1455: From the Heart of Florentine Renaissance Banking

A Signed Document from a Great Renaissance Merchant of Florence to His Venetian Counterpart, Rich With Details on Its International Trade And His Merchant Symbol

 

With the Treaty of Lodi signed, peace will bring prosperity, Buonaccorso Pitti predicts

 

“The galleys  have come and they have brought a few excellent silks from the archipelago [Indonesia]. Please, tell us their prices and tell us about the stravai and leggi [raw silk from Iran]”

A period of crucial historical development of the modern banking system is late Medieval and Renaissance Italy, and particularly the affluent cities of Florence, Venice and Genoa.  The most famous Italian bank was the Medici bank, established by Giovanni Medici in 1397. It was the largest and most respected bank in Europe.  Some estimates say that the Medici family was, for a period of time, the wealthiest family in Europe.

Banks in that period did not just loan money, they engaged in international and local trade in a way unprecedented before.  Their extension of credit, ability to trade across country boundaries, and the increasing affluence of the wealthy, allowed for a ready market for luxury goods.

Among these early Florentine Banks was the Baldesi firm, established by Turino Baldesi and quickly a client of the Medici firm, with which it did extensive business.  The Baldesi firm was involved in the trade in many countries, stretching from the Silk Road to the end of known civilization in the West – England.  They traded in silk from Iran, goods from Indonesia, and of course lent money.

In the early 15th century, the firm moved its main office to flourishing Venice, though its roots in Florence allowed it access to the great patrons, banks, and clients who were there.

The Treaty of Lodi, also known as the Peace of Lodi was a peace agreement between Milan, Naples, and Florence signed on April 9, 1454 at Lodi in Lombardy. It put an end to the long struggles between expansive Milan and Venice, which had produced a single decisive Venetian victory, at the battle of Maclodio in 1427, in which the Venetian ally was Florence, but had resulted in no lasting peace.

Buonaccorso Pitti was a prominent Florentine merchant whose family was among the more influential in the financial world. They bought and sold silk, horses, wine, wool, and clothing, among other things.

Interestingly, this letter shows that even though Ottoman conquests of 1453 had closed the Silk Road, silk from Persia was still reaching Europe through Damascus and Aleppo. Much of this came through Venice.

Autograph letter signed, February 5, 1455, from “Bonaccorso Pitti and partners silk manufacturers from Florence”, to Giovanni e Agnolo Baldesi in Venice.  This letter bears the mercantile symbol of the Pitti enterprise, a rare merchants mark which functioned both as a unique identifier but also as a postal symbol.  It begins with the sign of the cross.

“Last Saturday we wrote you.  We then received two letters from you, the first one dated 24th, the second 28th, and considering what you said there, we send this response.

“We expected you would tell us you had secured the trade of verzino [a wood used in making dyes, particularly to make clothes red, and mentioned by name by Marco Polo himself] without waiting for further instruction from us. You did not, and so we wondered whether you commissioned others to do it; but we have asked to Giovanni [Baldesi] if there is verzino here or in Bologna and he answered there is not, so that we understand that you did not handle it.

“We would like you to deal with it for us and we trust you, and we recommend that when you do business for us, you feel you have the authority to say ‘We did this for your profit’, especially in cases like this one or similar.

“Attached to these letters, we send you the prices of the cloth from Florence, even though less than a month ago we already sent them in detail, disclosed the same price, largely explained, as we do again now.  I do not know if you have received them, but we send it so that you can be informed about all the prices for barter, so, please, keep them for the next time – prices of all types.

“The galleys [vessels] have come and they have brought a few excellent silks from the archipelago [Indonesia]. Please, tell us their prices and tell us about the stravai and leggi [raw silk from Iran], if it is a better place for business here or there where you are, and please inform us about the prices of the talani silk [a kind of silk in Talich, a border area between Azerbaijan and Iran] and of silk for women, and tell us if you need to wait a few months (so that they will reach the right price for business) and if the situation is right to make a profit.  We will pay you a commission.  

“We appreciate that you entrust the writer of the last letter with future correspondence (it’s a matter of handwriting), because it was hard to read the previous letter(s), since we are not so used to their handwriting.

“As you saw that the law about clothes has been abrogated, presumably as a consequence of the peace [after the Peace of Lodi], for which we praise the Lord, that the Signoria will have to fulfill our wishes. We tell you that beginning today we want to buy from a friend of ours 25 pieces [of cloth] in order to give them to you so that you can send us some goods in exchange. We want to arrange something in one way or another.  The friend from Rome next time will send you the swatches of cloth and you will proceed and he’ll receive what he needs. We wrote him this.

“Dom. Alessandro [another northern Italian trader] does not want to send his goods until he receive some money; perhaps, now that peace has been signed, he ought to change his mind.

“We have nothing more to say about the trade of boccaccini [cotton cloth]… We wanted some boccaccini for trading in Rome and some for trading here.

“About the trade of french wool, you say that fl. is 300 worth fl. 3000 and that when the flemish galleys arrive we should sell it at ducats 32 the hundredweight and sell domaschini at 1 ½ ducats per braccio (ca. 60 cm,) of Venice, ¼ in cash and ¾ in exchange for domaschin, giving the money when we have received the wool. We reply this is not a business we want to do, because the wool will be priced here in florins  31/32 the hundredsweight, giving domaschini for ducati 1 e ½ per braccio in Ferrara, which is almost their value if they were sold for cash, and adding only ¼ ducati, surely is a mistake, because this is not a trade to be done. Consider that wool here is valued florins 25 per hundredweight if sold for cash and 25½ if it is good  wool), and so few people do this kind of trade. They could do this only after having inspected the wool in other words after taking a sack (of wool) as sample so to understand what quality has been achieved. Because from one type of wool to another one there is a difference (in price) that goes from florins 2 to 3 per hundredweight, and we have to consider that it can take from 2 to 3 months maybe before the galleys arrive and the domaschini cant be priced less than florins 1 7/8 /braccio, but we don’t want to give them money.

“If it is viable, you too will do likewise, and alert us about what you are going to. We guarantee you, that we are ready to do this trade, since we have a large amount of damasks (silk cloths) in the loom.

“Nothing more with this. May Christ protect you.”

This letter contains the merchant sign of the Pitti firm, a rare mark on a rare letter from the heart of Florentine Renaissance banking.