Academic literature on the topic 'Bankers Italy Florence Diaries'

ABSTRACT The emergence of double entry bookkeeping marked the shift in bookkeeping from a mechanical task to a skilled craft, and represented the beginnings of the accounting profession. This study seeks to identify what caused this significant change in bookkeeping practice. I do so by adopting a new accounting history perspective to investigate the circumstances surrounding the emergence of double entry in early 13th century Italy. Contrary to previous findings, this paper concludes that the most likely form of enterprise where bookkeeping of this form emerged is a bank, most likely in Florence. Accountability of the local bankers in Florence to the Bankers Guild provided a unique external impetus to generate a new form of bookkeeping. This new bookkeeping format provided a clear and unambiguous picture of the accounts of all debtors and creditors, along with the means to check that the entries between them were complete and accurate.

A Diary of a Journey to Italy and Switzerland in 1815–1816 written by Rozalia Dunin-Borkowska is one of few preserved descriptions of a journey to Italy made by a Polish woman in the early 19th century. Rozalia and her husband Stanisław embarked on their expedition on 27 May 1815 in Lvov; they went to Italy and spent nine months there, from October 1815 to July 1816. The Italian tour started in Venice and included Padua, Bologna, Florence (twice), Rome, Naples, Milan and Geneva. The spouses spent the journey actively although their main goal was to learn about the culture of the Italian Peninsula. Undoubtedly, their time in Italy was filled with admiring the works of art and visiting the most famous art galleries in almost every city on the itinerary. Consequently, the journal is full of reflections on the aesthetic value of Italian works of art. Rozalia Dunin-Borkowska was an informed traveller: while she admired the sights and paintings, sculptures and other works of art, she did that in a thoughtful way. She needed quality time to form her own opinions. Her journal demonstrates very well that visiting foreign countries was an intellectually stimulating experience. Getting to know a new culture significantly broadened the horizons of 24-year-old Rozalia. As her journal suggests, she was well-prepared for her European journey. The outstanding lesson that she learnt allowed her to reap the rewards of the tour and satisfy her intellectual aspirations. The Diary is a great source of experience accumulated by a Polish traveller; it provides an opportunity to find out about Rozalia’s cultural life, her preparation for the journey and how the trip affected her. Furthermore, Dunin-Borkowska’s testimony was compared with Katarzyna Platerowa’s and Teofilia Morawska’s diaries due to the fact that all three of them shared certain common features. Namely, their cultural background, material status and, most importantly, the travel itinerary. They were all well prepared for their respective journeys; they were also well educated, fluent in foreign languages and, above all, they were curious about the world and interested in learning about a new culture. Each of these travellers was influenced by the European journey which provided educational values combined with unforgettable experiences.

Abstract The article considers how Thomas Wyatt—courtier, ambassador and poet maker—became Italianate. It discovers a youthful Wyatt, with other members of Henry VIII’s court, at the company of Giovanni di Lorenzo Cavalcanti and Pierfrancesco di Piero de’ Bardi in London in the 1520s. These Florentine merchant princes were international bankers and traders, and notable cultural brokers between England and Italy. Pierfrancesco was a scholar, a collector and donor of books. Wyatt bought fine Florentine fabrics from the company. They allowed his growing indebtedness, partly through friendship, but also because of their need for the patronage of his father, Sir Henry Wyatt, Treasurer of the Chamber. Wyatt was also part of the gambling fraternity in which Francesco di Bernardo de’ Bardi was a principal player. Leaving Florence for London, the merchants did not remove themselves from the turbulent politics of their city, for their wealth and prominence ensured their continuing involvement, especially once Medici popes ruled Christendom. When Rome was sacked, and Florence established a republic, London’s Florentines were called to their city’s defence. Before he ever travelled to Italy, Thomas Wyatt encountered Italians of wealth and culture living in the grandest style in London, between the worlds of the court and the city. Perhaps with them he began to learn Italian. The story of Wyatt among the Florentines leads to life in London and the court, to the defence of Italy, to the revolutionary politics of Florence, and to Henry VIII’s ‘Great Matter’. Wyatt was precursor, and inspiration, of the Italianate Englishmen and women gathered at the humanist court of Edward VI who were fascinated by Italian culture and won to reform.

From over a hundred chronicles, diaries, and the fifty-eight volumes of Marin Sanudo’s collections of reflections, mercantile letters, and diplomatic dispatches, this chapter presents rebels’ chants and their flags and other insignia unfurled during popular insurgency from 1494 to 1559. It then compares these chants and flags to those previously collected and analysed in my Lust for Liberty from the late thirteenth to the early fifteenth century. In contrast to the earlier period’s inventive cries and banners that extolled guild power, rallied to extend the political franchise, and decried new and regressive taxes, those of the Italian wars appealed to outside powers, almost invariably the enemies of their current regimes, to intervene. These included more simplistic chants such as ‘Franza, Franza’, for the French king, and most often, ‘Marco, Marco’ for the Republic of Venice. Moreover, popular rebels of the sixteenth century invented no new flags for their newly-minted causes or republics. These contrasted sharply with earlier flag making for popular movements in Naples, Rome, Florence, and elsewhere. The chapter ends by asking if the poverty of popular rebels’ chants and flags from 1494 to 1559 suggests that the social-science models of ‘pre-modern’ revolt had taken hold in Italy by the end of the fifteenth century. The remainder of the book rejects that hypothesis.