The thirteenth century represented a crucial moment for the Holy See in its definition and deployment of a centralised financial system that fostered the movement of money and the development of capital transactions at an international level.¹ The origins of this phenomenon can be traced back to the history of the financing of the crusades in Italy, which is ‘at its widest, the history of papal finance generally in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, as Norman Housley put it.²

In the final years of the twelfth century, the papacy began to levy special and extraordinary income taxes to render pecuniary assistance to the crusaders fighting the infidels in the Holy Land. While originally conceived as a temporary and extraordinary measure, papal income taxes soon proved to be an asset for the finances of the papal court, which did not hesitate to rely on them on many subsequent occasions and not solely for the crusades. In 1228, Pope Gregory IX (1227–41) asked the clergy of the ecclesiastical provinces not controlled by Emperor Frederick II to grant him a tenth of their revenues to raise an army against the Swabian, who had invaded the papal territories.³ According to William E. Lunt, this was the first time a tithe was levied for a purpose other than a crusade.⁴ The episode set a precedent, and from that moment on, the collection of the tithe became the standard way for the Catholic Church to fund either the crusades or its policy of expansion throughout the thirteenth century.⁵

To properly administer the flow of money moving from the periphery of the Christian world to the Apostolic Chamber (Camera Apostolica), i.e., the papal treasury in Rome, the papacy had to introduce new measures into its fiscal system. By the end of the twelfth century, operations such as the transfer of papal funds and the safeguarding of deposits began to be delegated more frequently to merchant bankers of different Italian cities and less to the knightly orders of the Templars and Hospitallers, which had previously been responsible for those matters. They possessed an organisational structure that encouraged the conveyance and protection of substantial sums of money, although fighting remained their main activity.⁶

The Holy See’s economic relations with the Italian mercantile companies in the thirteenth century have been the object of a fair number of studies, although some of them are now quite dated.⁷ The majority are mainly concerned with the development of these relations, their mutual benefits and political implications, as well as their effect on the economy of the time. Yet, from a monetary perspective, they largely fail to assess the beneficial effects that the papacy, with its financial system and wide network of merchant bankers, brought to the diffusion of contemporary innovations, including the gold florin of Florence.

So far, the circulation of the Florentine coin in the finances of the papal court has only been partly examined by John Day.⁸ Day offered a systematic and statistical account of the coins paid to the collectors of the tithe of 1296 in the dioceses of Tuscany as part of the three triennial tithes ordered by Pope Boniface VIII in 1295–1304.⁹ His research revealed that by the end of the century, the florin had made up almost 40 per cent of the total value of the tithe collected on that occasion. Yet, Day’s analysis focused on a chronological period, the 1290s, when the adoption of the florin in several milieus had already occurred. In other words, his findings add little to discussions on the dynamics that led the Florentine gold coin to achieve such a strong presence in papal finances, the possible role played by the papacy in the rise of that currency, and the extent to which the florin represented an asset for the political projects of the popes.

This chapter aims to answer these questions by investigating the diffusion of the florin in the financial system of the papal court in the early decades following its introduction. It opens with an overview of the relations between the popes and the merchant bankers of Florence to show that for most of the century, the Florentines did not enjoy any privileged position but were just one group of the many Italian merchant bankers providing similar financial services to the papal court. Being appointed mercatores papae in the early 1260s certainly boosted their efforts to monopolise or at least get hold of significant chunks of papal business and finance; this in turn helped promote the spread of the florin. Yet, it was only under the pontificate of Boniface VIII that the gold coin came to act as a ‘unique selling proposition’ enabling the Florentine merchant bankers to outcompete other companies and gain almost full control of papal finances.

Nevertheless, the analysis of a remarkable set of hitherto neglected registers in the Collectoriae series of the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano covering the first four years (1274–78) of the collection of the sexennial tithe of Pope Gregory X in southern Italy proves that the florin was already being extensively collected in those territories, representing one-third of the total value of the tithe, with no significant rivals among the other gold, silver, and billon coins documented in the registers. This significant employment of the florin in papal collections in the early years of its life is a completely new aspect,¹⁰ which does not seem to have depended on a direct order coming from the popes.

Finally, the study of papal expenditure related to the tithe money will shed new light on the mutual contributions and benefits of the papacy and the florin. While the papacy significantly enhanced the diffusion of the florin by adopting the currency to finance its major political projects, the florin acted as both an economic tool and a political instrument through which the popes could project their power and assert their authority.

The papacy and the Florentine merchant bankers

The earliest references to merchants of Florence pursuing their interests in Rome date back to the last decades of the twelfth and the early years of the thirteenth century. Pierre Toubert claimed that Florentines were already performing banking activities with the papacy as early as 1177.¹¹ In 1193, the Florentine Rainuncino Tedaldini was recorded in the palatio sancti Adriani in Rome, acting as a witness in a dispute between Gregorio, abbot of the monastery of Passignano (Florence), and two merchants of Siena regarding certain cloths the abbot had acquired from them but never paid for.¹² Given the object of the dispute, Robert Davidsohn regarded Rainuncino as another merchant.¹³ In 1204, Tinioso Lamberti, consul of the oft-mentioned Arte del Cambio, was sent to appease Pope Innocent III regarding the dispute between the city of Florence and the bishop of Fiesole.¹⁴ The appointment of guild consuls as civic emissaries to carry out diplomatic actions was a common habit at that time, not necessarily an effect of a special relationship between Florence, its merchant bankers, and the popes. And while these three cases suggest an early Florentine involvement in the economic network of the papacy, the sporadic references in the extant documentation do not demonstrate how close and strong those ties were at that stage.

In the first quarter of the thirteenth century, the recourse of the papal court to Florentine merchants became more frequent. In 1219, under the pontificate of Honorius III, Arengerio of Florence was entrusted by the papal Camerlengo, namely, the official appointed to administer the revenues of the Holy See, to collect the tributes from the castles of Carpi and Monte Baranzone that the commune of Modena owed to the papacy.¹⁵ In the same year, the Florentines Gualtero Manerio and Angelo Cathelino were mentioned together with a group of Roman merchants and a Jewish one in a dispute over a loan originally contracted at the Roman Curia in favour of Walter, bishop of Chartres, which had not yet been repaid.¹⁶ A similar partnership is also documented a few years later, in 1224, when Godfrey of Crowcombe and Stephen de Lucy, ambassadors of the English Crown, borrowed 500 marks from Giovanni Gualfredi of Florence and Giovanni Nicolai of Rome at the papal court.¹⁷ In 1226, it was the king himself, Henry III of England, who ordered his treasurers to return the amount of 90 marks to Manerio Dedy, Guascone, Mannello, and Cambio, four merchants of Florence who operated in his kingdom, for certain loans their associates had granted at the Roman Curia to his representative, Master Philip of Hadham.¹⁸

It was in these same years that the merchants of Florence began to collect and transfer funds for the papacy while operating at the Holy See, as well as to exchange money or lend it to clerics or rulers in need. Yet, they were not alone in this. The same services were also being performed by many other merchants from different Italian cities, whose relations with the Holy See were more fluid and less structured than they would become in the second half of the century.¹⁹ In the registers of Pope Honorius III, for instance, there are several references to merchants of Pavia, Lucca, and Siena associated with the Romans in similar money-lending business.²⁰ The Florentines were just one of those groups and one of the poorer documented, presumably due to their lesser importance. Up to the 1240s–50s, the largest number of transactions remained in the hands of a few companies of Rome, joined in the 1230s by merchant bankers from Siena. Indeed, as they were all from Rome or the surrounding area, it is not surprising that the popes from Clement III (1187–91) to Gregory IX (1227–41) preferred to do business with their fellow citizens.²¹

Although documented, the companies of Florence continued to play a minor role under the pontificate of Gregory IX. On 3 February 1234, the Florentine Teobaldo stood with the Roman brothers Ottone and Stefano Mannetti, his commercial partners, against another member of the mercantile company, a certain Tinioso, who had depleted all the shared capital by contracting debts in England, France, and Rome.²² On 22 December of the same year, Uberto, Guglielmo Clarissimi, Salvio, Scaltano, and other mercatores of Florence were responsible for a loan of more than 1,000 marks sterling given to the bishop of Glasgow with the authorisation of the papal court.²³ In 1241, other Florentines loaned 40 marks sterling to Milone, canon of the diocese of Orange (France), for the costs of an inquisitorial proceeding (‘pro negotio inquisitionis’) he was pursuing against the bishop of the same diocese.²⁴

It is incorrect to consider these and other operations between merchants of Florence and the papal court as the result of any privileged relationship. At this stage, no Florentine merchant had yet been granted the official title of campsor domini papae, literally ‘exchanger of the lord pope’.²⁵ These were professional merchant bankers engaged in all aspects of the contemporary money exchange and trade, directly appointed by the pope to carry out specific assignments of different durations, including loans to prelates at the papal court, the collection and transfer of funds from other territories to Rome, or the exchange of money at the request of the Apostolic Chamber.²⁶ They operated on behalf and in the employ of the papal court but were not part of its organisation. For these years, archival sources record only Sienese or Roman merchants in this role, such as Angelerio Angiolieri, also called ‘Solaficus’ (1228–29), Montanino (1233), Raynucius (1239) of Siena, and the Roman Bobo of Giovanni Bobone (1232).²⁷ Except for these individuals, the only ones who managed to establish a personal and privileged bond with the popes, the papacy continued to rely on a number of different companies from a wide range of Italian cities; Florence was just one among many.²⁸

William E. Lunt speculated that some merchants of Florence were acting as papal agents as early as 1233.²⁹ On that occasion, King Henry III of England ordered his treasury to pay 1,000 marks to the Florentine Bonaccorso Ingelesk (sic), Aimerio Cosse, and their partners for the royal tribute due to the papal court.³⁰ However, while transporting papal revenues from England was a task normally entrusted to the pope’s campsores, the lack of the specific title in the official documentation does not seem to support Lunt’s thesis. Other factors may have influenced the papal decision to rely on Florentine merchants for that business. Certainly, the well-documented position of power occupied by the Florentine companies in England at that time would justify their participation. For example, members of the Scali, dal Borgo, and Pulci-Rimbertini companies had been operating there since the early 1220s as both wool traders and creditors of the English Crown.³¹ In the eyes of the papal court, Florentine companies involved in the economic and financial affairs of the English kingdom would therefore have offered the best deals, terms, and conditions, having a competitive advantage in handling payment transactions to and from those territories. Thus, for its own gain, the Holy See considered it more convenient to rely, in this particular case, on those merchants rather than its own campsores. The same dynamic also applied to the Sicilian business of Pope Alexander IV (1254–61) and King Henry III in the 1250s, as will be discussed below.

On occasion, however, Pope Gregory IX took direct action to protect and promote the interests of the merchant bankers of Florence. In September 1235, at the request of Florentines lending money in France, he prohibited the four-year deferment of payment granted by crusade preachers to debtors that joined the holy army, as these deferments made it impossible for the merchants of Florence to recover their money in a reasonable time.³² In the same month, Gregory entrusted the abbot of St Geneviève in Paris with the protection of the merchants of Florence operating at the Champagne Fairs by ordering that, in the dioceses of Paris, Meaux, Châlons, and Langres, the Florentines could only be put on trial by means of papal letters.³³ In November, the same privilege was granted to some merchants of Siena in the dioceses of Sens, Troyes, and Langres and then again to other Florentines in the dioceses of Rheims, Arras, and Paris.³⁴ The fact that merchants of Siena and Florence were enjoying equal benefits might be seen as evidence of the latter’s growing importance in their relationship with the papacy. This seems to be confirmed by the special measures that the pope adopted two years later exclusively for the Florentines in France, acting almost like an informal overlord.

In February 1237, Gregory sent his secretary Benedetto de Guarcino to France to require the payment of all the debts that clergymen, laymen, and crusaders contracted with the companies of Florence.³⁵ The order came after several Florentines had gone bankrupt owing to the significant sums of money that had been borrowed from them and never repaid. To guarantee their reimbursement, the pope also appealed to Louis IX, King of France (1226–70), his bailiffs, and Theobald I, King of Navarre (1234–53) and Count of Champagne, where the Florentines then had a strong presence.³⁶ His initial request did not have the desired effect, so Gregory was forced to write again to those authorities a year later, in 1238, at which point the Florentines finally got their money back.³⁷

Under the pontificate of Innocent IV (1241–55), references to Florentine merchants within the papal registers grow in number, and from 1243, they appear to offer loans to clergy all around Europe. Papal letters document transactions with the dioceses of Cambrai (1243), Utrecht (1246), Poitiers (1248), Palencia (1249), Lyon and Cologne (1250), and York and Cordoba (1253).³⁸ The contemporary decline of the merchant bankers of Rome significantly contributed to this result. In the 1240s, many of the Roman families previously involved in the financial market of the time lost their status, prestige, and power, and thus their relations with the papal court. As Marco Vendittelli points out, this was probably also due to the lack of support that the previous popes, Innocent III, Honorius III, and Gregory IX, all of Roman origin, had granted to the merchant bankers of their hometown, who were now unable to exercise direct control over the economic life of the city due to the internal crisis between its political parties.³⁹ This situation inevitably led to a higher level of involvement of Tuscan merchant bankers. The Magna Tavola of Orlando Bonsignori of Siena, the campsores domini pape par excellence, also called mercatores camere or mercatores domini pape from the 1260s, retained the monopoly of the financial operations of the papal court, but soon the companies from Florence began to rise in importance.⁴⁰

The first qualitative leap in their relations with the papacy occurred in the 1250s. Under Alexander IV (1254–61), the Dal Borgo, the Scali, the Ghiberti-Bellindotti, and the Pulci-Rimbertini companies provided extensive loans to Henry III of England for the conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily, alongside the Sienese Bonsignori.⁴¹ In this case, too, the decision of the papacy to rely on the Florentine companies primarily depended on the long records of financial relations that those firms – and similarly, the Bonsignori of Siena – already had with the English Crown. This time, however, the Florentines found themselves playing a more significant role, directly appointed to control the entire flow of capital that took place around the Sicilian venture of the English king. At the request of the pope, they anticipated significant loans to the monarchy on the promise of being repaid with the revenues of the special tithe that Pope Alexander established to fund Henry’s military efforts.⁴² This episode marked the first massive involvement of companies of Florence in papal financial operations but was rather unfortunate, as the military expedition never took place, not least due to the internal political crisis involving the king and his barons.

A second key moment in the participation of Florentine merchants in the financial affairs of the papacy occurred a few years later, under the pontificates of Urban IV (1261–64) and Clement IV (1265–68) when the papacy supported Charles of Anjou’s victorious campaign against Manfred. On that occasion, the companies of Florence were able to establish strong and direct ties with both the Angevin Crown and the Holy See, especially at the expense of Sienese merchants, as noted. In return, not only did they obtain from the new king a whole series of tax exemptions and benefits to trade in southern Italy, but many Florentine companies in business with the Holy See, such as the Pulci-Rimbertini, the Scali, the Mozzi, the Frescobaldi, the Cerchi, and the Bardi, were also granted the privileged status of ‘mercatores camere’, resulting in greater involvement in papal affairs. This title, however, was also attributed to the Riccardi, the Battosi, and the Cardellini of Lucca, and to the Ammannati and the Chiarenti of Pistoia.⁴³ Under Pope Gregory X (1271–76), the Scotti of Piacenza also joined this cohort of companies. Just like the Florentines, all these firms offered financial assistance to the popes, albeit to varying degrees and at different times, but equally sharing risks and without holding a monopoly on any transaction. This was the policy of the Holy See until the last decade of the century when it abruptly changed after the election of Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303).⁴⁴

Unlike all his predecessors, Boniface assigned the full administration of papal finances to just three companies, which acted as official treasurers of the papacy: the Spini and the Mozzi of Florence, and the Chiarenti of Pistoia. According to Robert Davidsohn and, more recently, Armand Jamme, it is only from this moment onward, that is, when the Florentines finally outnumbered the firms of other cities, that one can rightly speak of the ‘Florentinisation’ of the mercantile companies in the service of the papacy.⁴⁵

Indeed, interpersonal relations and political alliances between the pope and those firms played a pivotal role in Boniface’s decision. The Spini, for instance, were the leaders of the Florentine Black Guelphs’ party supported by the pope, while the Chiarenti had been serving him since he was a cardinal at Anagni.⁴⁶ Yet, it is hard to believe that the economic situation of the time, and more precisely, the contemporary fall of two of the most powerful companies of the period, the Bonsignori of Siena and the Ricciardi of Lucca, direct competitors of the Florentine firms at the Holy See, played a minor role.

During the 1290s, the outbreak of new wars, such as the conflict between King Philip IV of France and King Edward I of England and the Aragonese-Angevin war in southern Italy, suddenly generated an urgent need for large sums of money. Neither the Bonsignori nor the Ricciardi were able to meet the growing demand for loans while simultaneously returning all their deposits to their customers, including the papacy.⁴⁷ Due to the severe liquidity crisis affecting their finances, both companies soon went bankrupt. Boniface’s ultimate decision to limit his financial relations to just three banking companies may thus also have been dictated by the need for stability in the papal financial system. As Ignazio del Punta convincingly pointed out, the choice fell on the Mozzi, the Spini, and the Chiarenti, quite possibly because these firms had previously been less involved in heavy loans to political and ecclesiastical authorities. This, in return, would have made them ‘more reliable and more solid’ in the eyes of the pope.⁴⁸

Against this backdrop, the very fact that the Florentines could rely on the gold florin might have eventually tipped the balance of the pope’s decision firmly towards them. At that time, the florin represented one of the most stable and reliable gold coins in circulation, challenged only by the Venetian ducat minted from 1285 onward. As seen above, the Florentine currency was also already well-established in several milieus, including long-distance commerce and war markets, acting both as actual coin and money of account. As emphasised by Gino Arias, moreover, one must not forget that, as the makers of the florin, the Florentines could adjust its value on the market if necessary and sell it at a lower price than other firms in the event the pope asked for the coin.⁴⁹ For all these reasons, it is therefore very likely that the florin, by acting as what in today’s economic jargon is called a ‘unique selling proposition’, that is, the crucial factor that differentiated the Florentines from any other competitor and enabled them to win the existing competition ahead of the other companies, increased the creditworthiness of Florentine companies and added value to the pope’s choice.

Unfortunately, the lack of documentation makes it impossible to establish which one of these reasons, whether economic, political, or interpersonal, was given the most weight in Boniface’s final decision. Assuming that the florin did actually play an important role in his choice, none of this would have been possible if the papacy were not already familiar with the coin, its features, and its advantages. The following analysis of the movement of capital around the papal court generated by the collection of the sexennial tithe of 1274, here covering part of the Kingdom of Sicily, offers a clear picture of the spread of the florin through papal finances. It shows that, at least in southern Italy, the florin was the most prevalent coin used to cover the largest portion of the value of the tithe collected by the papal agents. Before proceeding, however, a brief overview of the tithe, its importance in the financial system of the thirteenth-century Curia, and of the primary sources used in the following analysis will be presented.

The tithe in the papal finances of the thirteenth century

The clerical tenth or tithe was a special income tax levied by the papal court on the revenues of all clergy and, in theory, corresponded to one-tenth of the value of their annual revenues. Linked with the monetary needs of the crusades, the tenth was paid for religious purposes and under ecclesiastical obligations. The first pope to levy an income tax of this kind to provide a more solid financial basis to the imminent Fourth Crusade (1204) was Innocent III (1198–1216) with his fortieth of 1199.⁵⁰ This tax was assessed by the payers, and its collection was entrusted to local bishops, who were expected to deliver the money to local crusaders or directly to the Holy Land. This use of income taxes was not entirely new, as something similar already existed among the lay rulers of the time. In 1147, King Louis VII of France decreed a special tax on all his subjects, both lay and religious, in support of the Second Crusade. In 1188–89, both King Henry II of England and King Philip II of France ordered their subjects to pay a one-tenth tax assessed by the dioceses and known as the ‘Saladin tithe’ for the preparation of a new crusade after the capture of Jerusalem by the Muslim army (1187). Conversely, in 1199, Pope Innocent III introduced a new form of taxation that, despite the secular antecedents, ‘was imposed solely by the will of the pope and paid by the clerical estate only’.⁵¹

The combination of tithes and crusades continued to prove its worth throughout the thirteenth century. The success of this formula was also due to the popes’ ability to present their monetary needs in terms of holy wars for the defence of the faith, thus making it easier for them to justify the fiscal burden generated by the extraordinary collection of money.⁵²

Three main changes were introduced under the pontificate of Gregory IX.⁵³ First, the amount requested by Gregory in 1228 was one-tenth of ecclesiastical revenues, and this became the portion usually demanded by the papacy from all clergy on subsequent occasions. Second, the tenth was not levied to provide financial aid to the crusaders only but also to fund the contemporary war of the papacy against Emperor Frederick II. Third, the assessment and collection of the new tenth were placed in the hands of dedicated officers directly nominated by the pope and responsible for the appointment of their own deputies. From that moment, the same principles were applied to many subsequent tithes levied either for the crusades or in support of the political interests of the papacy.⁵⁴ Nevertheless, new and crucial measures in the procedure for the collection of money were introduced by Pope Gregory X (1271–76) in 1274, which was a ‘turning-point in the development of the papal fiscal system’.⁵⁵

On 7 May 1274, Gregory X opened the fourteenth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, also known as the Second Council of Lyon. Since his inaugural sermon, the pope sought to awaken the enthusiasm of the 300 or so bishops and archbishops attending the Council, along with King James I of Aragon (1230–76) and numerous royal messengers, for a new crusade in the Holy Land and to persuade everyone to make sacrifices in its name. After lengthy negotiations, his proposal succeeded in gaining the consent of the laymen and clergymen participating in the Council. Gregory obtained the imposition of a new one-tenth income tax upon all the profits of Christendom for the duration of six years, from 1274 to 1280.⁵⁶ The so-called ‘sexennial tithe’ began on 24 June 1274, and the annual payment was split into equal portions in two different instalments: the first on 25 December, Christmas day, the second on 24 June, the day of the nativity of St John the Baptist. To ensure that money would arrive on a regular basis and to strengthen papal control from the centre to the periphery, the entire territory of the Catholic Church was divided into twenty-six collectorates or collectoriae, territorial constituencies deputed to the collection of the tithe and formed by one or more ecclesiastical provinces extending from Norway to Sicily and from Portugal to Jerusalem. Except for the collectorates of the city of Rome and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the others were under the responsibility of a general collector appointed by the pope.⁵⁷ It was Gregory himself who instructed these agents on the assessment and the collection of the tithe.⁵⁸ For the purposes of our inquiry, three main aspects are worth noting here.

First, the pope expressly ordered that all the payments throughout the six years had to be done solely in the money current in the territory where the tithe had been levied, without recourse to exchange transactions, while no payments in kind were allowed.⁵⁹ This disposition, the only one referring to the money collected, is a clear indication that at least all the coins recorded in our sources were part of the monetary circulation of those years, although the preference for payments in one currency over another might have depended on several factors, such as the reputation of that currency in a given area and at a specific time.⁶⁰ Second, not all people were required to pay the tithe. Exemptions were granted to the collectors and their deputies, to religious persons such as nuns or clerks with poor incomes or benefits, and to certain religious buildings like hospitals helping the poor and invalids.⁶¹ Third, clearly, no negotiations between the collectors and the payers were allowed, and excommunication was the punishment for any misconduct. Each collector was responsible for the appointment of his own deputies or sub-collectors (subcollectores), normally from two to four per diocese, who had to serve under oath.⁶² They were expected to collect the money and record all the sums received in their own registers (Rationes decimarum), usually one per semester. Those registers were sent to the relevant collector, who would compile the general account (Ratio) to be delivered to the papal Camera once the tithe was over.

In previous versions of the tithe, it was customary to deposit the proceeds in safe places, such as monasteries or cathedrals, while waiting to be donated to those kings leading the new crusade on the day of their departure. In the case of the sexennial tithe, however, probably also due to a series of cases of misconduct, the deposits were often assigned to companies of merchant bankers, who would award the money only at the request of the papacy.⁶³ Due to its volume, the unique geographical extension with no parallel in previous manifestations, and the complex machinery created by the papal court for the collection of money, scholars of papal finance have referred to this tithe as the first ‘universal’ tenth of the thirteenth century.⁶⁴

Nevertheless, only a fragment of the financial accounts recorded either by the collectors or the sub-collectors during the sexennial tithe is still available today. The remaining documentation is preserved in the Collectoriae collection of the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, a series of registers that the papal Camera stored to keep track of the work of its tax-agents.⁶⁵ As reported by Pietro Guidi, only twelve of the twenty-four Rationes compiled by the collectors are still preserved; complete or partial registers of the sub-collectors are documented for only six collectorates.⁶⁶ Part of this material was published in five of the fourteen volumes forming the series of the Rationes Decimarum Italiae and specifically in those covering the regions of Tuscia, Apulia-Lucania-Calabria, Sicily, Umbria, and Lazio.⁶⁷ However, up until now, far too little attention has been paid to this documentation from a monetary perspective. This may also be related to the issues affecting this kind of source and its interpretation.

Only on rare occasions did the collectors leave us either with a detailed description of the actual coins paid to them or with both a clear itemisation of the monetary specie received and the relative values in money of account. It is only in those circumstances that one can assess how much of each currency was paid and calculate their value as a portion of the total of the tithe in a specific year. Within the published documentation of the sexennial tithe, similar conditions apply only to the material in the Umbria and Lazio volumes.⁶⁸ In both cases, however, information is too scarce and fragmentary to allow a comprehensive study of the money collected over a continuous period of years. The still unpublished volume 217 in the Collectoriae collection of the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano related to the sexennial tithe levied in southern Italy represents an exception in this regard.

The florin and the sexennial tithe in southern Italy

Volume 217 consists of a series of registers of the sums collected (quaterni decimarum) and one register of deposits (quaternus depostitorum) belonging to two collectorates of southern Italy: the collectorate of the Kingdom of Sicily ‘with the exclusion of Sicily and Calabria’ (‘in Regno Syciliae exceptis Sycilia et Calabria’), which was assigned to the collector Pietro da Ferentino, bishop of Sora in 1274 and of Rieti from 1278, and the collectorate of Calabria and Sicily, to which was appointed Marco d’Assisi, bishop of Cassano.⁶⁹

In 1937, Domenico Vendola defined this material as being ‘of little use’ in tracking the religious bodies involved in the payment of the tithe in Apulia.⁷⁰ He noticed that the way payments were listed in those accounts, usually in the form of a single total amount for all sums collected from the bishop, the clergy, and the monasteries of a given diocese, was ‘too schematic’ to help calculate how much had been levied upon each individual religious body. Since then, historians have lost interest in this material.⁷¹ Through a new and careful analysis, however, it is now possible to reassess the role of this documentation, which provides unique details regarding the movement of capital around the papal court, generated by the collection of the tithe and the diffusion of the florin within papal finances.

The focus here is on five registers that Bishop Pietro da Ferentino prepared once the sexennial tenth was over in 1280 and then delivered to the Apostolic Chamber in Rome.⁷² These registers offer a full account of the sums paid by each diocese, often with the double entry of the actual money paid and the money of account. Also, more importantly, they document the collection of the tithe for four consecutive years of the six planned by Gregory: Year One (1274–75), Year Two (1275–76), Year Three (1276–77), and Year Four (1277–78). This is a crucial aspect that Vendola failed to notice, but which makes those registers an exceptional source, as they record the diffusion of the florin within papal finances with a degree of continuity over the years.

The number of dioceses and archdioceses those registers cover is 111, and this is also likely to be the total number for the Kingdom of Sicily in the years 1274–78 if we exclude those of Calabria and Sicily.⁷³ However, there are differences in how payments were recorded in these five registers, particularly between the first quaternus referring to Year One and the remaining four.

The first register is the only one to list payments for each of the 111 dioceses, and it appears to be more schematic and better organised than the others. It opens with the amounts paid by the dioceses ‘directly subject’ to the jurisdiction of the Holy See, or immediate subiecte, followed by the payments of those archdioceses and dioceses mediate subiecte, or ‘subject through a mediated way’, organised by ecclesiastical province.⁷⁴ These were ecclesiastical administrative districts formed by a group of suffragan dioceses governed by their own bishops, but all under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of a metropolitan bishop or archbishop based in the archdiocese. Excluding the regions of Calabria and Sicily, there were fourteen ecclesiastical provinces in the Kingdom of Sicily at that time.⁷⁵

All the payments recorded in the first register are exactly in the form described by Vendola, thus one single amount per diocese with no possibility of knowing how much was paid by each religious institution involved in the tithe that year. However, this is not the case for the other four registers. As illustrated in Table 4.1, they contain detailed accounts of the partial and extraordinary payments (‘particularium receptorum sive extraordinariorum’) made from year to year by individual religious bodies in different dioceses and archdioceses, which are thus specified.⁷⁶ The first of these registers refers to Year One, and it adds data to the sums from the previous quaternus; the others provide details up to Year Four. None of them, however, include payments for every single body or for each of the 111 dioceses and archdioceses forming the collectorate. The final register, for example, only records payments for eleven dioceses out of 111, thus providing a limited and fragmentary picture of the monetary circulation generated by the tithe in that year.

Owing to space limitations, it is impossible to report all the accounts for every single diocese of the 111 documented in the registers here.⁷⁷ The following analysis is based upon the totals calculated for every ecclesiastical province by aggregating the data available for each suffragan diocese and the relative archdiocese in each year.⁷⁸ In so doing, it has been possible not only to reduce the number of samples to a reasonable quantity without losing the distinctiveness of the different dioceses but also to provide a more comprehensive view of the circulation of money while identifying any possible pattern throughout the sexennial tithe. Table 4.2 provides a list of the fourteen ecclesiastical provinces, with details of the archdioceses and their suffragan dioceses as documented in volume 217.⁷⁹

As for the money involved in payment transactions, a wide range of gold, silver, and billon coins is documented.⁸⁰ For gold, along with Florentine florins and reali of Charles of Anjou (identified here as augustales, as explained above), auro fracto (literally ‘broken gold’) is also recorded.⁸¹ This is an unusual expression if it refers to any actual coin: it may include hackgold, namely fragments of gold items used as currency by weight, as well as gold taris ‘spezzati’ of Sicily that, due to their irregularities (being often cut, fragmented, even similar to broken gold ingots) were normally spent by weight.⁸² Written evidence of their existence appears in Villani’s chronicle, when Charles entered Naples and took possession of Manfred’s treasure, which was said to be made ‘almost entirely’ of taris spezzati.⁸³ Further confirmation of their diffusion comes from the limited archaeological material available for the period. For instance, the Benevento hoard, which was concealed around 1278, thus during the collection of the sexennial tithe, consists of 100 Hohenstaufen and Charles I gold taris, together with an unrecorded number of spezzati.⁸⁴ Yet, their use in these years has never been as well-documented as it appears in those registers.

Silver coins include English sterlings, French gros tournois, Italian grossi of Venice and Florence, and aquilini of Pisa. Both the old grossi of the Roman Senate issued in 1265 and worth, respectively, XV (15) or XVI (16) provisini by 1274 (romanini veteres de XV or XVI proveniensibus) make their appearance in the transactions, along with the newer and heavier ones (rinforciati) worth XXI (21) provisini minted between 1274 and 1282.⁸⁵ These provisini must be regarded as copies of the deniers of Provins of the Counts of Troyes and Champagne issued by the Senate of Rome from the last decades of the twelfth century onwards.⁸⁶ They appear together with many other billon coins, including denari of Florence, Siena, Volterra, and Ravenna (also called pistaculi or pistachios) and deniers tournois, all made of an alloy of silver and copper, with a majority of base metal content.⁸⁷

Payments in the registers were made in any of those coins and were recorded according to this format: unless counted by the piece, the o.t.gr. system of account was used for gold currencies and the £.s.d. ones for silver and billon coins. To compare the many currencies recorded and work out the values of the tithe, all the amounts in the following tables are provided in o.t.gr., the standard accounting system of the Kingdom of Sicily. This required the conversion of all the sums originally recorded in £.s.d., which was made possible by the exchange rates documented in the same records (Table 4.3).⁸⁸

All these exchange rates bear witness to an active and diversified monetary circulation at the time of the sexennial tithe, which combined relatively stable coins of high intrinsic value, such as the Florentine gold florins or the Italian silver grossi, with billon pieces of low value, like the deniers of Volterra and Ravenna. Despite the large number of different denominations involved in the payments, the largest portion of the sexennial tithe in the collectorate of Bishop Pietro was paid in gold florins of Florence.

It appears that at least o. 785 t. 23 gr. 13 out of o. 2548 t. 17 gr. 16 1/4 collected by Bishop Pietro and his agents in the four-year period were actually paid in gold florins (Table 4.4 IV).⁸⁹ This corresponds to about one-third (30.83 per cent) of the value of the sexennial tithe of the collectorate of the Kingdom of Sicily – with the exception of Sicily and Calabria – recorded in the registers under consideration. This is the most striking aspect, especially considering that there is nothing like this ratio in the ‘overall’ percentages of Tables 4.4 I–III for the other coins, which were too small in quantity to play a role of much significance in the tithe.

Nevertheless, it must be noted that the notary who prepared those registers was not always entirely clear when it came to describing the sums collected. In several entries, mainly concentrated in the first register, the notary quite frequently used the vague expression ‘gold ounces’ as a term of accounting, which does not specify the actual coins paid to papal agents. On a few occasions, moreover, the notary reported that the sum was given ‘in diversis monetis’, namely using different coins, sometimes indicating their types but not the respective quantities (i.e., florins and gros tournois, or florins and grossi of Venice). In these cases, it then becomes impossible to assess in what proportion each currency represented in the sum collected.

Unfortunately, these generic references to money, which are listed in the last column of Table 4.4 III, prevent us from knowing the nature of the coins used to pay c. 65 per cent of the total value of the tithe collected and recorded. We can only base our analysis on the remaining 35 per cent, for which we have precise information. In this regard, the fact that 30.83 per cent of the tithe was paid in florins, while all the other coins, whether they be gold, silver, or billon, contributed to only 4.19 per cent of that 35 per cent gives a clear indication of the significant penetration of the Florentine gold coin in the papal tithe from southern Italy.

Certainly, this result may depend on many factors and primarily on the number of transactions documented for each diocese and the quality of the information provided. Yet, the representation of the amounts collected per year suggests an even more widespread use of gold florins than the 30.83 per cent here documented (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1Percentages of coins collected from the ecclesiastical provinces between 1274 (Year One) and 1278 (Year Four).

For Year One and Year Four, respectively, 75.70 and 91.13 per cent of payment transactions were recorded in ‘gold ounces’ or diversis monetis. This makes it difficult to know the correct proportions of the different currencies involved. A different situation appears in Year Two and Year Three. In these cases, the total amounts of gold ounces/diversis monetis are estimated at 27.12 and 40.13 per cent, respectively. This implies that, at least for 73.35 and 59.87 per cent of the total values of those two years, we can produce a more accurate evaluation of the composition of the tithe since we know exactly which coins were used.

Year Two presents a higher percentage of gold florins, which contributed to 68.73 per cent of the value of the tithe collected that year, compared to the 45.95 per cent in Year Three. In this year, silver coins (10.73 per cent) and augustales/auro fracto (2.49 per cent) show higher percentages than in any other period, but still low compared to the florins, which remained the predominant money collected. Accordingly, it can be assumed that the 64.97 per cent recorded as gold ounces/diversis monetis in the ‘totals’ row of Table 4.4 includes a large proportion of gold florins, had the notary been clearer in his registration.

The greater involvement of florins also becomes evident if we look in more detail at those dioceses for which we have records of payment transactions documented for every single year of the period 1274–78. This is only possible for six of them (out of 111), namely the ‘immediate subiecte’ dioceses of Marsi, Penne, and Valva-Sulmona, and the ‘mediate subiecte’ dioceses of Capaccio, Siponto, and Trivento. The most interesting aspect here is that, on average, gold florins account for 38.89 per cent of the value of the tithe produced in those six dioceses, a percentage that almost matches the one registered by John Day in his study on the Tuscan tithe of 1296 (c. 40 per cent). This is an additional confirmation of the predominance of the florin in the papal tithe of southern Italy in the 1270s.

A final piece of evidence hints at the possibility that the florin played the same role also in other collectorates of the period. On 18 May 1279, in the diocese of Fiesole (Tuscany), dominus Benigno, camerarius of the Abbey of Passignano, paid the amount of £79 s. 12 denari of Pisa to the sub-collector Bernardo, prior of the rectory of San Donato in Citille (Greve in Chianti), which corresponded to the sum that the monastery still owed for Year Four of the sexennial tithe (1277–78). The notary Attaviano, who recorded the transaction, specified that those denari were actually received in gold florins of Florence.⁹⁰

The florin in papal spending and the role of the papacy

The analysis has shown that throughout the 1270s, thousands of gold florins were being collected through the papal tithe, thus forming a substantial part of the wealth of the Holy See. This was well before the Florentines overcame competition from other banking companies and ended up dominating papal finances under Pope Boniface VIII. It would therefore be unreasonable to link such a massive presence of the florin in the papal coffers to a hypothetical, although undocumented, exclusive relationship between the Curia and the merchant bankers of Florence before that time. What remains to be seen is (i) how all those florins were used in the actual expenditure of the papacy, (ii) whether such a significant involvement was the effect of a direct request for florins coming from the Apostolic Chamber, (iii) in what ways the papacy contributed to the diffusion of the Florentine gold coin, and likewise (iv) how the florin benefited the papacy.

Let us begin by looking at how the popes spent the money collected. As noted, the sexennial tithe imposed on all the benefices of Christendom in 1274 was conceived – as were many other tithes before – to finance a new crusade to recover the Holy Land. In particular, the revenues of this tithe were to be granted to those rulers who would take the cross and fight the infidels. Thus, when King Charles of Anjou expressed his intention to join the crusade, Pope Gregory X granted him all the sums collected for six years in the Kingdom of Sicily, as well as those from the counties of Provence and Forcalquier, both part of his French dominions.⁹¹ It was also agreed that if Charles did not embark on a crusade, the yield of the tithe would revert to his son and heir, Charles of Salerno, who would join the expedition as a crusader. Considering that the florin made up at least one-third of the income of the tithe collected in southern Italy and given the demand for florins coming from the military market, as illustrated in Chapter 3, there is little doubt that a good portion of the sum granted to Charles on that occasion would have been in gold florins.

Nevertheless, following the death of Pope Gregory in 1276, the crusade never took place, and the rest of the money collected was redistributed in Italy in subsequent years.⁹² For example, the Italian Franciscan friar and chronicler Salimbene di Adam (1221–88) informs us that the papacy was leading a very costly fight against the Ghibellines in Romagna in 1282. For the expenses of that war, he wrote, Pope Martin IV (1281–85) paid the total sum of ‘14 times 100,000 gold florins’ (‘XIIII vicibus centum millia florinos aureos’) or 1,400,000 gold florins that, in the words of Salimbene, ‘originally formed the sexennial tithe ordered by Pope Gregory X to rescue the Holy Land’.⁹³

New sums of gold florins were also collected through the triennial tithe of 1285–88, originally ordered by Pope Martin IV in 1284 and later confirmed by Pope Honorius IV (1285–87) to support the new war that King Charles was waging against the Aragonese dynasty to recover Sicily after the Sicilian Vespers of 1282. On 9 January 1288, in particular, the sub-collectors for the diocese of Arezzo, namely Guglielmo, abbot of the monastery of Santa Flora, and Leonardo, prior of the church of San Michele, deposited the sum of 900 gold florins ‘bonos et legales’ with the Florentine merchants Mascio and Cione sons of Ruggero Minerbetti and Lapo Accursi. This is what amounted to the revenues collected in that diocese in the second year of that triennial tithe.⁹⁴

According to these examples, gold florins were therefore used to cover the costs of the papacy’s political projects, for which financing wars was a central component. As pointed out by Robert Davidsohn, under the pontificate of Martin IV, the florin was also adopted as a common money of account in the fiscal registers produced at the Curia.⁹⁵ If confirmed, this would further corroborate the success of the Florentine gold coin in the papal finances.

Nevertheless, the written sources at our disposal do not seem to support the hypothesis that the popes specifically requested or desired florins. In the case of the sexennial tithe, as seen, papal collectors were simply instructed to accept the currencies in circulation in their collectorate; no denomination was indicated in Gregory’s dispositions. As a result, gold florins were being gathered along with many other gold, silver, and billon coins. This was because the papacy was in great need of money, but unlike the Angevin Crown, it did not need a precise currency. The popes would accept any coin to fund their projects as long as it was ‘valid’ at the time, that is, in circulation and commonly accepted and exchanged. One may argue that collecting florins would have been more profitable for the popes, as this would not have entailed additional transaction costs when exchanging money for future operations, given that florins were already broadly accepted in several milieus. Yet, since the popes could always count on the plethora of merchant bankers surrounding their Curia, they could relatively easily obtain florins when they needed them. In other words, it would be a mistake to think that collecting florins was a necessity for the papacy in the way that it was for Charles of Anjou. The strong presence of gold florins in the finances of the papacy is instead the result of their large diffusion in the Kingdom of Sicily, which is a reflection of the contemporary success of the Florentine gold coins in those territories.

The apparent lack of a specific demand for florins does not mean that we cannot clarify how the papacy contributed to the diffusion of this currency and, likewise, the beneficial role of the florin for the popes. The analysis seems to confirm the dynamics already encountered in the case of the Angevin Crown. In particular, the fact that the popes also adopted the florin to fund their political projects undoubtedly gave a major boost to the spreading of the currency in the early years of its life, allowing the Florentine coin to circulate beyond the circuit of long-distance trade and conquer new sections of the contemporary monetary market, including the papal finances. Papal connections with merchant bankers proved essential to this end.

As seen, the latter received in deposit the sums collected by the Church officials and stored the tithe money until the popes or their collectors requested it. The surviving register of deposits (quaternus depostitorum) written during the collection of the sexennial tithe in the collectorate of the bishop Pietro confirms that hundreds of gold florins were actually deposited with merchants belonging to a number of different companies from Lucca and Pistoia, but also Rieti, Ferentino, and Benevento.⁹⁶ All these merchants received a minor payment for the transport of the sums, although there was no profit related to the custody of the money collected through the tithe.⁹⁷ This means that if one excludes the patronage given by the popes, the actual profit for all those firms could only be derived from the use they would make of the money delivered to them. And by reinvesting florins, they would further enhance the diffusion and adoption of the gold coin.

Finally, the Florentine currency would eventually represent an important instrument in the hands of the popes for the deployment and consolidation of their power. Certainly, other coins were being collected and paid, yet the gold florin of Florence far outweighed all of them. Being the major currency collected and spent to fund political projects and military ventures through which the Holy See sought to establish or maintain its sovereignty over strategic territories (e.g., crusades and the East, the Kingdom of Sicily), the florin served as the primary means by which the papacy bolstered its authority and asserted its position as the main political institution of the time, especially given the simultaneous crisis of the Holy Roman Empire.

Conclusions

Throughout the 1270s, and thus in little more than twenty years since its apparent creation, the florin was accumulating significantly in the coffers of the papal court through the collection of the tithe, the favourite financial instrument in the hands of thirteenth-century popes to cover the high costs of their policies. This is what has emerged from the study of five unpublished registers for the collection of the sexennial tithe of Pope Gregory X in southern Italy between 1274 and 1278. On average, florins represented one-third of the total value of the money raised in the fourteen ecclesiastical provinces forming the collectorate of Bishop Pietro da Ferentino. This is an exceptional feature, especially considering that this percentage seems to rise whenever the sources are clearer about the actual coins paid to the papal collectors.

This significant involvement of the Florentine florin in papal finances was not a direct consequence of either the existing relations between the popes and the merchant bankers of Florence or the explicit demand for florins coming from the papacy or its agents. By looking at the papal expenditure related to the tithe money, it appears that, contrary to the Angevin ruler who desperately needed florins and explicitly ordered for them to be used in soldiers’ pay, there was never a command or legal obligation made by the popes to pay the papal tithe in gold florins. These naturally flowed back into the coffers of the papal collector because of their ubiquitous presence.

Indeed, the involvement of Florentine merchants in the financial affairs of the Holy See throughout the thirteenth century helped promote the spread of the florin. This represented a mutually beneficial deal: the Curia could draw upon an impressive range of expertise and assets accumulated by the Florentine merchant community since the twelfth century in their late but nonetheless stellar emergence, rise, and predominance in the ‘Commercial Revolution’; the Florentines could regulate the currency and its value at their behest, thus serving the popes with favourable exchange rates, and get in return a significant chunk of what was arguably one of the biggest financial businesses of the time, that is, remittances of all sorts of papal income to the Holy See in Rome. Yet, surviving documentation has shown that it was not until the pontificate of Boniface VIII that the florin would assist the Florentine companies in establishing their control over papal finances, although political reasons may have produced such a result. Once collected, the florin could further expand its role, as all the amounts received formed the capital of the papal court, which was normally invested to sustain its political plans. It was therefore also thanks to popes that the Florentine gold coin could conquer new milieus by acting as both a financial and political instrument in their hands.

We can get a final sense of the importance and popularity that the florin came to enjoy among the clergy from that point on if we look at the sermon De peccato usure. This was written in the early fourteenth century by Remigio de’ Girolami, a distinguished preacher appointed as lector at the Florentine convent of S. Maria Novella, and includes a pompous ‘eulogy of the florin’ within its pages. In this sermon, while criticising the contemporary struggles for economic power among the Florentines, Remigio pays tribute to the gold florin as the second of seven holy gifts that God offered to the city of Florence (‘Deus autem contulit isti civitati septem bona quasi singularia’). Despite being a member of the mendicant order of Dominicans, who were meant to live in poverty and depend directly on charity for their livelihood as did Jesus and the Apostles, Remigio praises the florin as a noble coinage (nobilis monete) for three main reasons: its material (materie), as it was ‘made of the best gold’, its iconography (sculpture), and its wide circulation (cursus) ‘all over the world, also among the Saracens’.⁹⁸ Another contemporary of Remigio, Pope Clement V (1305–14), believed in the special virtues of the florin to the point that he used to add small fillings of its gold to his soup, especially for the prophylactic properties of both the purity of its metal and the image of St John.⁹⁹ Yet, Remigio warned the reader that if used improperly, the Florentine coin could blind people with ‘false pride’.

Nevertheless, as illustrated in this chapter, the papacy’s utilisation of the florin in the early years of its life clearly valorised the currency and helped frame it more as a gift than a sin. Yet, one wonders whether Cieo, a leather-worker from the Santo Spirito neighbourhood in Florence, also felt the same way when, in 1293, he had to return thirteen gold florins to Bene Bencivenni, who had paid a fine of £25 to the city treasurers (chamarlinghi) for all the blasphemies against God and the saints that his son Simone had shouted in public.¹⁰⁰