Una civiltà di ragionieri. Archivi aziendali e distinzione sociale nella Firenze basso medievale e rinascimentale

The essay aims to provide a possible solution to an ancient enigma that is both historiographical and archival: why are the late medieval and renaissance account books present in Florentine (and more generally Tuscan) archives with an almost overflowing abundance, in the face of a very thin Italian (not to say European) panorama? Why are more account books preserved between Florence and Prato for the 13th-16th centuries than in the whole of Europe put together? And finally, how can we explain that the family archives of the Florentine nobles conserved, still in the late Grand Duke's age, ledgers, cashbooks and journals written a few centuries ago, whose practical usefulness was apparently zero? Working on multiple fronts, that of economic history, that of the history of techniques and cultural formation, that of political-social history, the author compares the Florentine case with that of the other great Italian mercantile cities, finally proposing an image of Florence slightly different from the stereotyped image of the cradle of Humanism.