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‘Every sort of manual type, and mostly foreigners’: migrants, brothers and festive kings in early modern Florence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 November 2010
Abstract:
In 1522, the artisan festive ‘kingdom’ of the Biliemme put up the biggest street tabernacle in Florence. German textile workers were behind the tabernacle and this article argues that, at a time of crisis for German workers, these men looked to reassert their place in Florence through their participation in a citywide artisan festive subculture. Forty years later, Germans in the Biliemme district had largely been replaced by textile migrants from other parts of Italy. Nonetheless the kingdom remained a important vehicle for creating neighbourhood solidarities and for incorporating these new migrants into the artisan and civic world.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Urban History , Volume 37 , Special Issue 3: Locating communities in the early modern Italian city , December 2010 , pp. 360 - 371
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010
References
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8 The Della Robbia workshop had been on the corner of via Guelfa and via Santa Caterina since 1446. Based on other Giovanni della Robbia commissions, the tabernacle probably cost in the order of 44 florins, well over half a year's income for a weaver. See Burke, ‘Florentine art’, 89.
9 The presence of St Lawrence, complete with the grill of his martyrdom, was possibly also a specific nod to the neighbouring potenza of the Graticola (grill), though the sources only allow us to be certain about this group's existence from 1545. Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASF), Otto di guardia e balìa, principato, 40, fols. 18v–19r
10 Cerretani, Ricordi, 408; Cambi, ‘Istorie’, 204; Filarete, The Libro, 128–9. A later confraternity closely linked to the Biliemme placed the unusual obligation on its members to pay homage to the Madonna of Impruneta whenever she came into the city. ASF, Compagnie Religiose Soppresse (hereafter CRS), Capitoli, 827, f. 26 (Assunta in via Tedesca, 1587). This confraternity is discussed below. On potenze trips to Impruneta, see Rosenthal, ‘The spaces of plebeian ritual’, 164–5, 180–1.
11 By 1480, Germans accounted for only 27 per cent of wool weavers. Franceschi, Oltre, 120.
12 ASF, CRS, Capitoli, 850, fols. 2r–v, 3v (Santi Crespino e Crespignano, detta dei calzolai). See also Böninger, Die deutsche, 223ff. For the confraternity of Santa Caterina in the Camaldoli area, founded in 1433 and absorbed into Santa Maria della Pietà in 1557, ASF, CRS, Capitoli, 608, fols. 28r–30r. The Carmelite friars’ comment is quoted in Böninger, L., ‘Gli artigiani stranieri nell'economia e nella cultura fiorentina’, in Franceschi, F. and Fossi, G. (eds.), La grande storia dell'artigianato. Il Quattrocento (Florence, 1999), 126nGoogle Scholar.
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14 In 1577, ASF, Depositeria generale, parte antica (hereafter Depositeria), 987, ins. 53; in 1610, ASF, Capitani di Parte (hereafter Parte), numeri neri, 1478, fols. 178r, 256r.
15 ASF, Parte, numeri bianchi, 340, unpag.
16 Montopoli and Ferrara appear five times each in the Camaldoli's 1559 list. For the 1577 leaders, ASF, Parte, numeri neri, 739, fol. 176; ASF, Depositeria, 987, ins. 53. Among the other six men who played some official role in the Camaldoli in 1577, another was from Ferrara, two from Siena and one from the Mugello. In the 1610 sources, another of the Camaldoli leadership group, its ‘admiral of the seas’, identified himself as a weaver from Santa Sofia. ASF, Parte, numeri neri, 1478, fols. 202r, 239r.
17 ‘Quanto che è cosa difficile il convenire di commun concordia in un Consiglio medesimo et in una istessa volunta, tante e tante Persone e massime vulgari e di diversi Paesi e Nationi, come sono state sempre e sono in questo nostro Mestiero.’ ASF, CRS, Capitoli, 799, fol. 2r (Compagnia di S Giovanni Evangelista e S Michele Arcangelo detta la Compagnia dei Tessitori di panni lani).
18 ‘Item, dicono che gli’ huomini fatti sopra tal compera elesseno detto luogo per più commodita dell’ uno et dell altro membro, perche essendo il nostro Membro diviso in dua parte, cioè uno in Camaldoli, et l'altro in San Bernaba, l'uno non voleva andare in Camaldoli et l'altro non voleva venire in S Bernaba.’ ASF, Parte, numeri neri, 1474, fol. 576r (1606). The building they bought, in 1579, was in via della Scala in the quarter of Santa Maria Novella.
19 Respectively Domenico Zaghi and Cosimo Pieralli: ASF, CRS, Capitoli, 799, fols. 2r–3r; ASF, Depositeria, 984, ins. 53.
20 From the festive expenses of the Camaldoli king of 2 June 1577. ‘Adi detto lire sette quando s[’]and ò al desinare di Re di Beliemo’; ‘Adi detto lire otto servino per so[l]dati et al altre persone del re quando ttoreno [sic] dal Re a Beliemo accompagno re sua colego.’ ASF, Parte, numeri neri, 739, fol. 176. Significantly, a second mass vote in both districts, to secure approval for the final version of the new brotherhood's statutes, took place on May Day 1576, a day long associated with carnivalesque festivity and the potenze in particular. ASF, CRS, Capitoli, 799, fol. 3r.
21 Four of eight 1610 leadership figures can be identified – Michele di Piero, Niccolò di Battista (flagbearer), Rafaello Rossellino and Bartolo Pieralli. The family name of the last of these men identifies him as a relative of the 1577 Biliemme secretary (n. 19, above). ASF, CRS, 171, No. 18, fols. 2r, 6r–v, 10r, 63r, for the first appearance of their names. For the potenza in 1610, ASF, Parte, numeri neri, 1478, fols. 178r–179r, 256r.
22 ASF, CRS, Capitoli, 827, fol. 1.
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24 Arditi, B., Diario di Firenze e di altre parti della cristianità, ed. Cantagalli, R. (Florence, 1970), 62Google Scholar. See also Baldinucci, G., Quaderno. Peste, guerra e carestia nell'Italia del Seicento, ed. Dooley, B. (Florence, 2001), 108Google Scholar.
25 ‘Per essere questa una compagnia numerosa et d'ogni sorte gente meccanica, et al maggior parte forestieri . . . Sappiamo che S[ua] A[ltezza] S[erenissima] del signore suo padre di f[elice]:m[emoria]: non volse simil sorte di gente dare adito di far gran compagnie.’ ASF, Parte, numeri neri, 1474, fol. 570r (1606). ‘Per essere di diversi paesi di stravaganti umori in fra di loro discordanti et finalmente che costumi poco civili’. Ibid., fol. 566r.
26 This was Paolo Mannucci, in his gloss to Perlone Zipoli (Lorenzo Lippi), Il Malmantile Raquistato, 4 vols. (Prato, 1815), vol. II, 11–12n.