Details

Subjects:

Medici, House of -- Archives.
Medici, Luisa de'.
Medici, House of.
Accounting -- Italy -- 16th century.
Accounting.
Italy.

Form/Genre:

Codices.
Accounts.
Credit records.
Ledgers (account books)
Manuscripts, Italian.
Manuscripts, Renaissance.
Archives.

Language:

Italian.

Summary:

A ledger of debtors and creditors, memoranda and miscellaneous accounts of Luisa de' Medici, wife of Luigi di Bivigliano de' Medici. Often includes the nature of a given credit or debt and its amount, as well as listing the names of the individuals that hold the debt or credit; the memoranda include a brief history of how certain assets (often property or cattle) were acquired or how a particular event resulted in a debt; the miscellaneous accounts are often related to the payment of workers and servants, the price of harvests, and various credits and debts that are paid in kind (examples of the produce used for these payments are chestnuts, grains, cattle feed, cattle, swine). Flyleaves formed by a 15th-century vellum bifolium, containing passages from Matthew (ch. 26), Jeremiah (ch. 18) and John (ch. 12). It is written in a Gothic script with red and blue initials and red rubrics.

Contents:

1. f.1v-104v: Debitori e creditori.
2. f.105r-123r: Ricordi e copie di conti.
3. f.125r-138v: Conti co' lavoratori de le ricolte.
4. f.145r-188v: Entrate e uscite di grani e biade e altro.

Notes:

Ms. codex.
Title supplied by cataloger.
Pagination: Paper, i (parchment), + 191 leaves, + i (parchment); versos numbered 1-123, [124], 125-138, [139-144], 145-188, [189-192], contemporary pagination in ink, modern pagination in pencil, upper left verso; rectos numbered [i], i-cxxiii, [cxxiiii], cxxv-cxxxviii, [cxxxviiii-cxliiii], cxlv-clxxxviii, [clxxxviiii-cxci], contemporary pagination in ink, modern pagination in pencil, upper right recto (leaves 139-144 and 189-192 are blank). Each opening has a matched Arabic numeral on the left and a Roman numeral on the right.
Layout: Debtors and creditors written in 2 columns with vertical bounding lines in lead; the large column on the left with the debtor or creditor and a brief description of the credit and debt, and the smaller one on the right with the amount of the debt or credit in Arabic numerals. Usually credits are listed on the left page and debts are listed on the right page of an opening, with the same individuals and institutions appearing as debtors or creditors on facing pages on some cases. The memoranda section is written in long lines but the leaves are ruled.
Script: Written in a cursive script, perhaps by multiple hands.
Watermark: Similar to Briquet, Arbalete 762 (Lucca, 1598), but without the fleur-de-lis.
Binding: Contemporary vellum, no. 25 on spine, the heading Debitori, creditori, ricordi e altro, no. 112 and letter A with decorative penwork on upper cover; lower cover wraps around upper cover with leather ties; decorative leatherwork on spine. Fragment from an incunable concerning Greek orators inside upper cover.
Origin: Written in Italy, between 1566 and 1573.
Forms part of: Gondi-Medici Business Records.

Penn Provenance:

Sold by Bernard M. Rosenthal, 1961.

Cited in:

Described in Zacour, Norman P. and Hirsch, Rudolf. Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Libraries of the University of Pennsylvania to 1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965), p. 195 (Ms. Lea 234).

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Codex 1292

OCLC:

297116426