The Florentine merchants’ role in the florin’s origins has always seemed clear. According to the fourteenth-century chronicler Giovanni Villani, the merchants asked the commune to introduce the new coin in 1252 and secured the necessary supply of gold for its minting. Villani’s account has found a broad consensus among historians, and his assessment still underpins our current understanding of the florin, traditionally presented as money associated with the mercantile class of Florence.¹ Although convincing at first glance, Villani remains silent on several aspects, ranging from the actual provision of the gold, its origins, and its transportation to Florence to the practical ways in which members of the Florentine mercantile class helped their city introduce the new gold coin and turned it into an international currency.

In recent decades, much has been written on the merchants of Florence and their activities in the late Middle Ages. Throughout the thirteenth century, they were active not only in long-distance trade but also as money lenders and financial agents for rulers and clergymen.² It remains to be seen, however, to what extent these merchants, with their activities in and knowledge of economic and monetary policy, were instrumental in the minting and diffusing the florin.

While we know that two mint-masters – one belonging to the Arte di Calimala and the other to the Arte del Cambio – were elected approximately every six months or semester (thus twice a year) to oversee all phases of minting from the arrival of the precious metals at the Florentine mint to the issue of the finished gold, silver, and billon coins, we still lack a complete picture of their participation in the various stages of the early life of the florin, from the forming of the project of a gold coin, via the provision of gold, to its early circulation.³

Through the study of the Florentine mercantile class, its network, and its movements, this chapter argues that the city of Florence was able to turn the project of a new gold coin into practice primarily thanks to the multifaceted contribution of its merchants. Crucially, this was not so much due to the merchants asking for the florin (as Villani wrote) as the merchants making its production possible through their familiarity with gold and its supply and their know-how and capacity to (i) run the Florentine mint and strike innovative coins, (ii) control actual monetary production of Florence, (iii) administer the monetary policy of the Florentine government, (iv) provide a network for the early circulation of the florin, and (v) decide on the iconography of the coinage. By linking the scattered records of Florentine merchant bankers and their business in Italy, Europe, and the Mediterranean between the late twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth century, this chapter provides an in-depth understanding of the dynamics that turned the florin into the emblem of the commercial and financial activities of the Florentine mercantile class – one which also functioned as a political actor at the time of the Primo Popolo.

The chapter opens with a brief analysis of the chronicles of Paolino Pieri and Giovanni Villani, discusses their reliability as historical sources for the early life of the florin, and clarifies the objectives of the analysis. It then deals with the gold supply of the city of Florence and the contribution of the Florentine mercantile class. In so doing, it investigates the familiarity of the Florentines with the yellow metal while taking into account several potential routes and markets for gold supply. After this, it outlines the primary skills and practical knowledge of the Florentine merchants, including their numeracy and understanding of the monetary market and its needs, as well as their ability to run a mint. As illustrated in the last section of this chapter, the introduction of the florin and its early diffusion would not have been possible without the crucial capacity of these merchants, by which I mean their authority as political actors to decide the monetary policy of the city of Florence, and likely the iconography of the florin, while providing networks for its early diffusion.

The florin in the chronicles of Paolino Pieri and Giovanni Villani

Written in the first and third decades of the fourteenth century, respectively, and thus roughly seventy years after the florin was introduced, the chronicles of Paolino Pieri (c. 1270–c. 1340) and Giovanni Villani (1275/80–1348) form the earliest narrative evidence of the origin of the Florentine gold coin.⁴ Little is known about Paolino Pieri and his life, but he was likely born in Florence around the 1270s. He started to write his chronicle, which stretches from 1080 to 1305, in 1302.⁵ With regard to the birth of the florin, he offers only a meagre account of that event:

Pieri’s narration lacks any practical detail regarding the historical or political context of the time or how the city of Florence decided to strike the florin. He simply relates that the florin was minted in 1252 under the Podestà-ship of Filippo degli Ugoni of Brescia, erroneously ascribed to the city of Parma. Nothing is said about the agents who promoted its minting or the provenance of the precious metal.⁷ In contrast, the Florentine merchant, diplomat, and chronicler Giovanni Villani offers additional, but still limited, information:

Born in Florence between 1275 and 1280, the young Villani worked as a travelling merchant and banker in association with the Florentine companies of Peruzzi and Buonaccorsi until his early thirties. In 1308, he established himself in his native city, where he took an active role in public life, first as one of the two masters of the local mint in December 1316 (and again in November 1327) and later as one of the city priors, i.e., the highest office in Florence, appointed at the end of the same year (and again in 1321–22 and 1328).⁹ His Nuova Cronica is a long account of the history of Florence, running from the creation of the Tower of Babel to the mid-fourteenth century. In the fifty-third chapter of its seventh book, Villani sets out a clear timeframe for the first minting of the florin, which he says occurred in November 1252.¹⁰ He contextualises the event in a series of favourable circumstances, such as new levels of wealth and prosperity and a stronger political dominance of Florence resulting from contemporary military successes. Villani also emphasises the agency of the merchants, both as instigators and gold suppliers, thus establishing a strong link between the new coin and the Florentine mercantile class of which he was a distinguished member.

However, the very nature of Villani’s work and the quality of the information provided warn against relying too much on his text as a historical source. Of course, chronicles normally set selected events in an interpretative context, excluding those episodes not relevant to the purposes of the narration.¹¹ Chronicles are creations of their authors, based on a communitarian background and sometimes filled with ‘novella-type anecdotes’ or personal comments on the period.¹² According to Peter Spufford, both Villani and Pieri might have written what they wanted to have occurred in 1252, not what actually happened.¹³

A recent study by Duccio Balestracci seems to support Spufford’s claim. When analysing the Florentine military ventures of the 1250s, Balestracci noted important disparities between the accounts provided by Villani and the anonymous author of a fourteenth-century Sienese chronicle.¹⁴ In his work, Villani claims that the years 1251–52 were a period rich in military successes for the city of Florence. At that time, the Florentine army prevailed over the Pisans and the Sienese on several occasions, including at the battles of Pontedera and Montaione. For his part, the anonymous author from Siena tells us exactly the opposite by relaying that the Florentines were heavily defeated on both occasions.

Regardless of which of the two accounts is true, the conflicting views of their authors, both writing about the same historical events and in the same years, prove that caution must be exercised when drawing information from chronicles. Other factors, such as political propaganda, may have taken precedence over facts, which may also be true of the history of the florin and its birth. Obviously, neither Giovanni Villani nor Paolino Pieri was an eyewitness to the striking of the gold coin or its early diffusion. They wrote their chronicles when the florin was already a fully established international currency. For events before their time, they admit they drew on earlier writings, which have since been lost.¹⁵ The lack of official records from the Florentine commune does not help solve the problem. Moreover, as underlined by Sergio Tognetti, Villani’s narrative only becomes more accurate after 1266, when Charles of Anjou appears in his chronicle. This was a consequence of Villani’s proximity to the historical events narrated or perhaps the result of a feeling, shared by his fellow citizens and the ruling class of merchants and bankers to which he belonged, that a new Florence was being created.¹⁶ This casts further doubts on Villani’s accuracy, especially for events prior to 1266, which, of course, include the origin of the florin. All these elements and the lack of clear economic and financial figures (as discussed in Chapter 1) call into question the year 1252 as the starting point for the introduction of the florin. To date, the earliest reliable written sources confirming that Florentine gold florins were being minted and in circulation are those illustrated at the opening of this book, namely the records relating to Parma, Lucca, and Florence dated to the years 1258–59.

Villani’s reconstruction also lacks clarity regarding several other important elements: for instance, he does not seem to differentiate between merchants of different sorts and different trading interests. He does not tell us through what channels they provided gold to the mint or the main activities that allowed them to collect the yellow metal. Were they merely suppliers of gold, or did they act in different roles in the early life of the florin? If so, what roles and what involvement – if any – did they have in the minting of the coin and its early circulation? Why did Florentine merchants promote the florin? These are crucial questions that still need to be adequately addressed.

Peter Spufford argued that the florin was introduced in the interests of the clothiers of the Arte della Lana, who used to subcontract imported raw wool to master weavers, fullers, stretchers, and so on to be processed in the Florentine countryside. A gold florin – Spufford claimed – ‘was a useful unit to pay for the weaving of a single roll of cloth’, as many of these subcontractors would be paid by the piece. Owing to this alleged role of the florin in the urban economy of Florence, Spufford went so far as to state that the coin was ‘originally designed for internal use in the Florentine state, not for international purposes’.¹⁷ Yet, there is no documentary evidence that provides a clear picture of the Florentine woollen industry and its costs in the mid-thirteenth century.¹⁸ Further, Spufford’s thesis does not consider two important aspects: first, throughout the second half of the thirteenth century, the value of the florin was very unstable in the local market, as its price rose continuously, shifting from Florentine s. 20 in 1252 to s. 25 in 1260, s. 29 in 1271, and s. 40 in 1294.¹⁹ Even if the alleged ratio of one gold florin for one single roll of cloth existed, those changes would make it difficult to believe that such a ratio was maintained over time and became the primary cause of the florin’s wider circulation and success. Second, gold had little practical use in day-to-day activities or within the local market, its price being so much higher than any of the practical necessities of life. In other words, the gold florin would be an inadequate means of payment for any purchase in Florence, which was normally carried out with local petty coinage. The histogram in Figure 2.1 shows how frequently gold florins, both as actual coins or money of account, occur within the Diplomatico collection of the State Archive of Florence, consisting of all the records and notarial acts involving the private business of Florentines, and Tuscans in general, for the period 1252–94. The documentation available for these years is particularly rich (c. 10,600 documents), although we cannot say the same for those sources mentioning gold florins.²⁰

Figure 2.1Gold florins in the Diplomatico collection of the State Archives of Florence, 1252–94 (10,582 parchments consulted). The light-grey bars indicate the number of documents available per year, the dark-grey bars specify the quantity of sources mentioning gold florins per year. Dates have been left as they are written in the originals.

As illustrated, references to gold florins appear first in the mid-1260s and then almost disappear until they become more regular and increase consistently from the late 1270s, in line with an increasing overall number of records available per year.²¹ Prior to this, only a very small number of documents mention gold florins, and those few do not explicitly refer to Florentine textile production and its local market. The earliest reliable reference in this collection, for example, mentions a loan of one florin ‘of good and pure gold and of the right weight of Florence’ (‘boni et puri auri et recte pondus florentino’) and s. 31 of floreni parvi that a certain Ricordo Cardinale received from Ugolino Buoni with the promise to repay him within the next six months.²² The lack of detail prevents us from knowing how that sum was spent.

Indeed, data in Figure 2.1 cannot be taken at face value as direct evidence of the increased use of florins from 1279 onwards. Many other factors, such as the incidental survival or disappearance of the written sources or the history of the collection, could have affected the total number of records available today. Thus, the question remains as to what extent this data can be considered representative of the circulation of the florin (or its absence) in those years.

In this regard, it is noteworthy that Pieri, contrary to Spufford’s hypothesis, recorded that the Florentines were initially reluctant to adopt the florin for their own local business.²³ To some extent, Pieri was right: as this chapter will show, after its minting, the florin was mainly used, and therefore requested, outside Florence, and this almost at once. This means one must look beyond the Florentine city walls and focus on the Florentine merchants’ activities to evaluate the mercantile class’s contribution to the florin’s birth and early life, starting with the contemporary gold supply.

Florentine merchants and gold supply: a Euro-Mediterranean story

The minting of coins in the Middle Ages depended on the supply of precious metal brought to the mint, whether in bullion, goldware, silverware, or old coins. If the authority running the mint controlled its own mines, it was relatively easy to provide a constant supply and turn the metal into coins. Otherwise, the mint had to rely on imported metal, normally provided by private individuals, usually merchant bankers, but also goldsmiths and moneychangers. No metal would flow to any mint unless an acceptable mint price was offered for it. This corresponded to the number of new coins returned to the ‘customers’, which was normally lower than the number of coins actually struck. Part of what was withheld was sent as profit or fee to the authority controlling the mint and was known as seigniorage; the rest was called brassage and was used to cover the costs of coining.²⁴

Tuscany had always been an important mining region since the Etruscan period, and gold was among the minerals present in the mining district known as Colline Metallifere, stretching from Campiglia (Livorno) to Massa Marittima (Grosseto). Yet, since its volume was not significant enough to guarantee profitable extraction and thus a constant supply, gold was never mined there.²⁵ In addition, the thirteenth-century Florentine commune does not seem to have had direct control over this area, the jurisdiction of which was traditionally disputed between the bishops of Volterra and the city of Siena.²⁶ Thus, Florence and its mint were obliged to base the production of the florin on imported gold.

Unfortunately, the lack of mint registers for the relevant years does not permit us to study the policy and incentives employed to attract the merchants and their reserves of precious metal to the Florentine mint in the thirteenth century.²⁷ Perhaps more surprisingly, virtually no gold appears in contemporary archaeological findings and written evidence from Florence. To date, only one gold coin hoard of five Fatimid dinars, dating between 972 and 1073, has been discovered in Piazza della Signoria, in the heart of the city.²⁸ The uniqueness of this find and its early chronology do not allow us to draw any substantial conclusions regarding the extent to which gold circulated in the city before the 1250s.²⁹ The same applies to the archival documentation of Florence between the late twelfth and first half of the thirteenth centuries, except for a single piece of evidence illustrated below. However, gold was clearly present in northern and central Italy and was recorded in the notarial registers of Pisa, Lucca, and Siena, the other major Tuscan cities of the time.³⁰ Whether and in what quantities gold was circulating in Florence and, specifically, how the Florentine merchants came into possession of this metal is not yet clear. If, as Villani wrote, they took care of the provision of gold for the local mint, they must have obtained it from somewhere.

The following analysis aims to describe the dynamics of this supply and the possible routes gold took to reach Florence. The paucity of written sources and the above-mentioned Florentine practice of posing as ‘pseudo-Pisans’ in the Mediterranean ports to escape the customs duties levied on non-privileged Latin merchants make our investigation more difficult. Yet, the merchants of Florence are not impossible to identify. Although poor in quantitative terms, from a qualitative perspective, the following archival sources suggest that Florentines were dealing with gold and gold coins well before the mid-thirteenth century via both commercial and financial activities and were thus collecting the precious metal.

The earliest reference to a Florentine dealing with gold in the form of foreign gold coins dates back to the second half of the twelfth century and concerns the Mediterranean business of the previously mentioned Ugolino the Florentine.³¹ In October 1169, Ugolino appeared in Armiro, a port city north of Tsimova (Areopoli), on the north-west coast of the peninsula of Mani (Peloponnese), contracting a particular form of sea loan known as a cambium maritimum with the Venetian Giovanni Sergi. This consisted of an exchange transaction between a stationary partner (socius stans) and a travelling agent (tractator) that would trade overseas. The former would lend a given amount of capital to the latter, who would normally repay an agent of the stationary partner in another port and often in a different currency from the one he had initially received – typically what was circulating at that destination. This contract, which relied on a network of representatives in foreign cities, would normally apply to a one-way trip.³²

Acting as travelling partner, Ugolino received from Giovanni the sum of five gold Byzantine perperi of the new weight (‘perpero auri paleos kenurgios pesantes’) before sailing on the ship of a certain Pietro Scivamendigo to trade along the maritime route to Constantinople. Ugolino promised to return the sum of six gold perperi of the old weight (‘perperos auri veteres pesantes sex’), thus a different currency, to Martino Sergi, Giovanni’s brother and his agent, within fifteen days of his arrival.³³ The difference between the two amounts presumably represented the interest for the creditor.

As this first source suggests, it was by means of long-distance trade that Ugolino could access a gold-standard area like the Mediterranean region and deal with gold, here in the form of foreign gold coins. The cambium maritimum gave him the opportunity to trade in the Mediterranean by exploiting a foreign port and dispose of ready cash to conduct his business in the Byzantine market. Since gold perperi represented the standard gold currency of the Byzantine world at that time, it is no surprise that the loan was contracted in that currency. It is also worth noting that these kinds of transactions occurred as early as the 1160s, a period for which we know very little about the trade relations of the city of Florence. Yet, whether such contracts were already a common practice among the Florentines trading overseas in those early years is, although likely, impossible to establish conclusively.³⁴ The few details we have about Ugolino do not even permit us to assess whether he contributed via his activities to either the economic development of Florence or the circulation of gold and gold coins in the Florentine territory. However, further documentary evidence from the late twelfth century provides new details in this regard.

On 26 February 1180, Pietro Zoppo of the village of San Donato in Poggio, in the vicinity of Florence, donated all his late father’s estate, i.e., lands and other immovable properties, to Silimanno, priest of the rural church (pieve) of San Pietro in Poggio for the sake of his (Pietro’s) soul (‘pro amore Dei et remedio anime sue’). These donations, offered by laymen to religious institutions, were quite common at the time: usually enacted on their deathbeds, the donors believed that a gesture of this kind would deliver them from their sinful attachment to material existence and help them embrace the spiritual life. To validate the donation, it was customary that the recipient paid a token fee to the donor, typically money or an article of clothing, which was called launechild in the Lombardic Law of the time.³⁵ In this case, Pietro received some leather from Silimanno, which is expressly said to be worth ‘quatuor bisantes’ or four bezants.³⁶

As seen, the term ‘bezant’ originally meant the Byzantine gold solidi or nomismata, replaced in 1092 by the hyperpyra or perperi of Emperor Alexius I Komnenos. According to Marc Bompaire, however, in the medieval documentation, ‘bezant’ could also refer to gold coins more generally, including Arabic coins such as Almoravid gold dinars (morabitinos) and their Christian imitations, Almohad doble and gold dinars (massamutini), as well as Saracen bezants of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Syria when specified.³⁷ Bezants could also stand for an extensively used unit of account at the (theoretical) value of the canonical dinar, which was popular among the Europeans, especially in the Levant and the Maghreb.³⁸

The fact that bezants appear here in a random donation taking place in a village of the Florentine countryside as a unit of value for some leather is illuminating. Generally, the standard money of account for contracts redacted in Florence and its contado between 1171 and 1181 was the denari of Lucca and Pisa, and from the middle of 1181 onwards, it was the Pisan coinage alone.³⁹ Yet, the use of bisantes, preferred here to these other monies of account, suggests that there might have been people accustomed to reckoning in such foreign currency on a very local level. How widespread this practice was and whether it reflects a significant circulation of foreign gold coins in the Florentine territory cannot be proved on the basis of such a circumstantial piece of evidence, especially as almost nothing is known about the people involved in the affair.⁴⁰ Yet the idea that these coins were exchanged locally is tantalising.

Further cases of Florentines dealing with gold and gold coins are documented in the first half of the thirteenth century. The fragments of the oldest book of account available today, belonging to a Florentine company of merchant bankers operating at the trade fair of San Procolo near Bologna in 1211, show that Florentines also dealt with gold through banking and financial activities.⁴¹ From the last decade of the twelfth century, Bologna was an important market for traders from all over northern and central Italy.⁴² From the year 1196 on, two urban fairs took place on the river Reno, the major one being the fair of San Procolo in May. According to the surviving ledger, several merchants of Florence conducted their business there. Specifically, many of the eighty-one Florentines recorded were members of the same families that would lead the economy and politics of Florence in the following decades, including Tornaquinci, Cavalcanti, Albizzi, Giugni, and Bencivenni.⁴³ Among them, Buoninsegna Falconi and Alberto son of Ubertino are also noteworthy. This is what the fragments tell us about them:

Buoninsegna and Alberto were two debtors expected to return the total amount of three gold massamutini, another name for the Almohad gold dinars in circulation in Christian Europe, as noted. Yet, virtually nothing is said about the purposes of these two loans. We know that in 1225, Buoninsegna became a member of the Arte della Seta, the Silk Guild of Florence, together with his son Arnolfo.⁴⁵ His involvement in the fairs of San Procolo could be related to that kind of business or to the cloth trade more generally. This is also suggested by another entry, where Buoninsegna was due to pay £2 s. 19 to the Florentine company on behalf of Tornaquinci, who reimbursed him with his cloth (‘k’ei pagò nei panni suoi’).⁴⁶ The fact that in this specific case, Buoninsegna accepted a payment made in cloth from Tornaquinci and that he paid the Florentine company in turn with the money that the latter was due to give provides further evidence for his involvement in the contemporary textile trade. One could also speculate that the loan of one gold massamutino was related to this very sort of business.

Other foreign coins also appear in this source. For example, Banzara del Garbo was due to give £15 of ‘new’ provisini that had been loaned to Bartolo the spice seller, Apollonio Tribaldi was due to return s. 35 d. 6 of deniers tournois, and Attigliante exchanged £3 for English ‘sterling’ pennies and other coins.⁴⁷ Robert Davidsohn has considered the mention of these currencies and specifically of the provisini, originally the silver deniers of the counts of Champagne struck at the mint of Provins, as clear proof of the participation of the merchants of Florence at the Champagne Fairs, although he relied on a single piece of evidence for this argument.⁴⁸ However, further documentation confirms that it was precisely in these years that the Florentines began to import cloth from the Fairs (1215), and their presence intensified towards the middle of the thirteenth century, along with the scale of their commercial affairs and financial transactions.⁴⁹

This growing involvement in the major commercial centres of northern Europe would have benefitted Florence and its gold supply. Gold was among the precious metals circulating at the Fairs, and its import and export are documented by detailed lists of custom duties from the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, also known as tarifs de tonlieux.⁵⁰ In 1265, gold coins such as Sicilian taris and augustales or paiola gold were exchanged there too.⁵¹ Uncoined gold could also be employed as a means of payment in loans and financial transactions. In 1222, for example, certain merchants of Bologna were expected to receive at Provins the sum of 35 marks in gold rods ‘of the weight of Cologne’ as reimbursement for a loan to Engelbert of Berg, archbishop of Cologne (1185/6–1225).⁵² Two years before, the same archbishop was in debt to Giovanni and Gherardo of Florence, who had lent him 120 marks.⁵³ Under threat of excommunication by Pope Honorius III (1216–27), Engelbert eventually returned the sum to the two Florentines, although the details of his repayment are unknown. As the transaction with the merchants of Bologna suggests, it is possible that Giovanni and Gherardo were paid in gold rods too.

At any rate, despite the lack of direct proof, the large body of indirect evidence attesting to the clear involvement of Florentine merchants at the Champagne Fairs suggests that by exploiting that market, not only did the Florentines contribute to the economic development of their city but also they acquired gold and imported it to Florence, possibly in exchange for spices and other luxuries from southern Europe and the Mediterranean.⁵⁴ The Fairs also promoted the Florentine gold supply by providing the necessary raw materials, such as wool or unfinished cloth, which were processed in Florence before being traded in the Mediterranean basin. The following episode suggests a close relationship between the Florentine cloth trade and the yellow metal in that region.

In a trial between two merchants that occurred in San Gimignano in 1224, Saraceno Grugnoli claimed back the sum of one gold bezant from a certain Gradalone for a loan that the former had given to Dando, Gradalone’s son, when they were both in Acre.⁵⁵ Dando was a former crusader who fought at Damietta in the Fifth Crusade but found refuge in Acre after the crusaders’ defeat. Once there, he ran out of money and began to beg in return for clothes, wandering half-naked in the streets of the city. To help him, Saraceno borrowed the sum of two and a half gold bezants (‘mei mutuaretis mihi II bisanzios et dimidium’) from the merchants Bonincontro Bonincontri and Ristoro of San Gimignano and bought him a tunic or ‘gonnella’ from the cloth shop (apoteca) of Rainerio the Florentine. Despite his efforts to avoid paying, Gradalone was sentenced to return the sum of one gold bezant to Saraceno for his son’s debt.

The small quantities of cloth and gold recorded here and the sparse details regarding Rainerio’s activities do not provide anything like a comprehensive picture of the actual scale of the Florentine cloth trade in that region or the gold supply that might have originated from that business.⁵⁶ Moreover, if we rely on just this source, it is impossible to say what kind of cloth and in what proportion the Florentines were trading in the East, thus allowing them to acquire gold with the related profit. The cloth could have been either northern European high-quality coloured textiles or cheaper varieties of Florentine cloths, which constituted a significant component of the long-distance and ‘luxury’ trade of the time.⁵⁷

Nevertheless, this is an interesting document, as it shows that the Florentine presence in the Mediterranean region became increasingly organised in the early decades of the thirteenth century. Specifically, the merchants of Florence were not only conducting their business as ‘pseudo-Pisans’, exploiting the port of Pisa and its sea routes.⁵⁸ They also formed part of the community of Tuscan merchants from inland cities that resided with their goods in Pisan fondacos.⁵⁹ There, the Florentines submitted to the Pisan consul in charge so that they could enjoy the tax privileges and trade benefits (i.e., freedom from customs duties) normally granted to Pisan merchants in foreign trading centres. For the city of Pisa, the ‘collaboration’ with non-Pisans favoured the injection of new capital and expertise from specialist traders into its own business. For the city of Florence, the institutionalisation of its trade in Pisan fondacos provided its merchants with invaluable access to the Mediterranean, regulated and structured commerce, and cross-cultural interactions with the major trading centres overseas. In turn, this facilitated their economic affairs and eventually promoted the import of gold.⁶⁰ The extensive network of fondacos that Pisa had built since the mid-twelfth century – if not before – encompassing key centres such as Valencia and Denia (1150), Alexandria and Cairo (1154), Tunis (1157), Seville (1167), Tyre and Jaffa (1187), Béjaïa (late twelfth century), Messina (1232), Tripoli (1234), and Naples (1243), vividly illustrates the growing opportunities for the Florentines to engage with the Mediterranean gold trade while residing in those fondacos.

Further written evidence shows that, like Rainerio, other Florentines were running their business in the Mediterranean region. On 26 October 1225, Fiesco of Florence stipulated in Genoa a commenda contract with Aldana, widow of Bucuccio de Fossato, and Bonadonna, wife of Biagio Castagna, to trade in Tunis. Similar to the cambium maritimum mentioned above, the commenda consisted of a formal agreement between a stationary partner or investor (commendator) and a travelling agent (tractator) to trade overseas. The stationary partner would entrust the capital to the travelling agent, who would take it with him and trade abroad. At the end of the contract, the travelling agent would return to the city of departure and divide the profits with the investor. In the standard or ‘unilateral’ commenda, where the capital was supplied by the stationary partner only, that partner would receive three-quarters of the profit and would bear the risks of the loss of capital; the remaining one-quarter went to the travelling agent.⁶¹ This was also the case of the Florentine Fiesco (travelling agent), who received from Aldana and Bonadonna (stationary partners) £25 and £11 s. 14 d. 8, respectively, to purchase products in Tunis, although nothing is said about the goods involved.⁶² Tunis was also the commercial destination of a new mercantile company between the Florentine Lazario son of Bonagiunta Botto, Bonagiunta son of Rustichello Pistore de Laborante, Meliore son of Osilioto, and Bartolomeo Martini Arcolai of Lucca, which was created in Genoa on 21 June 1233.⁶³ In both cases, we cannot exclude that gold was among the goods traded: Tunis was one of the major port cities of the northern African coast that received Sudanese gold before it was shipped northwards to southern Europe.⁶⁴ The fact that the Florentines were trading there, possibly residing in the Pisan fondaco, could indicate that large quantities of gold for the future minting of the florin were coming from Tunis too. No wonder Villani set his anecdote on the early diffusion of the florin in that very city. This is what he wrote:

Despite Pera’s disparaging comments with their strong political connotations, the city of Pisa and its port continued to play a crucial role in the provision of gold for Florence. On Friday, 18 September 1243, the Florentine Brocardo son of Ricovero acknowledged that he owed Maffeo d’Afflitto of Scala (near Amalfi) the sum of £465 in denari of Lucca or Pisa for 100 ounces of gold of the weight of Naples, which he promised to pay in a week in the city of Pisa. Maffeo was to give these gold ounces to either Brocardo, his heirs, or whoever would be indicated by Brocardo, within a month of his arrival in Naples. It was specified that each ounce was worth £4 s. 13, giving the indicated price of £465. As a pledge, Maffeo promised Brocardo he would give him everything he bought with the aforesaid money (or for a similar amount), plus extra money out of his own pocket equal to the fourth part of the sum received. The risks of the venture to Naples (shipwrecks, pirate attacks, and so on) were to be borne by Brocardo himself. Additionally, mutual guarantees were established: if Brocardo did not pay that money, he would be fined £10 in denari of Lucca or Pisa. The guarantor who would then pay for any other reason on his behalf was a certain Accetate, son of the late Stefano.⁶⁶ Instead, if Maffeo did not collect the said sum in gold and did not give it to Brocardo, or he refused to perform the pledge as established, he would pay £10 in denari of Lucca or Pisa. Magister Rocchisciano was appointed as his guarantor for any other payment for whatever reason. The act was signed in the tower of Passavante, where the notary Ser Ciabatto operated in the years 1227–61.⁶⁷

At first glance, it is hard to say whether this document refers to the actual purchase of uncoined gold that the Florentine Brocardo supposedly bought from Maffeo. This is mainly due to the double meaning of the term ‘ounces’ in the Kingdom of Sicily. There, it could represent either a unit of weight for medieval goods, especially metals, or a unit of account in the local monetary system of ounces/taris/grains (o.t.gr.).⁶⁸ In the latter case, this source would be another example of a sea loan or cambium maritimum, in which the interest was possibly concealed within the value specified for each ounce or hidden in the penalties.

This vagueness of the term ‘ounces’ could apply to another document concerning the economic activities of another Florentine, a certain Soldano son of Guidone, operating in southern Italy. On 30 August 1238, in the city of Brindisi, Soldano paid 51½ gold ounces to Enrico Brodaiolo, a citizen of Lucca who had lent that sum to a certain Bartolomeo.⁶⁹ In this case, however, the fact that the source refers to a debt previously contracted by Enrico indicates that here, the term ‘ounces’ was used as a unit of account to express the sum due without any specification of the actual payment.⁷⁰ But for Brocardo and his business, there is evidence that raw gold was effectively being exchanged. The participation of a member of the d’Afflitto family is the first and most significant aspect to point in that direction.

The d’Afflitto were a rich and powerful Amalfitan family originally from the Pontone district of Scala (Amalfi Coast), who were prominent in the thirteenth-century economy and politics of the Kingdom of Sicily.⁷¹ They were not simply merchants or bankers, as the source seems to suggest. Already under the Hohenstaufen, but mainly during the reign of King Charles I, several members of the family were either acting as royal officials involved in the minting of money, tax farming, and public administration or had prestigious ecclesiastical careers as bishops.⁷² As regards minting in particular, we know that in 1266, Angelo and Costanzo d’Afflitto were the first mint-masters directly appointed by Charles to strike his new gold reale, half-reale, and taris in the cities of Barletta and Brindisi, respectively. Costanzo was appointed again at the mint of Brindisi in 1270, which was then administered by Orso in 1274, Bartolomeo in 1275, and Bernardo and Tommaso in 1280, all members of the d’Afflitto family. Orso was also the mint-master at Messina in 1278, where Stefano d’Afflitto had worked two years earlier as assayer, testing the fineness of the alloy of each parcel of bullion brought to the mint and of each new coin produced.⁷³ The importance of so many members of the d’Afflitto family in minting operations under Charles of Anjou, probably also due to their longstanding expertise in the market for precious metals, which formed the practical knowledge of a medieval mint-master, makes it very likely that Brocardo actually purchased raw gold from Maffeo d’Afflitto.

Further convincing evidence comes to light if we take a closer look at the writing style of the notary Ciabatto. Two elements in particular stand out: the first concerns the use of specific expressions in the guarantees established between Brocardo and Maffeo. Ciabatto employed terms such as ‘et quod aurum’, ‘pro predicto auro’, or ‘pretium auri’ to refer to the object of the commercial transaction, i.e., gold, instead of ‘pecunia’ or ‘pecunia mutuate’, literally ‘money’ or ‘money lent’, which are usually more frequent in his loan contracts.⁷⁴

The second and more compelling element relates to the specification regarding the monetary value of each ounce of gold, which is introduced by the Latin expression ‘ad rationem’. Ciabatto makes use of this construct in other acts within the same notarial register. On 2 March 1243, Bonviso of the late Banagiunta and Aldobrandino of the late Arrigo Martini were to pay a total amount of £97 s. 10 of denari parvi of Lucca to Uguiccione of the late Lanfranco Maghiario, for the purchase of 1½ centenarium or 150 pounds of wheat. In this case, too, Ciabatto adopted the formula ‘ad rationem’ to indicate the price of each centenarium, which he said was worth £65 at that time.⁷⁵ The same applies to two other large purchases of wheat that took place later that year: the first involving the same actors but occurring on 24 April, when the centenarium was worth £61, and the second between a certain Lutterio and the same Uguiccione on 29 April.⁷⁶

The employment of the construct ‘ad rationem’ in all these examples is not coincidental: when analysed together, they show that Ciabatto made use of this formula when large purchases of products typically sold by weight were recorded in his register. But this is the same expression that also appears in the transaction between Brocardo and Maffeo, as noted. On this basis, and following Ciabatto’s writing style, it is therefore safe to assume that those 100 ‘ounces’ of the weight of Naples did not correspond to units of account in the local monetary system of the Kingdom of Sicily but rather to units of weight in connection with the considerable amount of uncoined gold that was sold and purchased on that occasion. This makes this document one of the rarest attestations – if not the first – of a gold purchase made by a Florentine, Brocardo, in one of the most important Tuscan cities of the time, Lucca, less than ten years before the minting of the gold florin. Unfortunately, the lack of further detail prevents us from knowing exactly how and where the metal was used. Yet, this is also an interesting source for the relationships it describes. While further corroborating the centrality of Pisa and its port for the Florentine business in the Mediterranean, it also highlights the key role of the Kingdom of Sicily in the contemporary gold supply.

As seen, Messina might have hosted a Florentine settlement as early as the final decades of the twelfth century (1187), cloth from Florence was already circulating there (1237), and Florentine moneychangers were active in the Italian south (1238). The opening of a Florentine fondaco at Naples in 1243 – the same year as the source discussed above – further emphasises the increased importance of the merchant bankers of Florence in the southern Italian commerce and of the Kingdom of Sicily for the economic development of the Tuscan city. From those territories, gold could reach Tuscany and possibly Florence via the port of Pisa, along with other goods, such as wheat, to support the demographic expansion of the Florentine city. Given the existence of this link between Florence, Pisa, and the Kingdom of Sicily, one can also speculate that, when Emperor Frederick II died in 1250 and the production of gold augustales in his name decreased or even stopped, it probably became more convenient to sell some of the gold in the kingdom to foreign merchants, including the Florentines. This is quite possible, especially considering that, with their fondaco, the Florentines were a constant presence in the kingdom by the early 1240s.

By the mid-thirteenth century, however, another port city in northern Italy played an important role in the provision of gold for the city of Florence: Genoa. A final piece of evidence seems to confirm that it was also from there that the merchant bankers of Florence could have obtained – or at least attempted to obtain – the necessary gold for the production of the florin. On 13 September 1251, Genoa and Florence signed a five-year agreement. Florentine merchants were given, among other things, full right to travel by sea or inland throughout the Genoese territory under the protection of the commune of Genoa.⁷⁷ This treaty, a consequence of the contemporary clash with the mutual rival Pisa, is presented as a series of arrangements ranging from customs duties to trade routes. One of these states that:

This is a typical bullionist provision that Genoa included in the agreement to regulate the export of precious metals from its territory. According to the provision, the Florentines could export only minted gold, not bolçonalie and boçonagiam, two synonyms of ‘bullion’. Their meaning is clearly defined in the famous mercantile notebook of the Florentine Francesco Balducci Pegolotti (1290–1347):

The fact that the commune of Genoa needed to insert such a protectionist provision, specifically aimed at prohibiting the Florentines from taking possession of its raw gold, along with other precious metals, is interesting in two respects: not only does it suggest that episodes of this practice were quite common at the time, but it also seems to imply that, perhaps because of the frequency and economic damage those exports were causing, it was high time to put an end to them. In other words, the Genoese wanted to safeguard their gold reserves for the imminent striking of the genovino and prevent their yellow metal from disappearing to its future competitors’ minting. This makes the hypothesis of a mutual agreement between Genoa and Florence to mint gold coins even more unlikely, especially considering that no documentary evidence in support of this view survives.⁸⁰ That said, the measure adopted by the Genoese commune constitutes a final but indirect piece of evidence for the contemporary gold supply of the city of Florence and perhaps the most significant, as it dates to only a year before the introduction of the gold florin.

Know-how: recording, accounting, mining, and minting

Once the precious metal was collected, the city of Florence also needed technical expertise and the opportunity to turn that metal into an innovative and competitive currency on the money market. No one outside the mercantile class could have accomplished this task as efficiently. Unlike other social groups, the merchant bankers had the essential know-how and capacity to help Florence introduce its new gold coin. This section deals with the main features of that know-how; capacity is discussed in the next.

In the Middle Ages, the profits of a mint depended, among other things, on the numeracy of the officials in charge and on their ability to measure the weight and the fineness of the metal entering the mint, make the maximum profit from its processing, and run the bookkeeping efficiently.⁸¹ Numbers, accounts, technological skills, and experience with money and metals formed the expertise of a medieval mint-master. Yet, these were also the skills that merchants needed to be efficient in the market. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that mints were often entrusted to the management of merchant bankers in the late Middle Ages.⁸² This was certainly true for Florence and its mercantile class.

Florentine merchants would read, write, and study grammar, i.e., the rudiments of Latin, from age five to seven. When they were ten or eleven, they would attend an abacus school or scuola d’abaco, an elementary commercial school where they learned the basics of arithmetic and acquired information regarding the contemporary monetary system, loans, interests, and other techniques crucial for their future career in the business world.⁸³ More advanced skills, like accounting and foreign exchange operations, were not taught at school. Those would be learned on the job once school was over and the students started their apprenticeship at the age of thirteen or fourteen, usually in a branch office of a mercantile company, either a cloth shop or a bank office away from Florence. In their twenties, they could decide to either become branch managers or go into business themselves. Hence, it was during their teenage years that they would familiarise themselves with all the complexities of long-distance trade, such as trading commodities of different values, managing various monetary and measure systems, dealing with the myriad of coins in circulation, operating international monetary exchange, and above all, keeping accounts of commercial and financial transactions. The Florentines were particularly good at this.

The fragments of the 1211 account book previously discussed are a clear example of the level of financial sophistication that an ordinary company of Florence had already attained in accounting at that early stage. They show a complex set of methods for settling debts, either by off-sets between two clients or with the use of negotiable instruments, the origins of which could date back to the late twelfth century.⁸⁴ Moreover, as already noted, participation in long-distance trade would give those merchants the necessary knowledge and information about the quality of the different metals in circulation, and the dynamics of the contemporary metal market, especially considering that as early as 1200, the Florentines were already active in such a trade. For instance, on 21 November of that year, Martino of Florence acquired 160 ‘pieces’ of steel (‘cent. LX açaris de numero set non de peso’) in twenty-one bags from the Lucchese merchant Guglielmo Doloto in the city of Genoa.⁸⁵

Further documentary records show that the Florentines were also involved in activities such as mining and minting well before the opening of the mint in Florence and the introduction of the florin. In 1214, the bishop of Volterra, Pagano Pannocchieschi (1212–39), farmed out the running of the mint and mines of Montieri to the Florentine mercantile company of Raniero Remitti, Cambio Giugni, and Gundo and Remitto Ruggeri.⁸⁶ Once established, the company began to expand, raising the number of its members and enhancing its reputation. Four years later, on 9 June 1218, the judges Gerardo di Rinaldo da Prata and Usimbardo da Picchena put an end to a dispute between the bishop and several members of the company, addressed as ‘domini montis et monete de Monterio’, or ‘lords of the mount and the mint of Montieri’. Pagano was ordered to return to them, over the next three years, the sum of £12,000 of old denari of Pisa for all the money he and his predecessor and uncle, Bishop Ildebrando Pannocchieschi, had borrowed and never paid back.⁸⁷ To this end, two-thirds of all the revenues coming from the mines and the mint of Montieri, as well as from Pagano’s office, had to be allocated to the Florentine company; the full amount was returned on 7 July 1221.⁸⁸

Similarly, on 4 November 1243, at the siege of Viterbo, Emperor Frederick II, who was in need of money to fund his military campaign in northern Italy, granted the mint and the mines of Montieri to another Florentine merchant, a certain Bentivegna d’Ugolino, at the price of £11,000 of denari of Pisa for the duration of two years. Bentivegna, who also received imperial revenues from the villages of San Miniato, Fucecchio, and Val di Nievole, was ordered to mint silver miliarenses following the example of the ones produced in Pisa at that time (‘ad modum et formam que in Sicha Pisarum servatur’).⁸⁹

It is hard to say exactly how long those Florentines remained in charge of the mint or whether any coin was ever produced under their administration. Yet, these are interesting cases showing that, within the Florentine merchant class, there were already people with the proper skills and expertise to run a mint, almost twenty years before Florence started minting its own money. It cannot be ruled out that this early involvement in mining and minting worked as a training period for Florentine merchants in view of a new domestic monetary production.⁹⁰

Given all these aspects, ranging from a profound knowledge of and excellent skills with numbers, measures, coins, exchange rates, and accounts of all kinds to proven expertise in mining and minting, it is no wonder that the Florentine government tended to appoint its mint-masters from two of the seven major guilds or Arti Maggiori of the city, namely the Arte di Calimala and the Arte del Cambio, as noted. In this respect, one could also argue that the late opening of the mint around the mid-1230s did not represent a disadvantage for Florence but rather an advantage for innovation, pushing minting further. The longer exposure of those merchant bankers to the economic and financial world would allow them to gain more knowledge about the monetary issues and needs of the time, including the debasement of silver coins and the lack of a solid gold currency, and to understand the complications that could arise when producing innovative coins. This may also explain why, when they started minting money in their own city, the Florentines did not initially strike denari, namely petty coins for local circulation, but rather silver grossi and gold florins for larger and more important transactions.⁹¹

Unfortunately, the names of only a few mint-masters survive in the existing documentation up to the year 1303, when the entries in the mint register or Libro della Zecca become clearer and more accurate. The first mint-master for gold on record was Lamberto dell’Antella in 1252.⁹² Lamberto was a merchant registered in the Arte di Calimala in 1242. In 1253, one year after the alleged introduction of the florin, he was lending money to two Florentines in Genoa where, by the 1260s, he was well established with his fondaco to trade in cloth.⁹³ In the decades following the minting of the florin, he held political offices in Florence, such as Ghibelline councillor in 1260 and city prior representing the Calimala guild in 1283 and 1285.⁹⁴ He was thus not merely a businessman but a politician too. Similar involvement in the politics of the city of Florence also characterised the lives of the few other mint-masters documented, such as Guido Cambi Falconieri and Tedicio Mannelli in 1280 (semester I), and Coppo Giuseppi and Ticio Manovelli in 1286 (semester I).⁹⁵

The Falconieri were a family of merchants enrolled in the Arte di Calimala from 1235. Guido Cambi Falconieri was twice appointed its consul in 1278 and 1281, while in 1278, he was also one of the advisors or consiglieri of the commune.⁹⁶ Coppo Giuseppi corresponded with Coppo di Giuseppe Caniginiani, whose participation in the commune’s politics seems more significant than Guido’s. The Canigiani family appeared in the Arte di Calimala from 1237 and was particularly active in trade and banking activities. Yet, before and after his experience at the mint, Coppo held prominent positions in the city government. He became prior five times between 1282 and 1295, as well as sindacus for the Guelph party in 1285, consul of the Arte di Calimala in 1289, and camerarius of the commune in 1290.⁹⁷ As for Tedicio Mannelli and Ticio Manovelli, these two names may refer to the same person, namely Tedice di Manovello, who was prior of the commune five times and a member of the Arte del Cambio, for which he was also consul.⁹⁸

If, as noted, the decision to rely on merchants for the administration of the local mint was a habit common to many other Italian and European cities in general, in the case of Florence, the participation of the mint-masters in the politics of the commune represented a crucial aspect, telling us much about the capacity of Florentine merchants to promote the minting of the florin and its early diffusion, as will be explained in the following and final section.

Capacity: politics and networks

The fact that merchants oversaw the Florentine mint would in itself be sufficient to explain their capacity, by which I mean the authority and power to introduce the florin and put it into circulation. Yet, the mint-masters were simply the executors of monetary policies that were normally discussed and decided by the local governments. This is particularly true for the majority of mints in the late Middle Ages when, following the experience of the communes, many cities introduced the practice of farming out the local mint to a group of entrepreneurs, usually coming from outside the local area.⁹⁹ Florentines, for example, achieved great success as mint-masters throughout Europe in the years following the minting of the florin.¹⁰⁰ Yet, Florence itself was an exception to this practice.

The Florentine mint was one of the few medieval mints that was always and entirely administered by the local authority and not contracted to foreign merchants.¹⁰¹ The local government decided the city’s monetary policy and pursued its plans by directly administering the mint and recruiting its official from within the city. As previously seen, the florin was the result of the choice of the Primo Popolo and thus an expression of Florence’s new political condition. Yet, the Popolo was also responsible for an important change in internal politics. A large number of its members were, in fact, merchants, bankers, and entrepreneurs from the guilds of Calimala, Por Santa Maria, Cambio, and della Lana. Up to that point, none of them had played leading roles in the Florentine political scene.¹⁰² The majority of the people forming the ruling group of the city council of elders or Anziani were also newcomers to the public life of Florence.¹⁰³ While not formalised, there might have been a tendency to exclude members of the old aristocracy.¹⁰⁴

Under these circumstances, if the merchants were running the mint that produced the gold florin, and the mint was under the direct authority of the Primo Popolo, which in turn was formed by the new members of the mercantile society (including the mint-masters), then it is safe to argue that in these very years, the mint, both as physical building and public institution, represented an asset of economic and political power in the hands of the Florentine mercantile class. From this perspective, the florin acquires a new dimension: not only did it function as an expression of the city’s autonomy and new identity, governed by the Primo Popolo, but also as a vehicle for the self-representation of the ruling mercantile class.¹⁰⁵ Several elements related to both its iconography and materiality support this view.

Traditionally acknowledged as the patron saint of the city, St John the Baptist was also the protector of the Arte di Calimala.¹⁰⁶ According to Giovanni Villani, from the mid-twelfth century, that guild was responsible for the upkeep of the Baptistry of Saint John, the spiritual and symbolic centre of medieval Florence. More precisely, Villani wrote that in 1150, its consuls financed the construction of the lantern on the top of the sacred building.¹⁰⁷ This assertion, which anticipates the first appearance of the Calimala guild in the surviving documentation of Florence (i.e., 1182) by several decades, is difficult to prove. Documentary evidence from 1216, however, mentions an agreement between the local ecclesiastical authority and the Calimala guild that, from then on, the guild would run the Baptistry workshop known as Opera di San Giovanni.¹⁰⁸ The relationship between the saint and the guild, as well as its chronology, are quite significant. They offer a different perspective from which to reconsider the choice to depict first the bust and then the standing and blessing figure of the Baptist on the earliest Florentine coins ever produced, the silver grosso (c. 1236) and the gold florin, respectively. This may even have occurred at the suggestion of the members of the Calimala guild, who were running both the mint and the local government in the mid-thirteenth century.

As for the lily, whose origins as a symbol of Florence seem to date back to the eleventh century, its bond with the ruling mercantile elite harks back to the episode of the expulsion of the Ghibellines, who conspired against the new commune in 1251. Following this event, both the Popolo and the Guelphs decided to change the old symbol of the city, namely a white lily on a red field, which was also used by the emperor’s supporters, to adopt a red lily on a white field, which still forms the modern coat of arms of Florence.¹⁰⁹

The unique fineness of the florin and its vernacular name fiorino may also be expressions of the ideology of the Primo Popolo. Scholars have shown how the myth of ancient Rome and its greatness was a central and recurrent theme in the imagery of contemporary Florentine society.¹¹⁰ In the earliest available civic chronicles, namely the anonymous Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, probably composed around 1228, and the Gesta Florentinorum written by Senzanome no later than 1245, Florence was presented as a new Rome, just as Dante would do in his Convivio roughly eighty years later.¹¹¹ Once in power, the Primo Popolo built its new identity around the same myth.

The now famous and still extant dedication inscription that the ruling group affixed to the west wall of the Palazzo del Popolo in 1255 not only explicitly compares Florence to Rome but also calls it a worthy heir destined to renew its ancient glory.¹¹² With this in mind, and considering that 24 carats were also the standard fineness of the Roman aureus, the gold coin of ancient Rome par excellence, the florin thus appears as an ideological carrier of the Florentine mercantile elite, i.e., a new gold aureus for a new Rome. This is also supported by the choice of translating florenus, the Latin name for the gold florin and Florentine coins more generally, with the vernacular fiorino.

In a study on the construction of Florentine identity in the first half of the thirteenth century, Enrico Faini pointed out that florenus bears a remarkable resemblance to Florinus, the Roman consul and eponymous hero that, according to the aforesaid civic chronicles, was killed in the battle against Fiesole, and on the site of whose death Florence was built. Faini also recognised that, despite the different spelling in Latin, both terms were later rendered in the vernacular with the same noun fiorino. Evidence of such a practice can be found, albeit years later, in Villani’s chronicle, one of the first vernacular texts to narrate both the mythical origins of Florence and the birth of the gold florin. Fiorino is the name adopted in the text to indicate both the hero – but with a capital initial – and the coin.¹¹³ Despite the clear overlap, however, Faini was hesitant to establish a direct link between the myth and the coin.¹¹⁴ Yet, the very use of the same vernacular term for both Latin names seems to corroborate this connection.

Indeed, from a purely linguistic point of view, the Latin long vowel /ē/ in florenus should have been retained in the passage to the Tuscan dialect, so the result would have been fioreno instead of fiorino.¹¹⁵ The fact that this phonetic rule was not observed might suggest that historical, cultural, and political reasons, not necessarily linguistic, could have influenced the transition from florenus to fiorino, or in other words, its ‘vernacularization’, a phenomenon ‘antagonistic to the humanist movement and its philological approach to texts’.¹¹⁶ Thus, the desire of the Primo Popolo to preserve, celebrate, and perpetuate through Florentine coinage the memory of Florence’s mythical origins and its greatness as a new Rome, while building the emerging identity and reinforcing the political leadership of the new ruling group, could be a valid argument. The diffusion of the vernacular term fiorini for Florentine gold florins as early as the 1260s, that is, just a few years after their first minting and during the rule of the Popolo, would also support this view.¹¹⁷

Against this background, we can therefore read the images on the florin on two different levels. Beyond the mercantile class, these would represent the symbols of the city of Florence, especially the lily. An analysis of the vocabulary used in the sources mentioning gold florins in the Diplomatico collection of the State Archives of Florence, for instance, shows that notaries used to refer to the lily when describing the gold coins; none of them mention the Baptist. Recurrent expressions were ‘florenos de auro ad gilium ad rectum pondus et conium florentinum’ (‘florins of gold with a lily and of the right Florentine weight and dies’) or ‘florenos aureos boni et puri et expendibilis cum lilio’ (‘good, pure and expendable gold florins with a lily’). It is likely that in the hustle and bustle of daily business, it was much easier for people to refer to the lily to denote Florentine florins, probably also because it was a more recognisable and less complex image compared to that of the patron saint.

Yet within the ruling mercantile class, particularly among the Calimala guild members, those images would appear as clear expressions of group identity and ideology, symbols of self-representation. As an economic and political instrument in the hands of the Popolo, it is not surprising that the earliest documented references to gold florins appear in payments directly involving the mercantile elite in power, as in the cases of Gherardo dei Denti da Correggio (1258) and Manfred (1259).

This is part of the final aspect of the capacity of the merchants of Florence: their ability to create networks of circulation for the florin within their economic and political circles. In 1259, for example, the Florentine merchants Conterio and Burgense paid an unspecified amount of ‘denariis aureis de Thoscana’, namely gold coins of Tuscany, thus including florins and grossi d’oro of Lucca – the only gold coins minted in that region at that time – for a load of barley moving from Genoa to Pisa.¹¹⁸ Florins were also circulating at the Champagne Fairs and in Alexandria before the 1270s as a result of Florentine commercial activity there. However, if the use of gold florins in long-distance trade is well-known among scholars, its diffusion in political circles remains unclear. This aspect will be explored in the following chapters.

As a final remark, it is interesting to note the rapid diffusion of the florin in the very earliest years following its introduction (i.e., 1258–59), which is symptomatic of the almost immediate but growing success of this currency and of the Florentine monetary standards in general. When, in 1259, the commune of Perugia commissioned two Lucchese merchants to open a mint, they were instructed to strike gold, silver, and billon coins to the standards of the Florentine florin, the Sienese grossi, and the denari of Siena, respectively. The very fact that the florin already represented a benchmark for potential gold coins only seven years after its reported minting is a clear indication of its contemporary reputation. And there is more. In January 1260, the commune of Perugia ordered a committee of consuls of the local guilds of merchants and moneychangers to ratify the contract with the two Lucchesi. Most of the previous conditions were approved, except for the minting of the new silver grossi: those had to be minted to the standard of the grossi of Florence and no longer to that of the grossi of Siena. In other words, Perugia’s new gold and silver coins were based on Florentine models.¹¹⁹ This change did not entail any major variation in terms of metal content for the new grossi of Perugia. Instead, this disposition was dictated primarily by the growing contemporary importance of the city of Florence, its politics, and economics, and thus of the gold florin, its natural extension.

Conclusions

This chapter set out to provide a more rounded picture of the contribution of the Florentine mercantile class to the introduction of the florin. As illustrated, the new gold coin was not solely the result of a request by the merchants to the city government, as narrated by Giovanni Villani. Besides being too distant in time and written for propaganda purposes, his chronicle provides only a truncated and rather simplistic image of the birth of the florin. Not a word is spent on crucial aspects in the process of making the new coin, including the provision of gold and the routes taken by the yellow metal to reach Florence, where it was accumulated and eventually minted. In the absence of solid archaeological evidence and consistent quantitative data, however, the qualitative analysis of scattered sources documenting the commercial and financial activities of the Florentines from the second half of the twelfth century onwards has shed new light on aspects hitherto only partially addressed in the literature.

The gold for striking the florin came, in the first instance, from the long-distance trade that extended from the Champagne Fairs, where precious metals were being exchanged, to the territories of North Africa and the Middle East. The Florentines ensured a growing presence in both destinations of this commercial axis. In particular, in the Mediterranean, not only did they trade under the Pisan flag of convenience to avoid customs duties, but they also began to reside in Pisan fondacos located in the major port cities of the region, where they could have better access to the gold market. Although poor in number, the documented cases have shown on more than one occasion, the close connection between the yellow metal – even if only in the form of Arabic coins – and the Florentine cloth trade. However, the episodes of archbishop Engelbert and those of the commenda contracts and the merchant company agreement concluded in Genoa suggest that the financial operations carried out by its merchant bankers offered the city of Florence another source of gold.

The obvious limitations of these written sources make it impossible to establish the volumes of gold collected in one way or another. It is also difficult, and perhaps unnecessary, to try to explain such a lack of information regarding the gold trade. A number of factors may have caused it. For instance, secrecy was a predominant feature of the work in the mint. In various contexts over the centuries, mint-masters had to promise under oath to strike good coins without revealing any information about their activities to the outside world. In return, the issuing authority granted them a whole series of fiscal and military exemptions. Thus, as a kind of protective measure for the mint’s work and profit, what happened inside its walls had to stay there.¹²⁰ It is fascinating – and somewhat naïve – to think that the same applied to the economic transactions of merchants involved in the gold trade, who avoided writing about it to protect their sources and income. That said, the usual suspects are most likely to blame, particularly the poor preservation of medieval sources and the loss of archival documentation through the centuries.

Once collected, gold took several different routes to reach Florence. The Lucchese document of 1243, one of the rarest if not the first attested purchase of gold involving a Florentine, emphasises the importance of maritime routes and, more specifically, of the sea trade with Naples and the Kingdom of Sicily for the provision of the precious metal. It also offers a snapshot of the kind of economic and social network around which that trade orbited. From the southern Italian city, the yellow metal was brought to Pisa by sea, and from there, it could reach Lucca, Florence, or any other destination either by land or going up the river Arno.¹²¹ Like Naples and Pisa, however, another port city of the time, Genoa, played a part in the Florentine gold supply, and probably a significant one if, a year before the minting of its genovino, the Ligurian city decided to introduce a protectionist measure to prevent the depletion of its resources of precious metals.

In Florence, it was when the need for a new gold coin met the numerical and accounting skills of the members of the urban mercantile society, together with their deep familiarity and knowledge of currencies, measures, and markets, and time-tested expertise in mining and minting, that the idea of the florin was first conceived and then realised with the imported metal. The right moment for its introduction, however, came when the Florentine merchants also acquired political power and authority within the urban walls and became responsible for the city government at the time of the Primo Popolo.

Against this background, therefore, the florin represented a ‘merchant currency’ in all respects, that is, the end product of the financial activities of the mercantile elite and a manifestation of its political autonomy and identity through its chosen iconography – and perhaps its name. Nevertheless, it was not only thanks to Florence and its merchants that the florin achieved such a rapid and long-lasting success.