Altopascio: A Study in Tuscan Rural Society, 1587-1784 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History)

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN HISTORY Editors J. H. ELLIOTT AND H. G. KOENIGSBERGER

Altopascio A study in Tuscan rural society, 1587-1784

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN HISTORY Edited by J. H. Elliott and H. G. Koenigsberger

The idea of an 'early modern' period of European history from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth century is now widely accepted among historians. The purpose of the Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History is to publish monographs and studies which will illuminate the character of the period as a whole, and in particular focus attention on a dominant theme within it, the interplay of continuity and change as they are represented by the continuity of medieval ideas, political and social organisation, and by the impact of new ideas, new methods and new demands on the traditional structures. The Old World and the New, 1492-1650 /. H. Elliott French Finances, 1770-1795: From Business to Bureaucracy / . F. Bosher

The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567-1659: the logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries Wars Geoffrey Parker

Chronicle into History: an essay on the Interpretation of History in Florentine Fourteenth Century Chronicles Louis Green

France and the Estates General of 1614 / . Michael Hayden

Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century John Francis Guilmartin

Reform and Revolution in Mainz 1743-1803 T. C. W. Blanning The State, War and Peace / . A. Fernandez-Santamaria

Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544-1569 Phyllis Mack Crew

Altopascio A STUDY IN TUSCAN RURAL SOCIETY, 1587-1784

FRANK McARDLE

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE LONDON NEW YORK MELBOURNE

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521216197 © Cambridge University Press 1978 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1978 This digitally printed first paperback version 2005 A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data McArdle, Frank, 1946Altopascio. (Cambridge studies in early modern history) A revision of the author's thesis, University of Virginia, 1974. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Altopascio, Italy- Social conditions. 2. Altopascio, Italy - Economic conditions. 3. Altopascio, Italy - History. I. Title. HN488.A47M23 1977 309.1'45'53 76-53261 ISBN-13 978-0-521-21619-7 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-21619-2 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-02307-8 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-02307-6 paperback

Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

List of illustrations List of tables Acknowledgments Origins The estate of Altopascio: village and villagers Population The economic organization The economic performance, part I The economic performance, part II Familial organization Class divisions The local authority The expression of grievance Conclusion Bibliography Index

vi vii ix 1 16 41 66 83 109 130 156 182 195 214 218 223

Illustrations

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

The location of Altopascio x Northern wall of the castello of Altopascio 17 Eastern wall of the castello 18 Ramp leading to the western gate 18 The Castello of Altopascio in the eighteenth century 20 Piazza Ospitalieri 22 The site of the wine cellar of the estate 22 Approach to the Florentine gate 23 The Plain 24 Architectural plan of a peasant house designed in the eighteenth century 26 Boats in a canal 28 The Oratory of San Rocco 34 Births and deaths reported in the parish of Altopascio (Altopascians only): annual average of five-year periods, 1625-1784 46 Annual births, marriages and deaths reported in the parish of Altopascio (Altopascians only): 1625-1784 51 The River Ralla 67 The Argine 68 View of the Church of le Spianate 69 The peasant farm 70 Indices of average annual price of wheat, net money income, and income adjusted for wheat prices of the estate of Altopascio, 1577-1780 88 Indices of average annual production of the Estate of Altopascio, 1600-1784 90 Indices of average annual leaseholder indebtedness, wheat prices at Montecarlo, and the yield of wheat per unit of seed for the Estate of Altopascio, 1630-1778 100 Abandoned farmhouse in the cerbaia 149

Tables

1 Distribution of population by the six classes of the Macinato tax of 1679 2 Burials in the parish of Altopascio, 1648-50 3 Age distribution of plague victims in Altopascio, 1648-50 4 Short-term demographic crises, 1625-1784 5 Average size of families of Altopascio by duration of marriage 6 Average interval between births (in months): mothers and daughters 7 Average family size of all reconstituted families of Altopascio 8 Respective marriage ages of women remaining versus those exiting 9 Distribution of land of the estate of Altopascio 10 Average price of wheat at Montecarlo 11 Relative prices of wheat, rye and millet in the market of Udine, 1500-1700 12 Gross return of wheat and segalato for each unit of seed planted on the estate of Altopascio, 1600-1783 13 Annual average leaseholder indebtedness, indices of the average annual price of wheat at Montecarlo and the yield of wheat per unit of seed for the estate, 1630-1778 14 Leaseholder rent payments, 1704-10 15 Annual net debt of average peasant household (in scudi and hundredths of scudi), indices of price of wheat at Montecarlo and of the gross return per unit of seed for the entire estate of Altopascio, 1624-1783 16 Average family size of the six macinato classes: 1679 17 Typology of families by profession: 1767 18 Household size of grand-ducal mezzadri, 1767 19 Household structure of the village of Altopascio, 1618-1767: percentage of total households for that year

36 48 49 52 57 59 61 63 80 84 86 95 99 102

114 131 132 133 134

Acknowledgments

This book is a thoroughly revised version of a doctoral dissertation presented to the graduate faculty of the University of Virginia in May 1974. My research was greatly facilitated by a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship, which allowed me to return to Florence for a full year in 1972-3 after a summer of archival work there in 1971. Many people have given me valuable assistance. I mention in particular my readers at the University of Virginia, Professors Samuel Berner and Michael Moohr, and Professor Carlo Corsini and his associates of the Dipartimento StatisticoMatematico dell'Universita degli Studi di Firenze, who processed the demographic data with the computer programs devised specifically for their ongoing research in the demographic history of Tuscany. Professor Simon Pepper of the University of Liverpool, Sergio Nelli of Altopascio, Phyllis Eastman of the Naval Research and Development Center at Carderock, Maryland, and Lucy A. McArdle, all contributed their skills at important formative stages of this study. The manuscript also benefited from the detailed criticism and recommendations of Professor David Herlihy of Harvard University, and from the helpful suggestions of the editors of the series, Professors J. H. Elliott and H. G. Koenigsberger. A special acknowledgement is due to my wife, Jennifer, who photographed the parish registers and the district of Altopascio, worked alongside me on some pressured research projects, and carefully read all my drafts of the dissertation and the book. To all these people, I extend my deepest thanks.

Peseta,

Fig. 1. The location of Altopascio.

Origins

In the Middle Ages, a heavily traveled highway called the Via Francigena served as a major thoroughfare that carried knights, clerics, and commoners from southern France and northern Italy to the center of Christian civilization in Rome. Sometime around 1060, an unidentified group of men founded a hospice on this highway at a place in Italy called Altopascio, whose name derived from an adjacent river. Altopascio is located in Tuscany, approximately 14 kilometers southeast of Lucca, 32 kilometers northeast of Pisa, and 64 kilometers northwest of Florence. The hospice fell under the jurisdiction of the state of Lucca from the time of its establishment until 1339, when it passed by treaty to the Florentine state. The site bordered on a difficult stretch of the road notorious for a multitude of hazards that threatened the safe journey of travelers. It was situated at the edge of the Cerbaia, a name that refers to a vast zone of woodland that originally occupied the area between the Lake of Bientina on the west and the Fucecchio swamp on the east, and was bordered by the crest of hills of Poggio-Adorno, Monte Falcone, and Pozzo.1 An eighteenth-century source makes the medieval Cerbaia sound a frightening region: 1

Emanuele Repetti, Dizionario geografico fisico storico della Toscana contenente la descrizione di tutti i luoghi del Granducato, Ducato di Lucca, Garfagna, e Lunigiana

(6 vols.; Florence, 1833), i, 652. [Abbreviations for footnotes: AC, Archivio Capponi; ACM, Archivio del Comune di Montecarlo; APA, Archivio della Parrocchia di Altopascio; APM, Archivio della Parrocchia di Montecarlo; ASF, Archivio di Stato di Firenze; AVP, Archivio Vescovile di Pescia; AVSM, Archivio Vesovile di San Miniato; CR, Consulta Regia; CSSM, Compagnie Soppresse di San Miniato; RP, Regie Possessioni; SF, Segreteria di Finanze.]

1

Altopascio

[In this] vast forest called Cerbaia. . . the tall thick trees made it dark even at midday, and the narrow winding roads within it became a labyrinth in which many travelers often lost their way while returning from the fairs and ended up dead, and often too they were robbed and murdered by thieves.2 Legend recalls that the Countess Matilda, the eleventhcentury Margrave who represented imperial authority in Tuscany,3 herself became lost in the forest. The terror she experienced prompted her to sponsor a hospice to aid pilgrims, 'a hospital in which poor people could be sure to find haven and spend the night with tranquility, safe from assassins and creatures of the wild.. . .' Alongside the hospital, a bell called La Smarrita (the Lost One) rang for one hour between one and two a.m. 'so that those who were lost in the forest could save themselves by following the sound of the bell/4 Such were the motives behind the founding of this pious institution. And although the obscurity surrounding the establishment of the hospice precludes any absolute judgment, it is generally believed that the church and hospice of Altopascio did enjoy the patronage of the Countess Matilda,5 who was herself Lucchese, had a castle in nearby Vivinaia, and who is celebrated for her numerous acts of piety and for her patronage of many religious institutions. The best identification of the first residents of Altopascio is still rather vague: in 1056 the Porcari family made a donation of lands to three priests in the adjacent community of Pozzevoli who, several years later, now grown to twelve in number, transferred themselves to Altopascio and opened the hospice around 1061-2.6 These men were united in their commitment to aid the poor 2 3 4 5 6

ASF, RP, 3767, no. 7: 'Alcune Memorie della Mansione dello Spedale dell'Altopascio.' Ferdinand Schevill, Medieval and Renaissance Florence (2 vols.; New York, 1963), i, 32 and 54. ASF, RP, 3767, no. 7. For the legend of the Countess Matilda, see Salvatore Andreucci and Guglielmo Lera, Altopascio (Lucca, 1970), pp. 113-14. Andreucci and Lera, op. cit., p. 80. Ugo Mori, Storia di Montecarlo, ed. Mario Seghieri and Giorgio Tori (Lucca, 1971), p. 161. Temistocle Lorenzi, Vospizio e il paese di Altopascio (Prato, 1904), pp. 61-2.

Origins

3

and the pilgrims. They organized themselves as a community for the purposes of maintaining roads, building bridges, and providing food and lodging to pilgrims bound for holy places. Some military activity was also required in defending the locality from the bandits of the Cerbaia; and the military aspect developed as the men of Altopascio became active participants in support of the crusading movement that gained momentum shortly after the foundation of Altopascio. By the early thirteenth century, the followers of the initial founders included knights, clerics, and laymen. In 1239 Pope Gregory IX conferred upon them the Rule of the Hospital of San Jacopo of Altopascio, which was inspired by the rule of St Augustine and similar to the rule of the Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. The Grand Master of the Order came under the direct jurisdiction of the Holy See. Thus the men of Altopascio, with the tau cross as their symbol, came to be known as the Friars and the Knights of the Order of the Hospital of San Jacopo of Altopascio; they were a product of the fervent religious atmosphere that characterized the late eleventh century. In the course of the twelfth century, the Order expanded its influence throughout Western Europe and 'dependent houses' subordinate to the Grand Master of Altopascio sprang up in Istria, Sicily, Sardinia, Piedmont, Spain, Flanders, Germany, and England. The charities of food and lodging dispensed by the hospital gradually became famous enough that Boccaccio could use the image of ' Altopascio's caldron' in The Decameron and expect his readers to understand the reference to the food prepared in great quantities to feed pilgrims.7 Along with fame, there came bequests of land that accumulated in time to form a 'fat' benefice not only in Tuscany but also around the various dependent houses. No wonder that the hospital of Altopascio came to attract the interest of the Florentine patriciate. Economic conditions eventually made patrician control of the benefice not only desirable but feasible. The warfare 7

Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca (Florence, 1965), Sixth Day, Tenth Story, p. 751.

4

Altopascio

endemic in the fourteenth century among the Florentine, Pisan, and Lucchese city-states, joined with the recurrent demographic checks through pestilence, brought serious disaster to Altopascio as it did to the rest of the towns in this contested frontier region. At one point, retreating Pisan soldiers actually set fire to the walled village castello.8 Direct jurisdiction of the Holy See also drew Altopascio within the partisan policies of the Great Schism that divided Catholic Europe in allegiance to the rival claimants to the chair of St Peter. An impressive list of lands alienated ' during the war of the Church and then recovered '9 indicates that the institution's revenues had been sacrificed for short-term considerations. By 1419 there is evidence that not only had disaster befallen Altopascio but that the Order could not draw the income from its lands. On 24 March, 1419, the Master General Bartolomeo de' Bonittis of Orvieto wrote a circulating letter declaring his need for charitable donations to restore the now deteriorated hospice to its former splendor.10 The catasto tax records of 1427 yield an equally gloomy commentary upon the fate of the institution. The tax records document a serious economic crisis: the castello was 'falling apart', formerly cultivated farms were abandoned to pasture, pastureland was unused because the lessee was without livestock, and many rents owed to the hospice went unpaid.11 All this stress prepared the way for successful patrician intervention. The Grand Mastership of the Order first passed to Giuliano Capponi in 1445, which initiated that family's legal control of Altopascio, finally consummated in 1472. In that year, Pope Sixtus IV awarded the ius patronatus of the benefice to Niccolo and Bartolomeo, brothers of Giovanni di Piero Capponi, with the proviso that some members of the family 8

9 10

11

Lorenzi, op. cit., pp. 165-77. The castello was put to the torch in 1363 and the following year, on 20 August 1364, a treaty was signed by which Pisa surrendered Altopascio to the Florentine republic. ASF, RP, 3767, no. 53. Biblioteca Moreniana, 230, 'Memorie Storiche,' in, no. 1. The actual text of the letter is provided by Giuseppe Dal Canto, Altopascio Medicea (Lucca, 1974), Appendix I, pp. 175-80, which the author graciously allowed me to consult in manuscript form. ASF, Catasto 1427, 198, ff. 750-71; there is a copy of the catasto for Altopascio in AC, xin, no. 65.

Origins

5

reside in Altopascio and spend three thousand florins in eight years to restore the institution.12 For all practical purposes the Order was fundamentally transformed once the institution fell into the grips of the patrician class. Elections of the Grand Master ceased, control of that office became centralized in the Capponi family and passed through hereditary succession. The benefice never left the Capponi until it fell permanently within the grasp of still stronger patricians - the Medici themselves. In 1537 Duke Cosimo de' Medici acceded to an uncertain regime which came into existence after Imperial armies and their Florentine allies dealt the final blow to the Florentine republic. The new duke had to reassert the sovereignty of the Florentine state in relation to the Papacy and the Empire, and at the same time to impress upon the notoriously independent patrician class the fact that he intended to rule by himself.13 In this context Duke Cosimo's effort to obtain Altopascio from the Capponi was more than a selfish struggle to secure a valuable benefice. A revived and militant papacy also gazed longingly at these lands, and the ensuing contest was not only a battle over revenue: it was a symbolic confrontation that challenged the sensitive issue of Cosimo's sovereign rule. The Holy See historically had controlled the ius patronatus of Altopascio. Were not the Capponi rights to the benefice solemnized by a papal bull? When the Capponi heir agreed to name a trusted agent of Duke Cosimo as Grand Master of Altopascio in 1537, Pope Paul III quickly retaliated by naming his own Grand Master, his nephew Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Duke Cosimo could hardly break with one of the most sacrosanct traditions of the Florentine republic independence from papal * domination.' Quite openly and bluntly the duke supported his candidate, Ugolino Grifoni, and a battle between the duchy and the Papacy lasted for three years, during which time Grifoni was twice excommunicated by the Holy Father.14 The outcome was predictable and once 12 13 14

Biblioteca Moreniana, 230. On this whole problem see Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527-1800 (Chicago, 1973), pp. 19-21, 29-35. ASF, Archivio Grifoni, 216:' Estratti o Spogli attenenti allo Spedale di San Jacopo di Altopascio dal 1409-1604.'

6

Altopascio

again in line with the history of the Florentine republic. Cosimo won, even though the compromise accepting Grifoni temporarily kept Altopascio out of the direct possession of the Medici. But only temporarily. In 1552 Grifoni ceded the title of Grand Master to Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, and in 1565 Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici received the title while the revenues and the administration remained in Grifoni's hands until his death in 1576.15 A trial at that date indicates that the remarkable fortune of the Grifoni family owed not a little to the revenues of Altopascio to which Ugolino had generously helped himself.16 Still, the Grand Mastership as it existed was not fully satisfactory for two reasons. The Papacy retained the power of granting its apostolic approval to changes in lands, in spending and in investment; and the Capponi, after three quarters of a century and a papal investiture, certainly held some legal claim to Altopascio. Grand Duke Francesco I satisfied Capponi claims by a settlement in 1584 by which the family gave up its rights to Altopascio in exchange for three commende (benefices) created from public revenues. Some shrewd members of the Capponi family perceived an element of unfairness in the fact that the estimated revenues from these commende did not equal the revenues from Altopascio.17 Other documents from the early eighteenth century indicate that the Capponi did not always receive even those revenues promised. The family members in favor of cession nonetheless prevailed. Exactly why the recalcitrant ones yielded is not certain. The most plausible explanation is that they realized the futility of resisting Francesco I. The final settlement also returned to the Capponi the lands confiscated because of Antonio di Niccolo Capponi's participation in the Pucci conspiracy of 1575, a plot against Grand Duke Francesco de' Medici in which four of the twenty-two participants were members of the Capponi family.18 15 16 17 18

A copy of the document of 1565 can be found in ASF, Miscellanea Medicea, 25, no. 4. Dal Canto, Altopascio Medicea, pp. 20, 82-3. The discussion of the issue among members of the family is preserved in AC, xin, nos. 68, 73, 74, 75, 76. Samuel J. Berner,' Florentine Society in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,' Studies in the Renaissance, xvm (1971), 238-9.

Origins

7

With the Capponi out of the picture, only the problem of His Holiness the Pope remained. Grand Duke Ferdinando I handled this satisfactorily by arranging for Sixtus V to issue an apostolic bull suppressing the Order of San Jacopo of Altopascio and creating in its place a Commenda Precettoria of the Order of Santo Stefano which Ferdinando, as Grand Master of the Order, could control and grant as a benefice to any member of the Order of Santo Stefano. The avowed intention was to endow the religious undertakings of the new order. In fact, Altopascio became for all practical purposes the personal property of the grand duke and was administered as such, reserving to the Order of Santo Stefano the ceremonial tasks of approving alienations of land decided by the grand duke's agents, and of making occasional inspections of the church. In return the duke agreed to pay 3,362 Roman scudi and 75 baiocchi to the Papacy every fifteen years, the 'quindennio.'19 A legacy of the suppressed Order of San Jacopo was the obligation of the grand dukes to sustain the charities traditionally offered by the hospice. Another legacy was the retention of the privileges of exemption from taxes and immunity from the legal jurisdiction of communal authorities, the so-called * Privileges of Altopascio/20 The old regime was nonetheless transformed. Papal control was removed: the apostolic approval required for alienations of lands of the benefice was actually only rarely obtained and for only a small portion of the vast lands alienated in the 1640s. The legal extinction of the Order of San Jacopo eliminated the clerical status of the Grand Master, a condition that would have excluded the Grand Master as a cleric from the ducal throne. By suppressing the old regime, Ferdinando cleverly managed to assert his control over the benefice while maintaining the customary public image of Altopascio as a haven for pilgrims. The requirement to maintain the traditional charities complicated the economic organization of the estate. The obligation to fund such undertakings often conflicted with the capitalistic drive of the grand duke and his 19 20

Biblioteca Moreniana, 230. For the privileges, see Andreucci and Lera, Altopascio, p. 47, and ASF, Carte Strozziane, Serie prima, cccv: 'Nota di Scritture e privilegi dello Spedale dell' Altopascio,' codice 211.

8

Altopascio

agents to maximize profits and minimize costs. But in any event, the lands were now securely in the Medici grip. Thereafter, the community of Altopascio bore the imprint of the Medici regime. The basic political and managerial assumptions of that regime remained relatively constant from the reign of Duke Cosimo I (1537-74) right through to that of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo (1765-90). Professor Eric Cochrane has described the regime at the accession of the latter grand duke in the following terms: 'The principle laid down by Cosimo I in the mid-sixteenth century was still accepted as axiomatic: government was a function inseparable from the person of a prince, and a bureaucracy existed only to carry out his orders.'21 Actually, both the traditions of the bureaucrats and the personality of the prince together influenced the administration of the grand-ducal lands. The chief posts in the bureaucracy were held by patricians. These men were often themselves landholders, descendants of families with long experience in commercial and agricultural undertakings. Their management of the grand-ducal lands was influenced by their practical training in efficient management of their own estates.22 They brought an acute statistical consciousness to the management of the grand-ducal lands, along with a shrewd sense of busines and a watchful eye towards fraud. The bureaucracy of the Medici regime, therefore, naturally reflected the values of the landlord class. The small size of the Tuscan bureaucracy, however, always allowed the personality of the prince to influence public administration even on the very lowest levels. The members of the bureaucracy numbered about a thousand in the sixteenth century, and 1,335 in 1765.23 And the documents 21 22

23

Cochrane, Florence, 1527-1800, p. 428.

The Marquis Francesco Feroni, for example, who held the post of InspectorGeneral of the Royal Possessions for many years, had vast landholdings of his own. Professor Antonio Anzilotti described the Feroni as 'a representative family of gentlemen, who know how to dedicate themselves to the reclamation of their lands and to their studies, excellent administrators, and at the same time openminded towards advances in the physical sciences and their practical applications' ('Le riforme in Toscana nella seconda meta del secolo XVIII. II nuovo ceto dirigente e la sua preparazione intelletuale,' in Movementi e contrasti per Vunita italiana (Bari, 1930), p. 97). Samuel Berner, 'Florentine Political Thought in the Late Cinquecento,' Ilpensiero politico, Anno III, no. 2 (Aug. 1970), p. 193, hereafter cited as 'Florentine Political Thought'; Cochrane, Florence, 1527-1800, p. 401.

Origins

9

pertaining to the affairs of the estate of Altopascio support the observation that Professor Samuel Berner has made for the sixteenth century: 'The dimensions of the Tuscan state were such that the Duke and a few trusted secretaries could realistically manage important as well as relatively minor affairs.'24 The grand dukes did exert considerable interest in the performance of their lands, and the letters of the Superintendent of the Royal Possessions frequently stated that the ruler of the state did take the time to examine personally the final accounts of the estate. Consequently, in the history of Altopascio, the tone of any given administration reflected the personality of the reigning grand duke. To cite examples, under Grand Duke Ferdinando I, known as an energetic duke with strong entrepreneurial leanings, the estate of Altopascio underwent its most dramatic physical expansion. Under Grand Duke Ferdinando II, who was plagued by financial problems, the war of the Barberini, and a serious commercial depression, all of the member estates of the original benefice of Altopascio were sold, except Altopascio itself. During the regency period (1737-65) that followed the end of Medici rule, there was a break in the historical tie between the Medici grand dukes and their properties; and the new regime leased the former lands of the Medici to a tax farm in 1740 in order to meet the financial needs of the reigning Grand Duke Francesco Stefano of Lorraine. Finally, under Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, the enlightened ruler, famous as a reformer and a modernizer, Altopascio experienced heavy capital investments in housing and land reclamation, and ultimately the alienation of the estate in 1784 as part of a planned program of agrarian reform. Notwithstanding the different personalities of the grand dukes, the ideology of the regime and the tenor of its representatives remained unchanged throughout the period under consideration. This was a monarchical regime steeped in the ideology of divine right absolutism. The concept of the ruler was paternalistic, and the grand duke, whether of the Medici or Lorraine dynasty, was still 'ruler of the household.' 24

Berner, 'Florentine Political Thought,' p. 193.

10

Altopascio

The paternalistic ideology did penetrate to the level of the everyday administration of the lands of Altopascio. Within limits, of course, the administrators would often mention their desire to act with 'Christian charity' in pardoning the offenses of the subject peasantry. Another feature of the Medici regime was its fidelity to custom, and here too the ideology of conservatism found expression in numerous reprimands to individual estate managers not 'to innovate' in the contractual relations with labor or in other customary practices of the community. To sum up, the fate of the inhabitants of Altopascio was inextricably bound to the inclinations of the Medici and their administrators. The historical significance of the community of Altopascio in the early modern period stems from this close identification with the Medici family. On the one hand, the economic performance of the estate serves as an indicator of the resources available to the rulers of the state. On the other hand, the thorough management of these lands by the Medici agents has bequeathed to posterity an exceptional source of primary material for reconstructing a rural society in the past. Inasmuch as the field of early European agrarian social and economic history all too often suffers from a lack of the direct testimony of the participants, this Tuscan source material deserves recognition for its outstanding character, the historical potential of which is virtually unlimited. In fact, one of the most renowned students of Italian economic history, Professor Luigi Dal Pane, has made the historical significance of the archive of the grand-ducal possessions a recurrent subject in his work. After stressing the unusual abundance of its valuable quantitative material, Dal Pane proceeds to describe the historical potential in the following terms: But the importance of this department [of the Royal Possessions] is not conferred solely by numbers: owing to the vast extent of the landed property, the methods of tenancy and of administration, the various works of agricultural improvement, and the commercial affairs of different sorts, the monographic study of the Medici business and of the grand-ducal possessions would not only constitute an indispensable premise for the economic and financial history of Tuscany during the Medici principate, but would also

Origins

11

advance the research into political events and the subsequent development of the economy and politics under the House of Lorraine.25 Unfortunately the sheer volume of archival material makes an exhaustive study of all the grand-ducal lands impossible for a single person to complete. What follows is a brief attempt to introduce the reader to the type of documentation available for the study of Altopascio, with the understanding that data of a comparable quality, though only rarely for so long a time span, exist for virtually all of the grand-ducal possessions. In the Archivio di Stato of Florence, Italy, where the grand-ducal archives are now located, two very thorough inventories catalogue the holdings and permit one to determine beforehand the extent of the documentation for any particular estate and the chronological span of the data. The inventory of the Piante delle R. Possessioni is a catalogue of all maps, drawings, architectural plans, and the like, that were used in the administration of the properties. Among the plans surviving for Altopascio, for example, is a detailed map of the estate dating from the late seventeenth century, showing the roads, houses, fields, granaries, swampland, etc. Here too can be found the architectural plan of peasant houses designed for an area of newly reclaimed land. Maps which depict the leasehold tenements and bear the signature of the leaseholder in witness have also survived. Basically, then, the piante provide the indispensable information to situate the properties and to reconstruct them visually. This historical information can then be supplemented by the excellent modern maps available for purchase through the Istituto Geografico Militare, which illustrate the topography, the vegetation, and even the location of old dirt roads. Aerial photographs of the region are also available from the Institute; and good geological maps can be purchased through the Servizio Geologico d'ltalia. The second inventory of the Possessioni catalogues practically all the rest of the narrative and quantitative data, out25

Luigi Dal Pane, La ftnanza toscana dagli inizi del secolo XVIII

Granducato (Milan, 1965), p. 13.

alia caduta del

12

Altopascio

standingly rich because the agency entrusted with the administration of the grand-ducal lands demanded complete information from the localities on the performance of the estate, thus generating a profusion of administrative sources. The primary yardstick of the estate's performance lay in the accounts. Generally the accounts for all the grand-ducal estates were entered in the thick and weighty master account book, the Libro Maestro, a series which is complete from the early seventeenth century onward. In addition to these volumes, there are individual account books for the estate which served as the sources for the Libro Maestro, organized according to subject matter. In both these series of accounts the transactions of the estate were recorded; from them, it is possible to obtain yearly quantitative data on agricultural production, livestock, market transactions, peasant indebtedness, rent collections - in short, data on the entire gamut of the estate's activities. The numbers themselves, and the comments entered alongside them, together allow the researcher to reconstruct the anatomy of the rural economy and to trace its movement over a long period of time. Certain gaps occur for individual estates, however, during periods when the estate was leased to someone else, but even then, some records of the lessee or of visiting agents of the grandducal possessions can frequently help to fill the void. The narrative accounts of the estate's history are also unusually abundant. To begin with, correspondence between the local estate management and the central administration in Florence was both frequent and regular; on average, about two letters per week were exchanged. All of the outgoing correspondence from Florence has been preserved from the mid-seventeenth century onward in the Copialettere of the Superintendent of the Royal Possessions. The letters actually originating at the estate are not complete for Altopascio, but, allowing for variations from estate to estate, significant numbers of these letters have survived. Furthermore, the format of the letters written in Florence generally summarized the original letter point by point, which usually allows the reader to comprehend the events that had transpired. These letters were extremely valuable because of the range

Origins

13

of the subject matter - the business transactions of the estate, incidents of violence, crime, illegitimate pregnancies, family disputes - in sum, the whole range of activities within the rural community. In addition to the letters, the Deputies of the Royal Possessions convened regularly and preserved their discussions in their Deliberazione and their more important dispositions in the Negozi, another two series of administrative sources which are virtually complete for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If the deputies required more technical information, they might order a visit by one of their agents, who then filed a report at the end of the commission, preserved today in the series of Relazione. Many of the specific inquiries by specialists addressed the problems of hydrology, and it is quite possible that these data could be used effectively to link known climatic fluctuations to the level of agricultural productivity. Still another extremely rich source is the petitions, the bulk of which for Altopascio are catalogued under the Segreteria di Finanze for the period from 1740 to 1784. (Earlier petitions are referenced mostly in the Copialettere.) Though every petition must be understood in its context, there is perhaps no other source that describes so vividly the human dimensions of the society as these demonstrations of the individual and collective mentalities in their dialogue with the royal landlord. Another intriguing series of documents dates from 1740, the ' Description' of each individual property included in the lease of all the grand-ducal possessions to the tax farm known as the Appalto Generate. These 'Descriptions' are detailed inventories of each estate, describing the houses, the number of residents in the household, the fields sown, the trees planted, an exhaustive inventory to insure that at the expiration of the lease the lessee would pay the difference for any deterioration in the estate. Here is another source that defies estimation of its full historical potential in reconstructing rural domestic systems and their relationship to the agricultural economy. It would be misleading, though, to suggest that this short discussion of the sources on Altopascio could summarize completely the historical possibilities of the archive of the

14

Altopascio

grand-ducal possessions. For one thing, a category of documents catalogued as 'Miscellaneous' could contain virtually anything. For example, there was no reason to expect to find, as I did, the extremely valuable census of the village executed in 1618 as a control on the amount of charities dispensed. For another thing, the documentation pertaining to Altopascio is such a small part of the entire archive that it is impossible to predict what an exhaustive study of the remaining documentation would yield. This brief discussion should suggest that a historian of whatever specialism, whose interests fall within the broad dimensions of rural society, could expect to turn to this archive in order to uncover practically as much information about the grand-ducal possessions as was available to the administrators themselves. As if all this were not enough, however, this study was also able to utilize the communal archive, the parish archive, and a private family archive to discover even more about the conditions of life in Altopascio. The town archive of neighbouring Montecarlo held the records for the macinato (flour) and polline (fertilizer) taxes, a long price series on grain sold in the communal marketplace, and the deliberations of the local town government.26 It is also on this level that the best efforts of local historians were encountered in men like Dr Mario Seghieri and Dr Giorgio Tori: in their careful maintenance of the archive itself, in the detailed published inventory of the town archives, in their own publications, and in their personal generosity and cordiality in making all resources readily available to outside investigators. Certainly, this study could not overlook the work of these dedicated local historians, of whom Tuscany can boast an abundance. Parish records were also available, and their riches have now become so well established that they need hardly be elaborated upon here.27 For Altopascio, a complete series of 26 27

See the published inventory by Mario Seghieri, Inventario dell'Archivio del Comune di Montecarlo (1480-1900) (Lucca, 1967). For descriptions of these sources in Italian parish archives, see Carlo M. Cipolla, 'I libri dei morti,' Carlo A. Corsini, 'Nascite e matrimoni,' and Athos Bellettini, 'Gli "Status Animarum": caratteristiche e problemi di utilizzazione nelle ricerche di demografia storica,' published by the Comitato italiano per lo studio dei

Origins

15

births, marriages, and deaths exists from 1625 onward, with only marriage and birth records extending back to 1596 and 1600 respectively. The many status animarum that have survived in the parish archive were of great value in studying the population. These are nominative lists of parish residents grouped under the head of the household, which can be used to determine household size, population size, the types of households, the developmental cycles of stable families, an age stratification of the population over time, population mobility, the professional structure of the community, and still more. Finally, the private archive of the Capponi family, graciously made available by Count Neri Capponi, contains valuable records of the administration of Altopascio in the late sixteeenth century by Senator Giovanbattista Capponi. In conclusion, this historical reconstruction of the village and grand-ducal estate of Altopascio is doubly important for its identification with the Medici and for the data that allow us to penetrate the obscurity surrounding the lives of ordinary people in a rural community from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries, years that have largely come to be known as 'the general crisis of the seventeenth century.' An underlying historical problem is the degree to which that general crisis affected these rather ordinary lives. problemi della popolazione, Le fonti della demografia storica in Italia, Atti del seminario di demografia storica, 1971-72 (Rome, 1974). More information on the

status animarum can be found in S. Chifini, 'Caratteristiche delle rilevazioni numeriche della popolazione nei secoli XVII e XVIII: gli stati d'anime,' Societa italiana di statistica, Atti della XXVI riunione scientifica, vol. n (1969) and the same

author's 'Exploitation des listes nominatives de population a Fiesole' in Population, 3 (1971).

1 The Estate of Altopascio: village and villagers

The property of Altopascio that passed to the Medici grand dukes was indeed worthy of a prince. In 1597 the entire benefice was valued at 240,000 scudi,1 although we must remember that in the interval between 1576 and that date, Ferdinando de' Medici's will to improve the land and the able administration of Senator Giovanbattista Capponi had already increased the value of the member estates. The benefice was composed of several member units, which became fattorie under the Medici reorganization. The mid-sixteenth century benefice included the 'members' of the Cerbaia, Lucca, Fucecchio, Pescia and Gello. The Cerbaia member corresponds to the estate of Altopascio, which is the subject of this study. The estate itself was vast. It consisted of the village of Altopascio, which served as the administrative center for the roughly 3,000 acres of land that sprawled over five different communal jurisdictions.2 Where possible, photographs of the 1 2

ASF, Miscellanea Medicea, 322, no. 33: 'Stato Patrimoniale della Religione di S. Stefano 1561-1600.' In 1697 the area cultivated for the grand duke amounted to about 1,856 acres, with an additional 958 acres leased for rents, bringing the total to 2,814 acres. In 1784 the estate had grown to about 3,182 acres. The size of the estate has been calculated from the figures in coltre for 1697 in ASF, Miscellanea Medicea, 359, no. 20. The estimate for 1784 is based on the stiore of the land in ASF, RP, 2555. Using the values of these respective measurements in Ildebrando Imberciadori, Campagna toscana nel '700. Dalla reggenza alia restaurazione (Florence, 1953), p. 419, of 1 coltra equal to about 7.5 stiore, and 19 stiore equal to 1 hectare, the measurements were then converted to acres. The estimate for the total size of the estate in 1784 assumes that the area of leased land was the same as it was in 1697, which is not exactly correct because the area of leasehold land may have changed, but this assumption is adequate to give an idea of the overall dimensions of the property in question. The estate fell under several communal jurisdictions: 7 pieces of land along

16

The Estate of Altopascio

17

Fig. 2. Northern wall of the castello capped by its bell tower.

historical features of present-day Altopascio have been utilized to aid in depicting the physical environment of the community of Altopascio in the past. The administrative head of the estate, the fattore or estate manager, resided in the castello, the walled village of Altopascio, a small urban nucleus constructed on the original site founded by the good men of the eleventh century (Figs. 2-4). Legally the entire village was the property of the grand duke. Within the urban walls there numbered about forty houses. This area contained the parish church, San Jacopo of Altopascio, famous beyond its dispensation of charities for its relic of St James. Each year on 25 July, the feast day of the patron saint was celebrated as a festa, while throngs of hungry people from all over the district congregated to obtain the free bread that was distributed. Over a dozen priests were invited to the ceremony, and because these clerics were paid 10 lire above what they could eat, the invitation was always an object of jealous contention among the local clerics of this area. The the Bientina lake in the Podesteria of Castel Franco di Sotto, 13 farms and woodland under the Vicariato of Fucecchio, 2 more farms under the Vicariato of Pescia, 16 under the Podesteria of Buggiano, and another 16 under the Podesteria of Montecarlo (ASF, RP, 2555).

Altopascio

18

•

•

'

•

,

Fig. 3. Eastern wall of the castello bordered by the vegetable garden.

Fig. 4. Ramp leading to the western gate.

The Estate of Altopascio

19

priests of the neighboring parishes of the Badia, Spianate, and Montecarlo were generally invited, and whomever else the curate of Altopascio considered worthy. Ultimate approval of the clerical participants always remained with the grand duke. Separate from the church was the spedale, which by the seventeenth century had ceased to be a 'hospital' in the modern sense. There were technically two hospitals, one for men and one for women, although visitors frequently complained that the distinction had broken down. Pilgrims or travelers passing through Altopascio could obtain food and lodging according to their social station. A coin called a pistacchia was issued by the parish priest and could be redeemed by the traveler at the dispensary at its designated value. A white coin entitled the bearer to a one-pound loaf of white bread and a half flask of wine. This type of coin was granted for eight consecutive days to pregnant women either of the parish or the wives of workers of the estate as well as to those who received the viaticum - the Eucharist as dispensed to dying persons. A black pistacchia was given to the poor pilgrims who passed through Altopascio. If they passed by day, they received a one-pound loaf of white bread and a quarter flask of wine, if by night, double quantities of bread and wine. Poor pilgrims also received firewood to keep themselves warm and a bed to sleep on. The pistacchie given as payment to the peasants and workers of the estate brought a loaf of brown bread and a quarter flask of wine. The pistacchie dispensed to the priests, brothers, and laymen of better status surpassed by far the distinction between white and brown bread. The more refined palates of these notables earned them 9 soldi's worth of food in addition to the loaf of white bread, the half flask of wine, firewood, and a bed. On normal days their menu included a half libbra of meat, with a good soup of broth with greens and a slice of dried meat, or instead lasagne, rice, or some other pasta, with cheese or fruit for dessert according to the season. On fast days the meal consisted of a soup of legumes or rice or vegetables, a salad, a pair of eggs cooked in a pan, or half an omelet cooked home style (alia casalinga), or some other equivalent, plus cheese or

Altopascio

20 Fliglit erfstairs (from the time of the C&pponi) shared by all Apartments

5? 3rd courtyard J< (today Ttizza. OsfiuUeri) •'

Castello of Altopascio in the middle of die I8tk century R&rtJii ona-plandrawviby Qiuseppe Val Canto and Sergio Nelll uponan erda/qemer& of the, tax map of \8Z4(Community of MonUcarlO; section Fof Altopascio ^adabiiTli4)

7A Ihe, apartment of the •^ administrator of the estate H | Tlu apartment of the Capvichin fathers Ej| UU otherapartmenfr 'Altogether noble' Z!

ADMINISTRATIVE AHEA

AREA OF THE COMMUNITY

Fig. 5. The Castello of Altopascio in the eighteenth century.

fruit. During Lent, fish and walnuts were substituted.3 Even charity, then, discriminated between rich and poor: in the sphere of donations, the poor deserved less. 3

On the pistacchie, ASF, RP, 2555: 'Notizie diverse relative alia Commenda Magistrate di Altopascio.' The menu was taken from ASF, RP, 3767, no. 19; and Giuseppe Dal Canto (' II piaggione di Altopascio - cenni di urbanistica,' La Provincia di Lucca, Anno XI, no. 2 (1971), p. 51, hereafter cited as 'II piaggione'), has published photographs of the coins.

The Estate of Altopascio

21

Those travelers who could afford better lodging stayed at the inn (osteria) run by families that had leased it on a short-term basis from the grand duke. The rest of the houses, by the end of the eighteenth century, were filled with shopkeepers and artisans who used the ground floor for their shop and the second story as a residence. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the urban nucleus had instead housed a large number of farmers, especially leaseholders but also a few peasants, who resided within the walls and walked to their fields. Gradually, by the end of the seventeenth century the settlement pattern stabilized with peasants and leaseholders living directly on isolated farmsteads. This left within the village walls the estate manager, the clergy, hospital staff, artisans, shopkeepers, and the very poor who rented a house or a room or two and worked for wages on all types of odd jobs. Widows and other solitaries also resided within the walls, where they might weave cloth for a living. The architectural profile of Altopascio (Fig. 5) drawn from the detailed narrative 'Description of 1740'4 illustrates the anatomy of this modest village capped by its lovely bell tower. One particular feature of the social organization of the community is embodied within this physical layout and deserves emphasis. This small village population, which oscillated in number between 600 and 700 over the period 1615-1784, was very much a divided society. Dominant was the palazzo (palace) of the fattore, which had originally housed the brothers of Altopascio and was then taken over and improved by the Capponi (Fig. 6). The physical dominance of the palace reflected the dominance of the padrone directly represented by his agent, the estate manager. This administrative zone was also physically separate and closed off from the rest of the village (Fig. 7), thereby setting the padrone above and away from the rest of the society. The fattore was even reminded by his superiors to extend this physical separateness into the social sphere: a good estate manager should discourage friendships with the villagers in the interest of efficient management. Often, however, that advice was unrealistic in the close quarters of this rural society. The impression of a divided society also applies to the houses outside 4

Dal Canto, 'II piaggione,' no. 3, p. 57.

22

Altopascio

Fig. 6. Proceeding to the center of the village from the western gate, there is the square today called Piazza Ospitalieri, with the old public well and the loggia of the palace of the estate manager. The room in the center of the loggia was the office, scrittoio, of the fattore.

Fig. 7. Through the passageway underneath the loggia, one arrives in another large square in the administrative section of the village. On the left is the site of the old wine cellar of the estate. On the far right a gateway closed off the administrative area from the rest of the village.

The Estate of Altopascio

23

Fig. 8. The site where the houses of the better families of the village lived, just adjacent to the Florentine gate. By a right turn here, one would complete the circle by passing the hospital, the bell tower, the church and ending up back at the palazzo of the estate manager.

the area of the fattore's palace. The rural bourgeoisie, the local notables, occupied the section along the wall of the Via Romana (Fig. 8); the artisans and shopkeepers occupied houses along the eastern wall, while the poor were crowded into dismal rooms in the tower. Within these village walls, from the pilgrims passing through to the permanent residents, all shadings of social status were sensitively registered and respected. The fields began directly outside the walls. The quality of the land was not uniform throughout the estate. The medieval community of Altopascio cultivated the lands of the forest called the Cerbaia, and these same lands formed the older nucleus of the Medici estate, several of which include ' cerbaia' in the toponyms of the member farms. One part of the estate, therefore, existed on an area of low hills or knolls that sloped southeast of the village from 24 meters above sea level until it reached 50 meters in the forest called the Bosco della Serezara. The quality of this soil was relatively poor, composed of hard yellow earth intermingled with gravelly

24

Altopascio

Fig. 9. The Plain.

pebbles. Even today the residents of the district use the word 'cerbaia' to describe a piece of land that is difficult to work and yields little. Local proverb echoes the stark historical reality of this land in the saying: 'In the Cerbaia there is hunger.'5 The other segment of the estate lay in the area called the Plain (Fig. 9), situated north and east of the River Ralla and the Sibolla Canal. Today this whole area is still very flat, at the low altitude of 17 meters above sea level. That altitude had probably been somewhat lower in the seventeenth century, since it was consistent Medici policy to raise the elevation of this lowland through reclamation that rendered it profitable. The geological map confirms that this was a fertile zone formed of rich alluvial deposits. Drainage posed a critical 5

The best maps of the region, which include altitude above sea level, vegetation, and even the old dirt roads, are those of the Istituto Geografico Militare of which foglio 105 covers Altopascio. My comments on the soil are based upon foglio 105 of the Carta Geologica d'ltalia, which clearly reveals the two faces of the estate in terms of soil composition, and also upon personal visits to the area, discussions with local residents, and the remarks of Lorenzi (Uospizio, p. 16), who described the cerbaia as 'composto d'un cemento di sassi e ghiaie.' For the proverb 'In Cerbaia dalla fame ci si abbia,' see Galli Nori Andreini, La grande Valdinievole (Florence, 1970), p. 105.

The Estate of Altopascio

25

problem for the cultivation of these lands since they were low, flat and situated in a rainy belt of Tuscany at the extremity of the Valdinievole.6 As long as these lands could be drained effectively, they yielded twice as much as the farms in the cerbaia. When drainage was deficient, so were the crops. The utilization of the Plain was a major factor in the economy of the estate. The lands were also divided into two jurisdictional areas, the lands given out on long-term lease (livello) and the portion directly worked for the grand duke and managed by the estate manager. The leaseholders who colonized this wood and swampland gradually built their own houses right on their plots. The area farmed for the grand duke was also divided into plots, which created another permanent paradox in the economy of the fattoria: one large unit of ownership was apportioned into numerous (38 in 1784) units of operation, called poderi, small farms complete unto themselves and worked by families. On these isolated farms, by the end of the seventeenth century, all the peasants, mezzadri, resided. Many of these houses were nothing more than large huts; others were carefully designed according to established principles of agricultural economics. Figure 10 shows a plan which has survived for one of the latter type houses. Here there is a real aesthetic concern to create a symmetrical, lovely edifice, quintessentially rational and therefore functional. A feature distinguishing this house from twentieth century equivalents in the same region is the unity of men and women and their animals under the same roof. Equally striking is the fact that this construction was not only a house, it was a small farm with a wine cellar, an oven for treating flax, a room with a loom for spinning, and its own threshing floor. Architecturally and economically this peasant house was a separate unit. The constant attempt of the estate manager to embrace and control these distinct entities is one dominant theme in the organization of this society. For the time being it suffices to 6

Ferdinando Milone, L'ltalia neU'economia delle sue regioni (Turin, 1955), p. 497. Altopascio is at the edge of a zone of 1200-1400 millimeters (47.2-55.1 inches) precipitation annually, or the second highest area of rainfall in all of Tuscany.

26

Altopascio Plan of tKc houses to be built oa the five farms of the of tke Pescia di Pescia river on the Estate of Altopascio.

Bedroom, and cellar below

Hall, and v&t-roovn below

Stable

bedroom, and place for IOOYYL below

I

Loggia., and portico bdow

Oven with a ken-house above and a, pigsty below

Fig. 10. Architectural plan of a peasant house designed in the eighteenth century. The original of this undated plan can be found in ASF, Piante delle Regie Possessioni. Although this plan is clearly the work of an Engineer of the Royal Possessions in the eighteenth century, the precise date is problematic, but it probably is the work of the engineer Pierantonio Tosi referred to in ASF, RP, 3534, no. 34 and in 3103, ff. 135, 154, 200, and designed between 1706 and 1709. The important point is that these houses were the planned product of professionals employed by the Royal Possessions, and not spontaneous peasant creations. In fact the instructions sent from Florence carefully controlled all specifications like the thickness of the wooden beam.

recall that the peasants slept in the same building with their oxen, horses, pigs, and pet cats.7 At the mill, also leased by the estate to private individuals, the peasants and foreigners came to grind their grain into flour. Over the entire period under consideration, the peasants were regularly instructed to frequent the estate's mill, although the instructions emanate from the fact that the peasants took the grain elsewhere whenever possible, prob7

That is, in houses of this design. The wide variety of peasant living arrangements means that in places there could be a separate hut for the animals, while in other huts of the estate of Altopascio, and in the Valdinievole generally, peasants and livestock were intermingled. The plan nevertheless reflects the ideal peasant house as conceived in this era, and the architects saw a clear advantage in centralizing peasants and livestock under one roof. For more discussion of Tuscan rural housing, see Guido Biffoli and Guido Gerrara, La casa colonica in Toscana (Florence, 1966).

The Estate of Altopascio

27

ably to avoid the monopoly prices charged by the estate's miller. The kiln, the fornace, provided the fattoria internally with all the bricks, lime and mortar that it needed. The forest was another unit of the fattoria, the two wooded areas called the Bosco della Serezara and the Bosco del Grifoglieto. From the woods fuel, building supplies, acorns for pigs, chestnuts for humans, and leaves and underbrush for the animals, all these were derived; and more was available from the swamps. A vast extension of water, called the Lake of Bientina, bounded Altopascio on the northwest. On the east, another large body of water, the Padule di Fucecchio, enclosed the estate. In the northeastern corner a smaller swamp area remained, the residue of the greater body of water that once covered the whole area. This marsh, called the Sibolla, was used to process flax, and the water of the swamp, the chiaro, was leased for its fishing rights, as were the mill pond and the Fossa Navareccia, the long canal that connected the port of Altopascio to the Lake of Bientina. Through this port and out across the lake one could reach the Lucchese region, or head south to the Arno river and proceed directly to Pisa and Leghorn. Through the 'ports' that lined the Fucecchio swamp, which were appropriated by the aristocratic landowners around the padule, one could also proceed to Ponte a Cappiano and from there down the Usciana Canal into the Arno. More important still, the Padule of Fucecchio was the drainage basin for the whole low-lying area called the Valdinievole, whose waters were then drained by the Usciana into the Arno. The efficiency of this drainage line effectively controlled the fertility of the lands of the estate. If the flow of water in the Arno or the Usciana or the padule became restricted and the water level rose, then the intricate network of drainage ditches that ended in the padule would become blocked, causing sterility to the undrained lands on which freshly planted crops would languish before reaching maturity. There were four major drainage systems: the Sibolla Canal ran west to east and drained the Sibolla swamp and the bordering farms into the padule; the Fosso alle Parti, a canal with two smaller ante fosso ditches on either side, also drained

28

Altopascio

Fig. 11. In boats much like these, the peasants journeyed into the swamp to transport wood, leaves, and underbrush to their farms and to catch fish without paying the high cost of the fishing permit.

into the padule; the River Pescia di Collodi and the other Pescia di Pescia river served similar drainage functions. Other ditches bordered all the fields of the farms and drained into the major canals. Also along this drainage network, the peasants could use their small boats, barche, to go into the swamp to fetch firewood, decayed vegetation, and leaves for fertilizer (Fig. 11). The Poderi del Cerro, the farms closest to the padule, even shipped their wine through the swamp. The peasants could fish in these waters and canals to supplement their diets, though we shall see that a major theme over this period is the exclusion of the peasantry from the formerly public sources of food in favour of individual lessees. The waterways and the port of Altopascio were not the only links with distant urban markets. The Via Francigena (also called the Via Romana), a principal thoroughfare that reached Italy from southern France, passed through Lucca and right by Altopascio from which it continued on to Fucecchio and Siena, until it finally reached Rome. Roads also

The Estate of Altopascio

29

connected Altopascio to the important urban markets of Pescia, Borgo a Buggiano, and Fucecchio. Between these roads and the Via Romana, one could get almost anywhere. Internally the estate was interlaced by roads which ran through it from the east towards Fucecchio, intersecting with roads crossing north and south, and ending in a network of viottole, narrow dirt roads that ultimately connected the peasant farms to the administrative center in the village. Clearly this was not a closed society but one open to travel and commerce with such important centers as Pisa, Leghorn, Lucca, Pescia, and Florence. This communications network was, at one and the same time, a consequence and a lubricant of a highly commercialized zone of Tuscany. Widespread water connections also meant relatively cheaper transport costs. In 1766 a governmental inquiry into manufacturing and commerce revealed that merchandise shipped from Pescia to Leghorn paid as much in transport costs for the short land trip to Altopascio as for the long water route from Altopascio to Leghorn.8 There were, in addition, links to outside the Florentine state. Directly north over the Apennine range lay Modena and Parma, whose inhabitants often crossed the mountains to pasture their animals or to steal. Altopascio was, moreover, the boundary between the Florentine state and Lucca. As a frontier zone, it reaped the suffering of mutual hostilities, immigrants and exiles from the Lucchese, and served as a permanent attraction for contraband traffic. This then is a description of the village and the estate of Altopascio. Around 1650, the Deputies of the Royal Possessions described it as ' an important estate both for the income it yields and for the charities distributed there daily.' No wonder it was so described: of the twenty-four entries that year, 1650, in the compilation entitled 'Summary for His Royal Highness of all the Net Income from all the estates and other [sources] of the Department of the Royal Possessions,' 8

The six or seven miglia overland journey from Pescia to Altopascio cost roughly the same as the 39 miglia water route from Altopascio to Leghorn (Luigi Dal Pane,

Industria e commercio nel Granducato di Toscana nelVeta del Risorgimento. Vol. I: II

Settecento (Bologna, 1971), p. 134, hereafter cited as Industria).

30

Altopascio

Altopascio's net income of 3,559 scudi ranked third largest and accounted for 13 % of the total revenue received from all the grand duke's lands.9 Again in 1784, Altopascio's lands ranked third most valuable of the forty estates listed.10 By that date, however, the verdict upon these lands had changed somewhat. Luigi Bartolini, the Superintendent General of the Royal Possessions who handled the alienation of the estate, felt obliged to point out that 'the Royal Estate of Altopascio, although vast in size, is physically a confusing mixture of excellent, mediocre, and terrible lands, of difficult cultivation and scarce return.' 11 Heterogeneous lands, then, some of which were difficult to work and yielded little, lands which largely determined the fortunes of those who leased and worked them. And this society, almost to a member, depended for its sustenance and its professional identity upon the land. Unfortunately the earliest complete description of the professions of all the villagers dates from 1767. The source of the descriptions of that year, the stato d'anime prepared by the parish priest, is unsurpassed for its detail. It divides the parish population of 631 into 116 households.12 To sketch an occupational profile of the villagers, I have taken the profession of the head of each household and classified these within the four broad categories that emerge from the descriptions given by the priest. The first category, those who worked the land, accounted for 84 households and embraced 72% (453) of the village population. The second category, the artisans and shopkeepers, consisted of 21 households and 19% (120) of the population; the third category, the notables who sublet land or acted as merchants, 4 households and 4% (24) of total population; the fourth category, the administrative staff of the estate, formed another 4 households and 4% (24) of 9 10 11 12

ASF, RP, 3758, no. 19. Pietro Leopoldo d'Asburgo Lorena, Relazioni sul governo della Toscana, ed. Arnaldo Salvestrini (2 vols.; Florence, 1969 and 1970), I, 400-1. ASF, RP, 2555: Final Report of Luigi Bartolini, 31 Dec. 1783. APA, Stato d'anime, 1767. Because of 2 households and 21 persons (mostly under age 1) who were listed in the stato d'anime but not reflected in the final sum, this total differs from the 114 households and 610 persons given by the priest.

The Estate of Altopascio

31

total population. The remaining percentage came from miscellaneous solitaries and beggars who lived from alms. The distinction of agricultural versus artisan occupations breaks down once we observe that about a third of the artisans in this small community either leased land and farmed it out, or worked the land directly themselves and exercised a trade in addition and were described by the parish priest as a 'leaseholder and shoemaker' (livellaro e calzolaio) or 'leaseholder and smith' (livellaro e fabbro). The notables, too, depended on the land even though they did not farm it themselves, since they lived for the most part on the income from land leased from the grand duke and worked for them by peasants on short-term arrangements. Within the first occupational category, that of persons employed directly on the land, those who worked lands held by others ranked at the bottom of the social pyramid. At the very base stood the apprenticed farm laborers (garzoni) and day-workers (pigionali) who did not farm land with any tenurial regularity but rather on hire, as the need arose. When they were not attached to a specific household, these people rented houses and worked as needed for different people, hence their designation as pigionale deriving from the shortterm house rent, pigione, that they paid. The garzoni, which translates as 'apprentices' in English, were frequently bastards whom peasant families took from the foundling home to work their plot and supplement the family's labor. Most garzoni were therefore unmarried and attached to households with regular tenurial access to land. Of the fifteen men each designated as a 'garzone' in the Stato d'anime of 1767, only one was a head of a household. In all, roughly 7% of the village population lived under garzoni and pigionali households. The sharecroppers, mezzadri, who worked the lands of the grand duke numbered 12 households and constituted 18 % of the population of the parish of Altopascio, while another 16 % of the villagers lived in 19 households that worked land conceded to them a mezzo (sharecropping) or in affitto (on rent) by leaseholders who lived outside the village. These con-

32

Altopascio

ceding leaseholders were most often designated as 'gentlemen', i.e., they belonged to the class of rural notables. The category of agricultural workers also included leaseholders who farmed their own land. This group consisted of 41 households and 31 % of the population of the parish. All told, then, there were four different types of agricultural workers who together constituted about three quarters of the total population. The twenty-one shopkeeper and artisan heads of households practiced the following trades: five shoemakers (calzolaio), two blacksmiths (fabbro), two delicatessen dealers (pizzicagnolo), a general storekeeper (bottegaio di pannine, spiano de pane, pizzicagnolo ed altro), a vegetable gardener (ortolano), a carpenter (legnaiolo), a plate dealer (bottegaio di piatti), and two weavers - one of wool (tesse efilala land) and one of linen cloth (tesse la tela di lino). The actual number of individual artisans was higher because of the frequency of several members of the same family exercising the same trade as that of the head of the household. There were four resident households in the category of notables, conceding leaseholders, entitled 'gentlemen' and each described as 'living from his income.' These were the two Baldaccini households, the Lenzi, and the Vettori. By farming out lands leased from the grand duke, the notables expanded their influence in the community as rentiers. But leasing land was not the only item in their portfolio. The Lenzi family also had members in the medical profession (chirurgo), while Jacopo di Vettorio Vettori was described in 1767 as 'a silk trader, cattle merchant, and dealer in other things' (negoziante di seta, mercante di bestiami ed altro). Within the

Vettori household there resided Silvestro Lorenzini, manager

of the grocery store (ministro del negozio di pane came ed altro),

Stefano Bernardini, baker (fornaio), and Antonio di Giovanni Vetturini, a carter (vetturino e barrociante).

The administrative staff of the estate that year 1767 included the estate manager (fattore), two assistant managers (sotto fattore), a clerk (scrivano), and a housekeeper (serva).

There were in addition the security guard of the estate (guardia), the steward of the dispensary (dispensiere), the bell-

The Estate of Altopascio

33

ringer (campanara) and an assistant (assistente alia campanara),

the parish priest and his servant. Only a small minority of the women of Altopascio ever became heads of households. In 1767 only 9 (7.8%) of the 116 households were headed by women. Most of the rural women were described as * assisting in the tasks of the farm' and/or 'taking care of the house/ One woman made shoes, another sold fruit and vegetables, several women performed odd farm chores, and another seven were servants. The women of Altopascio also suckled children either from private families or from the foundling homes of Lucca and Pisa to bring in supplemental income. The parish registers prove that this job often reduced the amount of time a woman lived at home with her own family, in addition to retarding her natural fertility.13 The Stato d'anime of 1746, for example, contains a notation alongside the name of Maria Camilla, wife of the peasant Giuseppe Cecchi, that she was out of the parish serving as a wet nurse (fuori per balia).14 The range of tasks that fell to women is still not exhausted. The Stato d'anime of 1767 lists eight women who spun flax and another seven women who wove linen cloth, and one spinner and weaver of wool. 'Putting out' characterized a principal part of the textile industry in eighteenth-century Tuscany, so signs of its existence at Altopascio are not surprising, especially since a major linen cloth industry operated nearby in the town of Fucecchio. And since the 'putting-out system' was an important stage in the economic history of industrial development, its personnel are of interest. The women who spun flax could be celibate or married or widowed, but every single one came from the pigionale category of landless dayworkers at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The spinners were also located outside the village walls, whereas the women weavers all resided within the castello. But the weavers were all wives or daughters of artisans: one was the wife of a boatsman, another four came from a carpenter's family, one from a blacksmith's 13

14

For the reduced fertility among Tuscan wet nurses, see Carlo A. Corsini,' Ricerche di demografia storica nel territorio di Firenze,' Quaderni storici, 17 (1971), 396-7, and also the same author's forthcoming elaboration of this theme in ' La fecondite naturelle de la femme mariee. Le cas des nourrices.' APA, Stato d'anime, 1746,

34

Altopascio

Fig. 12. Just a short distance outside the walls there remains the Oratory of San Rocco erected by the religious confraternity of that name in 1645.

household, and the last was the wife of a grocer. There was only one male weaver in Altopascio in 1767. So the labor for this primitive textile industry came almost exclusively from the women of the parish, from families of the rural poor for spinning, and from the lower artisan class for weaving. There was no inclination toward this preindustrial activity shown either by the peasants or the notables. The peasant women preferred to work the land, the bourgeois women looked after the house. The very poor women spun flax because the supplementary income was valued and necessary for subsistence. Not only the inhabitants themselves, but even the agents of the grand duke joined together in describing Altopascio as a poor parish. In an undated letter, written probably around 1631, the people of Altopascio asked Grand Duke Ferdinando II for a special favor. The dreaded plague had penetrated the surrounding area on two occasions, they wrote, yet, by the mercy of God, Altopascio had been spared both times. To preserve the memory of this miraculous protection, the villagers agreed to erect a chapel in honor of God

The Estate of Altopascio

35

and San Rocco (Fig. 12). 'To accomplish that, they did their best to get together as much money as they could, which amounts to 200 scudi.' The estimated cost of the proposed chapel, however, exceeded 300 scudi. Their only recourse was to solicit the aid of the grand duke: Now because they are poor and not able to obtain [the money], they appear once again at the feet of Your Highness, and out of their innermost feelings for the Lord they entreat him to grant that the estate [of Altopascio] will also contribute towards this project so that something may be done in honor of God and for the beautification and the reputation of this place. Andrea Cioli, the estate manager in that year, offered the following comments on the above request in his letter to Grand Duke Ferdinando II: 'By way of information we cannot report otherwise to Your Highness than that, these being poor men, it appears to us that they have done a great deal to put together as much as the sum of 200 scudi. ' 15 Thirty years later, in 1662, the estate manager Matteo Berti opposed an attempt by the community of Montecarlo to levy a tax on the people of Altopascio, which he described as 'disproportionate to persons who do not have the cash value of four pennies, so to speak.'16 The surviving documents of the estate abound with statements to the same effect. One reason why Altopascio was a poor village was that its residents owned no real estate. In one form or another all the villagers were tenants of the grand duke. In this rural society the possession of land was the yardstick that measured one's position in society and divided rich from poor. This consideration probably explains the low social status of the village population. The macinato tax is a useful indicator. It was first levied in 1678 as a head tax with rates proportionate to the economic condition of the assessed person. The results of the tax stratification of the parish of Altopascio are presented in Table 1, the first category being the most affluent. The people of Altopascio were more heavily distributed in the lower orders of society. Only 6 % fell in the top third of 15 16

ASF, RP, 1308, no. 51. * Sproportionate a persone che non hanno il valsente di quattro soldi per cosi dire' (ASF, RP, 3770, 13 May 1662).

36

Altopascio Table 1. Distribution of population by the six classes of the macinato tax of 1679 Total population

Families Class First Second Third Fourth Fifth Sixth Total

Number

Percentage

Number

Percentage

6 1 11 19 59 25 121

5 1 9 16 49 21 101

31 4 56 157

5 1 9 26 45 15 101

277 91 616

ACM, 420: 'Libro di Tasse, Decreti e Ragioni di Camarlinghi per la Tassa e Reparto del Macinato.' society, 35 % in the middle third, and 60 % in the bottom third. In other terms, 15 % of the population ranked in the top half, 86 % in the bottom half. The families within the walls of the neighboring village of Montecarlo were distributed differently. That community of small landholders and artisans had relatively more families in the top third of society and correspondingly fewer families in the bottom third, while the middle category in Montecarlo was only slightly smaller.17 The tenants of the grand duke were relatively poorer than their neighbors. The influence of the grand duke over the lives of the villagers did not end with the monopoly of land ownership. Rather, the power of the grand duke cast a veil over the villagers' relationship with the outside world, because the historical and legal identity of the estate community was so clearly bound to the titular holder of the benefice. Legally, Altopascio existed virtually as an island within the greater community of Tuscan villages and towns, like a fief, 17

Of the 77 families listed within the castello of Montecarlo in the macinato tax of 1679, 31 % fell in the top third, 16% in the middle third, and 53% in the bottom third (ACM, 420).

The Estate of Altopascio

37

except that the grand duke did not wield judicial power over the residents. But the distinction between private and public jurisdiction was not very real as far as grand-ducal peasants were concerned. The ducal landlord was literally the source of law in the community and throughout the estate: the ordinances (handi) of the castello were issued and enforced by the estate management, the economic regulations on retail trade emanated from the landlord's power of control over his property and, most important, the estate management held the power to choose when to utilize and when to ignore the police and judicial resources of the state. Consequently the legal relationship of the community to the outside world was largely a partisan one. The estate management could and did rely on the Tribunal of Montecarlo, for example, to imprison debtors, and thus used the courts as a lever to apply pressure on the leaseholders. On the other hand, * privileges' exempted the community from the law of Montecarlo with respect to taxes and other matters. The inhabitants of the village did not enjoy the benefits of regular police protection, because the police were only allowed to operate within the jurisdiction of the estate when prior authorization had been secured from the representative of the grand duke. Likewise, a leaseholder might become embroiled in civil litigation in the courts of one of the neighboring communes, but since ownership of the leaseholder's property lay with the grand duke, the Department of the Royal Possessions could negate any claims to real property, and itself demanded first claim upon any personal property in the settlement of a suit against a debtor. Inasmuch as the landlord of the community was the ruler of the state, there was no clear distinction between the will of the former and the law of the latter. It follows that the residents had rather fractured links with the Comune of Montecarlo within whose physical jurisdiction it lay. Because it enjoyed certain tax privileges right up to 1770, the community of Altopascio did not enjoy the social services of a public doctor or school teacher, services that the other taxpayers of the commune did enjoy. This ambiguous relationship to the wider community gradually came to an end in the late eighteenth century when Grand Duke Pietro

38

Altopascio

Leopoldo abruptly finalized the transition by abolishing the privileges of Altopascio and fully integrating the village within the Comune of Montecarlo just prior to the alienation of the estate in 1784. Even this change, however, owed itself to the personal inclinations of the grand duke. The local society, in fact, existed as a 'community' because of its connection to the seigneur rather than through an autonomous set of common understandings. The landlord was the chief element of commonality, his legal immunities were the privileges that his subjects enjoyed, his economic policies were the chief concerns that stimulated the residents, his regulations were the laws under which they lived. It is not surprising, then, that aside from the identity of religious beliefs among the residents and their religious confraternities, the first communal ties forged among the villagers came as political reactions to the administration of the landlord and these political associations in turn helped to create communal ties. But it was not until the economic role of the landlord diminished in the period after the alienation of the estate in 1784 that this autonomous communal expression gained momentum and ultimately resulted in the incorporation of Altopascio as a separate commune in the nineteenth century. The interpersonal links to the outside world had always been more firmly established than the legal ones. Trade, for example, brought merchants from Leghorn and Lucca to buy agricultural produce to feed the urban population.18 Price fluctuations in these cities had an impact on local price levels.19 Trade, too, stimulated Altopascians to travel to such urban markets as Leghorn, Pescia, and Borgo a Buggiano to sell their produce. Butchers from the urban centers around the Valdinievole and Leghorn would also come to the village to purchase animals locally. A similar mechanism linking members of the community 18 19

For one of the many examples of the presence of Leghorn merchants at Altopascio, see ASF, RP, 3053, f. 208. The point is an important one, in view of the tendency to regard the port of Leghorn as an enclave without any real impact on the Tuscan economy. For evidence of this linkage between supply and demand conditions at Leghorn and the local market at Altopascio, see ASF, RP, 3100, f. 634; 3127, ff. 276ff.; 3121, ff. 161, 168; 3126, f. 316.

The Estate of Altopascio

39

to the values of the greater world operated through professional mobility. Some members of families at Altopascio became soldiers20 stationed in places like Leghorn or Portoferraio. The boatsmen traveled the whole network of waterways in Tuscany and the Lucchese, as their counterparts on land, the carters, covered the district by road. More evidence of professional mobility can be found in the provenance of the artisans and shopkeepers of Altopascio, some coming from as far away as Bologna, Parma, Milan, and Modena, and many more from surrounding towns such as Montecarlo, Castelfranco, Fucecchio, Santa Croce, Lucca, Buti, Bientina, Calcinaia, and Pescia.21 There were also scores of pilgrims that passed through Altopascio on their journey to and from Rome, as Montaigne did in the sixteenth century.22 And several of the parish priests of Altopascio themselves made trips to Rome.23 Other links lay in the wholesale movement of people, like the uprooted families who hopped from parish to parish, perpetually in movement, and the masses of rural poor regularly set in motion by crop failure and economic crisis. There were the times of celebration when crowds gathered to celebrate the feast of San Jacopo, or the more sober times such as that in 1637 when 'about two thousand persons' came to witness the Bishop of San Miniato say mass at the chapel of the Madonna della Quercia, famous that year because of a hermit who had begun to pray at the site of an ancient church buried amidst the swamp and the forest. The hermit's efforts had been rewarded with miracles and other blessings for those who worshipped there, and the reports caused 'many people' to converge there month after month.24 The Capu20 21

22

23 24

See ASF, RP, 1317,' 102,'and the various statid'anime of the parish archive which list family members as soldiers in Portoferraio and Leghorn. The provenance was derived from the series of rental accounts 'Debitori e Creditori di Pigioni di Case, e Botteghe, e Proventi della Commenda Magistrate' (ASF, RP, 6693-9). Michel De Montaigne, The Diary of Montaigne's Journey to Italy in 1580 and 1581, trans. E. J. Trechmann (London, 1929), p. 275: 'Altopascio, sixteen miles. I stayed there for an hour to give the horses a feed of oats. . . We met a number of peasants on the road who were picking the vine leaves, which they keep as fodder for their catde in the winter; others were collecting ferns for litter.' ASF, RP, 3083, ff. 362, 389; 3144, f. 79. ASF, RP, 1310, '43.'

40

Altopascio

chin friars who came to Altopascio to preach the Lenten sermons each year, like the Jesuits and other religious orders who conducted missions at Altopascio and the surrounding area, also furnished another connection to the ideas of the outside world. Finally one cannot underestimate the important cultural link accomplished through the institution of marriage, the selection of a partner from outside the parish, and the tendency for women to settle in the land of their husband. Of the 748 marriages performed in the parish of Altopascio between 1625 and 1784, 333 (44.5%) involved two members of the parish, whereas in 378 (50.5 %) the husband came from outside the parish, in 29 (3.9 %) a wife from outside the parish married a man from Altopascio, and in 8 (1.1 %) neither one came from Altopascio. In 55.5 % of the total marriages, then, one or both persons came from outside the parish, and the data indicate that the tendency to select a partner from outside the parish grew stronger from the seventeenth century through the eighteenth century.25 In conclusion, the economic and cultural integration of the community within the wider world was always far more advanced than the dominance of the seigneur and the politicallegal isolation would suggest, until, at the very end of the estate's existence, legal assimilation was hastened by the reforms of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo. All this discussion, however, should not mislead us into thinking that cultural integration proceeded at equal rates among all members of this society. Cultural integration was always more advanced among the leaseholders and artisans than among the peasants, because of differences in their relationships to the market place, the unequal levels of occupational skills, and the overall freedom of professional mobility. Owing to all these factors, the leaseholders, artisans, and notables lived in relatively less economic isolation and commanded a wider range of personal contacts than the peasants, who traveled off the estate more as messengers on errands for the landlord than as independent agents in pursuit of their own interests. 25

See below, Chapter 2, Table 8.

2 Population

When Professor E. J. Hobsbawm set forth his theory of the ' general crisis' of the seventeenth century, he reached almost at the outset for one of the most telling indices of a society's vitality, namely, the size of its population and its capacity to sustain population growth. He found that 'the scattered figures for European population suggest, at worst an actual decline, at best a level or slightly rising plateau between the mounting slopes of the population curve in the later sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.'1 Even within the small world of the village of Altopascio, population was a dynamic element that changed its course in response to both economic and natural forces, and in turn imposed alterations within the fabric of the community as a whole. Fortunately a good many records have survived that enable us to calculate the village population, along with its short-term fluctuations in size and long-term modifications of demographic behavior.2 The picture that emerges from all these data is consistent with the demographic trends outlined by Professor Hobsbawm as evidence for a general European crisis. At Altopascio, over the entire period from 1551 to 1784, the secular trend in absolute size of population divides into a long period of growth through 1647, then an abrupt decline, followed by more than a century of cyclical fluctuations around a static level. 1 2

E. J. Hobsbawm, 'The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,' in Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660, ed. Trevor Aston (New York, 1967), p. 7. Unless otherwise indicated, all calculations relative to population are based on the totals in the stati d'anime, on the aggregative method of counting births, marriages and deaths in the parish registers, or on the family reconstitution project.

41

42

Altopascio

In 1551 there were 222 inhabitants of the village grouped within 38 households (fuochi). Population grew rapidly in the second half of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth centuries. Two episcopal visits of 1564 and 1588 document a 60% growth in population during those years, from the 250 heads reported in the first visit to the 400 reported in the latter. More rapid growth ensued between 1588 and 1615 when episcopal records stated that the population of Altopascio had now reached 'over 600.'3 The growth curve flattened out between 1615 and 1678 when the total inhabitants of Altopascio numbered 629.4 Actually within those terminal points population continued to grow from 1615 to 1647 when it underwent a severe reduction during the three years of the plague/famine of 1648-50. The village recuperated much of its losses, perhaps as much as 60%, in the years following the plague, but the peak in the second half of the seventeenth century probably never equaled the peak in the first half of that century. Population decline reappeared between 1665 and 1684 when total numbers had now fallen to 602, but some growth was registered through 1697 in the new total of 630. The next surviving estimate in 1717 registers a 13 % loss relative to 1697 in the 546 inhabitants then recorded, but population grew at roughly 1 % per annum to reach 690 in 1741. After that date population persistently declined until it reached 595 in 1777. The last years of the estate witnessed a recovery of population to 658 in 1783, even though population still remained below the 1741 level. Two comments are in order. First of all, the population of the village increased dramatically after the estate passed to Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici in 1565. The rapid rate of growth after that date indicates a sizeable inflow of population through immigration. Secondly, the Medici administrators, and especially Senator Giovanbattista Capponi, deliberately 3

4

The 1551 population was taken from the census ordered by Duke Cosimo (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Magliabechiana, 11, i, 120, f. xxxxv). The Episcopal visits stored in the Archivio Vescovile di Lucca have been reproduced by Dal Canto, Altopascio Medicea, Appendix VII, pp. 200-6. The population in 1678 was derived from the macinato tax records for that year (ACM, 420).

Population

43

encouraged settlers.5 The demographic inflow was part of a process in the calculated development of Altopascio from a largely wooded and uncultivated region to a flourishing Medici estate. To appreciate the dimensions of population mobility at this stage of the estate's history, we might refer to the partial census of 1618 that applied only to the residents within the village walls.6 Only 46% of the 37 families listed were native to Altopascio. Another 46% were recent immigrants, while an additional 8 % were the sons of immigrant fathers. Of these immigrants, 76% came from the neighboring state of Lucca, 12% from Montecarlo, 6% each from the towns of Lamporecchio and Castelfranco. The estate manager commented in this same report that the immigrant families had been in Altopascio for 10, 15 and 20 years, proof that the strong attraction of immigrants endured right into the first decade of the seventeenth century. Later on, as population stabilized and declined, the pattern of population mobility changed to a net outflow of persons. There is indisputable evidence that the last three decades of the seventeenth century witnessed an exodus of population from Altopascio. On 20 November 1684, the Vicarioof Montecarlo wrote a letter to the Deputies of the Salt Tax to protest against an increase in that levy. Besides the official's legal argument about local privileges, the letter contains important information describing why the new tax burden was unbearable for these rural inhabitants. First because this commune and its people are so wretched, being situated either on the largely unproductive hillside or on the plain which yields little fruit because of thefloodsthat occur nearly every year and which is treacherous because of the infections of the air as in Alto Pascio. This leads entire families to profit from the legal exemptions in Pisan territory, or to abandon their homes and flee into the state of Lucca so as not to be constrained to die miserably from hunger, for even their houses are in deplorable poverty and 5

6

AC, iv, no. 20: 'Lettera del Senatore Giovanbattista Capponi scritta al Signore Usimbardi' which specifically described the efforts to attract colonists:' Dite a S.S. I. che s'e disegnato et dato tre possessione per 3 famiglie lucchese. . .et li fo carezzare et servire accio che gli altri piglino animo a venire. . . et questi huomini promettano condurne dell'altre famiglie.' ASF, RP, 2991, no 63: 'Nota di tutte le famiglie che di presente si trovano nel Castello dell'Altopascio.'

44

Altopascio

laden with mortgages, as one can readily see from the reports of the executors and the distraints they make daily.7 A critical historian would ordinarily be skeptical of a similar plea as an exaggerated statement worded to gain a reduction in taxes. Other sources indicate, however, that every element in the argument corresponded to the actual situation in Altopascio. In 1677, 1678 and 1680 poor harvests and flooding crippled the rural economy. And the account books that record rent payments owed to the Medici underline a novel development. In 1683 five leasehold properties were described as abandoned lands. Alongside the entry for one of those abandoned leases there is a note that directly echoes the statement of the Vicario of Montecarlo: 'The abovesaid lands have been given to Jacopo Gennai to work on a sharecropping basis this present year, 1684, because the lessees have withdrawn to the Pisan district and have abandoned the leasehold.'8 The problem grew worse as the century drew to a close. By 1718 the account books recorded no less than 25 abandoned livello farms.9 A parallel exodus occurred within the village walls. Towards 1683, along with a trend towards declining rents, the account books registered 6 houses that had not been rented and 12 former lessees. By 1692 there were 12 entries for unleased houses and rooms, while the number of former tenants had risen to 19. The last category leaped to 45 between 1692 and 1704, and the entries alongside their names clearly attribute the reason for their departure to their wretched poverty.10 More quantitative proof of the net outflow can be obtained by summing the births and deaths from 1698 to 1716 and comparing their difference to the change in population recorded in the Stato d'anime of 1697 and 1717. Between those dates population declined by 84 members, but only 38 had died in excess of births. In other words, a net 46 villagers had left Altopascio between those dates. 7 8 9 10

ACM, 126: 'Registro di lettere al Magistrato dei Nove.' ASF, RP, 6684, f. 145. ASF, RP, 6686. ASF, RP, 6697 (1683-92), 6698 (1692-1704), 6699 (1704-18).

Population

45

All the data lead to the same conclusion. Between 1680 and 1720 an outflow of persons from Altopascio accompanied a trend of declining population by a surplus of deaths over births. The tendency of migrations in the early and late seventeenth century was to reinforce trends in natural increase and decrease. Let us now examine the movement of marriages, births and deaths. The first condition of population growth is the formation of families through matrimony. The number of marriages reported between 1596 and 1784 corresponds in its development to that of total population. Marriages remained relatively numerous through 1655, then turned downwards steadily and persistently for the remainder of the time period. The annual average number of marriages between 1596 and 1655 was 5-8, as compared to 4-5 between 1656 and 1784. The decline in marriages did not always proceed at the same rhythm: the annual average was higher in the periods of 1655-89, 1720-39, and 1770-84, and lower in the periods 1690-1719 and 1740-69.11 In other words fewer people married as population ceased to grow and during cycles of population decline.12 Natural trends in population size that exclude the element of migration can be determined by plotting total births against deaths over the period. The image can be examined in the appended curve (Fig. 13) that divides into a time of relatively strong surplus of births over deaths through 1660-4. After that date a clear negative period is in evidence from 1665 to 11 12

Here is the average annual number of marriages in the following periods: 1655-89, 4-6; 1690-1719, 4-0; 1720-39, 4-7; 1740-69, 3-6; 1770-84, 5-2. The proportions of those who married may also have changed, as a crude marriage rate of 10 per thousand in 1615 declined to 5 and 7 per thousand between 1656 and 1784. But the rate calculated for 1615 is not reliable, depending as it does on the highly approximate figure of 600 (when the Episcopal documents said 'over 600') and dividing that by the annual average of marriages between 1615 and 1620. Another population approximation is in the Episcopal visit of 1624 in AVSM, Visite Pastorali, which lists 300 anime of communion age, and using the very crude approximation, which was employed in the Episcopal visits of the sixteenth century, of doubling the number of people of communion age to arrive at total population, then the resulting estimate of 600, when divided by the average annual number of marriages between 1625 and 1629, yields 9 per thousand, which is still higher than the more reliable rates derived for specific moments in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when population counts are provided by the stati a" anime.

Births Deaths 50

40

30 1

20

—TH ... 1

10 J

I

1

1

1

I

I

1

I

J

1

1

1625- 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 < 29 34 39 44 49 54 59 64 69 74 79 84 89 94 99 '

1

1

05 10 09 14

J

I

I

I

I

1

I

I

I

1

20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 24 29 34 39 44 49 54 59 64 69 74 79 84

Fig. 13. Births and deaths reported in the parish of Altopascio (Altopascians only): annual average of five-year periods, 1625-1784. The parish registers of Altopascio throughout the period, and especially in the early seventeenth century, also recorded some acts of those who lived outside the parish but who were serviced by the curate of Altopascio for convenience. To deal with this problem I used here only the acts of parishioners and of those for whom no other domicile was specified. The acts of parents who were specified as being domiciled outside the parish were counted separately and not included in our discussion of population trends, even though some of the people in this category may have been recent immigrants to Altopascio.

Population

47

1714: in the 10 five-year periods between those terminal dates, the average annual number of deaths exceeded births for 6 of those 10, as opposed to only 3 periods when births exceeded deaths, with the last period being roughly equal 11.8 births as against 11.2 deaths. The last seventy-year period after 1714 represents a long trough in the curves of both births and deaths. Although deaths exceeded births in only 6 of the 14 five-year annual averages, there was little difference between births and deaths in the final seventy years, hardly a surplus large enough to allow much real growth, except in the period 1770—9 when conditions improved. Natural population trends, then, divide into a long positive period through 1660-4, followed by a predominantly negative period through 1720, some recovery in 1720-40, with renewed decline between 1740 and 1770 and more growth after that last date. The tendency of this population to maintain a surplus of births over deaths in the seventeenth century right until 1660—4 seems relatively late in terms of a turning point generally established around the 1620s.13 Altopascio's data indicate a rapid rate of growth through 1634, with a slowdown between 1635 and 1644 because of a rise in mortality, then the demographic reversal during the plague/famine of 1648-50, followed by renewed increase through 1664. The relatively high rate of natural increase after 1650 was a response to the demographic reversal of 1648-50. Otherwise a clear slowdown was already underway around 1635, even though the famous plague of 1630 miraculously spared the village.14 Perhaps that same miracle made the next plague/famine conjuncture all the more devastating. From July through September 1648, 74 people were buried at Altopascio as compared to 27 buried in the entire preceding year. Mortality 13

14

For the city of Florence, see Julius Beloch, 'La popolazione d'ltalia nei secoli sedicesimo, diciasettimo e diciottesimo,' in Storia delVeconomia italiana. Saggi di storia economica, ed. Carlo Cipolla (Turin, 1959), i, 475; for Venice, Daniele Beltrami, Storia della popolazione di Venezia dalla fine del secolo XVI alia caduta della Repubblica (Padua, 1954), p. 59; for Pavia, Giuseppi Aleati. La popolazione di Pavia durante il dominio spagnolo (Milan, 1957), p. 21. Mario Seghieri, Montecarlo e la Madonna del Soccorso (Lucca, 1961).

48

Altopascio Table 2. Burials in the parish of Altopascio, 1648-50

July-September 1648 October-December 1648 January-March 1649 April-June 1649 July-September 1649

74 43 24 19 29

October-December 1649 January-March 1650 April-June 1650 July-September 1650 October-December 1650

29 15 23 14 12

abated in absolute numbers after September, but abnormally high mortality rates endured right through 1650. Not all of the persons buried were Altopascians. About 15% were outsiders, bringing the total number of inhabitants who died between January 1648 and 1650 to 256. The age distribution of those who died clearly points to higher death tolls among the very young and the elderly. The bias towards young children is even more evident if we realize that of the 115 who died between 0 and 9 years, 99 were age 5 or under. The age distribution of mortalities affected this society in specific ways. On the one hand the age composition would immediately shift towards an older population, followed by a relative shortage of young adults until a new wave of post-plague births passed through the age spectrum. Age distribution is especially important in an agricultural labor force that depends so heavily upon physical exertion. A second implication of the age distribution of plague mortalities derives from the relatively smaller number of deaths among the 20-39 age group, which meant that the recuperative possibilities of this society were very good. The average number of births between 1651 and 1661 was only 10% smaller than the average for 1635-47, a fact that explains an estimated recovery of 60 % of losses by the 1660-4 period. Even in the demographic sphere this society displayed resilience in readjusting to shock and disequilibrium. The parish priest of Altopascio unfortunately left behind no account of this demographic disaster. For a narrative of the plague/famine we must rely upon the comments of the

Population

49

Table 3. Age distribution of plague victims in Altopascio, 1648-50 Age group

Percentage

0-9

41

10-19 20-9 30-9 40-9 50-9 60-9 70 + Not specified Total

7

8 8 9 8 11 4 4 100

priest of the neighboring parish of Montecarlo. 15 Here is his entry for the year 1648: July. I remember how Montecarlo and its district enjoyed universal good health thanks to God's compassion, even though Lucca, Pescia, Pistoia and all the surrounding areas suffered incredible mortality, not only among the poor, but even among the rich, and more among the young than the elderly. The illness began at Leghorn, Pisa, Lucca, Pistoia, Prato, and Florence, and then spread out into the towns, villages and countryside in the greatest slaughter, killing entire families... As in the state of Lucca and even in several parts of the Florentine state, Pescia has been very badly afflicted, particularly the parishes of Castellare. The sickness consisted of malignant fevers which caused death within a few days. The sick started out showing few signs of being ill, soon fell into a delirium, and inexorably they died, without the sickness being understood by doctors even though in Florence, Lucca and elsewhere many corpses were examined. They found many worms in these corpses, which would not die in oil. . .or in lemon juice, but instead in wine, so it was deemed useful to allow the sick to have wine. The most famous doctors were the least successful and they, as well as the novice physicians, have made fortunes, particularly in 15

My thanks to Sergio Nelli for directing me to this narrative account in APM, Libro de Morti, 1648.

50

Altopascio

Florence, where doctors and druggists of every sort became rich. The sickness showed signs of being contagious because wherever it struck it did not end with one person, and very few persons were cured. Those who improved had very great difficulty recovering despite the aid of all possible recuperatives, as were experimented on many rich people; therefore the slaughter occurred, and continues to occur, among the rich as well as among the poor, and it continues throughout all of Italy, and particularly in poor Tuscany, from which it follows that God is disdainful of the sins of all, because it is believed that such great mortality is joined with a famine and penury never before experienced in our time, wheat being priced at 34 and 35 lire a sack, and minor grains at 8 and 9 lire a staio, and still they are not to be found. Meanwhile, due to such a long and strange famine, an infinite number of persons died of hunger in the cities and in the countryside, and if these deaths did not occur among the rich, one could say that the illness and such frequent deaths stem from the extreme suffering among entire families for so many months, but because even the families of rich people were seen suffering from the sickness, one must believe that everything arises from the mercy of God, that sweetly visits us for our own good, and because all men permit themselves to offend Him. The famine is not only in wheat and minor grains, but also in the meats, hides, eggs, and similar goods, there being a great penury of everything, and all things being sold at a steep price, as are the wines; because a great quantity was spoiled in every district, all wine has sold for a giulio a flask. In Bologna wheat has risen in price to two scudi for a staio of our measure. Such was the attempt of this country priest to render intelligible a terrible plague and famine. He was a shrewd cleric at that: sensitive to the fact that sickness had a different meaning for rich and for poor; analytic in distinguishing a generalized famine from a shortage of wheat; aware of the market prices for goods not only in his own district but in distant Bologna; cynical of doctors who made fortunes without being able to cure; and sensitive, after all was said and done, to his own inability to explain the disaster except by reference to God's wrath. He was probably relieved to note on 29 November that the number of deaths in that month had dropped to less than half of the October level. On 21 December 1648 the curate made his summation:

Population

51

Births Marriages Deaths

1625 35

Fig. 14. Annual births, marriages, and deaths reported in the parish of Altopascio (Altopascians only): 1625-1784. A good summary discussion of short-term demographic crises can be found in E. A. Wrigley, Population and History (New York, 1969), pp. 62-76.

Here we are (praise God) at the end of the year 1648, a most cruel year because of the misery of a very great famine throughout all Italy, but more terrifying still because of the recurrent illness and death in all of poor Tuscany; may it please heaven through its infinite mercy to look not at our sins, but to take pity on our afflictions.16 The priest's testimony proves that even though plague and famine were active simultaneously, famine conditions had preceded the plague; the food shortage was not the result of the plague removing labor from the fields. But the plague fatalities also reinforced the subsistence crisis: the reduced labor force further contributed to poor harvests again in 1649 and 1650, which were responsible for continued high mortality. The reference to a subsistence crisis in the period 1648-50 leads to an inquiry about other short-term negative fluctuations in population size and specifically those due to changes in the price of wheat. The curve of births, marriages, and 16

APM, Libro de Morti.

52

Altopascio Table 4. Short-term demographic crises, 1625-1784

(Altopascians only)

Year 1636 1639, 40, 41 1648, 49, 50 1659, 60 1663 1667, 68, 69 1677, 78, 79, 80 1683, 84 1693, 94 1697, 98, 99, 1700 1705, 06 1708, 09, 10, 11, 12 1715, 16 1720 1731, 32, 33, 34 1747 1752 1757, 58, 59 1763, 65 1773,75 1782, 83

Births

Deaths

26 89 85 60 28

35 115 256 95 32 112 146 66

72 80

37

31 69 35 53 32 16 61 14 14 48 36 36 32

72

92 56 92 35 34 89 17 23 71 62 54 52

Population change -9 -26 -171 -35 -4 -40 -66 -29 -41 -23 -21 -39 -3 -18 -28 -3 -9 -23 -26 -18 -20

deaths plotted annually (Fig. 14) reveals the incidents of short-run demographic crises, when the number of deaths rose beyond the number of births and marriages fell. In all, nearly one-third of the period 1625-1784 can be labeled as years of short-run crises that occurred in the following sequence: 13 in the 50 years between 1626 and 1675, 22 in the years 1676-1725, 13 in 1726-75, and 2 in the 9 years between 1776 and 1784. Table 4 summarizes these crises. A list of years between 1661 and 1761 in which the price of wheat reached or exceeded 5 lire a staio has survived in the State Archives of Florence.17 These were years of dearth, and a sum total 17

ASF, Segreteria di Gabinetto, 98, f. 115: 'Spoglio degl'Anni nei quali a Firenze e a Pisa il Grano e arrivato ed ha passato il prezzo di L. 5 lo staio nel corso d'anni 100-coiedal 1661 al 1761.'

Population

53

of 16 occasions was uncovered for the years 1663, 1671, 1678, 1679, 1680, 1693, 1696, 1708, 1709, 1710, 1712, 1715, 1747, 1749, 1751, and 1759. When we compare the years of food shortage in Florence with the years of high mortality in Altopascio, there are 12 identities, 2 non-identities, and 2 occasions on which the mortality in Altopascio was recorded in the calendar year after the year of the high price. In other words for approximately 75 % of the years of high prices there was a demographic crisis in Altopascio, and the coincidence may be as high as 88 % if prices are considered to affect the mortalities of the following year. The size of these demographic crises can also be crudely estimated for certain years. Excepting the plague/famine of 1648-50, the worst setbacks came in 1667-9,1677-80,1693-4, and 1708-12. The losses in those years ranged between 5 and 10% of estimated population, while those in the remainder of the eighteenth century were much smaller in magnitude, the very largest ones ranging between 3 and 5 %.18 Along with a decline in births and deaths, the data on subsistence crises again point to a deterioration between 1667 and the 1720s in the form of negative population changes, and if we except the plague/famine of 1648-50, the second half of the seventeenth century appears far worse than the first half. Not all the short-term fluctuations were caused solely or primarily by a failure of the means of subsistence because of an increase in the price of grain. Illness, to be sure, could raise its head in epidemic proportions. The parish priests of Altopascio were silent on these matters, but for certain years our history can draw on the supplementary information 18

The apparent relaxation of pressures on subsistence may reflect the introduction of maize production in 1710 and its steady expansion during the remaining years of the estate's history, see below, Chapter 4. The 1677-80 crisis accounted for a net population loss equal to 10-5% of the 1678 head count, and if we add on net 22 heads lost in 1677 to the population of 1678 to derive an estimated population in 1676, the percentage is then 10-1 %. The loss in 1683-4 equaled 4-8 % of the population of 1684, that of 1693-4 6-1 % of the population of 1692, that of 1708-12 equaled 7-1 % of the population of 1717. The losses of 1715-16 were 0-5% of the population of 1717, and equally small were the losses of 1747 and 1752; but those of 1757-9 equaled 3-6% of the population of 1756, and the losses after that date were similar: the toll of 1763 and 1765 being 4.2% of the population of 1762; 1773-5 losses equaled 3-3% of the population of 1771, and the numbers lost in 1782-3 amounted to 3-1 % of the population of 1781.

54

Altopascio

contained in the registers of Montecarlo. 19 The priest there reported a tertian fever epidemic in 1641. For 1659, another year of high mortality in Altopascio, the parish priest of Montecarlo reported that many were suffering from a ' high fever' illness which, he wrote in August 1659, was aggravated by the 'excessive heat' that was felt night and day and by the extreme drought, it * not having rained for three months, and there is no memory of such extreme heat, nor of such unaccustomed drought.' T h e death of Lieutenant Pellegrino di Bianco di Andrea Bianci in September 1659 provided the occasion for a longer discourse by the priest. He contracted the illness that is going around while at his country estate where he had spent over a month caring night and day for one of his daughters afflicted with the same thing. And in effect it is seen that whoever returned to the city after spending the past summer in the country has died of this current epidemic of high fevers (febbri ardenti). And this has been the general experience. It is believed that the illness developed the same way at Lucca, Pisa, Pistoia, and other nearby places, and at Florence and other cities. The reason is thought to be that rural areas were more exposed to the sun and the night air because the extreme drought and excessive heat forced people to stay outside more, or stay by an open window. Others say that just as the eclipse that occurred last May caused great damage to the harvest which had promised to be excellent but then ended up meager, so has it ruined physical constitutions, almost every house having become a hospital. Though it is true that a great number of sick have appeared in my parish, very few died. The philosophers and the mathematicians whom Our Most Serene Lord asked to study this matter have said that the sun has been three degrees hotter than usual, and that for the last 22 years it has not been so hot as in this year, as everyone knows from the continuous perspiring nignt and day. And in this last quarter of the August moon the illnesses have become more frequent, and so have the deaths; and all the Almanacs threaten that the entire autumn will be bad. Therefore we must deliver ourselves unto God's compassion and mercy. Add to these menaces the smallpox reported in 1646 of which 'only the young [died], but none of the adults.' From October 19

All the following quotations of the parish priest were taken from the APM, Libro de Morti, under the entry for the year in question.

Population

55

1645 to January 1646 the health of these rural people faced the test of * very great and unaccustomed rains and damaging floods everywhere such as cannot be recalled.' The letters of the Medici administrators furnish more reports of illness; for example, the epidemics of 1667, 1708 and 171520 produced more years of high mortality in Altopascio. Short-run fluctuations in population were thus not always pure subsistence crises. Many demographic checks were due to fatal illnesses, and very often the same climatic process that brought poor harvests and undernourished rural populations might bring illness that could thrive in conditions of abundant moisture or excessive dry heat. A glance back at the curve of annual births, marriages, and deaths is enough to convince us, however, that the change realized in the second half of the seventeenth century was more than the simple result of an episodic, short-term fluctuation in population. This rural society had transformed itself. The population of Altopascio fell considerably after its peak in the midseventeenth century and remained perhaps as much as 20% to 30 % smaller right through to 1784. Changes in the pattern of migration transformed Altopascio from a village that attracted large numbers of immigrants to a society that exported its members largely through the * push' exerted by adverse economic conditions at the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Equally important changes governed the schedule of births and deaths. Between 1625 and 1665, the mean number of births per annum was 32, the mean number of deaths 26. Births declined to 23 per annum in 1665-84 and were more than matched by the annual number 20

In August 1667, the central administration in Florence sent a carton of medicines to the fattore of Altopascio to help cure the peasants' illnesses (ASF, RP, 3059, f. 309). According to Harold Acton (The Last Medici (New York, 1958), p. 101), there was an influenza epidemic in the city of Florence in July-August 1667. The epidemic of 1708 is discussed in ASF, RP, 3102, ff., 173, 200, 220. The administrators made a connection between this epidemic and the severe drought that ruined harvests in that year and they were pleased to learn that the September rains brought relief to the countryside and also to those who had been ill (ibid., f. 220). In December 1715, there was another report of epidemic illness at Altopascio (ASF, RP, 3109, f. 408). An epizootic of influenza had broken out in the Lucchese in October, and Florentine troops were sent to the border to prevent commerce in Lucchese livestock and the introduction of the disease to Florentine territory (ibid., ff. 244, 258).

56

Altopascio

of 26 deaths. From 1685 to 1784 the means dropped to 16-9 births and 16-6 deaths. The society had undergone a transition from one that was rapidly growing in the early seventeenth century to a population that was just barely successful in replacing its yearly numbers lost in death. That change involved a significant alteration in the demographic behavior of these people - a process that clearly emerges under close analysis of the population by the method of family reconstitution. This method was applied to the baptismal, matrimonial, and death registers of the single parish of San Jacopo of Altopascio throughout the period from 1625 (the first year for which all three series of baptisms, marriages, and deaths were recorded) until 1784. During those years 748 marriages were performed at Altopascio. Of this group, 385 couples produced 1,555 children whose baptisms were recorded in the parish. Family reconstitution is a laborious method that involves recopying all the individual births, marriages, and deaths recorded in the parish registers on to individual cards, and then collating all the births and deaths for the married couples and their offspring. The population reconstituted is not a statistical sample taken randomly but rather a complete analysis of that group of families whose members married and reproduced in Altopascio. The relationship between those families and the others that escaped reconstitution is still problematic.21 At the present stage of our knowledge we must proceed with the hypothesis that the families who escaped reconstitution share the same demographic comportment as their less mobile counterparts. Mobility also means that the population reconstituted is not homogeneous, but divided into two groups - the completed cases of stable families who married, reproduced, and ended their marriage at Altopascio, and the incomplete cases of families that married at Altopascio, reproduced for a variable number of years, but either left the parish before the marriage ended or were 21

Carlo A. Corsini, 'Recherches de demographie historique menees au Departement de Mathematiques et de Statistiques de l'Universite de Florence,' Annales de Demographie Historique (1972), pp. 62-4.

Population

57

Table 5. Average size of families of Altopascio by duration of marriage

Number

Average

Average number of

f\ IIT*!} t"lOTl

Period

Women

(children)

(in years)

per family

1625-49 1650-99 1700-49 Total (1625-1749)

23 49 43 115

(147) (284) (224) (655)

21-83 21-04 24-65 22-55

6-39 5-80 5-21 5-70

native of another parish and their date of birth is unknown, or both. T h e distinction between the two groups is an important one because their different qualities caused them to influence the demographic history of the village in diverse ways. T h e number of stable families in Altopascio was relatively small: at the maximum they ranged between 18% and 25 % of the total number of new families formed and about a third of the families reconstituted, the remainder of the reconstituted families being incomplete cases. One factor in particular was responsible for the negative population trends. T h e number of families who married and had children in Altopascio declined dramatically after 1650 and again from 121 in 1650-99 to 99 in 1700-49. T h e data from the family reconstitution fully support the conclusions already reached from the aggregative analysis of all births and deaths recorded. In other words, the number of families reconstituted declined and then stabilized just as the aggregate trends, the eighteenth-century level being roughly 20 % lower than the level of 1650-99. Other factors curbed the rate of growth among the reduced number of families. T h e most striking long-run modification was a trend towards later age at marriage. T h e age of the brides has been computed in 434 cases.22 Before 1700, the women of Alto22

The age of the groom at marriage was not generated by the computer analysis.

58

Altopascio

pascio married at the average age of 21 -50. The average age leaped forward to 24-17 between 1700 and 1749, until it finally reached 26-12 after 1750. All things being equal, one might expect a reduction in the average family size because of the later formation of the marriage and the reduction of the fertile period. Ultimate family size in past societies not efficiently controlling births was a function of both the woman's fertility and the duration of the marriage. The women of Altopascio between 1625 and 1784 generally had one child for every two and a half years of married life. The final size of the family was controlled by the length of the union.23 The group of completed cases demonstrates a persistent reduction in the average number of children per family over the entire period. There was a significant decline in family size by the first half of the eighteenth century especially considering the longer duration of the unions. This reduction was undoubtedly caused by the later age at marriage. Together with a fewer number of families, the decline in the average number of children per stable family is enough to explain the sharp fall in population size after 1650. Still other factors intervened, however, to insure that once a new level of population was reached at the end of the seventeenth century, a new phase of stabilization would replace a declining trend. The interval between births was among those variables. Changes in the timing of births somewhat mitigated the effect 23

Years of marriage 0-4 5-9

10-14 15-19 20-4 25 plus

Table 1 Average age at last birth

Average number of children

29-00 30-00 31-37 36-12 38-11 38-38

1-50 3-07 4-35 5-61 7-00 6-77

Population

59

Table 6. Average interval between births (in months): mothers and daughters Time period Before 1700 1700-49 1625-1784

Interval Marriage - first birth Average of all births Marriage - first births Average of all births Marriage - first births Average of all births

Mothers

Daughters

23-3 30-0 18-8 29-3 20-7 29-1

22-0 29-1 19-0 28-4 20-2 28-5

of the later age at marriage by reducing the interval especially among the earlier births. As the age of marriage increased after 1700 the families between 1700 and 1749 had their first child much sooner and their second and third children at shorter intervals than in the seventeenth century. After 1750 the range of the shorter intervals now extended as far as the sixth and seventh births, though the overall effect of subsequent births in the eighteenth century produced only a slightly smaller interval for total births. T o understand this better a study of generations has been made by comparing the mothers and daughters of Altopascio. Differences between mothers and daughters were insignificant in comparison to changes over time. T h e passage from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century produced a reduction in the interval between marriage and the first birth, while the average total interval remained roughly one month shorter for all births. T h e data indicate a social adjustment to the increase in age at marriage. Eighteenth-century families that married later inclined to have their first child sooner after marriage. 24 If 24

The shorter interval between marriage and the first birth may also have been biologically related to the later age of marriage of eighteenth-century women, given that the mean age of menstruation, from the little we know of it, was much older in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that the trend has been towards an earlier puberty over time. When we consider that the women of Altopascio between 1625 and 1649 married at the tender average age of 18-56, and that girls in Norway in 1850 began to menstruate at 17*1 years of age, it is possible that irregular ovulation among the young brides of Altopascio produced the longer interval between marriage and the first birth, as compared to subse-

60

Altopascio

the emphasis upon option is correct, did seventeenth-century families deliberately delay the timing of their first child? If so, did that same interference affect the intervals between subsequent births? Whatever the answers to those difficult questions, the interval between marriage and the early births seems to have been an important variable that underwent modification in the demographic evolution of Altopascio. The shift was in the direction of the behavior of families of the town of Fiesole outside the city of Florence. Professor Carlo Corsini and his associates, who studied those families between 1650 and 1700, have described as more * modern' the shorter interval between marriage and the first birth relative to the longer interval between subsequent births.25 Trends in Altopascio developed perhaps with a lag in timing in comparison with that district on the edge of the large urban agglomerate - the city of Florence. The interval between births was still only one variable that changed. Increases in the average life of married women and in their age at the birth of their last child tended to mitigate the effect of later age at marriage to reduce the average number of children per family. The average age at death of women who married between 1650 and 1699 was five years less than those who married between 1700 and 1749. This tendency of married women to live longer was reflected in later disruption of conjugal units and consequently a prolongation of the average fertile period among all the families of Altopascio, both incomplete and completed cases. Drawing on all the indices discussed, we are now in a position to analyze the forces behind the complex demographic history of Altopascio. In the early part of the seventeenth century the high growth rate was produced by a population largely formed by recent arrivals who married at an early age. The age composition of the inhabitants of 1618 was also very 25

quent generations who married later. The statistic from Norway and trends in the mean age of puberty were taken from Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (New York, 1965), p. 83. Between 1630 and 1680, the women of Fiesole married at an average age of 23-2, had their first child after an average interval of 13*9 months, and their second child at an average interval of 27-0 months after the first-born. Carlo A. Corsini, M. Livi Bacci, A. Santini, 'Spoglio dei registri parrocchiali e ricostruzione delle famiglie in Italia. Problemi delle ricerche di demografia storica,' in C. A. Corsini et al., Saggi di demografia storica (Florence, 1969), p. 13.

Population

61

Table 7. Average family size of all reconstituted families of Altopascio (n = 385)

Average Average age at age at marriage last birth

Period 1625-49 1650-99 1700-49 1750-84

(n = 94) (n= 121) (n=99) (w=7l)

18-56 20-41 21-87 25-51

29-06 31-15 34-31 34-27

Average fertile Average period number of in years children 10-50 10-74 12-44 8-76

3-85 4-17 4-38 3-59

young, 19-9 as compared to the 23-8 average age in 1684. 26 In their exuberance the young settlers of Altopascio in 1618 produced a population of 38-7% between the ages of 0 and 9, as compared to the more modest 22-5% in that category in 1684. T h e 1618 population eventually sent a wave through the society in the form of a sudden arrival at marriage age of an unprecedented number of young adults. This large generation forced down the age at marriage and kept the number of matrimonies high, two factors that explain the sustained population growth through 1660. T h e years between 1665 and 1685, and again between 1697 26

Age composition of the inhabitants of Altopascio, taken from the census of 1618 and the Stato d'anime of 1684: Table 2 Percentage of total population Age group

1618

1684

0-9 10-19 20-9 30-9 40-9 50-9 60-9 70 plus Total Average age of total group

38-7 12-3 19-6 17-2

22-5 25-0 17-7 12-7 11-7

4-9 5-5 1-8 0

100-0 19-9

7-0 3-0 0-7

100-3 23-8

62

Altopascio

and 1717, witnessed on the contrary a decline in population both in terms of the excess of deaths over births and in the form of an outflow of population that eventually produced abandoned lands and empty houses. Economic conditions deteriorated during this same period. The depression of incomes that paralleled the fall in the price of wheat and pauperized those who worked the land, actively discouraged any renewed population growth. The fall in population along with the economic malaise restricted the opportunities for marriage in Altopascio, a restriction that produced fewer marriages and a later age at marriage. The later age at marriage choked down population growth in two ways. First of all it reduced the average number of children produced by the stable families of Altopascio. At the same time it counterbalanced the tendency of married women to live longer and produce their last child at a later average age. The new and later ages at marriage thereby stabilized population by producing an average family size for all the families of Altopascio that remained relatively constant over a century and a half, allowing the population slowly to recoup its numbers lost in 1697-1720 without launching any new period of growth. In other words the trend had now shifted from accelerated growth to stabilization without producing any significant decline in the average number of children for all the families of Altopascio. There were limits to its possibilities for adjustment. After 1750 the upper limit on age at the birth of the last child had been reached, and the new increase in age at marriage reduced the average fertile period and the average number of children per family from 4-38 to 3-59. This last reduction explains the downward march of the population of Altopascio in the second half of the eighteenth century. In conclusion, the youthful settlement of Altopascio that passed to maturity in the course of the eighteenth century, and then experienced a mortality schedule that favored a longer fertile period, would have disastrously exceeded the means of subsistence had marriage age not increased. The family reconstitution programs also indicate how the decision to marry later was enforced. As the population of

Population

63

Table 8. Respective marriage ages of women remaining versus those exiting Marry and remain Time 1625-49 1650-99 1700-49 1750-84 Total

Marry and leave

Total marriages

No.

Marriage age

No.

Marriage age

137 241 216 154 748

94 121 99 71 385

18-56 20-41 21-87 25-51 21-75

43 120 117 83 363

21-00 22-49 24-21 26-90 24-16

Altopascio stopped growing, declined, and then stabilized, there was a corresponding change in the marriage patterns. T h e family reconstitution programs give the number of women who married at Altopascio but had no children there, i.e., for the most part women who had left the village after marriage to reside probably in the parish of their husbands. T h e implications of the marriage pattern upon age at marriage emerge from Table 8. T h e women of Altopascio who married and left changed from a minority of cases in the first period to near parity in the second half of the seventeenth century to a strong majority position in the eighteenth century. T h e results also indicate that even though the group who married and stayed within the village tended to marry later, that same group nonetheless married substantially earlier than those who married and settled outside the parish. As population declined there was less opportunity to find suitable husbands within the village, thereby forcing up age at marriage and dictating more frequent selection of partners from outside the parish. T h e substantially later age at marriage for that second group presumably reflects the longer time required to locate a partner and to arrange a mutually satisfactory union with a family not of the village. T h e changing marriage pattern, then, was the mechanism that enforced the later age of marriage as economic crisis and

64

Altopascio

declining absolute numbers restricted opportunities within the village. Interestingly enough, as the age at marriage increased to a level around that of the women of Fiesole, the women of Altopascio likewise followed in having their first child sooner, a reflex action that helped to soften the human adjustment to the later age at marriage. That human reaction was not always morally sanctioned. The parish registers enable us to gauge the number of illegitimate births and abandoned children. Over the entire period between 1625 and 1784 illegitimate births equaled only 1-1% of the total baptismal acts registered. The distribution is nevertheless instructive. After 1650 the actual number of illegitimate and abandoned children doubled as a proportion of total births registered. The conclusion appears warranted that the declining population and the number of postponed marriages generated new pressures evident in the doubling of the rate of illegitimacy. Perhaps this was the empirical basis for the edicts of Cosimo III in 1691 ordering peasants to desist from allowing their children to bring their girl friends into the house for sexual purposes. 27 Grand Duke Cosimo's fears were later substantiated by the number of pre-marital conceptions among married couples. Before 1700 only 1 in 20 of the married women of Altopascio gave birth to their first child within 8 months of marriage. By the first half of the eighteenth century the proportion rose to 1 in 9, and after 1750 to 1 out of every 6-7 women. The data also indicate that the pressure for pre-marital conception was greater among those who married later. Only 8*9% of those who married under 25 had conceived before marriage, as opposed to 13-7% of those who married over age 25. This last correlation adds strength to the hypothesis that as marriage age increased so did the tendency towards illegitimate and pre-marital conceptions. By the end of the eighteenth century 15-5% of the women had conceived before marriage, a change of manners that poses the question of internalized religious values in rather different terms. More and more couples in the eighteenth century turned to 27

ASF, RP, 3085, 21 July 1691, f. 29. According to Acton (The Last Medici, p. 184), laws against lovers were also promulgated in Florence in October 1691.

Population

65

personal rather than religious convictions about sex before marriage, as a confluence of secular factors delayed their age at marriage. Among those factors there looms especially large an economic system that underwent a severe depression of wages, prices, and income. To pursue our investigation into the fortunes of Altopascio and its people, we must now venture into the complicated world of its economy.

3 The economic organization

A network of economic relations linked the glorious house of the Medici princes to the humble peasants who worked their lands, the leaseholders who rented them, and the artisans and shopkeepers who serviced both the estate and the village population. The economic changes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not affect the landowner, his tenants, and his laborers in precisely the same way. At times the interests of these different groups placed them in stark opposition. This and the two subsequent chapters will dissect the village economy, study its movement, and assess the welfare of its constituent parts. But the economic organization of the Medici lands will first be described before the performance of the economy over roughly two centuries is assessed. Our description might well begin by discussing the building blocks of any economic system - the factors of production: land, labor and capital. It will be recalled that the estate sprawled over two different types of soil and terrain. The area of low hills or knolls, which was known as 'cerbaia' and characterized by tight yellow clay mixed with gravelly pebbles, contrasted with the expanse of low, flat land that lay in the Plain, rich in alluvial deposits but always threatened by the proximity of the rivers and the poor drainage that could ruin the crops. Whenever the water level in the Fucecchio lake or the Arno river changed the slope of the waters flowing off the Plain, the backlog impeded drainage, the crops suffered, and the land rendered little. The Medici dealt with this problem through the technique of colmate, i.e., raising the elevation of this low-lying land by 66

The economic organization

'A

67

•

&*

Fig. 15. The River Ralla, or Pescia di Collodi, low and tranquil in this late July photograph. As late as the 1950s this very destructive river during high-water seasons necessitated the construction of high embankments to hold back the waters.

building an earthen dam around the fields to be raised and then flooding the whole area by introducing waters from the river through a canal. The deposits from the river would collect in the basin until the desired elevation was reached, when the river would be detoured to the next area to be raised.1 The process was especially beneficial in the short run for the reason that it improved the drainage of the area reclaimed while simultaneously introducing a layer of rich topsoil. This technique was costly, however, and not always successful over the long term. First of all, the river must originate in the hills where it could accumulate rich deposits; otherwise it might introduce sand instead of fertile soil. Secondly the colmate sometimes backfired because by raising the elevation of the area reclaimed, the technique simultaneously lowered the slope of the farms farther upstream, thereby inhibiting the drainage of those lands and rendering them 1

Some detailed discussion of the colmate can be found in Imberciadori, Campagna toscana, who reproduces in Appendix XI, pp. 367-9, a document pertaining to the Colmate del Cerro of the estate of Altopascio.

68

Altopascio

•, Fig. 16. Argine of this type were used in the early modern period to contain rivers and encircle areas destined to be reclaimed through colmate. The river and the embankment were photographed from the Ponte a Pini.

sterile.2 That lesson took nearly a century for the Medici administrators to learn, and the implications deserve elaboration with regard to productivity. For the moment, it is sufficient to summarize the impact of the land on the subsequent history of the estate. The convenient supply of rivers furnished the possibility of reclaiming uncultivated land, but the rivers were a mixed blessing. With frequency, unpredictability and savagery, the rainy seasons would swell the rivers, flood the farms, and overnight leave the relentless efforts of the peasant family buried beneath a layer of water (Figs. 15-16). The important point is nevertheless that the large area of wood and swampland meant that the supply of land over this period was relatively elastic - a key consideration in the expansion of the estate but a condition that hinged on the ability to provide gargantuan labor inputs to colonize this land. The labor requisite for the project became relatively more 2

For other examples where colmate backfired in this way, see M. Biffi Tolomei,

Saggio d'agricoltura pratica toscana e specialmente del contado fiorentino (Florence,

1804), pp. 74 ff.

The economic organization

69

Fig. 17. View of the Church of le Spianate from a farm in the Belvedere district.

abundant as the sixteenth century drew to a close. The timing of the Medici acquisition coincided with the peak in a long period of population growth that had increased the demand for land and attracted large numbers of immigrants to the cultivation of these formerly marginal lands that had been neglected during the demographic reversal of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The landlord did not engage labor on a wage basis but guaranteed its supply through two different types of tenurial relations: direct peasant farming for a share of the crop and long-term leasing of land not directly farmed for the landlord. Peasants worked the lands of the Medici according to the terms embodied in the mezzadria contract by which lord and peasant shared the harvest and the returns from the livestock. In its ideal form the arrangement also provided housing for the peasant on the landlord's farm (Figs. 17-18). In fact housing was not provided by the landlord everywhere in Tuscany or even throughout the same estate. 'Housing' also included a wide variety of structures from solid masonry houses to miserable straw huts. The provision of housing definitely served the landlord's interests. By having a peasant

70

Altopascio

Fig. 18. The peasant farm with its fields bordered by grapevines.

resident upon the farm the landlord was assured of greater labor inputs and less time lost in traveling to and fro. Resident peasants also performed the necessary function of supervising the animals and the farm, protecting both against thieves, poachers, or sudden natural disasters. The documents of the Medici administration consistently stress the fact that a farm with a resident peasant family yielded a higher return than a farm on which peasants simply worked by day. The specific terms of the mezzadria contract varied according to the particular region of Tuscany. Where the land was especially fertile, or in other localities where housing was provided, the landlord could require the peasant to supply all of the seed.3 At Altopascio the Medici gave one-half of the seed except on reclaimed land, where the peasant was obliged to furnish full seed for the first year of cultivation.4 And then 3

4

The recommendations of a visitor to the lands of the commenda, in AC, xni, no. 48, proposed that on the estate of Fucecchio the peasants who formerly advanced only one-half the seed for lack of housing could be forced to provide full seed now that housing had been furnished. The tendency of landlords to exact full seed from peasants on fertile land emerges from Biffi Tolomei's discussion of the mezzadria and also from documents pertaining to the colmate of Altopascio cited below in n. 4. ASF, RP, 3121, ff. 19, 95; 3122, f. 92.

The economic organization

71

the landlord only gave half the seed for certain crops: wheat, vetched wheat, rye, oats, beans, and barley, but not millet, sorghum, flax, or panicum - crops for which the peasants provided all the seed. The peasants also maintained the mulberry trees used to nourish silkworms. Every three years the value of the leaves was appraised and the sum debited to the peasant, who was expected to make up the difference at the end of the three years if the trees had suffered damage. The same technique applied to the livestock, which the landlord purchased and then assigned to the peasants for raising. Here, too, the peasant was debited for the appraised value of the animals, their manure, and the carts. Thereafter lord and peasant divided the profits and losses from the rearing and sale of livestock. Above and beyond the labor provided intending the land and the animals, the peasants also pledged to perform certain labor services, like carting, or planting vines, that earned a fixed remuneration. There were other vantaggi (dues) that the peasants paid as a rent on the chicken house, the pigsty, and the pigeon loft connected to their houses. All these obligations together constituted the 'compacts' of the peasant's contractual relationship to the landlord, obligations that for Altopascio have been reconstructed from the account books, because in this region the terms of the mezzadria were not recorded in formal, written contracts.5 In Tuscany generally the peasants' duties were determined by a body of customary practice. Variations in the specific terms of the contract should not obscure the fundamental anatomy of this market relationship in which the landlord exchanged his principal outlay in the form of land for the labor supplied by the peasant family. Besides the labor pledged in the terms of the contract, the actual operation of the mezzadria generated even more labor. 5

Some written compacts have been published by Elio Conti (La formazione delta struttura agraria moderna nel contado fiorentino (vols. i and m part 2A; Rome, 1965),

i, Appendix, pp. 358-9). The terms of the compacts studied by Conti were more burdensome in the seventeenth century than at any other time, but the mezzadri of the seventeenth century had relatively more autonomy in the sphere of agricultural production than they had in subsequent centuries, which indicates to me that in the Florentine contado, just as at Altopascio, the landlord's control over the peasants and over work discipline tended to augment in the early modern period.

72

Altopascio

Ideally the peasant worked a holding and earned a share of the crop adequate to feed his family. The division of the harvest, however, rarely left the cultivators with enough to subsist, thereby forcing them to borrow from their employer. The consequence was a tie of indebtedness between peasant and landlord. Economically the landlord retaliated by extracting as much labor as possible to reduce the size of bad debts, labor that was paid on a wage basis and directed towards large reclamation projects on which indebted peasants were compelled to work. The history of peasant indebtedness and its crucial role in the social and economic transformations of the early modern period will be discussed at much greater length. The point here is to describe an economic system that assured an abundant source of labor from within the estate at a minimal cost. Other tenurial arrangements guaranteed still more labor for the development of the estate and the accumulation of capital in the form of colonized and reclaimed land. The most important of these was the leasehold contract. The livello was a long-term agreement in which the leaseholder paid an initial entry fee (laudemio) and a regular annual rent thereafter. The duration of the leaseholds granted at Altopascio varied over time as a function of the demand for land and the availability of labor. In the sixteenth century there is evidence of leaseholds awarded in perpetuity, while in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the leases were granted for the term of four lives. After c. 1630 the leases fell to three lives in duration, except in specific periods when downward pressure on rents apparently prompted a return to the longer term of four lives. The * lives' were reckoned along the male line of the initial leaseholder. Women were excluded from inheriting livelli except in unusual cases where the grand duke condescended to allow a female petitioner to accede to the land transmitted by her male relations.6 The leasehold contract allowed a certain degree of flexibility to the landlord's needs while insuring a stable rental income over the long term. Changes in the duration of the lease have already been noted as a mechanism adjusting their 6

ASF, RP, 772.

The economic organization

73

attractiveness to conditions in the market for land and labor. The type of rent payment could also be modified. At Altopascio the overwhelming majority of the leases specified rent payments in kind: mostly in rye, with some combinations of wheat, eggs, chickens, or wax from religious corporations. Still other contracts charged a fixed money rent. In any given year the leaseholder could also pay a fixed monetary equivalent for the portions of rent owed in kind. Finally, towards the end of the eighteenth century, all rent payments at Altopascio were converted to money payments. In short the landlord could adjust the terms of the contract according to the specific situation. Stability of rents derived from the long duration of the lease and the method of payments in kind. At any given point in time the society of leaseholders included tenants at different junctures in the ultimate duration of their particular lease. Rents in kind were determined as a fixed quantity of produce per acre of land leased - 2 staia of rye for every coltra of land. Whenever a piece of land became available the policy of the estate management was to lease the property for the same rent per unit of land as was already being charged the large body of leaseholders. The Medici administrators argued that if they lowered the rent on a piece of land newly granted on lease, they would have to adjust the rents of all active leaseholders.7 This inflexibility favored the Medici in three ways. First of all, the long agricultural depression of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries created pressures for a lower rent in the marketplace. So the estate's administrative policy of charging a fixed rent protected the Medici during these centuries because it arbitrarily kept rents higher for a longer period of time, when a free play of market forces would otherwise have caused rents to fall farther and sooner. Second, the amount of the fixed rent had been determined in the late sixteenth century, when the growing demand for land and the high price of agricultural commodities enabled the Medici to charge a stiff rent. In other words, the leaseholds preserved rents at relatively high levels. And third, the fact that most rents were in kind insured more stability. The depression of 7

ASF, RP, 3767, Letter of N. Gaetano Torelli, 3 Aug. 1718.

74

Altopascio

grain prices certainly reduced the market value of rents in kind, and the long duration of the lease prohibited the Medici from making any short-run conversion to money payments that would have evoked the protest of the leaseholders during the agricultural depression. On the other hand, the real value of the rent probably registered little change, since all commodity prices were depressed during this period and the lower market value of rents in kind probably rendered comparable purchasing power. All these features explain the attractiveness of the livelli as a system of guaranteed income. In addition to the rental income, the leases provided the landlord with an abundant supply of labor. In the second half of the sixteenth century, when the region was still underdeveloped and covered with large areas of wood and swampland, the Medici administrators used the livello to attract colonists.8 The uncultivated land was given out for four generations with the condition that the lessee reduce the plot to cultivation. Whether specified or not, colonists and cultivation meant an equal expansion of housing. Since the leaseholders were tenants, all improvements to the property accrued to the landowner by law. Even after the initial colonization had ceased, the livello could be used to require a tenant to build a house or to make improvements on an already existing one. The livello thus provided labor for capital improvements of the lands of the estate without any cost to the landlord. The process of capital accumulation was further reinforced by the large debts generated by the livello through unpaid rents; the landlord compelled the leaseholders, like the peasants, to pay off their debts by laboring on different projects ordered by the estate management.9 The economic system thus relied upon the labor force to expand its stock of capital goods used in agricultural production. For the landlord there was a high initial investment in financial capital in laying the infrastructure of the estate. Animals had to be purchased, houses constructed, and indispensable agricultural implements like wine barrels provided. Once the newly acquired holding had been placed on 8 9

See Chapter 2, n. 5. ASF, RP, 3060, f. 1,147.

The economic organization

75

a working basis, the rate of net financial investment fell close to zero, that is, to replacement and maintenance. Livestock acquisitions and maintenance were financed largely from receipts from the livestock account. Implements were durable and secondary to the labor input in the agricultural process. The plow used in this region produced only a shallow upheaval of the soil. The real soil preparation came from the vangatura, when the peasant took his shovel and penetrated the earth by twelve to sixteen inches and overturned the earth with his muscles.10 Housing, stables and the like, could be a costly initial investment, but in the overall management and expansion of the estate, the greatest factor input was the labor furnished by the peasants. Whenever the landlord provided the supplies for stables and huts, the peasants provided the labor, free of cost, to build them.11 The only possible exception to the model of low net investment lies in the large-scale reclamation projects that cover the history of the estate. These are problematic to assess as capital investment. These projects resemble to a large extent the high initial outlay of capital, because many of the reclamation projects were executed upon newly acquired but infertile lands. Where the technique was used to replenish older plots, the investment again takes the form of renewing the infrastructure of unproductive soils, a long-run replacement cost. Almost all the waterworks were conceived defensively, as operations to maintain land rendered unproductive by soil depletion, lack of drainage, or repeated flooding. The administrators certainly realized that the investment would increase the yields of the land. The precise circumstances out of which the colmate emerged made those decisions in almost every case a necessary defensive measure 10

11

Carlo Pazzagli has a good and accessible discussion of this key agricultural operation in his book, Uagricoltura toscana nella prima meta delU800. Tecniche di produzione e rapporti mezzadrili (Florence, 1973), pp. 165-78. AC, iv, 'Lettera di Giovanbattista Capponi al Cardinale de' Medici in Roma, Firenze 24-1V-1581.' In this letter Capponi justified his plan to build a large new stable on the grounds that it would actually cost very little: the lumber had already been cut from the forest. And in the housing restorations that were underway at this same time, the estate only furnished bricks, mortar, and hired the bricklayers; all the unskilled labor was provided free of charge by the peasants, who also hauled the material at no cost to the estate.

76

Altopascio

to preserve lands that were threatened with declining productivity.12 Even where reclamation projects were executed on the estate, the normal productive process was not altered. The agricultural system remained labor intensive, a feature that applied to the reclamation projects themselves. The beams and the earth to make the dams were readily available to the estate. The crucial requirement was the labor to build dams, dig new trenches, move rivers, and after the project was completed, to work the reclaimed land into a condition suitable for cultivation. The labor-intensive element stands out in marked contrast to our modern capital-intensive methods of performing the same operations. A change in the disposition of labor also made the reclamation projects less costly and therefore economically advantageous to undertake. The large accumulation of peasant and leaseholder debt in the seventeenth century meant a reduction in the costs of the undertaking that could be financed out of bad debt. In other words, the colmate made productive use of excess labor generated by debt.13 The use of the land, the organization of labor, and the production and accumulation of fixed capital by laborintensive methods, all situate the economy of the estate and the mezzadria system in a hybrid mode of production, one with marked advances of a capitalistic nature over the seigneurial regime, but an organization which inherited a legacy that prevented those capitalist elements from blossoming into the dominant economic system. This intermediary economic 12

13

The report of Giuseppe Salvetti dated 9 Sept. 1772 (ASF, RP, 3563, no. 135) illustrates this point, along with the fact that colmate necessitated more colmate by lowering the relative elevation of contiguous lands. The same defensive reaction lay behind the Colmate del Cerro. This tract had been described in 1674 (i.e. before reclamation) in the following terms: 'Parte di codesti poderi sono tanto sottoposti all'Innondazione del Padule che se ne cava poco frutto et i lavoratori non vi possono campare' (ASF, RP, 3065, f. 24). More on the defensive necessity of the colmate and waterworks of Altopascio can be found in ASF, RP, 3531, nos. 26 and 71; 3551, no. 17; 3534, nos. 2, 5, 8, 9, 10. It is impossible to calculate exactly what portion of the labor was financed out of peasant debts. Whenever a project was decided, the instructions from Florence would order the estate manager to use all the debt labor he could in order to minimize expenses, and to imprison those debtors who refused to work (ASF, RP, 3060, f. 1,147).

The economic organization

77

organization gives rise to a number of contradictions and ambiguities in the economic history of the estate. The first ambiguity derives from the landlord himself. The Medici were by 1587 an old mercantile family with a long history of dealings in land, banking, and commerce. But in the sixteenth century, because of a change in the political system realized in the 1530s, the Medici became the dukes of Tuscany and the first nobles of the duchy. As a result the Medici's political interest in 'good rule' influenced the economic administration of these lands. Such interests, for example, explain why the estate retained most of the historic charities of Altopascio intact without systematically evading the obligations. The charitable institutions of Altopascio accord very well with the other paternalistic elements of Medici rule, like the image of the Medici personally distributing grain to the hungry citizens of Florence or hiring unemployed wool workers to ease their suffering during the industrial crisis of the seventeenth century.14 This basic compatibility of the charities of Altopascio with Medici rule probably explains their retention. Similarly the leasing of the estate of Altopascio in 1784 was a calculated act of political economy designed to promote agrarian reform. The reorganization of the estate also represented an administrative improvement from the landlord's point of view; but the motive for the * reform' was nevertheless political in inspiration. To 14

For an account of Grand Duke Ferdinando I distributing grain and an observer's impression, see Berner, 'Florentine Society,' p. 210. A later example can be taken from the reign of Grand Duke Ferdinando II: on 10 October and again on 15 November 1663 he ordered the Scrittoio of the Royal Possessions to administer 200 staia of wheat to 'S. Francesco del Pugliese Provveditore del Arte della Lana, dovendo servire per distribuirsi a diverse povere tessitore di lana, che di presenze non anno da tessere' (ASF, RP, 1320, nos. 126, 127). It would be a fascinating study to reconstruct all of this activity of the Medici family throughout Tuscany, in an attempt to understand political quiescence and the transition from republic to principate. It is known, for example, that Ferdinando II played a personal role in combating the plague of 1630 which earned him the love of his subjects, and in 1632, by order of the same grand duke, a commandite was given to a firm of the Arte della Lana to provide employment for the vagabonds and unemployed housed in the Pia Casa de' Mendicanti (Maurice Carmona, 'Aspects du capitalisme toscan au XVIe et XVIIe siecles. Les societes en commandite a Florence et a Lucques,' Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, xi (1964), p. 85). For another example of this type of government, see n. 2 of the Conclusion and the way Grand Duke Cosimo III used paternalistic political economy in response to the urban riots of 1694.

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Altopascio

sum up, the estate's managerial objectives did not always focus strictly on profit and loss: as the private property of the grand duke, Medici lands financed, and were enmeshed in, the public interests of state. More serious contradictions in the degree of capitalist development governed the organization of labor. First of all there is the enduring ambiguity of a huge tract of property divided and worked by peasants on family farms, thereby creating a contradiction between the legal and the operational unit. The estate was simultaneously a vast Medici property and a loose federation of small holdings. In a sense this organization displays the fundamental capitalist division between the owners of the means of production and the producers. The Medici employed their capital and their land to engage labor. Over the period under consideration, the performance of the economy and the distribution of the costs of production increasingly deprived the peasants of any independent property. This proletarianization process steadily increased the dependence of the peasant on the estate manager, augmenting the latter's powers of control. The estate manager controlled the timing of all agricultural operations, and severely reprimanded the peasants if they ever acted individually on these matters.15 The control of timing constituted a primitive form of work discipline: the peasants must seed, harvest, prune, etc. at the designated times. The control extended to items of joint ownership. The livestock was marketed at the prices and the times decided by the estate management. Here, too, the peasant was a passive agent who could consult and sometimes advise, but never decide. As peasants became more and more indebted, they worked for the landlord in greater proportions on a wage basis. By the end of the eighteenth century the mezzadri had been so effectively stripped of any surplus that they were unable to meet small cash obligations, like the purchase of clothing, for which they were forced to borrow from the estate manager.16 15

16

ASF, RP, 3059, f. 201. Although this control served agricultural purposes by regulating the timing of operations, it was also enforced to prevent the peasants from defrauding the landlord by withholding part of the harvest, which was normally divided under the supervision of the estate manager and the guard. 'Contanti Rogati a Pietro Lazzeri per comprare roba per rivestirsi' (ASF, RP,

The economic organization

79

The social and economic relationship between lord and peasant resembled that of capitalist and proletariat. On the other hand some of the indispensable technical accompaniments of capitalism never manifested themselves on the estate. Despite the growing importance of debt labor, peasants were not remunerated primarily by a wage but by a share of the crop. That method of engaging labor itself influenced production decisions in important ways. By dividing labor according to family units, it was impossible to derive the benefits of an optimum use of labor on a large estate. At the very same moment in time, the organization of labor would tolerate a shortage of manpower on one farm and an inefficient surplus on another. Duplication of efforts meant that the estate never reaped the benefits of specialization of labor as a way of increasing output. The mezzadria itself actively discouraged specialization. By minimizing labor costs to the degree that it did, there was no advantage for the landlord to shift to the wage system. In providing subsistence by a share of the crop instead of through a wage, the production decisions of the estate were biased by the need to provide subsistence to each family working the farms. This prerequisite of agricultural production lies behind the 'coltura promiscua' that characterized Tuscany, the multiple-crop farming on a labor-intensive system. Because a family needed to subsist, the primary requirement of the farm was to provide cereals. All other production decisions were built around this essential requirement.17 So the vines were planted along the sides of fields, thereby inhibiting the extension of specialized vineyards that so advanced Tuscan agriculture after the Second World War. Fruit and olive trees were also planted at the edge of cultivated strips, on river banks, or alone in the middle of a field of wheat. The need to provide subsistence also

17

6737A: 'Quaderno di Conti dei Lavoratori dal 1768 al 1778,' second division, f. 114). The same accounts (f. 113) list the cash advanced to Francesco Picchi 'per sua meta di sugo comprato da Andrea Natale.' Similar cash advances under the general rubric of 'per occorrenze' are already in evidence in the accounts of 1735-50 (ASF, RP, 6730). This is a theme of the book by Pazzagli, L'agricoltura toscana, which was elaborated in discussion by Professors Imberciadori, Giorgetti, Romani, and Sereni during a conference held in Florence in June 1973, sponsored by the Unione regionale delle provincie toscane, to present this volume to the public.

80

Altopascio Table 9. Distribution of land of the estate of Altopascio

Year

% sterile

% arable

1697* 1784

N.S. 1-8

42-9 50-8

% under recla% mation pasture 5-8 6-7

14-7 14-8

% woods

Total

36-6 25-9

100-0 100-0

* The figures for 1697 were converted from coltre to stiore on the basis of 7-5 stiore per coltra in order to make comparisons with the data for 1784. restricted the production of forage crops, and placed an upper limit upon profitable expansion of livestock. The restricted development of livestock in turn restricted the quantity of available fertilizer. The net result of these restrictions was the inability of the estate to specialize according to comparative advantage. T h e estate could not be organized along lines that would devote one portion to wine cultivation, another to grain, another to orchards, as long as each independent family unit required a harvest of cereals that would allow it to subsist. T h e estate became locked into an organization of land use that resisted modernization along the lines of any agricultural revolution. Particular elements in the whole production equation could be modified or rationalized, while the system itself remained inflexible. Table 9 provides a concrete illustration of the stable pattern of land distribution. Between the two dates, the total area under direct estate management had increased by roughly 20%. T h e significant change in the distribution of land is the marked relative increase in the area of arable land and a corresponding decrease in the area of woodland over the century. Without minimizing the expansion of arable land, it is nonetheless clear that the new area had been carved from woodland without altering the agrarian balance or upsetting the interrelationships within it. The newly cultivated land was absorbed according to the same priorities. The system had been

The economic organization

81

rationalized to yield a higher level of aggregate output without ever revolutionizing the use of the land.18 This was an economy dominated by the most powerful merchant/landlord in Tuscany, an economy that depended on the labor of the peasants, on the rents provided by the leaseholders, and on the market that regulated the sale of its commodities. The two chapters that follow are a study in the performance of this economy and an analysis of the crisis that struck that system in the second half of the seventeenth century. For the sake of focus, the guiding themes in the analysis might here be summarized. The grand dukes of Tuscany enjoyed a secular expansion of the lands and the income of Altopascio from 1587 to 1784. After 1650, however, there began a depression of wheat prices that produced a decline in Medici income until the early decades of the eighteenth century. The effect of the economic crisis was to alter the relationship between lord and tenant. Important structural factors made the landlord by far the most resilient member of the economy. The crisis affected the peasants through an accelerated deterioration in their status as producers, symbolized by higher levels of indebtedness correlative to the expansion of Medici output and income. The net effect of the crisis was to transform the peasants of the estate from independent farmers to semiproletarians. For the class of leaseholders the crisis produced 18

Using the 1697 data as the base period equal to 100, the total area under direct cultivation in 1784 had increased to 121-2, arable land jumped to 143-6, pasture to 122-5, and reclaimed land to 122-5, while the woodland declined to 85-6. Note that the proportion of pasture, which is relatively high in comparison to the rest of Tuscany, was not the product of the internal organization of the estate but rather the external economy that the estate enjoyed by virtue of its location bordering the Padule di Fucecchio. The map of the estate in ASF, Piante delle Regie Possessioni, Scaffale D, Palchetto 3, Piante nos. 17, 18, proves conclusively that almost all of the pastureland of the estate was situated along the borders of the swamp, in the area called the Gremignaio, i.e., lands that were not suitable for regular cereal cultivation because they would seasonally be flooded by the waters of the padule, but nevertheless a bonus for livestock cultivation. This external economy that the Lago di Bientina and the Padule di Fucecchio constituted is responsible for the higher number of livestock found at Altopascio and in the Valdinievole generally, because the swamp also generated abundant sources of fodder crops that were otherwise neglected in the regular farming of the estate. It is, therefore, especially interesting to note that the estate nevertheless failed to increase productivity, despite this relatively more abundant supply of livestock and natural fertilizer.

82

Altopascio

more differentiation by ruining many small farmers and simultaneously releasing their lands at a cheap rate for the acquisition by the notables of their class who did not work the land themselves. Two separate lines of development moved the entire system in a capitalistic direction: merchant financial capital directly engaged labor in the production of farm commodities for profit; and a rural bourgeoisie quietly emerged out of the ranks of independent producers who gradually substituted hired labor on their farms and steadily extended their economic activities into small-scale commerce. At the end of both lines of development stood the pure agricultural laborers, among whose womenfolk local capitalists found an ideal medium for the culture of the domestic industry of spinning flax. These capitalistic tendencies never became predominant because of a basic inflexibility of the economic organization that was reflected in static levels of productivity. What follows is the paradoxical story of those who labored within a system that became increasingly capitalistic without ever adopting the classic pattern of capitalism wherein labor earns its subsistence through wage payments and is wholly reorganized to serve the production goals of the employer.

4 The economic performance, part I

The price of wheat in this period has long intrigued economic historians because of the ' price revolution' of the sixteenth century and the subsequent collapse of prices in the seventeenth. In the economy of Altopascio, since production costs and productivity did not vary much over time, the price of wheat and other farm commodities was crucial to the wellbeing of the estate members. Prices also altered the absolute and relative distribution of costs and benefits; the depression of commodity prices penalized those who owed debts, fixed money rents or other obligations, to the advantage of those who collected those items.1 A study of wheat prices for the Tuscan city of Siena permits us to situate the most rapid rise in prices in the second half of the sixteenth century, with the greatest gains coming after 1575 and reaching a high point around 1595.2 After that date there are more relevant price data for Altopascio collected from the communal archive of Montecarlo.3 1 2 3

For the specific effect of the price depression on the leaseholders of Altopascio, see below, Fig. 21, and the discussion in the pages that follow. Giuseppe Parenti, Prezzi e mercato del grano a Siena (1546-1765) (Florence, 1942), Table of Prices, pp. 27-8, and graph following p. 32. This, like every series, has its own history. It deals with the price of grain sold by quasi-public institutions in the months of April, May and June. The prices for the years from 1600 to 1636 are the average price of a staio of wheat for the total amount of wheat sold in the months of April, May, and June by the Opera Maggiore, that is, the corporation that looked after the maintenance of the church, which used as income the wheat grown on its lands and sold in the comune; after 1636 the prices are those of wheat sold under the 'Pio Legato Billo,' that is, the wheat from the lands left by Arrigo Barsanti called Billo to fund the dowries of 30 lire each that Billo established for the poor girls of the parish. Whereas in the period from 1600 to 1655 the price of wheat fluctuated from month to month, after 1672 (gap between 1656 and 1671) the monthly price became constant, which suggests that the price of wheat was now determined and maintained each year, with fluctuations from year to year but no fluctuations from month to month. Nothing specific has resulted about the method of determining

84

Altopascio Table 10. Average price of wheat at Montecarlo (per staio)

Time

Raw price (in soldi and hundredths of soldi)

Index (base period: 1601-55= 100)

1601-55 1672-1770 1771-1800

112-11 78-11 103-65

100-00 69-67 92-45

T h e movement of prices at Montecarlo yields the following observations. From 1601 to 1655 wheat prices stabilized at a relatively high level. From 1656 to 1671 there is a gap in the registers of Montecarlo, but when the data resume in 1672, a sharp fall in prices is recorded. In the course of the entire century through 1770, the price levels of 1651-5 were never reached again. Table 10 summarizes the changes in wheat price. Data from neighboring towns enable us to establish that the turning point in prices was around 1660.4 Within that long period of low prices there were of course distinct subperiods: between 1672 and 1690, and again between 1716 and 1730,

4

the price by communal authorities, nor of the reason it was decided to prevent fluctuations. Despite this policy, the prices at Montecarlo accurately reflect market trends, as proven by the fact that when values at Montecarlo and Siena are set at parity for a given base period, thereafter there is almost a perfect correlation between changes in price at Siena and at Montecarlo, which permits interpolations of missing years at Montecarlo on the basis of coefficients derived from the Siena series. The sources for the entire price series are ACM, 677: 'Saldi dell'Opera Maggiore dal 1600 al 1636'; 692: 'Saldi di Billo dal 1610 al 1655,' and volumes pertaining to the Billo accounts 693 (1671-1726), 694 (1727-74), and 695 (1776-1802). My thanks, once again, to Mario Seghieri for copying this price data for me, thereby allowing me to use my limited time in the communal archive to investigate other sources. The precise turning point was probably after 1655, Parenti, op. cit., p. 235. I am well aware that several economic historians, including Parenti, have noted the first break in the trend around 1600 or 1630, when the trend passed from accelerated growth to stability or decline. Even though prices did fall between 1634 and 1642 at Montecarlo, they rose again between 1643 and 1655, reaching the seventeenthcentury peak at Montecarlo between 1648-9. The data presented by Parenti (p. 229) on the annual average price for ten-year periods in 14 urban markets besides Siena also illustrate that generally the annual price in 1651-60 was higher than in 1641-50. In view of absolute levels of price, along with other indices of welfare analysis that emphasize a clear break after 1650,1 have opted for the later turning point.

The economic performance, part I

85

prices were at their lowest; in 1691-1715 and 1733-70 average prices were roughly 20 % higher. The definitive Medici acquisition of Altopascio in 1587 coincided with a trend of rising wheat prices that leveled off in the first half of the seventeenth century. The first shock was registered from 1660 to 1690. Some mild improvement followed until another cycle of low prices materialized between 1716 and 1730. After that point the economy steadily recovered from the depression of wheat prices. The fall in wheat prices undoubtedly stimulated adjustments in the demand for agricultural commodities. So it is unfortunate that no price series exists for commodities other than wheat at Altopascio, especially because changes such as the 'price revolution' and a 'price depression' most likely produced significant substitution effects, as occurred elsewhere. Professor Tagliaferi has collected prices for wheat, rye, millet, and wine for the market of Udine in the state of Venice from 1500 to 1700.5 Several interesting changes in price relationships are documented in that series. The most striking change is that wine, which Tagliaferi set at rough parity at the beginning of the time series, increased in price during the price revolution at approximately the same rate as wheat. After 1600 wine prices continued to rise through 1620, while wheat prices dipped. For the entire seventeenth century wine now had a greater value than wheat. There were also subtle substitution effects among grain crops. Table 11 takes the five-year average price for wheat, rye and millet at five different times; the wheat price was set at 100 and divided into the rye and millet prices to derive relatives. During the first half of the sixteenth century, as wheat prices rose slowly, the price relationships among these three crops remained roughly equivalent. In the sharp price rise between 1555 and 1605, the increases in all prices nevertheless produced a proportionate decline in the price of rye, thereby indicating a stronger demand for wheat.6 The 5

6

Amelio Tagliaferi, Struttura e politica sociale in una communita veneta del '500 (Udine)

(Milan, 1969), pp. 70-5. Of course, in theory, the decrease in the relative price of rye during the period of high prices, and an increase in its price during a time of low prices, could have been produced by an increase of rye production during the price revolution and a decline of rye production during the price depression. Actually that theoretical

86

Altopascio Table 11. Relative prices of wheat, rye and millet in the market of Udine, 1500-1700 (per staro Udinese) Wheat

Time 1501-5 1551-5 1601-5 1651-5 1691-5

Rye

Millet

Raw price Raw price Raw price (in denari) Index (in denari) Index (in denari) Index 1274 1786 3564 3374 3408

100 100 100 100 100

934 1330 2306 2155 2484

73-3 74-5 64-7 63-9 72-9

610 865 1759 1512 1939

47-9 48-4 49-4 44-8 56-9

Data for this table are taken from Tagliaferi's Tables 2 and 3. I have converted the figures to denari to facilitate calculation of relatives. relationship then stayed unchanged during the trend of stable prices through 1655, but in the second half of the seventeenth century the price of the minor grains, rye and millet, rose significantly in relation to that of wheat. These data support the hypothesis that over the early modern period there was a shift in consumption patterns from wheat to minor grains. This shift apparently did not come about during the price revolution, but rather during the depression, which suggests that the depression increased the relative cost of wheat for lower income groups and prompted a substitution of cheaper grains. Changes in prices also created more difficulties in the marketing of commodities, but the distribution of those difficulties hurt small farmers more than the ducal landlord because of structural advantages that the Medici enjoyed. Whereas small producers were more or less confined to local markets, the Medici estates readily received the license to export. When prices in the Florentine state were too low to suit the Medici agents, they could export their commodities to the nearby possibility is nullified by the fact that during the agricultural depression more rye was produced than wheat, thereby making a change in demand the independent variable that altered the price relationships in Table 11.

The economic performance, part I

87

state of Lucca using these export permits. The Medici lands also enjoyed a certain economy of scale in their marketing. At times the grains of Altopascio would be combined with those of other grand-ducal estates in the Valdinievole and sold in one huge transaction. At other times the estate negotiated its own sales and either sent its crops to the local markets of Pescia and Borgo a Buggiano, or instead sold them in small lots right at the estate. That decision was rationally made on the basis of prices in those respective markets, and the determination of whether the difference in urban prices would compensate for transport costs. Those decisions were facilitated by the centralization of information in Florence, where the Department of the Royal Possessions functioned as a clearing house of information on current market conditions. That information enabled the estate to execute the constant administrative injunction to sell at the highest possible price and buy at the cheapest. If the administrators decided that the market price was inadequate, they could also store the crops in their underground granaries until a suitable deal arose.7 For all these reasons the landlord showed considerably more resilience throughout the agricultural depression in comparison to the leasehold producers with their small surplus. Despite that resilience price trends exerted a depressive influence on the net money income derived from Altopascio. Much like prices, trends in net income divide into three distinct periods: a phase of marked expansion between 1587 and 1647, followed by an abrupt decline in money income that prevailed until 1734 when a new period of growth began that lasted through 1780. The graph of the indices of the price of wheat, money income and income in relation to wheat prices (Fig. 19) illustrates that the depression of money income was partially a function of prices. Income adjusted for the fall in wheat prices therefore showed far more resilience: while such income definitely ceased to expand after 7

There were, however, technical limitations upon these features. The Medici lands of Altopascio never had all the storage facilities that were desired, until the new granary was built under Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo; there were also limitations upon the efficiency of storage in the underground buche; inevitably some moisture entered the storage area, and crops would be damaged during times of storage, some crops storing better than others.

88

Altopascio Semi-logarithmic 2 cycles Base Period: 1602-16=100 Price of wheat • Net money income

1577- 1587- 1602- 1617- 1632- 1647- 1662- 1676- 1692- 1707- 1722- 1741- 1759- 176982 1601 16 31 46 51 75 91 1706 21 40 49 65 80

Fig. 19. Indices of average annual price of wheat, net money income, and income adjusted for wheat prices of the Estate of Altopascio, 1577-1780. Net income equals the total receipts from harvests, livestock, and other entries, minus operating costs, seed, maintenance, and other. Net income does not include the costs of peasant debt, nor of the land reclamation projects and improvements which are recorded under a separate entry either as Spese di Colmate, or Muramente e Coltivazione. Net income also does not take into account the costs of operating the church or the hospital. 'Income adjusted for wheat prices' is the index of money income from the estate divided by the index of the price of wheat at Montecarlo, the result being the index of the amount of wheat purchaseable at Montecarlo with the money income of the estate. The sources for all income figures are the grand-ducal account books cited below, n. 8, with the additional financial accounts of AC, xin, no. 47, and ASF, SF, 307, Incanti, 'Affitto Pagni.' Note that wheat prices in this graph are those of Montecarlo, which required interpolations for the years prior to 1600 and for 1662-71 by the method of coefficients derived from the Siena series as discussed below, Table 15n.

The economic performance, part I

89

1646, it stabilized rather effectively until the period from 1692 to 1721 when it then declined along with money income. The overall levels of both money income and price-adjusted income nevertheless declined proportionately less than wheat prices relative to the early seventeenth century. Medici income still underwent a remarkable 200% increase from the late sixteenth century to the late eighteenth century. That trend of expanding income was mostly a function of the expansion of agricultural output. Production trends for the estate are complicated by the existence of the multiple-crop system and the trade-offs among crops over the long run. To deal with this complication, all grains produced by the estate have been combined in a single index of aggregate output of cereals weighted by the price relationships among grains in a typical year.8 This 8

The formula for the index is

where n designates a given year, Po designates the price weight of a crop in a typical year, and Qo the quantity of that commodity produced in the base year. Included in the index with base production values of 1720-4 =100 for each crop, are wheat, segalato, beans mixed with vetch, barley mixed with vetch, maize, millet and panicum, oats and saggina. The weights used were those for a typical year derived from the values of an eighteenth-century agronomist found in Imberciadori, Campagna toscana, Appendix IV, 'Calcoli analitici dell'autore della "Selva di Agricoltura e di dimostrazione di zienda" in appoggio alia tesi dell'opportunita di estendere i Maggesi, 1774,' pp. 320-1, Capitolo VIII, no 10: ' Parimente per i prezzi proporzionali di Marcatura si valutano Staia 3 di Grano quante 4 di Segalato, tre di Segalato quante 4 di Fave e Vecciati, tre di Fave e Vecciati quante Staia 4 di granturco, Miglio e Panico, staia tre di granturco, miglio e panico quante staia tre di Vena e di Saggina.' I assigned to veccie orzato the same value as fave e vecciati.

The weights were necessary because a simple summation of wheat and, say, millet might disguise a change in the more important of the two crops. If any particular weight is off in size, then this would affect the absolute height of the curve, but not its shape. The more serious objection concerns the possibility of a changing price relationship among these crops over the long run. We have seen that the possibility did occur in the market of Udine in the relationships of rye and millet to wheat. Even there, however, over the long run rye's price relationship to wheat returned at the end of the seventeenth century to its level in the early sixteenth century. At Altopascio it is likely that any changing relationship would have increased the value of crops like segalato and the rest relative to wheat, and if that were the case, then the index of aggregate output would have increased at a greater rate than it does here, but the general conclusions would be the same. The sources for all production data are the Libri Maestri account books of the grand-ducal possessions in ASF, RP, 6649, 6650, 6651, 6652, 6653, 6654, 6655, 6656, 6657, 6658, 6659, 6660, 4131, 4132, 4133, 4134, 4135, 6708, 6716.

90

Altopascio Semi-logarithmic 4 cycles Base period: 1720-24= 100

100 90 80 70I ^J 60 50 40

'—

I

I i

Aggregate output of cereals

i I i i i i

i i i i i i i i I i i I I i i

i i I I i

i I I

I

i I i i

300 200

100 90 80 70 60 50

'

i

l

l

Flax production

40

30 25 200

l

I I I I I I I I I I

I I I I I I

I I l l l I I i I I I I

Wine production I II I III II II II II I I II I1 1 II I IIII I II I I I I I «-SN«m^*inlniS!oNi::-ooco5aoO--(N(NenMTt-Thininio u") Cb iO ^^ tO ^J tO CD *-O