A civilization of accountants. Corporate archives and social distinction in early medieval and Renaissance Florence

The essay aims to provide a possible solution to an old historiographical and archival enigma: why are late medieval and Renaissance account books present in Florentine (and more generally Tuscan) archives with an almost overflowing abundance, as compares to the rather scant Italian (not to say European) panorama? Why have more account books dating from the 13th and 16th centuries been preserved between Florence and Prato than in the rest of Europe? And finally, how can we explain that even in the late grand-ducal age the family archives of the Florentine nobles still preserved ledgers, cashbooks and journals written a few centuries earlier, despite these writings seemingly had no practical usefulness whatsoever? By employing multiple perspectives - economic history, the history of techniques and cultural formation, socio-political history - the author compares the Florentine case with other great Italian mercantile cities, in the end yielding a picture of Florence slightly different from the stereotyped image of the cradle of Humanism.