies for the magistracies and at the Court. But the contest between patricians and gente nuova was not an equal one. Newcomers moved into and out of the Court and the city, while patricians remained more fixed. Still, in the seventeenth century, the number of old casate that could trace ancestors to the priors of the Republic diminished steadily.

To confront economic adversity, the dukes helped to secure the credit of Florentine merchants and provided benefices, offices, and pensions to help avoid disaster for houses of the Court. The patricians

themselves looked after poorer families in their group.5 But at the Court, maintenance of an appropriate lifestyle could become an expensive burden. Even so, a building boom took place in late sixteenth-century Florence during which the patricians rebuilt old palaces or constructed new ones appropriate to their station. The sixteenth-century palaces of Baccio di Agnolo, Ammannati, and Buontalenti were equal to the fifteenth-century ones, if not larger, and building continued into the seventeenth century. The Court architects Gherardo and Pierfrancesco Silvani designed palaces for the Capponi, Corsini, Marucelli, and Pecori, and redecorated others for the Guadagni, Guicciardini, Pucci,

and Salviati. The last great constructions of the Panciatichi and the Capponi were built at the end of the seventeenth century by the Roman architect Fontana. °?

The expense of the Court became more difficult to justify in the economic difficulties of the first decades of the seventeenth century. Sons of families that had operated commercial companies and textile firms 5! On views of poverty in fifteenth-century Florence, see Trexler, “Charity and the Defense of Urban Elites,” 64-109; for sixteenth-century Venice, see Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice, 63-83 et passim. s2 Information on palaces of the patricians is from Limburger, Die Gebdude von Florenz.

42

ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT

for generations began to appear less often as active partners and more often as silent investing partners. In a period of uncertainty and inflation a safe investment was land, and multiple purchases of farms in the Tuscan countryside enlarged patrician estates, which promised a steady but smaller revenue than could be obtained from trade. Marriages became an expensive proposition and required huge dowries that might consume several years of income. In the early sixteenth century, patricians had contented themselves with relatively modest dowries, not much more than they had received from the Monte delle Doti of the Republic. But as they adapted to the Court the size of dowries rose steadily and much more steeply than the general inflation—a fact lamented by moralists.53 When Piero di Matteo Niccolini married Maddalena Antinori in 1535 the dowry was 2,648 Florins. When his son Lo-

renzo married in 1574 the dowry was 6,400 Scudi.54¢ But when Lorenzo’s son Matteo, who later became a senator, married in 1629 the dowry was 13,000 Scudi. Among the descendants of Girolamo di Piero Guicciardini, the dowries rose from 3, 180 Florins in 1547 to 8,000 Florins in 1587, and to 25,000 Scudi in 1616. The dowry of Benedetto di Giovanbattista Rucellai was 4,000 Scudi in 1611, his son Francesco’s dowry was 10,500 Scudi in 1650.55 To help secure resources, families consolidated their wealth. This undoubtedly explains the rising marriage age for men and the tendency ‘3 Thus a memorandum of Francesco Acciaiuoli of 1618: “. . . ’'incomportabile lusso dell’ eccessive spese che si fanno in questa citta (dij insopportabili Doti, le quali son venute a tanto eccesso . . . che rovinano le case dove escano, e portano il fuoco con loro dove entrano, necessitando a spendere chi le riceve, et a chi le da, debilita lo Stato sino in maniero che é forzato chi ha pit figliuole, di maritarne a pena una sola. . . . Etutte laltre farle monache per forza, con danno di mancanza di progenie. . .”; see ASF, Misc. Med., F 34, ins. $4. For dowries in the fifteenth century, see Kirshner and Molho, “The Dowry Fund and the Marriage Market,” 403-38. $4 The Scudo in this period was worth about 7 percent less than the Florin. ss Information on dowries is from eighteenth-century summaries of the Gabella dei Contratti in ASF, Deputazione Nobilta, F 6, ins. 18 (Niccolini); F 2, ins. 18 (Guicciardini); F 11, ins. 3 (Rucellai). These were big changes, even when considering the conversion from Florins to Scudi, devaluation of Scudi in silver, and the sixteenth-century price rise, all of which made prices of the 1610s nearly double those of the 1520s; see Parenti, “Prezzie salari a Firenze,” 205—58. The face value of known dowries for the nineteen fam-

ilies cited below increased from an index of 1.00 in 1500-49, when the mean was 1,800 Scudi (twelve cases), to 2.28 in 1550-99 (twenty-seven cases), to 5.50 in 1600-49 (thirtyeight cases), and to 5.80 in 1650-99 (forty-two cases).

43

PARTI

to limit marriages. Judging from the genealogies of nineteen houses, only one son per father, on the average, married in the seventeenth century. The median marriage age for men was twenty-nine years in the early sixteenth century, but rose to thirty-three for the cohort born in 1550-99, to thirty-four in 1600-49, and to thirty-six in 1650-99, before falling again to twenty-eight years in the eighteenth century. Women continued to marry at age eighteen to twenty.°° Slightly more daughters, whose dowries came from their fathers’ families, married than sons, which permitted families of high standing to create networks of clients in the city by offering brides to sons of families with relatively lower standing. But at the top of the social hierarchy, well-dowered daughters were hard to find for sons’ marriages. This kept the marriage age of sons high. Limitation of marriages enlarged the population of convents and sent unmarried sons out in search of independent means of support, while helping to assure that family resources would continue undivided. Unfortunately, since all married sons did not have children, limitation of marriage also made it more likely that casate would become extinct for lack of direct or collateral heirs. The number of collateral lines, which had accounted for the numerous patrician households in the fifteenth century, steadily diminished after 1500. Some houses continued artificially by substituting heirs who adopted their names, but the pattern of marriage was such that from one thousand married sons in the mid-fifteenth century, one might expect only 480 different lines to remain at the end of the sixteenth century, and

only 211 by the end of the seventeenth.”

The disappearance of houses had been a source of woe in Florence since the time of Dante. When the Abate Mariani compiled his priorista in the 1720s, he noted the houses from the Republic that he believed had become extinct. Only 159 of the 426 casate prominent among priors of the fifteenth century still survived in the city in Mariani’s day. He did not know the date of extinction of many of the families, and some may have simply emigrated or fallen to a lower social standing. 6 Litchfield, “Demographic Characteristics,” 191-205. These houses were the Alberti, Altoviti, Baldovinetti, Corsini, Gianni, Ginori, Guadagni, Mannelli, Niccolini, Orlandi, Pecori, Pepi, Rondinelli, Rucellai, Bartolommei, Cerchi, Riccardi, Ricasoli, and Ubaldini. A similar demographic weakness affected the patricians of Milan; see Zanetti, La demografia del patriziato milanese.

37 Litchfield, “Demographic Characteristics,” 201.

44

ADAPTATION TO MEDICI COURT

But among patricians whose ancestors had frequently been priors in the fifteenth century, he provides a date of extinction for 36 in the sixteenth century, 112 in the seventeenth century, and 19 in the first decades of the eighteenth century. These included the Ferrucci, “anciently extinct”; the Leoni, extinct in Roberto di Francesco, “dead in the wars of Flanders in 1596”; the Fioravanti, extinct in 1608; Benci in 1611; Amadori in 1636; Belfredelli in 1647; Del Benino in 1679; Pilli in 1708; and Cionacci in 1713.58 As houses disappeared, others that had been outside of the fifteenthcentury group replaced them in the scrutinies of officeholders for the magistracies and among aspirants for honors of the Court. There were different paths of upward mobility. At a lower level a wave of non-no-

ble immigrants entered the city in the period of relative prosperity of the 1560s to 1620s, and to the extent that they had sufficient property to be assessed for taxes they pressed to become citizens and move upward into the magistracies. At a higher level, families who had wealth and standing but a minor role in the priorate of the fifteenth century aspired to offices, and there was a continuous lateral movement into Florence of foreigners and notables from provincial towns. Some of them became established permanently in the city. The influx of newcomers at a lower social level followed the general trend of the city’s population growth. At the time of a census of Cosimo I in 1551 the population was $9,551. In 1622 it had increased to 76,023. It fell to 66,056 in 1632, as a result of the plague in 1630; but it recovered to 69,749 in 1642, and then remained about the same until the early eighteenth century.>%? It is also possible to estimate the general contours of change between these dates through the number of yearly baptisms at S. Giovanni Battista, the baptismal font for the city and its immediately surrounding rural area.°° Deaths were not recorded reg-

ularly until the 1780s, so no assessment can be made of the natural growth rate, or the balance between births and deaths. A third source is a Tratte list of new citizens drawn for the Collegio, the office that 38 ASF, Manoscritti, FF 248-53, Priorista Mariani, No. 332 (Ferrucci), No. $560 (Leoni), No. 651 (Benci), No. 437 (Amadori), No. 539 (Belfredelli), No. 660 (Del Benino), No. 181 (Pilli), No. 723 (Cionacci). 8° For the population history of Florence, see Pardi, “Disegno della storia demografica,” 3~84, 185-245; Del Panta, Una traccia di storia demografica. 6° Lastri, Ricerche sull’ antica e moderna popolazione di Firenze.

45

PARTI

conferred the right of hereditary inclusion in the scrutinies, which was compiled at the end of the seventeenth century and continued until the suppression of the Tratta in 1782.7 Admission to Florentine citizenship required roughly the same procedure under the Duchy that it had under the Republic: residence in the city for thirty years, a certain amount of real property assessed in the land tax, and approval of the Council of 200 or the duke. But qualification for citizenship was only the first step toward officeholding in the magistracies. The second step was approval in one of the scrutinies, which every fifteen to twenty years made up the borse of men eligible

for selection. Citizens who had been veduti or seduti, “selected” or “seated,” for the Buonuomini of the Collegio, or enjoyed the benefizio of these offices through their casata, were admitted for consideration automatically, while at each scrutiny only a small number of newcomers was admitted to the lists. From the point of view of the patricians, selection for the Collegio was very significant and marked the definitive admission of newcomers to the officeholding group. An index of veduti, baptisms, and total population, with the central years of the reign of Cosimo I as a common base (Figure 2.1), shows the trend of arrival of new citizens into the magistracies, if not into the circle of the Court. Birth rates were more consistent than death rates in

early modern populations, so that the trend of births over time can serve as a rough index of population size, and the index of births corresponds fairly well to the index of the known population. Both indices of births and new citizens were at low points in the 1540s to 1560s.

Historians have assumed that in the years of establishment of the 6: ASF, Tratte, F 1136, “Specchietto delle famiglie che hanno acquistato lo stato dal principato in qua. . . .” This list of names appears to have been compiled for internal use of the Tratte in the early eighteenth century, and was kept up to date until suppression of the Tratte in 1782. Another similar list is ASF, Manoscritti, F 420. 62 These procedures are best described in ASF, Tratte, F 1101, “Registro legale, ossia repertorio di massime relative alle tratte ed a tutti gli uffizi” (by Michele Paci, 1595), 6—24 et passim. 63 The plague of 1630 clearly had important repercussions, and probably affected the

young and elderly more than adult childbearing couples. Therefore, births remained high relative to total population for the years after 1630 but then fell abnormally in the 1650s, as the Figure 2.1 shows, when the smaller number of children surviving the plague reached childbearing age.

46

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822 \,4‘ boned : In its elaboration, Richecourt was assisted by a number of Tuscan advisors, who viewed the Regency as means for advancement, and also for carrying out legislation of a more progressive type than had been possible under the last Medici. In this group a prominent figure was Pompeo Neri, whose origins were at the small town of Castel Fiorentino near Volterra. After studying law at Pisa, he had followed his father into office in Florence and was made a secretary of the Council of Regency in 1737.° Ultimately he was entrusted to oversee the projects to create a new civil code, devise regulations for restricting entails and feudal ju-

| risdictions, and define the civil status of nobles and citizens. Pompeo Neri’s Discorso sopra lo stato antico e moderno della nobilta To-

scana was written in 1748 to survey existing legislation before drafting the new law. The work showed some of the first traces of the Enlightenment in Tuscany, but it also looked backward to the Republic and to the treatises that had discussed the noble status of Florentine citizens more than a century earlier. However, Neri abandoned the rhetoric of

the sixteenth century in favor of a more historical and legalistic approach. He was not advocating change in local tradition. A noble order seemed to him a natural phenomenon with which the legislation of the

, 54

4 Rodolico, “Emanuele de Richecourt.” ’ The law is printed in Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, xxvi, 23 1ff. 6 See Rocchi, “Pompeo Neri,” 255-69; Venturi, [luministi italiani, m, 945—50.

THE LIBRI DI ORO

Duchy should be in harmony. The treatise distinguished “natural nobility” —virtue and the respect accorded to the memory of virtuous ancestors—from “civil nobility,” the legal status regulated by law that confers “the right to govern that in all states and populations is accorded to a select number of persons.” He felt the two types of nobility should be one. Neri thought the “natural” nobility of Tuscany had been the families who governed the Republic, and he traced their distant origins to the time of Rome. The civil status of the city’s most ancient citizens had been lost during the Lombard invasions and were restored in the procedures for habilitating citizens for the magistracies of the Republic. But it had again fallen into abuse under the Duchy when the Medici had ignored the distinction between the higher and lower orders of citizens in the major and minor guilds and had accorded civil status indiscriminately to favorites of the Court.®

Thus Neri’s treatise was an indictment of the Medici Court, with which Richecourt and his advisors had to struggle during the first years

of the Regency, and a vindication of the civic traditions of the city, which he identified with the ruling group of the Republic. This gave his treatise an ahistorical quality, inasmuch as he had an unclear view of the history of the Republic, and ignored the extent to which patricians

and functionaries of the Medici Court had become the same. But his

aim was to guarantee the civil status of Florentines, and this was obliquely in accord with Richecourt’s aim to establish a uniform legal status for nobles. Richecourt was interested less in Florentine tradition than in administrative efficiency. As he wrote to Vienna, “. . . one of the prerogatives of citizens being employment in the magistracies and tribunals of the capital . . . consequences have necessarily resulted that are prejudicial to the state itself, for all kinds of people have been indiscriminately admitted to citizenship.”® For Florentine families to be recognized as nobles they would henceforth be obliged to submit formal proofs to a deputation that would validate their qualifications and register them in Golden Books, like the nobles of Venice. The law recognized three ranks: patricians, nobles, and citizens.'° 7 Neri, “Nobilta Toscana,” 556. § Ibid., 567-636. 9 Ibid.

$5 ,

© Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, XXV1, 231-41, and the further instructions on pp. 242—

: 46, 334-35.

PART I

Patricians were required to submit proofs that their direct ancestors had been admitted to the highest offices of the city more than two hundred years earlier, that is, to the tre maggiori uffizi e loro annessi before 1530;

families possessing fiefs or those who had proved nobility through quarterings of lineage for admission to the Order of St. Stephen were also included, as were houses that could prove to have been magnati anciently. Other families were recognized in the second category of nobles if their claims rested on no more than the foundation of a commenda in the Order of St. Stephen, or possession of a recent personal patent of nobility for less than fifty years, and if they had contracted marriages

with other families of standing and had sufficient wealth to assure maintenance of a decorous style of life. Insofar as the patricians and nobles satisfied the requirements of Florentine citizenship, they were also citizens. Florentine citizenship continued to require assessment for the land tax, for which the minimum assessment was now raised from two

Florins to six; residence in the city; and approval of the Council of Re- : gency. By raising the tax requirement, the new regulation excluded a large number of citizens who had previously qualified for offices.1! Be‘sides Florence, the law applied to thirteen provincial towns where citizens traditionally claimed to be nobles. Of these, six—Arezzo, Cor-

tona, Pisa, Pistoia, Siena, and Volterra—were to have their own registers of patricians and nobles drawn up with much the same criteria as those of Florence. The others—Colle, Livorno, S. Miniato, Montepulciano, Pescia, Prato, and S. Sepolcro—were only to have registers _ of nobles. Families who proved patrician or noble status in one place could be admitted to equivalent rank in the others.

The deputation began its work in 1751. The new law seemed to promise the Florentine elite continued enjoyment of a special status, and the registration of families proceeded quickly. Judging from the applications for recognition, 244 families proved their patrician status and 26 were registered as nobles in 1751. By 1759, the number of patricians had increased to 314, and the number of nobles to 63. The deputation continued to function during the last years of the Regency, and later, after 1765, under the new duke, Peter Leopold. Between 1760 and ' Por a list of names of persons excluded from “citizenship” by the law, see ASF, Tratte, F 1022, “Nomi e casate che restano escluse dalla cittadinanza per non avere i sei fiorini in vigore della legge di smi del di p/o Ottobre 1750. . . .”

$6

THE LIBRI DI ORO

1800, 71 additional families proved patrician status, 71 were recognized as nobles, and nine who had originally been nobles succeeded 1n presenting new proofs as patricians. The patricians may have viewed the

new regulation with misgivings, as Horace Mann, the English diplomatic resident in Florence noted: “Many of the chief families, I hear, intend to take no notice of this edict; let the consequence be what it will

of their not being in the Libri di Oro.” But still they fulfilled the provisions of the law.

The proofs of nobility consisted of authenticated genealogies from the Catasti and Decima, extracts from prioriste, copies of marriage contracts from the Gabella dei Contratti, coats of arms, and copies of patents of nobility, which reveal the identity of patricians and nobles in detail."3 Table 3.1 presents asummary of information about the origins of families passed by the deputation between 1751 and 1800. Patricians have been listed separately from nobles, and families presenting proofs

to the deputation before 1760, when most of the older patricians had made their appearance, have been separated from families recognized by the deputation later in the century. Since a number of lines descended from the same Republican casata presented their proofs to the deputation separately, families have been counted both by casata and by application for recognition. In the eighteenth century, names still concealed the existence of more than one line. Among the houses that proved patrician status before 1760, the continuity from the Republic is very clear: the elite from the fifteenth cen-

tury priorate was still the most prominent group in the Libri di Oro. Of the 426 casate successful four times or more in the selection of priors in the fifteenth century, 372 had survived in the sixteenth century, the

descendants of 150 were still living at the time of the inquiry of the Abate Mariani in the 1720s, and 133 were eventually inscribed in the Libri di Oro as patricians. It is difficult to assess the significance of this rate of persistence, but 30 to 35 percent survivors over two and a half centuries would seem a respectable figure. The original group was now much reduced in size, but its importance is nonetheless clear. Counting by casata, houses that had frequently been priors accounted for 56 percent of the patricians in 1760. And if the forty-three houses that had '2 Lewis, ed., Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, 1v, 192-93.

‘3 These are preserved in ASF, Archivio della deputazione sopra la nobilta Toscana.

$7

PART I TABLE 3.1 HOUSES REGISTERED IN THE FLORENTINE LIBRI DI ORO,

1751-1800

SEN ORSS FT CA RF SEN ORSS FT CA RF PATRICIANS I751—-$9 PATRICIANS 1760-1800 |

P+4 II! 32 12747 202I336 46 P 188930 3 42 AC 4 87 25 5 15 17 I I10 10 C 7 16 28 2 12 20 23 - POT I I 4 4 8 I 12 13

M 4 7 2 9 10 I I I

U I 2 5 6 6 2 14 I4 TOTAL 123 173 $2 227 314 3 32 4 66 71 NOBLES 1751-59 NOBLES 1760-1800

AC I I I C 27 I 39 1g 14 19 POT I I 242 2 36 14

P+4 P

UTOTAL 4 2 15 18 7 2 38 38 33 4 $7 63 16 2 71 71 KEY: SEN = Senators; orss = Order of St. Stephen; rr = Fief or title; ca = Casate; rF = Registered

families; Pp + 4 = Four or more priors in the fifteenth century; P = Priors under the Republic but less than four times in the fifteenth century; M = Claimed to have been Magnati under the Republic but no priors;

Ac = Claimed to have been Ancient citizens under the Republic but no priors; c = Citizens after 1530; POT = Patrician or noble of other town; u = Uncertain or unknown.

been priors at other periods of the Republic, or less frequently in the fifteenth century, are also included, the proportion of patrician houses in 1760 that could trace ancestors to priors of the Republic increases to 75 percent. In addition, fourteen houses claimed old standing in the city, although they had never had priors, and nine claimed that their ancestors were magnati and thus had been barred from office. The deputation also included as patrician thirty-four houses that had become established in the city after 1530. These were patricians of other towns,

or families established at the Medici Court by acquiring fiefs or through the Order of St. Stephen. Most of the survivors from the priorate had also established themselves at the Court. Indeed, their success was better than that of any of the other groups in this regard. It is difficult to distinguish with absolute certainty among collateral lines in some cases, but 70 percent of 58

THE LIBRI DI ORO

houses that had frequently been priors had had some members among the senators of the Duchy, in comparison with 42 percent of houses appearing as priors less frequently, 31 percent of the ancient citizens or magnati who were never priors, and only 23 percent of the newcomers since 1530. Similarly, 87 percent ofthe houses frequently priors had appeared in the Order of St. Stephen, compared with 62 percent of those in the other three groups combined. Still, the number of families with

fiefs or titles remained small. Only fifty-four patrician houses had some title, of which thirty traced ancestors to priors of the fifteenth century. Of the thirty, eleven had ducal fiefs in Tuscany, seven had fiefs outside of Tuscany, and twelve had simple titles of honor. Titles mostly

reflected membership in the Order of St. Stephen. Only twenty-four houses remaining from the fifteenth-century group in 1760 had no honor of knighthood or title from the Medici, and of these, ten had been senators and two others were admitted to the Order of St. Stephen later in the eighteenth century under the Hapsburgs. The houses whose ancestors had appeared less frequently as priors can be grouped with those who claimed ancient standing but had never been in the priorate. It is tempting to assume they had been relatively unimportant houses in the fifteenth century, and indeed some rose to prominence only after 1530. The Bartolommei, priors five times between 1493 and 1532, made their social ascent in the seventeenth century, when they acquired the marquisate of Montegiovi from Ferdinando II in 1677. The Martellini had had two priors, in 1470 and in ©

1§15, and entered the Order of St. Stephen in 1669, while the Dell’ Anchisa had had only one prior, in 1475, and had not entered the Order of St. Stephen until 1728.'4 But other houses in this group, such as the Bardi and Cerchi, had high standing in the fifteenth century and appeared infrequently as priors because they were considered magnati.

The Covoni, Gori, Panciatichi, Riccardi, Del Sera, Spina, and Ughi had never been priors, although they all had considerable wealth at the time of the 1427 Catasto.'5 Of these sixty-five houses, twenty-five had '4 On the Bartolommei, see ASF, Manoscritti, FF 248~53, and Priorista Mariani, No.

1495, Deputazione Nobilta, F 1, ins. 13; on the Martellini, see Priorista Mariani No. 1489, Deputazione Nobilta, F 3, ins. 7. 's In their provanze di nobilta, genealogies are traced backward to the Catasto of 1427, although it is difficult to be sure of collateral branches. Nonetheless, the Catasto had ten

$9

PARTI , been among the senators of the Duchy, forty-five had entered the Order of St. Stephen, and eleven had fiefs or titles, including the Bourbon Del Monte, the Gherardesca, Malaspina, and Ricasoli, who still possessed ancient fiefs from the fourteenth century or before. The thirty-four houses registered as patricians who were newcomers to the city since 1530, or whose origins are uncertain, were divided chiefly between foreign nobles from the sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Court and patricians from provincial Tuscan towns, such as the Bartolini-Baldelli of Cortona; the Forti, Ganucci, and Incontri of

Volterra; and the Marsili of Siena. The newcomers seem very few when one considers the number of foreign nobles who had frequented the Medici Court at one time or another. The law of 1750 relegated other newcomers to the category of nobles, and the fifty-seven “noble” houses had all established themselves in Florence since 1530. In the normal course of events, through ducal favor, marriage with older families, and good fortune, these houses might anticipate rherging eventually with the older group; in fact, nine of the original nobles presented new proofs and were reregistered as patricians before 1800. The “nobles” generally were of more recent establishment than the newcomers registered as “patricians,” and they came from the smaller and less important towns: the Guerrini, new citizens from Marradi who had been visti di collegio in 1561; the Comparini, from Lastra a Signa who were visti in 1$88; and the Anforti from Ponte a Sieve who were visti in 1673.'° The nobles also included a few houses of Lorrainers who had arrived in Florence with the Hapsburgs—the Gaulard, Gervais, Gilles, Grobert, Lottinger, and De Poirot—but in 1760 the number of such foreign nobles was as yet small."” In the 1750s the patricians and nobles registered in the Libri di Oro still looked backward to the Republic and to the Duchy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By contrast, houses inscribed in the Libri di Oro later in the century were indicative of what the Florentine elite was households of Covoni, six Gori, two Panciatichi, two Riccardi, four Del Sera, seventeen Spina, and four Ughi. ‘© For the Anforti, see ASF, Deputazione Nobilta, F 18, ins. 2; Guerrini, F 19, ins. 21; Comparini, F 18, ins. 25; Soldani-Benzi, F 21, ins. 12. '7 For the Gaulard, see ASF, Deputazione Nobilta, F 19, ins. 14; Gervais, F 19, ins. 15;

| | 60

Gilles, F 19, ins. 18; Grobert, F 19, ins. 19; Lottinger, F 19, ins. 23; De Poirot, F 20,

ins. 25.

THE LIBRI DI ORO

becoming. The tendency of older families to die out continued in the eighteenth century, and few houses from the Republic that had not already presented proofs as patricians by 1760 emerged later in the century to replace those that became extinct. Of 170 patrician houses from the Republic in the first decade of registration, § were already extinct in the male line in 1760. Their proofs had been presented by last-surviving males or by females, and 47 more houses became extinct before 1800. Some additional branches of families emerged later in the century to claim inheritances, and were entered in the Libri di Oro in the place of their relatives. But of the sixty-six patricians newly registered after 1760, only ten could trace their family origins to priors of the Republic,

and ten others claimed ancient standing as citizens, or to have been magnati.

The eighteenth century thus marked a further step in the decline of the older elite, and after 1760 there was also an acceleration in the emergence of new nobles, many of whom were families that received patents of nobility from the Hapsburgs. The new creations began in 1760

with Pompeo Neri, the advisor of the Regency from the 1740s, and continued with such names as Bonfini, Bricchieri-Colombi, Dithmar von Schmidweiller, Francois, Fulger, Gavard des Privets, Hayré, Morali-Franchini, Seratti, Tavanti, and Tosi—all important functionaries of the bureaucracy in the mid-years of the century.‘* But in general, the eighteenth-century Libri di Oro confirm that there had been a high degree of continuity under the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dukes. The elite of the Republic had largely succeeded in preserving its consistency. Before examining the implications of the emergence of new nobles in the eighteenth century and the demise of the older patricians, we shall turn to an important factor in the patricians’ long survival—that

is, their relationship to the administration of Tuscany under the sixteenth to eighteenth-century dukes, and the way in which this relationship evolved and changed. '§ For the Bonfini, see ASF, Deputazione nobilta, F 18, ins. 113; Bricchieri-Colombi, F 18, ins. 12-13; Schmidweiller, F 19, ins. 2; Francois, F 19, ins. 10; Fulger, F 67, ins. 5; Gavard des Privets, F 19, ins. 14; Hayré, F 18, ins. 5; Morali, F 43, ins. 10; Seratti, F 63, ins. §; Lavanti, F 21, ins. 15; Tosi, F 21, ins. 16.

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PART II

THE NEW BUREAUCRACY OF THE MEDICI DUKES IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

BLANK PAGE

4

FROM MAGISTRATES TO FUNCTIONARIES

The law of 1750 had defined the legal status of the patricians still largely

in terms of the regulations that had once determined the admission of citizens to offices in the magistracies of the Florentine Republic. Officeholding had always been a chief privilege of the elite, and admission to the borse from which magistrates were selected was a difficult and complicated process. Under the Duchy, descendants of the fifteenthcentury officeholding group continued to be selected for the Senate, the Council of 200, and the rotating magistracies and provincial judgeships. But there was a fundamental change in the system of officeholding as an increasing number of new permanent offices not reserved for citizens made their appearance. As the bureaucratization of the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century ducal government advanced, the relationship of the patricians to political influence had changed accordingly.

The growth of bureaucracies in early modern Europe was a process by which central authority expanded through employment of an increasing number of functionaries who absorbed the authority of fief holders, town corporations, estates, and other local bodies, establishing the jurisdiction of the ruler over a larger area and on a more immediate basis than previously. The process was a gradual one, which eventually produced the institutions and procedures of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century monarchy. But it was not entirely completed in the eighteenth century. In the classic definition of Max Weber, early modern bureaucracies were still in transition from a “patrimonial” to a “rational-legal” type, that is, from a situation in which functionaries were still essentially the servants of the ruler to one in which they became governed by the impersonal rules of the state. The bureaucratic state emerged in stages. In the early phases of its evolution, rulers undermined older forms of participation, centralized jurisdiction, created a

more hierarchical relationship to authority, and employed a larger 65

PART II

number of permanent officials who were better trained and paid for state service, and who were also presumably more impersonal in exercising their duties.’ But growing states were obliged to compromise with existing institutions and with the social groups over which they were establishing control. The officialdom of the new bureaucracies was part of the social context of state building, and in a stratified society it was difficult to escape the influence of family and group solidarity,

which affected both the functioning of government and protected established elites within the state’s expanding authority. This was true of the Florentine patricians in their confrontation with the bureaucracy of the Medici dukes. Still, the Medici bureaucracy differed from the system of the Republic. Weber assumed that bureaucracies emerged out of feudal monarchies, but Florence had already possessed an evolved and complex system of administration in the fifteenth century, which filled most of the functions of the ducal government without having its precise form. Its

Renaissance origins gave the bureaucracy a distinct and precocious character in comparison with feudal monarchies of northern Europe. But in the fifteenth century, Florentines had held office for only brief terms, they were selected through a more open system than the officeholders of the Duchy, and in the variety of different places in the magistracies they might occupy over their lifetimes they remained more

nearly private citizens than public functionaries. Besides its citizen magistrates, the Republic had also employed a subordinate semipermanent staff composed of chancellors, lawyers, and notai, which was relatively small in size, and was always subordinate to the councils and rotating magistracies.? The magistracies remained under the Duchy, ' For Weber’s general discussion on the nature and development of bureaucratic gOvernment, see Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, 324-407. Weber’s general definition of bureaucracy has been adopted here; see Gerth and Mills, eds., From Max Weber, 196-244. These characteristics include clear areas of administrative specialization, a definite hierarchy of authority, records, fixed rules, and trained, appointed, and permanent functionaries. It should be noted, however, that Weber, too, assumed the state to have been basically of “feudal” origin, and fails to take into account the significant earlier development of bureaucratic procedure in Renaissance city states. > The fullest treatment of the Republican staff is in Marzi, Cancelleria, and in Guidi, II governo della citta-repubblica di Firenze. Despite differences of emphasis and interpretation, others seem to agree that the lesser staff of the Republic was relatively small; see Brucker, Renaissance Florence, 128-39, and Martines, Lawyers and Statecraft, passim.

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FROM MAGISTRATES TO FUNCTIONARIES

but the staff of permanent functionaries grew in size and influence around them until it predominated. These men reinforced the authority of the dukes, tightened central control over the outlying areas of Florentine territory, and helped to develop new habits of order and subordination to authority that outlasted the Medici and persisted through the eighteenth-century Hapsburg reforms into the nineteenth century. Thus gradually under the Duchy the modern state in Tuscany more clearly emerged. The Change in the Magistracies

Essential to establishment of the new system was the process by which the first dukes changed the electoral procedures and evaded the constitutional checks on their prerogatives that had been embodied in the Reform of 1532. The Ottimati of the Medici faction of the elite at the end of the Republic had not aimed at the creation of a princely monarcky,

but rather at a mixed government, like that of Venice, in which the duke would assure continuity of the regime but share power with a Senate and general council. “We will change the modes and customs of Florentine life very little,’ Donato Giannotti wrote in his Della repubblica florentina in the 1530s, “as prudent architects . . . in remaking a house do not undo it entirely, but only the defective parts, rebuilding the others left whole.”

Among the upper councils, the highest magistracy was a rotating committee of four senators, the Magistrato Supremo, which was intended to share the duke’s executive and legislative powers, replacing

the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia and priors of the Signoria. Two other magistracies remained from the Signoria: the twelve Buonuomini of the Collegio, who supervised the selection of citizens for offices, and the twelve Procuratori di Palazzo, six after 1545, who received petitions

addressed to the Council of 200. In addition, the Signoria had employed a staff of two chanceries composed of secretaries and clerks, and

another one for the Riformagioni. A fourth, under the notary of the Tratte, continued to administer drawings for office under the supervision of the Magistrato Supremo and Collegio.+ Besides these offices, two new councils, the Senate and Council of 200, in which members 3 Quoted in von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato, 152, n.t. 4 On the chanceries at the end of the Republic, see Marzi, Cancelleria, 278-334.

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sat for life terms after nomination by the duke, had carefully defined electoral and deliberative powers. Accoppiatori from the Senate selected the Magistrato Supremo. The Senate as a whole nominated citizens for the lesser magistracies and provincial judgeships and was sup-

posed to approve laws, while the Council of 200 nominated further citizens for office and acted on petitions.’ Finally, the lesser magistracies of the Republic survived the transition to the Duchy. These had developed from period to period in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,

and because they became the core of the new bureaucracy of the sixteenth century, they need to be considered individually. As they existed after 1530, they can be grouped by function roughly into three areas: the law courts, the financial and public domain, and the general administration and central offices of control for the Florentine Dominion. The law courts had overlapping jurisdictions. They were staffed partly by trained jurists and partly by citizens. Different courts had competence in different areas, most of the magistracies in the finances and the general administration had independent jurisdiction, while some magistracies supervised others. In an effort to insure the impartiality of civil justice, the Republic had long resorted to the employment of foreign, non-Florentine judges who could stand above private interests and factions in the city; the five justices of the Ruota, the civil tribunal that had replaced the old Podesta and Capitano del Popolo in 1§02, were foreigners appointed by the priors for three-year terms. The Ruota had original jurisdiction in the city of Florence, and it had appellate jurisdiction over the Podesta and Vicari of towns in the Contado. Criminal justice belonged to the Otto di Guardia e Balia, which had originated in 1378 and was a committee of eight citizens who rotated in office for four-month terms. The Otto had been the police arm of the Republic and was one of the most feared magistracies of the fifteenth century, being sometimes compared to the Council of Ten of Venice. Its citizens were charged with the maintenance of public order. Their jurisdiction also extended outward into the Dominion through the Podesta and Vicari of provincial towns. The Mercanzia, with six 5 On the functions of the Senate and Council of 200, see “Ordinazioni fatte dalla repubblica Fiorentina insieme con I’excellentia del Duca Alessandro De Medici . . . 27 aprile 1532,” in Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1, 5-17; ASF Tratte, F 1101, 34f., Consulta,

F 454 “Magistrati di Firenze,” first part, ins. 11; Prunai, Firenze, 72; Anzilotti, Costituzione interna, 25—40.

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FROM MAGISTRATES TO FUNCTIONARIES

citizens chosen from a special borsa made up from the guilds, was the commercial court, while the Onesta, a committee of eight, had jurisdiction over certain petty cases regarding morals. These were the chief regular courts of the city, but most of the other magistracies also had judicial authority in particular areas, and two, the Sindaci of the Ruota and Conservatori di Leggi, both with eight citi-

zens, reviewed and supervised the other tribunals. The Sindaci reviewed the conduct of the justices of the Ruota annually, while the Conservatori di Leggi, from 1429, exercised a type of ombudsmanship, hearing appeals of administrative acts and supervising the provincial justices. Finally, two magistracies, with four and five citizens, the Soprastanti and Buonuomini of the Stinche, maintained the Florentine prison.°

There was a similar complexity in the financial administration, which was very advanced for its day. Here, the central and most 1mportant place was occupied by the ufficiali of the Monte Comune. From 1343 this magistracy was composed of ten citizens charged with the public debt who served for six-month terms and, along with the camarlinghi of the Camera del Comune, had controlled the financial administration of the Republic. The Camera del Comune was chiefly responsible for payments and receipts of the treasury. In addition, three magistracies governed the indirect taxes: four ufficiali of the Gabella del Sale, the salt tax; three ufficiali of the Gabella dei Contratti, the tax on notarized contracts; and four ufficiali of the Dogane, the system of tolls.

Four men controlled the Decima, the property tax, which in 1494 had replaced the Republican Catasto of 1427. In fact, the Decima was administered by three offices: the magistracy of the Vendite, which prosecuted tax cases, and the Prestanze and Decima properly speaking, which were charged with assessment and collection of the tax. These were the chief fiscal offices, but three further magistracies had a periph-

eral relationship to the finances. Eight citizens, who served for terms of | three years, directed the Monte di Pieta, the charitable loan fund that had originated in 1495. Eight citizens served as the Capitani di Parte 6 On the magistracies in the fourteenth and at the beginning of the fifteenth century in general, see Guidi, Il Governo della citta-repubblica di Firenze. There are further summary notices in Prunai, Firenze, 46-91; ASF, Tratte, F 1101, Manoscritti, F 843, “Magistrature

Diverse,” and Consulta, F 454. On the law courts, see G. Antonelli, “La magistratura,” 3-39; Pansini, “La ruota fiorentina,” 533-79.

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Guelfa. These remained from the party organization of the fourteenth century, but were now chiefly occupied with the administration of the property of criminals confiscated by the state and with other public property. Finally, six citizens rotated in office as Ufficiali di Torre e Fiumi. With the Capitani di Parte, they provided for the upkeep of buildings, roads, bridges, and waterways in the public domain.’ The remaining magistracies were concerned with general administration in the city, or with the control exercised by Florence over the provincial towns. Committees of eight and five citizens, respectively, governed the Abbondanza and the Grascia, provisioning magistracies for the supply of the city’s grain, meat, and other foodstuffs, and for the supervision of its markets. The Magistrato dei Pupilli—since 1384 composed of five citizens—looked after the property of minors of elite families whose parents had died before they reached maturity and who became wards of the court. The Sanita, which had evolved from an earlier office during the plague of 1527, met in years of crisis to enforce health regulations.’ The Abbondanza, Grascia, Pupilli, and Sanita were concerned chiefly with Florence and its immediate territory. For the control exercised over the more distant towns of the territorial state, the Otto di Pratica and Cinque Conservatori del Contado were of chief importance. The Otto di Pratica, composed of eight citizens, was the committee of security that replaced the Dieci di Balia of 1380, the Ten of War, in times of peace and provided for defense throughout Florentine territory. The Cinque Conservatori del Contado supervised taxation of the territorial state from 1419 and adjudicated disputes between towns.° The magistracies were an important legacy to the Duchy. Administration through a system of rotating committees had extended to every level of the Republican government, from the priors of the Signoria down through the law courts, the finances, and the general administration, the guilds, and the Operai of churches, hospitals and charitable foundations. The line between a public and private sector is difficult to draw. Through such rotating committees, the Republic had provided ’ For the finances, besides the above, see Canestrini, La scienza e l’arte; Pagnini, Della decima e di varie altre gravezze, 1; Pampaloni, “Cenni storici sul Monte di Pieta,” 525—60. § Prunai, Firenze, 56, §8—5$9.

9 On the Otto and Cinque, see Guidi, Governo, 1, 203-23; I, 175-77; and ASF, Consulta, F454, second part, ins. I-3.

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for a sharing of influence, participation, and accountability within the citizen group. Fifteenth-century Florentine writers held that a relatively broad participation in office was appropriate to the preservation of Florentine liberty.'° In extraordinary circumstances, authority belonged to especially delegated commissions, the Balie, but in ordinary circumstances, under the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia and priors of the Signoria, individual magistracies had considerable autonomy. Particularly important were the Monte Comune, which stood for the bankers of the city; the Otto di Guardia, the police power; and the Otto di Pratica, for war and defense. The problem of continuity inherent in the frequent change of citizens in office was compensated for by a staging of terms in the magistracies, by electoral controls that affected the composition of the officeholding group, and by the small continuing staff. The electoral controls were further refined and strengthened in favor of the patrician elite by the reform of 1532, which reserved certain key offices in the magistracies for members of the Senate and Council of 200 and foresaw that others would be filled by nomination from the borse of eligible citizens by the two councils before the final drawings by lot." The dukes preserved the outward form of the magistracies, and indeed created new rotating committees that took their places alongside the older ones. A type of collegial administration continued into the eighteenth century. Still, it is important to distinguish clearly between rotating committees, boards on which members served permanently, and bureaus composed of permanent staff and headed by a single man. The Ruota with its foreign judges, and the Tratte and Riformagioni with their single notaries or secretaries, were not citizen committees but rather boards or bureaus, and in 1549 the Sanita was converted from a rotating committee into a permanent board. A list of positions in the central-administration in 1551, when the reforms carried out by Cosimo I were partly accomplished, describes 142 rotating offices in committees filled by citizens for brief terms, 23 in the upper councils between the Magistrato Supremo, Buonuomini, and Procuratori di Palazzo, 47 in the law courts, 45 in the finances, and 27 in the general and provincial administration. In 1552 Cosimo I created a new submagis‘© See Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, 1, 418-39; Rubinstein, “Florentine Constitutionalism,” 442-62. 't Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1, 12-13, 16.

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tracy in the Monte Comune of two Soprassindaci to audit accounts. In 1559 the Otto di Pratica and Cinque Conservatori del Contado were

combined into a single new magistracy, the Nove Conservatori del Dominio Fiorentino, with nine rotating citizens, and when the Archivio della Camera was created in 1569 as an archive for the protocols of notai, 1t was put under the direction of a committee of three."3 By the time of another list of offices drawn up under Cosimo’s second successor, Ferdinando I, in 1604, the number of places in magistracies had decreased slightly to 135. These continued with relatively few changes through the seventeenth century; the number was 115 under Cosimo III in 1695, and 115 under the last Medici duke, Gian Gastone, in 1736. Yet only the outward form of the Republican system survived into the seventeenth century, for the first dukes undermined the autonomy of the magistracies and reduced them to routine tasks. Cosimo I was the true architect of the new system. His authority grew partly out of the constitutional prerogatives given to the first Duke Alessandro De Medici in 1532, and partly out of circumstances of war and threat of disorder that made extension of his powers seem necessary to preserve the security of the city. But Cosimo guaranteed the privileges of the of-

ficeholding group and proceeded cautiously. One is reminded of Machiavelli’s advice in The Prince that rulers of civil principalities should free themselves from the nobles who brought them to power and from dependence on the established magistrates, while still being careful not to assert independent authority too rapidly. It was not until the reign of Cosimo’s two sons and successors, Francesco I and Ferdinando I, that the new procedures of the regime became fully elaborated. Still, from his first years Cosimo promulgated laws in his own name and that of the Magistrato Supremo alone, referring to the Senate only in particular instances.'> He then introduced his own men into the magistracies and the subordinate staff, who gave him cognizance of their deliberations and control over the entire administration. Symptomatic of the duke’s new authority was the change in the electoral procedures. In 1532 Alessandro De Medici had been empowered to appoint new senators and members of the Council of 200. He also 12 ASF, Inventario, Soprassindaci, preface. 3 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, vil, t1-13. 4 Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 9, “Of the Civic Principality.” 1s Anzilotti, Costituzione interna, 25-40, §0-53.

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appointed the Capitani of fortresses, officials of the Bande, the militia, and he filled certain other positions previously filled by the Signoria. But the Reform of 1532 had anticipated that the Senate and Council of 200 would have a dominant role in the selection of citizens for the magistracies. This was to operate partly through reservation of offices for members of the two councils, and partly through nomination of names from the borse by Accoppiatori in the Senate before the final sortitions. The four members of the Magistrato Supremo were always to be senators, as were one or more of the Buonuomini, Procuratori di Palazzo, Conservatori di Leggi, Otto di Guardia, Otto di Pratica, and Capitani di Parte, while additional offices in these and other magistracies were designated for the Council of 200. The Accoppiatori in the Senate were to choose the Magistrato Supremo; the Senate as a whole preselected the Otto di Guardia, Otto di Pratica, Conservatori di Leggi, Capitani di Parte, and Ufficiali of the Monte Comune, as well as the Capitani of

the larger towns of the Dominion. Preselection of other magistrates and provincial officials belonged to the Council of 200."

Cosimo intervened in the selection of magistrates by the appointment of citizens a mano, through the Magistrato Supremo. Selection a mano had already been a practice of the Republic. But in the sense understood in the fifteenth century, it had been a preselection of men by Accoppiatori from the borse before the more discrete final drawings by lot, as continued to be done for many offices after 1532.!7 The intervention of the duke involved a further a mano process, which substituted appointment among the preselected candidates by the duke and Magistrato Supremo for the final drawings by lot. The progressive introduction of this change is illustrated in Table 4.1, which shows the number of men selected during a year in 1551 and 1604. Offices in the magistracies continued to be reserved for members of the councils or eligible citizens, and the number of places available was 142 in 1551 and 135 in 1604. Considering the brief terms in office, from 286 to 274 individuals would be selected yearly. As anticipated in 1532, fully a third of the places were filled by men from the Senate and Council of 200, and thus by a relatively restricted group. Nineteen places in seven mag© See Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1, 12-13, and 118-22, for the reconfirmation of the privileges of the councils at the accession of Cosimo I. For details of the electoral proce~ dures, see Pansini, “Le segreterie nel principato Mediceo,” 9-23. 17 Rubinstein, Government of Florence, 30-52.

73

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PART II

istracies out of twenty were reserved for senators in 1§51, and this number increased by the end of the century to twenty-four positions in

fifteen committees out of twenty-two, while twenty-two places in 1551 and nineteen in 1604 were reserved for the Council of 200. The terms in office were such that each senator would be expected to serve at least one term 1n the magistracies during the year, and he might also occupy an office for a term in the provinces. Thus the Senate became an officeholding and administrative rather than deliberative body. Year after year, and day after day in the week, the senators made their rounds

of offices as the inner group of magistrates, a function they continued | to exercise into the eighteenth century. These new arrangements, and particularly ducal appointments, were

decisive changes in the old process of sortition. The participation of Florentines in office, on a broader, more open, and partly random basis, was disappearing. Magistrates were now chosen from above, and Cosimo might dismiss and reelect an entire committee, as was done with the once independent Otto di Guardia e Balia in 1558 when it imprudently proceeded to act against an official of the Court."* In 1551 ducal appointment extended to thirty-four positions in nine committees out of twenty-one, and under Cosimo’s successors the system of appointment was further extended. In 1595, under Ferdinando I, ducal appointment a mano engulfed the Buonuomini of the Collegio, thus making it easier for the duke to intervene in the election of new citizens.'? By 1604 appointment a mano extended to eighty-eight positions

in seventeen of the committees out of twenty-two, leaving only the Mercanzia, Onesta, Gabella del Sale, Gabella dei Contratti, and Dogana to be selected by lot in the accustomed manner. By this point two-

thirds of the magistrates were appointed by the duke, and although these men were still technically citizens made eligible through the scrutinies, total newcomers could be made eligible for offices ex nuovo if the occasion demanded. To some, selection a mano seemed a guarantee of more effective government, and indeed, the first dukes established a reputation for the effectiveness of their rule. As the Venetian ambassador, Andrea Gussoni, reported in 1576: “Since the magistrates know that their acts are over‘8 Lapini, Diario Fiorentino, 120. '9 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, XIV, 136.

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seen and are often examined by the Prince, out of fear of infamy or punishment they administer justice with a proper openness.”?° Under Ferdinando I, the lists of candidates prepared by the secretary of the Tratte provided precise indications of the qualifications of the men being pro-

posed. As was observed in a new summary of the regulations of the Tratte in 1595: “Selection by lot, never used by the ancient Romans and decried by reputable authors, is thus corrected, improved, and ordered,

so that judgment is not governed by chance, but chance by judgment.”?! However, ducal appointment narrowed the group of citizens in office, and left many who had had access to office under the Republic without access to influence. The sixteenth-century dukes governed with the participation of a select part of the patrician group. Discontent in the last years of Cosimo broke out in the rapidly suppressed Pucci conspiracy of 1572. The prospect of advancement, even among wellestablished citizens, for men who were not brought to attention by senators, the ducal secretaries, or the Court was dim. Further offices of less difficult attainment, it is true, were available outside of Florence among the places filled by Florentines in the provincial towns. These provincial offices will be considered separately. The Permanent Functionaries

Ultimately the Medici depended less on the Senate, the Council of 200, and the magistracies than on men chosen initially mostly outside of the

patrician group, who became the permanent officials of the new regime. The Medici had begun to make use of their own agents in the government of the city after their restoration in 1512—men such as Goro Gheri and Silvio Passerini, the cardinal of Cortona.?? Later, among the councillors of Alessandro De Medici in the 1530s were Cardinal Innocenzio Cybo and Francesco Campana, who had experience in the administration and diplomacy of Rome under Clement VII and had been sent to Florence with the Medici restoration, 1n the hope that they would help to secure the young duke’s position in the city.73 Un-

der Cosimo, the consolidation of ducal authority was entrusted to a succession of jurists able to find their way through the tangle of Repub20 Segarizzi, ed., Ambasciatori veneti, 11-1, 221.

21 ASF, Tratte, FIIOI, II. 2 On these, see Stephens, Fall of the Florentine Republic, 147f., 166f. 23 Spini, Cosimo De Medici, 14-15.

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| PART II lican legislation and able to define a new area of ducal jurisdiction. Lawyers were the technicians of sixteenth-century statecraft, and in Florence their importance increased quite noticeably under the first dukes.

The appearance of some of these new men has been studied by A. Anzilotti.24 By 1560 six new offices had acquired a special importance: the duke’s first secretary, or Auditore della Camera; the Auditore della Giurisdizione; the Auditore Fiscale; the secretary or Auditore of the Riformagioni; the Depositario Generale; and the Soprassindaco of

the Nove Conservatori del Dominio. They sat as members of a new council, the Pratica Segreta, which at first had irregular composition but gradually acquired responsibilities, particularly for the Dominion, that were distinct from the Magistrato Supremo. The Pratica became a council of the duke’s chief agents and provided for his private control of the central administration as a whole. The change began under Alessandro De Medici in the 1530s before Cosimo’s accession. In 1§32 one of the justices of the Ruota, Lelio Torelli, a lawyer from Fano who had been employed previously by Clement VII in the administration of the Papal States, was made Auditore della Giurisdizione to deal with problems related to the Church.*5 Cosimo retained Alessandro’s first secretary, Francesco Campana, replacing him on his death in 1546 with Torelli, who thus, besides being Auditore della Giurisdizione, also became the first secretary and Auditore della Camera. In this office he was the duke’s councillor for matters of

justice and grace, a position well above the lesser secretaries of the household who were in attendance for correspondence and special business. There were ten secretaries in 1551. The Auditore della Camera became the duke’s chief agent in the resolution of judicial appeals. Torelli was also a figure of great influence in the city. He was one of the

founders of the Accademia Fiorentina, edited the Florentine manu4 Anzilotti, Costituzione interna, 41-53 et passim. For a more recent discussion, see Diaz, Il granducato di Toscana, 85-103.

8 On the origins of the Pratica Segreta and another informal parallel council of about 1550, see Anzilotti, Costituzione interna, 167-95; on Torelli, see ibid., 158-59. On Quistelli, see Conti [de Comitibus], “Relationum,” 1, 76, 111. For other early members of the Pratica, see Francesco Vinta in ibid., 117; De Nobili in ASF, Guardaroba, F 50, I10; and Benvenuti in ASF, Magistrato Supremo, F 4310, 24.

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FROM MAGISTRATES TO FUNCTIONARIES

script of the Pandects of Justinian, and was made a senator in 1571, five

years before his death. Two other jurists attained a particular importance in the 1540s: Jacopo Polverini, a lawyer from Prato, the Auditore Fiscale; and Antonio Quistelli, a lawyer from Modighiana, the Auditore of the Capitani di Parte Guelfa and of the Conservatori di Leggi. Jacopo Polverini also began his career as an Auditore of the Ruota. He had occupied the Republican office of secretary of the Riformagioni at the time of Cosimo’s accession, was made the Auditore Fiscale in 1543, and later Auditore and permanent secretary of the Magistrato Supremo.’’ As secretary of the Riformationi he was the custodian of the archive of privileges and

statutes of the Republic, an important weapon in the control of the provinces. He was also the ducal representative in the Senate. As the Auditore of the Magistrato Supremo, he served as the legal secretary of this council, especially because by the 1550s it was becoming an extraordinary court of equity, attracting certain civil cases from the regular courts for the duke’s own arbitration. As the Auditore Fiscale, Polverini directed the new bureau of the fisc. He was responsible for the law of 1549 that revived the crime of lesa maesta, a legal weapon by which Cosimo controlled opposition within the city.28 The Auditore Fiscale controlled criminal justice. He sat as a member of the Pratica Segreta, later assumed control of the Otto di Guardia, and intervened ex officio in the Onesta, Gabella del Sale, Gabella dei Contratti, and Dogana. He also assisted in the direction of the Farine, a new bureau from 1§§2 that administered a ducal tax on mills.

Antonio Quistelli succeeded Polverini as the Auditore Fiscale in 1555, while Francesco Vinta, a lawyer from Volterra, became the Auditore of the Riformagioni and the Magistrato Supremo. Antonio Da Subbiano, another lawyer, was employed in 1543 as Auditore of the Bande, and thus became the justice for matters regarding the ducal militia.2° In the Capitani di Parte, Quistelli had been charged with the collection of fines due to the fisc and the administration of the property of rebels. In the Conservatori di Leggi, he was at first the duke’s repre6 Anzilotti, Costituzione interna, 158-59.

7 [bid., 44; J. Conti, “Relationum,” 76. 8 On the Riformationi and Fisco, see Anzilotti, Costituzione interna, 41-53, 131, 1553 ASF, Consulta, F 454, first part, ins. 3~4. 7? On Da Subbiano, see J. Conti, “Relationum,” 222.

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sentative in resolving petitions appealing administrative acts generally. But by the 1560s this control was assumed by Lelio Torelli as Auditore della Camera, and the Conservatori di Leggi became occupied instead with those cases of the poor that were presented to the duke rather than to the ordinary courts.3° Where the Auditori did not intervene in the magistracies directly, assessori legali were introduced as a further means for controlling the jurisdictions of the magistracies. By the time of Ferdinando I the Auditori exercised a consultative rather than final opinion

in the deliberations of the Nove Conservatori del Dominio, Pupilli, Monte Comune, and Monte di Pieta. Along with the Auditori, two other officials sat regularly in the Pratica Segreta. The new Depositario Generale, in the person of Ottaviano De Medici, appeared in 1537 as the treasurer of Cosimo’s assignment of public revenue, and the importance of this office increased as the ducal assignment grew.3' In 1559 the Otto di Pratica and Cinque Conservatori del Contado were joined into a single new magistracy, the Nove Conservatori del Dominio Fiorentino, which became the chief office for the administration of the Dominion. The three senators and six citizens of the Nove, all appointed a mano, had, besides their ordinary staff, a Soprassindaco who sat ex officio in the Pratica Segreta. He became the link between the Pratica and the rotating magistrates of the Nove of whom he, in effect, assumed direction.3? The provveditori of different magistracies, who continued from the Republican staff, were

generally responsible for the management of day-to-day economic matters and assumed a special importance in the new hierarchy of com-

mand. They became the chief responsible staff members in many offices. In 1§59 Filippo Dell’ Antella, the Provveditore of the Monte Comune, attended the meetings of the Pratica Segreta.33 Giovanbattista Gianfigliazzi, the Provveditore of the Grascia, sat as a member of the Pratica later under Ferdinando I.34 Finally, although he was never a member of the Pratica, the secretary 3° On the Auditore of the Conservatori di Leggi, see Anzilotti, Costituzione interna, 113-18; D’ Addario, “Note di storia,” 140-47. 31 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1, 118~22.

32 For the foundation of the Nove, see ASF, Leggi [Raccolta Tavanti], Affari di economia civica dal 1545 al 1777, V, ins. 4. 33 Anzilotti, Costituzione interna, 175. 34 ASF, Manoscritti, F 223, 8.

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of the Tratte acquired new responsibilities. In the middle years of the century the secretary was Ser Giovanni Conti, a notary from the pro-

vincial town of Bucine. He continued to keep the records of the Tratte | and was occupied with the extractions of citizens for offices, but he now also prepared lists of names for the appointments a mano and became important in filling lesser offices, receiving the petitions of place-

seekers, noting the claims of each applicant, and drawing up lists of names for the consideration of the ducal secretaries, the Magistrato Supremo, and the duke.?>

These men took their places above and alongside the senators and magistrates, acting to control, if not entirely centralize, the Republican administration from the top. The appearance of the Auditori gave rise to a long-lasting quarrel of precedence with the Senate that was provisionally concluded in 1588 when the Auditori assumed precedence over senators in all magistracies except the Magistrato Supremo.3° But the dukes also transformed the lesser staff of the Republic. Since the fourteenth century and before, this had grown in size as Florentine territory expanded, and as the volumes of letters, official acts, deliberations, and

accounts to be compiled annually grew. These offices had ranged in importance from the chancellors of the Signoria and Riformagioni, through the camarlinghi, ragionieri, scrivani, and notai of the law courts,

finances, and general administration, to a large number of menial underlings: porters, guards, messengers, and custodians. It is difficult to estimate the precise number of these offices in the fifteenth century, but a printed and incomplete list from the last period of the Republic describes nearly a hundred.37 In 1530 the offices in Florence itself, filled through the Tratte, included fifteen provveditori, two sottoprovveditori, nine camarlinghi, two ragionieri, twenty-four scrivani, and thirty-one

notai,3* : Such men had helped to provide for the continuity of the Republican

35 See the registers of “Suppliche informate” and of “Note ed informazioni” in ASF, Tratte. 36 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, xu, 287-88. 37 BNF, no author, “Magistrati della Citta di Firenze” (n.d., but from the period 1480~

1§30). There is information about individual offices in the fifteenth century and before, but without much indication of the total number involved, in Marzi, Cancelleria, and in Guidi, Governo della citta-repubblica di Firenze. 38 For 1530, see ASF, Tratte, F 85.

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PART II

government, although many of them had held office on as temporary a basis as the citizen magistrates. Some offices were filled through sortition for brief periods from the ordinary borse of citizens, or from the borse of citizen notai. Others were filled through a mixed system of nomination and sortition by the councils or the Signoria, and the officeholders chosen initially for brief terms of two or three years might continue in office for quite extended periods. Bartolommeo Scala remained through successive renewals in office as first chancellor of the Signoria from his first appointment in April 1465 until his death in 1497. Machiavelli, who was initially appointed for a two-year term, served continuously in the second chancery from 1498 until 1512.39 Some of the lesser offices had required special technical qualifications. The camarlinghi, the treasurers for the casse of different magistracies, were obliged to pledge sizeable sums of surety with the Monte Comune. The notaries or lawyers required for many positions had become a special group. Notaries were subject to the regulation and examination of the Arte dei Giudici e Notai, and lawyers were required to complete a course of legal studies. Lawyers had gained in importance during the fifteenth century. They helped to rationalize administrative procedures and to make the legal training of officeholders seem important for the sake of administrative efficiency.*° The extension of ducal appointment to the lesser staff can be followed through the registers of intrinsici of the Archive of the Tratte. These contain the names of men selected for brief terms by sortition, and although many lesser offices did not pass through this channel in 1530, twenty-five provveditori, camarlinghi, or ragionieri attached to fifteen magistracies can be followed incumbent after incumbent up to the

1560s, when most of them had become appointments for indefinite terms in the name of the duke. Of the original twenty-five positions, eleven became permanent appointments in the 1530s, six were converted during the 1540s, and four more before 1555, while two offices were suppressed, leaving only the camarlinghi of the Prestanze and Pu39 Note the electoral procedure for the chanceries of the Signoria in Marzi, Cancelleria, 291-99. On individuals in the chanceries of the Signoria, see Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads, A. Brown, Bartolommeo Scala; Rubinstein, “The Beginnings of Niccolé Machiavelli’s Career,” 72-91. 4° Martines, Lawyers and Statecraft, 11-61.

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pilli to be extracted through the Tratte yearly into the 1560s.4! Ducal appointment was exercised for the lesser offices partly through the substitution of ducal candidates for the men extracted from the borse. Thus, from a survey of offices prepared at the end of the 1540s, we find that the Camarlingo of the Monte Comune was selected “by tratta, he enters [office] on the first of March for four months . . . and does not exercise. . . Carlo di Simone Lenzoni serves for the one extracted, and has been [in office] since 1536.” In the Dogana, “the chancellor is extracted for a year . . . and does not exercise because there is Ser Giovanbatista Quarantotti from Montecatini.” In the Gabella dei Contratti, “the camarlingo per tratta. . . does not exercise . . . the substitute is Bastiano del Pace elected in 1534.4? This was a further step in the establishment of ducal control and a means for exercising patronage. With the decreasing ability of the magistrates to resolve matters independently, a larger amount of business was absorbed by the lesser staff.

Francesco Buontalenti, the Provveditore of the Fisco, wrote in response to an inquiry of 1576: “For some years now, the business of this office has grown to such an extent that besides the usual accountant, |

have kept another youth and one of my sons; otherwise it would not have been possible to keep everything in order.’’43 And indeed, as the procedures of the regime developed, the number of lesser functionaries grew steadily. 41 In the Capitani di Parte, Monte Comune, Prestanze, Dogana, Sale, Gabella dei Con-

tratti, Torri, Grascia, Cinque del Contado, Pupilli, Vendite, and Conservatori di Leggi; see ASF, Tratte, F 85, 3, 31, 34-41, 61, 114-24, 137. 4 BNF, Manoscritti Palatino, 756, $7, 82, 92. The salariati of the duke for 1543 include

the names of these and other men appointed directly; see ASF, Manoscritti, F 321, 17—21.

43 ASF, Misc. Med., F 27, ins. 13, 734f., dated 20 July 1576.

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5

THE EXPANSION OF THE CENTRAL BUREAUCRACY

The general trend in the increase in number of functionaries can be followed through lists of offices and officeholders that were drawn up at different times by the officials of the Tratte. The amount of paper that remains from the ducal bureaucracy is enormous, and through two and a half centuries the secretaries of the Tratte created a large archive concerning appointments. From time to time they also prepared general surveys of the bureaucracy for internal use, as a record of the means by which offices were filled. These lists are revealing documents because they describe offices in the central administration at different dates and provide the names of officeholders and information about fees and salaries. They begin with three surveys prepared under Cosimo I. One 1s

in two versions for the years between 1546 and 1550, made by Ser Tommaso Petrini, the third chancellor of the Tratte under Giovanni Conti;! a second, anonymous list dates from 1551, and a third from 1561.7 A detailed list dated “1604, a Giugno,” describes the central bureaucracy under Ferdinando I in the first years of the seventeenth century.? In addition, two very detailed and complete lists exist for the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, which reveal the state of the bureaucracy under Cosimo III and the last Medici duke, Gian Gastone; ' BNF, Manoscritti Palatino, 756, “Tutti e mag / della citta e uffitti di fuora de quali parte ne da a mano Sua Ecc / e parte se ne tragghono, distinti per ordine secondo le dienita di ciaschuno de quelli con li sua ministri, salari et altre cose a pie di ciascheduno di essi annotate secondo I’ordine della nuova riforma . . . [di Tommaso Petrini].” The names reflect the composition of the bureaucracy c. 1546-51. This is an extended copy of Manoscritti Palatino, 757, an earlier version dedicated to Luigi di Piero Guicciardini. 2 For 1551, see ASF Mediceo del Principato, F 633, “Uffici e stato della citta di Firenze,” pub. by D’Addario in “Burocrazia,” 362-456. For 1560, see ASF, Guardaroba,

F 50, “1561, Magistrati e ufizi della citta di Firenze.” .

| 84

3 ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, “1604, a Giugno, Magistrati della Citta di Firenze dati per tempo terminato da SAS o cavati per tratta con le lor provisioni et ordine della precedenza.”

EXPANSION OF THE CENTRAL BUREAUCRACY

they also contain series of names going back to the late sixteenth century. The first was compiled by Niccolo Arrighi, the son and personal assistant of Senator Alamanno Arrighi, the secretary of the Tratte between 1677 and 1700 under Cosimo III. It contains both descriptions of offices and continuous series of names ending in 1695.4 The second appears to have been prepared in 1765, but it provides descriptions of offices and the names of officeholders based on the acts of appointment for the years between 1695 and 1736.5

The lists are not entirely complete, for some magistracies are omitted entirely for the years 1551 and 1604, as are offices in all the lists that were considered to have been positions of the ducal household and of the Court. Municipal offices in the provincial towns, offices in the State of Siena, officers of the Bande, and ambassadors are also missing. However, for the central offices in Florence some of these gaps can be bridged, thus making it possible to construct cross sections of the central bureaucracy at these different dates.° Table a.1 in Appendix A groups magistracies and bureaus roughly by administrative function—

the upper offices of state, the law courts, the finances, the general administration, and the central offices for the provincial administra4 ASF, Misc. Med., F 413 (previously F 696), “Teatro di Grazia e di Giustizia ovvero Formulario de Rescritti a tutte le cariche che conferisce il Ser. G. Duca di Toscana per via del ufizio delle Tratte illustrato di varie notizie da Niccold Arrighi. . . parte prima, che contiene gli ufizi e cariche della citta di Firenze”; F 414 (previously 697), “. . . parte seconda che contiene gli uffici e cariche per fuori della citta di Firenze.” s ASF, Seg. Gab., F 123, in three parts “A: Ministero civile della citta di Firenze in tempo di Cosimo II, Gio. Gastone I, Granduchi di Toscana di G.M.; B: Relazione del governo Civile dello stato di Firenze e di Siena. . . ; C: Ministero civile per le jusdicenze del Dominio Fiorentino. . .” (n.d., dated 1765 in the inventory, but probably from the 1730s).

° For 1§§1 preference has been given to ASF, Mediceo del Principato, F 633, in the publication of D’Addario, which omits the lesser secretaries of state, the Pratica Segreta, Depositeria, Banca Militare, and Decima Ecclesiastica. The list for 1604 omits the lesser secretaries of state, the Riformagioni, Bande, Depositeria, Banca Militare, and Decima Ecclesiastica. For these years other positions, the Magona, Scrittoio delle Fortezze, Scrittoio delle Possessioni, Guardaroba, and Posta, which were apparently thought to be offices of the Court, are not mentioned. This is true of the Scrittoio delle Possessioni and Guardaroba in 1695, and of the Guardaroba in 1736. The lesser secretaries of the duke have been taken from ASF, Manoscritti, F 321. The number of missing offices for 1551 and 1604 has been estimated, chiefly on the basis of ASF, Guardaroba, F 50, and BNF, Manoscritti Palatino, 756. 85

PART II

tion—and distinguishes offices by relative type and rank—rotating or permanent positions in the magistracies, higher-level permanent offices, such as auditori, segretari, or provveditori, and permanent offices at _ an intermediary level, such as cancellieri, assessori, ragionieri, notai, and ajuti. Positions held ex officio have been counted as separate offices. The

guilds, the Operai of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Order of St. Stephen, the Studio Fiorentino, and other offices in Florence of peripheral importance have been omitted from consideration.” Definition of what comprised the bureaucracy depends on what magistracies the Tratte lists included consistently, and with time the view of the state became more inclusive. In the eighteenth century some offices that had earlier been Court positions are included. A large number of menial positions at the level of servants—custodi, donzelli, guardie, facchini, and tavolaccini—which were reported irregularly, have also been omitted. These included the famiglia of the Magistrato Supremo, the old ceremonial attendants of the priors of the Signoria, famigli of the Otto, and numerous veditori, cassieri alle porte, and stradieri of the Dogana.® Their omis-

sion limits the field of vision realistically to the more important positions, at the level of scrivani or above—perhaps 40 percent of all those in the city that were paid from the public purse. In 1551, when the reforms of Cosimo I were partly accomplished, there were some 360 identified offices, of which 142 (two-fifths) were rotating places in magistracies and 218 were fixed places on boards or at an upper or intermediary level in the permanent staff. The relative completeness and consistency of reportage gives percentages a reasonable significance. Considering magistrates and functionaries together, the total number of offices increased by two-thirds between the midsixteenth and early eighteenth centuries. But as this happened, the number of rotating offices in magistracies decreased by about 20 percent, while the number of permanent offices more than doubled. The

most rapid growth in permanent staff was in the late sixteenth century, | with about a 60 percent increase in number of offices between 1551 and 7 The Bigallo, which was a charitable hospital, and the magistracy of Or San Michele, a shrine near the center of the city that had some control over the central market, have been omitted from consideration in all the lists. ® Lower-level officeholders were not reported consistently. There were more than 220 at this level in 1551, more than 392 in 1604, and more than 396 and 478 in 1695 and 1736. Many of these were menial employees of the Dogana.

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EXPANSION OF THE CENTRAL BUREAUCRACY

1604. Another 40 percent increase took place by 1695, and another 20 percent by 1736. The change affected all branches of the administration, although it was less in the upper councils, in the law courts, and in the general administration than in the finances. In comparative perspective the Florentine bureaucracy appears to have been larger than the central bureaucracy of the Duchy of Milan at the end of the sixteenth century, but slightly smaller than the central bureaucracy of the dukes of Savoy at Turin in the early eighteenth century. The growth in number of offices may have been less rapid than in some parts of France, but

the true point of comparison is with the system of the Republic and first years of the Duchy, from which there was clearly a change.? The Upper Councils

The new functionaries at the top of the administrative hierarchy can be followed through the evolution of offices under the duke. Here much depended on circumstance, for under Cosimo and his two successors neither the Magistrato Supremo nor the Pratica Segreta served as a single council of state, and in the minds of some contemporaries this made the Medici government seem quite arbitrary.'° Cosimo I guarded his

own initiative and kept his small group of private councillors in the background. The Venetian ambassador, Vincenzo Fideli, reported his habits in 1561 as follows: In the morning at this time of year he always rises at dawn. . . and the first usually introduced is the Segretario di Criminale [the Auditore Fiscale] to whom all the crimes of the state are reported . . . of which the prince disposes. .. . They say that after the criminal matters are resolved, the secretary for affairs of state enters [the Auditore della Camera, or another secretary] and if there are any letters he [the duke] opens them himself, and they are read first by him. . . . When his own business is concluded, he gives audience to ambas» Chabod, “Stipendi nominali,” u, 187-363, lists some 150 offices, exclusive of provincial offices and Church benefices, for the vice-royal government of Milan in the 1590s, surely only a part of the Milanese administration. For Piedmont, Quazza, Le riforme in Piemonte, 1, 94, estimates that there were some 1,639 royal officials at all levels in the first decades of the eighteenth century. For France, Mousnier, La vénalité des offices,

106~14, estimates that the number of officials in Normandy, which is comparable in size to Tuscany, was about 1,800 in 1573 and had more than doubled to about 4, 100 by 166s. © One English observer in the 1590s wrote, “The Government (to speake in one word,

and not to use a harder terme) is meerely Despoticall”; see Dallington, A Survey of the ] Great Duke’s State of Tuscany, 39. On Dallington, see Crino’, “Documenti relativi.”

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sadors, nunzios, and other important persons. . . [and] . . . receives private persons, one by one, until the time to dine. . . . Then he passes petitions of justice and grace, and if there are any uncertain points on which he wants council

.. . and he has many men of valor and wisdom . . . he sends the matter on which he wants an opinion to whom he wants under seal, and they respond in writing under seal. Thus business is resolved according to his own will, and it is never said the council has resolved, but the duke has deliberated a certain thing.”

Cosimo stood above the Court, the Auditori, and his secretaries, while Francesco I, who was associated with his father’s rule in 1564 and succeeded on his death in 1574, withdrew to private diversions, giving more influence to his advisors. Andrea Gussoni reported to Venice in

1$70: |

As for the management of affairs of state . . . he [Francesco] takes council in everything from the secretary Concino [Bartolommeo Concini, one of the secretaries|. This man, . . . for his long practice with affairs, had already acquired a great authority under the prince’s dead father . . . [which]. . . is not only maintained with the son, but is in a sense increased, so that one can truly say that this prince not only does nothing without his knowledge, but does not determine anything different from his opinion. . . . He has a few other favorites . .. and among these principally Signor Giacomo Salviati, his kinsman. Still, this small number of councilors acts so that. . . affairs are conducted very secretly.?

In 1587, after he was suspected to have been poisoned by his morganatic wife Bianca Cappello, Francesco was succeeded by his brother Ferdi-

nando De Medici, who marked a return to the style of Cosimo. Francesco Contarini reported about Ferdinando to Venice in 1589: Although the magistracies remain as in the time of the Republic, still they come

to no decision . . . without knowing the intention of the Grand Duke, who regulates matters as he likes. He has no firm and determined council of state, only in some things he takes the council of Cardinal Dal Monte, the bishop of Pisa, of Camillo Dal Monte [the Commissario Generale of the Bande], and of Colonel Dovara, but then he makes his own decision, being of a lively wit, practiced in affairs, one might say brought up and nurtured in them." 1 Segarizzi, Ambasciatori veneti, WI-1, 151. 12 Tbid., 200.

3 [bid., mI—2, 109.

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The Venetian residents clearly thought the dukes had an independence of action well beyond that of the doge of Venice. Ducal edicts were law, and under Cosimo they were countersigned by the Auditore della Camera, as first secretary, and published in the name of the Magistrato

Supremo. The other secretaries, in what became the Segreteria di Stato, were occupied partly with internal administration and partly with foreign correspondence. They had a greater or lesser importance

depending on personality and circumstance. Some, like Lorenzo Pagni, Giacopo Guidi, or Bartolommeo Concini, a provincial notary whose rise to influence began in the chancery of the Riformagioni in the

1540S, were often absent on diplomatic missions abroad, either with their own charges or in attendance on the ducal ambassadors.'4 Giovanbatista Concini, the son of Bartolommeo, succeeded Lelio Torelli as Auditore della Camera in 1576, and he attained an influence with Francesco I equal to that of his father. He fell from favor as an intimate of the Court on the accession of Ferdinando I, but he continued to hold the office of Auditore della Camera until his death in 1605.'5 Too much influence of such secretaries as the Concini may have caused Ferdinando I’s division of responsibility in the Segreteria di Stato. In an instruction of November 1587 he named three principal secretaries, a first secretary, Piero Usimbardi, and two under-secretaries, Antonio Serguidi and Belissario Vinta. Responsibility was divided among them for foreign correspondence, internal correspond-

ence, the government of Siena, mandates to the Depositeria, and appointments to offices through the Magistrato Supremo and the Tratte.‘© Ferdinando also replaced Concini as Auditore della Camera by a Consulta of three permanent auditori for matters of justice and grace. This became a new high tribunal of much importance. The Consulta later handled judicial appeals from both Florence and Siena, reviewed the appointment of justices, and acquired a consultative opinion 1n new legislation. ?” 14 ASF, Manoscritti, F 321; Del Pozzo, “Ambasciatori toscani,” $7—106.

's On Giovanbatista Concini, the father of Concino Concini of the Court of Marie De Medici in France, see Litta, Famiglie celebri, u, fasc. 14, and J. Conti, “Relationum,” $6. 6 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, x, 10-12. On the division of responsibilities among different secretaries, see Pansini, “Le segreterie nel principato Mediceo,” xxiv—xlix. 17 J. Conti, “Relationum,” 84-105, describes the Consulta as a judicial tribunal, but according to the Venetian ambassador, Francesco Badoer, in 1609, it was more nearly a sec-

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The Magistrato Supremo continued to serve as a court for petitioners seeking direct ducal arbitration. Florentine citizens enjoyed a privilegio

del foro before this court. The Pratica Segreta continued as the council , of Auditori and other key officials, and by 1604 both of these councils had absorbed a new volume of business. In 1551 the five senators of the

Magistrato Supremo had been assisted by a permanent Auditore, a chancellor, and two coajutori. In 1588 they acquired a fourth chancellor, and in 1604 both the Auditore Fiscale and Auditore of the Riformagioni were attached as ex officio members.'® The Pratica Segreta continued with the regular participation of the Auditore della Camera, Auditore

Fiscale, Depositario, and Soprassindaco and two senators from the Nove. It acquired jurisdiction over the government of Pistoia and its Contado, ultimately over the group of detached ducal fiefs in the region of Lunigiana and Pontremoli north of the Republic of Lucca, over communal chancellors in the provincial towns, over licenses and privileges, and dispatched much other business through a regular secretary and his three assistants. 19

In the sixteenth century the focus of the upper councils of state was the person of the duke, and the key officials of state had the task of exercising control in the duke’s name over the lesser magistracies. There was a parallel hierarchy of control for the military forces of the Duchy, a militia called the Bande, which had developed from the Republican militia and was further reorganized by Cosimo I at the time of the war with Siena in the 1550s. The Bande were organized under captains of fortresses, and commanded by Commissari who were generally nobles of the Court, so that only two offices appear in the Tratte lists: the Auond Pratica: “. . . il Granduca Ferdinando introdusse poco prima della sua morte una re-

duzione d’uomini . . . come un collegio, nominato da lui la Consulta, e questo per sollevarsi dal fastidio d’aver a veder suppliche e scritture de particolari . . . e in questo aveva introdotto il dottore Cavallo fiscale, 11 dottore Staldo, Usimbardi segretario di Stato, il dottore Encalandi, Bolognese, e per segretario il Corbolino. . . . Ora a questa Consulta ha introdotto madama [the Duchess Christine of Lorraine, Regent for Cosimo Ij] che, oltre le suppliche de’ particolari, si portino anche altri negozi, appoggiando al parer d’essa Consulta molte cose delle quali non é ella molto ben capace”; see Segarizzi,

Ambasciatori veneti, 11-2, 166. |

8 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, xu, 58-59; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 28. On the changing jurisdiction of the Magistrato Supremo, see Pansini, “Il Magistrato Supremo,” 283-315. '2 ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 8, 43. ofe)

EXPANSION OF THE CENTRAL BUREAUCRACY

ditore of the Bande, who had jurisdiction over matters such as recruitment, and the Banca Militare, the central paymaster.”° In the seventeenth century the highest officials under the duke exercised a more regular collegial influence. The Segreteria di Stato grew in importance, and there began to be a regular Council of State. Ferdinando I died in 1609 and was succeeded by his son Cosimo II, a youth of nineteen who governed at first under a Council of Regency; he died in 1621. Ferdinando II also succeeded as a minor, occasioning formation of a second regency in which two dowager duchesses, Christine of Lorraine and Maria Maddalena D’ Austria, had a role. These accidents of succession helped to strengthen the influence of the upper ranks of officialdom. The Council of Regency for Ferdinando II was made up of men of the Court: Giuliano De Medici, the archbishop of Pisa; Count Orso D’Elci; Senator Niccoldé Dell’ Antella; and Marchese Fabbrizio Colloredo, the Commissario Generale of the Bande.?! Two secretaries were attached to the council—Andrea Cioli for internal affairs and Curzio Picchena for external affairs. The influence of these men grew like that of their sixteenth-century predecessors, and the Council of Regency continued when Ferdinando II reached majority in 1628. With the death of Curzio Picchena in 1626, Cioli became the principal secretary, an office that he retained until his death in 1640.2 Through the deaths of four members of the Regency in 1636 and 1637, Ferdinando II was finally able to assert his independence, but a Council of State continued with participation of his brothers Mattias, Giovan Carlo, and Leopoldo De Medici. In these circumstances the tasks of the ducal secretaries became still more specialized. A Segretario di Guerra, Lorenzo Usimbardi, had appeared during the 1620s. He stood above the Auditore and paymaster of the Bande, and his successors were regularly attached to the council.?3 Previously the secretaries had been chosen almost exclusively outside of the Florentine elite from among lawyers or notaries who were dependent on the dukes alone. 0 On the organization of the Bande, see Ferretti, “L’organizzazione militare in To-

scana,” 1 (1929), 248-75; 11 (1930), 58-80, 133-51, 211-19. | 21 The Regency was foreseen in the will of Ferdinando I of 1592; see ASF, Misc. Med., F 359, ins. 4. For its composition after the death of Cosimo II, see Galluzzi, Storia, vu, 29-31. 22 On Cioli, see J. Conti, “Relationum,” §7; Galluzzi, Storia, v1, 190-91. 23 ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 871-75.

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But the secretaries were now generally chosen among Florentine patricians of the Court. In 1641 Giovanbatista Gondi was made the first secretary and in 1644 Domenico Pandolfini became secretary of war.*4 The Council of State continued in the last years of Ferdinando II and under Cosimo III after 1670. In 1674 the members were the Maggiordomo of the Court, the Auditore della Giurisdizione, the Depositario Generale, and since the death of Gondi in 1664, one of the two first secretaries by turn.”5 Gian Gastone De Medici, who succeeded Cosimo III in 1720, was introduced into the council in 1693, when the two principal secretaries were Francesco Panciatichi and Benedetto Quaratesi.”° By the end of the seventeenth century these men stood well above the Magistrato Supremo and Pratica Segreta, which had hardly changed in

their membership and functions since the time of Ferdinando I. The type of Renaissance monarchy where attention focused chiefly on the person of the duke, which had been typical of the sixteenth century, evolved in a new, more institutional direction in the seventeenth century, so that routine deliberation of the higher officials of state as a group gained in importance. The Administrative Magistracies

The growth in number of functionaries at a lower level may have been partly a consequence of this growing concentration of influence around the duke. The Medici did not raise revenue through the sale of offices nor did they expand the size of the bureaucracy by this means, and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not a period of extreme external pressures on Tuscan society, such as accompanied state building in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War. Still, in the seventeenth century it seemed to require a larger number of functionaries to accom-

plish what had been done under the Republic with fewer men. The emergence of the bureaucracy as a source of steady employment may have promoted the creation of new offices. Nonetheless, the growth in number of functionaries had a utilitarian aspect. The dukes governed a larger territory than had been controlled by the Republic, they were obliged to counter strains imposed by diplomacy and war, and within 4 J. Conti, “Relationum,” 58; ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 872. 5 Pellegrini, Relazioni inedite, 221. 26 Ibid., 250; ASF, Manoscritti, F 321, 797.

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Tuscany they had to deal first with conditions presented by the economic expansion of the late sixteenth century, and then by a seventeenth-century contraction. With the War of Siena in 1555 and the acquisition of Siena as a fief from Philip II in 1557, Cosimo I had increased the original territory of the Duchy by nearly a third. Siena was ruled by a governor through its own magistracies, but the bureaucracy in Florence was still obliged to give attention to this Stato Nuovo. The Medici were then not involved in another war until Ferdinando I’s brief intervention in support of Henry of Navarre in southern France in 1591. Nonetheless, the dukes had an active diplomacy. Their foreign commitments were of a complex nature. Florence was repeatedly claimed as a fief of the Empire by the Hapsburgs in Vienna. They were tied to Spain through their possession of Siena, and there was a permanent Spanish garrison in the presidii, a Spanish enclave in Tuscan territory along the Mediterranean coast. Thus the Medici were obliged to propitiate both branches of the Hapsburgs, and to defend themselves diplomatically in the intrigues of Italian politics. Cosimo enlarged the militia and carried out an extensive program of building fortresses along the borders of the state. He constructed a small fleet for the Order of St. Stephen, which was present at Lepanto and still had some importance at the end of the seventeenth century under Cosimo I[II.?7 But the Medici never had a large army nor were they involved in a lengthy war. Tuscany was a power of significance in the restricted space of sixteenth- and early seventeenthcentury Italy but was entirely outclassed in the seventeenth-century struggle of Spain, France, and the Empire. The loans obtained from Francesco I by Philip II in 1583 involved large sums sent to Spain, and the attempt of Ferdinando I to escape Spanish domination by providing support to France—to which was added the expensive marriage of Marie De Medici in 1601—were burdens on the ducal finances.* In the seventeenth century, Cosimo II was obliged to provide troops in defense of Spanish interests in Lombardy in 1614, and then for the service of the Empire in Germany in 1619. Ferdinando II sent further troops to 27 The most comprehensive work on the Order of St. Stephen is the compilation of documents of Guarnieri, L’Ordine di S. Stefano; for a list of engagements of the fleet, see

vol. 1, 183. On the Bande under Cosimo I, see Ferretti, “L’organizzazione militare in Toscana.” On the new fortresses, see Spini, ed., Architettura e Politica, 7-77 et passim. 8 On the foreign loans, see Pampaloni, “Cenni storici sul Monte di Pieta,” 550.

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Lombardy in 1635. Between 1641 and 1644 he was involved, in league

with Venice and Modena, in a war with Pope Urban VIII over the Duchy of Castro, a possession of the Farnese along the southern boundary of Siena. The brief war exhausted the ducal treasury, causing a near crash of the Monte Comune and Monte di Pieta. The remaining years of Ferdinando II were more tranquil, but in the 1690s, at the time of the War of the League of Augsburg, Cosimo III was obliged again to pay tribute to Vienna.”9 The growth of the bureaucracy also reflected the changing economic prospects of the Duchy. At the end of the sixteenth century and until about 1620, the population of the Duchy grew steadily by the influx of new men from the countryside into Florence and into the other larger towns, along with their artisan industries. ‘Then came a downturn, and not much new growth occurred until the mid-eighteenth century. The bureaucracy grew with consolidation of the ducal state in the sixteenth century upswing, but then was confronted with the seventeenth-century depression. The economic downturn placed new burdens on the state. The dukes were obliged to defend the economic position of Tuscany, provision the inhabitants of its cities in years of scarcity, and help to provide for the increasing number of rural and urban poor. Offices in the bureaucracy undoubtedly helped to employ citizens of the capital who could not find employment elsewhere. One can hardly ignore the greater tendency of subentry into offices under titular officeholders and the increase in number of supernumerary functionaries. Yet, although the ducal government was able to act to some extent positively to confront the seventeenth-century economic crisis, it responded in a largely

routine manner to the new problems that confronted it. In the lesser administrative offices, institutions inherited from the Republic and the first period of the Duchy continued through the seventeenth century

with relatively little change. | The Law Courts

In the administration of justice, most of the new functionaries were at an upper level, close under the advisors of the duke. Because of the sixteenth-century effort to centralize jurisdiction, these new men heard 9? Caggese, Firenze dalla decadenza di Roma, m, 151-339; Galluzzi, Storia, vi-tx, passim.

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appeals and supervised the procedure of other magistracies, and they did not, for the most part, constitute courts themselves. The functions of the Auditori continued to expand. The Auditore Fiscale had jurisdiction over criminal justice, over the Otto di Guardia e Balia, and over certain financial matters. When the office was created in 1543 he was provided with a lesser staff of six men, three chancellors with two coajutori, and a depositario or provveditore who dealt with fines and property

confiscated by the fisc. The Auditore Fiscale preserved this staff in 1551, but as his powers grew, and with the new regulations of 1563 and 1570, he was supplied with a luogotenente. By 1604 the number of assistants had grown to eleven: the provveditore with three assistants, a cancelliere, two scrivani, a ragioniere, and three notai of the Camera Fiscale, who were aggregated to his office from the Camera del Comune, a Republican office that dealt with fines from the courts.3° The Audi-

tore Fiscale also intervened in the Consulta, which with its three Auditori and secretary stood above the other regular courts of the capital. Another Auditore, with jurisdiction over rights for hunting and fishing, emerged during the reign of Ferdinando I. Finally, a new archive was created by Cosimo in 1569 and connected with the law courts as a registry office and repository for protocols of acts registered by notai.3!

Concern with the ultimate jurisdiction of the duke extended to the relationship between Church and State. This was the area of activity of the Auditore della Giurisdizione, who had emerged in the 1530s. The dukes nominated bishops, controlled patronage for many benefices, and had jurisdiction over what were called “luoghi pu,” Church buildings of various types under lay administration.3? The Medici had a large area of control in affairs of the Church. Still, the Church had large autonomies and exercised its own jurisdiction through the archbishops of Florence, Pisa, and Siena, the bishops, and the Nunzio and Inquisition in Florence. The Auditore della Giurisdizione, who was a very impor3° Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, V, 75-92; VU, 286f.

31 For the Auditore di Cacce e Pesce, see Segarizzi, Ambasciatori veneti, 111-2, 82. It is significant of the overemphasis on higher officials that in 1695 this Auditore was thought

to have few duties, so that “. . . [this office was generally given to]. . . un auditore che sia provvisto di altre cariche. . .”; see ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 204, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 645-48. 32 On the activity of the Auditore della Giurisdizione, see Taddei, “L’ Auditoriato,” 29-76.

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tant and active official in the sixteenth century, continued without acquiring a separate staff, although he worked through the ducal secretaries until 1693, when Cosimo III, in what was seen by contemporaries as a relaxation of ducal control in matters of Church and State, made the Giurisdizionali into a board of four—two civil and two canon lawyers, with a secretary. They remained until the single Auditore was restored in 1730, just before a new offensive began to distinguish ducal from ecclesiastical jurisdiction. There were other offices in the area of Church-State relationships. An Auditore di Benefizi e Cose Ecclesiastiche existed in the seventeenth century, and a fixed board of four deputies, called the Deputazione Sopra 1 Monasteri, exercised a degree of control over convents and monasteries. The Church was taxed, in accordance with an agreement with Leo X, on property acquired after 1§16, and the Decima Ecclesiastica was administered separately from the Decima of “citizens” and paid, in accord with an agreement with Pius VI in 1564, to support the University of Pisa.33 Further institutions were in the area of mixed ducal control that fell between Church and State. Officials of the Bigallo, an orphanage and asylum for the poor in Florence that had jurisdiction over other hospitals of the city, were included in some of the Tratte lists.34 But the Buonuomini of S. Martino, a hospital for the indigent poor, and the hospitals of the Innocenti and of Santa Maria Nuova did not pass through the Tratte. Below the level of these jurisdictional offices, there was surprisingly little expansion of staff in the regular law courts. One must remember how diffusely justice was administered in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century states. Most of the Florentine magistracies continued to have jurisdiction in their own areas for individual taxes, markets, trades, and other particular matters, under the surveillance of ducal Auditori and Assessori. The sixteenth-century dukes were more concerned with securing the ultimate intervention and cognizance by their own agents than in changing the form of juridical proceedings, although the in33 The best available guide to the relationship between Church and State is the introduction to Scaduto, Stato e Chiesa. Otherwise for the Auditore della Giurisdizione, benefizi e cose ecclesiastiche, see ASF, Misc. Med., F413, 194, 202, Seg. Gab., F 123A, §97—600; for the Giurisdizionali, see Misc. Med., F 413, 239-41; for the Decima Ecclesiastica,

see Misc. Med., F 413, 323-28, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 475—80; for the Deputazione Sopra i Monasteri, see Misc. Med., F 413, 341-45, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 601-604. 34 ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 323-28, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 475-80.

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quisition of justices and magistrates was strengthened. The Ruota, Otto di Guardia, Conservatori di Leggi, and Mercanzia continued through the seventeenth century much as they had under Cosimo I. The Ruota preserved its small staff of six Auditori for civil cases, two of first instance for the city and four of appeals, with six rotating notai attuari, despite the fact that the court heard appeals both in the city and from the justices sent out from Florence to the lesser towns. The staff of the Otto di Guardia, which had criminal jurisdiction under the Auditore Fiscale, remained similarly small. In 1551 there were four men besides the eight rotating magistrates—a provveditore and three chancellors who stood above the lower level esecutori and guards. In 1604 the Auditore Fiscale had become an ex officio member of the Otto, and it had also acquired a permanent secretary, who directed the proceedings of the court.35 The staff of the Conservatori di Leggi hardly changed, while the Mercanzia, the commercial court, had already employed a regular justice under the Republic, and its staff increased from three men in 1551 to five in 1695. However, in the seventeenth century the activity of the Mercanzia decreased as the volume of foreign trade diminished, the several notai di banco who had been licensed for the use of merchants disappeared. By 1695 the status of the court had fallen, in that the magistrates, justice, and staff had passed under general supervision of the Soprassindaco of the Nove. 3

Repeated ordinances attempted to speed up the procedure of the courts and to regulate fees paid by petitioners to the judges, magistrates, and lesser functionaries. It is clear that the overlapping jurisdictions of magistracies and the long chains of appeal caused delays, while there was sporadic pressure from lawyers to rationalize procedure.37 3s On the Ruota, see D’ Addario, “Burocrazia,” 435-36; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 2, 433 Misc. Med., F 413, 831-40, Seg. Gab. F 123A, 228-34. Further on the Ruota, see Pansini,

“La ruota fiorentina.” On the Otto, see D’Addario, “Burocrazia,” 402; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 33, Misc. Med., F 413, 723-35; Antonelli, “La magistratura degli otto di guardia,” passim. 36 On the Conservatori di Leggi, see D’Addario, “Burocrazia,” 402-403; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 3, 35, Misc. Med., F413, 243~-50, Seg. Gab., F123A, 119-29, 221-27. For the Mercanzia, see ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 5, 36, Misc. Med., F413, 505-22, Seg. Gab., FI23A, 119-30.

37 See among others the indications in BNF, Magliabecchiana, cl. xxix, Cod. 1; A. Accolti, “Saggio di alcuni avvertimenti politico-legali . . . 1644,” andin ASF, Misc. Med., F 370, ins. 36.

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The trend in the development of legal training emphasized the importance of trained jurists, rather than boards of rotating “citizen” judges. There was an attempt to reform the court system further in this direction in 1680 through an extension of the functions of the Auditori of the Ruota. The tribunal of the Onesta was suppressed and absorbed by the Otto di Guardia, while the Otto lost its old criminal competence, and a new criminal court was attached to the Ruota with three permanent Auditori, called the Ruota Criminale. However, this reform was short-lived. The Onesta never reemerged, but the old powers of the Otto were restored in 1699.38 Some observers of the sixteenth century thought the ducal administration as a whole was pervaded by a network of spies, and the esecutori of the Otto, the lowest agents of the Auditore Fiscale, may have given this impression.3? The Otto may have helped to counter disorder and violence in the sixteenth-century city, but here developments had stopped. The Medici never created a separate body of police. Like the figure of justice that Francesco J had erected on top of a column in Piazza Santa Trinita in 1581, justice was administered by high-status officials distant from citizens. The duke as the ultimate font of grace was a distant symbol of order and security, and the punishments that emanated from ducal justice were harsh. The gibbet stood outside of Porta Santa Croce, and the Stinche, the prison near the old Palazzo of the Podesta with its two magistracies, bargelli, and guards, retained the aspect of a grim urban fortress.*° 38 On the reform, see Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, xIx, 141-54; on the Ruota Criminale, see Antonelli, “Magistratura degli Otto di Guardia,” 35-37; ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 843-47. For the Onesta, see D’ Addario, “Burocrazia,” 414-15; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 40.

39 Segarizzi, Ambasciatori veneti, 11-1, 149-50: “gli ufficiali [of the Otto] . . . vanno di notte per la citta, mandano le liste al detto segretario del criminale di tutti quelli che da loro sono incontrati. . .” and “. . . un numero infinito di una certa sorte d’uomini che sono da tutti fuggiti come la pesta, perche. . . sono chiamati le spie del Duca. . . questo terrore delle spie e ridotto a questi termini, che tutti hanno paura del compagno e che uno non sia spia dell’ altra per acquistarsi la grazia del Duca. . . .” In 1604, the esecutori of the Otto included 18 famigli, 2 bargelli, a luogotenente del bargello, and an undetermined number of famigli del Bargello; see ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 33.

4° On Tuscan criminal procedure in general, from the standpoint of the eighteenthcentury reforms, see the essay by Paolini, “Discorso politico-storico sui giudizi.” For the

Stinche, see D’Addario, “Burocrazia,” 420-21; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 5, 41, Misc. Med., F 413, 891-900, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 99-103.

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The Finances

In contrast to the law courts, there was a steady expansion of personnel in the administration of the finances. Here the new functionaries were partly at an upper but chiefly at an intermediary level. They were employed partly in the administration of taxes left over from the Republic, partly—because the dukes sought to compensate for insufficient tax revenue by borrowing—in the expanded administration of the public

debt, and partly in new offices involved with the patrimony of the Medici, in what can be called roughly the ducal domain. The development was from a public financial administration of the Republic with its beginnings of a system of direct taxation and elaborate controls

to a more private and oblique system. The Republic had been highly innovative in public finance, and the dukes made full use of the resources available to them, although there was little advance in direct taxation. Tuscans seemed to have been willing to accept ducal absolutism so long as it did not mean that direct personal taxes increased much. Instead, the Medici finances operated through indirect taxation and borrowing. The peculiar accounting methods for revenue and expenditure make it difficult to discern global assessments, but the tax burden appears to have been very light. There was no true central treasury. Revenues were

received through different magistracies, which also disbursed them haphazardly through mandates for payment. A certain greater availability of resources in the financial magistracies may thus have been the

important factor for the growth of staff in this area. Nonetheless, through estimates of revenue made from time to time, one can glimpse the trend of change in the way the dukes marshalled resources. There was a gradual progression from the city of Florence as the chief source of revenue to a broader dependence on the Florentine territorial state and on the State of Siena—that is, on the regional state as a whole. An estimate of the yield of the finances under Cosimo I in 1550 indicates that public revenue in the first years of the Duchy came chiefly from taxes imposed on the city of Florence itself. The Decima, the direct land tax paid by Florentine citizens, provided about 10 percent of

revenue. The Dogana of Florence, customs duties, and the Casse e Porte, a further tax on goods entering and leaving the city, accounted for a further 41 percent. Generalized indirect taxes such as the Gabella 99

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del Sale, the salt monopoly, and the Gabella dei Contratti, the tax on notarized contracts, which fell both on the city and on towns of the Dominion, accounted for 29 percent. Taxes on provincial towns, the revenues of Pisa and Pistoia, the Decima of the Contado, and the Tasse de1 Comuni (local estimi assessed locally and paid to the Cinque del Contado and later to the Nove in Florence) accounted for 20 percent. The remainder was made up chiefly of small items of intake from different Florentine magistracies, and of fines paid to the fisc.4* This balance put the major tax burden on the capital and reflected the practice of the Re-

public, as did the relative importance, however small, of direct taxation, an. innovation that had developed during the fifteenth century.” If one compares these revenues with estimates of revenue from the 1730s, the trend of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries becomes clear. By the eighteenth century the relative tax revenue derived from Florence had decreased with respect to the remainder of the state, and there was an expansion of indirect as opposed to direct taxation. In the 1730s the share of the Decima, Dogana, and Gabelle delle Porte of Florence had fallen to 4, 6, and 12 percent of revenue respectively, or 22 per-

, cent in all. There was a considerable increase in the proportion of gen- _ eralized indirect taxes affecting both Florence and the provinces. Among the Gabella del Sale, the Gabella dei Contratti, and the Farine (a group of new taxes from the mid-sixteenth century on foodstuffs and mills), indirect taxes grew from 29 to 45 percent of revenue. Taxes that weighed only on the provincial towns also increased, from 20 to 27 percent of the total, with sizeable new contributions from the Dogana of Livorno and from Siena.*3 Indirect taxes were far easier to impose over an extended area than direct taxes, and their growing importance is indicative of the shift in dependence from capital to region. As in the law courts, the new officials of the finances were partly of a supervisory type. According to an instruction of Ferdinando I| in 1587, orders for the treasury were to pass from the Segreteria di Stato to the Depositario Generale in the Pratica Segreta, and in the seventeenth century the Depositario was a member of the Council of State. In 1537 the Depositeria had been the treasury of the duke’s own assign+ See “Entrate dello Sta[to] di Fiorenza, al netto ordinarie, 1550,” in D’ Addario, “Burocrazia,” 436-37. 4 Molho, Florentine Public Finance, 22-122 et passim. 43 ASF, Seg. Gab., F 1238, 80ff; averages for the years 1731-37.

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ment of public revenue. This assignment was initially paid by the Monte Comune, the central financial office of the Republic, which continued as an important office of the finances in the first period of the

Duchy. There was a distinction among public revenues, public revenues officially assigned to the duke, and the private patrimony of the Medici, although the distinction became progressively blurred. Both the ducal assignment and Medici patrimony were accounted for by the Depositeria, but this was still not the total of state revenue. The Ufficiali of the Monte Comune continued to receive proceeds from the Decima and revenue from the casse of other magistracies to fund the debt,

and in the first period of the Duchy the Monte continued to make a large number of payments. The ten ufficiali of the Monte were reduced to four in 1573, of which two, the Soprassindaci, were permanent appointments, while the permanent staff of the Monte grew in the six-

teenth century from twenty-three men to twenty-nine. In 1537 the assignment of the duke had been a mere 12,000 Scudi annually.45 But from the time of the War of Siena in the 1550s, an increasing amount of revenue was diverted to the duke directly, and gradually the Depositeria Generale replaced the Monte Comune as the central office of the finances. The Depositario, at first a functionary of the ducal

household, is not included in the lists of officeholders for 1551 and 1604; but in a fragmentary list for 1561 he appears with five assistants, and it is assumed that he had at least this many in the other two years.*° The Auditore Fiscale also intervened broadly in the financial admuinistration, and the Soprassindaci gradually absorbed the old functions of the Ufficiali of the Monte as the central auditing and accounting office. These men, originally in 1552 two citizens appointed a mano for indefinite terms, were reunited to the Monte in 1573, but in the seventeenth century they had become a separate body with an independent staff of

fifteen men.47 Among other financial offices, the Zecca—the mint,

with two magistrates and five permanent functionaries—hardly 44 ASF, Tratte, F 86, 78; D’Addario, “Burocrazia,” 403-404; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 34.

4s Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1, 120.

46 ASF, Guardaroba, F 50, 110; Misc. Med., F 413, 331-39. On the development of the Depositeria, see Canestrini, La scienza e l’arte di stato. 47 Ibid., 181-88; ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 881-88, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 441-48.

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changed, although by 1695 it also depended on the Depositeria rather than on the Monte Comune.* In the 1620s, at the time of Ferdinando II, the sum accounted for by the Depositeria had risen to some 600,000 to 800,000 Scudi annually, chiefly from the Farine, Dogana, Gabella dei Contratti, and Nove. The patrimonial possessions of the Medici provided a smaller sum. The receipts went chiefly to the ducal family, to the militia, to the galleys of St. Stephen, and to the upkeep of fortresses. Other revenues continued to be received and paid out by the Monte and by various other magistracies.*9 In the 1730s the Depositeria received a smaller total revenue than it had in the 1620s, and there were further changes in the types of receipts. The dukes sold monopolies in the seventeenth century, which multiplied for those engaged in the manufacturing and selling of tobacco, spirits, and playing cards; the manufacturing of felt hats and tallow candles; the mining of alum; hunting deer; and tuna fishing at Portoferraio. In small amounts, they also entered into the more private revenue of the state.5°° By 1695 the staff of the Monte Comune had dwindled to only fourteen men.’ But the decline of the Monte did not mean that the dukes did not follow the practice of the Republic in an attempt to borrow from their subjects. Other new Monti were created

under separate administrations. To pay for his involvement with France and for provisioning the Duchy with grain in the 1590s, Ferdinando I created a new Monte Vacabile in 1591, which was clearly separated from the Monte Comune in a regulation of 1593.5? Cosimo I] turned his attention for raising new funds to the Monte di Pieta, and then the regents for Ferdinando II started a new policy of borrowing on the revenues of the gabelles. The Ufficiali of the Gabella del Sale had charge of the salt tax, overseeing the production of salt near Volterra 48 T)’ Addario, “Burocrazia,” 409; ASF, Manoscritti, F283, 40, Misc. Med., F 413, 921I— 29, Seg. Gab., F 123A, $62—72.

49 Note the balances of the Depositeria in ASF, Misc. Med., F 264, ins. 15, 16, 26, 29, 44, for the years 1626-50. so BR, Moreniana, 142-1, “Compendio istorico del Governo Civile, economico e militare della Toscana a sm il Re Carlo di Napoli, di Sicilia, Duca di Parma e Gran Principe di Toscana. . . [di Luigi Viviani ?, 1733],” 17-28 “Bilancio entrate.” A more detailed set of balances of the Depositeria for the 1730s is in ASF, Seg. Gab., F 1238. On the Appalti, see Dal Pane, “Riforme finanziarie e riforme economiche,” 71-98. 51 ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 525-53. $2 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, Xi, 255-60; XIV, 37-42.

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and arranging for its distribution to Florence and the provincial towns, which were expected to consume their quotas. These officials had nine assistants in 1551, with additional provveditori outside of the capital at Volterra and Pisa. By 1604 the number of men in the central office had grown to eleven. Then, in 1625, the regents for Ferdinando II created two new Monti on the Gabella del Sale, which was enlarged in 1641 and acquired a separate board of seven fixed protettori. In 1695 fourteen men in Florence were occupied with keeping the Monte and Gabella del Sale operating. 53

The financial problems resulting from Ferdinando II’s involvement in the War of Castro in the 1640s evoked a further effort to raise revenue through the creation and sale of monopolies for tobacco and spirits and a reorganization of the Monte di Pieta. This had become a charitable loan and deposit bank in the sixteenth century, attracting the savings of Florentines at all levels of the social hierarchy. It was linked to the ducal finances in that Francesco I used its capital for a loan to Spain in 1583, Cosimo II borrowed from it in 1616, and it was then further plundered by Ferdinando II, who obliged depositors to accept only a fraction of their original interest in 1645. Thus the Monte di Pieta also became a part of the debt.5+ Funded debts of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries were generally of two types: perpetual funds in which holders passed shares on from generation to generation; and short-term funds, generally at higher interest, in which the shares became extinguished on the death of the original shareholders. The earlier Monti of Florence had been mostly perpetual funds, but a short-term Monte Vacabile was established by Ferdinando | in 1591. Cosimo III created another one in 1692, of 600,000 Scudi, with a board of six protettori and a staff of fourteen.55 By these means the funded debt of the Medici reached truly immense proportions. At the beginning of the Hapsburg regency in 1737 it totaled some 14 million Scudi. Among indirect taxes, on which the finances increasingly depended, 33 ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 38, Misc. Med., F 413, 609-37; Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, XVI, 344-53.

$4 Pampaloni, “Cenni storici sul Monte di Pieta,” 542-55; ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 555-607, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 295-331. Carol Menning of Brown University is completing work on the Monte di Pieta in the sixteenth century. 3s Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1X, 272-324; ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 639-53, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 361-80.

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the Farine assumed a considerable importance. This was a tax on the milling of grain imposed in 1552 that was administered along with a tax

on butchering meat by a bureau directed by the Depositario and the Auditore Fiscale. The tassa del macinato was quite profitable and was made effective through its connection with the provisioning legislation. Its proceeds went directly to the Depositeria. It employed twentyeight men in 1604 and twenty-three in 1695.°° The Gabella dei Contratti, Dogana, and Decima continued much as they had at the end of the Republic. The men employed by the Gabella dei Contratti, the tax on notarized contracts, attempted over two centuries to enforce a tax on contracts and to collate copies of huge numbers of notarized documents for the information of the fisc, tasks requiring eight men in the mid-sixteenth century and sixteen at the end of the seventeenth.‘7 The Dogana, the system of tolls, under its magistracy of four Ufficiali, had sixteen men in its central office, more officials under local direction in the provincial towns, and a swarm of menial employees—tbollatori, legatori, guardie, and facchini—in Florence and the provincial toll stations, who inspected, stamped, and carted about merchandise in the Florentine and provincial customs houses.**

The recourse to indirect taxation becomes more comprehensible when one considers the difficulties of administration that beset the Decima, the direct tax on land and houses paid by Florentine citizens and inhabitants of the Florentine Contado. Direct taxation presented problems because its imposition and collection involved a degree of negotiation with the propertied classes who were most affected, and in Florence these were the patricians. The fifteenth-century Catasto of 1427, a tax on all types of income imposed on Florence and throughout Flor-

entine territory, had grown out of the Republican system of forced loans, and continued, despite difficulties of administration, until 1480. But the Florentine state was not again able to summon up this kind of civic spirit. The Decima, which was assessed initially in 1494, was only a tax on income from real property imposed in Florence and its Con$6 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 11, 297-305; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 51, Misc. Med., F 413, 447-70, Seg. Gab. F 123A, 501-20.

s7 [)’ Addario, “Burocrazia,” 419-20; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 39, Misc. Med., F 413, 447-70, Seg. Gab. F 123A, 481-99. 88 T)’ Addario, “Burocrazia,” 415-17; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 37, Misc. Med., F 413, 921-29, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 562-72.

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tado. New revenue assessments for the Decima were made in 1534, the magistracy absorbed the older offices of the Prestanze and Vendite in 1§51 and 1579, acquired its own assessore, and developed its own jurisdiction. There were fifteen regular employees of the Decima in 1604, and four more men for the Decima Ecclesiastica, the separate tax on Church property. The ineffectiveness of the Decima, and the difficulty of administering the tax, arose from the fact that the dukes never succeeded in renewing the revenue assessments of 1534 on which it was based. Thus the officials of the Decima attempted to keep the tax accounts of property owners up to date by compiling registers of purchases and transfers

of land and houses in double-entry registers. Whenever there was a purchase or sale of property, the tax amount was transferred from account to account. When a property owner died, new accounts were opened for his heirs.s? New men were added for this purpose, and in a final effort to keep up with operations and trace dead-letter accounts, the Decima was reorganized under a permanent Soprintendente Generale in 1690, who stood above the four citizen magistrates. In 169s, while the Decima continued on its old basis, the permanent staff, in-

cluding that of the separate Decima Ecclesiastica, had grown to twenty-eight men. For what became the ducal domain, the emphasis shifted from the public buildings of the Republic to ducal regaglie and to the Medici possessions and estates. The Capitani di Parte Guelfa had been occupied

- with the small concerns of public property of the Republic, and this magistracy absorbed the old Ufficiali di Torre, which was concerned with roads, streets, and the city walls, in 1547. The Capitani di Parte seems to have been a busy office in the sixteenth century, which, besides the ten magistrates, employed an Auditore and staff of eight in 1551. It was concerned with fortresses, town walls, public roads, bridges, drainage, maintenance of river channels to guard against floods, and the streets of Florence. Its authority extended geographically outward through the Contado from the upper Arno to the outskirts of Pisa. At the end of the century the architect Bernardo Buons9 The inventory of the Decima Granducale lists nearly 6,000 volumes of records related to these operations between 1534 and 1776. 6 Pagnim, Della Decima, 1, 107 et passim; D’Addario, “Burocrazia,” 405-406; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 42, Misc. Med., F 413, 285-328, Seg. Gab., F 123A, $62—72.

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talenti was one of its chief engineers. Yet the Capitani di Parte was not responsible for the supervision of all buildings, for five extraordinary provveditori were appointed for the construction of the Uffizi in 1560; a second office developed, the Scrittoio delle Fortezze e Fabbriche, which in 1604 was still a suboffice of the Capitani di Parte. The two bureaus

together had about the same staff in 1695 and 1736 as they had in 1604.° The Guardaroba and Scrittoio delle Possessioni, which administered

the private patrimony of the Medici, were under the general supervision of the Depositeria Generale. They do not appear in the Tratte lists for 1551 or 1604, probably because they were still considered to be offices of the ducal household and of the Court. The Medici had a large family patrimony: estates in Tuscany, Monti shares in Rome, fiefs in the Kingdom of Naples, and further possessions in the Duchy of Urbino. In the sixteenth century the Guardaroba and Scrittoio delle Possessioni developed to manage this patrimony as offices of the Court. There were two parallel developments: on one hand there was an expansion of functionaries grouped around the Florentine magistracies, and on the other hand there was a transfer of officials to the bureaucracy

from the household of the duke. The first of these two developments was by far the more important one in Florence, although the second is more usually associated with administrative developments in northern Europe. A list of salariati of the Court in 1560 provides the names of a guardaroba, sotto guardaroba, and scrivano of the Guardaroba, and of a cas-

siere of the Scrittoio delle Possessioni. Another Court list, for 1604, shows twelve officials of the Guardaroba and Scrittoio. But the Scrittoio delle Possessioni appears in the Tratte list in 1736, when it employed twelve men in Florence under a Soprassindaco, and others out-

side of the city. The Guardaroba supervised gilders, furriers, upholsterers, and other artisans, and in 1736 was still considered to be

an office of the Court. 61 T)’ Addario, “Burocrazia,” 399-400; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 30, Misc. Med., F 413,

737-69, Fortezze e Fabbriche, 437-44, 618-31, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 22-48. On public works carried out under direction of the Capitani di Parte Guelfa in the late sixteenth cen-

tury, see Cerchiai and Quiriconi, “Relazioni e rapporti,” 187-253, and Gallerani and Guidi, “Relazioni e rapporti,” 261-316. 6 For 1560, see ASF, Manoscritti, F 321, 153f.; for 1604, 331f. For the 1730s, see BR, Moreniana, 142-1, 14f. For 1736, see Scrittoio Possessioni, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 650-69.

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EXPANSION OF THE CENTRAL BUREAUCRACY

Finally, the Magona, the monopoly for the production of iron from the island of Elba, was a private business undertaking of the dukes and became a part of the bureaucracy. The iron mines had been worked by a company under Medici control from the fifteenth century onward, and Cosimo I acquired further rights over them from the Appiani, the princes of Piombino, in 1572. The administrators of the monopoly do not appear as officeholders in 1604, although by 1695 the Magona had also become a regular bureau, with eight officials in Florence and more men at Pistoia, where the iron ore was smelted, finished, and processed.°3 When comparing the number of court and city institutions, the city still predominated; few new offices emerged independently out of the Medici Court. The General Administration

The offices that fell outside of the immediate area of the law courts and finances, although there were no true sectoral divisions 1n the bureau-

cracy, can be grouped together under the rough heading of “general administration.” Some of these were concerned with provisioning and public assistance, others were concerned with the general control exercised from Florence over the provincial towns. The provisioning of Florence with foodstuffs was a necessity of first

importance for the Republic and the Duchy alike. The Abbondanza and Grascia, the provisioning magistracies, developed in response to efforts to assure a sufficient urban food supply. Grain prices rose sharply in the sixteenth century, and Tuscany experienced grain shortages at the end of the century.® The Abbondanza secured local supplies of grain, imported grain, maintained granaries, controlled the marketing of grain, and supervised bakers in an attempt to assure a sufficient supply of bread. The office was reformed by Cosimo I in 1556, and in 1604 it was under the direction of a provveditore, with a magistracy of four rotating citizens, and a staff consisting of sotto provveditore, camarlingo, cancelliere, and two assistants. The Abbondanza was reorganized again after a grain crisis in 1648-49, when the rotating magistrates were 6; BR, Manoscritti, 142-1, 140-43; ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 493-500, Seg. Gab., F 123A, §73-96.

64 Parenti, Prezzi e mercato del grano a Siena, 27-28. This problem is treated at greater length in Chapter 12.

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replaced by a board of fixed Protettori and the staff grew still further. The Grascia exercised a similar control over the marketing of meat, fish, and oil, and underwent a similar development. New ordinances for its regulation were published in 1561, 1580, and 1680. In 1695 the office was directed by a rotating committee of five citizens under the direction of a provveditore and had a staff of nine. The dukes also intervened at other moments of threatened crisis, and the Sanita developed as an office with powers to act in years of plague and epidemic. Through reforms of 1549 and 1604, this magistracy also became a fixed deputation, acquired its own provveditore and chancel-

lor, and assumed direction of local health offices in the provincial towns. These were fully operative, and had some effect, in the plague of 1630.7 The Republic had also provided other types of assistance. Orphans and abandoned children of the poor were relegated to hospitals, but for more well-to-do citizens the Magistrato dei Pupilli continued through the seventeenth century as a court of wards.°* Another public service, the post office, was an entirely new undertaking. In the mid-sixteenth century this was a concession farmed out by the duke to a private individual. But beginning with an ordinance of Cosimo I in 1564 a maestro generale delle poste began to be appointed regularly through the Magistrato Supremo. Other regulations for the Poste followed in 1587, 1623, and 1628. In 1695 the Uffizio delle Poste was directed by three officials under a Soprintendente Generale who em-

ployed fourteen other men in the capital for the collection and distribution of letters.°° Through their efforts Florence enjoyed a regular mail service at what might appear to have been a surprisingly early date. 6s ASF, Guardaroba, F 50, 88f., Manoscritti, F 283, 43, Misc. Med., F 413, 1-9, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 381-95. For the nuova Abbondanza, see Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, xvU,

371-75, and, on the reform of 1697, XXI, 14-30. 6 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1V, 253-63; IX, 272-324; XIX, 177-82; D’ Addario, “Burocrazia,” 407-408; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 42, Misc. Med., F 413, 473-91, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 251-48.

67 On the Sanita, see the historical introduction to ASF, Inventario 404, Guardaroba, F 50, 10of., Manoscritti, F 283, 43, Misc. Med., F 413, 851-58, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 24148. The extent of its jurisdiction in 1630 appears in Cipolla, Cristofano and the Plague. 68 D’ Addario, “Burocrazia,” 407-408; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 40, Misc. Med., F 413, 797-813, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 104-18. 6 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, v, 157-58, XI, 55f., XV, 329-30, xvi, 38-39; ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 771-76, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 632-44.

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It is difficult to define the limits of the bureaucracy in this area of gen-

eral welfare, for some other institutions, which have not been considered separately here, also appear in the Tratte lists. There was the Bigallo, the hospital for the poor; Or San Michele, the shrine maintained since ancient times by the Comune, which had some jurisdiction over the central markets; the Opera of Santa Maria del Fiore, which maintained the fabric of the cathedral; and the Studio Fiorentino, which served partly as a university. These institutions had other officials. The guilds also remained important through the eighteenth century. Their boards of deputies and consuls were selected from the guild membership through special borse of the Tratte, but in the sixteenth century the staff of the guilds were appointed like those of other ducal offices. Indeed, the decline of the guilds is indicative of the consolidation of the new system. The guilds had been very important in the Florentine government of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; one could say that the Florentine city-state had initially emerged from these institutions. But their importance decreased in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as the magistracies of the Republic grew. After 1532, guild membership, in all but the Arte dei Giudici e Notai, no longer affected the admission of citizens to the scrutinies for offices in the magistracies.”° In 1534 the fourteen minor guilds were disestablished, or combined, and later the statutes of the remaining guilds were revised. Nine guilds remained in the eighteenth century: the Arte del Cambio, Mercatanti, Lana, Seta, Medici e Speziali, Vaiai e Quoiai, Fabbricanti, Linaiuoh, and Giudici e Notai. These institutions were entirely subordinate to the new system. A regular staff of provveditori, assessori, and camarlinghi appointed through the Tratte had appeared around the guild consuls and Deputati, who themselves were appointed a mano by the duke. Guild regulation of Florentine professions and trades continued into the eighteenth century, but the guild statutes were enforced by the Mercanzia and other regular courts, and the guilds were lower-level institutions in the regular bureaucracy. 7° There is no comprehensive study of the development of the guilds under the Duchy, although some indications may be drawn from Doren, Le arti Fiorentine, and Sarchiani, Ragionamento sul commercio. Regarding their personnel, see D’Addario, “Burocrazia,” 421-28; ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 46-50, Misc. Med., F 413, 33-191, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 130~220. Charitable institutions of the city are described in Passerini, Storia degli stabilimenti.

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6

CENTRAL AND PROVINCIAL OFFICES

The offices in the central bureaucracy were situated in Florence, but their jurisdiction extended well beyond the walls of the capital. In the sixteenth century their jurisdiction was exercised most effectively in the Contado, nearest to the city, where Florentine rule was longest and most completely established. At a greater distance was the territorial state, the Distretto, which completed the Florentine Dominion with its privileged towns and feudal jurisdictions, and after 1557, the State of Siena. Siena continued to be governed separately from Florence into the eighteenth century with its own administration. The dukes also acquired a number of small, previously independent fiefs around the periphery of the state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the size of the Duchy did not change significantly after the 1550s." There were a number of different channels through which orders of

the central administration were transmitted to the provinces, which, despite particular privileges, were ruled more or less directly from the capital. The dukes had to deal with the privileges of subject cities, but they never had to bargain with provincial estates. The law courts of Florence, particularly the Otto di Guardia and the Ruota, had appellate jurisdiction throughout the Florentine Dominion, as did the tribunals of other magistracies. But the office of the Nove Conservatori del Dominio Fiorentino was particularly concerned with the provincial towns. The Nove was a new office that absorbed the functions of earlier magistracies in 1559, and by the early eighteenth century, besides its three senators and six citizens, all appointed a mano, it had accumulated a permanent staff of thirty-three men. The affairs of Siena passed separately through the Segreteria di Stato. Pisa and its territory, although it remained part of the Florentine Dominion, acquired a degree of administrative autonomy. The Practica Segreta had jurisdiction over two other privileged territories: Pistoia and its region, and the detached ' Fasano Guarini, Stato Mediceo, 10.

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communities and ducal fiefs at Pontremoli, north of Lucca. But the Nove had jurisdiction over what might be called economic and political

matters for all other towns in the Florentine Dominion. The magistrates and staff audited communal expenditures, supervised the collection of taxes, and received tax revenues. They also approved many ap-

pointments of local officials, reviewed local statutes, adjudicated disputes between towns, received petitions, were guardians of luoghi pti, and concerned themselves with other affairs outside of Florence.? Moving outward from the capital, one wonders whether the new offices of the Duchy were all, like the Nove, in Florence, thus further consolidating the dominance of the capital over the territorial state that had begun to emerge under the Republic. Or was there a parallel expansion of institutions outside of Florence, which helped to guard provincial autonomies? The government of the Dominion had presented serious problems in the last years of the Republic, and in the first period of the Duchy a relationship between Florence and its territory seemed to have been emerging in which feudal nobles and the notables of provincial towns were linked to the ducal regime through the ceremonies of the Medici Court. Yet the administrative bond with Florence soon tightened, central institutions developed at the expense of provincial ones, and provincial autonomies that remained from the Republic con-

tinued to decline. |

With its component parts, the dukes ruled a small to medium-sized state in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century terms, smaller than the Duchy of Savoy or the Republic of Venice. The central nucleus of the Florentine Dominion, the Stato Vecchio, was the Contado, a territory divided at the level of criminal jurisdiction into four Vicariati, a Podesteria, and the detached Capitanato of Livorno. The oldest part of this territory, an area with a diameter of about sixty miles around Florence, contained the three Vicariati of Certaldo, S$. Giovanni, and Scarperia.3 This had been the first area of Florentine expansion, and from the four2 On the Nove, see ASF, Consulta, F 454, second part, ins. 1-3; for the staff in 1559, see Magistrato Supremo, F 4310, 24; for later, see Manoscritti, F 283, 32, Misc. Med., F 413, 655-56, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 49-73. 3 About 1560 the Florentine Contado contained the following Vicariati (criminal juris-

dictions that had subordinate Podesterie with civil jurisdiction): Certaldo, S$. Giovanni, Scarperia, S. Miniato al Tedesco, and also the Podesteria of Prato, which had criminal jurisdiction, and the Capitanato of Livorno. See Fasano Guarini, Stato Mediceo, 83-93.

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teenth century it was controlled directly by the central magistracies of

| the capital. Then the Dominion extended further, engulfing the Contade of Colle, Pescia, San Miniato, Pistoia, Arezzo, and Montepulciano in the fourteenth century; of Pisa, Cortona, San Sepolcro, and Volterra in the fifteenth century, and of Pietrasanta, north of Pisa, in 1513, until it extended in a long arc from Lake Trasimeno down the valley of the

Arno to the Mediterranean coast. Some of this new territory was assigned to the Contado, but most of it was called the Distretto. Depending on the nature of their original treaties with Florence, these more recently controlled towns preserved their own statutes, magistracies, and particular privileges—an uncertain federative relationship that was increasingly resolved in the fifteenth century into close association and control from the capital.¢ The surviving independent feudal nobles of Tuscany were also largely in the Distretto, and some of these preserved a special degree of autonomy.’

The Republic had sent out justices to the more distant towns and subjected them to taxation, levies of troops, and a degree of economic regulation. Still, at the end of the fifteenth century central control was uncertain at moments of crisis. After the expulsion of the Medici and after the French invasion of 1494, Pisa revolted, internal factions at Pistoia reduced it to disorder, the loyalty of Arezzo became unsure, Cortona was briefly controlled from the Papal States, and the Volterra succeeded in regaining some of the privileges it had lost at the time of its revolt and reconquest in 1472. By the end of the fifteenth century, the Dominion had reached approximately its permanent size. Aside from Siena, the new territory added to the state by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dukes was very small. The chief Republican officials sent out to the Dominion from Flor4 The major administrative units of the Distretto were: Anghiari, Arezzo, Barga, Borgo S. Sepolcro, Campiglia, Castiglione Fiorentino, Castiglione del Terziere e Bagnone, Castrocaro, Colle Valdelsa, Cortona, Firenzuola, Fivizzano, Montagna di Pistoia, Montepulciano, Pescia, Pietrasanta, Pieve S. Stefano, Pisa, Pistoia, Poppi, S. Giminiano, Sestino, Val di Bagno, Val di Chiana, Vico Pisano, and Volterra; see ibid., 93107. A more recently controlled territory, San Miniato, Livorno, was aggregated to the Contado rather than to the Distretto. s On the formation of the Dominion, see Becker, “The Florentine Territorial State,” 109-39; Guidi, Governo della citta-repubblica di Firenze, m1. Of fundamental importance for

assessing the cohesion of this territory in the sixteenth century is Fasano Guarini, Stato Mediceo. See also her “Alla periferia del Granducato Mediceo,” 1-29.

I12

CENTRAL AND PROVINCIAL OFFICES

ence were Capitani, Podesta, and Vicari, Florentine citizens who served as the local justices and were selected for brief terms through the Tratte. They were accompanied by regular justices, notai, and men-atarms, who were often provincials. The Capitani and Podesta were the older officials, and the Vicari were of more recent installation, from the

mid-fourteenth century. Capitani served in larger towns of the Distretto and had both civil and criminal jurisdiction, as did some Podesta. In the Contado, Vicari had mixed criminal and civil jurisdiction and stood above groups of Podesta who had civil jurisdiction alone. There were eighty-one justices in 1551, thirty-two in the Contado and forty-nine in the Distretto: fifteen Capitani, twelve Vicari, and fiftyfour Podesta. A few other towns, chiefly in the Distretto, had the right to elect their own justices or were sent minor ufficiali in the form of notai. These territorial jurisdictions remained with little change into the eighteenth century, except that new justices were sent out to territories added to the Dominion, and the status of some jurisdictions changed.

The number of major officials sent out from Florence in 1736 was eighty-five.°

Besides these men, the chief local officials who linked municipal governments to the capital were the communal chancellors and camarlinghi, who came under the supervision of the Nove in 1559. Even small

local communities had their own statutes, an elected council in one form or another, and magistrates who regulated markets, roads, and provisioning, levied taxes, and maintained I[uoghi pii. At the end of the Republic the communal chancellors and camarlinghi had been locally

elected officials, but during the reign of Cosimo I control over the chancellors tightened. Beginning early in his reign, there were scattered reforms of town statutes that proceeded through the Auditore delle Riformagioni in Florence.” The camarlinghi, as officials responsible for local finances, continued to be selected locally, but the chancel‘ For 1551, see Fasano Guarini, Stato Mediceo, 83~107, a list of jurisdictions rather than of officials; see also D’ Addario, “Burocrazia,” 428-33; for 1604, see ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 14-24; for 1695, see Misc. Med., F 414, “Ufizi e cariche per fuori della citta di Firenze,” 172f.; for 1736, see Seg. Gab., F 123c, “Ministero Civile per le jusdicenze del dominio Fiorentino,” 1-120. 7 New statutes were adopted at Cortona (1543), at Livorno (1544), San Miniato (1546), Anghiari (1550), Empoli (1560), Montepulciano (1561), and elsewhere; see Fasano Guarini, Stato Mediceo, $5.

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lors began, despite local protest, to be appointed in the capital. In 1552 the chancellor of Arezzo, who had previously been an elected “doctor or notary of the place,” became a “dottore forestiero” (that is, not of Arezzo) appointed by the duke. The same happened at San Giminiano in 1563, and at Firenzuola, Pieve S. Stefano, and Val di Bagno in 1564. At this point, central appointment seems to have became the general rule. This was protested at Montepulciano in 1563-66, where the communal council at first resisted paying the salary of an appointed chancellor, at Castiglione Fiorentino in 1566, and also at Cortona, where new statutes and the appointment of the chancellor led to a protracted struggle with the Nove. Finally, the confrontation led to ceremonial burning of the communal archive by townspeople in August of 1569.° The sixteenth-century reforms fell far short of imposing institutional uniformity on provincial communities. Local institutions still varied

considerably from place to place, and individual communities preserved an array of privileges with regard to taxation, judicial immunities, and procedures of judicial appeal. But the appointment of the chancellors made them into agents representing the duke, and they be-

came important provincial correspondents of the Nove.° | Municipal autonomies were greatest in the larger towns of the Distretto, where in the eighteenth century “citizens” still claimed noble status equal to the patricians of Florence. Pisa had its own proud communal traditions, as did Volterra, Pistoia, Arezzo, Cortona, Borgo San Sepolcro, and Montepulciano, as well as such smaller towns as Colle and Castiglione Fiorentino. The Reform of 1532 had recognized the privileged status of towns in the Distretto that had previously recognized only the Signoria of Florence, and questions of dispute with these places were reserved to the Magistrato Supremo and the duke.'° Thus the dukes themselves had a special place in the government of the Distretto, and the relationships of these towns with Florence continued to

develop through particular arrangements. In fact, it was in the Distretto rather than the Contado that the changes under the Duchy chiefly appeared. The titles of justices sent out from Florence changed, almost as if the dukes were attempting to gain allegiance by according ’ Fasano Guarini, “Potere centrale e comunita soggette,” 490-538. 9 Ibid., 518.

114 |

© Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1, 14, “. . . le faccende di Volterra, Arezzo, S. Giminiano, Colle e di tutti 1 sudditi che riconoscevano solamente la signoria. . . .”

CENTRAL AND PROVINCIAL OFFICES

particular honors. Arezzo, Pisa, and Pistoia were raised from the rank of Capitanati to Commissariati in the sixteenth century, and the Commissari were usually Florentine senators. The same happened for Cortona and Volterra at the beginning of the seventeenth century, while Montepulciano, when it became the seat of a bishop in 1561, and later Prato, in the Contado, were raised from the rank of Podesterie to Capitanati." The special arrangements for Pisa and Pistoia developed out of the situation of the first years of the Duchy. The arrangements for Livorno, Portoferraio, and other places under the governance of military Commissari of the Bande developed subsequently. Pisa had been conquered by Florence in 1406, and, after its revolt in 1494, was reconquered in 1509. In the fifteenth century Florence had controlled the city through a Capitano, and after 1421 also sent out two other citizens annually, the Consoli di Mare, for the supervision of the port. Under Alessandro De Medici, the Consoli di Mare were supplanted by a special commission, reformed by Cosimo I in 1542, which remained until 1551. Cosimo and his two successors encouraged development of the commerce of Pisa through Livorno and attracted artisans to the city. The duke restored the University of Pisa in 1543, making it the major university of the Duchy. Pisa was exempted from the Florentine guild regulations that forbade the finishing of silk cloth outside of the capital in 1546, and the Order of St. Stephen was established there in 1562. A canal from Pisa to Livorno was completed in 1573, and Francesco I encouraged the leather industry. The local Pisan magistracies, whose selection was partly controlled by the Florentine Commissario, included a General Council, Council of Priors, Monte Pio, and uffiziali for the Onesta and Grascia. In the Council of Priors and in the more select council of Riformatori, where offices were reserved for a restricted group of families in the citizen class, a new orientation of the elite developed toward the

Court through entry of Pisans into the Order of St. Stephen.'? The Florentine Commissario was the chief magistrate, the university had its own Auditore and jurisdiction, and the Consoli di Mare served as the commercial court. Other Pisan officials were appointed from Florence 1! ASF, Manoscritti, F 283, 14, 16, 18, Misc. Med., F 414, 174-75. 12 Luzzati, “La classe dirigente di Pisa,” 457~67.

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PARTII as assistants to the Commissario, and for the Dogana, Gabella dei Contratti, Gabella del Sale, and Grascia. Ferdinando I extended the privileges of Pisa still further, so that the city and its territory gradually acquired a degree of local autonomy. Confronted with high grain prices in the 1590s, the duke attempted to encourage agricultural improvement. A new magistracy had been introduced at Pisa in 1495 for drainage of the surrounding marshes. With

broader powers, revenue from local taxes, and supervision of communities in the territory of Pisa, this magistracy became the Magistrato dei Fossi in the sixteenth century. Under Cosimo I the local revenues of Pisa and its territory were put under control of the Nove in Florence. But local control was introduced in 1608 through creation of an office at Pisa called the Magistrato dei Surrogati, which, along with the Ma-

gistrato dei Fossi, acted to give the city autonomy from the Nove. Other new local offices, the Deputazione sopra le coltivazioni del piano di Pisa and the Magistrato di Coltivazione e Fabbriche, had appeared in 1§91 and 1601. They were directed partly by Pisans and, with the other Pisan magistracies, helped to preserve a semblance of Pisan independence.'3 A similar arrangement developed for Pistoia where the bloody feuds of the Panciatichi and Cancellieri clans from the 1490s were still a problem in the 1530s. In 1490 two Commissari from the capital were associated with the Capitano for Pistoia’s internal affairs. Four Commissari were sent out in 1538, but after the magistracies of the city were rein-

stated in 1545, Florence continued to have a special jurisdiction over Pistoia. This was exercised by the Pratica Segreta, which appointed a Depositario, Auditore Fiscale, and other local officials.'¢ Livorno grew steadily in size to become the major port of Tuscany, and was made a free port through successive measures of Cosimo I and Ferdinando I. By the 1630s it had surpassed Pisa in size, and by the 1670s Siena, so that in the early eighteenth century it was the second largest city of the '3 Most recently for Pisa, see Fasano Guarini, “Citta soggette e contadi,” 1-94. Also see Mallett, “Pisa and Florence in the Fifteenth Century,” 403-41. For its later development, see Braudel and Romano, Navires et marchandises, 16-31; Repetti, Dizionario, rv, 297f.; BR, Bigazzi, 229. For a list of officials appointed at Pisa, see ASF, Misc. Med., F414, 2f. 14 For Pistoia, see Repetti, Dizionario, 1v, 401f.; ASF, Misc. Med., F 414, 160; BR, Bigazzi, 220.

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Duchy. Foreign merchants enjoyed exemptions from tolls, Protestant and Jewish communities emerged at Livorno, and the dukes continued

to develop the port. Livorno was considered part of the Florentine Contado. In 1615 the Capitano was replaced by a fixed military Commissario who was later raised to the rank of governor. It developed a Dogana, Decima, Grascia, Fortezze e Fabbriche, and other officials. The sizeable, important, and wealthy Jewish community acquired its own institutions, and there were other self-governing enclaves of foreigners. Military governors or Commissari were also sent to Portoferraio on Elba, to the Isola del Giglio on the coast, and to Fivizzano, a detached ducal territory north of Lucca. Direct control was similarly exercised over ducal fiefs at Pontremoli, Monte San Savino, Castiglione della Pescaia, Pitigliano, Scarsano, and Sorano, where the justices were appointed directly by the dukes.'s But even in privileged cities, the Commissar and Governatori sent out from Florence had ultimate control over the development of local affairs. In the smaller towns of the Contado and Distretto, ducal appointment a mano was extended to the Florentine citizens who served as provincial justices. In 1532 the Senate had been empowered to select the Capitan of Pisa, Arezzo, Pistoia, Volterra, Cortona, Castrocaro, and Fivizzano, and the Podesta of Prato, while the remaining justices were intended to be selected through sortition from the borse of the

Tratte. In 1551 direct ducal appointment extended to eleven of the fourteen Capitani of the Distretto. In 1604 the three Commissari were appointed a mano, as were eleven of the twelve Capitani, five of the nine Vicari, and two of the twenty-four Podesta. In 1695 appointment extended still further, and a tendency developed for the Vicari and Podesta appointed a mano to be renewed in office at the end of their terms instead of being replaced by others, as the earlier procedure specified, so that terms in office lengthened to several years. The small Podesterie became quite unpopular offices for Florentine citizens, with the result that ducal appointment became exercised de facto through the practice of giving offices a mano after a certain number of refutations of men se-

lected by lot.'® Selection of citizens for provincial offices by sortition 's For Livorno, see Mori, “Linee e momenti dello sviluppo”; Repetti, Dizionario, ny, 717f£. Also ASF, Misc. Med., F 414, 172f., Seg. Gab., F 123C, I-120.

'6 Provincial offices are listed in BNF, mss. Palatino, F 756, 123-33; ASF, Tratte, 1101, Manoscritti F 283, 14-24, Misc. Med., F 414, 172f., Seg. Gab., F 123C, I-120.

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| PART II | from the borse of the Tratte persisted mostly in Vicariati and Podesterie of the Contado, where administrative control from Florence was most strongly established. Ducal appointment emerged more clearly in the Distretto, the region where the control of the Republic had been less secure. It was also in the Distretto, and in the territory of Siena, that the new fiefs of the 1620s and 1630s made their appearance. The infeudated villages were small subcommunities of Podesterie in the hill towns between Pisa and Volterra, but they often had extensive commons lands that passed into control of the new lords. Several were in the valley of the Era, a region of olive groves and hunting, where five of the seventeen communities of the Podesteria of Peccioli became infeudated: Castellina to a branch of the Medici in 1628, Chianni to the Riccardi in 1629, Orciano to the Obizzi of Padova in 1630, Riparbella to the Car-

lotti of Verona in 1635, and Laiatico and Orciatico to the Corsini in 1644. The acts of infeudation gave rights to the feudal lords to appoint the local justice, to hunt and fish, and to control local administration, in return for payment of communal taxes to the duke at a fixed rate determined at the time of infeudation. The acts contained sonorous legal phrases suggesting broad privileges, for example “mero et misto imperio, gladii potestate, et omnimoda jurisditione,” as the patent of the Riccardi at Chianni in 1629 read.’” But the fiefs were in fact carefully regulated within the centralized structure of the provincial administration. The dukes reserved mining rights and the creation of forges. The holders of fiefs were bound by the existing communal statutes. They could not impose new taxes, feudal justices could appeal to the duke,

the fief holder was to maintain a regular notary, and the infeudated communities were to continue to respond to administrative orders from the usual ducal authorities. The chief pecuniary advantages to holders of the fiefs were judicial fines, hunting and fishing rights, and

disposal of commons lands."® | To be sure, central control of the Dominion was exercised at a distance. It involved ordinances sent out from the capital, delays of correspondence, and petitions that were returned. Yet the necessity that Among the successive regulations, see Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1, 51 (1549), and 181-82 (1550); Iv, 7 (1560); VII, 266-68 (1570); XVI, 10-23 (1627), and 66-68 (1629). 17 ASF, Pratica Segreta, F 191, 85ff.

8 Pansini, “Per una storia del feudalesimo,” 131-86.

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had obliged Cosimo I to control distant feudal nobles and notables in towns of the Distretto through honors of the Court gave way to a more regular procedure. At an upper level, the secretaries of state and Pratica Segreta stood above the Nove. In the administration of justice, the direction of appeals passed from the Podesta to the Vicari, Capitani, or

Commissari, and then to the Otto di Guardia in Florence, or to the Ruota. Municipal Camarlinghi were responsible for tax revenue through local estimi that served for town expenses and for indirect taxes, and the Nove drained every Scudo in excess of what was reserved to pay minimal local expenses to Florence, making it difficult for towns

to take independent initiative, and leaving them without resources or in debt.'? An ordinance of Francesco I in 1581 limited provincial exemptions from the Florentine indirect taxes. Local towns were also responsible for the Tassa del Macinato and the Suggillo del Carne of the Farine, for the Gabella dei Contratti, and for the Gabella del Sale.2° For

these last two taxes, additional men were employed outside of Florence. In 1695 the Gabella del Sale maintained a Provveditore and other men at Volterra and at Pisa. The Dogana sent out thirteen Florentine citizens to serve as Doganieri for provincial toll stations, and from

thirty to fifty men were appointed for the Dogane of Pisa and Livorno.”? The jurisdiction of the Capitani di Parte was shared with that of the Nove outside of Florence for roads and waterways, but the Abbondanza and the Grascia acted independently throughout the Dominion.”? At the time of the plague of 1630, the Sanita not only controlled the situation in nearby Prato, in the Contado, but was in contact with local health offices throughout the state. It also organized refuges for Florentines as far away as Monterchi, in the Distretto east of Arezzo.?3 9 On the Nove, see ASF, Consulta, F 454. The decadence of provincial town govern-

ment became a large issue in the eighteenth century, as for F. M. Gianni, “Cagioni € progressi dello sbilancio degli interessi tra la capitale e le provincie in Toscana,” in ASF, Carte Gianni, F 48, ins. §54. On this, see Anzilotti, Decentramento amministrativo. 20 ASF, Leggi (Raccolta Tavanti), Affari di Regia Finanza dal 1503 al 1599, UJ, ins. 61.

21 For the provincial officials of the Gabella dei Contratti in 1695, see ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 447-70; for the Gabella del Sale, see ibid. , 609-36; for the Dogana, see ibid., 147-89, and Misc. Med., F414, 1f., 98f. 22 Note the regulations of 1680 and 1697 in Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, x1x, 177-82; XXI, 14-30.

23 ASF, Misc. Med., F 389, “Notizie, ordini e provvisioni fatti dal Magistrato dalla Sanita nel tempo del contagio”; Cipolla, Cristofano and the Plague, 33-65.

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Thus in many matters local government was subordinated to the magistracies of the capital. The problems of Siena, the southern third of the Duchy, are indicative of the dominance inevitably assumed by Florence. After its conquest by Cosimo I, Siena remained until 1765 in theory a separate state, but its interests were nonetheless subordinated to those of Florence. Separated from Livorno and the sea, and disfavored by the commercial legislation of the Medici, the industries of the city of Siena developed very little, and by the 1630s there was an outflow of wealth toward Florence.*4 The population of the city remained almost stationary. Between the city and massa of its suburbs, it stood at 19,600 in 1559, at 21,400 in 1640, and at 23,000 in 1745, while the smaller town and rural population decreased by nearly 20 percent between the sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries, when the State of Siena was only one-sixth as populous as the Florentine Dominion.’ Two reforms in 1561 and 1588 made the government almost a duplicate of that of Florence. Under the ducal governor, and the Fiscale, Auditore, and Depositario of the governor’s Consulta, citizens of the city were formed into a General Council and a Balia, or Senate. The old executive magistracy of the Sienese Republic remained in the Consistorio and Capitano del Popolo, and these participated in the nomination of citizens for the remaining magistrates. The law courts included a Capitano di Giustizia, Ruota, and Mercanzia, and the finances included the Biccherna, Dogana, Sale and Gabelle, Monte dei Paschi, and a Monte Pio. Four Con-

servatori dello Stato had jurisdiction over provincial towns in the Sienese state, which was similar to that exercised by the Nove in Florence over the Florentine Dominion. There was a separate Abbondanza and Magistrato dei Pupilli. The selection of magistrates was distributed among the duke in Florence, the ducal governor in Siena, and the chief Sienese magistracies. Appointment to offices in the permanent staff— about one hundred places in 1640 that were not reserved for Sienese nobles—was similarly distributed.*° 4 Note the balances of the Dogana in ASF, Mediceo del Principato, 2064, “Relazione dello stato nel quale si trova la citta di Siena e suo dominio per tutto l’anno 1640.” 25 Ottolenghi, “Studi demografici,” 297-358. The population of the State of Siena was 134,832 in 1596 and 109,648 in 1737; see Del Panta, Una traccia di storia demografica, 56.

26 Marrara, Studi giuridici, 89-175. The permanent staff is described in ASF, Mediceo del Principato, 2064. For the sixteenth-century reform of the provincial administration

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There appears to have been a long, three-cornered struggle among the nobles of Siena with the ducal governor, his Consulta, and the central Florentine administration about the extent and nature of the city’s autonomy.?”? The nobles of Siena differed from those of Florence chiefly in that they were a smaller group. Citizens inscribed in the four Monti qualified for admission to the General Council as reseduti of a college of eight Priori, just as citizens were veduti for the Collegio in the capital, and in 1640 some seven hundred Sienese qualified for offices by

this means.?* Among the councils, the Balia of twenty nobles appointed from Florence was the most important. The Capitano del Popolo and Consistorio were reduced to chiefly ceremonial functions, and the General Council became essentially an electoral body for the lesser magistracies. The Balia was only able to deliberate with the consensus of the governor, although it participated in discussion of legislation, published laws, and preserved a right—disputed by the governor—to petition the duke in Florence. The Balia thus became the chief focus of local politics, and through it the nobles of Siena resisted any change of the statutes of 1561 and 1588, or any intervention of the magistracies of Florence in the administration of their province. In the view of the Balia, the union between Florence and Siena was merely a personal one under the duke.” The first governors of Siena were Florentines experienced in the central administration or nobles of the Medici Court: Agnolo Niccolini in 1557, Count Federigo Da Montauto in 1567, Senator Giulio Del Caccia in 1585, Marchese Tommaso Malaspina in 1590, Marchese Lorenzo Salviati in 1606, and Marchese Carlo Gonzaga in 1610. The sixteenthcentury Medici had kept brothers and younger sons of the ducal house distant from power; but in the seventeenth century, from the time of the Regency for Ferdinando II in the 1620s, the government of Siena of Siena, see Fasano Guarini, Stato Mediceo, 74. The new statutes are published in Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, 1v, 116f., and xn, 124f. 27 Baker, “Nobuilta in declinio,” 582-616, has traced the decrease in number of Sienese

nobles eligible for offices in the rotating magistracies of the city, although he has not noticed that much the same phenomenon occurred at Siena as at Florence, that is, administrative duties were taken over by the permanent staff. See also Marrara, Riseduti e nobilta.

28 ASF, Mediceo del Principato, 2064, 13. These were 223 casate. 29 Marrara, Studi giuridici, 133-63.

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PART II

was reserved for the Medici themselves. Mattias, the brother of Ferdinando II, was made governor in 1629, at the age of sixteen, and except for brief periods he remained in that position until 1667. Francesco Maria, the brother of Cosimo III, served as governor between 1683 and 1711, and Violante Beatrice of Bavaria, the widow of the eldest son of Cosimo Ill, served as governor between 1716 and 1731.3° Personal government of the Medici may have pleased the Balia and the Sienese nobles. But despite their privilege of officeholding in the local magistracies, the Sienese nobles, like those of Florence, were gradually dying out. This, combined with a certain tedium of local politics, undoubtedly helped to consolidate power in the governor’s Consulta, which was appointed in Florence and responsible to the capital.3" This council consisted of the Auditore of the governor, an office that appeared in 1569, who had cognition of the sentences of the Sienese courts; the Procuratore Fiscale, the agent of the Auditore Fiscale in Florence, who appeared in 1561; the Depositario, who was the chief local official of the treasury; and the governor’s secretary. These men progressively absorbed the business of government at Siena, and in the absence of a governor assumed governance of the city between 1603 and 1606, in 1631, in 1667 and 1668, between 1711 and 1716, and again after 1731.3? Considering the ducal bureaucracy as a whole in the relationship be-

tween capital and provinces, it is clear that there was a growth in the number of functionaries outside of Florence as well as in the capital, and that this growth was chiefly in the larger towns; but the proliferation of functionaries served chiefly to enforce the central control exercised by Florence. At the end of Medici rule the central bureaucracy was of only moderate size, but it was in reality larger than the offices considered here might indicate. Beginning with the central offices in Florence, a rough estimate can be made of the total size of the bureaucracy in about the year 1736, or at least of the number of offices filled from Florence and Siena at this time. In Florence, the total of upper and intermediary-level offices considered here in particular was 598, of which 115 were rotating offices reserved for citizens in the magistracies, and 483 were filled through the 30 Thid., 257-61.

31 The number of Sienese noble houses decreased from 259 in 1560 to 107 in 1764; see Baker, “Nobilta in declinio,” $92. 32 Marrara, Studi giuridici, 177-254.

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Tratte for terms that depended on the beneplacito of the duke. Besides

these, there were other offices in the capital that have been omitted from particular consideration, as well as a large number of menial positions at a lower level. Among these, the guilds were governed by consuls or Deputati—some sixty-one positions—and had a subordinate upper or intermediary-level staff of some sixty-nine.33 The Operai and other officials of Or San Michele, Santa Maria Del Fiore, and the Bigallo also passed through the Tratte—a further seventeen magistrates and eighteen functionaries, bringing the total of central upper and intermediary-level offices to some 763.34 If menial positions at a lower level are added—twelve staffbearers, six flag carriers, six trumpeters, and four bell ringers attached to the Magistrato Supremo; the custodians, ushers, and guards of other offices; and the porters and warehousemen of the Dogana—the size of the central bureaucracy becomes enlarged by more than half, to some 1,150 men. Many menial positions appear to have been omitted from the list of officeholders for 1736, so that the total of offices in the capital was more likely about 1,200 to 1,300. This is consistent with a census of Florence in 1766 in which occupations were indicated, when the number of “stipendiati pubblici,” excluding the garrisons of the fortresses, was reported to have been 1,355.39

Moving outward to the Dominion and Siena, it is more difficult to make a comprehensive estimate of officeholders, particularly of offices

at a lower level. Local municipal officials were not counted, but the number of additional places outside of the capital appears to have been only slightly more than double the number in Florence. The centralization of administration is striking. Most of the men outside of Florence were employed as justices or in the staff of justices in the provincial

towns: four military Commissari; twenty-seven Commissari, Capitani, or Vicari; fifty-five Podesta; and thirty-four notai who served as ufficiali. They were accompanied by some thirty-three additional regular justices, and 102 lesser notai, a total of 255 men, besides other at-

tendants and guards. Then, seventy or more communal chancellors were appointed with the consensus of the Pratica Segreta, and some 3 ASF, Seg. Gab., F 123A, 130~220. 34 Ibid., 434-40, 412-27, 428-33. 35 Zobi, Storia civile, 1, App. v.

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ninety camarlinghi were elected with the partial consensus of the Nove. In addition, fifty or more men were employed as provincial Doganieri

or in the Dogane of Pisa and Livorno. Other functionaries were appointed in Florence for the government of Pisa and Pistoia.3° This brings the upper and intermediary-level officials in the Dominion to 450-500 men, with probably some 400 or more at a more menial level. For Siena, a sparse list of offices and officeholders in 1743 gives a description of 84 magistrates and a permanent staff of 89, a total of 173— surely too few—while there were probably an additional 410 men between citizen justices, notai, chancellors, and camarlinghi in the provincial towns of the territory of Siena.37 Allowing for men at a menial

, level, 1,300 to 1,400 outside of the capital seems a reasonably conservative estimate. This brings the total size of the bureaucracy, always omitting municipal officials at a smaller town level, to roughly 2,600 to 2,700 men. To these one might add the ducal Court and its dependencies, the Universities of Pisa and Siena, regular troops of the Bande of the militia, and the Order of St. Stephen, a total of about 3, 500.38 Considered more broadly, the bureaucracy numbered roughly 1,900 upper and intermediary-level officials at Florence, Siena, and the provincial

towns, and perhaps some 6,000 if menial level employees are also counted. Since the total population of the Duchy was 894,000 in 1738, the ratio of upper and intermediary level functionaries to total population was about one functionary for each 470 inhabitants. A rough estimate of the ratio of royal functionaries to subjects in France in about 1500 might have been about 1 to 1,250, and in 1934 it was I to 70. In Prussia about 1770 the ratio may have been about 1 to 450, and in Germany in 1925 it was 1 to 46. In other words, eighteenth-century Tuscany had about as many functionaries as eighteenth-century Prussia.39 Thus there had been a significant change in the form of government

in Tuscany since the early sixteenth century. There had been, to be sure, magistrates before 1530, and these were assisted by a semipermanent staff. But the magistrates of the Republic were many fewer than the functionaries of the Duchy. Most of them did not hold office 36 ASF, Seg. Gab., F 123C, 1-120. 37 ASF, Reggenza, 232. 38 BR, Moreniana, 142-01, 65f.

39 Mousnier and Hartung, “Quelques problémes concernant la monarchie absolue,” 47, NI.

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on a permanent basis, and they still reflected closely the legal relationship between citizenship and officeholding that had been typical of the

government of Italian medieval communes, which also defined the standing of the Florentine patricians. The bureaucratization of Tuscan government developed further after 1737 under the Hapsburg-Lorraine. But long before the eighteenth-century reforms, the rotating offices reserved for citizens in the magistracies of Florence had become but a small part of the central ducal bureaucracy. The communal corporative vestiges of Florentine government had been decisively undermined. Still, the emergence of a bureaucracy was less disadvantageous to the interests of the patricians than might be supposed. Their place in the ducal system emerges more clearly when the identity of the new officeholders is considered at closer hand.

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PART IIl

THE PATRICIANS IN THE BUREAUCRACY

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7

THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE MIXED STATE

The changing relationship between magistrates and functionaries was reflected unclearly in the native political thought of Tuscany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a result partly of the political calm that descended onto Florence under Cosimo I. The period of the Medici dukes was not a bright one for Tuscan political theory. By the time of Ferdinando I in the 1590s and the publication of works such as Scipione Ammirato’s Discorsi sopra Cornelio Tacito in 1594, there was no longer the conflict and uncertainty, nor were there the dissident groups of politically involved intellectuals who had helped to generate the realism of political thought in the early years of the century.' In the generation after Machiavelli and Guicciardini, no writer emerged to describe the new form of the ducal government with the acuteness of the last generation of Republican writers, and into the eighteenth century there continued to be an ambivalence in theory about the relationship of the patricians to the new offices of the regime. Sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Europe did not have a developed theory of the bureaucratic state, which was perceived within the general category of monarchy. In Tuscany there was not even the discussion that developed in seventeenth-century France among jurists, such as Loyseau, on the nature of sovereignty and the constitutional function of corps of officeholders within the absolutistic state. A later result of the French discussion was Montesquieu’s view of law, intermediary bodies, and the importance of nobles in balancing the absolute authority of the sovereign, which was an important element in eighteenthcentury constitutionalism.? ‘ On Florentine political thought in the transition to the Duchy, see Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 1, part 2; Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato, 280-354; Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Diaz, II] Granducato di Toscana, 206~29. ? Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France, 124-29, 392-419.

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In Florence, theorists of absolutism focused simply on the ruler him-_ self. Writers at the end of the Republic had followed the tradition of Aristotle in identifying different types of government, in accordance with the groups that actually held power: the “many” of citizens in repub-

lics, the “few” in aristocracies, or the “one” of a principate or monarchy. In discussing officeholders, they made a distinction, in practice, between “Magistrati” (citizens who held office by legal right) and “Ministri” (the administrative servants of the ruler), but they did not give

much further attention to the administrative structure of the state. Machiavelli, when discussing the kingdom of Darius in antiquity, for instance, distinguishes between kingdoms governed “by a Prince and his servants (servi), who, as ministers (ministri) by his grace and permis- | sion assist in governing the realm, [and] by a Prince and Barons, who hold their positions not by favor of the ruler but by antiquity of blood.” The prince has more power in states governed by himself and servants, because “if [these] are obeyed it is merely as ministers and officials of the Prince.” Full exercise of sovereignty by the ruler assumed that he had complete control over his ministers. In a description of civic principalities, where a citizen has assumed absolute authority by favor of his fellow citizens, he discusses magistrates. Princes “either command themselves, or by means of magistrates. In the latter case their position is weaker and more dangerous, for they are at the mercy of those citizens who are made magistrates, who can, especially in times of adversity, with greater facility deprive them of their position.”+ Magistrati, in Machiavelli’s view, like barons, occupy an intermediary constitutional position and can limit the prince’s authority. But Ministri depend entirely on his will: “A Prince’s ministers,” he wrote, “are either good or not according to the prudence of the Prince.”5 | As the structure of Florentine government changed into that of a princely monarchy, native political writers gave further attention to the prince and to the attributes of Ministri. They generally assumed that the ruler enjoyed undivided power and exercised absolute authority. Florentines of the sixteenth century do not seem to have thought the prerogative of patricians to serve as Magistrati was a constitutional 3 The Prince, Iv.

5 [bid., xxu. .

4 Ibid., rx.

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check on the duke. As the political ideology of the Duchy, this view grew more out of the advice to princes literature, adulation of the Medici, and understanding of absolute authority of the late fifteenth century than out of the discussion by Giannotti and others of a mixed monarchy as the Duchy was being formed. It became a strong argument for undivided princely rule. The point of view was expressed by individuals in the chancery of the Signoria of the late fifteenth century, such as Bartolommeo Scala, and despite Machiavelli’s preference for republics it was a central theme of The Prince.° The theme was further developed under Cosimo I by writers such as Giovanni Francesco Lottini, a lawyer from Volterra who was employed in the Segreteria di Stato and used by the duke as a diplomatic agent. In 1560 he was made bishop of Volterra, where he died in 1572.

Lottini’s Avvedimenti Civili was published in 1574. He was not a writer of particularly great depth, although his views remained typical of Florentines through the seventeenth century. There was, he held, no constitutional check on the authority of the prince, who was guided by reason and justice. But Lottini rejected the Machiavellian proposition that the prince should make himself more feared than loved, and argued that his actions should be justified instead by their contribution to the common good, as if the ruler were a member of Plato’s Academy: “He is placed by God as guardian of the honest and just”; “He takes the example of his government from the fathers of families”; “When one says the will of the Prince is law [this does not mean| anything he wills, but what he should will”; “Good government is understood to be what is beneficial to the governed, bad [government] what is beneficial to the governors. 7

With regard to officeholders, Lottini distinguished between Magistrati and Ministri as between chance and the exercise of reason. He gives an example by which the Ottimati of the Roman Senate selected 6° On Bartolommeo Scala’s political thought, see Brown, Bartolommeo Scala, 329-43. Machiavelli thought reform of government was best carried out by a single legislator, but he favored broad-based republics. He associated monarchy with the existence of a nobility, and argued in a well known passage (Discourses 1:55) that Tuscany was naturally more suited to republican government than to monarchy “due to the fact that there are in [Tus-

cany] no lords possessing castles, and exceedingly few or no gentlemen”; see Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, 184-85.

7 Lottini, Avvedimenti Civili, pars. 2, 10, 14, 15, 36.

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ambassadors by lot (per sorte) and magistrates by appointment (per elezione), while he says republics generally select magistrates a sorte and ambassadors per elezione (“so that chance should not procure some ig-

norant person”). He defends the Senate by arguing that in this closed body any senator would be a worthy choice.* His point was the need to procure effective officeholders, who should be appointed by the prince. It may be advisable to appoint more than one Ministro for a given task

so that one will serve as a check on the other. The prince should distribute tasks with consideration of the personal abilities of different Ministri. It is an honor for valiant men to serve as Ministri in the court of a prince. The prince should not attempt to exonerate the actions of unworthy Ministri. When a person of low extraction becomes chief minister of a prince, his personal bearing becomes less important than

the dignity and authority of his office, from which he derives his honor.?

This idealistic view of a ruler with unrestricted authority acting through Ministri to procure the common good continued to develop through the official historiography of the Medici Court. The vogue for Tacitus of the mid-sixteenth century produced another current favorable to absolute monarchy. New translations of Tacitus’s Annals about Rome after Augustus were published in Florence by Giorgio Dati in 1563 and by Bernardo Davanzati in 1596. Florentine historians of the early years of the Duchy, such as Jacopo Nardi and Filippo De Nerli,

depicted the transition from republic to principate as a process by which the Medici, like Augustus, had risen above the factions and contradictory aims of patrician Ottimati to restore civil tranquility and the

common good.” But ultimately the view of absolute monarchy became highly Christianized through a renewed association of the aims

of the state with religion. |

The last of the sixteenth-century historians was Scipione Ammirato, a Neapolitan intellectual who became the Court historian of Cosimo I in 1569 and survived as arbiter of the Accademia Fiorentina through the reigns of Francesco I and Ferdinando I until his death in 1601. His Istorie frorentini, of which the second part was published after his death, ended ® Ibid., par. go.

9 Ibid., pars. 75, 77, 79, 82, 87. 0 Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato, 314-29.

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with a eulogy on the death of Cosimo I. Ammirato’s major work, the Discorsi sopra Cornelio Tactto of 1594, was a treatise on politics in the form of a commentary on Tacitus. Ammirato is generally thought to have been a figure of importance in elaboration of the theory of ragione di stato. Like Lottinmi, he was a proponent of government by a prince with absolute authority who acts for the common good. He also held that the actions of the prince should be in accordance with existing un- — derlying law, and that the princely state must serve the best interests of religion. In discussion of the ragione di stato Ammirato envisioned a hierarchy of qualities of rationality proceeding upward from natural or civic reason. The ragione di stato of the prince, he thought, would serve as a correction of the lower qualities of rationality, but was itself subject to regulation and correction by a still higher reason, that is, by divine law: “Ragione di stato,” he wrote, “is no other than correction of ordinary law, for the public good, or with regard to greater and more uni-

versal reason." The sixteenth-century writers set the tone for Florentine political thought through the seventeenth century. In comparison with the political discourse of the last period of the Republic, the discourse of the Duchy was highly abstract. Little attention was given to the functioning of institutions or to the actual personnel of the regime. “Munisters are higher or lower, and depend not only from the ruler, but also from superior ministers, and one kind or the other must be gifted with four qualities by nature: intelligence, judgment, prudence, and memory,” wrote the Sienese Lelio Maretti in a conventional manner in his Compendio politico of about 1600.’ Three types of persons act together in the

state, wrote Antonio Maria Cospi, secretary of the Otto di Guardia, in his Il giudice criminalista of 1633: those who command, “the role of Princes, Councillors of State and other intimates of the Prince”; “Ministri,” who “are like the spiritual part of this great body, while seeing to observance of the laws they seem to give life to the other limbs”; and artisans and peasants, who have no part in government but provide for 1! De Mattei, Il pensiero politico di Scipione Ammirato, 124. Further on Ammirato, see Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 95-161, and Church, Richelieu and Reason of State, 66-67.

'2 Lelio Maretti, “Compendio politico, Ovvero direttione ad ogni Principe o Ministro per ben governar li Stati,” in Folger Library, Strozzi Transcripts.

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life and survival.'3 The political writings of such seventeenth-century erudites as Francesco Magalotti were void of any description of the ac- _ tual government of Tuscany. “We are not so simple as to believe,” Magalotti wrote in an unfinished treatise of the 1680s entitled Concordia della religione e del principato, “that the weakness of most princes is to be

too devout, and their greatest problem to be too much attached to acts of piety, and religion.” This weakness of theory was undoubtedly one reason for the lack of

clarity with which both contemporaries and later historians have viewed the relationship of social groups to the institutions of the Duchy. If only the prince was presumed to have authority, it was possible to disregard the subordinate personnel of the regime. If the myth of Venice was its mixed constitution, the myth of Florence became its absolute prince. “The Senate and Council of 200,” one eighteenth-century senator wrote, “in the course of centuries, and even in the first period of their inception, have never given the slightest difficulty, either

directly or indirectly, to the ruling house . . . and the Senate might even be said to have been instituted purposely to further the consolidation of absolute monarchy.”' Interest became focused on the ruler to the expense of any other group that might have been held to have influence, a weakness in perception of the nature and operation of ducal absolutism that has become a part of native tradition. But when one considers the identity of officeholders it becomes clear that the political theory of the Duchy obscures a quite significant and important relationship of patricians to the bureaucracy, which signifi-

cantly affected the nature of the ducal government. In the sixteenth century there was, to be sure, a relative increase in importance of Ministri over the Magistrati, and in the relatively obscure social origin of many Ministri under the first dukes this was in accord with contemporary conceptions of the anonymity of agents of the prince. But this situation changed in the seventeenth century when the patricians abandoned the magistracies and invaded the permanent offices of the new

bureaucracy. The elite gradually changed from being Magistrati to being Ministri, thus helping to preserve their political influence, and to '3 Quoted in Fasano Guarini, “I giuristi e lo stato,” I, 244. '¢ Cochrane, “Failure of Political Philosophy,” 572. *S Giulio Rucellai on the Senate in ASF, Consulta, F 459.

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infuse the ducal regime, despite the seeming change from city-state to regional Duchy, with a policy that persistently favored the interests of the capital. The Tratte lists that were used to trace the growth of the bureaucracy make it possible to assess the changing social identity of functionaries in quantitative terms. But measurement of the social identity of officeholders requires precise definition of the elite and also careful distinction of the relative importance of offices of different types and at different levels. As was noted in Part I, the Florentine patricians were not | a closed body under the Republic, and the Medici dukes further undermined their corporative solidarity. Whereas at Venice, with the exception of a few newcomers in the seventeenth century, the Consiglio Maggiore always contained the same group of hereditary nobles, at Florence the Senate and Council of 200, although made up mostly of patricians, were always open to new men. There were also different social groups within the elite. The officeholding group of the fifteenth century had excluded magnati who were not represented in the priorate. In the sixteenth century, newcomers emerged at the Medici Court. The Libri di Oro of the eighteenth century made still further distinctions of standing. It is difficult to assess the patricians as a group over time with the criteria of any one period exclusively. To trace the later fortunes of houses prominent as priors of the Republic would exclude “nobles” of the fifteenth century who had been outside of the officeholding group, and ignore new nobles who rose to prominence at the Medici Court. To trace the earlier fortunes of families registered as patricians or nobles in the eighteenth-century Libri di Oro would ignore old houses from the Republic that had disappeared from the city before the eighteenth century, and give excessive prominence to newcomers.

Still, measurement of the social recruitment of the bureaucracy makes it necessary to identify a specific group of families to represent the elite in its changing situation through time. To do this, an amalgam has been made between houses prominent as priors in the fifteenth century and houses registered as patrician or noble in the eighteenth-century Libri di Oro. To distinguish old from new, houses that proved pa-

trician or noble status in the eighteenth century were separated into three groups on the basis of the proofs of nobility they submitted to the deputation administering the law of 1750: (1) old houses of patricians who had appeared as priors at least four times in the fifteenth century; 135

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TABLE 7.1 ,

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE IDENTIFIED PATRICIAN ELITE

P+ 4 PR MAG ANCC SEN ORSS PTIT EXT PAT NOB TOTAL Patricians from

Priorate 426 124 156(29) 33.(37)246s :133 426 = (8) (58) (3) (100)

Houses from Libri 133 45 10 26 126 254 64 13 293 #128 421 di Oro (32) (tr) (2) (6), (30) Go) (5) (3) (70) (30) _~—— (100) Adjusted group from —196 45 ‘10 26 161 266 64 #42469 293. 128 484

Libri di Oro (40) (9) (2) = (5) (33) (55) (13), (14) (61) (26) (00)

KEY: P + 4 = Four or more priors in the 15th century; PR = Other priors; MAG = Magnati; ANcc = Ancient citizens; SEN = Senators; ORSS = Knights of St. Stephen; rtit = Fief or title; ExT = Extinct in male line before 1750; paT = Patrician in Libri di Oro; NoB = Noble in Libri di Oro.

(2) old houses registered as “patrician” who demonstrated that they had standing under the Republic, although they had not been priors or had appeared less frequently as priors in the fifteenth century; and (3)

newcomers since 1530 who proved patrician or noble status in the eighteenth century through other claims to noble standing. This helps to capture the changing composition of the elite: 196 old houses from the fifteenth-century priorate that were still present in the eighteenth century, 84 old houses with other claims to standing at the time of the Republic, and 202 new families established since 1530. For brevity and clarity, I will refer to them as old patricians frequently priors, old patricians less frequently priors, and new patricians and nobles. This has the advantage of defining the elite in terms that would have been accepted by contemporaries, but is still weighted toward families existing in the eighteenth century. To compensate for the extinction of families from the Republic, 63 houses appearing as priors four times or more in the fifteenth century, which had succeeded in establishing themselves at the Court through the Senate or Order of St. Stephen but had disappeared before 1750, were added to the older patricians. The characteristics of the three groups are shown in Table 7.1. It should be emphasized that the families in this “identified elite” are but a conservative approximation of the Florentine patriciate as a whole. The group is reasonably complete for comparison with the lists of officeholders in 1695 and 1736, but is less complete for comparison with the lists of 1551 and 1604. Houses from the fifteenth-century priorate 136

THE MIXED STATE

who did not appear later as senators or Knights of St. Stephen and did not survive to be registered as patricians, may have lost status, become

impoverished, emigrated from Florence, or died out. Many other houses from the time of the Republic that might later have qualified as patricians less frequently priors shared a similar fate. The new patri-

cians and nobles were houses that had established themselves since 1530, but here many families who were important temporarily at the Court and then disappeared from the city are missing. Officeholders not identified as nobles were, of course, of quite diverse origins: “citizens” of Florence, inhabitants of the city who were not citizens, notaries, lawyers, unidentified nobles, and non-Florentines. Assessment of the relative importance of offices of different types and levels presents further problems, for some positions were clearly of greater importance than others. Below the level of the ducal secretaries and men in the Pratica Segreta it is difficult to identify the chiefly responsible officials. Although a change in precedence between citizen magistrates and permanent officeholders was clearly emerging, there were no fixed grades of offices in the permanent staff. The soprintendenti, certain segretari, and the provveditori of different magistracies gradually assumed a more directional role. Distinctions of rank have been made on the basis of indications contained in the lists of officeholders and from the order in which offices were listed. For instance, in 1695 the office of Soprassindaco of the Nove, one of the officials of

the Pratica, was described “one of the most authoritative and noble [charges] conferred by the Padrone Serenissimo, since through his hands pass the selections of all the chancellors [of the Dominion] and many other ministers, the disposition of Luoghi Pu, . . . and in general all that concerns the economy and good order of the [provincial] communes.”'© The secretary of the Otto di Guardia “with the Auditore of the Bande dispatches all criminal acts.”!”? The provveditori of different offices, the men chiefly responsible for financial arrangements, generally had a special place. The Provveditore of the Monte Comune was described as “the most regarded and honored of all the [Provveditori]

.. . the office requires a man of prudence, authority, and practice in 16 ASF, Misc. Med., F 413, 657. 17 Ibid., 725.

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public affairs.” The office of Provveditore of the Gabella dei Contratti was an “important charge for the interests of Sua Altezza Serenissima, since this minister collects and makes effective the Gabelle. A person of esteem, spirit, and intelligence should be sought.”'9 The office of Provveditore of the Abbondanza “requires a prudent man and also one practiced in commerce, because of the provisions of foodstuffs that have to be made.”?°

Accordingly, more important upper-level positions have been distinguished from the lesser, intermediary-level ones, while menial-level employees, such as custodi, donzelli, and tavolaccini, have been omitted from consideration. Offices were also ranked roughly into three grades

, by size of salary for the purpose of a minor tax on salaries in 1659, and distinctions of rank and precedence were made for ceremonial occasions such as the annual feast of S. Giovanni Battista, the patron of Florence, when the dukes received annual homage from feudal nobles and delegations from the subject towns.?! On these occasions soprintendenti, certain segretari, and the provveditori were consistently given a special place. The participation of the two groups of older patricians, the new patricians and nobles, and men who were not in the identified elite, in the

magistracies, fixed boards, and upper and intermediary-level permanent offices is shown in Table a.2 of Appendix A. An advantage of basing the definition of the elite largely on the houses registered in the

eighteenth-century Libri di Oro is that these contain genealogies, which can be checked from other sources and provide a basis for assuring that the family identifications have been correct.?? Between magistrates and Ministri, 74 percent of the officeholders can be identified in 8 Ibid., 527. 19 Ibid., 449. 20 Tbid., §.

21 ASF, Consulta, F 24, 26 Sept. 1659. For the precedence of officeholders attending feasts of S. Giovanni Battista, see ASF, Monte Graticole, F 4, 90-96. 22 In addition to the genealogies in the Libri di Oro and the Decima tax accounts of many families, the numerous detailed genealogies in the collection of ASF Carte Sebrigondi, served to identify officeholders. Not all names of the permanent officeholders are

known from the lists, and it was necessary to assume that the men most recently appointed were the ones actually in office in 1695 and 1736. The rotating magistrates are those for the first term of the year, and their names have been taken from the registers of instrinseci of the Archive of the Tratte.

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1$51, 78 percent in 1604, 83 percent in 1695, and 89 percent in 1736.73 It is important to remember that the tables show the proportions of of-

fices occupied by different groups rather than the number of officeholders, thus double counting men holding more than one office at once, a problem that will be considered separately. However, men holding office ex officio have been counted only in their chief-ranking places. Percentages are the proportions of offices for which the occupant is known. From the totals for the bureaucracy as a whole it is evident that the participation of all types of nobles, despite the progressive expansion in number of offices, remained relatively constant over the whole period. Patricians and nobles of various types held 51 percent of the offices in 1$51, 47 percent in 1604, 45 percent in 1695, and 44 percent in 1736. There was a decrease in the participation of older patricians who were frequently priors from nearly half of the offices in 1551 to a quarter in

1736, which can be adduced partly to the gradual disappearance of houses from the older elite. As older families disappeared there was a corresponding increase in participation of patricians less frequently priors, and of new patricians and nobles, although still in 1736 the older patricians were the largest group. But of equal significance was the progressive relocation of patricians by type of office. Here it is useful to compare the relative position of the different groups in 1551 and 1604 with their position in 1695 and 1736. For the whole period, older patricians tended to be particularly prominent in the rotating magistracies, a situation, as we shall see, that depended partly on their place in the Senate. But whereas they accounted for three-quarters of the offices in the magistracies in 1551 and 1604, by 1695 and 1736 their participation had decreased to one-half or less. In the permanent offices their participation at an intermediary level was always less than their participation in the magistracies, and remained about the same or decreased slightly with time. The most important change was in the higher-ranking permanent offices. If the elite 23 The identification of officeholders in 1551 is incomplete in the upper councils because Auditori of the Pratica Segreta, a board with as yet unfixed membership and almost all non-nobles, have been counted in their lesser positions; the names of Auditori of the Ruota in the law courts, also non-nobles, are lacking; and in the finances and the general

administration certain Provveditori are missing. The list of Petrini and other available documentation for 1551 reflect the shifting nature of the administration at this point.

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had predominated in the magistracies in the sixteenth century, they had had very little participation in the permanent offices at an upper level, which were occupied chiefly by non-nobles. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, they had moved into the boards of permanent magistrates and particularly into the higher-ranking permanent offices,

where they came to predominate. Here the ducal system gave them their new place.

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8

THE RELOCATION OF THE PATRICIANS BY TYPE OF OFFICE

The relocation of the patricians can best be followed through different types of offices and in different sectors of the bureaucracy, for the elite settled more easily into some areas than into others. The whole period was one in which rotating magistrates were declining in relative importance, and thus it does not seem surprising that the rotating offices became progressively of less interest to patrician office seekers. In addition, the social distance between “nobles” and “citizens” in the scrutinies for the magistracies widened, an anomaly between patrician senators and lesser citizens that evoked comment at the time of the creation of the Libri di Oro in the eighteenth century. The permanent offices, on the other hand, became of obviously greater value as extensions of honors of the Court. Here there was more continuous service, more influence in the direction of affairs, and as we shall see, progressively better remuneration. These contrasts were undoubtedly important in determining the patricians new objective. The Falling Status of Magistrati

The increasing social distance between nobles and mere citizens appears very clearly in the changing identity of magistrates. The Senate remained the chief bastion of the older patricians frequently priors, and the appointment of senators from well-established houses was clearly one of the expected rituals of Florentine life. An anonymous memorandum from the 1730s expressed this as a basic liberty. The reform of 1532, it stated, had required that senators be “noble” Florentine citizens appointed from the Council of 200. The original senators of 1532 had been “subjects of the most selected and favored nobility of the city of

Florence without any mixture of persons from without who had not enjoyed the first honors of the Republic.” The senators appointed by Cosimo I were “all of the first nobility of Florence, except Lelio Torelli,

I4I

PART Ill

noble of Fano [and previously] admitted to Florentine citizenship.” Fer-

dinando I “did not appoint to the said dignity [anyone] outside of the Florentine nobility besides Paolo Vinta, and after his death Belissario his brother, nobles of Volterra.” Cosimo III “at different times created 135 senators, among them a few non-Florentine nobles. . . , but these were elected when they held the honorable office of Auditore Generale of Siena.”!

Indeed, of the 634 men made senators between 1532 and 1736, 91

percent were from the group of older patricians from the Republic, and 82 percent were houses that had been priors four times or more in the

fifteenth century. Thirty-three senators, or 5 percent, were in the “other” category, that is, they did not belong to houses in the identified group. These men included some old houses, such as the Del Bene, who had not survived for long under the Duchy; houses of ducal secretaries such as Concini, Torelli, Usimbardi, and Vinta, who did not

establish lasting dynasties, and a few houses of notables from provincial towns. But most of these families appeared in the Senate only once. By contrast, houses of patricians from the priorate appeared repeatedly: in all, twenty-seven men from the cluster of Capponi families, nineteen Strozzi, thirteen Ginori, twelve Guicciardini, eleven Nic-

colini, Gondi, Acciaiuoli, Altoviti, and Ridolfi, and ten Nerli and Salviati.

The identity of senators determined the identity of many magistrates, because of the reserved places in the magistracies for senators. But still, there was a significant change in the social identity of magistrates through the entry of non-noble citizens into the group of citizens approved through the scrutinies, and gradually even the participation of senators decreased. In 1551 and 1604 about 25 percent of the magistrates were senators, half were patricians or nobles, and 25 percent were non-nobles. By 1695 and 1736 only 15-20 percent were senators, 35— 40 percent were other patricians or nobles, and the participation of nonnobles had increased to 40-44 percent. One can follow the entry of newcomers through the general scrutinies of officeholders, which were intended to renew the borse of citizens eligible for selection. “[This grace] is distributed with a prodigious hand,” read the ducal Banda that announced the general scrutiny of ' ASF, Misc. Med., F 34, ins. 15, “Relazione istorica del senato fiorentino.”

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1610, “not only to the end of restoring by the admission of new citizens

the deficit that from time to time occurs of families that become extinct, but also in consideration of benefit to the public.”? Selection through the scrutinies could also lead to the visto di Collegio that conferred the right to be included as benefiziato in subsequent scrutinies. A

summary of regulations of the Tratte of 1595 describes minutely the general scrutiny of 1593, and the procedure changed little thereafter.? A committee of three senators for each of the sixteen gonfaloni of the city solicited names of members of families and their sons down to age five who already had the benefizio of the Collegio, along with new citizens who qualified through payment of the Decima and residence of thirty years or more. In practice, very few new citizens were accepted for inclusion in the borse by the scrutinizing commission. But the dukes could also bypass the regular scrutinizing process by habilitating citi-

zens for office con privilegio, a recourse that was used from time to

time. The fact that the Tratte did not keep lists of citizens from decade to decade but referred instead to the votes recorded when the different borse were made up, makes it difficult to tell at any given point in time exactly how many “old” and how many “new” citizens there were. But the register of names of “new” citizens who had acquired the benefizio of selection for the Collegio contains the names of some 4,700 individuals between 1530 and 1772 whose descendants were subsequently counted as benefiziati in the scrutinies.’ (The trend in appearance of these newcomers was discussed in Chapter 2.) Relatively few new men were made eligible for the Collegio in the first years of the Duchy, but then an increasing number became eligible beginning with the scrutiny of 1563. There were further scrutinies in 1578, 1593, [611, 1628, 1645, 1661, 1682, 1702, 1734, and 1758, generally years when many new men | were veduti di Collegio. The largest number, an average of some thirty yearly, appeared between 1610 and 1670. > Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, XIV, 354-55.

3 ASF, Tratte, F 1101, 41ff. For the procedure in 1735, see ASF, Tratte, F 545. 4 Judging from ASF, Tratte, F 1136, cittadini con privilegio were about 8 percent of the total over the whole period.

’ ASF, Tratte, F 1136, “Specchietto delle famiglie che hanno acquistate lo stato dal principato in qua.” This appears to have been compiled about 1697-98. ° For 1593, see the description in ASF, Tratte, F 1101; for 1611, see Cantini, Legisla-

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In ordinary circumstances, admission to the magistracies as veduti of the Collegio required more than thirty years of residence in the city. This meant that the new men of the early to mid-seventeenth century were the remnants, in harder times, of the city’s late sixteenth-century population growth. Most of the new citizens of the seventeenth century did not later have descendants in the Libri di Oro, either because they did not remain permanently in Florence or because they were families of quite modest standing and means. The notations written in 1604

in the “Note e Informazioni” of the Tratte beside the names of men being proposed as novellini for the visto di Collegio provide indications of their station: “Piero di Martino Martucconi, described [for taxes] in 1592. He pays, with three brothers who have been visti, 11 Florins, 15

Soldi, and 6 Denari [of Decima]. They have a large shop of foreign merchandise at the Canto Del Giglio, are well off, and in good standing.” Another group of brothers were “Cosimo, Cambio, and Lorenzo di Messer Lorenzo Bamberini, described in 1575, pay 6 Florins, 13 Soldi, 3 Denari, and are artisans in the wool guild, Cosimo for the Gia-

comini, Cambio for Ridolfo Della Stufa, and Lorenzo for Giovanni Maria Fettini, all well established.” In 1650 the new men included “Lorenzo di Messer Giovanbattista Chimentelli, described in 1625. He pays Decima of 6 Soldi, 9 Denari of Florins, and is employed in the [of-

fice of the] Farine, an upright youth.” Also, “Cesari di Bastiano Brunacci, described in 1648, [who] pays Decima of 10 Florins, 1 Soldo, 8 Denari, and thus should be kept in mind, he is the Chancellor of the Auditore of the Bande.”® In 1695 the newcomers included “Giuseppe Maria, Giovanni, and Giuseppe Terzi, the first and second wholesalers with their own business, and the third, an accountant. They have been citizens [described for taxes] since 1594, and pay 2 Florins of Decima.’”9 These were middling merchants, men employed in the businesses of

others, notaries, and lesser functionaries—middle-class Florentines in the years of the city’s long, seventeenth-century depression. Their tax assessments are quite small in comparison with moderately endowed zione Toscana, XIV, 354-55; for 1628-34, see ASF, Tratte, F 575, “Squittinio generale degli anni 1628, 1645, 1661, 1682, 1702, 1735”; for 1758, see ASF, Tratte, F 1114, “Squittinio generale per l’anno 1758.” 7 ASF, Tratte, F 629, “Note et informazioni,” 419.

8 ASF, Tratte, F 662, “Note et informazioni,” 96. : 9 ASF, Tratte, F 686, “Note et informazioni,” 184.

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patrician senators who might have a palace in Florence and two or three

farms in the countryside assessed for the Decima at least at 30 to 40 Florins. In 1690, under Cosimo III, the necessity of owning a house in Florence and maintaining residence there was dropped as a preliminary requirement for establishing new citizenship, leaving only the requirement of owning property assessed for the Decima at two Florins, and even this could be waived in favor of a two-Florin poll tax.!° It is difficult to discover the patricians’ view of these new men, but it was probably still reflected in a complaint of Pompeo Neri of the 1740s: “The names of artisans made citizens only a few days previously are entered into the same borse as those of families inscribed as citizens for many centuries. . . old and new, poor and rich, have access to the same magistracies, and seat themselves in the same seats, without any order

of precedence, . . . all are reputed equally noble.”!' Some writers accused the Medici of having demeaned the status of Florentine citizenship. Giovan Francesco Pagnini, a “new” Florentine patrician from an established family of Volterra, also writing in the 1740s, thought the regulation of the property qualification for citizenship in 1690 had “filled the books with names of citizens, who, lacking substance and sufficient means to maintain themselves decorously, not only diminish the consideration Florentine citizenship once had, but vilify it in the minds of many.”!? With the entry of newcomers, participation of the older families in the magistracies decreased, and their withdrawal was not much compensated for by the entry into office of “noble” newcomers later inscribed in the Libri di Oro. In the first term for 1551 and 1604, older patricians occupied three-quarters of the places in the magistracies, but in the first term of 1695 and 1736 their participation had fallen to half or less. Meanwhile, the participation of new patricians and nobles had increased to 12 percent, and the participation of non-nobles

had increased to 44 percent so that it equaled the participation of the older group. Much the same was true of the judgeships filled by Florentines in the provincial towns. Here, a different appointment procedure makes the names of officeholders selected a mano by the duke difficult to trace, © Pagnini, Della Decima, 1, 72~73. 11 Neri, Nobilta Toscana, 602. 2 Pagnini, Della Decima, 1, 73; on the Pagnini, see Spreti, Enciclopedia nobiliare, v, 39.

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since when this occurred the names of the officeholders were not recorded in the lists of estrinsici from the Tratte. The older patricians con-

tinued chiefly as Commissari and Capitani of the larger towns of the Distretto, Pisa, Pistoia, Arezzo, Cortona, Volterra, offices generally reserved for senators, where they occupied 71 percent of the places in 1551 and 38 percent in 1736. But among the Vicari, in the lesser towns, the appearance of the older group fell from 60 and 42 percent in 1551 and 1604 to 55 and 17 percent in 1695 and 1736. A still more dramatic decrease occurred among Podesta in the smaller towns—from §5 and $1 percent to 14 and 4 percent. Overall, counting Commissari, Capitani, Vicari, and Podesta, patricians frequently priors in the fifteenth century held 53 percent of the seventy-three identified positions in 1$51, 41 percent of the eighty-three in 1604, 22 percent of the seventytwo in 1695, and 13 percent of the seventy-seven in 1736. The proportion of non-nobles rose from 41 percent in 1551 to 49 percent in 1604, 71 percent in 1695, and 81 percent in 1736. Patricians continued to go out to the more important offices in the larger towns of the Distretto, but even while their landed estates spread farther and farther from the capital, it was always to Florence that they returned, and in Florence that they envisioned their political role. They abandoned the smaller towns where the lesser judgeships involved inconvenient absences from the capital, the tedium of the countryside, little honor, and the least remuneration. These lesser offices were the ones that new citizens who were recently habilitated in the scrutinies increasingly conquered. The Rising Status of Ministri

As the older patricians transformed themselves into nobles of the Court, their alternative to rotating offices in the magistracies became the new permanent offices of the bureaucracy. Here, officeholding took on greater honor, more influence in the management of affairs, and steadier employment in a period when other opportunities were not expanding in the city. Thus, as the social status of Magistrati fell, the social status of Ministri gradually rose. Employment of patricians in the permanent staff of the magistracies

was not an entirely new phenomenon—the Republic had opened routes both as Magistrati and as Ministri to citizens seeking a political career—but the offices in the staff of the magistracies had a secondary place. One remembers that Niccolé Machiavelli, in the second chan146

THE RELOCATION OF PATRICIANS

cery of the Signoria from 1498 to 1512, had belonged to an important established citizen house, although to a lesser branch that was frustrated in its political advancement. Some other names of houses prominent in the priorate appear in the chanceries of the Signoria and in lesser magistracies.‘} But there also had been a vibrant subculture of notaries and lawyers in Renaissance Florence who occupied many places in the permanent staff. The route to offices through training in law was attractive to men in the elite as well, and lawyers enjoyed high social status in the fifteenth century, ranking after knights. Matriculation as notai could be disadvantageous, since from the 1430s onward notaries were barred from office in the Signoria, and into the 1560s a distinction was made between cittadini and cittadini notai in the borse for

the magistracies.'4 Notaries were required to designate whether their names would be entered into the borse of “citizens” for offices, or into a separate borsa of cittadini notai, and many offices were filled from the

second group.’ Thus the patricians contributed some men to the permanent functionaries of the first years of the Duchy, but most were not members of the elite. In the offices close to the duke, no ancestors among the ten secretaries of Cosimo I| in 1551 can be identified among priors of the

Republic, although six were lawyers and two were notai. These included Lorenzo Pagni, a lawyer from Pescia; Jacopo Guidi and Vincenzo Ricciobaldi, lawyers of Volterra; and Ser Giovanni Conti, who had begun his career as a notary in the provincial town of Bucine. Cosimo I employed non-patricians in other places of trust, particularly among the Auditori and other high officials in the Pratica Segreta. In 1604, under Ferdinando I, the displacement of patricians toward the higher offices had begun, although the choice of men in the Secreteria

di Stato and among Auditori was still similar to what it had been in 1551. With the appearance of sons or nephews of the agents of Cosimo I, one can see the beginnings of formations of dynasties of non-patrician functionaries. The Auditore della Camera, Giovanbatista Concini, "3 Note Marzi, Cancelleria, 483~514, for the occasional patrician surnames in the Cancelleria of the Signoria. 4 On the Arte dei Giudici e Notai in the fifteenth century and the political role of lawyers and notaries, see Martines, Lawyers and Statecraft, 11-115 et passim. 's Martines, Lawyers and Statecraft, 47-51. For the repeal of the statute of 1496 in 1563, see ASF, Tratte, F 1101, 43.

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was the son and successor in office of Bartolommeo Concini, a notary of Terranuova in the vicinity of Arezzo who had begun his career in the chancery of the Riformagioni in 1544. Later he also served as a diplomatic agent abroad. One son of Giovanbattista Concini became a favorite of Marie De Medici and acquired the title Maréchal D’Ancre in France, the other son was made a senator.'® Ducal secretaries under Ferdinando I included the clan of the Usimbardi from Colle: Pietro, Lorenzo, and Usimbardo. Their influence lasted into the 1630s.?7 Still, when one continues to examine the lists of officeholders, it is clear that some important offices were occupied by patricians from the early years of the Duchy. The Depositario Generale, the chief official of the treasury, was consistently a patrician from the appointment of Ottaviano De Medici in 1537, as was the Soprassindaco of the Nove from the creation of this office in 1559.78 The secretaries of the Tratte were patricians steadily from the time of the appointment of Senator Lorenzo Niccolini in 1592 to succeed Piero di Giovanni Conti, the son of the secretary of the Tratte under Cosimo I. In the law courts, the finances, and the general administration, a definite pattern of patrician involvement developed. Very few older patricians were employed in the law courts. Not only the Auditori in the Pratica Segreta, but also the Auditori of the Ruota, the justice of the Mercanzia, the Auditore Fiscale, and the secretary of the Otto were generally non-nobles, as were most of the lawyers and notai employed elsewhere in the bureaucracy. This followed the practice of the Republic, when employment of foreign justices was required to assure an appearance of impartiality of justice. The place of the patricians in the law courts was chiefly in the

rotating magistracies attached to the Otto di Guardia, Mercanzia, Onesta, and Conservatori di Leggi, and among the Sindaci of the Ruota, the men who annually reviewed the conduct in office of the Auditori of the Ruota. The more accustomed place of patrician officeholders was in the administration of the finances, where they were of special importance. In 1551, 85 percent of offices held by the two groups of older patricians, and 66 percent in 1604, were upper or intermediary-level offices in the © On the Concini, see Litta, Famiglie celebri, n, fasc. 14. 17 On the Usimbardi, see the notices in G. E. Saltini, “Istoria del Granduca Ferdinando I,” 367-70. 8 In 1604 these were Vincenzo De Medici and Donato Dell’ Antella.

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THE RELOCATION OF PATRICIANS

finances, and this pattern continued through the seventeenth century. In 1551 only two men from this group had upper-level offices in the finances: Senator Cristofano Rinieri, the Provveditore of the Monte Comune; and Chiarissimo di Bernardo De Medici, the Provveditore of the Monte di Pieta. But in 1604, older patricians held seven of the ten upper-level offices. Among these were Lanfranco Lanfredini, the Provveditore of the Monte Comune; Simone Franceschi, the Provveditore of the Monte di Pieta; and Raffaello Niccolini, Onofrio Bracci, and Giovanfrancesco Carnesecchi, the Provveditori of the Decima, Farine, and Capitani di Parte. Patricians also held a large number of offices at an intermediary level in the fisc, where they were employed as segretari, camarlinghi, sotto-provveditori, and ajuti. Younger men particularly were

likely to be employed in the intermediary-level offices, from which some advanced later to places of greater importance. But it was chiefly in the seventeenth century that the patricians ef-

fected their conquest of the bureaucracy. They became established among the ducal secretaries during the 1640s under Ferdinando II. Earlier, all the first secretaries had been non-nobles, the last being Andrea Cioli between 1626 and 1641. Giovanbatista Gondi, who had earlier been ambassador in France, became first secretary in 1641 and stayed in office until his death in 1664, while in 1644 Cavaliere Domenico Pan-

dolfini replaced Alessandro Nomi, a non-noble, as Segretario di Guerra. In 1653, besides Gondi and Pandolfini, three other patricians were listed in the Court roll of secretaries: Pierfrancesco De Ricci, Alessandro De Cerchi, and Jacopo Biffi-Tolomei. After the death of Gondi, the office of first secretary remained vacant until the appointment of another patrician, Senator Francesco Panciatichi, in 1682, while Domenico Pandolfini was replaced as Segretario di Guerra by Count Ferdinando De Bardi in 1655. In 1692 there were six older patricians among the secretaries of state, and in 1736 there were four.

There was a similar trend toward increased employment of nobles in | other high offices. In the Pratica Segreta in 1695, five of the eight coun-

cillors were older patricians, as were seven of the eight in 1736. The Auditori Fiscale were generally non-nobles, but the Depositario Generale and the Soprassindaco of the Nove continued to be chosen from the elite. All of the Auditori of the Riformagioni were older patricians in the seventeenth century after the appointment of Francesco Vettori in 1637, as were all of the secretaries of the Tratte: Geri Spini in 1607, 149

PART Ill

Cristofano Spini in 1617, Pierfrancesco De Ricci in 1624, Piero Girolami in 1631, Senator Alamanno Arrighi in 1677, Senator Vincenzo Da Filicaia in 1700, Senator Giuseppe Ginori in 1707, and Senator Carlo Ginorl in 1734. At an intermediary level, the number of offices occupied by nobles grew partly through a striking increase in pluralism, which will be considered further below. Pluralism was more likely to involve nobles than non-nobles, except with lawyers, who were frequently pressed into service in more than one place. Thus Giuseppe Orceoli, a non-noble who had first appeared in Florence as one of the Auditori of the Ruota in 1672, held three offices in 1695: he was one of the auditori of the Consulta, giudice of the Mercanzia, and assessore of the Decima. The chang-

ing economic prospects of Florence in the seventeenth century undoubtedly affected the change in the pattern of officeholding. Sons of patrician houses who had earlier been employed in commerce sought other opportunities as the prospects of success in business narrowed,

and it seemed natural that they should be employed by the duke. Among the petitioners for an office in the Monte di Pieta in 1604 was Falco di Carlo Serragli: “He was once in the bank of Alessandro Scarlattini.”*? Among the candidates for the position of Vicario of Monte S. Savino, which was given a mano, was Ottavio di Gianozzo Attavanti: “(Madama [Christine of Lorraine] has commanded that he be remembered), he was employed in trade.””° For an office in the Nove in 1650 was Francesco di Giovanni Alessandri: “He has been in trade abroad, at Messina and Naples, although he has had little success”; and for an office in the Monte Comune, there was Luigi di Niccolé Capponi, “a poor gentleman, and his father was once rich.”?! The bureaucracy offered honorable employment, not only for second or third sons who could not be supported from family resources, but also for elder married sons with patrimonies and expectations of inheritances. Still, the underlying social division among different sectors of the

bureaucracy continued. Few patricians were employed in the law courts, while they predominated in offices of the finances. In 1695 and 1736, 83 and 87 percent of the upper-level offices and more than one19 ASF, Tratte, F 629, “Note et informazioni,” 220. 20 Tbid., 305f.

1 ASF, Tratte, F661, “Note et informazioni,” 95; F 662, IS.

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THE RELOCATION OF PATRICIANS

quarter of the intermediary-level offices of the finances were occupied by older patricians. Many of them also occupied places in magistracies of the general administration, in the Abbondanza, Grascia, Pupilli, and Nove. The proportion of offices at an intermediary level held by patricians in these magistracies also grew. Considering the two groups of older patricians together, one wonders how broadly officeholding was diffused among houses of the elite and whether, in time, the number of families with some members employed increased or diminished. This can be assessed for the four years being considered, although the results are affected by the reduction in number of older patrician houses as families became extinct. Of the 199 casate of patricians from the group frequently priors that survived in 1551, there were 193 in 1604, 158 in 1695, and 140 1n 1736, and 47 old casate that had been priors less frequently or had not held office under the Republic were inscribed in the Libri di Oro. There was an increas-

ing tendency for these families to be employed in the bureaucracy. Considering the two groups together, some members of thirty-nine houses, 16 percent, were employed in the permanent offices in 1551, 24 percent in 1604, 35 percent in 1695, and 42 percent in 1736. Rather than being defeated by the new offices of the ducal bureaucracy, the patri-

cians adapted themselves admirably to officialdom, so that the longrange effect of family and group solidarity was to provide them with a new area of employment and activity. But particular attention should be given to houses entering the elite that were later registered as new patricians or nobles, since these show the extent to which the bureaucracy provided a means of social ascent and development of a type of noblesse de robe. It is more difficult to account for the new patricians and nobles because of the relatively short life of many houses of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Court.

Among the secretaries of Ferdinando I, the Vinta reached the Senate but held no offices after the death of Belissario Vinta in 1613. The Vinta returned to their native Volterra, where they died out in 1675.72 The

Concini enjoyed honors from the dukes for three generations before they also became extinct in 1636.73 The Usimbardi remained in office 22 ASF, Carte Sebrigondi, 5483. 3 Litta, Famiglie celebri, 1, fasc. 14.

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PART III

for only two generations.”4 Among the secretaries of Ferdinando I only

the Corboli survived to be registered in the Libri di Oro among new

patricians in 1760.5 |

One group that rose in status through the bureaucracy consisted of jurists who first appeared in Florence as Auditori of the Ruota, or in other offices reserved for lawyers, and then stayed on. There was a small independent judicial elite. Jacopo Conti, an Auditore of the Ruota of Siena and of Florence, listed the names of many of its members in his Relationum Curiae Senensis et Florentinae, which was published in 1723. Families of jurists in office in 1695 who were later registered as nobles included the Luci and Maggio, and in 1736, the Neri-Badia. The Luci family were notables of the provincial town of Colle, where they qualified as nobles through their habilitation for office in the communal government. Emilio Luci, whose father was a lawyer at Colle, entered the bureaucracy as chancellor of the Dogana in 1654. He was made Assessore of the Otto di Guardia, chancellor of the Mercanzia, and an Auditore of the Ruota before becoming the Auditore Fiscale in 1671. In 1695 one son, Alessandro Luci, was also an Auditore of the Ruota, while another, Filippo, was the Auditore Fiscale.

The Luci were admitted to the Order of St. Stephen in 1708 and recognized as patrician in 1761. Similarly, the Maggio were notables of the town of Urbino in Umbria. Piermaria Maggio became Auditore of the Magistrato Supremo in 1674. In 1695 he was an Auditore of the Con-

sulta, an Auditore of the Ruota, and the Auditore of the Bande. His family continued to hold judicial offices; they proved their nobility for

the Order of St. Stephen, and were registered in the Libri di Oro in 1751. The Neri-Badia came from Castel Fiorentino near Volterra, and Giovanni Neri was an Auditore of the Consulta in 1736. But the Neri were not yet nobles; they had to wait until Pompeo Neri, the secretary of the Hapsburg Regency and defender of the privileges of old Florentine patricians in the 1740s, was admitted to the Libri di Oro as a noble of Florence and Volterra by the Hapsburgs in 1762. There was thus a small judicial elite in seventeenth-century Florence

that rose in status through the bureaucracy. However, old patrician standing was a far more important determinant of social standing than 24 ASF, Carte Sebrigondi, 1803. 2s ASF, Deputazione Nobilta, F 13, ins. 6.

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THE RELOCATION OF PATRICIANS

was social ascent through office in the bureaucracy. Of the ninety-one houses of new patricians and nobles registered in the Libri di Oro before 1760, only 23 percent had held office in 1695 or 1736, as compared with 48 percent in the corresponding two groups of older patricians. Ennobled dynasties of jurists were a minority even among the new nobles. To the extent that the emergence of officialdom in Tuscany involved the creation of a noblesse de robe, the ennobled officeholders were patricians, and it is significant that the sector of the bureaucracy that most attracted them were the financial offices, which were an extension of their accustomed place in the Florentine business community, rather than the law courts. We shall see, in Part V, that the commercial orientation of Florentine officialdom was quite important for the policy of

the dukes in the adverse economic situation of seventeenth-century Tuscany. Bureaucratic office also had a greater significance for the elite than simply providing employment in a period of economic downturn. But before considering further the relationship between patrician interests and ducal policy, it is necessary to turn briefly to some other aspects of the habits of patrician officeholders, which further define the nature of the bureaucracy’s seventeenth-century development.

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PART IV

THE PATRIMONIALISM OF PATRICIAN FUNCTIONARIES

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9

TRAINING AND APPOINTMENT

The influx of patricians into the permanent offices clearly affected the quality of administration, which did not develop in a strictly linear way in early modern states, so that the aims of one period were always realized directly in the mode of operation of the immediately succeeding one. Indeed, in some ways the ducal administration of the sixteenth century was more modern than it was in the seventeenth century, when there was growth of abuses of types that Tuscany shared with other states during this period. Historians generally identify a transitional phase in the development of bureaucracies, which Weber described with the term “patrimonialism” to differentiate the practices of earlier periods from the more rational ones that developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By patrimonialism he meant a form of political authority, and also an administrative system, in which high officials of state were officials of the household of the ruler. Such officials had broad personal latitude in their conduct of office and haphazard maintenance: payment in kind, participation in taxes or fees, or rewards of estates or fiefs.' In the England of the 1630s officials of Charles I could still claim the perquisite of maintenance in the household of the king. They were personal servants of the king rather than, as yet, subjects of the more impersonal rules of the state.2 A characteristic problem of patrimonialism was the tendency for officials to escape close control and to consider their offices as private property. In France this led to inheritance and sale of offices, which created problems through the eighteenth century. In Tuscany there was no formal sale of offices,

but the ducal administration nonetheless had strongly patrimonial characteristics and developed a pattern of abuses. Rulers elsewhere sought to remedy the ills of patrimonialism by designating a more select corps of officials, such as the service nobles of the Russian tsars from the time of Peter the Great, or by creating commissaires as intend, 1 Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization, 346-54. 2 Aylmer, The King’s Servants, 160~82; for his discussion of Weber, see pp. 453-64.

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PART IV

ants to circumvent the independence of officials already established, as in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century France.3 To these patrimonial characteristics of early bureaucracies Weber contrasted the modern state with its foundation in rational-legal authority, more specialized fields of administrative activity, a more definite hierarchy of command, and a clear separation between the private enterprise of officials and their public duties, achieved through specialized training and strict observance of rules of procedure. In Tuscany the Republic had already achieved a degree of rationality in administration, through an exercise of rules governing conduct in office that Weber might have ascribed to a later period. Weber paid more attention to monarchies than to city-republics and made insufficient distinction between the institutions of the medieval city and of the modern state.’ In Tuscany these two forms were intermixed, but in the seventeenth century, as the habits of the city-state were transformed into those of patrimonial monarchy, the habits of the ducal administration became more similar to those of monarchies elsewhere in Europe. _ Training: Lawyers and Non-Lawyers

The changing importance of lawyers and notaries is indicative of the shift in nature of the system. Lawyers, as men with training in special procedures of administration, might be taken to be to some degree agents of rationality, and it has often seemed that their employment in ever larger numbers was an important aspect of the development of the modern state.° Weber himself gave large importance to the study of law in the transition from patrimonial to rational-legal procedure.” Considering the development of legal studies in the Renaissance and the importance assumed by lawyers and jurists in the sixteenth century, one would think their number and importance would have continued to 3 Note the discussion of Fischer and Lundgreen, “Recruitment and Training,” 456— 561; Armstrong, “Old Regime Governors,” 2-29; Pinter and Rowney, Russian Officialdom.

+ Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, 196-244; Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Or-

ganization, 328-41. 5 See Weber, The City, 183-86.

*‘ Bouwsma, “Lawyers and Early Modern Culture,” 303-27; Martines, Lawyers and Statecraft, passim. 7 Note the discussion in Bendix, Max Weber, 385-416.

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TRAINING AND APPOINTMENT

grow in the seventeenth century. This development might have continued the trend toward greater regularity of procedure, have facilitated the mobility of new men into offices, and have required a revolution in education of the patricians as they prepared themselves for a new type of administrative career. The employment of lawyers did not take ona strictly linear development, but instead an increase of their number in the sixteenth century was followed by stasis in the seventeenth century. Patricians generally did not occupy offices requiring legal training, and as they invaded the permanent offices the proportion of places held by

lawyers and notaries did not increase. The expanding bureaucracy adapted itself to the habits of the elite, rather than the elite to the bureaucracy, so that from the point of view of legal training the patricians entered office largely on their own terms. Table 9.1 shows the number of permanent offices at an upper and intermediary level occupied by lawyers and notaries between 1551 and 1736. It has been constructed from reference to the titles messer, avvocato, and ser in the lists of officeholders, from biographical and genealogical sources, and from descriptions of offices from the archive of the Tratte. The Republic had employed a sizeable legal staff, and in the sixteenth century this staff grew. In 1551, under Cosimo I, a third of the permanent offices were held by lawyers or notai. In 1604, through the introduction of auditori, assessori, and other men, the number of offices held by lawyers and notaries increased by nearly half, from 71 to 101, a

legal revolution of sorts. But through the introduction of offices that did not require lawyers, the proportion of offices held by men with legal training actually decreased slightly between 1551 and 1604, from 34 to 31 percent. Then in the seventeenth century, the number of offices held by lawyers and notai remained constant, while the number of offices held by non-lawyers continued to grow, so that in 1695 and 1736 the proportion of offices held by men with legal training had fallen to 26 percent. The decrease in employment of lawyers is particularly no-

ticeable in the upper councils of state, the Segreteria di Stato, Magistrato Supremo, Pratica Segreta, Riformagioni, and Tratte, where nearly three-quarters of the places were held by men with legal training

under Cosimo I in the 1550s, but only a third under Gian Gastone in the 1730s. With regard to the social standing of lawyers, one notes that the number of offices held by older patricians who were lawyers grew slightly between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, but that these 1$9

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PART IV

were always a distinct minority. In 1695 and 1736 the new patricians and nobles contributed an almost equal number. The overwhelming majority of lawyers and notaries continued to be recruited outside of the elite.

Legal training thus deserves attention, although it is clear that this was by no means the only training patrician officeholders received. By considering the mode of training and appointment, one can divide the Florentine legal profession into three groups: (1) foreign non-Florentine lawyers who were required for the Ruota, the Consulta and the Mercanzia; (2) native lawyers from the city or from the Florentine Dominion who qualified for offices requiring lawyers that were not reserved for foreigners; and (3) notaries, who might or might not be Florentines, and, as the practices of the regime developed, became a group of decreasing importance. The foreign justices were men with training and experience outside of Florentine territory and tended to be a group apart. Native lawyers and notai were required to fulfill the qualifications of the lawyers’ and notaries’ guild, the Arte dei Giudici e Notai, and were subject to its jurisdiction. Foreign justices were required for the Ruota and the Mercanzia, and other Auditori of importance were often chosen from this group. Itinerant justices were quite common in Italy, and those employed by the

Medici came from all over the peninsula and abroad. According to a reform of its statutes in 1585, the justice of the Mercanzia had to be at least thirty-five years of age, a doctor of law at least three years before his election, and from outside of the Florentine Dominion.’ The practice for the Ruota and Consulta was similar. Places were sometimes occupied by lawyers from Siena, but Florentines were excluded as justices in the courts. Indeed, patricians may not have sought legal training as a first step of administrative careers because they were excluded from the most important positions, and the habit of employing non-Florentines provided a regular means of entry of non-nobles into the bureaucracy.

The Auditori of the Ruota were restricted in their tenure of office to terms of three years in the sixteenth century, although in the early eighteenth century they often remained longer. The twelve justices in the two terms before 1604 were from Bergamo, Perugia, Correggio, Bologna, Pontremoli, Ravenna, Fano, Rome, Siena, and Portugal, and § Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, XI, 132-346.

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three of these were later appointed as Auditori in other magistracies. Carlo Lunardi, from Ravenna, became the Auditore of the Bande in 1605. Domenico Gualandi, from Bologna, later became the Giudice of

the Mercanzia, an Auditore of the Consulta, the Assessore of the Monte di Pieta, and in 1616 the Auditore Fiscale. Antonio Curini, from

Pontremoli, who followed Gualandi as Giudice of the Mercanzia in 1634, had earlier been an Auditore of the Consulta and was later made Auditore Fiscale.

Through the seventeenth century there was a demand for such trained men, and in the rash of pluralism that affected the bureaucracy, lawyers were often the men who had more than one place. In 1695 the

most extensive pluralist among the Auditori was Senator Cavaliere Dottore Andrea Poltri, whose family was finally registered as patrician in the Libri di Oro in 1791. He held six offices simultaneously, being

Auditore of the Consulta, Auditore della Giurisdizione, Soprintendente and Consultore of the Nove, a deputy of the Deputazione Sopra i Monasteri, and a Protettore of the Monte di Pieta. Earlier he had been Provveditore of the Gabella dei Contratti and Giudice of the Magona, and later he was made Auditore Generale of Siena. Lawyers were educated at Bologna, Padova, Rome, or Turin, and natives of the Duchy at the Universities of Pisa and Siena. Eighteenth-century critics com-

plained about the quality of education in the schools, since masters were available only sporadically in some subjects, attendance was erratic, and lessons were traditional and formalized. Ways were found to shorten the number of years of required attendance, and many students did not receive degrees.” At Bologna, education in law was based on the

Justinian Digest and Institutes, which had been revived through the philological and historical methods of Renaissance legists. It included canon law, feudal law, criminal procedure, and notarial practice.’ Everywhere, legal education was based on the study of Roman law, a habit that contributed in Tuscany both to the nature of ducal legislation and to the way in which common law and the underlying legal tradition of the Republic were interpreted. ® On the University of Turin, see Ricuperati, “L’ Universita di Torino nel Settecento,” $75-97; and Balani, “Studi giuridici e professioni,” 185-278. On Padua, see Brugi, Storia della giurisprudenza. Further on the culture of sixteenth-century Florentine jurists, see Fasano Guarini, “I giuristi e lo stato nella Toscana Medicea,” 229~47. © Simeoni, Storia dell’ Universita di Bologna, 11, 29-37, 103-38.

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Legal erudition in Tuscan universities took on new developments in the sixteenth century, but little further development occurred in the seventeenth century. One remembers that Lelio Torelli, the Auditore della Camera of Cosimo I, had published an important edition of the Justinian Pandects in 1553. Florentine citizens and inhabitants of the Dominion were obliged to attend the University of Pisa or the Studio Fiorentino, while inhabitants of Siena attended the University of Siena. The University of Pisa was the most important, and it expanded with the new Collegio Riccium in 1568, the Collegio Putaneo in 1605, and the Collegio Ferdinando in 1643. In the school of law, besides the Ordinarii in Jus Civile and the Institutes, new regular chairs were founded in criminal law in 1544, in pandects in 1591, and in feudal law in 1627. From the registers of fees paid by students receiving doctorates, one can make a rough estimate of the trend in the number of students. In

the years 1610-19, there was an average of about seventy degrees yearly, and many of the recipients were non-Tuscans. The number of degrees then decreased in the mid-seventeenth century, and did not begin to recover again until the beginning of the eighteenth century." Students matriculated at about age seventeen, continued for five years, and were required to prepare the Institutes and Corpus Civile before being declared doctors of law. Legal education was thus unrelated to the actual administrative practice of the Duchy, which operated on recent precedent rather than on the historical experience of antiquity. It was not until the founding of a chair in public law in 1726 that the university began to provide training in Tuscan as well as Roman practice. Appointments of foreign justices for the Florentine courts passed through the ducal secretaries and the Consulta, while appointment of

native lawyers for other offices passed through the channels of the Tratte. The candidates were under supervision of the Arte dei Giudici e Notai, which traditionally controlled the Florentine legal profession. The statutes of the guild were reissued in 1567 and remained in effect 't The decrease in the number of law degrees began in the 1630s and by the 1650s and 1660s the number was about half that of the period 1610-19; see ASP, Dottorati, D 0, 4-7. 2 On the development of legal studies at Pisa, see Abbondanza, “Tentativi Medicei di chiamare |’Alciato,” 362-403; Fabroni, Historia Academiae Pisanae; Carranza, “L’universita di Pisa,” 469-537.

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until its suppression in 1771.'3 Matriculation into the guild was open to men from any part of the Florentine Dominion. Matriculation as a lawyer required exhibition of a doctorate in law, and notaries, whatever their training, were required to pass an examination in notarial practice before the examinatori of the guild. Thus, both the practice of employing foreign justices and the procedures of the Arte dei Giudici e Notai opened the way for non-Florentine lawyers and notaries in the city, and although it is difficult to tell how many provincials obtained matriculation into the guild, there was clearly a continual immigration of aspiring lawyers and notaries into Florence from provincial towns. Their presence undoubtedly helps to explain why so many men in the permanent offices, and particularly so many lawyers and notaries, were non-patricians. Provincial lawyers might well have acquired a still greater prominence had it not been for a reaction against them, akin to the fifteenth-century exclusion of cittadini notai from the borse for the magistracies that was no longer practiced after 1563, and a movement of men from the elite into offices requiring lawyers of modest but persistent effect. Patricians had a place among the consuls who governed the Arte dei

Giudici e Notai, and in 1612 under Cosimo II their place within the guild was further defined by the formation of a new body called the Collegio degli Avvocati. Only lawyers who were Florentine citizens “from noble families, in the determination of the Collegio” could be admitted to this body. Two of the eight consuls of the Arte dei Giudici e Notai and ten of the thirty places in the three lesser councils of the

guild were reserved for them. The Collegio also had a consultative | voice in the appointment of men for certain judicial offices conferred a mano through the Tratte, and the Avvocati dei Poveri, an office attached to the Conservatori di Leggi, were always supposed to be avvocati nobili.%4

The formation of the Collegio degli Avvocati not only distinguished a special place for lawyers from the Florentine elite, but it also marked a step in the decline of notaries under the Duchy, who were excluded from membership. In the balance between the profession of lawyers and the profession of notaries, the sixteenth-century expansion of legal 13 ASF, Arte dei Giudici e Notai, F 1. 4 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, XIV, 364-74, 377-79.

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training gave lawyers a higher status, and they tended to replace notai among the successful candidates for offices. The title ser appears much less frequently among officeholders in 1695 and 1736 than it had in 1551 and 1604. A Florentine treatise of the 1660s vainly attempted to defend the “nobility” of the notarial profession, and bitterly complained of the

secondary place given to notai in the Arte dei Giudici e Notai.'5 Although notaries continued to be required for provincial offices, in Florence they were increasingly relegated to private practice. In 1548 and 1627 the dukes reissued the Republican regulation of 1469 fixing the le-

gal age at which notaries could matriculate, and with provisions of 1570 and 1586 they regulated the procedure of selecting notaries to accompany citizen justices to the provincial towns.’ This legislation introduced a triennial scrutiny of lawyers and notaries applying for places in the staff of the provincial judgeships that was intended to check the

patronage over appointments exercised privately by the citizens selected as Vicari and Podesta. It is difficult to assess the balance between patricians and non-patri-

clans among lawyers matriculated in the Arte dei Giudici e Notai or, from the lists of Dottoriati, to tell how many studied law at Pisa, since patricians did not always complete their degrees. While patrician lawyers remained a minority there was a persistent tendency to acquire some training in law. Among the Ordinari in civil law at Pisa, who remained as masters after the completion of their studies, one notes the names of a Malegonelle and a Capponi in the 1550s, another Capponi in the 1560s, an Ugolini in the 1580s, a Medici after 1600, a Della Stufa

in the 1630s, and an Antinori in the 1650s.'7 Four of the thirty-two older patrician senators in 1551 were Avvocati, as were seven of the thirty-seven in 1604, six of the forty-five in 1695, and five of the fortyfour in 1736. Only three older patricians in the permanent offices in 1$§1 can be identified as lawyers, while there were thirteen in 1604, thirteen in 1695, and twenty in 1736. In the Collegio degli Avvocati, the avvocati nobili were not very numerous. Sixty men were admitted between 1612 and 1736, and although they were not all patricians from

the older group, the careers of some of them can be traced step by ts ASF, Consulta, FF 96-100, Matteo Neroni, “Nobilta del Tabellionato madre della fede publica difesa da altrui calumnie” (1667). 6 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, XVI, 10-27. '7 Fabroni, Historiae Academiae Pisanae, , 463-71.

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step.'® Ferrante di Niccold Capponi (1611-98), a doctor of law at Pisa employed in the Sacra Rota of Rome, was admitted to the Collegio at the age of forty-three in 1655. He became a senator in 1657, then Au-

ditore della Giurisdizione in 1661, and held seven other offices of importance. Roberto Viviani (1634-1708), similarly educated at Pisa,

became the Assessore of the Monte del Sale in 1664 when he was twenty-nine. He was admitted to the Collegio degli Avvocati a year later, became a senator in 1688, and then the Provveditore of the Gabella dei Contratti, a Protettore of the Monte del Sale, and a Protettore of the Monte Redimibile. A lawyer among the senators in 1695 was Vincenzo Da Filicaia (1642-1707), a poet, who also served as Commissario of Volterra and of Pisa and then as secretary of the Tratte. Other lawyers among senators in 1695 and 1736 were Simone Altoviti, Lorenzo Pucci, Pier Francesco De Ricci, and Giulio Rucellai, all of whom held offices in the permanent staff. But the majority of patricians in the permanent offices were not lawyers, and there was a long murmur of protest through the seventeenth century from the Arte dei Giudici e Notai against employment of men who lacked legal training. One wonders what other types of education prepared the sons of patrician families for administrative careers. The family was important in the education and advancement of upper-class Florentines, both in their early years and as they emerged into society. Formal schooling ended at an early age, but grammar schools were attached to Florentine churches, and there were colleges of Jesuits and Oratorians, as well as other collegi dei nobili. Academies filled an educational function.'? Admission to the borse for the magistracies of the Republic had been achieved through family standing rather than for-

mal education, and judging from the descriptions of types of men

sought for employment in 1695, most permanent offices required little : more than elementary schooling, perhaps some accounting, personal bearing, and a “knowledge of affairs.” The customary education of Florentine citizens not destined for the law or the Church was as giovani

in banks or merchant companies, an apprenticeship in commerce acquired with kin or family associates. This may have been what led so '8 For the names of those admitted to the Collegio de Nobili, see ASF, Arte Giudici e Notai, F 88, “Decreti per l’ammissione al avvocatura del Collegio de’ Nobili, 1612-— 17§2.”

19 On the collegi dei nobili, see Brizzi, La formazione della classe dirigente.

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many patricians into offices of the finances. Under the Republic, men had customarily entered office in the magistracies at a quite mature age, having acquired their “knowledge of affairs” in business or the world at large. In the seventeenth century a type of apprenticeship in the bureaucracy also became more common. But for both commerce and ducal service, the training of young nobles was left largely to family, kin, and social peers. The early education and progress of two patricians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ruberto di Ruberto Pepi (1571-1633) and Alessandro di Vier1 De Cerchi (1625-1708), and of one in the eighteenth century, Giuseppe Pelli-Bencivenni (1729-1808), can perhaps be considered typical. The first had experience in the lesser permanent offices and in the magistracies, and the second at the Court, among the secretaries of state and in the Senate. The third had a long career in the bureaucracy that began in the 1750s and continued through the Hapsburg reforms.

Ruberto Pepi, descended from an old house that was first in the priorate in 1301 but of relatively modest circumstances in the sixteenth century and whose father died the year of his birth, began his adult life as a commercial agent for Florentine merchants in the Levant trade. Then, in service of the duke, he traveled to Poland to buy grain for the Abbondanza at the moment of the grain crisis of 1601 and became a provisioner for the fleet of St. Stephen. At the end of his life he entered the round of offices in the magistracies and provincial judgeships. His early education was probably typical of young Florentines who were intended to enter trade. As he later wrote in his Ricordi, I began as a youth to go to school with different masters, and the last was M/ Antonio Orsi, rector of the Church of San Donato, from whom I learned Latin .. . and from other masters writing and the abbacus, and in all of this I had good practice. It was the desire of my mother in the same year, 1588 [when he was 16], and of other of my kinsmen, that I be put into a bank, with the Ricasoli, under Cammillo Magalotti, Orazio Ricasoli, and others, and I remained there steadily until the year 1591 [when he was 19], the year of the coming of Serenissima Madama [the marriage of Ferdinando I and Christine of Lorraine] when I served as a page. A little later, by the same Ricasoli, I was sent to Alexandria in Egypt.”° 20 Archivio Pepi, Libro di Ricordi di Ruberto di Ruberto Pepi.

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Ruberto was thus apprenticed to a merchant, but after only a few years of service with the Ricasoli he began to seek the service of the duke. In 1599 he obtained appointment as a Rationiere, or provisioner, of the galleys of St. Stephen. After several voyages with the galleys of Pisa, he obtained the place of Guardiano of the Dogana in Florence in 1607, the year before his marriage. In 1610 he was again in the service of the duke, this time as agent to ransom two Tuscan ships held in Sicily at Trapani. Then he returned to Florence, kept his office in the Dogana, busied himself with the management of two small farms 1n the nearby Contado, and held office in the magistracies. In 1617, when he was forty-five, he was “honored with the office of the Nove” in recol-

lection of his earlier service to the duke. In 1619 he was among the Ufficiali of the Monte Comune, in 1620 the Magistrato dei Pupilli, and in 1621 vicar of S. Miniato and on commission for the Abbondanza.

The round of the magistracies was made for such relatively mature men, and Ruberto Pepi continued to be employed regularly in this manner, his last place being among the Consoli di Mare of Pisa in the year of his death in 1633, when he was sixty-two.?! Ruberto Pepi’s was a moderately successful career in which access to the magistracies was still of primary importance. His place in the Dogana gave him a steady employment, but in his mind this seemed a sec-

ondary matter. Alessandro di Vieri De Cerchi, from an old house of popolani that was once magnati, rose to greater heights. The Cerchi ranked above the Pepi in standing and means. They had entered the

priorate in 1285, and became established in the Senate and Order of St. | Stephen in the generation of Alessandro’s father, Vieri di Alessandro De Cerchi (1588-1647). Alessandro later recalled: “In 1633 [when he

was eight]... Vieri my father brought into the house the excellent 21 He was a Consul of the Arte della Lana in 1624, “uffizio di 4 mesi di poca briga e di non molto benefizio,” then one of the Ufficiali of the Decima. In 1625 he was made Commissario di Viveri of a contingent of Tuscan troops sent to Lombardy. In 1626 he was in the Capitani di Parte, in 1627 again in the Nove and in the Arte della Lana. In 1628, after

a pilgrimage to Loreto, he was again among the Ufficiali of the Decima, “e posso dire che a mio credere si adoperassi per me . . . favore pit che ordinario . . . che in quattro anni due volte delli suddetti Ufficiali tocca a molti pochi. . . sia il S/re benegratiato, a la sua Santa Madre di Loreto.” In 1629 he was in the Monte di Pieta and the Mercanzia, in 1630 in the Opera of Santa Maria del Fiore and again in the Mercanzia, in 1631 again in the Nove, and in 1632 in the Onesta.

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| PART IV priest M/ Jacopo Buonfanti of Bibbiena, and gave me to him to be taught along with Vincenzo my brother and our older sisters.” In 1636, when he had learned Latin, he was sent to study “in the Accademia dei Nobili, which the regular fathers of the Madre di Dio [Sta. Maria dei Ricci]. . . had set aside from their regular school five or six years before.”2? Of his twenty-eight schoolmates, he noted that four were later senators, five Abbate or canons, and six Knights of St. Stephen or of Malta. Here Alessandro remained until 1640, when at age fifteen he was sent to study for a year at the Accademia degli Ardenti in Bologna. Then he was placed for some months in the bank of the Albizzi and Mazzinghi in Florence before being preemptively elevated in 1642, when he was seventeen, through the influence of the first secretary of

| state, Giovanbattista Gondi, to a supernumerary place as assistant in the Segreteria di Stato. The same year he entered the first grade of the Knights of St. Stephen. He then remained in the service of the Court, receiving a permanent place in the Segreteria di Stato from Ferdinando IT in 1650, when he was twenty-five, which he occupied until his death, and a place in the Senate, in 1666, from which he entered the usual round of offices in the magistracies and permanent offices. Besides his place in the Segreteria di Stato, he was made Provveditore of the Monte Commune 1n 1679.

In the early eighteenth century the education of Giuseppe PelliBencivenni, descended from a family of relatively small importance in the fifteenth century and of small to moderate wealth, was essentially similar. Giuseppe Pelli was orphaned of his mother in 1736, when he was seven, and of his father in 1738, when he was nine. He was brought up under the guardianship of another noble family, the Coppoli. Three of his four sisters became nuns, and he quarreled with an older brother

with whom he shared an inheritance. He attended the University of Pisa to study law but took no degree, and returned to Florence in 1752, when he was twenty-three, to seek some preferment. He began in the studio legale of one of the Auditori of the Ruota. Four years later he was hoping to become the librarian of the ducal library, a place that went to another. He then considered a post as tutor to the sons of another patrician family, the Feroni, or in the household of Cardinal Neri Corsini in Rome, and thought of acquiring subentry into a minor office of the 22 ASF, Carte Cerchi, F 167, “Storia di Famiglia.”

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bureaucracy as Assessore of the Conservatoio di S. Bonifazio, a position held by the decrepit Senator Giovan Francesco Quaratesi (an office “of little income [but which] could put me in the position of being known”). Instead, to his good fortune, he obtained a place as assistant in the Segreteria di Stato in 1758, when he was twenty-nine, a place from which his later succession of offices developed.?3 The education of other patricians was probably similar to that of one or another of these men. The regulations for the magistracies had set a minimum age which varied from twenty-five to forty years for different rotating offices, and in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the permanent offices were rarely occupied formally by younger men. Between the early end of formal education and the advanced age of marriage—thirty-three to thirty-six years in the seventeenth century— wellborn Florentines passed a period of years as giovani di banco, as assistants in commercial companies, or, increasingly, as supernumerary assistants without formal appointment in the bureaucracy. Opportunities for first employment were shifting from business to officeholding, once successive careers in which early experience in business had been followed by a round of offices in the magistracies later in life. In the seventeenth century, early apprenticeship in the bureaucracy rather than experience in trade became increasingly common. Thus in 1603, among the supplicants for the office of Guardiano of the Mercanzia was Pierfilippo di Benedetto Uguccioni, “Ajuto of the Provveditore of the Decima, where he has served for several years with forbearance.” For the office of Scrivano of the Soprassindaco of the

Nove was Niccolé di Giovanfrancesco Altoviti, “Scrivano of the Monte di Pieta, and previously assistant to the Ragioniere of the Farine,

a well-intentioned youth with good knowledge of writing. He is unmarried.”*5 In 1695, among the supplicants for an office in the Decima

was Anton Maria di Cosimo Pitti, “most humble servant and subject of Your Highness [who] humbly petitions the grace to be elected a supernumerary in the office of the Decima. . . to serve in the office of the Provveditore, or some other, so that he can prepare himself for the service.””° For an Ajuto of the Ragionieri of the bureau of the Farine, 23 BNF, NA 1050, Giuseppe Pelli-Bencivenni; Efemeridi, 1.

24 ASF, Tratte, F629, “Note et informazioni,” I. 25 Tbid., $0.

26 ASF, Tratte, F 686, “Note et informazioni,” 8.

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Orazio di Giovanfrancesco Carnesecchi, “a youth who has done nothing. Son of the Provveditore who petitions Your Highness and promises that he will succeed in satisfying the service. He will keep an eye on him, and the place is not very important, or very difficult.”27 These were all patrician youths seeking their first office or advancing petitions through the Tratte after their initial period of service to obtain more suitable offices. Formal education is seldom mentioned in the petitions, so that one might hazard to guess that formal education was not an important criterion for appointment of patricians in the permanent staff. The success of petitions and the development of patrician careers depended instead on family connections and on the system of patronage.

, The System of Appointments One aspect of the ducal system that facilitated the entry of patricians into office was undoubtedly the fact that appointments to the permanent staff, and the terms on which these offices were held, never acquired the degree of legal regulation that had governed officeholding in the Republican magistracies. The old regulations for the magistracies had been most elaborate, and after the first years of the Duchy they were compiled in a lengthy summary by Michele Paci, one of the chancellors of the Tratte, in 1595.78 Not only were the qualifications of citizens for admission to the scrutinies set down in minute detail, and pre-

cise means determined for forming the borse of men eligible for selection at different levels, but also divieti prevented citizens from | being reselected for the same offices, from holding several offices concurrently, or from holding certain offices when other members of their

casate were in office. Should their names appear in the drawings, priests, tax delinquents, natural sons, bankrupts, and criminals were prohibited from holding office. The age at which men became eligible for different offices was specified, as well as the method by which they

, were to prove their age. Offices reserved for notai were carefully distinguished, as were the sums required as surety from camarlinghi responsible for the Casse of different magistracies and the means by which the conduct of magistrates was to be reviewed at the ends of their terms. 27 Tbid., 295.

8 ASF, Tratte, F 1101, “Registro legale, ossia repertorio di massime relative alle tratte ed a tutti gli uffizi” (by Michele Paci, 1595).

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The politics of the Republic seem to have required this degree of publicity of rules, and the dukes inherited and adapted the Republican legislation, which continued to apply to rotating offices in the magistracies. But no similar body of rules was enacted for the permanent staff where procedures developed independently on a customary basis. Still, in the sixteenth century, the process of appointment seems to have proceeded with reasonable efficiency. A memorandum of the 1650s describes the way of filling offices earlier in the century when Lorenzo Niccolini (1592-1607), or Geri and Cristofano Spini (1607-17 and 1617-24) were secretaries of the Tratte: Whenever an office became vacant in any of the chanceries of the City . . . or its Dominion, applicants brought their petitions to the tribunal where the office was vacant. These were sent to the Secretary of the Tratte, who made up a list with information about each of the petitioners that was sent to the Auditore and Segretario diCameraofS.A.R. ... The Auditore and Segretario returned the petition granted to the Secretary of the Tratte, who in turn sent it to the Magistrato Supremo for publication of the act. With this notification in his favor, the successful applicant went to the Monte Comune, where he paid a certain tax, and another tax for the expedition of his petition to the Chancery of the Tratte, and with the receipts from these took possession of the office he had obtained.?9

Thus the secretary of the Tratte had control over appointment to most offices, a fact that matches what can be determined from the records of the archive of the Tratte. To be sure, offices of the Court, ambassadors, military officials of the Bande, Church benefices in the patronage of the duke, and certain offices in the provinces passed through the Segreteria di Stato independently. Menial places were filled by the Provveditori of the magistracies themselves. Still, there was a centralization of control. In the spring of 1604 under Lorenzo Niccolini, appointments began on January 16 with the selection of a Scrivano for the Farine, for which there were eleven petitioners, and, on the same day, of the Doganiere of the city, for which the candidates numbered sixteen. On January 26 selection was made for the Capitani of the Montagna di Pistoia and of Librafratta, and for the Podesta of Campi and Barga, provincial offices given a mano. On the 6th and roth of February

memorandum of 1651. , | 27 ASF, Misc. Med., F7, ins. 27, “Modo che si teneva nel conferirsi da SAR le cariche,”

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| there were two petitions for the office of Provveditore of the Decima Ecclesiastica, for which the appointment was concluded on March 4. On March 2, a list of eighteen petitions was drawn up for an assistant to one of the Ragionieri of the Monte Comune, and a list of nine petitioners for an assistant of the Ragioniere of the Farine. On March 13, lists of names were drawn up to fill four more Podesterie.3° In this way the business of the Tratte proceeded through the year. Yet the manner in which petitions were presented, in which lists of candidates were drawn up, and in which men were ultimately selected provides matter for speculation, for it was easier for private interests to assert themselves in appointments for permanent offices than for places in the magistracies, where selection continued to be made from the borse of eligible citizens from the scrutinies. Appointment on the basis of petitions of aspirants might seem to provide sufficient latitude of choice, and judging from the information provided about petitioners at the time of Lorenzo Niccolini, the majority of applicants were men with prior experience in office, and often in the magistracies. Thus in 1603, for the Camarlingo of the Monte di Pieta, Marcantonio De Nobili was chosen from among eleven candidates, “a person of intelligence and substance who has been drawn for several offices, and most recently was at Montepulciano, where he had good success. He is married and has several children.”3! In the same year, for one of the Ufficiali of the Monte Comune, given a mano, the candidate chosen from among

fifteen others was Piero di Marco Bartolini-Salimbeni, already the Provveditore of the Decima Ecclesiastica, “an intelligent and capable person who has been in the Collegio, Otto, Conservatori di Leggi, and other [magistracies] and outside [of Florence] at Montepulciano and Pietrasanta. . . . Most recently he was among the Consoli di Mare.”3? Both of these were men of mature years who had first entered office

through the regular procedure prescribed for the magistracies, and

were presenting themselves for offices in the permanent staff. , But it was difficult to counteract the influence of ducal secretaries, men at the Court, senators, and the Provveditori of the magistracies themselves. The names of men ultimately appointed were by no means 3° ASF, Tratte, F 629, “Note et informazioni,” 354-438. 31 [bid., 144. 32 Tbid., 388. —

174

TRAINING AND APPOINTMENT

always those sent from the Tratte to the Segreteria di Stato. Advancement through patronage was no novelty for the patricians, and the result of their penetration of the Court was the assertion of a system of preferment that inevitably undermined the regularity of appointments. The petitions make clear that employment was an objective of men seeking protection and assistance. Thus in 1603, for the place of one of the ufficiali of the Decima, an office given a mano, the successful petitioner, from an old patrician house, was “Mario di Buoninsegna Attavanti, most humble servant of Your Highness [who] asks to receive the grace of election as one of the officials of the Decime and Vendite, so that he can carry forward his poor family by which he is heavily burdened, having nine children, and seven daughters, and he sixty-five years of age.”33 Failure in business frequently gave rise to requests for employment. In 1604 a candidate for one of the Scrivani of the Gabella del Sale was Ridolfo di Francesco Carnesecchi, “an agent who has failed

in an accomandita of Bernardo Davanzati at Venice, but is otherwise knowledgeable of bookkeeping.”34 In 1694 the successful applicant for the place of Capitano of Borgo S. Sepolcro, among ten others, was “Buonaventura di Diego Ambrogi, who has been employed for many years in different business ventures. Now he is unemployed.’”35 As the system of patronage developed, men of the Court, and particularly the ducal secretaries, assumed a central place in the advancement of aspirants, first the Concini under Cosimo I and Francesco I, and then the clan of the Usimbardi from 1580s to the 1620s. Piero Usimbardi, a lawyer from Colle and the first secretary of Ferdinando I,

managed to have himself appointed bishop of Arezzo in 1589 and brought forward his three brothers: Usimbardo, made bishop of Colle in 1§92; Claudio, who had three offices in Florence in 1604; and Lorenzo, who was first a secretary of state, then the Capitano di Giustizia of Siena, and finally, before his death in 1636, the Auditore of the Riformagioni, a senator, and a councillor of Ferdinando II.3° Among the papers of the Tratte in 1604 is a letter addressed to Lorenzo Usimbardi concerning the selection of the Podesta of Campi: 33 [bid., 51. 34 Thid., $72.

35 ASF, Tratte, F686, “Note et informazioni,” 91. 36 ASF, Carte Sebrigondi, $359.

175

, PART IV I thank your Lordship infinitely for the favor procured for me from [the duke], that the Podesteria of Campi should have been given to M/ Marco Falcucci. I ask that my gratitude be communicated to His Highness, assuring him that I count this among the other graces I daily receive. . . . I only desire the command that I may perform some exchange for so many courtesies. It may be that M/ Giovanbattista Buffoli has spoken to you of another service for the same subject, but having this one Podesteria, there is no need to think of the other.37

Other places were also being assigned to men of the Court in this year. For a place as Ajuto to one of the Scrivani of the Monte Comune, Lorenzo del Cavaliere Giorgio Vasari, a kinsman of the painter and architect of the Court under Cosimo I, “of reasonable intelligence and good will,” was favored over eight others. For a place as Ajuto in the chancery of the fisc, the successful candidate, among thirteen petitioners,

was “Francesco di Bastiano Tinghi, brother of the Tinghi [the court diarist] who serves in the household of Your Highness . . . a good youth, of good will.”3* First Secretary Andrea Cioli arranged appointments in the 1620s and 1630s, as did Giovanbattista Gondi, Cioli’s successor, during the 1640s

and 1650s. Gondi was the first of the ducal secretaries to be selected within the elite. He had served as a youth in the Giacomini bank in France at Lyons, and was in contact with the branch of the Gondi established in France as dukes of Retz, which probably influenced his appointment as Tuscan ambassador to the court of Louis XIII in 1621, where he remained through the 1630s. Alessandro De Cerchi, who owed his rise and first appointment to Gondi, wrote later in his Ricordi: The [dukes] had never conferred up to that time such an important office [as first secretary| on a Florentine Gentleman, the secretaries were subjects of the state, but never natives of the Dominant City. Thus, in the person of Gondi our nobility began to enjoy this coveted honor, and he immediately took care to introduce his compatriots into other vacancies as these appeared.

Cerchi reflected that in his own youthful appointment in the Segreteria di Stato he had been brought forward by Gondi among “several noble youths thought most likely to succeed.”39 Among names of pages of 37 ASF, Tratte, F 629, “Note et informazioni,” 405. 38 Tbid., 135.

39 ASF, Carte Cerchi, F 167, 81.

176

TRAINING AND APPOINTMENT

the court for these years were the names Medici, Guicciardini, Alamanni, Strozzi.4° Senators exercised an influence over appointments in favor of kinsmen and clients. Among the Niccolini, Lorenzo di Piero, the secretary

of the Tratte in 1604 and a senator, held three subsidiary offices. Among his sons, the eldest, Piero, became archbishop of Florence; the second, Simone, succeeded his father as Assessore of the Nove and as Assessore of the Arte della Lana; the third, Antonio, became Provveditore of the Monte del Sale, the fourth appears not to have held office; and the fifth, Matteo, was made a senator in 1649.*' Senator Alamanno

Arrighi (1620-1700), the secretary of the Tratte under Cosimo III, clearly exercised much influence. His first office, in 1650, was as Ragioniere of the Nove. He then became the Provveditore of the Dogana in 1653, a senator in 1658, Provveditore of the Abbondanza in 1665, secretary of the Tratte in 1667, and Provveditore of the Capitami di Parte in 1687. He held all four of these last places in 1695. In addition, his son Niccolé was employed as an assistant in the Tratte in 1685 when he was twenty-three, and later acquired an office in the Nove, while a grandson, Giuseppe di Niccolé Arrighi was made Camarlingo of the Arte della Seta in 1733 when he was only nineteen.* In general, of the thirty-five senators living in 1551 only eight, or 23 percent, were themselves employed or had kin in permanent offices. In 1604, 34 percent of the senators had offices or kin in office, while in 1695 and 1736 the proportion had risen to 72 and 76 percent, respectively. The increase of family interest over appointments among senators seems clear.

One wonders whether relaxation of control reached the extent of venality—the sale of offices as was practiced in France, Rome, and Venice during the seventeenth century. Venality in French, Roman, and Venetian practice was the open public sale of offices, sanctioned, regulated, and practiced by the state. In France venality developed from the fifteenth century onward as an extraordinary means for raising revenue by the crown, and then became entrenched in the seventeenth century to the extent that the rights of officeholders over the offices they had

| 177 4° ASF, Manoscritti, F 321, 925ff.

41 Passerini, Famiglia Niccolini.

# ASF, Carte Sebrigondi, 194.

PART IV

bought were acknowledged first as hereditary and then as ennobling. At Venice, venality developed in a different but similar way. Here there was a difference similar to the one in Florence between citizen magistrates, who were nobles of the Consiglio Maggiore, and a staff of ministerial officials. The sale of particular offices had been customary in

Venice at moments of fiscal crisis, and venality became a general prac- | tice in the seventeenth century during the long and exhausting crisis of the Turkish wars. Rotating offices in the Venetian magistracies were not affected, and the number of permanent offices in feudo, that is, sold on an hereditary basis, appears always to have been small. In sixteenthand seventeenth-century Rome the sale of offices was a common fiscal recourse, and became an important reason for the expansion in number of offices in the papal bureaucracy.# In French, Venetian, and Roman practice, the sale of offices developed chiefly in response to desperate deficiencies of public revenue, but other factors were also involved.

There was inevitably a temptation of men with wealth, when there were no better ways of acquiring influence, to corrupt officeholders or buy offices privately as a means of entering the officeholding group. This was a second type of venality, which proceeded more privately in Spain, as it did at Milan and Naples under the Spanish viceroys.4 There was no public sale of offices in Florence, and venality was not provided for in any of the ducal legislation. Venality was of the second type: a private traffic in preferments that operated between officeholder and office seeker. There had been public sale of particular offices under the Republic, just as there was at Venice, notably the places as Ufficiali di Banco, men attached to the Monte Comune who were given surety of office in exchange for loans to the state. The offices of Ufficiali di Monte were again sold for a brief period under Cosimo I. A provision in 1558, a year of financial need following the Sienese War, named eight wealthy citizens who for loan of 24,000 Scudi to the Camera Ducale were made Ufficiali of the Monte Comune. They were to retain the offices as surety against repayment of the loan.*5 But thereafter the Uffi43 Swart, Sale of Offices, 5-67, 82-89. For French practice, see Mousnier, La vénalité des offices, I~92 et passim. For Rome, see Delumeau, Vie économique et sociale de Rome, 1, 768—

82. For Venice, see R. Mousnier, “La vénalité des offices 4 Venise,” 8-14. 44 Swart, Sale of Offices, 19-44, 87-88. For the Duchy of Milan in the sixteenth century, see Chabod, “Usi e abusi nell’ amministrazione dello stato di Milano a mezzo il ’500,” in Studi Storici in Onore di G. Volpe (Florence, 1958), 95-191. 45 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, I, 235-37.

178

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G ‘ + t ‘ ‘

The new direction of policy reflected both contemporary economic

theory and the actual economic situation. Both Peter Leopold and Count Rosenberg were well acquainted with the writings of economists, and the Tuscans in the Council of State, particularly Pompeo Neri and Angelo Tavanti, had clearly absorbed the literature of French 21 Venturi, “Quattro anni di carestia,” 666-67. 22 In 1720 patricians had subscribed 61 percent of investment in the larger commercial companies and banks registered by the Mercanzia, 38 percent in small-scale commercial ventures, and 72 percent in silk and wool shops. By 1760 their participation in these tra-

ditional sectors of the economy had fallen to 41, 22, and 35 percent, respectively. See Litchfield, “Les investissements en commerce.”

23 ASF, Seg. Gab., F 106, ins. 14. |

4 Zobi, Memorie Economico-Politiche, 1, 50-64.

*s Zobi, Storia Civile, u, App. s.

291

PART VI

physiocracy that was popular in the circle of the Accademia dei Georgofili. Pompeo Neri took the lead in the projects adopted in 1766 and 1767. In a Memoria sopra la materia frumentaria of 1767 he argued that Tuscany could no longer be considered a commercial and manufactur-

ing state. “Anything we might want to export,” he wrote in clearly physiocratic terms, “whether a raw product or manufactured, is basically a product of our fields.”?° Restriction of trade in agricultural prod-

ucts, particularly the effort to regulate production of bread by bakers through the Abbondanza, was unrealistic. New efforts were needed to increase agricultural productivity by providing the incentive of a free market. The grain market would provide sufficiently by itself for scarcity in years of dearth.

It was clearly necessary to import ‘grain, and funds were raised through loans contracted at Genova, but an entirely new tactic replaced the old strategy of provisioning. Funds were advanced directly through

the Nove to individual communities for acquisition of grain on the open market, and for public works to assist the poor. The regulation of bakers for the production of bread by the Abbondanza was suspended, and restrictions on the internal transport of grain were temporarily removed. Through the winter and spring, deregulation of the grain trade was thought to have had good effect and was introduced permanently

with a law of September 1767. Export of grain was allowed when prices remained within certain limits, although the quantity subsequently exported was small.?7 The total cost of confronting the grain crisis was enormous, some 275,000 Scudi, and this, along with the realization that with a free market communities could effectively procure grain independently, was undoubtedly decisive for permanent introduction of free trade and suppression of the Abbondanza and Grascia, which were overwhelmed with debts, in October 1768. The provisioning magistracies were converted into a statistical office for compiling reports of prices and states of the harvest, the Annona, which was in turn suppressed in March 1778. There was, to be sure, opposition to the introduction of free trade, and in retrospect it can hardly be said that deregulation was an unrelieved blessing for urban consumers, since the price of grain continued to rise from the 1760s onward. Nonetheless, 6 Neri, “Discorso sopra la materia frumentaria,” 12. 27 Mirri, La lotta politica, 62.

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the new system operated adequately in most years to procure sufficient supply. Certainly, it weighed less heavily on the ducal treasury than provisioning had done. Ultimately, when prices again reached exceptional highs in the 1790s, export of grain was again prohibited and the Annona was reestablished. But the extreme controls of the provisioning legislation of the Medici never reappeared.

The experiment with the grain trade attracted attention outside of Tuscany, and free trade became a fixed axiom of ducal policy. There were official inquiries in 1766 into all aspects of internal trade, manufacturing, and the condition of the poor, and then progressive dismemberment of institutions that had served to protect urban industries. In 1770 the tribunals that regulated Florentine trades, the Mercanzia and the guilds, were abolished in favor of anew commercial court called the

Camera di Commercio. Abolition of the guilds of provincial towns followed soon thereafter. In the wool industry the prohibitions on import of foreign cloth were abandoned in 1768 and 1769. In 1773 the re-

quirement of putting the mark of the guild on native cloth was dropped, and, with a new regulation of tolls and of the Dogane, transport of raw wool of all kinds was permitted freely. In silk, the monopoly that Florentine Setaiuoli had enjoyed on access to raw silk produced in the countryside ended in 1776. In 1778 and 1779 all restrictions were removed from the kinds of silk cloth that could be made by small producers, and in 1780 the remaining regulations of the Arte della Seta were abandoned.”*® The new economic policy was crowned by a new tariffin 1781 that included the whole Duchy in one customs union. Urban industries continued to receive support but lost their privileged status, a development that furthered the decline of the Florentine silk in-

dustry. Producers of raw silk in the countryside found it more advantageous to export their product elsewhere than to sell it at low prices to Florentine cloth finishers. When Tuscan industries began to revive in the nineteenth century, it was not through the high-quality textiles so carefully protected by the Medici. The reshaping of the finances was another central element of the reform movement and reflected all of its essential features. Under the Medici the financial administration of the Duchy had continued to reflect the economic dominance and institutions of Florence. The major 8 Salvestrini, ed., Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, 1, 291-94.

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change from the Republic was the growing dependence on indirect taxation, which weighed increasingly on the countryside; but the city and particularly the Monti of the funded debt were always the chief sources of exceptional revenue, and indirect taxation redirected revenue from

the provinces through the gabelles that guaranteed the debt into the pockets of bond holders of the capital. In the 1730s the funding of the debt absorbed nearly 30 percent of the Duchy’s gross revenue. But a clearer distinction between the finances of the city and the finances of _ the state developed under Peter Leopold, especially as the reorganization of communal government gave Florence, like the other towns, its own government and tax base. The financial administration of the Duchy was then reorganized to be above the finances of the city, so that the state as a regional entity emerged supreme. The initial changes were made in the early years of the Regency, under the tax farm. One can see from Appendix A.1 how many bureaus

in the finances either disappeared entirely or emerged in a new form between 1736 and 1773. Assumption of the public debt by Francis Stephen in 1737 had been followed by a consolidation of administration of three of the Monti of Florence: the Monte Comune, Monte del Sale, and Monte Redimibile. The tax farm was then suppressed 1n 1768 and direct administration of the finances resumed. In 1769 the central revenue offices were amalgamated under what was called the Amministrazione Generale, and were divided into three departments. The first had supervision over the Dogana of Florence, all the provincial Dogane, and the Zecca. The second department administered the Gabella dei Contratti, the Gabella del Sale, the monopolies of tobacco and playing cards, and the group of indirect taxes administered previously by the office of the Farine. The third department supervised the ducal domain, that is, the Magona, the iron monopoly, and the ducal estates. In this arrangement a few offices, such as the Depositeria, Monte di Pieta, Decima, Scrittoio delle Fortezze, and Scrittoio delle Possessioni, remained largely on their old basis. A sign of the new order and discipline of the finances was the effort to construct regular periodic balances of revenue and outlay systematically, office by office, which had never been done under the Medici. The orders for this new procedure were published in October 1776, and in 1779 the first set of three-year balances was com294

THE LEOPOLDINE REFORMS

pleted through the bureau of Revisioni e Sindicati, which had replaced the old office of Soprassindaci of Cosimo I in 1768.79 Developments during the 1770s and 1780s included efforts to liqui-

date the funded debt, to convert the land tax to support local communal government, and to reorganize indirect taxation. A large problem of eighteenth-century finance was the burden of debt left from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The huge funded debt of the Med-

ici was thought to absorb a larger proportion of revenue in interest yearly than the debt of the kings of France. It was created, as Peter Leopold wrote in his reflections, “in various periods of the Republic, and particularly by the Medici for expenses of war, tribute to other courts, and other public necessities.”’3° He associated it with war, luxury, and unfruitful manipulation of capital. An aim of the new policy was to re-

duce the size and cost of the debt, although this raised problems in other areas of the finances, given the necessity of refunding capital to holders of Monte shares and of finding alternative sources of income. The effort was to create a system in which direct taxation would contribute more largely to public revenue. Pompeo Neri, in the Consiglio di Stato, had been employed in a sweeping reform of the tax system of Lombardy during the 1750s, which included a new land tax survey and the creation of a system of communal assemblies to administer taxation.3! The relative success of tax reform in Lombardy held promise for what might be accomplished in Tuscany. There was a current of opinion among advisors of the duke favorable to the physiocratic view that the best form of taxation was a single tax on landed revenue, which was

consistent with the new legislation on the grain trade. It was also agreed that the existing land taxes, the Decima of Florentine citizens and the Estimi of proprietors in provincial communities, were in desperate need of revision. A manuscript treatise on the Decima by G. F. Pagnini from 1746 was published in 1765, and in 1769 and 1770 a new series of memoranda was drawn up.3? These called attention to the fact that assessments of landed revenue were still those of the sixteenth cen-

tury; that the Decima was collected in an outmoded and undervalued 29 Dal Pane, Finanza Toscana, 1$7. 3° Salvestrini, ed., Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, 1, 285. 31 Klang, Tax Reform in Eighteenth Century Lombardy. 32 Dal Pane, Finanza Toscana, 123.

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money of account, which reduced the values in the tax books by nearly half; that through time and errors many properties escaped taxation altogether; that property of the Church was largely exempt; and that the Medici had permitted proprietors to impose payment of the Decima on tenants and sharecroppers through what was called the Decimino, so that the land tax had become a burden on peasants who were the least able to pay. For the promoters of a single tax it seemed proper that reduction of the public debt might be accompanied by a revision of the land tax. The effort to redeem the debt began in 1770 and 1771 with a further reduc-

tion of interest on funds of the Monti from 3% to 3 percent, and notification to shareholders that they could obtain reimbursement of capital at the rate of 100 percent. The plan was to pay for the repurchase of Luoghi di Monte through sale or long-term lease of Fattorie in the ducal domain, and of property of municipalities and luoghi pii, that is,

hospitals and other pious foundations under ducal jurisdiction. The debt was thus to be moved from private to public ownership as the domain, communities, and luoghi pii were rermbursed with Monte shares repurchased from the public. By 1789 some 850,000 Scudi had been re-

alized through sales and leases in forty Fattorie of the ducal domain alone, an operation involving some four hundred farms.33 It was hoped

that small holders and ex-sharecroppers might benefit, and on some ducal estates there was, indeed, an initial movement of farms to small holders, although most passed ultimately to middle-class proprietors or nobles. 34

It was anticipated that further conversion of the debt would be funded by increasing the yield of the land tax. Two currents of opinion formed on this issue. Peter Leopold himself, and Angelo Tavanti in the Segreteria di Finanza, favored reassessment of the land tax through a

new geometric cadasteral survey of every community, an operation similar, or more advanced technically, to what had been done in Lombardy. This plan was defeated by practical considerations of the cost and time required by the operation, and by the concurrence of other proposals through the bureaucracy. Gian Francesco Pagnini, the author 33 Salvestrini, ed., Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, 1, 390-414.

34 On the allivellazioni of Peter Leopold, see Giorgetti, “Per una Storia delle Allivellazioni Leopoldine,” 96-216.

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of the 1746 treatise on the Decima, was one of the authors of memoranda on taxation in 1769~-70. He also favored a single land tax, but he preferred to proceed without a new cadasteral survey—through the assessments in the existing tax books of the Decima and Estimi—by requiring proprietors to make new declarations of the extent and revenue of their properties. This proposal was supported as a defense of Tuscan tradition and as a less radical change in the existing system. As it turned out, resistance to making a new tax survey and the need to finance the new plans for communal government forced adoption of a version of the plan of Pagnini. In 1774 the Decima and Estimi were

transformed, on the basis of the existing assessments, into a new tax called the Tassa di Rendenzione, which was assigned to the communities, and a search was made through the books of the Decima in Florence to return tax values of properties owned by Florentine citizens in the Contado or Distretto to towns where the properties were actually located.35 In 1781 the administration of the Tassa di Rendenzione was turned over to the communities themselves, which were to determine their own budgets, and the office of the Decima in Florence was closed. This was the most satisfactory solution from the point of view of land-

holders, since it was feared that a new land survey would have decisively increased the land tax. It was proposed that further liquidation of the debt proceed by discounting payment of interest on shares in the Monti against payment of the Tassa di Rendenzione, perhaps through a slight increase in the rate at which the land tax was assessed.3° Landowners would receive credits for the land tax instead of interest on the debt.

In deference to proprietors, taxation was thus approached with much circumspection by the duke and bureaucracy. The solutions to tax problems were more conservative in Tuscany than in Milan, and more in tune with interests of the local elite. A further position on taxation, which was also favorable to interests of the patricians, was later advanced by Francesco Maria Gianni, who gained importance as an advisor of the duke after the deaths of Pompeo Neri in 1776 and Angelo Tavanti in 1781. Gianni was a patrician economist who emerged as an anti-physiocrat on the tax issue. He had helped to elaborate, and he fa35 Dal Pane, Finanza Toscana, 464. 36 [bid., 132-33.

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vored, the new legislation on the grain trade of 1767-68; but through the discussions of proposals for carrying out a new tax survey, he revealed a position hostile to the notion of a single tax on land and more favorable to the traditional industrial interests of Florence. If agriculture was the chief source of wealth, he argued, it was surely dangerous to tax it excessively: “Agriculture, and not only land alone, provides the fruits of the soil. This is only another branch of human industry... . They contradict themselves who favor all encouragement for agriculture, and then insist on taxing the land, . . . as if there were a difference between land and agriculture, or rather, industry.”37 Instead, he favored indirect taxes on objects of consumption. Gianni had more

traditional views about the Tuscan economy than Pagnini or Tavanti and was unwilling to abandon protection of traditional urban interests. He did not see a contradiction between support of free trade in grain and a policy of protecting manufacturing and even some agricultural products.3®

| In brief, there was little discussion of a new cadasteral survey after 1784, although the project was taken up again under the Restoration and was finally completed in 1834. The resolution of the problem of the

debt was to credit interest against payment of the Tassa di Rendenzione, although some critics argued that the consequent reduction in intake of the land tax left provincial communal governments with an insufficient tax base.39 The financial dominance of the capital persisted, and urban bond holders were still favored over rural tax payers. In 1780

the magistracy of the Monte Comune was suppressed; its bureau remained to carry out the residual operations of reducing the debt. The Monte di Pieta was also affected. In 1781 its remaining funds were assigned to the community of Florence, and it was reorganized as a charitable loan fund called the Azienda di Credito. The effort to reduce the size of the debt was temporarily successful. By 1790 two-thirds of it had been eliminated.#° But the problem of reducing the debt returned when it increased again under Ferdinando III after 1790. Ultimately, the financial support for the central bureaucracy was reduced largely to the declining revenue of the Dogane and to other in37 [bid., 137. 38 Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni, 90.

39 Note the discussion in ASF, Carte Biffi-Tolomei, 198-99. 4° Dal Pane, Finanza Toscana, 147.

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direct taxes. Tariffs on agricultural products were removed and low tariffs were imposed on manufactured goods in 1781 to provide a limited protection to manufacturers, although commercial products that had previously been prohibited, such as import of paper, silk cloth, and finished iron, or the export of Tuscan raw silk, were now allowed. Francesco Maria Gianni wanted the lowest rates to be on items of common consumption, including agricultural products and raw materials, and the highest rates on luxuries. In further support of manufacturers, the tariff of 1781 was again modified in 1788 after vigorous protests of producers in the Florentine silk industry, in‘order to make export of raw silk and import of foreign silk cloth more difficult. There was an effort to decrease other indirect taxes, and the remaining state monopolies were transformed into simple agencies of production. The Magona lost its monopoly on production of iron in 1781, but it continued to produce iron as a ducal enterprise. The Gabella del Sale had been both a monopoly on production of salt and a tax, in that communities were obliged to consume a set amount of salt. In 1788 the forced consumption of salt ended, although restrictions on the import of non-ducal salt continued. Stamped paper continued to be produced and its use was mandatory, although the number of types of documents requiring stamped paper decreased. The monopoly on the production and sale of tobacco was abandoned in January of 1789. Gianni had thought of consumption of tobacco as a vice: “It fills the prisons, desolates families, wastes patrimonies, and torments or dishonors individuals.” He advised abolishing the monopoly, banning cultivation of tobacco, and introducing a high tariff on its import. But the duke thought tobacco might be a useful product: “With time it could be advantageous and increase production in the countryside. . . since many fields are adapted to its cultivation.”43 The Tassa di Macine had been a profitable tax on milling of grain. In an effort to make up for the small intake of the land tax, it was transformed into a simple head tax in 1789 and assigned to the communities. It is difficult to make a direct comparison of the revenues and outlay of the ducal state between the last years of the Medici and the end of the 41 Tbid., 496-512. 42 Ibid., 477-80. 43 Salvestrini, ed., Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, 1, 333.

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reign of Peter Leopold, but judging from a Rendiconto published in 1789

there was a change in the balance between capital and provinces.‘ Large items of revenue from the 1730s, particularly from the Decima and Monti, were transferred to the communities or were considerably reduced. The components of revenue from the point of view of the central government were fairly similar: 42 percent came from the first department of the Amministrazione Generale (the Dogane), and 29 percent from the second department (chiefly from the Gabella dei Contratti and Gabella del Sale). The rest came from the Azienda dei Lotti, the lottery introduced by the Regency in 1737, and the Tassa di Macine, the new head tax. The significance of the new relationship between central and local government emerges from the fact that the revenues of the conto dello stato in 1789, which supported the bureaucracy, were less than half what had been accounted through the central offices of the buréaucracy in the last years of the Medici. To be sure, some communal revenue now belonged to the municipal government of Florence. However, the financial dependence of the provincial administra-

tion on the capital had clearly decreased. Among items of outlay, interest on the debt had accounted for 29 percent of total revenue in the 1730s. To the extent that the funding of the debt was not yet absorbed by the Tassa di Rendenzione, it had fallen by nearly half, to 15 percent of the 1789 revenue.‘ In general, the Depositeria maintained a positive balance of revenue over outlay, a result partly of negligible military expenditures and partly of cessation of payments to Vienna after 1765. At the same time, there were large outlays for reduction of the debt, for public buildings, for roads, bridges and canals, for drainage of marsh-

lands, for the construction of hospitals, mineral baths, and leper houses, and for schools.4° In the financial aspects of its operation, the new systéme monarchique presented a face of benign improvement. Municipal Government and the Constitutional Project

The new economic legislation of the 1760s was truly progressive by eighteenth-century standards, an experiment in policy carried out in 44 ASF, Seg. Gab., F 123B, 80ff. The series of balances from the 1730s is of uncertain origin, although in the sums assigned to the Depositeria Generale it matches the balance sheet of the Depositeria for 1737-38, published in Dal Pane, Finanza Toscana, 531-34. 45 Dal Pane, Finanza Toscana, 632-67. 46 Ibid., 172-77.

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collaboration between the duke and advisors who represented a native development of opinion. The effort to reform local communal government and the tentative plan to grant a fundamental constitution to the Duchy, advanced beyond the views of Peter Leopold’s advisors, and there was also opposition to a fundamental restructuring of the ducal state from the Hapsburg dynastic policies of Joseph II in Vienna. The problems of gaining acceptance for reform most clearly emerged with the constitutional project, which was also to be the keystone of the new system for municipal government. According to the agreements made at the time of Peter Leopold’s accession in 1765, Tuscany was not to be a fully integral part of the

Hapsburg possessions, but was to remain distinct under a second branch of the imperial line. This gave Tuscany more autonomy than the Low Countries or the Duchy of Milan, which were ruled by governors under close control from Vienna. However, Joseph II had no children, and it was assumed in Vienna that Peter Leopold’s first son Francis, born in 1768, would eventually succeed as Emperor. There was also reason to suspect that Joseph’s plans for further centralization of rule at Vienna might reduce Tuscany to the status of a province such as Milan. “The Empress,” Peter Leopold wrote of Maria Theresa in a diary of 1778-79 when he had been summoned to Vienna at the begin-

ning of Joseph’s Bavarian War, “gave me some pages written by the Emperor. . . containing his ideas about government. This [memorandum|.. . contains harsh maxims of violence and arbitrary despotism [including the intent to] remove all the privileges of [the Empire’s component] states, even those promised and sworn.”47 The relationship between Florence and Vienna affected the plan to

publish a Tuscan constitution, which was to accompany dismemberment of the last Florentine institutions sanctioned in the creation of the Duchy by the Reform of 1532. The project began on Peter Leopold’s return from Vienna in 1779, it was completed secretly in 1782, and it was then abandoned in 1783-84. Although it was never adopted, the constitutional project is a significant indication of the new aims of administration with regard to local municipal government. There were, in effect, two distinct aspects of arrangements in this regard. On the one hand, there were new financial and administrative arrange47 Wandruszka, Pietro Leopoldo, 358.

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ments for local government, involving the Tassa di Rendenzione and the new municipal councils, that proceeded from the 1760s, for which the constitution would have provided a guarantee. On the other hand, new arrangements were made for the appointment of local justices and for the reform of civil and criminal procedures in the courts, which were part of the general reform of the court system in the new criminal code of 1786.* The change in the financial arrangements for municipal government began in 1769 with the suppression of the Nove and the Capitani di Parte, which had had control over local town government in the Florentine Dominion. The two magistracies were replaced by a new bureau, the Camera delle Comunita. This occasioned a series of memoranda on the relative degree of central control or local autonomy that should operate in the Florentine Dominion. In the memorandum “Per la unione della Parte e de Nove” of 1769, Pompeo Neri, who had supervised creation of new municipal assemblies to administer the land tax in Lombardy during the 1750s, noted the ills of the existing system in Tuscany, particularly the close control exercised from Florence over the most minor local decisions, the awkward and confused territorial subdivisions, and the lack of practical knowledge of local affairs by the Nove in Florence, and even by many communal chancellors in the provinces. He aimed at increasing provincial representation by combining and restructuring the magistracies of the Nove and Capitani di Parte to include delegates from provincial towns. This would have created a kind of representative assembly. He was opposed by Count Rosenberg-Orsini, the Council representative from Vienna, whose view prevailed. Rosenberg wanted a regular professional bureau in Florence “composed of subjects capable of putting into execution the paternal intentions of V.A.R. and of keeping firm in the constant observation of whatever system it might please V.A.R. to introduce.”49 The Camera delle Comunita was thus organized as a bureau, but the problem of excessive centralization of control continued. It was confronted by crea-

tion of new municipal councils for provincial government of the Duchy as a whole, which were introduced in stages between 1773 and 1786.

ministrativa. :

48 On the reform of municipal government in general, see Anzilotti, Decentramento am-

4 ASF, Seg. Gab., F 107, “Riforma dei magistrati della parte e de nove.” , 302

THE LEOPOLDINE REFORMS

In February 1773 regulations were published for the communities of

the Florentine Contado, and in September 1774 for those in the Distretto. In June 1776 regulations were published for the territory of Pisa, and between May 1776 and August 1786, a gradual reform of local institutions took place in the State of Siena, which was divided adminis-

tratively into two parts, an upper part with its capital at Siena and a lower part with its capital at Grosseto, to help stimulate the economy of the lower province. These measures established uniform institutions from the smallest communities up to the provincial capitals—Florence, Pisa, Livorno, Siena and Grosseto—which remained as centers of re-

gional administration. Each town was to have a municipal council, consisting of a Gonfaloniere and priors extracted by lot among proprietors assessed for the Tassa di Rendenzione; cities with Libri di Oro would draw lots among citizens, nobles, and patricians. The larger general councils representing assessed taxpayers were responsible for administration of the land tax, and through local budgets provided financing for roads, bridges, public buildings, public doctors, Iuoghi pii, and schools under municipal control. The 1781 regulation for the new municipality of Florence charged the general council with the administration of the Decima, maintenance of public buildings not maintained by the Scrittoio delle Possessioni, the Monte di Pieta, and supervision of public spectacles, streets, sewers, and bridges.*° To be sure, the councils continued to be supervised by the communal chancellors, who were appointed by the duke. They were also subject to the jurisdiction of the Vicari and Podesta, who represented the central law courts. Other centrally appointed officials continued to operate in the provinces, and the provincial capitals had further hierarchies of officials. In 1784 Siena still had the Collegio, Consistorio, Ruota di Siena, Tribunale di Giustizia, Conservatori, Biccherna, Magistrato dei Pupilli, Monte dei Paschi, and other institutions under the direction of the Luogotenente. At Pisa were the Consoli di Mare, Uffizio dei Fossi, hospitals, and the university, all under the jurisdiction of the Commis-

sario rather than the municipal council. The municipal councils emerged, in short, with a limited sphere of activity that centered on administration of the land tax. But the duke had further anticipations for provincial representation. so Bandi e ordini, 11, 163 (20 Nov. 1781).

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The constitutional project, which was elaborated in consultation with Francesco Maria Gianni and a few others, was to have completed the relationship between the municipalities and the central administration. The duke was clearly interested in the possibility of creating a general representative assembly and read much on this subject; besides French works, he even had a copy of the 1776 constitution of Pennsylvania. In its nearly completed form of 1782, the constitution stated the natural rights of subjects—civil liberties, enjoyment of property, and pursuit of legitimate needs—and basic guarantees of the Tuscan state—ducal sovereignty, geographical integrity, neutrality, and inalienability of the patrimony of the Crown. The prerogatives of the duke were to include control of the armed forces, appointment of public officials, nomination of bishops, granting of titles of nobility, and the functions of justice and grace. There was to be a representative assembly, for which deputies were to be elected by the general councils of the municipalities. It would review accounts of the financial administration and salaries of officials, and would provide an advisory voice in the formation of new legislation by the duke. 5!

The constitution was never put into effect, and the project was unknown to the public until an essay describing it by Francesco Maria Gianni was published in 1825.5? But the constitutional project was not viewed with uniform approval by Peter Leopold’s advisors. Gianni himself thought that public spirit in Tuscany was too corrupted for an assembly to produce good results.53 Hapsburg policy in Vienna also opposed granting a fundamental charter. In 1783-84 Joseph II obliged his brother to subscribe to a plan in which the special status of Tuscany as an independent province would end with Peter Leopold’s death, an eventuality avoided ultimately because Peter Leopold survived his brother.54 Although the constitution was not put into effect, it is nonetheless a significant indication of the aims of administrative reform. Modern monarchy in Tuscany was to have operated not only through s* Zimmermann, Das Verfassungsprojekt, 123-76. Further on the impact of the American Revolution, see Tortarolo, Illuminismo e Rivoluzioni, chap. 3.

52 His “Memorie sulla costituzione di governo immaginata dal granduca Pietro Leopoldo da servire all’istoria del suo regno in Toscana,” written in 1805. On this, see Venturi, Illuministi italiani, 1038. $3 Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni, 292-94. $¢ Wandruszka, Pietro Leopoldo, 460—70.

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a hierarchy of bureaucratic functionaries, but also through the limited participation of subjects. And unlike the liberties of Medicean Tuscany, which were guaranteed by separate arrangements for Florence, Siena, and other component parts of the state, the constitution extended to the Duchy as a unified, regional whole. The Law Courts and Reform of Criminal Justice

In the 1780s two other issues took a central place in the remaking of the

bureaucracy. One was a new offensive in the relationship between Church and State, which had been a continuing problem since the 1740s. At first this had involved chiefly jurisdictional matters, but the area of concern enlarged in the 1780s at the moment of a parallel movement of Joseph II in Austria and in Lombardy. In Tuscany, Peter Leopold elicited cooperation of the Jansenist bishop of Pistoia and Prato, Scipione De Ricci. The plans of Ricci had broad implications involving

reduction in number of clergy and changes in outward form of reli-

| gious practice that became impossible to implement. Ricci was condemned by Rome and rejected by an assembly of Tuscan bishops in

1787; he evoked riots in his diocese at Pistoia and Prato, and the planned innovations remained largely unachieved. 5 The other issue, which was of more importance for the bureaucracy,

was the reorganization of the court system and elaboration of a new criminal code that was published in 1786. In the mode of eighteenthcentury jurisprudence, the harsh penalties of the traditional criminal law were modified in a more utilitarian direction. Civil jurisdiction had been so widely dispersed under the Medici, among different magistracies with jurisdiction in their own administrative areas, that changes in any area of administration inevitably affected the operation of the courts. Criminal jurisdiction had been highly centralized under the Otto di Guardia and the Auditore Fiscale. But the right of the Auditore Fiscale to intervene personally at any point of the system—in all the Florentine courts and magistracies, and with the police—produced, in the view of the duke, an excessive degree of centralization: “From this too arbitrary authority,” he wrote in his reflections, “resulted a thousand vexations, as did also from the criminal jurisdiction exercised by 5s On the issue of Church and State, see Scaduto, Stato e Chiesa. 390§

PART VI

all the magistracies.’’5° Basic aims of reform in the law courts were the

transfer of jurisdiction from the tribunals of magistracies to regular professional courts, institution of a more utilitarian system through the criminal code of 1786, so that regularly defined procedures could substitute for intervention of higher-level justices, and a new organization and expansion of activity of the police, who were perceived as important agents for maintenance of morality and public order. For the magistracies that had served as civil courts, the aim was both centralization and further professionalization of personnel. Magistracies were transformed into administrative bureaus, and their judicial

functions passed to the regular courts. This had happened in the finances under the tax farm in the 1740s when jurisdiction of the tax offices had passed to the Camera Granducale, a tribunal that in 1773 had employed four Auditori and a staff of seventeen; in 1777 it was abolished and its jurisdiction was divided between the Supremo Tribunale di Giustizia, the new central criminal court, and the Auditore delle Regaglie e Possessioni in accordance with the new distinction between public revenue and the ducal domain. The jurisdiction of the guilds and Mercanzia had passed to the Camera del Commercio in 1777, which was suppressed in favor of the regular courts in 1782. Even the Archivio had had civil jurisdiction. Its tribunal was suppressed in 1777.

At the top of the hierarchy of civil authority, the Magistrato Supremo, with its four senators, had long served as a court where Florentine citizens exercised a privilegio del foro for special judgment in cer-

tain cases. But three regular Auditori replaced the senators in 1776, Florentines lost their privilegio del foro in 1784, and the Magistrato Supremo became a court of appeal in what might be thought of as family

disputes.57 Another magistracy with civil jurisdiction was the Magistrato dei Pupilli, which had received cases involving wards from throughout the Florentine state. In 1777 the senator and four citizens who had rotated in office as magistrates were replaced by a fixed tribunal composed of two senators and three permanent members of the staff, the provveditore and two residenti legali. The jurisdiction of the Pupilli was restricted to the city of Florence so that cases in provincial

306 :

6 Salvestrini, ed., Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, 1, 129. 87 [bid., 1, 115-16.

THE LEOPOLDINE REFORMS

towns involving wards were brought before the local Vicari.5* But the Magistrato Supremo and Pupilli were the only Florentine magistracies that continued to exercise civil jurisdiction. Other cases were assigned to the Ruota, which continued as the central Florentine civil court of

first and second instance; with expanded jurisdiction it continued through the reign of Peter Leopold with much the same organization as it had had in the last years of the Medici.

An important change in both the civil and criminal courts was the professionalization of personnel. The reforms aimed to have trials conducted by a panel of professional judges rather than by untrained magistrates or arbiters. Florentine tradition had never provided for trial by

jury, but there had been a procedure for arbitration in civil cases through tribunals of elective judges. Aldobrando Paolini described them in the 1820s: “The method of election consisted of having each of the litigants draw up a list of persons pro and con, which was presented sealed to the president of the tribunal. . . . The day and hour fixed, the lists were opened and the tribunal was in operation.”5® Paolini favored this system as one that assured more publicity of procedure than in-

quisitorial trials conducted by professionals. But Peter Leopold strongly disfavored elective arbiters: “One can see what inconvenience derived from these kinds of people. . . . There was sometimes litigation for years just on the selection of the judges.”°° A regulation of December 1770 began a series of measures designed to tighten the require-

ments for training justices and to assure their regular appointment. Henceforth judges were to be necessari, that is, fixed appointed personnel of the courts, and elective judges were prohibited. The basic measure was the new procedure adopted for staffing the provincial courts in 1772. The offices of Vicari and Podesta had earlier been filled by Florentine citizens for short terms in office, although the terms had tended to lengthen in the seventeenth century, and the citizen judges were accompanied by regular justices or notai. The law of September 1772 established a uniform procedure of appointment for Vi-

cari, Podesta, and Notai in both Florence and Siena. Citizen judges were replaced by professional justices, and the judgeships were divided 38 Ibid., I, 104.

89 Paolini, “Discorso politico-storico sui giudici,” 335. 60 Salvestrini, ed., Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, 1, 102.

6 [bid., 103.

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into two classes, maggiori and minori, according to their importance. Still higher-ranking Auditori were designated for Pisa, Siena, Livorno, and Portoferraio, and a Commissario was sent to Grosseto in the lower province of Siena. The justices were to be selected from approved lists drawn up in accordance with a regulation of 1771 specifying the qualifications for training and examination of giudici and notai. Only qualified giudici could be appointed as Vicari or to the Podesterie maggiori; ‘notai could be appointed in Podesterie minori and in other lesser places. All served for terms of three years. Feudal jurisdictions still remained after 1772, but the justices in infeudated communities also had to be appointed among justices from the approved lists. For criminal justice, reorganization of the courts centered on a new central criminal court, the Supremo Tribunale di Giustizia, which replaced the Otto di Guardia in 1777, and on the new criminal code of 1786. Police courts were also introduced. In the view of the duke, the difficulty in the criminal courts arose from the excessive intervention of a few functionaries and from the frequent appeals for dispensation of sentences to the Consulta and to ducal grace. The Otto was a source of continual interference for Vicari in the provinces and for other subordinate tribunals: “Every time questions were raised in provincial tribunals or doubts expressed as to whether to allow some point or not,

or a particular kind of proof, . . . the Vicari referred matters to the Otto.”® A similar uncertainty resulted from the frequency of appeals to the Consulta, the board of three Auditori who passed on judicial matters reserved for the duke. In Peter Leopold’s view, proper functioning of the courts required a greater observance of fixed rules, procedures, and sentences at all levels. In 1777 the Supremo Tribunale di Giustizia replaced the tribunal of the Otto. In 1781 the bureau of the Fisco and the office of Auditore Fiscale, which had great importance as chief prosecutor under the Medici, were suppressed. Finally, the Consulta was suppressed in 1789. Criminal procedure was simplified in matters that extended from the types of evidence acceptable in criminal trials to the basic definition of crimes and punishments. The new aims of the system were expressed in the 6 Tbid., u, 1-8. For the text of the regulations of 1771 and 1772, see Cantini, Legisla-

zione Toscana, XXX, 120-29, 311-451. | 63 Salvestrini, ed., Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, 1, 121.

308

THE LEOPOLDINE REFORMS

criminal code of 1786, which became famous as the first in Europe to abolish capital punishment. It also prohibited use of torture, confiscation of patrimonies of criminals, and dismissed the earlier category of crimes of lesa maestd against the state. The new code made significant changes in the nature of court procedure and marked the transition in Tuscany from expiatory to corrective punishment. Penalties in whole categories of crimes were reduced. Henceforth only fines, flogging, prison, forced labor, and exile were permissible sentences. Indeed, for some years an interest in criminal law reform had developed in the bureaucracy. The first edition of Cesare Beccaria’s Dei delitti

e delle pene was published at Livorno in 1764. Giuseppe Pelli-Bencivenni, in the Segreteria di Stato, was a correspondent of Beccaria, and another Florentine, Cosimo Amidei, published a Discorso filosofico-politico sopra la carcere dei debitori against the imprisonment of debtors in 1770. The preparatory work for the law code proceeded intensively from 1782 and involved not only a full investigation of the criminal courts, but also a broad philosophical discussion of punishment.° The code fully confirms the views expressed in Peter Leopold’s reflections that the central aim of criminal procedure was to make rational uniformity of law a substitute for the private influence of individuals in the legal bureaucracy: “It is essential, now that punishments are so reduced, never to give pardons on any occasion, or reductions of penal-

ties, .. . since the effect of punishments now results ... from not being able to escape them.”°° With the new code the old institutions of

ducal grace were dismembered. As the code itself concluded: “All powers of our Consulta... to grant reductions, alterations, or pardons from penalties, whether economic or afflictive, are revoked.’® The reorganization of the law courts was completed through new ar-

rangements for prisons and the police. The prison of Florence, the Stinche, was put under direction of a Provveditore of the Supremo Tribunale di Giustizia in 1779. The Stinche itself, a fortresslike building in the eastern part of the city, was made into a type of penitentiary, where prisoners were required to work to contribute to their support. Debt64 On Amidei, see Rotondo, ed., Opere di Cosimo Amidei; Beccaria, Dei delitti e delle pene, 206~10.

6s Note the works on this matter in ASF, App. del Gabinetto, F 64. 66 Salvestrini, ed., Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, 1, 135. 67 Bandi e ordini, x1, L1x (30 Nov. 1786).

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ors were not ordinarily imprisoned after 1782, and there was a new ef-

fort to control vagabonds and other potentially dangerous persons among the poor, who were enclosed in a new type of poorhouse, a Casa di Correzione, opened in the buildings of the Fortezza da Basso in

1782. They were also expected to transform themselves into industrious workers. The police force of Florence under the Medici had consisted of the

Esecutori of the Otto di Guardia. “The Esecutori,” Peter Leopold wrote, “were entirely arbitrary . . . hated by the public and almost independent of the government. . . . They fomented crimes, engaged in all kinds of extortions, and were never punished.”® The new system began to emerge in 1774 with the introduction of a Commissario of police equipped with Esecutori for each of the four quarters of the city. The police courts were put under the Supremo Tribunale di Giustizia in 1777, and then under direction of the Presidente del Buon Governo, who supplanted the Auditore Fiscale in 1784 and became a very important official, parallel to the Presidente of the Supremo Tribunale di

Giustizia.° These courts of the Commissari dei Quartieri handled petty cases defined with “economic” penalties in the code of 1786. A similar economic jurisdiction was exercised under the governor of Livorno, the Commissario at Pisa, the Auditore Fisale at Siena, and the Commissario of the lower province of Siena at Grosseto. The police courts developed great importance in the enforcement of legislation, and the new state of the bureaucracy in 1784 lists some ninety places in the Squadro of Esecutori in Florence. Assumptions that lay behind abandonment of capital punishment were that Tuscans were naturally rational and pacific in temperament. “The Tuscan people,” the duke had written, “are easy to govern with courtesy and persuasion, there being no need of severity or rigor.”’7”° But, in fact, a great deal of legislation was directed to the end of correcting and improving morals, and this task was assigned to the police. The legislation of 1777 that prohibited ostentatious funerals, the carrying of uncovered corpses in procession, and the burying of corpses in church crypts fell in the area of economic penalties. A regulation of 68 Salvestrini, ed., Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, 1, 137.

6 Ibid., 138-39. 7° [bid., 21.

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THE LEOPOLDINE REFORMS

1780 that attempted to expel “vagabondi, forestieri, saltimbanchi e ciarlatami” from the Duchy required hotel keepers to notify the police every evening about all foreigners staying on their premises. Prostitution was forbidden, as was card playing in public places. In 1782 regulation of theaters and public spectacles was renewed, and there were continual efforts by the police to restrain the excesses of carnival. The liberal economic policy, the new attention given to local government, the constitutional project, and even the moderation in severity of punishments might be thought of as anti-bureaucratic elements of administrative reform; if the constitutional project had been implemented, the essential nature of the regime might have changed significantly. But with the new organization of police, the basic authoritarian habits of ducal absolutism returned to the center of the picture. The rational procedure of the bureaucracy was to operate essentially above Tuscan so-

ciety as a tutor for the improvement of well-intentioned subjects at large. Peter Leopold departed from Florence to succeed his brother as emperor in Vienna in February of 1790, and was succeeded as Grand Duke

in Tuscany by his second son Ferdinando III. During the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Tuscany was occupied by the French in 1799 and 1800, awarded to the Bourbons of Parma under what was called the Regno di Etruria in 1801, and annexed to France from 1807 until the restoration of Ferdinando III in 1814. He died in 1824, and was succeeded by his son Leopoldo Il, who remained duke until 1860. There were, to be sure, further developments in the bureaucracy in the early nineteenth century.7! But the Leopoldine system, which was restored almost intact in 1814, remained the basic system of administra~ tion until the absorbtion of Tuscany into the united Italian monarchy in 1860.

Enough has been said about the institutional development of the bureaucracy to show how relatively modern it had become by 1790. In the eighteenth century, utilitarian efficiency replaced the Baroque profusion of Medicean officialdom, and the regional administration of Tuscany emerged with a new remodeled system that reflected rationalistic 7 For developments after 1814 in general, see Galeotti, Leggi e amministrazione, Pansini, “Gli ordinamenti comunali,” 33-75.

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conceptions of government and administrative skill. But there was not only a change in institutions. The reforms also affected the social identity of officeholders, and were accompanied by the emergence of a new social group in the bureaucracy. New anticipations affected conduct in office, and opinion about politics and the state began to change.

312

| 15

THE EXIT OF THE PATRICIANS FROM OFFICE

Institutional aspects of the Leopoldine reforms have long been of interest to Tuscan historians, as have the chief functionaries, Giulio Rucellai, Pompeo Neri, Angelo Tavanti, and Francesco Maria Gianni, who were the duke’s collaborators. But little attention has been given to the effect of the reforms on the lesser personnel of the bureaucracy, and in fact there was a revolution in the social identity of officeholders. The reforms also introduced changes in procedures of administration and were accompanied by a new orientation of local politics. Between the 1730s and 1780s the patricians practically disappeared, not only from the places they had occupied in the Senate and magistracies, but also from their offices in the permanent staff. They were replaced partly by new nobles, but chiefly by non-nobles, that is, by notables from the provincial towns, provincial lawyers, and middle-class Florentines. And as the patricians disappeared from office, other features of the ducal system also changed significantly. Weber’s contrast between “patrimonial” and “rational legal” does not fit Tuscan experience closely in the early development of the Florentine bureaucracy out of the institutions of the city-state, but it does fit developments in the eighteenth century, when new regulations affected training, tenure of office, and salaries. Fees disappeared, pensions were regularized, pluralism in office ended, and the conduct of officeholders was more closely watched. A further evolution of political opinion took place in the academies, gazettes, and among individuals. The Leopoldine reforms did not provoke a straightforward reaction. Habits of acceptance of ducal authority facilitated acceptance of changes introduced from above, and the patricians resigned themselves to their new situation quietly. However, in the last years of the century, political opinion began, nonetheless, to take a new direction. 313

PART VI

The Replacement of the Patricians

The replacement of the patricians began under the Regency and was completed by Peter Leopold. The regents had acted through political

expediency, but Peter Leopold had the view that the bureaucracy should rise above the interests of particular groups, and he followed a consistent policy in the choice of functionaries in this regard. He clearly distrusted the Florentine elite. The lists of officeholders for 1773 and 1784 were the first regular Ruoli of the bureaucracy to assess performance in office, and the duke’s notes in the list for 1773 are filled with observations on personalities that have a repetitive sameness in many

cases. Among the senators he cited “Ferdinando Buondelmonte, a most honest knight, a good man, good-hearted, limited talent” and “Ferdinando Incontri, Councilor of State, honest, charitable, prudent, but lacking in talent.” About Giobattista Uguccioni Soprintendente of the Monte he wrote, “Honest, disinterested, exact in his duty, but with little talent and very weak. He is good for this position but for nothing else; he is liked but not esteemed,” and about Niccolo’ Martelli Soprintendente of the Annona, “He has some knowledge of business, but is short of talent, has little capacity, timid, makes little effort, attends to his private affairs.”? The duke’s later reflections on the government of ‘Tuscany gave more lateral expression to the same theme: “In the choice of functionaries [one should seek] honesty, ability and capacity .. . with no regard for birth, condition, family, needs, or length of service.”? “Education is much neglected . . . particularly among the nobility, which does not study at all, giving it little capacity for offices.”3 “It is an essential maxim, except in few and rare exceptional cases of those with character and superior talent, to hold as much as possible to the rule of never employing Florentine gentlemen, especially in upperlevel offices in Florence, because they make cliques among themselves to exercise their private passions and vendettas.”4 Peter Leopold’s view of the Florentine middle classes was not entirely favorable either; he

thought they were too subservient to the patricians. The group he sought to encourage were the provincials—the notables of the larger 1 ASF, Seg. Gab., F 124, 161-67. 2 Salvestrini, ed., Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, I, 11. 3 Ibid., 16. + Ibid., 22.

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THE EXIT OF THE PATRICIANS

towns and the small towns of the countryside: “The people of the Val di Nievole are very industrious. . . . In the little towns . . . there are many property owners who make good functionaries. . . . The nobles of Pisa are numerous, little educated, and lazy. . . . The middle class is of mediocre but sufficient talent, and can provide some employees.” One can follow the replacement of patricians in detail through the lists of officeholders in 1736, 1773, and 1784. In the table in Appendix A.2, offices have been arranged in the same categories used for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the same groups of nobles and non-nobles have been identified in the same way.° Considering the bureaucracy as a whole, the proportion of permanent offices held by older patricians fell from 31 percent in 1736 to 20 percent in 1773, and to 13 and 12 percent in the two states of the bureaucracy in 1784. Patricians had earlier been most prominent in the higher-ranking offices, where in 1736 they occupied 36 percent of the places. In 1784 they still occupied more places at an upper than at a lower level; but other groups, notably the new patricians and nobles, with 32 and 25 percent of the places, and non-nobles with 39 and 55 percent, now predominated. The only nobles whose participation increased between 1736 and 1773 were the “new patricians and nobles,” who were mostly registered as “nobles” in the Libri di Oro, but the prominence of this group again decreased before 1784. The group that gained in importance steadily through the century until it predominated at all levels was the non-nobles, whose growing ascendancy marked the social revolution in eighteenth-century Tuscan government. The exit of the patricians thus occurred gradually over more than a generation. When officeholders became advanced in age they were replaced by non-nobles. When bureaus were reorganized, the new staff was likely to be made up of new men. The fate of the Senate shows the nature and chronology of the change. There were forty-four senators in 1736, and then additional appointments brought the number up to forty-eight in March 1737—forty-two older patricians, five new patricians, and one non-noble. One new senator was appointed in 1739, but then no further appointments were made until 1760, so that the number s Ibid., 30.

¢ The identity of rotating magistrates was not traced for 1773, when many of the offices were already suppressed; they had all disappeared before 1784.

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of senators decreased and the age of the survivors increased. In 1750 , there were thirty-three senators with a mean age of sixty-one, in 1755

there were twenty-two with a mean age of sixty-two, and in 1760, there were twelve with a mean age of sixty-seven. The secretary of the Tratte complained in 1752 that there were only twenty-four senators,

barely enough to renew the Magistrato Supremo yearly. The reply from Vienna was that since a new arrangement was planned for the Magistrato Supremo, there would be no appointments of new senators for the present. In 1757 the secretary warned that there were only sixteen senators, and that their inability to attend the magistracies would make administrative acts invalid. The reply was that the Council of Regency would validate the acts.7 In October 1760 twelve new senators were appointed, mostly among older patricians with experience in office, and there were further new appointments in 1763, 1764, 1766, 1767, and 1768, bringing the number to twenty-two in 1768. But then the Senate continued to decline in members. There were no more ap-

pointments until 1782, and these were the last. The participation of senators in other offices also decreased, so that by the 1780s they were reduced to a handful of elderly men with no clear institutional function. The last survivor, Francesco Maria Gianni, who had been appointed in 1760, died in 1821. The patricians’ departure from other offices followed the same chronology. Their overall participation decreased most markedly under the Regency and the first years of Peter Leopold so that the most intense phase of administrative reform occurred when, from the point of view

of personnel at least, the confrontation with the elite had already largely occurred. But when one looks at different sectors of the bureaucracy, and particularly at the rise and fall of men registered as “nobles,” it is clear that there was a change of strategy in the choice of officeholders between the mid- and later years of the century. Whereas the regents had tended to replace patricians with new nobles, some of whom were

new Hapsburg creations, Peter Leopold’s aim was to dispense with employing nobles altogether. The policy of the mid-years of the century is most evident in the upper councils, which had no “nobles” in 1736 when 36 percent of the offices were held by older patricians. In 1773 the proportion of places held 7 ASF, Reggenza, F 349, ins. 168.

316

THE EXIT OF THE PATRICIANS

by patricians had fallen to 23 percent, and the proportion held by “nobles” had risen to 27 percent. These included such important functionaries of the early years of Peter Leopold as Pompeo Neri in the Segreteria di Stato and Angelo Tavanti in the Consiglio di Finanza.’ Another conspicuous area of substitution of new nobles for patricians was in the

finances, where the tax farm dislodged many men from the older group. A scattering of French surnames of ennobled Lorrainers continued to appear in the finances up through the 1780s: Giuseppe Gavard des Privets, the director of the second branch of the Amministrazione Generale; Leopold Gervais and Carlo Hayré in the Segreteria di Finanza in 1773; and Carlo, Francesco, and Giovanni Grobert in the first branch of the Amministrazione Generale and in the Lottery in 1784. But the influx of new nobles was a phenomenon of short duration. In the later years of Peter Leopold, non-nobles predominated in all sectors of the bureaucracy, and at nearly every level of rank. It is difficult to find in-depth information about the non-nobles as a group. In this study I designate as non-nobles those who were not registered as patricians or nobles in the Libri di Oro, a method that conceals the fact that a few “non-nobles” were really “nobles” who were not registered. For example, in 1773 a member of the Council of State and the director for foreign affairs in the Segreteria di Stato was Count Tommaso Piccolomini, who came from a most ancient and illustrious Sienese patrician house that had never bothered to register in the Libri di Oro of Florence. However, there are only a few such cases of misplaced status;9 few nobles who were sufficiently established to hold important offices failed to be registered in the Libri di Oro. From biographical notices

gleaned from the questionnaires distributed in 1768 and from com- , ments on individuals in the list for 1773, it is possible to provide a rough picture of the non-nobles. Some were notables from the provincial towns, many were lawyers, and many more, particularly ® Other new nobles in the Segreteria di Stato in 1773 were Francesco Seratti from a family of jurists of Siena who were ennobled in 1756, and two members of the De Poirot family, Lorrainers who were ennobled in 1761. In the Segreteria di Finanza were Luigi Dithmar di Smidweiller, an Austrian ennobled in 1764, and Bernardo Francois, another Lorrainer ennobled in 1749. 9 So far as can be ascertained from titles in the lists of 1784, only Piccolomini and Baron Cervella in the Segreteria di Stato fell into this category for offices exercised in Florence.

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tines. , PART VI

among intermediary-level officeholders, were middle-class FlorenIn the Councils of State and Finance and in the Segreteria di Stato, provincial notables and lawyers were prominent among the new men. Among the eight non-patricians employed in 1784 was Riguccio Galluzzi, the historian of Tuscany under the Medici. He came from a family of notables at Volterra, was employed in an intermediary-level position as archivist of the Segreteria di Stato in the first list for 1784, and had been promoted to a slightly higher office in the second. At least two of the eight men were Florentine lawyers. One, Gaetano Carrini, had been chancellor of the Pratica Segreta at the time of the questionnaires in 1768, when his responses indicate that he was a Florentine doctor of law and was first employed in the Archivio di Palazzo in 1735. Another was Giuseppe Bianchi, who was employed in the Segreteria di Guerra in 1768 and 1773 and in the Segreteria di Stato in 1784. He had studied law in the Studio Fiorentino, and began his career in 1741 through subentry into the office of chancellor of the Order of St. Stephen, where he had remained for five years. Then he became secretary to the commandant of the ducal militia before obtaining a place in the Segreteria di Guerra in 1759.'° In other offices, provincial lawyers were a group clearly sought after in appointments, and the new regulation of training and examination of lawyers and notaries for the provincial courts in 1771 and 1772 created a pool of eligible candidates. The Auditore of the Supremo Tribunale di Giustizia in 1784 was Jacopo Biondi, a lawyer from Pomer-

ance, near Volterra, who had begun his career in the staff of the provincial courts and was first employed in Florence in 1760 in an office in the chancery of the Auditore della Giurisdizione. The Assessore of

the Supremo Tribunale was Jacopo Paoletti, a lawyer from Volterra, who had first been employed in Florence in the tribunal of the Otto di Guardia in 1755, when he was twenty-seven, and was promoted to chancellor in 1768. In 1773 he was reported “very capable, attentive, hard working, exact.”!! He was again promoted to Assessore Criminale when the Otto was replaced by the Supremo Tribunale di Giustizia in 1777. Among the Commiussari dei Quartieri, the new Florentine po10 ASF, Reggenza, F 224, Seg. Gab., F124, 117f. 11 ASF, Seg. Gab., F124, 320f.

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THE EXIT OF THE PATRICIANS

lice court, was Giuseppe Calamandrei from San Casciano, a small town near Florence. He had begun his career in the provinces as a minor employee in the tribunal of Portoferraio. In 1768 he moved to Florence in a low-ranking office in the Otto di Guardia. In 1773 he had been promoted to a slightly higher-ranking office in the Otto. He was described

as “able, attentive, exact, rather cold: should be promoted.” On the creation of the police courts in 1777 he was made one of the four Commissari dei Quartieri. Two other provincial lawyers in 1784 were Giu-

seppe Tognetti, the chancellor of the Stinche, and Ranieri Giunti, Commissario of the Casa di Correzione. The first came from the town of Monte Lupo and the second from Buti, in the direction of Pisa. Both had begun their careers as employees of provincial courts.” As one moves down the ranks to offices at an intermediary level, native middle-class Florentines become the most conspicuous among the non-nobles. Among all non-nobles responding to the questionnaires of 1768, 70 percent were Florentines, 27 percent came from other parts of Tuscany, and three percent were non-Tuscans; but while 44 percent of lawyers came from provincial towns, only 15 percent of non-lawyers came from the provinces. Training in law was always a factor affecting migration into the city, and offices that did not require lawyers went to natives. The middle class of Florence had supplied the rank and file of the bureaucracy throughout its development, and as the influence of the patricians waned, its importance again grew. The movement upward of middle-class functionaries was undoubtedly furthered by the lessening influence of patricians over appointments, and by the new, more regular procedures for advancement and promotion. Disappearance of the patricians, reassertion of rules of officeholding, and reassertion of the middle class went hand in hand. 2 Tbid.

3 From the appointments of judges approved after the new regulations of 1771 and 1772, one can follow traces of careers of other men moving from the provinces into offices in Florence. Dario Angeloni, a lawyer from S. Piero in Bagno, was vicar of Sestino in 1772 and chancellor of the Supremo Tribunale di Giustizia in 1784. Giovan Battista Cangini, from Volterra, who was Podesta of Castel Franco di Sotto in 1772, was one of the Commissari dei Quartieri in 1784. Ser Giuseppe Cappelli of Castel Franco di Sopra, who was the Notaio Criminale of Anghiari in 1772, was employed in a minor office in the Consulta in 1784. See ASF, Consulta, F 447, “Libro che dimostra le persone impiegate nei tribunali provinciali dalla riforma provinciale di 1772.”

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Still, most non-noble officeholders had some independent means. They were recruited among property-owning citizens who had sufficient resources to provide for education and good bearing. In 1768, 60 percent of non-nobles claimed to have revenue from a personal family patrimony of one kind or another. In the office of the secretary of the Tratte in 1768, Dottore Vincenzo Niccoli, age fifty-five, was employed as second Ministro, an office he had obtained in 1758. He was a doctor of law, married, with no children, and had a salary between provvisione and incerti of 240 Scudi yearly. In addition he owned a house in Florence

jointly with his father. But this placed him near the lower margin of means claimed by middle-class functionaries. Men with less property were more likely to be menial employees. Thus Francesco Cavini, a copyist in the Archivio Generale who had a very modest position paying only 80 Scudia year, was age forty-five, was married and had seven children, and was without any assegnamento in proprio. Higher in the scale, Giovanni Vinci was listed in all three years as chancellor of the Magistrato dei Pupilli. In 1761, when he was thirty-four, he had become chancellor sostituito, in 1763 chancellor pro interim, and in 1767 chancellor. He received a high salary, between provvisione and incerti, of 460 Scudi yearly, and was reported to have some assegnamento in proprio,

which he shared with a brother, Giuseppe Vinci, who was employed as chancellor of the Magistrato Supremo and later, in 1784, as an Auditore

of the Ruota, a substantial and highly paid office in the law courts worth 700 Scudi a year. 4 The new state of the bureaucracy in 1784 thus presented a quite different picture from the old state in 1736. The reforms of the Regency

and Peter Leopold might be compared with the first establishment of the bureaucracy by Cosimo I in the sixteenth century, in that the aim in both periods was to undermine the influence of patricians by opening Florentine government to new men. But the aims of Cosimo I had been to create a political counterweight through the bureaucracy to the patricians in the Senate, the Council of 200, and the magistracies, a tactic that led the patricians ultimately into the permanent offices and into de-

pendency on the Medici Court. The eighteenth-century reforms had much more decisive results. The patricians, to be sure, did not disappear from Florentine society or entirely from offices in the bureau-

4 ASF, Reggenza, FF 224-25. 320

THE EXIT OF THE PATRICIANS

cracy. They continued to occupy some important places up to the end of the Duchy in 1860.'5 But through the Leopoldine reforms their institutional place was restricted more narrowly to the municipal council of Florence, on which they based much of their political influence in the nineteenth century. The Gonfaloniere and Priori Nobili of the first municipal council of Florence, which was elected in February of 1782, were two nobles, Giuseppe Maria Panzanini and Giovanbattista Verdi, and two older patricians, Marchese Bartolommeo Ginori and Giovanantonio Pitti.'° As the regional administration of Tuscany rose above

the old institutions of the city-state, the patricians receded to their proper place. The New Discipline of Officeholders

The new discipline of officeholders also gave a quite different tone to the bureaucracy at the end of the century. The patrimonialism of the seventeenth century bureaucracy had arisen partly through failure to develop rules for the permanent staff parallel to those for the Republican magistracies, but in the eighteenth century there was a new infusion of rules. More strict requirements of training appeared for candidates for appointment, subentry into offices ended, advancement in careers was arranged in a more formal way, pluralism disappeared, fees were disallowed as a component of salaries, and there even emerged a regular system of retirement and pensions. The departure of the patricians marked a break in the pattern of abuses. The aim was to impose new standards of public utility in administration. Peter Leopold’s reflections even contain notes about rooms in the Uffizi and in other buildings occupied by different magistracies and tribunals; he makes suggestions for the reorganization of space, and about new quarters for bureaus.?? “The defects of employees in Tuscany are generally negli's Although judging from the annual almanacs, their participation in offices under the Restoration was not above that in 1784. See Almanacco della Toscana, 1820, 1830, 1840, 1841.

6 Gazetta Toscana, 23 February 1782. Although the Gonfalonieri of the municipal councils became appointed officials under the Restoration, the Florentine municipal council provided a political platform of some importance in the early nineteenth century. Ubaldino Peruzzi, a patrician among the Tuscan moderates in 1850, and Ferdinando Bartolommei, who was among the leaders of the National Society in Tuscany, used their places as Gonfaloniere of Florence to advantage in the politics of the Risorgimento. 17 Salvestrini, Relazioni sul Governo della Toscana, i, 167-86.

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gence,” he wrote. “[They] leave the details of business entirely to underlings, come to their offices as little and as late as possible, merely for show, and spend their time gossiping, doing useless things, or conduct their own business.” *®

In the new system functionaries were more carefully watched and controlled. The review of candidates for office under the Medici had been centralized in the hands of the secretary of the Tratte, but with suppression of the Tratte in 1782 approval of appointments reverted to the Segreteria di Stato, although a more decentralized system evolved for initial review of candidates by the heads of different departments. At the same time, central control tightened; it was expected that a review of the Ruolo of each bureau would be undertaken every few years to assess performance, salaries, and need for more staff. On these occasions detailed reports were submitted to the Segreteria di Stato and the Segreteria di Finanza.'9 Indeed, the assertion of central control was pursued steadily from the first years of the Regency, and among the first acts in 1739 was disallowance of sopravvivenze, that is, private arrangements for subentry into office with anticipation of succession. —

“When any public office becomes vacant,” the new orders read, “the superior officials . . . are bound to inform the Council of Regency immediately, and give intelligence of the duties of the vacant office, and all its regular and irregular revenues, to await such orders as will then be given.”?° Later the aim of the questionnaires of 1768 and the Ruoli of 1773 and 1784 was to review salaries and conduct of functionaries, de-

partment by department, through periodic reviews. New general regulations on tenure of offices were published in 1784, and the Ruoli of 1784 were then reviewed and revised 1n 1792-93. The regulations for 1784 established three types of positions: places di ruolo, which formed the core staff of each department, places held by aggregati, that is, ad hoc employees whose number might change from year to year; and places for apprendisti, young men assigned by the Se-

greteria di Stato to different bureaus to serve initially without salary while gaining experience and awaiting appointment to a place as aggregato or di ruolo. New appointments were expected to proceed on the ba8 Tbid., 1, $7.

9 Note the procedure for revision of the Ruoli in 1792-93 under Ferdinando III in ASF, Reggenza, FF 212-13 and ASF, Misc. di Finanza, FF 129-32. 20 ASF, Misc. Med., F 273, ins. 3, “Abolizione delle sopravvenze del 1736 e 1739.”

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sis of plans proposed in the periodic reviews. In the renewal of Ruoli in 1792-93 apprendisti were reviewed as a group by the Segreteria di Stato

and then apportioned to departments needing them. In the matter of salaries, collection of incerti, the official fees, was prohibited in 1784, and pluralism of officeholding, particularly among different departments, was forbidden. Individuals seeking increases in salary were instructed to submit petitions directly to the duke.*! In addition, training became a matter of new regulation, particularly for lawyers and notaries, who had been regulated earlier by the Arte dei Giudici e Notai. With suppression of the guild in 1770 and the new requirements for legal training in 1771, the Consulta replaced the Proconsolo of the Arte in the examination of candidates. Notaries were required to have studied law for at least two years at a university, and they were exempted from an annual tax if they had studied longer and received a degree in law. Those who were appointed to positions requiring lawyers had to have a law degree and six years of experience under an established justice.”?

It is not possible to know in detail the extent to which the requirements for training were effective, but there was clearly some degree of success. It would be useful to be able to compare the number of lawyers and notaries employed between the early and late eighteenth century, as was done in Chapter 9 for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Unfortunately, the way of recording officeholders in 1773 and 1784 makes it impossible to ascertain the number of lawyers, since titles, such as Avvocato or Ser, are omitted from the lists. But in many cases one can get details of their training from responses to the questionnaires of 1768. Lorenzo Rossi, who was employed as Cancelliere of the Sanita, described himself as a doctor of law in 1768, but in 1784, when he had become chancellor of the Camera delle Comunita, he was listed without a title. In 1768 Giuseppe Calamandrei, Domenico Leoni, and Giuseppe Tognetti, all employed in the tribunal of the Otto, reported themselves to be doctors of law, but in 1773, when they were still employed in the Otto, and in 1784, when they had moved on to other offices, they were also listed without titles. The proportion of lawyers in the upper- and intermediary-level offices rose from 27 to 33 percent be-~ 21 ASF, Seg. Gab., 1784, prot. 24, ins. 1-2. 22 Cantini, Legislazione Toscana, XXX, 120-29.

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tween 1736 and 1768, but the identification of lawyers is too incomplete for estimation in 1773 and 1784. However, the renewal of the Ruoli in 1792-93 provides examples of young men beginning their careers as apprendisti, which show the im-

portance of legal training for men seeking appointment, even among nobles, and which confirm that the new regulations were being observed. Forty-one places were available at that time: three in the Segreteria di Stato, three in the Segreteria di Finanza, one in the Segreteria di Guerra, four in the office of Revisioni e Sindicati, sixteen in different offices of the Dogana, and the rest distributed in ones and twos among other bureaus in Florence or the provinces.?3 Among applicants consid-

ered for the Camera delle Comunita was Pietro, son of Count Neri Cesari Gaci, aged twenty-three, who had been educated in the Collegio

di San Filippo in his native town of Castiglione Fiorentino. He had studied law for three years at the University of Perugia, although he had not received a degree, and was currently employed in the Studio Legale of a Florentine lawyer. Another was Giuseppe Balbianci from Pontedera near Pisa. He was twenty-seven years old, had a degree in law from the University of Pisa, and was also employed by a Florentine lawyer. Among fourteen candidates for places in the office of Rivisioni e Sindicati, the bureau that reviewed the accounts of different departments, five were patricians and four had studied law at Pisa. Other applicants included provincial nobles with degrees from Pisa, Siena, or Florence, all of whom were apprenticed to Florentine lawyers.?4 Education in law and a period of apprenticeship in a legal practice were thus clear requirements for applicants for these appointments in general. Patterns of careers in the late eighteenth century also seem to have followed more regular lines. The age of officeholders did not change

, much, but the incidence of pluralism decreased very significantly. Men continued to enter office in their early thirties. The median age of obtaining a first office in a sample of patricians in 1736 had been thirtyfive years, and it was thirty-three years for the 117 men for whom this

information can be gathered from the questionnaires of 1768. But judging from a particular sample of officeholders for the years 1773 and 1784, the mean age of men in office increased slightly during the 1760s — 23 ASF, Misc. di Finanza, F 131. 24 Ibid.

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to 1780s, a fact possibly related to the reorganization of personnel and the general decrease in number of functionaries. As offices were rear-

ranged and combined, men with seniority tended to be kept on and moved to new places, while the number of young men admitted to the rolls was limited.?5 The precedence of seniority was stated explicitly in 1784: “When there are vacancies, in proposing appointment [of substitutes] to S.A.R., men already in service as aggregati, or who are superfluous in other offices and are qualified, should be reviewed before proposing outsiders.”6 Meanwhile, pluralism decreased from 15 percent of officeholders in the sample in 1736 to 7 percent in 1773, 3 percent in the first list for 1784, and 2 percent in the second list. Pluralism was specifically prohibited in 1784 in that functionaries were forbidden to draw salaries from the cassa of more than one department. The campaign against abuses had come to a climax in the years of the Regency with the publicity given to the grand embezzlement from the Abbondanza of Senators Alberti and Gaetani in 1747. A scandal of this proportion did not develop again later in the century. Under Peter Leopold the practices of the Medici administration most seen as “abuses” were irregularities of appointment, pluralism of officeholding, and 1rregularities of salaries, particularly the collection of mancie and incerti, the semi-official fees. These problems were all addressed at the time of the new Ruoli of 1784, when fees were suppressed and a more regular provision was made for retirement. All fees beyond official salaries were disallowed: “It is absolutely, and vigorously, prohibited,” the new regulations stated, “to require, or receive, even if spontaneously of5 In the sample of officeholders for the eighteenth century, not only patricians were under consideration but all men whose surnames began with the letters Aa-p, a combined

total (counting some men who were in office in more than one year) of 514 for 1736, 1773, and 1784. The mean age was forty-five years in 1736, forty-six and 1773, and fiftytwo and fifty in the two lists for 1784. Because different groups were involved, the earlier sample used in Part IV and the eighteenth-century sample do not coincide in all respects. In 1736, when the two overlap, the sample of patricians alone had more cases of pluralism (48 percent) than the sample of patricians and nobles combined (15 percent), and patricians alone were older (median fifty-one years) than the patricians and nobles together (median forty-five years). These differences are explained partly by the presence of many patrician senators in the earlier sample who were generally older and more likely to hold more than one office. 6 ASF, Segreteria di Stato, 1784, prot. 24, ins. 1-2, “Ordini generali per tutti i dipartimenti.”

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fered .. . any gift, retainer, fee, participation, or tip besides the fees that are specifically permitted in the Ruoli of 5 April 1784.”27 The trend of salaries in the eighteenth century is shown in Appendix A. 3, and it is

clear that this was not a period of improvement in the relative wellbeing of officeholders. In 1736 incerti had accounted for an average of 33 percent of salary for the 179 offices out of 420 for which the size of incerti was reported, and incerti accounted for 12 percent of the total cost of salaries for the bureaucracy as a whole. In the first list for 1784, when this information was much more fully reported, incerti made up an average of 25 percent of salary for 255 offices out of 481, or 17 percent of the total cost of salaries. But in the second list for 1784 the number of offices deriving a part of salaries from incerti fell to only 34 out of 410, and although the mean proportion of salaries made up by incerti was high for these remaining offices, the proportion of the total fell to only 3 percent. Virtual elimination of incerti was clearly a matter of significance, because it caused a slight overall decrease in the average size of salaries. Financially, from the point of view of the ducal treasury, the suppression of fees was accomplished through a reduction in the number of offices and by adjusting other components of salaries—the official regular provvisioni, which had been the basic element of salaries under the Medici, and what were called pensioni or pensioni di indennizzazione—from case to case. One would think today of a pension as something payable

on retirement or to one’s survivors after death. But this was not the usual case in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Pensions are not recorded in the earlier lists of officeholders, probably because they were arranged individually as a special grace, although even then they did not necessarily involve someone’s retirement. What was meant by a pensione di indennizzazione is made clear in the case of Gio Battista Uguccioni in 1767. He left the office of Depositario Generale to be-

come Soprintendente of the Monte Comune, “with all the faculties, prerogatives, salary and fees connected to the same, and as well with a pension of 250 Scudia year. . . as recompense for the smaller salary he will receive in this new place.” Pensions were additions to salaries and 27 Note the full instructions in Bandi e ordini (1784), xu, 8 April 1784, “Ordini di S. Altezza Reale a tutti i dipartimenti.” 28 ASF, Misc. Med., F 273, ins. 3.

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permitted more flexible arrangements, among other things, when officeholders were moved from place to place. The suppression of incerti in 1784 was compensated for by granting officeholders supplementary pensioni di indennizzazione, but this still left many in a precarious state. Judging from the price of grain in Florence, the cost of living rose very steeply, by at least 50 percent, between the 1730s and 1780s, making the real value of salaries fall; even without consideration of cost of living, the adjustments of salaries in 1784 did not fully compensate for the suppression of fees. The Hapsburgs were parsimonious in the remuneration of functionaries, and in fact, the total cost of salaries for the central bureaucracy decreased by 16 percent between the dispositions in the two lists for 1784. There was a slight increase in the mean size of provvisioni, so that with the reduced number of functionaries the face value of salaries only decreased slightly. But in terms of real buying power, officeholders were much worse off in 1784 than they had been in 1736. Indeed, vigorous complaints about the economic effects of suppressing incerti and petitions for redress regularly

punctuate the departmental folders compiled during the revision of Ruoli of 1792—93.79

A final innovation of the 1780s was the appearance of a new system of retirement and the introduction of pensions in the modern sense. Operations in this matter had earlier been a continual source of abuse. Functionaries of the Medici had generally continued to work until they died or until, in declining health, they hired younger men who wanted to succeed them in office to assist them, giving them part of their salaries. An exception had been the Mazzieri of the staff of the Signoria in the fifteenth century—the messengers and ushers who, through legislation in 1419 and 1452, had been granted the privilege of receiving a pension at the age of sixty if they had had at least fifteen years of service.3° The privilege of Mazzieri of the Magistrato Supremo continued through the seventeenth century, but there is no evidence that it was enjoyed by other functionaries, and the Mazzieri themselves, whose positions were largely sinecures, later regularly hired substitutes to discharge their minimal duties. Instead of “retiring” when they reached 9 Note particularly ASF, Reggenza F 212, “Fogli relativi ai nuovi ruoli del 1792 al 1793 i quali contengono le proposizioni per la rifusione dei medesimi in esecuzione della circolare del di 4 Novembre 1791.” 3° Brucker, “Bureaucracy and Social Welfare in the Renaissance,” 1-21.

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age sixty, they held onto their offices in an effort to pass them on to substitutes.3! Retirement had been a private arrangement, tacitly approved by the Tratte, in which substitutes assisted aging officeholders and received a part of their pay. But retirement must have become a matter of new importance in the eighteenth century, because, as bureaus were rearranged and staff was dismissed, it became an obvious arrangement for older functionaries to retire. There does not seem to have been any general provision in this matter until the new Ruoli of 1784, when procedures were laid out in

detail. “To employees,” the instructions read, “who because of their age and indisposition have become incapable of continuing their service, if they have a deserving record and continuous service for thirty years, S.A.R. is inclined to give them their entire provvisione as a pension.” Employees with only twenty years of service were to receive half of their provvisione; those with less service or those who left ducal serv-

ice for reasons other than “retirement” were to receive nothing. 3? Other regulations provided for widows and minor children.33 But there was no mandatory retirement age. In the revision of the Ruoli in 1792-93, men of quite diverse ages were designated for retirement. Some in their forties and fifties were deemed incompetent in office and were slated for “retirement”; others, in their sixties and seventies, were to be retained as “useful.”34 Thus retirement was perhaps as much a means for exercising tighter control over functionaries as it was of providing a benefit to the officeholders involved. It clearly decreased the independence of functionaries with regard to tenure and succession in 31 In an investigation of February 1740, it was reported that the twelve remaining places as Mazzieri were “reduced for the most part to being exercised by substitutes” and new instructions from the secretary of the Tratte required that the duties be dispatched by the men who actually held the offices, in line with the Motuproprio of the Council of Regency of July 1739 that disallowed succession in offices through sopravvivenze. See ASF, Reggenza, F 752, ins. 2-3. 32 ASF, Segreteria di Stato, 1784, prot. 24, ins. I-2. One should note that the annuities received by retired officials were not their pensioni d’indennizzazzione, which were to cease at the end of active service, but a proportion of their base salaries, the provvisioni. 33 Heirs of employees who died in office with less than ten years of service were to receive as alump sum as much of two-thirds of a year’s provvisione; after ten years of service they could receive an annuity of one-tenth to one-half the provvisione per year. A copy of this regulation is in ASF, Misc. di Finanza, 0, F 384. 34 ASF, Misc. di Finanza, I, F 132, “Stato degli aggregati. . . 5 Gennaio 1793.”

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office. Through new procedures for appointment, the review of department rolls, the regulation of salaries, and provision for retirement, one can safely say that the bureaucracy of the eighteenth century became regulated by new and more impersonal rules. The Legacy of the Patricians

Involvement of the patricians with the ducal state did not end with the eighteenth-century reforms or with the departure of Peter Leopold for Vienna to succeed his brother as emperor in February 1790, although this event marked the end of the reform movement. Patricians continued to occupy offices in the nineteenth century, although to a much lesser degree than in the eighteenth century. They also occupied places in the municipal government of Florence and in the civil society that constituted public opinion in academies, reading societies, journals, and gazettes. It was at this level, in civil society rather than in the reformed bureaucracy, that the ultimate judgment of the regime of the Hapsburgs developed. In the 1790s opinion also began to be affected by developments and ideas that radiated from Revolutionary France. ‘The administrative reforms of Peter Leopold had been accepted without

much open protest, although at a popular level there was a reaction against the Jansenist innovations introduced at Pistoia and Prato in 1786 and 1787.35 Then in June 1790, bad harvests produced market riots in

Florence and some other towns, requiring the restriction of grain exports and renewing debate on the value of free trade, which continued through further crises of 1793 and 1795. Florence escaped French occupation during the invasion of Italy that followed Napoleon’s first Italian campaign of 1796, although Livorno was occupied; but the Duchy was occupied by the French during the War of the Second Coalition in 1799. An undercurrent of native Jacobinism developed at Livorno, Florence, and the University of Pisa; anti-Jacobinism emerged among San Fedist partisans of Austria in the Viva Maria uprising at Arezzo in the spring of 1799. Tuscany was then shaken by the general European upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars. The French Revolution and Napoleonic period were clearly impor35 But there was a satirical undercurrent expressed through a libelle of Beccatini, Vita pubblica e privata di Pietro Leopoldo, which gave vent to the plight of officeholders in the reforms.

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tant turning points. Gino Capponi, who later figured in the provisional government of Tuscany in 1848, wrote in his Storia di Pietro Leopoldo in the 1830s: “The Revolution coming at that time covered up everything else, and by showing what was possible in the matter of politics, enlarged the hopes of men immeasurably, turning to dislike even the best institutions of the past.”3° With the departure of Peter Leopold in 1790, Florence began to emerge from the world of courtiers and ducal functionaries into a new kind of politics that involved a broader spectrum of opinion, new ranks of participants, and new political tactics. What was the place of the patricians at this moment of transition? The patrimonialism of Florentine officialdom had involved not only the conduct of men in office, but also acceptance of absolute ducal authority as a legitimate rationale of the state. The ducal government had also been acceptable to the patricians because of the concession that as “nobles” they had a privileged place in the state. The erosion of this view advanced through the shift from Medici to Hapsburg-Lorraine, the forum of academies and gazettes, through administrative reform, and later through the experience of the Revolution and Napoleon. The

Enlightenment of the eighteenth century had deep implications for politics and perceptions of the state. The earlier co-option of the patriclans as administrators made it difficult for them politically to develop a collective opposition to administrative reform, although at the end of the eighteenth century a new sense of separation from the state clearly developed in Florentine society. It is possible to identify several currents of opinion at the end of the century that are indicative of this change. One was a progressive program that continued among Tuscan moderates up through the revolutions of 1848 and persisted at the time of the annexation of the Duchy

, to Piedmont in 1860. This was a view deeply rooted in the tradition of functionaries of the Florentine bureaucracy. It embodied a practical, secular, but authoritarian view of the state, a marriage between aristocratic habit and princely rule, but it now became more open to currents of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century constitutionalism. Francesco Maria Gianni and other advisors of Peter Leopold represented this current in the 1760s to 1780s. We have already followed some of Gianni’s views as he advanced in office in the finances under the tax 36 Capponi, Scritti editi ed inediti, 1, 347-48.

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farm to the Council of State, notably his advocacy of free trade in grain in 1768, his efforts to procure a tariff that would protect urban manufacturing in 1781, and his generally anti-Physiocratic views on taxation. Francesco Maria Gianni was no egalitarian, and he had a higher regard for the capacities of his fellow patricians than the duke. In an undated memoir of the 1780s he wrote: “The class of nobles is significant and respected in government where birth confers the right to intervene

... [as]. . .a group with public authority in the administration of the State. But where this is not true [nobility] is perceived to be useless and merely external show.”37 In his view, the proper place of Florentine no-

bles was employment in public administration, a position that distinguished them from merchants and artisans. His views of politics developed further through the constitutional

, project of 1779-82, in which he was a secret collaborator. Peter Leopold had planned to adapt the form of a representative assembly to the circumstance in Tuscany, which had no traditional “estate” of nobles besides patricians and nobles of the principle towns. He found no impediment to representation for a consultative assembly that was based on property ownership alone.3° In his exchange of views with the duke, Gianni showed little understanding of the potential operation of a rep-

resentative assembly. At this point he was a determined monarchist who sought to preserve the individual initiative of the sovereign. In a set of “Pensieri” of 1779-82, he wrote: “Government is best where the Sovereign is best, who knows how to lead, with legislation and administration toward the happiness of his subjects. The many books written to teach the world the fundamentals of good legislation and the rules of just administration are so much paper wasted. Only the light of Eternal Providence can instill this great capacity into the souls of princes.”39

Gianni’s views of the proposed constitution and assembly were circumscribed by his experience with the limited authority exercised historically by the Florentine Senate.4° His other writings on administra37 ASF, Carte Gianni, F 18, ins. 368, “Nobilta ricca, nobilta’ povera, mercanti ed artigiani.” 38 Wandruszka, Pietro Leopoldo, 390-406. 1am following the views of Wandruszka and

Diaz on this point, not those of Cochrane in Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 454-83, who credits Gianni with more initiative. 39 Diaz, Francesco Maria Gianni, 280.

4° Ibid., 285-86.

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PART VI , tive subjects of the 1770s and 1780s were devoted chiefly to technical problems of economics and finance: the grain trade, the operation of municipal government, law reform, education, and poor relief. He had an administrative view of politics and argued in this period that public spirit in Tuscany was too uninformed and corrupt for an assembly to operate with good effect. Francesco Maria Gianni’s views developed further in the years between the departure of Peter Leopold in 1790 and his own death in 1821. Indeed, the departure of the duke affected him deeply, since he was closely identified in the liberal economic policies of the reforms, and with the retreat from free trade that followed the grain riots of 1790 he was dismissed from the Council of State. His views did not become more egalitarian during the 1790s; but as one of the “outs” of ducal politics under Ferdinando III, he developed an interest in Revolutionary France, and emerged briefly as a partisan of the French during the occupation of Tuscany in 1799. This caused him further difficulties in the restoration of 1800 and under subsequent regimes. Finally, he left Tuscany to live out his remaining years in Genova. The politics of the last decade of the century strengthened Gianni’s interest in the constitutional project of 1779-82. In 1805 he wrote an essay entitled “Memorie sulla costituzione di governo immaginata dal Granduca Pietro Leopoldo,” which, when it was published in 1825 after his death, became a link between the Leopoldine reforms and the developing currents of liberalism of the early nineteenth century. However, Gianni’s defense of the constitutional project grew less out of consideration of the historical experience of the Duchy than from the combination of circumstances that had arisen since the 1780s and 1790s. He

| thought of constitutional guarantees as something new. Also from the perspective of 1805, his point of view had changed so that he placed the

unachieved constitutional project at the center of the reform movement: “It seems that a possible perfection of political and civil society has been found in monarchical government tempered through a fundamental law, by which in joining the throne and the state, the voice of the people intervenes with the election of their representatives.” Politics was a subject of discussion by only a few, he wrote, until the French Revolution made its impression on the minds of all.#! 41 “Memorie sulla costituzione di governo immaginata dal Granduca Pietro Leopoldo

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The political opinion of other patricians of the mid-to-late eighteenth century, such as Pompeo Neri, Giulio Rucellai, and Giovan Francesco Pagnini, was probably similar to the early views of Francesco Maria Gianni. They also match the uncertain reading of Montesquieu of Stefano Bertolini in the 1770s.4? The patricians were slow to associate their changed relationship to the bureaucracy with the need for a new type of constitutional guarantee. But Gianni’s later views linked him with the current of opinion later associated with Tuscan moderates of the Restoration, a group composed of jurists, such as Francesco Forti and Leopoldo Galeotti, who continued the discussion of the reform of administration of the same kind begun by Pompeo Neri in the 1740s; and patricians, such as Gino Capponi, Cosimo Ridolfi, Cosimo Buonarroti, Pier Francesco Rinuccini, Neri Corsini, Luigi Serristori, Vincenzo Peruzzi, and finally Bettino Ricasoli, who supported a moderate constitution in 1848 and the National Society in 1859-60.*3 The basic aim of the moderates was a progressive administration that would per-

mit Tuscany to preserve autonomy in whatever national solution might emerge for Italy. This was a further elaboration of the experience of the Florentine bureaucracy and the eighteenth-century reforms, but it still stressed more the values of administration than those of politics. The administration of Tuscany was generally viewed as being highly

progressive among Italian states of the early nineteenth century, and the Tuscan moderates also gave in easily to the centralized Piedmontese

solution for administration of the unified state. Outside of the bureaucracy, however, other more radical currents of opinion developed through the gazettes, the academies, and the universities. The division between state and civil society, which had begun to appear in the divergence between the bureaucracy and the Florentine academies in the 1770s and 1780s, continued and became a significant

feature in the development of public opinion in the Risorgimento. A critique of bureaucratic absolutism developed through European opinda servire all’ Istoria del suo regno in Toscana,” in Venturi, ed., Illuministi Italiani, 103864.

42 Mirri, “Profilo di Stefano Bertolini,” 464-65. 43 For biographical notes on these and others who were members of the reform Consulta di Stato in 1847-48, see De Feo, ed., Atti della reale consulta. On the Tuscan moderates in 1859-60, see Grew, “La Societa Nazionale Italiana,” 77-101. 44 See Pansini, “Bettino Ricasoli,” 379-405, and Salvestrini, I moderati toscant.

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ion generally in the decades before the French Revolution, and Tuscan intellectuals became more aware of currents outside of Tuscany.45 Vittorio Alfieri’s famous treatise On Tyranny was written in Siena in 1777, and a “republican” reinterpretation of Machiavelli as an apologist for republics rather than for despotism, emerged in the Fossi, Follini, and Tanzini edition of his works published in Florence in 1782-83. This

stressed the Discorsi, the republican undercurrent in Machiavelli’s thought, and began the reinterpretation of Florentine republicanism of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, which has continued to the _ present day. Tanzini wrote that the aim of The Prince was “not to give precepts for a legitimate government, but to depict tyranny, revealing all its deformity and painting it in its blackest colors, either to frighten and shame tyrants, or to warn people to avoid them.” At the University of Pisa, advanced opinion developed through radical students such as Filippo Buonarroti, the grandson of a Florentine senator; he studied with Lampredi at Pisa, fell under suspicion as a libertine by the ducal

police in 1786, and in 1789 left Tuscany for Corsica and ultimately Paris, where he became part of the Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals in 1796. The new French republicanism of the 1790s gained adherence among jacobins of Livorno, Pisa, and Florence during the French occupations of 1796 and 1799, and helped to strengthen ideas that were critical of ducal absolutism in the form it had achieved through the eighteenth-century reforms.*’ But the patricians in general, through their progress from Republic to patrimonial Duchy to bureaucratic regional state, had grown accustomed to accommodating themselves to the regime in power because of the private advantages they could expect to receive from the state. Each phase of development of the Florentine and Tuscan state left a legacy to the next. The patricians of the Republic left to the patrimonial Duchy of the Medici the underlying habits derived from the communal forms of the Renaissance city-state. But the patricians were then themselves transformed by sixteenth- to eighteenth-century ducal absolutism so that they acquired new, hardly communal or Republican, habits 45 Note here particularly the discussion in Venturi, Settecento riformatore, 1v—(i), 3-145, and Iv—(ii), 615-779. 46 Rosa, Dispotismo e liberta, 70. On Alfieri, see the introduction to Alfieri, Of Tyranny.

47 For the currents of Tuscan “Jacobinism,” see Turi, “Viva Maria.”

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THE EXIT OF THE PATRICIANS

and tastes. This legacy later contributed to the political weakness of Tuscan moderates in the Risorgimento, and to the arrangements that ultimately contented Florentine aristocrats with the centralized bureaucratic character of institutions in the unified monarchy of the Italian national state.

335

CONCLUSION The preceding pages have set forth contours of the long-term development of the Florentine and Tuscan state in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, a period largely neglected in the annals of Italian statecraft. Regional developments are the components of national ones, and judging from the Florentine bureaucracy under the Medici and Hapsburg-Lorraine, this period was an important one in the formation of Italian regional states, although it saw neither the beginning nor the end of the state-building process. Medieval and Renaissance developments set the basic communal character of the city-state in Tuscany, and defined the elaboration of administrative techniques that gave the sixteenth-century ducal bureaucracy its precocious character. Likewise, further developments in the nineteenth century linked the experience of the Duchy to that of the unified monarchy of the Italian national state. But the developments of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries

| were quite important in their contribution both to the institutional form of government and to the underlying habits of the relationship of social groups to political authority. The most conspicuous contribution

of the Medici dukes was to transform the type of government by changing the magistrates of the Republic into functionaries of the ducal bureaucracy. The ducal regime was thus able to effect a greater centralization of authority in the city and to integrate the regional government

of Tuscany more completely than had been possible for the Renaissance Republic. But ducal absolutism neither aimed nor succeeded in eradicating its city-state origins—in specific institutions, in the continued role of the Florentine patricians as functionaries in the bureaucracy,

and in the strong urban bias of policy that the Medici preserved through the seventeenth century. Although the patricians assumed the style of nobles at the ducal Court and moved investments from commerce to land, the degree of “refeudalization” of Tuscan society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was very small. The regional state was sufficiently well developed before the formation of the Duchy to make such a backward step unnecessary, and the policy of the dukes protected urban interests of Florence through the seventeenth-century 336

CONCLUSION

crisis of the Italian economy. The ducal bureaucracy stabilized institu-

tions and social groups that remained from the communal past, and continued to reflect the capitalist interests of an urban economy.

Thus the views of Weber and other theorists of the early modern state who have associated the origins and growth of bureaucracy with feudal monarchy are not fully applicable to developments in Tuscany,

which were strongly rooted in institutions of the city-state. The bureaucracy of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century dukes was already new in its inception, although it still lacked important characteristics of a modern state. The Medici dukes created a patrimonial system, akin to Weber’s concept, in which abuses clearly increased with the patricians’ increasing dominance of offices in the seventeenth century, an indication both of their continued social importance and of the failure of

the ducal system to regulate officialdom through an open system of rules.

A further step toward the elaboration of a bureaucracy of a rationallegal type in the eighteenth century was taken through the reforms of

the Hapsburg-Lorraine, which brought on a thorough renovation of the Medici system. The changes affected procedures, policy, and personnel. They infused the bureaucracy with a new discipline, replaced the patricians as officeholders, and reflected a more utilitarian view of the state. The regional state took precedence over the city-state in its sixteenth- to eighteenth-century transformation. But the eighteenthcentury reforms were carried out from above. They gave more attention to procedures of administration articulated within the bureaucracy than to the relationship between state and society. This problem continued under the Restoration and persisted through the Risorgimento in the politics of United Italy.

337

BLANK PAGE

APPENDIX A

TABLES ON OFFICES, OFFICEHOLDERS, AND SALARIES,

ISSI-1784

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