II

Between 1364 and 1371 Florentines approved a new immigration law and developed an unequal fiscal system across rural society. In October 1364 they attempted to attract labourers from outside the Florentine state to work as sharecroppers or tenants (but not as independent farmers) by granting them an exemption of six years from all the taxes and services normally due from rural inhabitants.4 ASFi, Provvisioni, 52, fols 34r–34v (3 ottobre 1364). Between 1364 and 1431 Florentine city councils passed at least twenty-six laws and decrees favouring both immigration and the return of the Florentine peasants who had left the area ‘because of war, famine, debts, and especially excessive taxes’, ‘no matter what tenurial relations they contracted’.5 Cohn, Creating, p. 230. See also Cohn, ‘After the Black Death’, 472–3. Regarding the laws, see ASFi, Provvisioni, 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). The change was radical, as shown by comparing the title of the decree in 1352, which was ‘against rural workers’, while that forty years later was ‘to favour rural workers returning at work’.6 See ASFi, Provvisioni, 40, fols 27r–27v (3 December 1352); 80, fols 197r–198v (2 December 1391).

After 1371 and especially between 1383 and 1402, fiscal reform led to an unequal redistribution of the tax burden across the Florentine territory7 It should be also noticed that taxes could be levied more than once per year and according to the needs of the city-commune. See Cohn, Creating, pp. 55–61. created by the type of tax levied in the countryside (estimo del contado) in the fourteenth century. It was based on a mixed system of analytical and arbitrary assessment. First, the city governments or tax officials established and distributed the overall amount to be collected among the various communities. At this stage, Florentine patrons could influence the redistribution of the total share in order to favour some communities over others. Second, the share was split among the households of each community by local officials and councils on the basis of an evaluation of the tax capacity of each household according to wealth (measured in land and animals) and the number of adult male workers.

The implicit goal of such an unequal redistribution of taxes was to support land investment by the city dwellers in the plains and the hills near Florence.8 A survey of land purchases in the plains near Florence shows that the ‘majority of sales (forty-one sales or 37 per cent) took places between villagers’ in 1364–71, while in 1370–1401 the trend was reversed. Exchanges of rural properties between Florentines increased, exchanges between peasants fell and ‘urban buyers doubled the number of rural buyers in the acquisition of rural lands in the plains near Florence’. See ibid., pp. 102–3. On the one hand, Florentine elites protected the villages where they had previously or recently established their patronage as mezzadria landlords by lessening the tax levied there.9 Ibid., pp. 107–8: ‘heavy tax burdens on those from lowland and hill villages near the city, where citizens possessed their farms and profited from their sharecroppers’ production and well-being, would have threatened the economic resources of these same urban rulers and proprietors; in effect they would have become a tax on themselves’. On the other, they burdened the mountainous areas on the borders of the state, which was unsuitable for Florentine land investment because it was too distant and infertile (see Figure 3.1).10 Ibid., pp. 104–5. In this way, they channelled the internal and external immigration towards the plains and the hills near Florence, resulting in a stable or increasing population between 1365 and 1427.11 Ibid., pp. 80–9, at pp. 86–8.

However, the unequal fiscal pressure exerted by Florence on the periphery emptied the mountain villages on the borders of people. Indebted villagers from the Apennines chose to escape into the territories of Bologna, Romagna and Pistoia, rather than hand over almost half of the value of their land in taxes.12 Ibid., p. 75. Indebtedness also influenced sharecroppers’ mobility, but they tended to move within the Florentine state, usually to work for another landowner who was willing to pay off their debts.13 The mobility of labourers beyond the borders (12 per cent from the plains, 15 per cent from the hills, all because of the debts), across the contado (49 per cent from the plains, 33 per cent from the hills of the total population) or within each pieve (28 per cent in the plains, 44 per cent in the hills) between 1383 and 1412. Data assessed for fourteen villages in ibid., p. 37). For Siena see Piccinni, ‘La politica agraria’, pp. 217–18. In 1427 a new fiscal system called the Catasto introduced a standardised analytical assessment of the wealth of all Florentine households. This removed the inequality in tax distribution among the Florentine settlements, but inequalities between sharecroppers and other rural workers remained. Sharecroppers were assessed as propertyless and were taxed only on the able-bodied men of the household, while their landlord paid for half of the property leased out in mezzadria. In contrast, smallholders and farmers were taxed for all the land they held. Thus, the Catasto continued to make mezzadria more attractive than wage labour or farming during the whole fifteenth century.14 See Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans, pp. 1–27.

In December 1364 the Sienese city council approved two new laws in the same day. The first defended mezzadria workers against over-taxation from rural communities.15 Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria, document XV (1364). The deliberation claimed that local representatives were over-burdening sharecroppers to discourage them from working for the city dwellers. This was a form of resistance against the land purchase process and dated back to the end of the thirteenth century in the Sienese territory.16 See Piccinni, ‘La politica agraria’, pp. 223–4. For Florence, see footnote 40. The Sienese council used the upsurge of this type of conflict to strengthen the bond between the city dwellers and their sharecroppers and to support sharecroppers in contrast with the rest of the peasantry. This was done via exemptions from taxes and services due from the rural community. The taxes due from sharecroppers to Siena were reduced and the only services required were guarding the settlement where they lived in case of war and payment of damage done by their livestock. All other taxes and services due as members of the rural community were suspended if they were working for city dwellers.17 If sharecroppers were landless they had to pay to their community only three lire or thirty soldi, depending on whether they were provided with a pair of oxen or not. Local officials not respecting the measure must be fined fifty lire. See Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria, document XV (1364).

The second law, like that of 1348, addressed the increasing number of wage labourers as opposed to sharecroppers and the rising cost of labour. Both trends were causing land leased out by the city dwellers to be left uncultivated. The measure proposed was subtle: all the able-bodied men who were not directly cultivating a certain amount of land, no matter if owned or leased, had to pay a tax of twenty soldi per month (around 0.66 soldi per day in a thirty-day month).18 The amount of land to cultivated ranged between twelve staiora (1.5ha.) and six staiora (0.75ha.) according to the proximity to the city. See ibid. In this way, wage labour became immediately less profitable compared with sharecropping. The highest daily wage recorded in 1364 was one soldo per day: accordingly, wage labourers risked losing over 60 per cent of their salary in taxes.19 The deliberation reports that the highest salary requested by wage labourers was twelve denari per day: that is, eighteen soldi for working thirty days. See ibid.

Despite these laws, however, social control over rural workers in the Sienese territory was still difficult: in 1368 a law was approved to punish the flight of indebted sharecroppers with detention.20 See ibid., document XVI (1368). Further measures against sharecroppers escaping abroad were adopted in 1435 (against those helping fugitive sharecroppers) and in 1460 (sharecroppers escaping with the harvest and draught animals were to be hanged). See ibid., documents XLV (1435) and XLVI (1460). This crime was perceived as even more serious than in other parts of central Tuscany because of the severity of the demographic crisis in the Sienese territory.21 In 1440, for instance, a ‘shortage of labourers’ near Siena was reported. See Piccinni, ‘La politica agraria’, p. 218 n. 87. In the fifteenth century many Sienese communities were recorded as unable to pay taxes because they were abandoned, underpopulated or inhabited by unpropertied peasants: see M. Ginatempo, Crisi di un territorio. Il popolamento della Toscana senese alla fine del Medioevo (Firenze, 1989). As the population did not recover, between 1398 and 1431 Sienese rulers were forced to change strategy by approving new Florentine-like immigration policies in favour of foreigners and fugitive labourers: in 1398, a ten-year fiscal exemption was granted to foreigners (usually Florentines) migrating to Siena and its countryside. In 1413, 1425 and 1427 five years’ relief from the payment of previous debts was granted to all the sharecroppers who had escaped from the territory.22 See Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria, documents XXV (1413), XXIX (1425) and XXXII (1427). In addition, Sienese councils further reduced the taxes paid by sharecroppers to the community of residence in 1427.23 Propertied and unpropertied sharecroppers must pay their community only three lire per pair of oxen owned or leased. All the other payments due to communities were abolished. See ibid., document XXXIII (1427). Only in 1460 was the series of tax exemptions granted to foreigners abolished, probably because of increasing fiscal demands from the city and the slightly decreasing need for labourers from abroad by this time.24 See ibid., document XLVI (1460).