The Merchant of Prato: Daily Life in a Medieval Italian City

by Iris Origo

Francesco di Marco Datini, the 14th-century Tuscan merchant who forms the subject of the Marchesa Origo's study, has now probably become the most intimately accessible figure of the later-Middle Ages. In 1870 the whole astonishing cache, containing some 150,000 letters and great numbers of business documents, came to light. The Marchesa Origo has drawn on this material to paint, in detail, a picture of Italian domestic life on the eve of the Renaissance.

Genres: History, Italy, Biography, Nonfiction, Medieval History, Medieval, Renaissance

400 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1957

About the author

Iris Origo was a British-born biographer and writer. She lived in Italy and devoted much of her life to the improvement of the Tuscan estate at La Foce, which she purchased with her husband in the 1920s. During the Second World War, she sheltered refugee children and assisted many escaped Allied prisoners of war and partisans in defiance of Italy’s fascist regime and Nazi occupied forces. She is the author of Images and Shadows; A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939–1940 (NYRB Classics); Leopardi: A Study in Solitude; and The Merchant of Prato, among others.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

This lovely study of mercantile life in northern Italy based on a chance find of a set of documents which turned out to be almost the complete archive of Francesco di Marco Datini (1335ish - 1410 the era of Boccaccio and his Decameron ). Datini came from Prato in Tuscany, as a young man went to work in Avignon - at the time the seat of the Papacy and an important commercial centre - where he set up a shop which expanded over time into a far reaching network of companies and commercial activities. Datini's will left his house and most of his money as an endowment to his home town to be administered for the benefit of the poor. In 1870 during work on his former property, a huge archive of Datini's paperwork was discovered behind a wall. The documents included about 500 ledgers and account books, some 300 deeds of partnership, around 400 insurance policies, in the region of 120,000 letters personal and business related, and thousands of other documents such as bills of exchange, contracts, letters of credit, bills of lading and so on. Judging by the dates of the documents the archive isn't even complete, as it seems to cover only most of the last thirty years of his life, which gives some idea of the scale of his undertakings 120,000 letters over 30 years is something like 4000 a year, this is a picture of constant and regular activity .

The scope of the archive opens up the possibility of any number of specialised detailed studies whether looking at Datini's business or personal life. Origo draws from some of these as well as from archive material to give an overview of his business and daily life. The book is divided into two parts, the first looking at the business side of his operations, the second at family and daily life. But really any one chapter could be expanded to become the subject of a book length study.

Datini was not one of the greatest merchants of his age, however the spread and scope of his undertakings appear striking. There was no specialisation, he traded in apparently anything: wool, cloth, salt, arms and armour, jewels, enamels, crucifixes and religious paintings, silks, lead, paper, cotton, woad, brass, spices, hides, soap, ivory, ceramics, ostrich feathers and eggs, maps, leather, sardines, rope, honey, sugar, alum and slaves were among the goods he bought and sold. Eventually he also moved into banking In Origo's view Datini was close to the forefront of contemporary banking practises, Origo was writing in the 1950s I've heard that Genoa is generally now considered to have been the innovative banking centre devising most of the practises that are familiar to us today .

His business operated out of shops established in Florence, Valencia, Barcelona, Pisa, Majorca and Genoa. These were established as partnership companies, with different partners putting in capital and labour with one partner often based in the regional office with the profits shared in proportion to their investment. One interesting detail is the long time it took for the merchant to realise profits on transactions. Another the looseness of the form of operation. Datini had definite ideas about how his business should be transacted which led to him writing long, frustrated letters to his factors and partners.

Business wasn't straightforward. Wars closed markets and devastated regions, the plague interrupted trade, and there were shipwrecks, piracy and brigandage as well. At the same time outbreaks of peace and of royal weddings offered opportunities to sell luxury goods. Lending money to kings bankrupted the grander Italian merchants, Datini was too small to be involved in that kind of venture. However conditions of business seemed to have ground on Datini, Origo sees him as living in a state of angst. He was also penny pinching. A stone mason who worked on Datini's house wasn't paid for twenty-four years. Datini was outraged when the man eventually screwed up his courage and asked to be paid. Painters were turned out of his house mid way through their work leading to a court dispute, a friend told him that had he spent the time in prayer instead of dispute he would have found the road to Paradise (p243).

A striking feature of the description of the household is how Spartan it seems in contrast to the wealth of the business operations. A few beds and chests, a bare twelve silver forks, not much crockery. The clothes are lavish, the linen closet a source of pride but the impression is that fourteenth century Italy didn't produce a great range of household goods. By modern standards the great house seems sparely furnished. There are hardly any chairs for instance. Mirrors were important - as a way to reflect light on to the writing table. Datini owned a few books including a large volume of the Life of the Saints, the Divine Comedy is cited a few times in the letters, there is battered children's psalter, a copy of the little flowers of St Francis which is lent to a friend for him to read to his young sons at bedtime, and the letters of St Jerome and St Gregory.

Datini's wife, Margherita, was somewhere between fifteen and eighteen when she married the significantly older Datini. She learnt to read in her thirties. Until which time her husband's letters were read aloud to her. The couple had no children and Datini spent many years apart from her in Florence while she remained in Prato during which time he pursued serving women and slaves with sufficient assiduousness to become the father of several illegitimate children. One of whom, a daughter, was brought up by his wife and married off with a decent dowry, a Cardinal was among one of the godparents of a grandchild. But unsurprisingly the martial relationship was stressed. Origo compares the range of Datini's lengthy instructions to his wife (Wash the wine barrels! Make friends with the Podesta's wife! Give out a thousand oranges and some herring in charity!) to The Goodman of Paris, but that comes across as considerably gentler in tone than the nagging letters sent by Datini to his wife.

Her life was fairly circumscribed, while she had a circle of friends in Prato she didn't get to travel much beyond it. It is easy to see how as Huizinga describes in The Waning of the Middle Ages pilgrimages were rare opportunities of freedom from the round of daily life. Datini joined a penitential movement, inspired by fear of the plague, and with thousands of others spent nine days away from home having sworn not to sleep within stone walls or to take off their robes but apart from the business of scourging ourselves with a rod and accusing ourselves to Our Lord Jesus Christ of our sins despite the scourging, it seems to have been pleasant enough: I took with us two of my horses and the mule; and on those we placed two small saddle-chests, containing boxes of all kinds of comfits, and a great many small torches and candles, and cheeses of all kinds, and fresh bread and biscuits, and round cakes, sweet and unsweetened, and other things besides that belong to a man's life; so that the two horses were fully laden with our victuals; and besides these, I took a great sack of warm raiment to have at hand by day and night... (p323).

There are other details of daily life, the rare person who had breakfast - a slice of bread and a glass of white wine as fortification against the plague. The more usual habit was to have just two meals a day. A substantial cooked dinner at about nine in the morning bread, broth, lasagne or ravioli or rice or blancmange which was then a savoury rather than a sweet dish, meat (veal, pork, kid or mutton, rarely beef) or fish and sometimes frogs. All cooked with herbs, spices, onions and garlic followed by a supper around sunset. The couple probably slept naked apart from the nightcaps that they wore and when they woke up rather than having a wash they would rub their heads with a towel. This was considered very good for health and well being.

With the close of his life Datini was encouraged to amend his will to leave his wealth for charitable purposes and as a result the archive of materials that Origo draws upon for her book was sealed up behind a wall and accidentally preserved. The strength and the weakness of this book is the attempt to give an overview of all of Datini's activities, the businesses, his marriage, friendships, his house and household, the farms that he owned, the food and drink. As a result it is not as focused as some more recent micro-histories. There is so much material that Origo is generally summarising the source material rather than letting it speak for itself - which is a pity, however it is a rounded overview of one of Dante's readers and a medium sized cog in the economic life of his times, a big man in a small town.



http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_...

Datini is the large kneeling figure in red in the bottom left. He is presenting the four men who will administer his charitable endowment to the Virgin and Christ Child, John the Baptist and Saint Stephen.

[kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend who knew of my interest in textiles recommended that I read this. Francesco Di Marco Datini was (among other things) a wool trader in 14th century Tuscany. The most interesting thing about the book is the raw materials the author uses to reconstruct Datini's life: he left unbelievably vast amounts of letters, business records, ledgers, all of which were discovered undisturbed and intact in the 1870s. Just the fact that all this material was left in a room under the stairs for over 400 years is mind-boggling. The sense I get from reading the book is that life for this citizen of Prato -- in its most basic form of human relationships -- was little different than it is today. Datini himself was not a very endearing character: he was a classic type-A, driven to make money, and worrying all the time that he would either lose it or not make enough. The fact that he was so obsessed with his businesses meant that he was rarely at home, and that fact actually helps us to get a glimpse of daily life because he wrote detailed, almost daily letters to his wife, obsessing about how she was conducting the business of running their home. She clearly had a sense of humor, because her letters in reply were patient but there was enough retort in them to show that she was definitely not just going to sit there and take it! Some of the book, particularly the part outlining Datini's business dealings, reads like a textbook, but once you get into daily life, the story comes to life. Medieval Italy never seemed so real before!

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book constitutes a very careful analysis of an incredible treasure trove of primary sources related to late medieval or Renaissance business and banking practices, family structure, civic culture, and trade relations.

[Lotte Jellema · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me YEARS but I finally finished this book 😭😭

Hate to give it 2 stars, because the actual research is so so interesting. The way it's written is unfortunately very dated and difficult, which makes it boring & very hard to read. I would love to see someone take this research and write a more widely accessible book, because learning about life in 14th-century Italy was super interesting.

[William T · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well researched, very well written biography. Barbara Tuchman got it right when she wrote, "one of the great works of historical writing of the twentieth century." Having said that, it takes an unusual curiosity to want to read 389 pages of a biography of an obscure Merchant from the 13th and 14th century, dying in 1410. That curiosity is, however, well rewarded in a wide ranging description of life, religion and business in the 14th century France and Italy.

Written in 1957, this book will undoubtedly help historian for many centuries to come.

[Yuri Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work did not hold my attention as well as I hoped and expected; I think it has been a little over-sold by its admirers. This edition also suffers from a foreword by Charles Nicholl which is a complete waste of space. An additional problem is that some of the notes at the back are in fact annotations rather than mere references, and these would have been better placed as footnotes on the relevant page, thus avoiding a lot of tiresome to-ing and fro-ing. Looking past such qualms, looking directly at Origo’s text, this is nevertheless a competent and often interesting account of life in 14th century Italy’s commercial circles.

[Stella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the paper book, on “recommendation” from the chief curator at The Frick Collection. An unexpectedly wonderful read - thoughtfully researched and written in an extremely readable way, this is a story of a man who came from nothing and became a prosperous merchant in the Middle Ages. I loved learning about everyday life of this period in Tuscany - the food, the houses, the clothing, the customs, all gleaned from a treasure trove of letters and business records of a single man who was wise (or vain) enough to decree them preserved for posterity. A perfect book for dreary winter days.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book which really lets the reader into what life was like in the 14th Century. Francesco di Marco Datini was a successful merchant who rose from humble origins to a position of considerable wealth and stature. A compulsive guy, he left behind 140,000 letters and 500 ledgers from which Origo constructed this detailed depiction of daily life in Italy at that time.

When he was in his 40's, he married Margherita who was a teenager. The marriage never seems very joyful, though they stayed married until the end, and exchanged countless letters since Datini was often away from Prato. The letters are generally cranky, and one gets more of a sense of loyalty than of love. Perhaps some of the unfulfilled quality of this relationship was their failure to produce children. Italian culture was male-dominated, and Margherita had extensive duties for which Datini rarely seems grateful. Aside from nuns, women were not taught to read and write, though Margherita in her 30's did acquire these skills through lessons from a male friend of her husband's. Along with Datin's friend Ser Lapo, she is one of the few characters besides Datini himself who comes alive in the book.

There is an extensive discussion of trade, since Datini was a merchant, and it is surprising to know how extensive it was, even though shipping was done by mule or galley. Italy traded regularly with England and Asia, and depended on a surprising number of imported products like cloth and spices. On the one hand, life was more sophisticated than I expected; on the other, they lived with surprisingly few possessions like furniture and dishware (though they had rather a lot of clothes).
Amazingly, their bed was twelve feet wide.

There were many aspects of Italy's culture then which surprised me. Slavery was prevalent (who knew?) and the victims were more from Central Asia than Africa. They seem to have been treated well for the most part, at least as well as free servants. The price of a slave boy was about the same as that for a mule. Fur was a big deal in apparel, and included squirrel and (!) cat. It was cheaper than cloth. Clothes cost more than jewels. In most cases, overhead costs were a lot greater than those for labor; thus, a painter was paid very little, but the paints etc. were surprisingly costly, probably because they had to be imported.

Food seemed abundant and had some variety. Recipes were very rich and usually sweet and had no relation to Italian food today. Sugar was seen as healthy. Provisions were bought in large amounts -- wine and fish by the barrel, for instance. They ate a lot of a fish called tench, which seems to have been a kind of carp (just a guess) with a lot of small bones. Breakfast did not exist. Beef was eaten rarely (though veal was esteemed) and was always only boiled.

The chapter on the Great Plague (really a series of epidemics which recurred periodically) brings to mind the current COVID pandemic, though the plague had a far higher mortality rate and people died more quickly.

The book is surprisingly readable, and the footnoting is user-friendly. But there are still struggles for a reader. There is often far too much detail (especially concerning trade). The cost of just about every item is relayed, but the values are not put into any context of another era, and it was hard to know what anything cost except relative to other items. There are also an astonishing number of words which are apparently English but unfamiliar to me (tench, mentioned above was one; there is an illness called "gravel" which perhaps was kidney stones). I spent a lot of time on my phone looking up words, which disrupted the flow of reading.

Still, this is an unusual and compelling book for anyone interested in other cultures. It reminds me of the work of Ruth Goodman, which I have enjoyed.

[Godine Publisher & Black Sparrow Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Like a modern day Forrest Gumpp, Datini was an average person dealing with the everyday business of life but one where circumstances placed him at the center of great change. He lived at the time of transition from the middle ages to the modern era and was one of the many who were in the forefront of the march to modern times. He was a minor figure at the Papal Court in Avignon which was the center of a political and religious struggle. And, unlike the thousands of others in the same position, Datini kept his records which give us an insider's view of that world of a half a millennium ago."
-Chuck Nugent

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was prepared for this book to be quite dry, and a bit of a struggle to get through, but in actual fact it was a relatively easy read. I can't pretend the intricate details (the precise number of articles of furniture in the house, or count of linen in the linen chest) really interested me, but the overall image of 13th century Italian life is well captured in the book.

[Caio Petelinkar · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much detailed info from the medieval daily life if you are into that, very interesting book. Some chapters less interesting than others (too much detail on less interesting topics like spices, weights or currencies). On the other side very detailed routine on food, religious, plague, and trading (among others).

[Ocean G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite dry and full of facts, but an excellent book. Taken from correspondence and contemporary writings and literature. A fascinating insight into a family's life in the late 14th century in Avignon and Prato.

[Hannah Trower · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating description of daily life in fourteenth (and very early fifteenth) century Tuscany from the papers and letters of a merchant from Prato, who made his start in Avignon, and did much of his work in Florence. You really get a sense of his character and the character of his familiars, wife and friends, etc from their letters, especially their foibles. How irascible, exasperating, exacting, miserly and yet generous he could be, but also the simple pleasures he took in food and drink, etc. I feel like he could walk through the door and I would recognize him from the prose. Strong attention to details like the cost of fabric relative to jewelry, and so on. Some of the descriptions have not aged well at all, reflecting racist and classist ideas of the 1950s, but there is so much good here that I strongly recommend it anyway to anyone interested in the daily "ordinary" (he's wealthy, and a merchant, but an ordinary example of his class) life of this period.

[Richard Koerner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not my usual book, but at Randy's recommendation, I read it. This is the actual story of a man in the late 14th and early 15th centuries in Italy, Prato to be exact. Prato is near Florence. He was a businessman and spent much time in Avignon, France as well as Italy. He documented pretty much everything, and the author, Iris Origo, managed to put it into a form that reads easily. It is an amazing account of life in that time period and what people had to do to get along and how they dealt with everyday issues, even things like the plague. In many respects, this is a 'must' read.

[Barney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Francesco di Marco Datini was a 14th-century merchant, born in Prato, and who ran businesses throughout Western Mediterranean. From a whole stache of letters and documents, this book brings him to life in such remarkable detail - it's really astonishing, considering he lived around 700 years ago and history - from its sheer wight - usually has a way of reducing and removing the nuance out of all but the most recent lives.

But Franceso is revealed here in all his miserly, nervy, grumbling self. His letters to his wife are strained and patronizing and they spent most of their lives apart and childless, only growing fond of each other in their old age. He sounds like the absolute worst boss - micro-managing every detail, prone to long lectures and demanding total devotion from his employees for minimal reward. And there's the touching, frank friendship he had with the devout Ser Lapo who was constantly appealing to Francesco to do good before it was too late, and who he shared a love of good wine with.

And it brings the world in which Franceso lived in to life too, so we get a better feel for the man himself. It was a hard world, constantly menaced by outbreaks of the plague which carried off so many of his relatives and friends so swiftly.

[Attila Gáspár · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francesco da Marco Datini died at the remarkable age of 75 in 1410. His achievements were no less remarkable - having lost his parents to the Black Death in his teens, he turned a modest inheritance into one of the biggest fortunes of his age through building a merchant empire over the Mediterranean. He never had a (legitimate) son and heir, so he vested his fortune in a foundation serving the needs of the poor of his native city of Prato, in Tuscany. The foundation continues to live on to this day in the palazzo built by him. This is where his business documents (500 account books and 150,000 papers in total) were found hidden in a stairway in 1870.

This book builds on this vast library of public and private documents to paint the most vivid picture of every day life in the late 14th and early 15th centuries: business dealings, politics, religion, cloths, art, food, drink, family quarrels, friendships, and the fear of death in an era where the plague could strike one dead any minute. Francesco as a person was probably not very pleasant, nor was he very remarkable; however, his life and legacy was thus preserved in this quite remarkable book for eternity.

[Jose Esquibel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-researched account of the 14th-century merchant, Francesco di Marco Datini. If you enjoy reading about the early history and commercial success of the Medici family of Florence, you'll discover many business details that contributed to the Medici prosperity found in the rich records left by Datini as revealed by Iris Origo.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholarly analysis of the life of a 14thC cloth merchant who left behind a trove of his commercial and personal papers, by a early 20thC polymath.

[Alexandra Wieland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well researched and beautifully written book on Francesco Datini of Prato, and his household.

[Floortje Zwigtman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessant verslag van het leven in het Middeleeuwse Toscane, gebaseerd op het archief dat de rijke koopman uit de titel naliet. Veel boeiende details maar helaas ook net wat te veel herhalingen.

[John McCormack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating insight into life way back then. Then,as now, business was all that mattered to the merchant. Everthing else, everything, was secondary.

[Muharrem Enes Erdem · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Merchant of Prato: Daily Life in a Medieval Italian City by Iris Origo offers a fascinating and intimate portrait of 14th-century Italy through the life of Francesco di Marco Datini, a prosperous merchant of Prato. This is not merely the story of a wealthy businessman, but an exploration of the intricate daily lives, economic systems, and social norms that shaped medieval Italy.

Origo does an exceptional job of weaving together historical facts with the personal letters and documents of Datini, providing a rare and detailed look at the merchant’s life, his relationships, his business dealings, and the world in which he operated. By drawing on Datini’s extensive correspondence, Origo paints a vivid picture of not only the merchant's world but also the broader society in Prato, where commerce, family, and politics intersected in often surprising ways.

One of the book's strengths lies in its ability to present medieval Italy with both historical accuracy and human empathy. We get a sense of the rigid class structures, the frailties of human nature, the everyday struggles, and the triumphs of those living in the 14th century, all while observing how Datini navigated these pressures in his professional and personal life. From the bustling marketplace to the quiet moments of introspection, Origo immerses the reader in the rhythms of medieval urban life, presenting it in a way that is both scholarly and deeply human.

What makes this book particularly engaging is how it allows readers to understand the complexities of medieval trade, the global reach of Italian merchants, and the role of family and religion in shaping societal norms. Origo’s meticulous research and detailed narration bring a level of depth to the everyday experiences of the people of Prato that you rarely encounter in broader histories of the period.

That being said, while the book is rich in detail, it can sometimes be overwhelming for readers not already familiar with the historical context or the intricacies of medieval commerce. However, for those with a genuine interest in this period of history, The Merchant of Prato provides an invaluable perspective that goes beyond the typical historical narrative.

In conclusion, The Merchant of Prato is a captivating work that brings the past alive through the lens of one merchant’s experience, offering a rare and thorough look at daily life in a medieval Italian city. It’s an insightful and rewarding read for anyone interested in medieval history, economics, and the lives of ordinary people in a time of extraordinary social and political change.

[Kitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absolutely fascinating insight into the life of a medieval Italian merchant, Francesco di Marco Datini. I have never read anything that brings the trecento to life like this does, and makes one think simultaneously how different things were then and yet how very similar in many ways. The first part deals with his business interests - after his parents died of the plague he travelled to Avignon where the Pope had his court and set up as a merchant, trading in a wide range of goods - arms and armour, cloth, artworks, spices, etc. - from across the Mediterranean and Middle East. Eventually he is persuaded to return to his home town of Prato with his new wife and joins the guild system in Florence, with offices in Catalonia, Genoa and Pisa. Letters between Datini and his agents across the Mediterranean attest to the dangers that beset trade - and travel in general - in the fourteenth century, and the time it took to relay messages and goods. The second part of the book focuses on domestic life: Francesco's building projects in Prato and in the countryside, how his house was furnished, what he ate and wore, how his household was organised, his religion and his health. These details come not only from the household accounts but also from letters between Francesco and his wife Margherita who were often separated while he was in Florence and she in Prato, and from his great friend the notary Ser Lapo Mazzei and others. These give an intimate insight into the character of Datini, his anxieties and close relationships.

The cache of letters and accounts that form the Datini archive are almost unique in their completeness, and though discovered in the 1850s their worth was not fully appreciated until Iris Origo gained permission to carry out this lengthy research. The resulting volume could, however, have been very heavy-going considering the meticulous detail of the account books, but in the hands of Origo, who lived most of her life in Tuscany and understood the traditions that still persisted (for instance the 'mezzadria' system of tenant farming), it is addictively readable, the fascinating facts of everyday life picked out and the characters brought to life with a lightness of touch and an innate understanding that is remarkable.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a very fascinating account of the life of a late Medieval merchant named Francesco di Marco Datini from the Italian city of Prato, situated fourteen miles Northwest of Florence. His life, from 1335 to 1410, spanned, among other events, the Black Death and the end of the Pope's tenure in the city of Avignon (where Datini cut his mercantile teeth).

His life story is relatively well know because he left more than 100,000 letters stored in his house, which after some time were walled in below the staircase and forgotten about for over 400 years. When they were found they were in remarkably good condition. Much of his correspondence was taken up by business matters and has formed several consequential studies of economic history. In Origo's words:

These studies, however, have dealt chiefly with Datini's trade. Except for the delightful letters written to him by his friend and notary, Ser Lapo Mazzei, which were published by Cesare Guasti in 1880, his private correspondence has remained almost untouched in particular, the letters he exchanged with his wife, his partners and his fattori [factors]. It is from these letters that most of the information in this book is derived - although indeed even now these sources are far from being exhausted, or even fully tapped. This book is merely an attempt to draw, from this vast and miscellaneous material, a picture (even if fragmentary and incomplete) of the daily life of the time, and a portrait of the merchant himself, of his wife, his friends, and his underlings.

Overall Origo is an excellent writer and marvelously brings her historical portrait to life.

[Suanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second reading of The Merchant of Prato, a book I first read shortly after returning to the US after living for years in Italy and suffering from nostalgia for Tuscany. The small town of Prato is only fifteen miles from Florence and has close ties with the larger city. Francesco di Marco Datini is a Prato merchant who moves to France then back to Prato and maintains offices there and in Florence, Valencia, Barcelona, Pisa, Majorca, and Genoa.

An enormous archive of Datini’s documents were found walled off in a secret room in 1870. Origo draws on these documents and copious other research to draw a picture of this merchant. He remained a relatively small-time merchant, but the breadth of his investments is staggering, ranging from cloth (for which Prato is famous) to spices and even slaves. Letters between him and his friends and his various offices show him to be both avaricious and conflicted about his relationship with God; his clothing sumptuous, but the furnishings of his dwellings spartan.

I wish I had reread earlier this year in conjunction with Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer which focuses on Florence with detours into England, Switzerland, France, Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. While The Merchant of Prato deals with a single man, Palmer looks at the lives of fifteen different Renaissance women and men and their roles in the making of the era. Between the two books, the reader can get a good idea of what Tuscany was like just before and during the Renaissance.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I alluded the other day to a biography shelf that I decided to dissolve and redistribute (everything could be moved into history, art history, British lit etc).

Aside from needing the space (for a liquor cabinet!), it held rather a lot of miscellany in the sense of books that I couldn't tell you where I got them or who they were about.

Glancing at this in an "I might read this and give it away" kind of mood, the opening sentence of Barbara Tuchman's 1986 foreword "Why is this book one of the great works of historical writing of the twentieth century?" made me wish not to be too hasty. (Whether Tuchman's star is what it once was when I was a kid is another matter).

Origo herself is a fascinating character: an Englishwoman who married an Italian aristocrat and wrote books of history entirely without any academic career (rather like Tuchman, I believe) and took a few years out in the 1940s to traffic Jewish refugees to safety.

The book itself is an amazing portrait of society and economy in 14th century Tuscany, southern France (Avignon having been important at the time as the center of the Church) and the east side of Spain from Catalonia to the Balearic islands. The amount of detail can be a bit mind-numbing, but there are some clear high points - to me the chapter on what they ate!

[otto · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is so much, and it varies so greatly within it, that reviewing it is impossible.
Some chapters (most notably 'The family friend') speak out to us and make centuries-dead people and concepts as alive as they were in their time. It is in this chapters that you can see that the author has read her Homer, her Shakespeare and her Dante: they fascinate not only because of what they tell but also because of how they tell it; the writing has a rhythm, a continuosness and a flow that are poetry-like.
Other chapters (truth be told, most of them) are so dull that you dread having to read the book while you're going through them. Though Origo tried to make them less repellent by threading them with small anecdotes and general knowledge about the late middle ages, their true nature (inventories in the form of bullet lists of prices and jewels and clothes and donations) cannot be hidden from the reader. Perhaps these chapters are what makes this account one of the most reliable, but they also make this book so boring at times that i would only recommend reading it to middle ages nerds like myself and no one else.

[Sebastian Fortino · Rating 4 out of 5]

As many books of this nature can do — I expected it to drag on a bit. Fortunately, this seemed to be an exception. Perhaps because the writer paints a portrait of Francesco di Marco that is as business-oriented as it is domestic. We learn of his strikingly Italian marriage. One could imagine a young Sophia Loren complaining that she lives like “an innkeeper’s wife” back home in Prato while her husband lives in 12 miles away in Florence.

The intricate world of 14th C finance, as discussed by a businessman & merchant with his hands in all sorts of enterprises in Italy & as far away as Romania & England, sheds a lot of light on how difficult trade was in the early days of banks. Three years to turn a profit on wool from England!

Letters maintained by the merchant, his wife, preparations made for illegitimate children, scoldings by more religious men he knew, & other personal details make this a book I wish was longer. I only give it four stars because this edition didn’t send a modern photographer to take pictures of his remaining items.

[Tech Nossomy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een bijzonder boek met een ontzagwekkende hoeveelheid achtergrondinformatie samengesteld: alleen al van de koopman zelf, de ijdele maar vredelievende Francesco di Marco Datini, zijn 120.000+ brieven, bonnen en andere documenten overgeleverd. Daarnaast is het werk aangevuld met bronnenonderzoek uit Avignon, London en Florence, en daarbovenop nog eens met werken aangaande de sociaal-economische geschiedenis van Toscane.
Stilistisch doet het denken aan Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, hetgeen ook geinspireerd is op een enkele bron, met de verhalen over niet alleen de koopman zelf, maar ook zijn familie, tijdgenoten, zeden en gebruiken van die tijd, en helaas tevens de vele herhalingen.

Het oorspronkelijke werk is uit 1957 en de Nederlandse vertaling van 2001 laat sporen zien van het engels waarin het werk is opgesteld.

Kringloopwinkel.

[Stuart Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anyone curious about life in late medieval Italy will be enthralled by this rather charming account of the life of Francesco de Prato, a wealthy merchant based in Prato, a small Tuscan town not far from Florence. Much to our benefit, Francesco's papers--letters, journals, contracts, ledgers, bills, invoices, etc., both business and personal--survived, allowing for an intimate view of his life in the late 14th century. Each chapter focuses on certain aspects of his life, e.g., his marriage, his friends, his time in Avignon, etc. so it is not a strictly chronological biography. It does however omit any in-depth discussion of Italian politics primarily because Francesco stayed away from political activities in the interest of protecting his lucrative business. An excellent account of the period based on "real life" documentation which often shows the disconnect between what people actually did as opposed to what the law and government policy presumably allowed (or disallowed).