Social%20Life%20

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Social Life Renaissance Florence
Unit 4 Outcome 1 Social Life in Renaissance
Italy

• HTAV Student Lectures
• 20 July 2008
• Presenter Nick Frigo

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Studying social life

• To use a metaphor used by may historians of
  social history such work requires you to adopt
  the perspective of a truffle-hunter . . . And
  also that of the parachutist (David Cannadine)
• The section I would enjoy teaching the most (both
  Venice and Florence).
• For today, there is a need to be selective.

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Studying social life

• The Outcome students would enjoy the most but in
  some ways also find the most frustrating.
• Dealing with real people over a lengthy period
  of time change took place and over arching
  general comments can prove problematic or
  misleading so . . .

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Social Life Florence

• Remember . . . This is the most dynamic and
  complex area of study in many ways but also the
  most rewarding and enjoyable!

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Study Design Preamble Social Life

• Italian city-states such as Florence and Venice
  possessed distinct social structures shaped by
  their economic and political bases. These social
  hierarchies were reflected in many aspects of
  everyday life such as dress, housing, food,
  entertainment and the social map of the city
  based on neighbourhoods. There is historical
  debate over just how important neighbourhoods,
  gonfalone in Florence and sestieri in Venice,
  were to political, economic, social and religious
  aspects of life at this time. While it is agreed
  that a range of social relationships were crucial
  to a Florentine or Venetian citizens existence,
  historians have variously described them as
  competitive, pragmatic or co-operative typified
  by economic and political networks, but rarely as
  personal ties like love or friendship. The
  functional view has been shaped by evidence of
  conventions such as the strategic location of
  families within neighbourhoods, marriage
  contracts and dowries, and the institutionalisatio
  n of charity. Within each city, many people, such
  as the urban poor, foreigners and deviants,
  fell outside the networks created by the dominant
  elite. Historians have suggested that various
  means, such as legislation (e.g. controlling
  foreigners, prostitutes and homosexuality),
  institutionalised charity and festivals were used
  to incorporate these groups into, or exclude them
  from, city life in the interests of civic
  harmony. Students will investigate the nature and
  role of social conventions and relationships
  based on location, wealth, gender, class, or
  inclusion within or exclusion from the cities
  mores.

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Key Knowledge

• Outcome 1
• On completion of this unit the student should be
  able to analyse the nature and importance of
  social life in one urban centre during the
  Renaissance.
• To achieve this outcome the student will draw on
  knowledge and related skills outlined in area of
  study 1.
• Key knowledge
• This knowledge includes
• The social structures of either Florence or
  Venice during the Renaissance
• The social map of either Florence or Venice and
  how it reflected social identity, wealth, gender
  and class relationships
• The importance of aspects of social life such as
  family, marriage, dowries, charity, social
  legislation and festivals to the life of the city.

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Studying social life

• You are now aware of some of key notions
  underpinning most social relationships in
  Florence Parenti, Amici, Vicini. (broadly
  networks of family, friends and neighbours) In
  many ways the phrase social life needs to be
  considered more broadly than we might consider it
  today.

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Social Life Living Closely
The influence of Florence as a walled city is
evident in the physical layout of many of the
neighbourhoods. Many neighbourhoods were
characterised by congestion and houses were
packed together, streets twisted and meandered
through the district, following no rational
pattern Brucker
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Social Life the citys MORES
Ideas, actions, laws and architecture for
INCLUSION and EXCLUSION
From Gene Brucker, The Society of renaissance
Florence.
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Historical debate social life

• Historical debate surrounding the important of
  these
• While individual Florentines obviously saw much
  of their identity emerge from their social
  relationships these were quite complex and as
  such have become a source of debate and varying
  representation by historians. Kent explains
• Florence was fragmented into multiple
  communities, where the significant social
  relationships of friendship, amicizia and
  vicinaza, were so dense, multifaceted and
  often ambiguous . . . that men sometimes
  sought release from them. They did so in lay
  religious confraternities, whose confraternal
  ritual provided a temporary suspension of class
  and neighbourhood loyalties because their
  membership was usually city-wide. For Richard
  Trexler, on the other hand, sectional or
  neighbourhood loyalties have little importance in
  the ritual life of the class commune. Before
  Lorenzo de Medicis time, a person was either a
  member of a family and a Florentine, or nothing
  at all.

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Social Life and Neighbourhood

• The strength of some social relationships
  (those based around neighbourhood and providing
  perhaps a local identitity) and the potential
  that they had to rally popular support or
  opposition was obviously a point of concern for
  the Medici. Kent explains how the gonfalone
  were to participate actively in the turbulent
  politics of the period after 1494, and it is
  hardly surprising that the Medici finally
  abolished them, and other components of the
  republican constitution, in 1531. Everything
  was done wrote the pro-Medicean Filippo de
  Nerli, to take away from the people the
  opportunity of being able any longer to meet
  together under those ancient and popular
  insignia.

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Social Relationships

• Political Networks
• The gonfalone, however, in as much as it was a
  division of the commune, only half belonged to
  the neighbourhood an elite political
  institution, it was open only to full members of
  the guild community, and was dominated by
  Florences great citizens. (p. vxii) an
  administrative ward or form of local council.
• Ecktein asserts that from about the middle of
  the fifteenth century a more aristocratic set of
  values, of which the Medici were the principle
  proponents, had begun decisively to undermine the
  traditional reliance of Florentine politics upon
  relations of patronage forged within the citys
  neighbourhoods. (p. xxiv).
• It was Drago which played a decisive role in the
  Ciompi revolt, and contemporary sources confirm
  that the regime itself identified the threat from
  Florences lower orders with the district. (p.
  12)

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Neighbourhood Social Life

• Economic Networks
• In this neighbourhood, and one could assume every
  other, the historian Richard Goldthwaite
  emphasised the way in which men were woven into
  a web of credit relations in which payment was,
  according to the informality which flows from
  regular personal contact, loose and familiar.
  (p. xix)

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Neighbourhood - Social Relationships

• Rarely as personal ties like love or
  friendship.
• A large part of Florences collective identity
  was created and transformed in public ritual . .
  . there was little distinction between Dragos
  parish life and that of its community, and parish
  was most assuredly a community as much as an
  ecclesiastical - affair. (p. xxiii)

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Neighbourhood - Social Relationships

• The importance of social relationships such as
  dowries and marriage contracts is attested in the
  Drago by the actions of a pious but generous
  local barrel maker named Michele di Simone, who
  had lived opposite the campanile of the parish
  church in Borgo . . . leaving his prosperous
  estate to the parish confraternity in order that
  his confratelli might save the gonfalones poor
  girls from dishonour by paying for their
  dowries. (p. 35)
• In Drago one expression of social relationships
  was a youth brigade from San Frediano who
  presented street festivals and celebrations for
  the community one of which ended in tragedy
  when some of the onlookers perished because the
  bridge they were standing on collapsed!

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Social Life Neighbourhood

• While each neighbourhood was felt to possess its
  own identity, this did not develop easily, it was
  largely the result of the disorderly character
  of Florences expansion, and also social
  tradition. Each prominent family was closely
  identified with a particular neighbourhood, where
  the first urban generation had settled its
  members banding together for protection in the
  twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By 1400, the
  danger of physical attack from a rival house or
  faction was less real, but the pressures to
  remain in the ancestral neighbourhood was very
  strong. For in its own district, a family could
  muster the support among relatives, dependents,
  and friends which enhanced its political role in
  the commune. Brucker.

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Social Life Neighbourhood a case study Drago
Verde

• For Nick Eckstein, the notions of parenti, amici
  e vicini refer to the myriad forms of social
  contact that structured and conditioned life
  within Florences neighbourhoods.

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Social Life The Spiritual

• The districts confraternities provided a forum
  where these aims, which included an obliteration
  of social distinctions and an elevation of the
  common good above that of the individual, could
  be achieved. (Eckstein)
• It was in Drago that the fornai (the bakers) were
  an example of one group who were heavily involved
  in charitable works. They baked special bread
  (often marked with a symbol of the gonfalone
  which were distributed to Dragos poor at
  Christmas and Easter by the confraternity of
  Sant Agnese. (Eckstein)
• In Drago one family is worth highlighting for
  their spiritual and social activities. The
  Bartolommeo family had involvement with the
  Carmelite Friars which was reflected in their
  tax return by an obligation to pay the church
  six florins a year for a ritual meal in honour of
  their fathers memory. (Eckstein)

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Social Life The Spiritual

• Within Drago the bells of the Carmine and San
  Frediano that sounded day and night on the piazza
  could often, therefore, be heard as voices of the
  districts dead, announcing their presence to the
  living. The latter cared for the souls of
  departed neighbours with the masses that they
  celebrated in their memory by funding dowries
  and bread for the poor, the dead participated in
  the life of the community from beyond the grave.
  (Eckstein)
• As a result of their involvement in Dragos two
  major confraternities (San Frediana Brucciata
  and the one which met in the Carmelite basilica
  of Santa Maria del Carmine, the Company of Saint
  Mary and Saint Agnes called Sant Agnese)
  inhabitants of the neighbourhood were drawn into
  a number of interpenetrating social networks.
  (Eckstein)

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Social Life Neighbourhood

• Within the fabric of social relationships in
  Florence, the neighbourhood is represented by
  many historians as the ultimate expression and
  structure for the maintenance and encouragement
  of a variety of social relationships. In
  Renaissance Florence, the neighbourhood could
  touch a persons life in a variety of ways
  socially, economically, spiritually, politically,
  through contests and also by meeting the
  individuals physical and material needs.

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Social Life Neighbourhood a case study Drago
Verde

• For Nick Eckstein, the notions of parenti, amici
  e vicini refer to the myriad forms of social
  contact that structured and conditioned life
  within Florences neighbourhoods.
• It was traditionally felt in Florence that it was
  in the older part of the city that honourable
  civic life should take place and be celebrated.
  Located in the Oltrarno the colloquial
  Florentine name for Santo Spirito - Drago was an
  area that was overall a relatively poor
  community. At the same time, Drago was home
  for a range of venerable families and some of
  Florences greatest lineages.

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Social Life Neighbourhood a case study Drago
Verde

• Within the neighbourhood there were very few
  distinct physical boundaries between different
  groups, however Dragos classes and occupations
  were not uniformly distributed, and one may speak
  of pockets of poverty and prosperity which . . .
  constituted the greater district. (Eckstein)

Nicholas A. Eckstein, The District of the Green
Dragon.
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Social Life Neighbourhood a case study Drago
Verde

• Drago, in fact, was not one, but several
  overlapping areas which as a whole may be
  envisioned as a series of semi-permeable
  sub-sets. Because these micro-communities were
  created by internal relationships and not by
  static institutional or geographic divisions,
  they were dynamic, their unofficial boundaries
  fluid.

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Social Life Neighbourhood a case study Drago
Verde

• It should always be remembered that many
  Florentines did in fact have wider concerns
  outside that of their neighbourhood as well.
• Another way of thinking about social
  relationships might be in terms of
  affiliations or loyalties.

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The Importance of Neighbourhood

• Given that all of these multi-faceted social
  relationships required dealing with people it is
  little wonder that these human relationships were
  a source of support, strength but also conflict
  or tension
• I say that it is a greater rule to love ones
  neighbour than to love God, the Friulian miller
  Domenico Scandella told his inquisitor in the
  next 15th century, . . . and I believe that
  he who does no harm to his neighbour does not
  commit sin . . .

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Social Life Dowries and Marriage contracts
To make a match, both families expected not only
to receive but also to pay out. To make a match,
both families expected not only to receive but
also to pay out. To make a match, both families
had to commit material resources, so that the new
couple had a base for supporting themselves and
their soon anticipated children. In supplying the
dowry, however, the brides family made the
larger outlay . . . Daughters were therefore seen
as a financial burden, since they carried away
were hefty and went to benefit another lineage.
(Elizabeth S. Cohen).
Document Gene Brucker, The Society of
renaissance Florence pp 32-33
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Social Life Institutionalisation of Charity

• Used to incorporate these groups into the city.
• Confraternities and their connection to guilds
  and role in parishes.
• Viewed by some historians as social equalisers.
• In the Green Dragon the Confraternity of Saint
  Agnes.

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Social Life Institutionalisation of Charity

• A large part of Florences collective identity
  was created and transformed in public ritual . .
  . there was little distinction between Dragos
  parish life and that of its community, and parish
  was most assuredly a community as much as an
  ecclesiastical - affair. (p. xxiii)
• The importance of social relationships such as
  dowries and marriage contracts is attested in the
  Drago by the actions of a pious but generous
  local barrel maker named Michele di Simone, who
  had lived opposite the campanile of the parish
  church in Borgo . . . leaving his prosperous
  estate to the parish confraternity in order that
  his confratelli might save the gonfalones poor
  girls from dishonour by paying for their
  dowries. (p. 35)
• In Drago one expression of social relationships
  was a youth brigade from San Frediano who
  presented street festivals and celebrations for
  the community one of which ended in tragedy
  when some of the onlookers perished because the
  bridge they were standing on collapsed!

29
Social Life - Legislation

• Legislation used as a mode of social control and
  also for the purposes of INCLUSION in society and
  the EXCLUSION of groups and individuals in
  society, for example
• June 10, 1378 We prosecute Niolosa, daughter of
  Niccolo Soderini, of the parish of S. Frediano,
  aged ten years. Nicolosa was discovered wearing a
  dress made of two pieces of silk, with tassels
  and bound with various pieces of black leather,
  in violation of the Communal Statutes.

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Social Life Exclusion of groups

• In the interests of civic harmony even this
  notion of exclusion needs to be considered
  carefully, as many of these groups and
  individuals were in fact still accommodated in
  society because they served a specific purpose
  for the city-state.
• Foreigners
• Prostitutes
• Homosexuals

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Social Life Inclusion of groups

• In the interests of civic harmony
• In festivals the notion of bread and circuses
  under the Medici.
• The feast of St John the Baptist 24 June.
• The work of confraternities where many social and
  class boundaries were dissolved.
• In times of crisis.

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Social Life - Gender

• The experience for womens social life in
  Florence depended very much on the class from
  which they came
• Women
• Natalie Thomas argues that women did have a
  space indeed, more than one in Florentine
  society and culture but necessarily equal to
  mens.
• Women who exercised some power and influence did
  so by carefully negotiating and sometimes
  manipulating existing gender ideologies so as to
  be able to achieve a degree of autonomy and,
  indeed, a space of their own.

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Social Life - Gender

• Writing in the early years of the fifteenth
  cetury, Giovanni Cavalcanti observed Whoever
  holds the Piazza della Signoria is master of
  the city. (Thomas)
• But for one brief, rare moment in April 1497
  during a period of great famine, three thousand
  poor women gathered in he Piazza della Signoria
  and were effectively masters of the city. For
  several days and weeks prior, women, men and
  children had fainted while awaiting the
  distribution of bread . . . According to a
  contemporary several women began to shout Pane!
  Pane! . . . Which quickly became Palle! Palle!

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Social Life - Gender

• This incident illustrates the variety of spaces
  that women could occupy in Renaissance Florence,
  depending on their circumstances. The rioting
  women, who as wives and mothers were concerned to
  provide food for their starving families, acted
  effectively within traditional female, domestic
  space. However, that very domestic responsibility
  and duty also enabled them to move physically
  beyond the conventional circumscribed space of
  the home in a time of crisis . . . To speak and
  to act, sometimes violently, in the
  quintessential male space of the Piazza della
  Signoria. (Thomas)

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Gender - Women

• According to Natalie Thomas Contemporary
  paintings of Florentine street life suggests that
  women often appeared at their windows and
  doorways and sometimes even in the streets. The
  exigencies of everyday life, particularly for
  working-class women, would have required it.
• The honour of a Florentine upper-class family
  depended, in large part, on the chastity of its
  female members in order to produce legitimate
  children. (Thomas)

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Social Life - Women

• A good, honourable wifes activities, as
  exemplified by Vespasiano da Bisticcis model
  wife, Alessandra Bardi Strozzi, not only properly
  concerned looking after the household and family
  they also pointedly did not involve her spending
  time engaged in frivolous, wasteful, and sexually
  dangerous activity of gazing out the window.
  (Thomas)

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Social Life - Gender

• Natalie Thomas does emphasise that The
  boundaries of female domestic space wee also more
  porous than is generally recognized.
• Working class women, generally moved about far
  more freely than upper class ones. Female
  chastity although still important was less
  stringently enforced for them than upper-class
  women.
• Prostitition was yet another type of occupation
  available to working class-women. Prostitutes
  were, in effect, public women, women of the
  street, by definition immodest . . . and
  dishonourable. (Thomas)

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Social Life - Historiography

• In his description of social change in the
  Renaissance, Jacob Burkhardt argued that the
  individual had become emancipated from the
  corporate bonds of the medieval world, that he
  had become a free man in a free social order.
  The Florentine experience does not corroborate
  these conclusions of the Swiss historian. It is
  true that collective restraints upon the
  individual had weakened, although they never
  entirely disappeared. In particular, the vitality
  of family bonds and commitments remained much
  greater than Burckhardt suggested. But
  contradicting the vision of Renaissance man
  joyfully breaking his traditional bonds and
  exulting in his liberty is the picture of the
  Florentine who desperately sought new sources of
  security and identity to replace those which had
  disappeared. He forged bonds of friendship and
  obligation with protectors and benefactors, who
  would defend him against his enemies, and also
  against the burgeoning power of the state. Nor
  was the powerful citizen, the patron, really
  free. He was too enmeshed in a network of
  obligations and commitments, which limited and
  controlled his freedom of action. He could not
  release himself from these obligations without
  incurring loss of social prestige and political
  influence. The social freedom of the Renaissance
  man postulated by Burckhardt and elaborated by
  his followers is, in fifteenth century Florence
  at least, a myth.