Chapter illustrations ()
Loading image navigation...
No image index could be found for this publication.
Close this Panel
3
The Ties that Bind: Mezzadria and Labour Regulations after the Black Death in Florence and Siena, 1348–c.1500
Davide Cristoferi1 This research is part of the GINI project ‘Economic Growth and Inequality. Explaining Divergent Regional Growth Paths in Pre-Industrial Europe from late Middle Ages to Nineteenth Century’ supported by Ghent University and conducted jointly by the Economics and History Departments.
During the so-called ‘crisis of the late Middle Ages’ labour regulations played a major role in shaping rural economy and society in central Tuscany via the development of an extractive sharecropping system known as mezzadria.2 See P. Jones, ‘From Manor to Mezzadria: a Tuscan Case-Study in the Medieval Origins of Modern Agrarian Society’, in N. Rubinstein (ed.), Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence (London, 1966), pp. 193–241; D. Herlihy and Ch. Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families: a Study on the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven, 1985). Regarding sharecropping in general see T. J. Byres, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers, Library of Peasant Studies, 6 (London, 1983). This trend – closely connected to the political and economic dominance of the urban elites in the region – was unique in late medieval Europe.3 See for a discussion R. J. Emigh, The Undevelopment of Capitalism: Sectors and Markets in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany (Philadelphia, 2009). For instance, in most areas of the Low Countries sharecropping disappeared over the course of the Middle Ages and was only temporarily implemented in period of deep crisis: E. Thoen and T. Soens, ‘The Low Countries, 1000–1750’, in E. Thoen and T. Soens (eds), Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe. Struggling with the Environment: Land Use and Productivity (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 221–58, at p. 227. Mezzadria worked as an inequality-regulating institution by dividing half (mezzo in Italian) of the input, such as the purchase of sowing seed, oxen, tools and manure, and half of the output between the lessor and the lessee. Lessees were typically smallholders or landless peasants who often lived in the lessor’s farmhouse, while lessors were usually absentee urban landlords. Townsmen, who had other sources of revenue, were able to increase their wealth by sharing just part of their income from land – avoiding time-consuming day-to-day management – while peasants were kept at a subsistence level.4 Concerning the rationale of sharecropping, see D. A. Ackerberg and M. S. Botticini, ‘The Choice of Agrarian Contracts in Early Renaissance Tuscany: Risk Sharing, Moral Hazard, or Capital Market Imperfections?’ Explorations in Economic History, 37 (2000), 241–57. This was assured by the size of the landholding, designed for the subsistence of both the lessor and the lessee and to fully exploit the labour input of the latter. Furthermore, the share of the input, the repayment of debts and a series of extractive clauses hindered any form of capital accumulation on the part of the lessee. In this way, mezzadria perpetuated wealth inequality and land concentration during the late Middle Ages and the early modern period.5 See D. Cristoferi, ‘Socio-Economic Inequalities in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany: the Role of Mezzadria System’, in G. Alfani and E. Thoen (eds), Inequality in Rural Europe: Late Middle Ages–18th century (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 81–101.
The development of this sharecropping system was already taking place in the late thirteenth-century Tuscany through the growing land investment of urban market elites: craftsmen, merchants, bankers, notaries, urban patricians and nobles.6 Jones, ‘From Manor’, pp. 193–241. For instance, in the early fourteenth-century Sienese countryside almost 46 per cent of real estate was owned by city dwellers and 81 per cent of their land was leased out in mezzadria. According to the area, the rural population was mainly composed of smallholders who worked as seasonal wage labourers or tenants, as well as of sharecroppers and leaseholders.7 Peasants owned 31 per cent of the land surface and preferred direct farming (74 per cent) to sharecropping (18 per cent) and tenancy (6 per cent), while religious institutions controlled 17 per cent of land surface, mostly run via sharecropping (52 per cent) and other leases (41 per cent). Elaboration of the author from a sample of twenty Sienese villages recorded in the Sienese cadaster (Tavola delle Possessioni) of 1316–20 and published in G. Cherubini, ‘Proprietari. contadini e campagne senesi all’inizio del Trecento’, in G. Cherubini, Signori contadini borghesi (Florence, 1974), pp. 231–312, at p. 280 (table 11) and p. 297 (table 15). The trend was similar in the Florentine countryside.8 See D. Herlihy, ‘Santa Maria Impruneta: a Rural Commune in the Late Middle Ages’, in Rubinstein (ed.), Florentine Studies, pp. 242–76; O. Muzzi and M.D. Nenci, Il contratto di mezzadria nella Toscana medievale, vol. 2, Contado di Firenze, secolo XIII (Florence, 1988), pp. 92–9. After the Black Death, however, the economic and demographic factors that had favoured this land consolidation process were at stake. The labour force dropped dramatically, wealth and land were redistributed among the survivors, rural wages rose and some agricultural land was abandoned.9 See G. Piccinni, ‘L’evoluzione della rendita fondiaria alla fine del Medioevo’, in A. Cortonesi and G. Piccinni (eds), Medioevo delle campagne. Rapporti di lavoro, politica agraria, protesta contadina (Rome, 2006), pp. 57–95. For an European perspective, see J. Drendel (ed.), Crisis in the Later Middle Ages. Beyond the Postan–Duby Paradigm (Turnhout, 2015). In this context, city governments such as those of Florence and Siena reacted to support urban land investment and share-contracts through labour regulations and specific agrarian policies between 1348 and the third decade of the fifteenth century.10 For European comparisons, see Whittle and Michaud in this volume. Regarding the mechanisms behind the negotiation and production of statutory law in Mediterranean city-communes see D. Lett (ed.), La confection des statuts dans les sociétés méditerranéennes de l’Occident (XIIe–XVe s.). Statuts, écritures et pratiques sociales (Paris, 2017); D. Lett (ed.), Statuts communaux et circulations documentaires dans les sociétés méditerranéennes de l’Occident, XIIe–XVe siècle (Paris, 2018). Notably, the aim was to bind peasants to land, curbing the rise of wages. The convergence of interests between ruling urban elites and city dwellers as mezzadria landowners made such coercion of labour possible.11 For instance, the motivations of a law in 1446: ‘in this way the rural properties of the city-dwellers will be saved for the benefit of the city as well as of that of agriculture […] for the good and utility of the city, of its inhabitants, of the countryside as well as for the development of agriculture […] to which as the most needed thing we should always care, especially for the preservation of the properties of the city-dwellers’. See G. Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria nella Toscana medievale, vol. 3, Contado di Siena 1348–1528. Appendice: la normativa 1256–1510 (Florence, 1992), pp. 431–3 (document XLIV). For a theoretical framework: B. J. P. van Bavel, The Invisible Hand? How Market Economies have Emerged and Declined since AD 500 (Oxford, 2016), pp. 251–88; D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson and J. A. Robinson, Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth, in P. Aghion and S. N. Durlauf (eds), Handbook of Economic Growth, volume 1a (London, 2005), pp. 386–464.
Previous research has addressed this topic by focusing on specific case studies or trends such as changes in share-contracts and policies.12 See Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria; Piccinni, ‘La politica agraria del comune di Siena’, in Cortonesi and Piccinni (eds), Medioevo delle campagne, pp. 207–92; S. K. Cohn, Creating the Florentine state. Peasants and Rebellion, 1348–1434 (Cambridge, 1999); S. K. Cohn, ‘After the Black Death: Labour Legislation and Attitudes Towards Labour in Late-Medieval Western Europe’, Economic History Review, 60 (2007), 465–75. A comparative study encompassing labour regulations and their impact on labour market, share-contract clauses and peasants’ conditions across Tuscany is yet to be written. This essay provides a first step in this direction by comparing the post-Black Death labour regulations of Florence and Siena, the major city states in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Tuscany. It integrates the findings of the existing studies on labour policies and share-contracts’ evolution with a new study of twenty-four Florentine laws between 1348 and 1431.13 The Registri delle Provvisioni of Florence is a series of laws discussed and approved by the assemblies of the commune of Florence and recorded as public laws in specific registers: Archive of Florence (hereafter ASFi), Provvisioni, 36, fol. 154v (25 August 1349); 40, fols 27r–27v (3 December 1352); 42, fols 114v–115r (21 August 1355); 42, fols 161r–161v (9 December 1355); 43, fol. 146v (12 September 1356); 46, fol. 101r (22 February 1358); fols 71v–72r (2 December 1363); 52, fols 34r–34v (3 October 1364); 65, fols 44v–46v (4 June 1377); 68, fols 113v–115v (17 August 1379); 72, fols 171r–172r (20 October 1383); 74, fols 204v–205r (8 December 1385); 80, fols 197r–198v (2 December 1391); 88, fols 182r–183v (14 October 1399); 88, fols 226r–227r (7 November 1399); 88, fols 328v–329v (23 February 1399 (1400)); 91, fols 146v–147r (20 September 1402); 93, fols 193r–193v (3 February 1404/(1405); 101, fols 333r–334r (24 January 1412/1413); 101, fols 334r–334v (24 January 1412/1413); 105, fols 215v–216v (22 November 1415); 107, fols 215r–215v (5 May 1417); 112, fols 143r–144r (18 October 1422); 113, fol. 217r (7 February 1423 (1424)); 114, fols 63v–64v (5 December 1424); 117, fols 122v–123r (26 June 1427); 117, fol. 123r (26 June 1427); 118, fols 116v–117v (20 November 1427); 120, fols 461v–462r (8 February 1429/1430); 120, fols 491r–491v (13 February 1429/1430); 121, fols 72r–72v (26 October 1430); 122, fols 2r–2v; 2v–3r; 4r–5r (16 April 1431). Previously, these laws have mostly been analysed to address rural immigration and the state-building process in the Florentine countryside.14 See Cohn, Creating; Cohn, ‘After the Black Death’, 465–75.
Such comparison allows (i) an exploration of differences and similarities in labour regulations between Florence and Siena; (ii) an evaluation of their effectiveness in the short and long terms; and (iii) an explanation of how and why they achieved the binding of peasants to land as sharecroppers by the end of the fifteenth century. The analysis is organised in three sections. The first focuses on the labour regulations that attempted to curb the profit shares and claims of sharecroppers between the two plagues of 1348 and 1363. The second covers the immigration and fiscal policies developed between 1364 and 1435 in order to cope with the further drop in population and the labour force. This includes a consideration of supplementary Sienese laws up to 1470.15 See Piccinni, ‘La politica agraria’, p. 238. The third analyses the reasons behind the policies discussed and their short- and long-term impacts.
 
1      This research is part of the GINI project ‘Economic Growth and Inequality. Explaining Divergent Regional Growth Paths in Pre-Industrial Europe from late Middle Ages to Nineteenth Century’ supported by Ghent University and conducted jointly by the Economics and History Departments. »
2      See P. Jones, ‘From Manor to Mezzadria: a Tuscan Case-Study in the Medieval Origins of Modern Agrarian Society’, in N. Rubinstein (ed.), Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence (London, 1966), pp. 193–241; D. Herlihy and Ch. Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families: a Study on the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven, 1985). Regarding sharecropping in general see T. J. Byres, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers, Library of Peasant Studies, 6 (London, 1983). »
3      See for a discussion R. J. Emigh, The Undevelopment of Capitalism: Sectors and Markets in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany (Philadelphia, 2009). For instance, in most areas of the Low Countries sharecropping disappeared over the course of the Middle Ages and was only temporarily implemented in period of deep crisis: E. Thoen and T. Soens, ‘The Low Countries, 1000–1750’, in E. Thoen and T. Soens (eds), Rural Economy and Society in North-western Europe. Struggling with the Environment: Land Use and Productivity (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 221–58, at p. 227. »
4      Concerning the rationale of sharecropping, see D. A. Ackerberg and M. S. Botticini, ‘The Choice of Agrarian Contracts in Early Renaissance Tuscany: Risk Sharing, Moral Hazard, or Capital Market Imperfections?’ Explorations in Economic History, 37 (2000), 241–57. »
5      See D. Cristoferi, ‘Socio-Economic Inequalities in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany: the Role of Mezzadria System’, in G. Alfani and E. Thoen (eds), Inequality in Rural Europe: Late Middle Ages–18th century (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 81–101. »
6      Jones, ‘From Manor’, pp. 193–241. »
7      Peasants owned 31 per cent of the land surface and preferred direct farming (74 per cent) to sharecropping (18 per cent) and tenancy (6 per cent), while religious institutions controlled 17 per cent of land surface, mostly run via sharecropping (52 per cent) and other leases (41 per cent). Elaboration of the author from a sample of twenty Sienese villages recorded in the Sienese cadaster (Tavola delle Possessioni) of 1316–20 and published in G. Cherubini, ‘Proprietari. contadini e campagne senesi all’inizio del Trecento’, in G. Cherubini, Signori contadini borghesi (Florence, 1974), pp. 231–312, at p. 280 (table 11) and p. 297 (table 15). »
8      See D. Herlihy, ‘Santa Maria Impruneta: a Rural Commune in the Late Middle Ages’, in Rubinstein (ed.), Florentine Studies, pp. 242–76; O. Muzzi and M.D. Nenci, Il contratto di mezzadria nella Toscana medievale, vol. 2, Contado di Firenze, secolo XIII (Florence, 1988), pp. 92–9. »
9      See G. Piccinni, ‘L’evoluzione della rendita fondiaria alla fine del Medioevo’, in A. Cortonesi and G. Piccinni (eds), Medioevo delle campagne. Rapporti di lavoro, politica agraria, protesta contadina (Rome, 2006), pp. 57–95. For an European perspective, see J. Drendel (ed.), Crisis in the Later Middle Ages. Beyond the Postan–Duby Paradigm (Turnhout, 2015). »
10      For European comparisons, see Whittle and Michaud in this volume. Regarding the mechanisms behind the negotiation and production of statutory law in Mediterranean city-communes see D. Lett (ed.), La confection des statuts dans les sociétés méditerranéennes de l’Occident (XIIe–XVe s.). Statuts, écritures et pratiques sociales (Paris, 2017); D. Lett (ed.), Statuts communaux et circulations documentaires dans les sociétés méditerranéennes de l’Occident, XIIe–XVe siècle (Paris, 2018). »
11      For instance, the motivations of a law in 1446: ‘in this way the rural properties of the city-dwellers will be saved for the benefit of the city as well as of that of agriculture […] for the good and utility of the city, of its inhabitants, of the countryside as well as for the development of agriculture […] to which as the most needed thing we should always care, especially for the preservation of the properties of the city-dwellers’. See G. Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria nella Toscana medievale, vol. 3, Contado di Siena 1348–1528. Appendice: la normativa 1256–1510 (Florence, 1992), pp. 431–3 (document XLIV). For a theoretical framework: B. J. P. van Bavel, The Invisible Hand? How Market Economies have Emerged and Declined since AD 500 (Oxford, 2016), pp. 251–88; D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson and J. A. Robinson, Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth, in P. Aghion and S. N. Durlauf (eds), Handbook of Economic Growth, volume 1a (London, 2005), pp. 386–464. »
12      See Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria; Piccinni, ‘La politica agraria del comune di Siena’, in Cortonesi and Piccinni (eds), Medioevo delle campagne, pp. 207–92; S. K. Cohn, Creating the Florentine state. Peasants and Rebellion, 1348–1434 (Cambridge, 1999); S. K. Cohn, ‘After the Black Death: Labour Legislation and Attitudes Towards Labour in Late-Medieval Western Europe’, Economic History Review, 60 (2007), 465–75. »
13      The Registri delle Provvisioni of Florence is a series of laws discussed and approved by the assemblies of the commune of Florence and recorded as public laws in specific registers: Archive of Florence (hereafter ASFi), Provvisioni, 36, fol. 154v (25 August 1349); 40, fols 27r–27v (3 December 1352); 42, fols 114v–115r (21 August 1355); 42, fols 161r–161v (9 December 1355); 43, fol. 146v (12 September 1356); 46, fol. 101r (22 February 1358); fols 71v–72r (2 December 1363); 52, fols 34r–34v (3 October 1364); 65, fols 44v–46v (4 June 1377); 68, fols 113v–115v (17 August 1379); 72, fols 171r–172r (20 October 1383); 74, fols 204v–205r (8 December 1385); 80, fols 197r–198v (2 December 1391); 88, fols 182r–183v (14 October 1399); 88, fols 226r–227r (7 November 1399); 88, fols 328v–329v (23 February 1399 (1400)); 91, fols 146v–147r (20 September 1402); 93, fols 193r–193v (3 February 1404/(1405); 101, fols 333r–334r (24 January 1412/1413); 101, fols 334r–334v (24 January 1412/1413); 105, fols 215v–216v (22 November 1415); 107, fols 215r–215v (5 May 1417); 112, fols 143r–144r (18 October 1422); 113, fol. 217r (7 February 1423 (1424)); 114, fols 63v–64v (5 December 1424); 117, fols 122v–123r (26 June 1427); 117, fol. 123r (26 June 1427); 118, fols 116v–117v (20 November 1427); 120, fols 461v–462r (8 February 1429/1430); 120, fols 491r–491v (13 February 1429/1430); 121, fols 72r–72v (26 October 1430); 122, fols 2r–2v; 2v–3r; 4r–5r (16 April 1431). »
14      See Cohn, Creating; Cohn, ‘After the Black Death’, 465–75. »
15      See Piccinni, ‘La politica agraria’, p. 238. »