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A Civic Debate on Florentine Higher Education (1460)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Gene Brucker
Gene Brucker*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

The recent publication by Armando Verde of a collection of documents on the Pisan Studio (1473-1503) has been recognized as a major contribution to the cultural history of Florence in the late Quattrocento. The yield from years of painstaking research in Florentine and Pisan libraries and archives is made available in four massive volumes, which document the history of the university after its transfer from Florence to Pisa in 1473. Verde has identified the professors who taught, and the 1600 students who were taught, at Pisa and Florence; he has also provided documentation, largely from archival sources, concerning the faculty and the student body: their background and education, their academic and professional careers. He has also collected information on more than one thousand young scholars who were identified in the Florentine tax records (catasto) of 1480 as having been enrolled in schools.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , Winter 1981 , pp. 517 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1981

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References

1 Verde, Armando F., Lo Studio fiorentino 1473-1501. Ricerche e documenti, 3 vols. (Pistoia, 1973-1977).Google Scholar See Schmitt, C. B.'s review in The Times Literary Supplement, 13 Oct. 1978, pp. 1177–1178.Google Scholar

2 Gherardi, A., ed., Statuti della Università e Studio fiorentino dell'anno MCCCLXXXVII seguiti da un’ appendice di documenti dal MCCCXX al MCCCCLXXII [Documenti di storia italiana, VII] (Florence, 1881).Google Scholar For recent works on the Studio, see Brucker, G., “Florence and its University, 1348-1434,” in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Memory of E. H. Harbison, eds. Rabb, T. K. and Seigel, J. E. (Princeton, 1969), pp. 220–236 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spagnesi, E., Utiliter edoceri. Atli inediti degli Ufficiali dello Studio fiorentino (1391-96) (Milan, 1979)Google Scholar; Picotti, G. B., “Lo Studio di Pisa dalle origini a Cosimo duca,” Scritti vari di storia pisana e toscana (Pisa, 1968)Google Scholar; Caturegli, N., “Le origini dello Studio di Pisa,” Bollettino storico pisano, 11 (1942), 1–16.Google Scholar

3 de’ Medici, Lorenzo, Lettere, ed. Fubini, R., I (Florence, 1977), 464–466 Google Scholar; Rochon, A., La jeunesse de Laurent de Médicis (1449-78) (Paris, 1963), pp. 303–307.Google Scholar

4 The documents are published in Gherardi, , Statuti, pp. 247–276, 440-494.Google Scholar The 1429 complaint about the Studio's poor quality is in ibid., pp. 210-211.

5 Ibid., pp. 252-253, 261.

6 Bartolomeo's salary (1442) was 700 fl. annually; Argyropulos was paid 400 fl. from 1458 to 1471; ibid., pp. 446, 447, 492-493. On Argyropulos’ academic career in Florence, see Seigel, J. E., “The Teaching of Argyropulos and the Rhetoric of the First Humanists,” in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe, pp. 237–260.Google Scholar

7 Legal education in Florence (and in Bologna for Florentine students) is discussed by Martines, L., Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1968), pp. 62–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The law faculty for the academic year 1439-1440 is printed in Gherardi, , Statuti, pp. 443–445 Google Scholar; it includes six professors of canon law and six of civil law. The average salary was 80 fl. A list of law professors in 1451 is in ibid., pp. 461-462. Florentine notarial records contain the names of some scholars who received law degrees from the Florentine Studio in these years; Gherardi, , Statuti, pp. 446–448 Google Scholar, 20 April 1444 (D. Jacopus d. Ugolini de Farneto, in utroque iure); Archivio di Stato di Firenze [hereafter ASF] Notarile Antecosimiano, M 569 (1450-1453), fols. 56-56v, 9 Sept. 1450 (D. Petrus Jacopi de Iesi, canon law); M 348, no. 57, 5 July 1454 (D. Julianus Johannis de Parciavallis, civil law); M 570 (1461-1467), fol. 536, 5 June 1466 (D. Prosperum Nerii de Pictis, civil law); ibid. (1468-1472), unpaginated, 29 April 1469 (D. Nicolaus de Baldovinettis, canon law).

8 Gherardi, , Statuti, p. 489.Google Scholar

9 The republic's inability to pay troops was mentioned in civic debates in 1458; ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 55, fols. 29-29v, 31. In 1449, some professors had not been paid for four years; Gherardi, , Statuti, p. 486.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., pp. 492-493.

11 The first papal license to tax the Florentine clergy for a Studio subsidy (1500 fl.) was granted in 1429 by Pope Martin V; ibid., pp. 218-220. But his successors were less responsive to Florentine appeals; e.g., Nicholas V, who adamantly refused to authorize any secular taxation of the clergy; ASF, Died di Balìa, Responsive, 22, fols. 15, 51, 55. The Florentine embassy sent to congratulate Pope Pius II on his election was instructed to ask the pope to authorize a levy on the clergy for the Studio; Gherardi, , Statuti, pp. 266–267.Google Scholar Pius’ response was negative; ASF, Consultee Pratiche, 55, fols. 97v-102 (22 Jan. 1459).

12 Gherardi, , Statuti, pp. 488.Google Scholar

13 Mazzone, U., “El buon governo”. Un progetto di riforma generate nella Firenze savonaroliana (Florence, 1978), p. 124.Google Scholar

14 ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 56, fols. 34v-38v; text below.

15 Accolti held an appointment in the Studio as professor of civil law; Gherardi, , Statuti, pp. 442, 444, 469.Google Scholar

16 These arguments were developed by the officials in charge of the Studio in 1429; Gherardi, , Statuti, p. 211.Google Scholar

17 For this legislation, see Brucker, “Florence and its University,” p. 234.

18 Mazzone, , “El buon governo,” pp. 193–194.Google Scholar

19 L. Martines has written about the costs of schooling in Bologna for law students. Lawyers and Statecraft, pp. 89-90. For examples of paternal complaints about the costs of supporting students in the university, Verde, Studio, III, 514, 829, 836, 853.

20 Brucker, “Florence and its University,” pp. 222-224.

21 Francesco Guicciardini's father Piero insisted that his son go away to school, “perchè stimava che più ferventemente attenderei a studiare quando fussi fuor di casa”; Verde, Studio, II, 293.

22 Argyropulos left Florence for Hungary in 1471, even though he had been honored by a grant of citizenship; Gherardi, , Statuti, pp. 271, 489.Google Scholar

23 Giovannozzo Pitti's statement on 8 March 1460; ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 56, fol. 76: “… Dixit se pluries dixisse cum de Studio Pisis faciendo ageretur multis de causis non placere sibi ut studium ibi fieret; et in eandem sententia etiam nunc permanere, sed tamen quod videt alios concurrere ad studium ibi creandum, tunc cessisse illorum auctoritati ac sententie et ita se nunc etiam facturum quin aliis aliter videatur… . ”

24 In February 1472 a provision was passed authorizing the election of five Studio officials to “providere all'ordine d'uno bello et degno Studio nella città di Firenze, et non altrove”; Gherardi, , Statuli, p. 272.Google Scholar

25 ASF, Libri Fabarum, 69, fols. 131v-132v. The votes in the councils: 161 to 80, 103 to 48, 92 to 33.

26 Gherardi, , Statuti, pp. 273–274.Google Scholar

27 Verde, , Studio, I, 291–292.Google Scholar An interesting comparison of Pisa and other Italian universities was made (1492) by Jacopo Gherardi da Volterra: “Possem referre pisanam hanc scolam, sed quam voluptatem ex iis esse percepturus certe non video, cum ea frequens non sit hominibus magna ex parte florentini imperii. Papiensi vel Patavine nee numero scolarium, nee cultu, est comparanda; doctores nihilominus non habet illis inferiores”; ibid., III, 478.

28 Ibid., I, 293-294.

29 Ibid., III, 958-960, 984-986.

30 The allocation made to the Studio in Dec. 1472 was 6000 fl., but the budget for professorial salaries in the first year was 8738 fl.; ibid., I, 293.

31 Ibid., I, 297; Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere, I, 464.

32 Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere, II, 124, no. 4; 126, n. 7. The license was granted in Jan., 1476.

33 In 1477 the budget for professorial salaries was 7350 fl.; Verde, Studio, I, 293. Pope Innocent VIII extended the ecclesiastical subsidy for five years (June, 1487), as did Pope Alexander VI (Sept., 1493); Picotti, , Scritti vari, p. 26.Google Scholar

34 For a general discussion of Florentine views on education, see Bee, C., Les marchands écrivains à Florence 1375-1434 (Paris and The Hague, 1967), pp. 279–299 Google Scholar.

35 Philippe Aries has perceived a European trend toward disciplining the young, intensifying in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Centuries of Childhood (New York, 1965).

36 See also the review by R. Fubini of Bee's book, Rivista storica italiana, 82 (1970), 222-229.

37 Baron, H., The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton, 1955), pp. 358–373.Google Scholar