I. Florentine Networks in Europe

Abstract

Robert Sabatino Lopez described twelfth-century Italian communes as ‘Governments of the merchants, by the merchants, for the merchants’, which accurately reflects the most important characteristic of the Florentine state and society in the studied period: the predominance of merchant culture and its manifestions in the overlaps between various private and public spheres.2 According to John Najemy, the period of the Albizzi regime, marked by political consolidation after the unskilled wool workers’ revolt (1378) and Cosimo de’Medici’s return to the city (1434), witnessed important changes in social structure, economy, politics, and culture.3 In politics, the most remarkable novelties occurred in the electoral system, when the number of elected city off icers, who belonged to the major and the minor guilds, was established. Political participation and off ice holding were based on guild membership, and therefore guilds were part of the political system. Members of the f ive major guilds possessed an absolute dominance within city magistrates, even though, in theory, the reforms following the Ciompi revolt meant to weaken their positions by giving more seats to members of the minor guilds. The f ive major guilds: Merchants’ (Calimala), Por Santa Maria (later, Silk), Wool (Lana), Moneychangers’ (Cambio), and Doctors’ (Medici e Speziali), were headed by their elected consuls and were the guilds into which merchants of various ranks traditionally enrolled. Furthermore, the six consuls of the Merchant Court (Mercanzia), the supreme court for merchants residing inside and outside the city, were elected among members of the f ive major guilds. The elections for the most important city off ices,