Luciano Pezzolo

“Una fiera senza luogo”: Was Bisenzone an International Capital Market in Sixteenth-Century Italy?

From the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth century, Genoese bankers collected money from a variety of sources and lent it to the king of Spain. It was all made possible by the Bisenzone exchange fairs, which created an efficient financial network under Genoese control and permitted arbitrage among northern Italian financial markets. At Bisenzone, Genoese bankers raised money for these loans from a variety of sources, which reduced the risks of lending and funded the kings long-term obligations via short term loans. Bisenzone was in many ways an offshore capital market which operated on an international scale, or, in the language of the sixteenth century, a fair without a place—una fiera senza luogo.

Government Debts and Credit Markets in Renaissance Italy

At first sight a marked difference turns out among the Italian governments of early Renaissance: the means of financing their deficit. There are, on the one hand, communal cities and republics, raising money from citizens through the system of forced or voluntary loans; there are, on the other, princes and lords who exploit services of bankers and merchants. These two different systems of borrowing bring about significant financial and political aspects. In this paper I will examine the main features characterizing the two mechanisms of indebtedness and the implications concerning the emergence of a true financial market connected with state bonds.

The Rise and Decline of a Great Power: Venice 1250-1650

This essay outlines the rise and decline of the most powerful Italian republican state between the middle ages and the early modern period. It moreover seeks to analyze the political, financial, and military means that enabled a state based on a peripheral site and disposing of relatively limited population resources to achieve such a prominent position in Europe. It then examines the causes of its decline, in both relative and absolute terms. The history of Venice in fact offers an excellent case study with which to verify Schumpeter�s thesis for a specific geographical area, that of the Italian peninsula, which has been surprisingly neglected by scholars interested in the origins of the fiscal state.

Venetian Finance, 1400–1797

This chapter presents the main features of state finance of the republic of Venice from the fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. Taxation and indebtedness provided the government with financial resources both to support the commercial and military expansion in the Mediterranean Sea and to cope with the Ottoman threat. The establishment of public financial institutions facilitated the workings of the financial market.

Una Fiera Senza Luogo: Was Bisenzone an Offshore Capital Market in Sixteenth-Century Italy?

This paper discusses how Genoese bankers collected money at exchange fairs. This money was then lent to the King of Spain - through the asientos - from the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. Genoese bankers raised capital at the exchange fairs , which were typical short-term credit mechanism, where foreign bills of exchange were discounted over a three-month period. The Genoese funded long-term obligations by means of short term loans which meant they were able to enforce payment to the King and at the same time successfully manage the supply of finance from a large number of easily substitutable markets, located in different states. The Bisenzone fair of exchange was the forerunner to an efficient, widely integrated international capital market where Genoese pre-eminence was firmly established and which the Genoese kept firmly under their control. The success of the Bisenzone fairs of exchange directly challenges the theory which suggests that the laws against usury restrained the development of capital markets in early modern Italy.

Tassare e pagare le tasse tra medioevo e prima età moderna

Il concetto di competizione e alla base di molti studi recenti, che cercano di analizzare la storia delle elites altomedievali anche sotto questa particolare prospettiva.1 La competizione, a sua volta, e strettamente collegata allo scambio, la cui centralita nella societa medievale, e altomedievale in particolare, e ben nota, in tutte le forme con le quali esso si manifesta nelle pratiche sociali: gift-giving, baratto o commercio.2 Poiche lo scambio regola, all’interno di quelle che gli antropologi definiscono societa tradizionali (qual era quella medievale), la posizione di ciascuno all’interno della comunita, esso «da forma alle strategie della«Il velo mistico di una leggenda ravvolge le prime lontane origini del monastero di Farfa».1 Così Ugo Balzani inizia la sua edizione del 1903 della memoria scritta del monastero di Farfa, nei pressi di Roma. L’immagine del velo potrebbe trovare una eco formidabile a mio parere, come si vedrà qui di seguito, con una altra immagine, quella di una nebulosa della quale riporto qui di seguito la definizione del Vocabolario della Enciclopedia Treccani:In un libro di storia sociale per me molto importante, Famiglia e civilta,1 Edward Shorter insiste ai piu riprese sull’«irruzione del sentimento»2 nel matrimonio e nel corteggiamento nella societa europea dalla fine dell’ancien regime. Questo capitolo di storia sociale, come del resto molti altri trattati da Shorter, ha lasciato consistenti tracce nel canto popolare italiano. Noi sappiano che nella cultura popolare tradizionale, specie nella cultura contadina, il matrimonio era questione economica, non di affetti, e c’era spesso freddezza tra gli sposi, che si davano del voi.3 C’e una vasta letteratura in proposito:4 Shorter sostiene che

Professione militare e famiglia in Italia tra tardo Medioevo e prima età moderna

1882, p. 36 e 42. Un vivo ringraziamento a Piero Del Negro, che ha discusso e commentato una prima versione di questo articolo. 2 Sull’organizzazione militare dei comuni italiani si vedano i lavori di A. A. Settia, Comuni in guerra. Armi ed eserciti nell’Italia delle citta, Bologna 1993; Id., Tecniche e spazi della guerra medievale, Roma 2006; e la recente sintesi di P. Grillo, Cavalieri e popoli in armi. Le istituzioni militari nell’Italia medievale, Roma-Bari, 2008. LUCIANO PEZZOLO