Abstract
This chapter introduces the volume by outlining not only why the role of the father was such an important point of contention during this period, but also how the growing mercantile economy and social expectations for merchants affected paternity and the portraits of ideal fatherhood, in particular, representations of wealth, poverty, and charity.
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Notes
- 1.
“Mercatante conviene che sia buono leggitore e scrittore e buono ragionere, e che sappia usare e practicare con tutte maniere di genti e che sia parlante con misura e costumato sì che cappia tra’ mercatanti e tra gl’altri savi e gentili uomini, dove spesso conviene ch’arrivino, e che sia aperto e cognoscente di quella mercatanzia che traffica; ancora che sappia conoscere i vantaggi delle mercatanzie e de’ tempi. E diventato che <sia> mercatante, dee usare somma lealtà e verità con qualunque traffica e in qualunque parte dee sapere conoscere le monete e le false mercatanzie acciò che non possa essere ingannato, non dee intendere in vagheggiare, in giucare, in sollazzi e i[n] molt’altre cose vane, ma onestamente vivere, acciò che non dea danno a sé e sospetto a quelli il cui trassinasse; e sovr’ogni cosa dee amare e temere Iddio, e delle decima parte di quello che guadagna de’ fare bene a’ poveri per l’amore d’Iddio, e guardarsi di non offendere Iddio in verun modo e usare la chiesa, acciò che Dio gli dea guadagno, e se pur perdesse, lodare Iddio sperando in lui grazia” (Pucci , Libro 262).
- 2.
For more on the growing ambivalence toward economic and social changes created by a growing monetary economy, see Vitullo and Wolfthal, Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. For other important works about the effects of the monetary economy on ethics and notions of value, see the works of Baxandall, Langholm, Le Goff, Kaye, and Todeschini.
- 3.
“Né pare ad alcuni questi essercizii, come gli chiameremo, pecuniarii mai stieno netti, sanza molte bugie, e stimano non poche volte in quegli intervenire patti spurchi e scritture non oneste” (Alberti , I libri 171).
- 4.
A recent article by Julie L. Mell questions the notion that money itself created a sense of anxiety in late medieval culture. Although I agree with Mell that “binary oppositions between an altruistic Christianity (linked to a gift economy and a modernizing Judaism (linked to a profit economy) ought to be broken down” (1) as all Europeans debated the ethical questions surrounding commercial transactions, I still believe that money itself and the people who focused on making money as a profession were often characterized as a form of contagion that disrupted natural hierarchies and sacred spaces.
- 5.
Only a damaged fragment of the much larger fresco still exists, but an eighteenth-century watercolor of the fresco gives us an idea of the entire work (Levin , Advertising 221).
- 6.
While one child is clearly holding a pomegranate, the others are difficult to distinguish. See Levin’s explanation in footnote 46 of his article on the fresco (Levin, Advertising 287). He also refers to the fresco as a type of billboard for the “prized commodity” of orphaned or abandoned children (Levin , Advertising 221).
- 7.
- 8.
I am grateful to Nina Berman for these references to scholarship on contemporary forms of charity.
- 9.
See Carol Lansing, Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Commune.
- 10.
Here I am referring to Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of emotional communities, which will be examined more thoroughly in Chap. 3.
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Vitullo, J. (2019). Introduction. In: Negotiating the Art of Fatherhood in Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29045-0_1
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