Studi di storia

17 La compravendita di libri nella contabilità dei mercanti fiorentini

Un confronto coi prezzi dei generi di prima necessità e col potere d’acquisto dei salariati nella seconda metà del XV secolo

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Abstract

The account-books of Florentine merchants are full of purchases and sales of books. In particular, the ledgers of the company of Francesco and Bernardo of Niccolò Cambini offer, for the second half of the 15th century, numerous records. Unfortunately, the conciseness of the accounting does not allow us to know all the characteristics of these books; however, the registrations always indicate the monetary value, thus enabling us to reconstruct the average selling price for various types of books. In this paper, we aim to compare this information with the price series of two goods – wheat and wine – that constituted the basis of the diet for the majority of the population, to better understand what the purchase of a book meant for the society of the period and to perceive more clearly its value.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: July 17, 2019 | Accepted: Sept. 18, 2019 | Published Feb. 24, 2020 | Language: it

Keywords Wine • 15th century • Books • Wages • Prices • Purchasing power • Wheat

Copyright © 2020 Paola Pinelli. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-332-8/017


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