«E terassi per bilancio». Pratiche amministrative e gestioni contabili negli ospedali fiorentini del Quattrocento

The essay analyses the summary accounting (ledgers) of the five major hospitals in Florence in the 15th century. The aim is to verify whether or not the historiography on Italian hospitals of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, recently very interested in good practices of financial management of care, is right in talking about the hospitals of the time in business terms, i.e. with an approach that assesses the management of income and expenditure as similar to that followed in contemporary private companies. The Florentine case, certainly one of the most documented at a European level, also because of the close ties established with the world of mercantile guilds, reveals a reality made up of chiaroscuro elements, even if there are evident elements of progress in the administration of hospital institutions between the beginning and the end of the 15th century.