The Trade of Second Hand Clothing in Fifteenth-Century Florence: Organisation, Conflicts, and Trends

FONDAZIONE ISTITUTO INTERNAZIONALE DI STORIA ECONOMICA “F. DATINI”

PRATO

IL COMMERCIO AL MINUTO Domanda e offerta tra economia formale e informale.

Secc. XIII-XVIII

RETAIL TRADE Supply and demand in the formal and informal economy

from the 13th to the 18th century

Selezione di ricerche

Firenze University Press 2015

�

Il commercio al minuto. Domanda e offerta tra economia formale e informale. Secc. XIII-XVIII = Retail Trade. Supply and demand in the formal and informal economy from the 13th to the 18th century : selezione di ricerche. – Firenze : Firenze University Press, 2015. (Atti delle “Settimane di Studi” e altri Convegni ; 46) http://digital.casalini.it/9788866557517 ISBN 978-88-6655-750-0 (print) ISBN 978-88-6655-751-7 (online) La Settimana di Studi è stata realizzata con il contributo di: Ministero per i Beni, le Attività Culturali e il Turismo Certificazione scientifica delle Opere Tutti i volumi pubblicati sono soggetti ad un processo di referaggio esterno di cui sono responsabili il Consiglio editoriale della FUP e i Consigli scientifici delle singole collane. Le opere pubblicate nel catalogo della FUP sono valutate e approvate dal Consiglio editoriale della casa editrice. Per una descrizione più analitica del processo di referaggio si rimanda ai documenti ufficiali pubblicati sul catalogo on-line della casa editrice (www.fupress.com). Consiglio editoriale Firenze University Press G. Nigro (Coordinatore), M.T. Bartoli, M. Boddi, R. Casalbuoni, C. Ciappei, R. Del Punta, A. Dolfi, V. Fargion, S. Ferrone, M. Garzaniti, P. Guarnieri, A. Mariani, M. Marini, A. Novelli, M. Verga, A. Zorzi. La Fondazione Datini si dichiara fin d’ora disponibile ad assolvere i suoi obblighi per l’utilizzo delle immagini contenute nel volume nei confronti di eventuali aventi diritto. © 2015 Firenze University Press Università degli Studi di Firenze Firenze University Press Borgo Albizi, 28 50122 Firenze, Italy http://www.fupress.com/ Printed in Italy

INDICE

CARLO MARCO BELFANTI, Il commercio al minuto. Domanda e offerta tra economia formale e informale. Secc. XIII-XVIII ................................................. pag. 1 COMMERCIO FORMALE E INFORMALE TRA REGOLE E PRATICA FORMAL AND INFORMAL RETAIL TRADE BETWEEN RULES AND PRACTICE JAMES DAVIS, PETER STABEL, Formal and Informal Trade in Late Middle Ages. The Islamic World and Northwest Europe Compared .............................................. pag. 15 LUCA CLERICI, L’approvisionnement du marché urbain: conflits et négociations (Vicence, XVIP

eP siècle) ...................................................................................................... » 39

JEAN-MARIE YANTE, Organisation corporative et « tours » des merciers (XIIIP

eP-XVIP

e siècles). France, Lorraine, Pays-Bas ............................................................................... » 69 BRECHT DEWILDE, Expanding the Retail Revolution: Multiple Guild Membership in the Southern Low Countries, 1600-1800 ................................................................. » 91 ANNE MONTENACH, Genre, prohibition et commerce de détail: les femmes et la circulation des indiennes en Lyonnais et Dauphiné (1686-1759) ...................... » 113 JUDICAËL PETROWISTE, Définir et sanctionner le commerce informel dans une petite ville de la fin du Moyen Âge: Saint-Jean d’Angély aux XIV P

eP-XVP

eP siècles ...... » 131

BEATRICE ZUCCA MICHELETTO, Tra autonomia lavorativa e strategie familiari: le donne nel commercio al dettaglio a Torino in epoca moderna ............................. » 153 BART LAMBERT, Offences in the Outport: Illicit Trade in Fifteenth-Century Sluys and Southampton ................................................................................................... » 167 JULIEN VILLAIN, La boutique et les différentiels intra-régionaux de l’offre: le cas de la Lorraine à la fin du XVIIIP

eP siècle ............................................................................... » 185

IL COMMERCIO AL MINUTO IN AMBIENTE URBANO THE RETAIL TRADE IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT BRUNO BLONDÉ, ILJA VAN DAMME, Beyond the “Retail Revolution”. Trends and Patterns in 17P

th- and 18P

thP-Century Antwerp Retailing ............................ pag. 219

FRANCESCA PUCCI DONATI, ROSSELLA RINALDI, Il commercio al dettaglio a Bologna tra Due e Trecento. La piazza, l’osteria, la bottega .................................. » 241 PAOLA PINELLI, Commercianti tuttofare: il mondo delle piccole botteghe a Prato fra XIV e XV secolo .......................................................................................... » 259 GRZEGORZ MYŒLIWSKI, Retail Trade in Wrocâaw between around the Mid-Thirteenth and the Fifteenth Century ............................... » 277 JUAN VICENTE GARCÍA MARSILLA, GERMÁN NAVARRO ESPINACH, CARLES VELA AULESA, Pledges and Auctions: the Second-Hand Market in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon ........................................................................ » 295

INDICE�VIII

ALESSIA MENEGHIN, The Trade of Second-Hand Clothing in Fifteenth-Century Florence. Organisation, Conflicts and Trends ............................................................. pag. 319 MAUD VILLERET, La vente des produits coloniaux: le rôle des détaillants dans la diffusion de l’exotisme dans la France de l’Ouest au XVIIIP

eP siècle ............. » 337

ALIDA CLEMENTE, Gli spazi delle botteghe nella Napoli del Settecento: dinamiche di localizzazione, strategie commerciali e conflitti istituzionali nel secolo della “rivoluzione dei consumi” ................................................................... » 353 DANIEL MUÑOZ NAVARRO, Sistemas de comercialización y oferta textil en la Valencia preindustrial (1675-1805). La consolidación del comercio estable y el surgimiento de nuevos espacios de consumo, más allá de la ciudad .................. » 385 IL COMMERCIO ITINERANTE: MERCI E UOMINI THE ITINERANT TRADE: GOODS AND MEN CHRISTOF JEGGLE, Provisioning the Countryside. The Retail Sale of Textiles of the Perrollaz-Cartier in Laufenburg / Rhine around 1800 ................................... pag. 415 DANIELLE VAN DEN HEUVEL, Depictions and Perceptions of Street Vending in the Northern Netherlands, 1600-1800 ..................................................................... » 433 AUGUSTO CIUFFETTI, Venditori ambulanti nell’Appennino pontificio tra XVIII e XIX secolo ................................................................................................... » 445 ELEONORA CANEPARI, Le commerce de détail dans les parcours de mobilité professionnelle (Rome, XVIIP

eP-XVIIIP

eP siècle) ............................................................... » 465

DAVID CELETTI, Le commerce au détail des fils de lin et de chanvre. Acteurs, espaces et réseaux dans la Vénétie et la Bretagne d’Ancien Régime .......... » 481

Abstracts............................................................................................................................ » 503

Alessia Meneghin

The Trade of Second-Hand Clothing in Fifteenth-Century Florence: Organisation, Conflicts, and Trends

Historians’ interest in the market and its dynamics has increased as a result of, among other factors, the growing number of publications devoting their attention to the changes that affected the market and consumption patterns.1 Both are seen as complex phenomena which involved the employment of social, cultural, and anthropological tools, in addition to economic strategies. In recent years a mounting emphasis has also developed, towards the consumption attitudes of those groups of society with a reduced financial capacity, who nonetheless were an integral part of the market, both as sellers and consumers.2 However, much remains to be done on those professional categories that sold basic goods – the so called Arti Minori – the groups of retailers at whom consumers with poorer but also greater means often shopped.

Florence, as is well known, offers an incomparable rich variety of sources that can be employed to study the manifold features of Renaissance society. Among a myriad of other documents, the city's archives hold a wealth of records that give testimony to the life and activity of the guilds, and to the way the market functioned and was regulated. Traditionally, the sheer availability of statutes for the major guilds has allowed for Florentine historiographical literature to concentrate largely on this type of documentation and therefore on the issues related to the institutional and legal aspects of the guild work, namely at the expense of other facets, like the work force itself. One of the consequences is that the history of the lesser known professional groups, those who were part of the Arti Minori, has been

1 Most research on consumption is still carried out in North America, the United Kingdom, and

Continental Europe (Belgium and Holland especially). Some books have been instrumental in the study of consumption: A. APPADURAI, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge 1988; and Consumption and the World of Goods, J. BREWER, R. PORTER eds., London-New York 1993; but also Retailers and Consumer Changes in Early Modern Europe. England, France, Italy and the Low Countries, B. BLONDÉ, E. BRIOT, N. COQUERY, L. VANAERT eds., Tours 2005; for a world-wide examination of consumption see the recently published volume The Oxford Handbook of The History of Consumption, FRANK TRENTMANN eds., Oxford 2012.

2 D. ROCHE, La culture des apparences. Une histoire du vêtement XVIIe- XVIIIe siècle, Paris 1989; P. MALANIMA, Il lusso dei contadini: consumi e industrie nelle campagne toscane del Sei e Settecento, Bologna 1990; C. SHAMMAS, The Pre-industrial Consumer in England and America, Oxford 1990; D. ROCHE, Histoire des choses banales, Paris 1997; M. OVERTON, J. WHITTLE, D. DEAN and A. HANN, Production and Consumption in English Households, 1600-1750, London 2004; and the fundamental J. DE VRIES, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behaviour and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present, Cambridge 2008.

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a theme very little studied by historians of Florence, and remain a much neglected topic of historical inquiry.3

This paper aims to illustrate particular aspects of the second-hand trade, concerning the organisation, the conflitcs and divisions between members and partners, and the way the Arte developed over the course of the fifteenth century. To be sure, references to rigattieri, second-hand dealers, are found in studies focusing their attention on fashion and the used clothes trade in early Renaissance Florence, and more generally in Italy. The scholarly studies by Ann Matchette, Carole Collier Frick, and Evelyn Welch, to name only the most significant contributors, have described the world in which the rigattieri operated.4 In particular, they have shown us the extraordinary value of the rigattieri in Florence and beyond, most notably in terms of the socio-economic advantages their wares provided to those who could not afford to buy new clothes. These scholars also used second-hand dealers to analyse the changes of fashion and taste associated with the attitudes of wealthy consumers. Despite these works have produced a relative abundance of studies in the field of used clothes, and certainly deepened our knowledge in the field, yet the information on the subjects of that market is still elusive.5

3 Guilds are the focus of the discussion – although very little is about Italy – in the articles

contained in Les métiers au Moyen Âge: Aspects économiques et sociaux, P. LAMBRECHTS and J-P. SOSSON eds., Louvain-la-Neuve 1994; James Farr is of the opinion that artisan production has not received much attention, J. R. FARR, Artisans in Europe, 1300-1914, Cambridge 2000; The Artisans and the European Town, 1500-1900, G. CROSSICK ed., Aldershot 1997; on the Arti Minori in Florence see G. CORA, Storia della maiolica di Firenze e del contado, secoli XIV-XV, Florence 1973; R. A. GOLDTHWAITE, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History, Baltimore 1980, pp. 242-286; for the wool industry see B. DINI, I lavoratori dell'arte della lana a Firenze nel XIV e XV secolo, in Artigiani e salariati: Il mondo del lavoro nell'Italia dei secoli XII-XV, Pistoia 1984, reprinted in his Manifattura, commercio e banca nella Firenze medievale, Florence 2001; A. GUIDOTTI, Indagini su botteghe di cartolai e miniatori a Firenze nel XV secolo, in La miniatura italiana tra gotico e Rinascimento, Florence 1985; A. ASTORRI, Appunti sull'esercizio dello speziale a Firenze nel Quattrocento, in “Archivio Storico Italiano” (hereafter “ASI”), 147, 1989, pp. 31-62; F. FRANCESCHI, La mémoire des 'laboratores' à Florence au début du XVe siècle, in “Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations” 45, 1990, pp. 1143-1167; and Oltre il “Tumulto”: I lavoratori fiorentini dell'arte della lana fra Tre e Quattrocento, Florence 1993.

4 E. WELCH, New, Old and Second-Hand Culture: The Case of the Renaissance Sleeve, in Revaluing Renaissance Art, G. NEHER, R. SHEPHERD eds., Aldershot 2000, pp. 101-119; A. MATCHETTE, To Have and Have not: The Disposal of Household Furnishings in Florence, in “Renaissance Studies”, 20, 5, 2006, pp. 701-716; E. WELCH, From Retail to Resale: Artistic Value and the Second-Hand Market in Italy (1400-1550), in The Art Market in Italy: Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries, M. FANTONI, L.C. MATTHEW, S.F. MATTHEWS-GRIECO eds., Modena 2003, pp. 283-299; C. COLLIER FRICK, The Florentine Rigattieri: Second Hand Clothing Dealers and the Circulation of Goods in the Renaissance, in Old Clothes, New Looks: Second-Hand Fashion, A. PALMER, H. CLARK eds., Oxford-New York 2005, pp. 13-28; A. MATCHETTE, Credit and Credibility: Used Goods and Social Relations in Sixteenth-Century Florence, in The Material Renaissance, M. O'MALLEY, E. WELCH, eds., Manchester 2007, pp. 225-241; EADEM, Women, Objects and Exchanges in Early Modern Florence, in “Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal”, 3, 2008, pp. 245-254.

5 This focused approach has a respectable pedigree within, especially English and American historiography. Much work has concentrated on northern Europe and, for Italy, Venice and Florence on later periods. See M. GINSBURG, Rags to Riches: the Second-hand Clothes Trade 1700-1978, in “Costume”, 14, 1980, pp. 121-135; B. LEMIRE, Consumerism in Pre-industrial and Early Industrial England: the Trade in Second-hand Clothes, in “Journal of British Studies”, 27, 1988, pp. 1-24; EADEM, The Theft of Clothes and Popular Consumerism in Early Modern England, in “Journal of Social History”, 24, 1990, pp. 255-276; EADEM, Peddling Fashion: Salesmen, Pawnbrokers, Tailors, Thieves and the Second-hand Clothes Trade in England, c. 1700-1800, in “Textile History”, 22, 1991, pp. 67-82; J. STYLES, Clothing the North: the

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As it will be shown, guild membership and regulations conditioned the fellows' formal and informal relations with each other and with the market. On the one hand, the guild of the rigattieri was characterized by relative freedom in each member’s movements, and by the existence of numerous spaces for those who wanted to practise the Arte. On the other hand, economic realities and the progressive and irreversible transformation of the craft into an increasingly hierarchical organisation in the second half of the fifteenth century led to constraints and conflicts within the system. Ultimately, these exerted a significant influence on the practices of selling second-hand clothes.

The rigattieri moved between highly permeable boundaries of the private and the public, the street and the market and the household; they did not possess very large capital assets, nor did they take part in the race for the acquisition of new markets. In fact, they were not international merchants, preferring to focus on an essentially local market. The used-cloth dealers however, represented a corporation that, although not operating in one of the strongest sectors of the Florentine economy such as the wool or silk trade, nonetheless the vast majority of the urban population. Although the bulk of their clientele was made up by labourers and artisans, especially in the first half of the Quattrocento, the merchandise of a rigattiere did indeed appeal to a wider spectrum of customers. 6 In fact, their role was

Supply of Non-elite Clothing in the Eighteenth- century North of England, in “Textile History”, 25, 1994, pp. 139-166; P. ALLERSTON, Le marché d’occasion à Venise aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles, in Echanges et cultures textiles dans l’Europe préindustrielle, J. BOTTIN, N. PELLEGRIN eds., Lille 1996, pp. 15-29; E. SANDERSON, Nearly New: the Second- hand Clothing Trade in Eighteenth Century Edinburgh, in “Costume”, 21, 1997, pp. 38-48; P. ALLERSTON, Reconstructing the Second-hand Clothes Trade in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century Venice, in “Costume”, 33, 1999, pp. 46-56; B. LEMIRE, Second-hand Beaux and Red-armed Belles: Conflict and the Creation of Fashions in England, c. 1660-1800, in “Continuity and Change”, 15, 2000, pp. 391-417; H. DECEULAER, Urban Artisans and Their Countryside Customers: Different Interactions between Town and Hinterland in Antwerp, Brussels and Ghent (18th Century), in Labour and Labour Markets between Town and Countryside (Middle Ages-19th century), B. BLONDÈ, E. VANHAUTE, M. GALAND eds., Turnhout 2001, pp. 218-235; G. CALVI, Abito, genere, cittadinanza nella Toscana moderna (secc. XVI-XVII), in “Quaderni storici”, 37, 2002, pp. 477-503; J. M. MUSACCHIO, The Medici Sale of 1495 and the Second- Hand Market in Late Fifteenth-Century Florence, in The Art Market in Italy: Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries, M. FANTONI, L.C. MATTHEW, S.F. MATTHEWS-GRIECO eds., Modena 2003, pp. 313-324; M. LAMBERT, Cast- off Wearing Apparel: the Consumption and Distribution of Second-hand Clothing in Northern England during the Long Eighteenth Century, in “Textile History”, 35, 2004, pp. 1-26; B. LEMIRE, Shifting Currency: the Culture and Economy of Second-hand Trade in England, c. 1600-1850, in Old Clothes, New Looks, pp. 29-48; I. VAN DAMME, Changing Consumer Preferences and Evolutions in Retailing. Buying and Selling Consumer Durables in Antwerp (c. 1648-c. 1748), in Buyers and Sellers. Retail Circuits and Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, B. BLONDÈ, P. STABEL, J. STOBART, I. VAN DAMME eds., Turnhout 2006, pp. 199-223; other recent publications are J. STOBART, Clothes, Cabinets and Carriages: Second-hand Dealing in Eighteenth-century England; and B. LEMIRE, Plebeian Commercial Circuits and Everyday Material Exchange in England, c. 1600-1900, both in Buyers and Sellers, pp. 225-266; H. DECEULAER, Second-hand Dealers in the Early Modern Low Countries. Institutions, Markets and Practices, in Alternative Exchanges: Second-hand Circulations from the Sixteenth century to the Present, L. FONTAINE ed., New York 2008, pp. 13-42.

6 The statutes allow only a glimpse of the ultimately very broad range of activities of the rigattieri. In fact, the statutes of 1296 stated what goods they were allowed to sell – old clothes and furs and other things (pannos et pelles veteres et alias res) – but they are silent on the fact that they occasionally traded in animals, food, and weapons, and that like many of the thousands of urban workers they often led secondary activities to supplement an income that was probably insufficient to cover the costs of maintaining the family and the shop, Statuti dell’Arte dei Rigattieri e linaioli di Firenze (1296-1340), F. SARTINI ED., I-II, Florence 1940- 1948, 1, p. 45.

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shaped from the very way they moved between the different clients they did business with and the varying quality of their goods. Moreover, when a rigattiere was successful, not only did he acquire considerable wealth, but in some cases he could grasp the opportunity to fill prominent roles in the political and administrative life of the commune by the municipal authorities, thus becoming a relatively eminent member of society.

THE GUILD

From the various formulas with which many declared their profession in the fiscal survey known as the Catasto of 1427 – sono rigattiero, fo un poco d’arte de rigatteria, ho una bottega di rigattiere – we learn that 84 used cloth dealers, out of a population of 38,000, were working in Florence in the first half of the fiteenth century.7 However, the number of those practising the trade could have been considerably higher, given to the fact that – at least at the beginning of, and still well into the first half of the Quattrocento – there was no formal prohibition for whoever was not enrolled in the book of Admission to the guild, the Matricole, to practise the trade. Furthermore, the Matricole show how many of the newly enrolled members were themselves relatives of sellers of the guild who had matriculated years before and were still actively in business.8 In fact, an article of the statutes of 1324 had established that the brothers or sons of a rigattiere praticing the trade, did not have to pay their fees.9 Indeed, in those cases there is no trace of any payment registered next to their names, but instead it would appear the formula fuit pro rigattiero ... matriculatus propter beneficium.10 This would lead us to hypothesise that the trade was a real professional vocation for at least some of these families of rigattieri. What were the reasons for this phenomenon of “familial work”? Could it be simple cost-effectiveness, since access to the same trade practised by a relative implied using the matriculation fee of one’s father or brother? Or perhaps was it the opportunity to take advantage of a business and clientele network, and of the knowledge in the trade? Or was it simply the attachment to a family tradition? Alternatively, was it

7 The figure proposed here is for the urban residents only, D. HERLIHY, C. KLAPISCH-ZUBER, Les

Toscans et leurs familles. Une étude du catasto florentin de 1427, Paris 1978, p. 325, tab. 28. 8 For instance Andrea di Giovanni, brother of Damiano, another rigattiere of the popolo di Santa

Lucia matriculated on October 30, 1413; Antonio di Niccolò di Giovanni Jacobi, whose father Niccolò was still in business, matriculated on January 20, 1425, ARCHIVIO DI STATO FIRENZE (hereafter ASF), ARTE DEI RIGATTIERI, LINAIOLI E SARTI, 10, LIBRO DELLE MATRICOLE, f. 2v.

9 Statuti dell’Arte dei Rigattieri e linaioli, cit., Quod filius et frater possit hanc artem exercere sine aliqua solutione, p. 110. There was also another article of the statutes which stipulated that anyone who had married the daughter of a maestro rigattiere, was not subject to the payment of any fee if he wanted to pursue his own activity, Ibid., cit., Quod qui acceperit in uxorem aliquam filiam magistri huius artis possit sine solutione facere artem, p. 128.

10 As confirmed by the cases of Antonio di Francesco Bartoli Saxonico of the popolo of Santa Reparata, who matriculated propter beneficium patris on November 24, 1417; or Antonio d'Ambrogio Gherardi who entered the corporation propter beneficium patris suis on December 17, 1420; Antonio d'Onofrio di Romolo of the popolo of San Martino benefited instead from the Matricola of his brother Romolo, ASF, ARTE DEI RIGATTIERI, LINAIOLI E SARTI, 10, LIBRO DELLE MATRICOLE, f. 2v.


the need, in the case of widowed women, to provide sustenance for themselves and their family?

As the Catasto and the Matricole, the statutes also bear witness to a large number of people involved in the profession. Prohibitions for the two guild consuls to be re-elected in successive years, and a ban on the consuls and the six councillors to rule the guild at the same time as any of their relatives or business associates speak in favour of a rather large number of people working as rigattieri. Moreover, the fact that the consuls and the treasurer could single out certain guild members who were especially poor to be less heavily burdened by the guild fees is indicative of a conspicuous number of them being in business.11 The liveliness of the trade is further confirmed by a paragraph in the statutes prescribing how members of the Arte had to deal with foreigners and foreign merchants who came to Florence to stock up on old clothes.12

In 1427 the rigattieri were prominent in the quarter of San Giovanni (there were 45 of them), where they outnumbered even the conspicuous group of the calzolai (shoemakers); adjacent to San Giovanni, and conveniently close to the Mercato Vecchio (the Old Market), there was another quarter, Santa Maria Novella, numbering 19 rigattieri, against the 14 living in Santo Spirito. They were almost absent in Santa Croce.13 There, only 6 out of 84 retailers practised their trade, from the well-off Giovanni di Tuccio, living in the gonfalone Bue, to the miserabile Antonio d'Ambrogio residing in the gonfalone Carro.14

There is substantial evidence that the Arte thrived, especially in the first half of the fifteenth century. It would appear however, that it was essentially represented by rigattieri who mostly sold inexpensive goods, and whose business turnout was most likely to be low, judging from some of the list of their creditors (most often people with reduced financial capacity) held in their portate in the Catasti of 1427 and 1458. Additionally, the trade was practised both by those individuals who worked in this capacity intermittently, doing so mainly to get additional income to their revenues,15 and by those who had been trained specifically for this business. Finally, there were also those who only had ‘re-invented’ themselves as sellers of used garments.

In mid century, in 1451, there were only eight companies of second-hand dealers who worked in Florence, despite a high number of people otherwise engaged in the profession. This was most probably due to the fact that most of them, lacking the initial capital to enter into a business partnership, tended to make the best of what they had. They practised their profession anywhere: their homes,

11 Statuti dell’Arte dei Rigattieri e linaioli, cit., De puniendo in expensis et impositis viginti pauperibus

hominibus huius artis, p. 25. 12 Ibid., cit., De faciendo recolligi pannos a mercatoribus forensibus, p. 22.

13 C. COLLIER FRICK, The Florentine Rigattieri, p. 18-19. 14 ASF, Catasto, 69, f. 355r; Ibid., 296, f. 34r. 15 Such was the case of Bonifazio di Leonardo, a ricamatore (seamster) who lived in the quarter of

Santo Spirito, in the gonfalone Ferza, and who occasionally also practised the trade in used clothing. To the officials who were to file the declarations for the valsente of 1451 he declared : ‘‘abbiamo dieci fiorini in masserizie, non traffichiamo danari” ('we have ten florins in goods, we do not have investments in cash’), ASF, Catasto, 690, f. 1072r.

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on the streets, in the squares, in their shops if ever they had the possibility. Indeed, with the exception of three companies – that of Leonardo Bettini, Jacopo di Nofri, and Bartolomeo dell’Aveduto – nearly all of them were not kept alive by business partnerships but supported only by individual owners who could count on considerable fortunes, or had access to initial capital, and may well have been aided in their work by apprentices, or employees, or even their wives. The company of Bartolomeo dell’Aveduto for example, along with another, that of the members Filippo and Giovanni di Domenico Burci, were the only ones to have a net worth of capital of 1,000 gold florins. The other five were on a capital estimated between 200 and 500 gold florins.16

Individual situations aside, the financial position of the guild as a whole must have been decidedly florid if in 1411, they could afford to appoint none other than Donatello to make a sculpture of the statue of San Marco, their patron saint, in one of the niches on the Church of Orsanmichele. Indeed, although there were particularly sad cases, there were also individual situations of real wealth. The rigattiere Giovanni di Salvestro Carradori, for instance, appears to have been among the wealthiest tax payers of the quarter of Santa Maria Novella in the Catasto of 1427.17 Several years later, in 1472, we find another second-hand dealer, Tommaso di Pagolo, the owner of a prosperous shop, listed by the chronicler Benedetto Dei as one of the wealthiest men in Florence.18

PROBLEMATIC RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE LINAIOLI AND ESPRIT DE CORPS

The guild, founded in 1291, resulted by the merging of the ancient guild of the rigattieri with that of the linaioli – linen cloths retailers – which hitherto had been separated. The rigattieri were at the bottom of the so named Arti mediane ‘middling guilds’, that were degraded to the status of lesser guild in 1293.19 The union with the linaioli was to remain intermittently problematic for decades. From a very early stage their affiliation to the same guild proved to be only a formal joining: both the linen retailers and second-hand dealers jealously guarded their respective autonomies, and each appointed a consul, only agreeing to be represented together in issues involving third parties. As for the disputes arising within the Arte, the linaioli preferred to resort to arbitration by an external officer appointed in agreement with the rigattieri.20 Only in 1325 was it agreed that the final decision on all matters, including internal affairs, had to be entrusted exclusively to the consuls of the reconstituted guild of the linaioli e rigattieri. Finally, in 1340 members from both guilds signed an agreement that put an end to years of administrative separation, with the creation of a special commission which was to oversee and

16 A. MOLHO, The Florentine “Tassa dei Traffichi” of 1451, in “Studies in the Renaissance”, 17, 1970,

pp. 73-118. On the value of florins in this period see R. A. GOLDTHWAITE, G. MANDICH, Studi sulla moneta fiorentina (Secoli XIII-XVI), Florence 1994, pp. 35-42.

17 L. MARTINES, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390-1460, London 1963, pp. 372-375. 18 B. DEI, La cronica dall’anno 1400 all’anno 1500, R. BARDUCCI ED., Florence 1985, p. 85. 19 E. STALEY, The Guilds of Florence, London 1906, pp. 45-46; C. COLLIER FRICK, The Florentine

Rigattieri, p. 14. 20 Statuti dell’Arte dei Rigattieri e linaioli, cit., De causis et litibus diffinendis et terminandis, pp. 7-8.


regulate mutual relations, and with the fusion of both statutes into one. The conflicts with the sister guild of the linaioli somehow decided the sphere of activity of the rigattieri, as fissures between the parties would also eventually result in a professional division in the market. In fact, even if occasionally the rigattieri would sell new goods, they rarely ventured so far as to sell linen garments, well aware of the legal and judicial consequences that this would entail.21

If the relations with the sister guild of the linaioli were not always easy, the reasons for this were to be found in the lack of trust in the moral principles of second-hand dealers, and the refusal by certain linen cloth retailers to be associated with a category of tricksters, as indeed many of the rigattieri were regarded.22 In fact, it seems that the activities of second-hand dealers were – at least until the Trecento – also constantly kept under check by the authorities so as to prevent the trade in stolen goods. The same consuls of the linaioli were authorised to avail themselves of the aid of secret agents, real spies who had to report any non-compliance of the members to the statutes, or any member’s lack of obedience to the guild.23

Aware of the fact that a poor reputation in the market was likely to have a negative effect on their trade, the consuls enacted a number of necessary measures to safeguard the clientele as well as the honour of the corporation. For example they issued the prohibition for the rigattieri and the linaioli alike to act as moneylenders. In spite of the consuls’ efforts, this provision not always proved effective.24 At the same time, they increased the penalties for those that contravened the rules. Indeed, one learns from the paragraphs in the statutes that the rigattieri were not allowed to insert stuffing in the plots left open by an old and torn fabric to make a garment look as new, nor they could dye items of clothing indigo blue to make them look more attractive.25 Other statutes forbade any treatment to restore aged clothes so that they might be sold as new, including the washing of old cloth in warm water and soap.26 Stolen goods were a separate, if related, concern. It was not a secret that some of the rigattieri did business with Jewish dealers and pawnbrokers, who in turn often acted as receivers for stolen goods that thieves wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible.27 Nor is it a coincidence that at least some of the clothes and accessories that came from both categories were stolen goods, as it is no surprise that the consuls required shopkeepers to immediately dismiss disciples who were caught stealing or dealing with stolen goods, under the penalty of 25 small florins.28

21 Statuti dell’Arte dei rigattieri e linaioli, cit., Quod nullus faciat vel vendat farsitia, guarnella vel sottana de

velis, etc., pp. 66-67. 22 R. DAVIDSOHN, Storia di Firenze, VI, II, pp. 326-327. 23 Statuti dell’Arte dei rigattieri e linaioli, cit., Quod dictus officialis possit habere et tenere spias, pp. 177-178. 24 Ibid., cit., De non fenerando et exercendo simul et semel artem, in eadem apotheca, p. 246. 25 Ibid., cit., De non faciendo fartia mista de stuppa et bonbice, p. 15; De non faciendo pannos follatos, pp. 19-

20; De non rinfollando vel rimborrando pannos, pp. 65-66; Quod nullus tingat pannos cum indigo, p. 128. 26 Ibid., cit., De non reactandis pannis veteribus cum sapone et acqua calida vel sodandis ad ceppum et de eodem

totali prohibitione, p. 23-4. 27 R.A. GOLDTHWAITE, Local Banking in Renaissance Florence, in “The Journal of European

Economic History”, 14, 1985, pp. 5-56, 31. 28 Statuti dell’Arte dei rigattieri e linaioli, cit., De non tenendo discipulum qui fecerit furtum in hac arte, pp. 14-15.

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The contrasts that set the linaioli and rigattieri in opposition were among the factors that not only favoured but also encouraged the development of a strong corporatist spirit in the latter. This resulted in a number of episodes of care and genuine devotion for the Arte and for the venue chosen as the rigattieri’s headquarters, along with for the churches elected as their places of worship. In fact, the separation of the linaioli and rigattieri had also defined the site of the respective guilds: the linaioli elected as their venue the church of San Piero Buonconsiglio and then Santa Maria Sopraporta, while the rigattieri chose the church of Santa Maria degli Ughi and then San Miniato tra le Torri.29 The latter would eventually become the point of symbolic and material reference – for the rigattieri’s lifetime membership – for religious practices. The cohesion of the guild was further enhanced when the members made the decision to divert part of their incomes for the purchase of a house in Piazza Sant’Andrea, where the headquarters would be eventually transferred. Of this house, which was restored and decorated with frescoes, nothing is left but the main entrance doors and the tabernacle from Ghiberti’s workshop which was to accommodate a painting by Frate Angelico, both now preserved in the museum of San Marco in Florence; the rest was destroyed due to the late nineteenth-century desire to recover the historical centre. The investment of substantial parts of the guild’s revenues to patronize the church, and to provide it with candles and furnishings, and to embellish and maintain the house, responded to the need of cementing the rigattieri’s unity. In addition, these activities provided a tangible raison d’être for the esprit de corps that was felt by consuls, masters, and apprentices alike.30

The sense of cohesion and belonging to the corporation resulted also in many episodes of assistance for the less fortunate members: numerous acts of charity were promoted and even encouraged by the wealthiest rigattieri. To do charity proportional to one’s economic abilities was not only a widespread habit, but was also specifically prescribed by the statutes. In addition to bury the dead, provide for the dowry of young orphans, aid the sick, help the family members of the sick, offer candles to the churches of the guild, etc., some of our rigattieri provided to spend part of their business revenues in other ways, still charity-related. In 1428 for instance Bartolomeo di Francesco di Neri, a rigattiere formerly from Grignano, spent 16 gold florins to build a tabernacle alla Madonna nella via della Montanina, in the outskirts of Arezzo, demonstrating a form of religious devotion which manifested itself outside the customary channels. He also helped with bushels of wheat and flour for two poor old impoverished men, and provided to have the food delivered at their homes at his expenses. To the Bishopric of Florence he gave three bushels of wheat and a couple of chickens annually.31 The far wealthier Nero di Filippo del Nero also provided some charity: a house he owned, which was close to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, was given ‘for the love of God’ to Frosino di Francesco, a man so poor that he could not even afford the rent of a room.

29 Statuti dell’Arte dei rigattieri e linaioli, cit., Quod offeratur ecclesie sancti Miniati inter Turres, p. 74. 30 In his The Economy of Renaissance Florence, Baltimore 2009, R. GOLDTHWAITE argues convincingly

that these 'cultural norms' are the opposite of those rules which regulate a free market, where each economic operator would be on his own. 'In the historiography, in fact, guilds are regarded as an obstacle to the development of industrial capitalism', cit. p. 342.

31 ASF, Catasto, 78, f. 516v.


Another house he granted in usufruct to an old slave, Monna Caterina, probably his former wet-nurse, again ‘for the love of God’.32 There were also those who, fulfilling the wishes of their dead relatives, set aside part of their income for charity. One example was Giuliana di Francesco, a business woman whom will be discussed shortly. She never failed to provide for the annual maintenance of a donkey, the humble mount of the friars of Santo Spirito. And every year she always helped to marry two poor girls, orphans of deceased members of the guild, as her father had prescribed in his will registered by the notary Ser Filippo di Cristofano.33

Although it cannot be doubted that the ambition, as well as the legitimate desire to preserve, if not improve, one’s social position guided many rigattieri’s actions, one must bear in mind that among members of the same guild there was devotion and Christian feelings alongside the love of profit; the two goals were seemingly antithetical and incompatible, in reality they were sides of the same coin.34 It is in this sense that one should read the many episodes of charity practised by the members of the guild towards the most needy and unlucky fellows.

RELATIONSHIPS OF CO-MEMBERS AND HIERARCHIES

As with the linaioli, hostilities also arose with other members of the guild such as the sarti (tailors), a group originally associated with the Arte of Por Santa Maria (the silk guild) in the early thirteenth century and subsequently part of the guild of the linaioli e rigattieri starting in 1306. The frictions between the two groups originated – and were probably sustained – by an inherent ambiguity in the role of the sarti within the corporation.35 In fact tailors were allowed to sell used clothes in their shops. They often handled used garments, because it was not uncommon that a customer would resort to their services to have an item, just bought at a second-hand dealer’s, re-cut, down-sized, or re-fitted. However, despite the fact that the sarti were required to pay a surety to enter the Arte, they were not initially granted the privilege to elect their representatives. It was only at the end of the fifteenth century that the guild recognised them as something more than just laborers, and even then they were not granted full rights.36

32 ASF, Catasto, 64, f. 409r. 33 Ibid., 67, f. 314r. 34 J. HENDERSON, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence, Oxford 1994, pp. 354-401; N.

ECKSTEIN, Pittori, amici e vicini: The Formal and Informal Bonds of Community amongst Florentine Artists, in Sociability and Its Discontents. Civil Society, Social Capital, and Their Alternatives in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, N. Eckstein and N. Terpstra eds., Turnhout 2009, pp. 109-128.

35 Emblematic was the case of the tailors of Pisa. After the seizure of Pisa by Florence in 1406, the tailors' statutes were corrected and approved in 1455 by none other than Florentine rigattieri, who enforced their privileges over the corporation of the sarti in Pisa. If it would not be appropriate, as argued by Cinzio Violante, to see this episode as a signal of the subordination of the Arti of Pisa to the Florentine Arti, nonetheless the hopes of the sarti pisani to eliminate any interference with their crafts from second-hand dealers were frustrated, C. VIOLANTE, Economia Società Istituzioni a Pisa nel Medioevo. Saggi e ricerche, Bari 1980, pp. 266-282, in particular pp. 273-274.

36 R. DAVIDSOHN, Storia di Firenze, I-VII, trans. from the original by G. Klein, Florence 1956-68, 4, pp. 17-18, 98-99, 324-329.

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Various resistances also resulted from relationships with those members of the corporation who, despite being equally part of the Arte, were looked upon with contempt by the same rigattieri because they trafficked with waste materials. These included the strazzaruoli (rags sellers) and the ferrovecchi (scrap metal sellers). The statutes once again reflect the difference in treatment for all these categories, and show that even if strazzaruoli and the like were part of the guild, they were not required to enrol formally in the Arte and so could not sit in the council (though they had to pay a tax to the guild on the goods sold).

Women were generally another category excluded from second-hand dealers. There are many contradictions in the relationships rigattiere women had with other second-hand dealers and contemporary society at large. For example, even though references to rigattiere women practising the trade are to be found in the statutes, in reality there were very few, in comparison to men. In 1427 we find only 5 women out of 84 retailers (roughly a mere 6%), generally widows or daughters of second-hand dealers themselves, working as rigattiere.37 Many women were denied entrance into the guild altogether, while others were required to pay a surety if they wanted to enter the profession.38 Although the rigattiere were also denied all political rights (for example, they could not elect consuls on their own), and were considered legally subject to men, there is evidence that the wives of many second-hand dealers often helped run their husbands’ and even fathers’ businesses, and managed to become quite skilled.39 It is only natural to assume that when their husbands or fathers died they often took over. Giuliana di Francesco (the same woman described above as performing charity), a widow and daughter of another rigattiere, Francesco di Jacopo, was apparently doing quite well, as she declared a taxable income of more than 950 gold florins many years after her husband and father, both in the profession, had passed away. Conversely there were poor rigattiere women like Margherita, daughter of Giovanni di Damiano rigattiere, widow, and mother of two children, who was so destitute that she could not afford to pay any taxes, claiming to be miserabile, and was forced to send her mother Agnola to live in someone else’s house because she could not keep her.40

We find a resourceful woman in the person of one Monna Antonia, the widow of a rigattiere, Pagolo di Giovanni. Half of the shop she owned in Santa Maria Novella square was rented for 8 gold florins a year; she also lent another property that her husband had left her, a piece of land located near San Quirico d’Orcia, to a certain Mechero del Vescovo, in exchange for a couple of chickens a year and

37 C. COLLIER FRICK, The Florentine Rigattieri, cit. p. 23. 38 Statuti dell’Arte dei rigattieri e linaioli, cit., De non dandis pannis vel pellibus ad vendendum alicui venditori

vel venditrici pannorum, nisi primo dederint fideiussorem, pp. 9-10. 39 See the case of Margherita Datini analysed by C. JAMES, A Woman's Work in a Man's World. The

Letters of Margherita Datini (1384-1410), in Francesco di Marco Datini. The Man The Merchant, G. NIGRO ed., Florence, 2010, pp. 53-72. For women left out of the guild system see D. HERLIHY, Opera muliebria. Women and work in Medieval Europe, Philadelphia 1990, p. 162. On women's work in general see IDEM, Women's Work in the Towns of Traditional Europe, in La donna nell'economia secc. XIII-XVIII, S. CAVACIOCCHI ed., Florence, 1990, pp. 103-136; see also the essays by N. ZEMON DAVIS, M. KOWALESKI and others in Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, B. HANAWALT ed., Bloomington 1986; M. HOWELL, Women, Production and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities, Chicago-London 1986.

40 ASF, Catasto, 75, f. 348r.


wheat, part of which Antonia kept for her personal needs, and part of which was resold in the city grain market. But it was in the retail trade that this woman turned out to be particularly shrewd. She entered into a business partnership with a certain Bartolomeo di Jacopo, and together they bought the shop where Antonia’s husband had had his licence (entratura) as seller of used clothing, located in the Old Market.41 Then she opened a tavern above the shop, again in concert with Bartolomeo. It is safe to assume that in this case both the shop and the tavern proved to be the ideal ground to successfully conduct Antonia’s affairs. From the tavern in fact customers could be drawn directly into the shop, downstairs; vice versa after a long negotiation, a customer could be refreshed in the tavern located upstairs.42

The attitude of suspicion, if not open hostility, towards the professional groups subjected for various reasons to the rigattieri, is revealing not only of moral issues, but also of social and economic motivations, which in turn were the basis of internal hierarchies in the corporation. The group from which the greatest number of people aspiring to hold the highest offices came forth was that of the wealthy shopkeepers, who also had the greatest bargaining power within the Arte. Even the shopkeepers however, were differentiated into two groups, depending not only on the value of the goods they sold, but also on the social capital (the corpo di compagnia) they had invested in their business – or on the number of shops they owned. Additionally, as the expenses of the guild varied depending on individual income, it is almost certain that a contribution was somehow indicative of different financial situations, with higher fees revealing a higher financial capacity. What may appear as an indirect form of financial assistance, as the intention was to weigh less on the pockets of the poorest members, was in fact a form of discrimination, which further fuelled internal divisions. Indeed the enforcement of the provisions of the consuls essentially functioned as a partition between those who could afford to sustain the guild financially and could thus aspire to the highest offices, and those who could not, and were therefore relegated to the role of passive co-members. Over time this ‘endowment’ proved to be a barrier against the claims of upstart and underprivileged members (like the strazzaruoli and ferrovecchi), as well as women and sarti (at least for a long time), to ascend the steps of the guild, and thus benefit in part from the possibilities offered by the market. Decisions like the consuls’ prohibition for newly-enrolled rigattieri ‘to entice’ potential customers to visit their shops should be interpreted as a sign of closure against the new people who practised the profession.43 It is not a coincidence that this measure, although present already in the statutes of the fourteenth century, found its actual application only in the second half of the fifteenth century. It is clear that long-established and wealthy retail enterprises were able to offer a wide and outstanding quality range of goods that did not need be publicised, as their premises were often located right in the centre of the commercial hub, the Old Market, and could make the most of a longstanding reputation. It was a very different story for the owners of smaller,

41 HERLIHY argued that women could not sign contracts on their own, Opera muliebria, pp. 162-167. 42 ASF, 1009, fs. 74r-v. 43 Le regole dei mestieri e delle professioni. Secoli XV-XIX, M. MERIGGI, A. PASTORE eds., Milan 2000,

p. 23, n. 16.

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less-known and hidden away shops, which were cheapest to rent but peripheral; they perforce had to resort to advertise their products if they wished to stay in business and attract any buyer at all.

As the rigattieri were divided into various categories for their wealth, the members also recognised a three-level hierarchy between the apprentices and the masters, and between the latter and the street vendors. The difference existing between apprentices and masters was a normal difference, of course, destined to be resolved when the ragazzo finished his apprenticeship, generally within a two-year period. This was a system of exchanges, mutual responsibilities, and obligations but also benefits. The teacher had to teach the craft to the apprentice and accept him in his own home as if he were a family member.44

If the apprentice was below the teacher and had to obey, the peddler was behind the apprentice. Generally, shopkeepers felt threatened by the bad reputation of the peddlers, who were potentially able to discredit the other members of the guild since they wandered from street to street and even from town to town. In fact, open conflicts often exploded between the street vendors and shopkeepers, the latter being concerned about safeguarding the honour of the guild. For the few women in the guild this was doubly problematic, as they were viewed with suspicion not only for belonging to the female sex but also because many of them were among the peripatetic sellers.45 In 1371 the Florentine guild had even forbidden them to sell from house to house; the perceived danger was that they would insinuate themselves into people’s homes and cajole other women into buying things and wasting their husbands’ money (et seducunt mulieres ad dampnum virorum).46

However, the roles and differences between sedentary and peripatetic vendors were not always well defined. For example, it is not uncommon to find that a rigattiere worked as a street vendor for some time, and that in this capacity he went around to villages, cities, and the countryside to sell his wares at the town fairs, like that in Prato in September called of the Sacra Cintola. These certainly offered rich opportunities to those who wanted to earn some extra money. One of these was Baldassarre Di Falco, a 45 years old second-hand dealer who lived in a small cottage on the Rubaconte Bridge (today Ponte alle Grazie) with his old mother, his wife Tommasa, and six children. Baldassarre had placed his workshop under his

44 R. DAVIDSOHN, Storia di Firenze, VI, II, pp. 165-171. On the contract of apprenticeship the

mandatory reference is to R. GRECI, Il contratto di apprendistato nelle corporazioni bolognesi (XIII-XIV sec.), in Corporazioni e mondo del lavoro nell'Italia Padana medievale, Bologna 1988, pp. 157-224.

45 Davidsohn illustrated for example the role of the venditrici (sellers) of herbal medicines, who were particularly sought after to ease the effects of the Plague, Ibid., IV, II, pp. 85-86. 46 C. COLLIER FRICK, The Florentine Rigattieri, cit. p. 23. This is in stark contrast with what Wiesner Wood has shown for Nuremberg for example, where it seems that craftsmen’s wives took on a significant responsibility in their role as peddlers, M. WIESNER WOOD, Paltry Peddlers or Essential Merchants? Women in the Distributive Trades in Early Modern Nuremberg, in “Sixteenth Century Journal”, 12, 1981, 2, pp. 3-13; also in Paris and Cologne some textiles crafts were seen as a typically womanly occupation, A. DOREN, Le Arti fiorentine, trans. by G. KLEIN, 2 vols., Florence 1940-48, I, p. 145, n. 3, p. 146, nn. 1-4; 'In its exclusion of women, the guild system of Florence was one of the most restric-tive of Europe', C. COLLIER FRICK, The Florentine Rigattieri, cit. p. 21. On the role of women in the Florentine guilds see R. DAVIDSOHN, Storia di Firenze, VI, II, pp. 163-164.


house; judging by the economic performance and value of the merchandise kept there (100 florins), his shop did not do big business. During the summer Baldassarre would entrust the shop to Tommasa and his mother Maffia, while he would load his two mules and mount his donkey to wander the streets of the suburbs, in a not too dissimilar fashion from that of the peripatetic seller represented in the beautiful image of the Manesse code.47 Another occasional peripatetic vendor was the rigattiere Lotto di Jacopo, 60 years old, who lived in the district of San Giovanni, in the Banner of the Golden Lion, and who had a licence in the Old Market. The licence was in the shop that his business partner Banco di Simone had bought years before for 150 gold florins from a family member of the Del Vernaccia. The activity flourished, due to the fact that members, who had invested considerable capital of about 1,600 gold florins, knew how to take advantage of the central location of the shop located in the parish of San Tommaso, where many artisans resided. Although there was apparently no need to go and procure customers outside the shop, it appears that Lotto would sometimes ride his nag and run from street to street to sell his goods.48

BUSINESS PARTNERS AND DEBT SETTLEMENTS

Among those who worked in the same workshop, including business partners, there were both formal and informal networks, in addition to emotional relationships. Partnerships could be strained in cases where members came into conflict over issues of profit or, more often, loss. In most cases, disputes were to be resolved in front of the guild’s magistrates. In one instance Giovanni d’Antonio di Niccolò, a young rigattiere, complained that his business partners Bartolo and Neri ‘had removed everything unsold in the shop and every of his household goods’ to make up for some loss, and even the dowry of 550 gold florins from his wife had served in part to repay his debts. His troubles however did not end there: the land that he had inherited from his father was now all in the hands of the consuls of the guild, with the exception of a barn whose rent had been entrusted to the son of Lippo d’Agostino, to whom, needless to say, Giovanni also owed money. As if this was not enough he still had a payment to settle with another partner. ‘I do not know how we will manage for we will remain poor’ he wrote in desperation, adding that if during that year he would not be able to collect certain credits himself he feared he would be ruined, because ‘no one would want to do business with him, not even the poorest of the poor’.49 In fact, the punishment for debts was to go to the Stinche, the notorious Florentine prison where, in theory, a debtor could languish until his death, and where Giovanni was eventually taken. After six months in prison he was still unable to raise enough money to discharge his debts, and begged his wife to provide him with some clean shirts and some bread and wine.

47 ASF, Catasto, 64, fs. 246r-v. 48 Ibid., 78, fs. 353r-v. 49 Ibid., 77, fs. 279r-v.

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Another ‘victim’ of conflicts between soci (business partners) was Andrea di Neri, who had worked as a rigattiere with Giovanni d’Antonio del Buono. The company had failed and they had to close the shop and forfeit the right to claim back all the goods contained therein, in addition they had to fulfil the obligation to deliver all their account books as evidence to the Magistrates of the guild. Andrea, father to three young children, wondered how he could meet other demands since he had no more to spare.50 It must be said that in front of the tax officers there were many who complained of a poor financial situation, in the hope of seeing their tax burden lightened, but in this case the situation seems dire indeed.

There were also those who protected themselves from losses, and from the retaliation that the partners could make on their assets, by diversifying investments, and whenever possible, hiding them. This trait seems common to many second-hand dealers and other individuals alike, many of whom, as soon as they had accumulated some capital, albeit small, immediately invested it in lands and vineyards outside the city (which they would conveniently fail to declare to the officers of the Catasto)51 so that if the company went bankrupt, all was not lost. But this unfortunately does not seem to have ever been the case with Romolo di Jacopo. When he was 80 years old the amount of goods that were removed by order of the judicial officers responsible for making him repay his debts was not only high but actually deprived him of everything he owned, except for the little house with a small orchard situated in the parish of San Lorenzo where he lived with his family. Romolo had in fact owned two licences in the Old Market, but his activity had declared insolvent. He had also stopped paying rent to the owner of the shop, Galeazzo Borromei. The magistrates of the corporation established that Borromei should first be given both the entrature in payment for the rent in arrears; in addition, they decided that in order to repay his debts, the 26 gold florins (the savings of a lifetime) that were found in Romolo’s house were to be seized at once, and a piece of land he had out of town would also go to them: ‘tutti questi beni al mio [come] se nulla havessi hanno in mano i sindachi’ he wrote sadly to the officers of the Catasto, beseeching them to be compassionate in determining the coefficient of taxes, since he was ruined.52

DIVERSIFICATION OF ACTIVITIES AND POWERFUL NETWORKS

Though membership in the corporation may have led to conflicts over issues of loss and profit, it also provided access to a lively market that gave many sellers (but not all) the possibility to improve their financial position. To sell particular kind of objects to a more refined clientele, wealthier and more discerning, became very

50 ASF, Catasto, 78, f. 226r. 51 Elio Conti maintained that the survey of 1431 was characterized by a decrease in total tax

income of 25.5% on receipt of payment (if compared to the Catasto of 1427), 22.8% after further additions and revisions were made. Additionally, both the survey of 1431 and the next one in 1433 witnessed the spread of increasingly more refined techniques, to avoid paying taxes, by broad strata of the population, E. CONTI, L'imposta diretta a Firenze (1427-1494) Rome 1984, pp. 151-180.

52 ASF, Catasto, 296, fs. 110r-v.


common among some of the rigattieri. Although it would be inappropriate to speak of a true specialisation, some second-hand dealers were more ‘dedicated’ to sell certain clothing and accessories. Examples include Braccio di Filippo di Biagio, who would deal with hose and doublets only,53 or Lorenzo di Andrea and Morello di Giovanni, who in the Old Market trafficked almost exclusively in items of a certain value.54 At some point, some second-hand dealers began to diversify the offer to accommodate a substantial demand. In the shops of these rigattieri, in addition to used clothing, accessories, and old leather skins, still in good condition, there were often items of value, such as gold brocade fabrics, carpets, curtains, pillows, silk blankets, furs, robes or cassocks, decorated chests, horse blankets, saddle-cloths, and other things, many of which came from the legacy of wealthy families, or from churches and convents, or occasionally, from the war’s spoils.55

One witnesses also an increasingly widespread tendency of members searching for alternative forms of security for their economic wealth, once it had been achieved. To be sure, some in the sale of certain garments and accessories, decided to deal only with rich and powerful clients, from whom they hoped to obtain protection and favours. An interesting case is offered by one Ghirigoro di Jacopo Cardinali, a Florentine expatriate, who went to live in the Kingdom of Apulia, ‘at the service of His Excellency the Prince of Salerno’. The latter had granted Ghirigoro the collection of taxes in Naples – behind anticipation of money – and the right to collect the credits due to him. The job must have been very remunerative as Ghirogoro wrote that ‘in a short time he had amassed more than 300 gold florins without doing anything’. Along with this secondary activity, Ghirigoro continued to work as a rigattiere, trading only highly valued clothing, which he sold to people who obviously could afford to splash on it. At some point in Ghirigoro’s career, the prince of Salerno, in return for i suoi servigi, gave him dozens of old clothes, embroidered con ricami, expensive robes ‘made in the past fashion’ for people now dead. As a connoisseur, Ghirogoro could not fail to notice that this was a significant amount of capital that could be sold, traded, or even exchanged for other items, although he did complain about the clothes’ style, which was evidently out of fashion.56

Like Ghirogoro, other second-hand dealers aimed at a certain point to expand towards the market of luxury goods. In the meantime some developed a valuable network of contacts with personalities prominent in the social and political life of Florence. A typical case is given by one Dino di Lapo Dini, a rigattiere who lived in Pisa but traded in Florence. Among his customers Dino counted not only artisans and wool workers, but some illustrious individuals, such as two members of the Medici House, Cosimo and Lorenzo di Giovanni. Over a significant period of time he sold them expensive panni and robes. In fact, he boasted a substantial credit of about 87 gold florins with them. It does not appear that the credit, likely to be a payment linked to the purchase of clothing and luxury ornaments was returned to

53 Ibid., 1015, f. 639r. 54 ARCHIVIO DEGLI INNOCENTI FIRENZE (hereafter AOIF), Memoriale G di Piero Puro di

Francesco da Vicchio e di Tommaso di Piero di Francesco suo figlio merciaio (già Fondo Estranei), 12618, fs. 13v, 84r.

55 R. DAVIDSOHN, Storia di Firenze, VI, II, p. 328. 56 ASF, Catasto, 296, f. 77r.

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him, at least in cash. But money was not all: to count among one’s clients and contacts two members of the Medici clan evidently had its benefits which went well beyond the purely economic side.57

This almost ‘sprawling’ projection of the second-hand dealers’ sphere of activity and potential success in business could not fail to encourage certain ambitions. In particular, some of the youngest members wished to step higher on the social ladder and did so by means of marriage. These young rigattieri often married daughters of notaries, and so consolidated their fortunes by purchasing an uncontested degree of respectability. Leonardo di Michele did just that when he took as his wife the daughter of Ser Niccolò di Ser Guidone, Monna Lena, and enjoyed her handsome dowry of 370 gold florins.58 Filippo di Giovanni di Filippo did even better: in 1460 he was able to marry Caterina, the illegitimate daughter of Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, one of the richest and most powerful men in the district of Santa Maria Novella. The dowry in this case amounted to 600 gold florins.59

Concurrent to the acquisition of a prominent social and professional status by some of the most skillfull members, some began to use their affiliation to the guild as something comparable to a springboard to climb the tiers of society and enter into politics. Many in fact abandoned the status of second-hand dealer as the century progressed, preferring instead to migrate to the Arti Maggiori in the hope of gaining more access to political offices. The Del Nero, formerly a family of rigattieri from Genoa and the object of several studies,60 are a clear example of this attitude. They can also be seen as a tipycal facet of the politics of the Medici, who increased the number of their supporters by raising men and families of modest origins to leading positions at the expenses of the ottimati.

The reputation of the guild improved, and the desire (especially of the most prominent members), to preserve it was probably responsible, in the second half of the century, for the enforcement of the ban on anyone whose name was not registered in the Matricole (and that therefore did not pay fees to the guild) to practise the trade.61 It is notable that this period also sees the book of Matricole record a declining number of members among its ranks, and still fewer women. The number of those who declared the profession in 1480 decreased dramatically: only 16 rigattieri are listed (recall that there were 84 in the Catasto of 1427) while at the same time the number of rag-sellers, the strazzaruoli, increased. This does not

57 ASF, Catasto 79, f. 433v. 58 ASF, Notarile Antecosimano, 17402, fs. 265r-v 59 I wish to thank Luciano Piffanelli for this information. 60 V. ARRIGHI, Del Nero Bernardo, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 38, 1990; F. DE' NERLI,

Commentari de' fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze..., Augusta 1728, pp. 70 ss.; F. GUICCIARDINI, Dialogo e Discorsi sopra il reggimento di Firenze, R. PALMAROCCHI ed., Bari 1932, passim; S. AMMIRATO, Istorie fiorentine, III, Florence 1651, pp. 104, 110, 113, 150, 157, 163, 173, 180, 230, 239, 243; A. ADEMOLLO, Marietta de' Ricci ovvero Firenze al tempo dell'assedio, L. PASSERINI ed., Florence 1845, pp. 1341 ss.; P. VILLARI, La storia di Girolamo Savonarola..., II, Florence 1888, passim; G. B. PICOTTI, La giovinezza di Leone X, Milan 1927, p. 540; E. FIUMI, L'impresa di Lorenzo il Magnifico contro Volterra, Florence 1948, pp. 120, 162, 183; A. ROCHON, La jeunesse de Laurent de Médicis, Paris 1963, pp. 201, 227; N. RUBINSTEIN, The government of Florence under the Medici (1434-1494), Oxford 1966, pp. 30, 53, 59, 104, 234, 236, 274, 281; F. DIAZ, Il Granducato di Toscana. I Medici, Turin 1976, pp. 18 ss.

61 Statuti dell’Arte dei rigattieri e linaioli, cit., Quod nullus habeat beneficium ab arte nisi portaret de expensis arte, p. 57.


necessarily mean that there were only 16 rigattieri practising their trade; rather, it suggests that many continued to work as such while claiming to do something else. It is true that some rigattieri had migrated to other trades, and some had left altogether, but beyond that the age gaps and the lack of generational replacement alone can not justify such a reduction in the percentage of those involved in this business. Furthermore, the conditions that had determined the high appeal of the used cloth market at the beginning of the fifteenth century remained unchanged towards the end of the century; if anything, such conditions increased. Perhaps the acquired wealth of some of the most prominent rigattieri shopkeepers simply made them reluctant to rub their shoulders with strazzaruoli, the sellers of cast-offs and rags. One is tempted to see this negative trend as an effort by the second-hand dealers to free themselves from an activity which was recorded among the Arti Minori, and which therefore would have never allowed the more ambitious members to run for the highest offices.

CONCLUSIONS

The second-hand trade, characterized by strong social differentiation with rich and poor actors (women, destitute sellers, peripatetic vendors, small shopkeepers, but also rich entrepreneurs backed up by powerful relations) witnessed remarkably versatile practices which were very different from one another, and subject to great fluidity. Especially at the beginning, shortly after the union of the rigattieri with the linaioli, conflicts broke out in light of the lack of consideration that the linaioli had for the moral conduct of second-hand dealers, considered as tricksters and a little more than charlatans. In fact, the separation of the two professional groups which, while united under the same guild, still had different statutes and consuls, remained a matter of fact until about the first half of the fourteenth century. The same authorities for some time kept the rigattieri checked to prevent them from defrauding customers in the market. But this fact was readily understood by second-hand dealers as a potential danger to their activities, and they reversed the situation by soon demonstrating a renewed attention to the rights of the consumer, which resulted in the promulgation of paragraphs in the statutes aimed at protecting customers from purchasing counterfeited goods, as well as the honour of the guild. Thus, if still in the late Trecento second-hand dealers were considered by some as practitioners of a degrading trade, this certainly did not seem to constitute a major problem for many of them at a later stage. The inclusion of some rigattieri in the group of the richest men in Quattrocento Florence, and their ever growing involvement in the urban economy, instead suggest that the trade had become not only a prosperous activity, but in the most fortunate circumstances it conferred social prestige and even significant wealth.

The fact that the statutes ruled the sale of goods with minute prescriptions did not prevent the natural unfolding of everyday activities. In fact the market, despite being essentially local, was a very lively one, and could accommodate and absorb a substantial number of employees. In addition, a fast replacement of roles within the corporation, given by the fact that an apprenticeship lasted only two years, meant

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that – at least until the first half of the fifteenth century – anyone with a little initiative and perhaps some capital at his/her disposal could venture into the market of used clothing: women, tailors, street vendors, as well as people who did this work just to increase their main salary generated by other activities. However, although initially the trade was free, eventually it was barred to those who were not enrolled in the book of the Matricole. Concurrently the Arte had become a very conservative organisation: if among the members of the guild there were distinguished masters and journeymen, and apprentices who would themselves one day become masters, the officials and consuls were elected primarily from the wealthiest members. This, a possible lack of capital for many, and also gender and moral issues, eventually resulted in an obstruction to the achievement of better business performances and the acquisition of social status and consideration for many of the subjected categories (strazzaroli, women, sarti and peddlers). Conflicts, not only between linaioli and rigattieri, but also among the latter and the other members of the guild (ferrovecchi, strazzaroli, tailors etc.), as well as among business partners, made the activities of the consuls and the magistrates of the guild an essential tool to the proper performance of the trade. Yet such conflicts also resulted in significant power imbalances within the guild: tensions and quarrels not infrequently ensued in heavy sentences, and at times even in prison charges, as seen in the case of Giovanni d’Antonio. In cases such as his, more onerous than the punishment itself was the loss of reputation, and that of the family, on which depended not only the business’s success but also one’s neighbourly relations, the future ability to develop closer advantageous ties, and even possible patronage.

While in the first half of the fifteenth century many had mainly sold clothes and rags for little money, in the second half some rigattieri became more specialised sellers of costly merchandise. They might then aim at a clientele that was able to invest considerable sums in the purchase of clothing, as it was in the case of Ghirigoro and Dino di Lapo. This shift of market strategies certainly did not apply to all the members of the Arte operating in Florence in the Quattrocento. Yet the quality of some of the merchandise they now sold, along with the change in a segment of their clientele’s shopping practices, suggest a new use of the possibilities the rigattieri offered to their customers, and more generally, a diverse strategy in selling. In the time span of little more than half a century, it is noticeable that what had once been a trade for purchasing essentials expanded into more rarefied areas, with clients like the Medici making use of the new possibilities offered by second-hand clothing dealers to buy used but essentially costly garments. At the same time some among the more determined members of the Arte made use of their acquired wealth and prestige to ascend the steps of the society and to enter politics. For these new men status and position were needed to redefine themselves and their identity. In many ways a cultural transformation was taking place, a shift of values from a collective and corporate level of cohesion to a stronger individual ambition.

The Trade of Second Hand Clothing in Fifteenth-Century Florence: Organisation, Conflicts, and Trends

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