Le compagnie mercantili-bancarie toscane e i mercati finanziari europei tra metà XIII e metà XVI secolo

The paper aims to offer an updated historiographical survey and an interpretative approach about the role of Tuscan merchant-banking companies in the European financial markets between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Structures of the firms, business turnover, technical expertise, geographical spread of branch offices are considered as well as the huge relationships with popes, kings and princes finances: from the papal Rome/Avignon to the Capetingian and Valois France, from the Angevin Naples to the Plantagenet England, from the Burgundian Netherlands to the Iberian kingdoms.