Abstract
A turning point in European administrative and documentary practices was traditionally associated, most famously by Robert-Henri Bautier, with the monarchies of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By summarizing previous research in this field, as well as by using both published and unpublished sources, this article intends to underline an earlier process of transition connected to the development of significant new techniques for the production and preservation of documents in Renaissance Italian city-states. Focusing on the important case of Florence, the administrative uses of records connected to government, diplomacy and military needs will be discussed, and evidence will be provided that such documentary practices accelerated significantly during the so-called Italian Wars (from 1494 onwards). A particular reason of interest for Florence at this time is that a major role in the production and storage of a large quantity of state papers was played by Niccolò Machiavelli, one of the outstanding political thinkers of the age. This was especially true in connection to the new militia which he himself created in 1506. By stressing the role of information management and the importance of correspondence networks at a time of war and crisis, this article also contributes to recent scholarship which has focused on the growth of public records relating to diplomacy in Italy during the second half of the fifteenth century, as well as to a recent field of historiography which has lately gained importance: namely the ‘documentary history of institutions’.
In 1498, a set of new instructions for the Chancellor of the Riformagioni described the ritual ceremony for the periodic renewal of the Signoria (the Priors), the highest office in the Florentine Republic. The office of the Riformagioni was the branch of the Florentine chancery in charge of preparing and preserving government records, yet the new instructions gave a prominent role to all the chancellors of the Republic as keepers of the government's memory, and thus made them responsible for administrative continuity in a republican regime otherwise marked by rotation and discontinuity. Many other chancery officers are mentioned in this document, from the Chancellor of the Tratte, in charge of dealing with the electoral records, to the Coadiutori, who were simple scribes in charge of writing letters on behalf of the city magistracies or their superiors in the chancery. In particular, the instructions gave significant responsibilities to the first Chancellor, who was required to explain briefly to the new governors – the Priors – the basic procedures of government and the arrangements for the writing of official state letters, as well as supplying them with a notebook summarizing the rules of their office. Once the new Signoria comes into office […] all of the Chancellors and Coadiutori shall present themselves and swear an oath to the Signori, starting with the Chancellor of the Tratte. After this, the first Chancellor presents the Priors with some brief instructions contained in two filze
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with an explanation of the effects of the Provvisioni and the basic rules concerning the procedures for official state correspondence. Files are to be presented for the binding of both those letters which arrive from beyond their jurisdiction, and those which come from the subjects. Then the chancellor of the Riformagioni holds in his hands a notebook with a brief explanation of laws and acts concerning the Priors, titled the ‘short handbook of rules’, which explains how, as established by ancient custom, the Chancellor presents it to the Priors so that they may easily consult a brief summary of what they must observe in the duties of their office.
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Such a situation raises a number of questions. How did the chancellors of the city come to hold the responsibility for these tasks? How did they acquire sufficient knowledge of governmental practices and principles, in some cases dating from up to two centuries earlier? What were the record-keeping techniques that enabled them to preserve this kind of information? How much significance was given to the preservation of records, and which types of documents were prioritized? Many scholars have stressed the importance of the formation of a bureaucracy in late medieval Florence 3 and of the process of documentary production in the construction of a communal identity, 4 yet comparatively little attention has been given to the role of the archives themselves within this system.
In recent years, scholars have studied the archives of Florence with a particular focus on their role in politics and institutions. Giuseppe Biscione has for instance claimed that the early archives of the Camera del Comune were a vehicle for the preservation of the legal documents that sat at the core of the city's authority and unity as a political system. 5 The Camera del Comune was the oldest office responsible for collecting and preserving public records, which was also charged with administering the city's income and expenditure and with the keeping of account books. 6 Scholars have also focused on the relationship between the physicality of the archives and the wider sphere of Florentine politics. In particular, Francesca Klein has recently claimed that the fourteenth-century transition from the Archive-Thesaurus of the Camera (which was originally dedicated to a very specific kind of document, such as charters, pacts and treaties of alliance which provided evidence of ancient privileges and of the city's various territorial rights) to an archive of current government documents (resulting from daily administration, such as official correspondence, litterae patentes and so on) was inextricably tied to the physical shift from using these old archives, situated in the Palazzo del Podestà, to the new archives of the Riformagioni in charge of preparing and preserving government records. These were situated in the Palazzo del Popolo (now called Palazzo Vecchio); the same building that hosted the Priori, who used them as instruments of government. 7 In addition, Paul Dover has recently emphasized the growth of the city's diplomatic archives in the second half of the Quattrocento. 8
Other scholars have focused more specifically on the production and registration of written records. In her magisterial work on Bartolomeo Scala (Florence's first Chancellor in the years 1465–97), Alison Brown highlighted his role in introducing new forms of both documentary practice and registration procedures. 9 More recently, Lorenzo Tanzini has shown how Florentine politics was occasionally influenced by the growth of its legislative activity. 10 In addition, Andrea Zorzi and Piero Gualtieri have emphasized the role of the production of legislative documentation in the Italian communes, such as the so-called Legislazione antimagnatizia, as a means by which the popolo could legitimize its power against the old aristocracy. 11
Various features of these studies present a potentially novel approach to the history of Florentine politics. They resonate with a wider historiographical trend for interpreting the archives and chanceries of the Renaissance Italian city-states as a central element of their formation and territorial expansion; in other words, the connection between the increasing production of written records and the formation of a ‘homogeneous sovereignty’. 12 However, this article proposes a slightly different approach, stressing instead the role of the Italian Wars (1494–1559) 13 as a turning point in the history of Florentine documentary production.
Through the use of both published and unpublished documentation, I will begin by demonstrating how the formation of the Florentine government between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century was deeply connected to the creation and use of the public archives as an instrument of government, diplomacy and warfare, through processes of record-making and record-keeping which developed in response to the ever-changing circumstances of the city's politics and institutions. In addition, by emphasizing the critical role of information-management and correspondence networks in times of war and crisis, I will present new evidence suggesting that such documentary practices experienced a significant acceleration during wartime, due in no small part to the major role played by chancellors such as Niccolò Machiavelli in the production and preservation of a large quantity of military and state papers.
By looking at the machinery of state in relation to governance, diplomacy and above all the military, this article will demonstrate how the permanent state of conflict generated by the Italian Wars from 1494 onwards should be considered a major shift in the history of Florentine document production. As a result of this, I will also argue that these early practices must be considered as the beginning of an earlier and more long-term process in European administration and record-keeping practices than the conventional interpretation based upon the traditional turning point of the late sixteenth century might suggest.
A widespread need for public records in late medieval Italy generated the formation of new archival repositories, as measures for the preservation of records and the appointment of the first archival staff were implemented throughout the peninsula towards the end of thirteenth century. 14 As mentioned above, the oldest office responsible for collecting and preserving public records in Florence was the Camera del Comune. 15 A chapter of the so-called Provvisioni canonizzate of 1289, the oldest Statutes (Statuti) of the city, established the role of an officer in charge of looking after the records, who was to be elected from ‘the most circumspect and dependable notaries of the city’. 16 This officer was required to store the city's various acts and charters in a series of drawers within the armoire of the Camera, on which he had to ‘affix a card with a description of the contents’. 17 He was also tasked with ‘writ[ing] in clear and large characters a summary title of the contents on each book cover’, 18 to be renovated, if needed, ‘at the expense of the Camera’. 19 A few decades later, the Statuti of 1322 included a chapter containing instructions for the preservation of records and their physical organization. 20 Charters and documents were to be stored in the Camera, ‘in sacks which display and describe the contents and subject of the charters and documents on the outside’, 21 in order to ‘make it easier to find documents’. 22 Finally, an addition to the Statuti outlined new measures for financing the construction of new repositories for the archives of the Camera. 23
This early period constituted the first stage in the evolution of city archives in Florence. It was marked by the role of notaries in the archives’ organization, 24 and by the role of the Camera del comune as an official repository for charters, pacts, treaties of alliance, and so on. The papers of the Camera included ‘instrumenta et iura comunis Florentie’, which defined the legal basis of the Florentine government and its territories, 25 the records and acts of government (‘omnia acta curie’), 26 as well as its financial records.
The Statuti were a compilation of laws enacted by the legislative councils 27 concerning both day-to-day government and legislative activity, which, at this stage, were largely in use as an instrument for the daily activities of city and chancery offices. As a result of their use in administrative affairs, the series thus included a number of rubrics pertaining to the first archival formation in Florence.
A second stage of this evolution, which began around the middle of the fourteenth century, was characterized by a general growth in the legislative activity of the Republic. The management of the Florentine archives in this period was regulated by a growing number of Provvisioni. The Provvisioni were the decrees, or rather laws of the Republic, approved by the above-mentioned councils. They were administered by the chancery-office of the Riformagioni, which, not surprisingly, in the Florentine vernacular meant the ‘reforms’ (or ‘laws’) passed by the legislative councils that introduced new political and administrative norms in the governance of the city. A number of Provvisioni signalled an expansion of government involvement in documentary production and preservation. Such a shift in political and institutional practice was marked by new techniques of registering and preserving the Provvisioni themselves. As illustrated by Lorenzo Tanzini, the Provvisioni were copied into duplicate registers to be made available to the city's offices. 28 Finally, the registers were provided with indexes, and a thesaurus of terms and contents was also created in order to facilitate the retrieval of legislative precedents. 29 By this time, Florence had thus improved its record-management systems by compiling newer and more accurate inventories of the terms and contents of the Provvisioni, such as the so-called Carte di Corredo. 30
A growing number of Provvisioni also concerned archives and their staff. One of the earliest Provvisioni, dated January 1339, ratified the creation of a new notary to work within the Camera who was in charge of looking after (‘ad custodendum’), researching (‘perscrutandum’) and ‘making available to a public domain’ (‘mostrandum’) the records pertaining to the Camera communis. 31 Duties like storing, investigating and sharing the records are still today the fundamental aspects of the archivist's job. Before this point, the election of the Camera’s notary had been overseen by a committee consisting of the communal priors, the consuls of the seven major guilds, and 12 individuals nominated by the priors and the consuls, as spelled out in the Statuti of 1289. 32 Instead, the 1339 Provvisione explicitly made the Priori solely responsible for the task of nomination and so established, in a way, direct governmental control over the old city archives of the Camera (‘this nomination belongs to the Priori and Gonfaloniere of justice currently elected, and to nobody else’). 33 This process was marked in 1340 by another Provvisione which officially established – or at least formally recognized the administrative and political functions of – the new archival repository built within the Palazzo dei Priori (also known as Palazzo della Signoria, or Palazzo del Popolo), the new seat of the city's government whose construction had started at the end of the thirteenth century. This Provvisione was implemented to fund all expenses relating to the preservation of the ‘acts of the councils and any other public record already produced or to be produced in the future’. 34 This act reflected the growing importance of the Priori in the production and preservation of public records, 35 whilst later Provvisioni that established new rules on the topic further illustrated their continuing influence over this process. In 1388, for instance, the iura communis, previously stored in the Camera, were ‘incorporated’ into the Riformagioni. 36 This process culminated in 1415 in the establishment of a new set of functions for the notary of the Riformagioni concerning the preservation of documents and their uses for governmental and diplomatic purposes. 37
These measures marked the transition from an Archive-Thesaurus to a current archive of government documents. 38 In Florence, this process took place on different levels: administrative, geographical and political. In terms of diplomatics (the science that studies ancient diplomas and charters), it constitutes a shift from the cultural and institutional predominance of the archive conceived for Urkunden (that is, diplomas or muniments), to one conceived for Akten (the records of day-to-day administration). 39 Geographically, the focus shifted from the old archival repository located in the Palazzo del podestà to that of the Riformagioni located in Palazzo dei Priori, the main site of political power. Finally, this process was characterized from a political perspective by the shift from an archive (the Camera del Comune) as Thesaurus, a place in which charters and muniments relating to the city as both a community and a singular judicial entity were preserved, to an archive which more specifically represented the daily activity of the government: the office of the Riformagioni.
City oligarchies and political regimes in the Italian Renaissance states used bureaucracy as a tool to legitimize their power. 40 As a result, in Florence, the production (as well as preservation, or loss) of documents was influenced by the cultural and political circumstances of the ruling class. 41 One famous example of regime change in Florence, for instance, was the overthrow of the Duke of Athens in 1343, which culminated in the destruction of the previous archives. Amongst the judicial records lost in the fire were those pertaining to the prosecution of political opponents, several of whom were now in power, by the previous regime. 42
This phase in the history of the Florentine archives culminated, in the early decades of the fifteenth century, in the earliest compilation of inventories pertaining to the papers of the office of the Riformagioni. Such inventories were necessary in order to facilitate the use of the archives as a tool of government, and thus illustrated the contemporary relevance now afforded to this growing body of records. Not surprisingly, the earliest examples of these inventories referred specifically to the series of Provvisioni registers, a partial inventory of which was compiled by ser Martino di Luca Martini around 1415, and which can still be found in the Carte di corredo series of the Florentine Archives. Following this, a more comprehensive inventory of the wider Riformagioni archive was initiated by ser Alberto di Donnino di Luca in 1432. 43
The Statuti, by contrast, took too long to be formed as an effective tool of government. These were compilations of laws passed by the Commune's various legislative councils, sometimes decades before their entry into the volumes themselves, and thus were rendered obsolete by the more up-to-date and ever expanding series of Provvisioni. Given that the city had now improved its record-management systems by creating the more contemporary inventories of the Provvisioni, the Statuti increasingly appeared to be no longer necessary, at least to the daily activity of the offices themselves, and were therefore not revised beyond 1415.
As a result of this process, by the second half of the Quattrocento the office of the Riformagioni came to be considered the main official archive of the city of Florence, and was where any charter concerning pacts and alliances – in other words those ‘instrumenta’ which had previously been stored in the archives of the Camera – had to be exclusively preserved from then on. This was formally recognized by a 1475 Provvisione promoted by the Chancellor Bartolomeo Scala. 44 Even in the case of charters and pacts stipulated by the city, therefore, the previous archival system of the Camera had largely come to be replaced by that of the Riformagioni.
Around the same time, another important process was taking place all over Italy in the creation of other chancery offices, mostly relating to the development of diplomacy and the growth of territorial states. These new offices were overseen by chancellors known as segretari (secretaries) – notaries or chancellors in charge of preparing, delivering and later filing both diplomatic correspondence (of particular importance and, above all, secrecy) and communications relating to the administration of the territories under the control of a city or its signore. So far, we have been considering the preservation of public records, but we will now consider the main purpose which drove this preservation – that is, the actual use of these documents – in the first place.
By the end of the fifteenth century, Italian states had established their own secretariats, each with their own set of characteristics and with each individual office generating its own set of archives. In the case of Florence, the specific nature of the pre-Medicean government meant that this process took its own unique direction. The aforementioned Riformagioni office, together with the Notary of the Priori and the so-called Cancelleria delle lettere (later the Cancelliere dettatore) 45 were responsible for preparing government acts, the deliberations of the Signoria, transcriptions of the enactments of the legislative councils and the discussions of advisory meetings (Consulte), and, especially in the case of the Cancelliere dettatore, the official correspondence of the Republic. 46 Given the huge documentary production and increasing administrative responsibilities arising over successive decades, these tasks came to be distributed amongst a series of newly created offices. In 1378, the office of the Tratte (in charge of managing elections) was created from a branch of the Cancelleria delle lettere. 47 This was followed by Leonardo Bruni's well-studied 1437 reform which divided the chancery into two different offices. One, the first Chancellor (‘primo cancellario’), was responsible for ‘preparing and recording the elections of ambassadors, their commissions and payments, and every dispatch or other document which was to be sent or carried abroad [by Florentine ambassadors]’. 48 In other words, this office was in charge of communication with foreign states. The other (‘alium cancellarium’, later known as the ‘second’ Chancellor), was responsible for ‘writing all letters and other documents which are to be sent, or else pertained to, the administration of the city's territories’. 49 Finally, the office of ‘secretariat’ was formally established in Florence through a reform implemented by the Chancellor Bartolomeo Scala in 1483. The latter re-established the division of the chancery into two branches originally introduced by Bruni, and created ‘six’ chancellors, defined as ‘secretaries of the Signoria’. Moreover, the 1483 reform assigned two secretaries with the task of ‘managing all affairs, even very important ones’, thus giving them responsibility for recording documents pertaining to all political and diplomatic business. 50 In enacting this reform, Scala made reference to the widespread use of secretaries in politics and diplomacy in other Italian states: ‘[the secretaries’] job is in use in several principalities as well as [free] republics in these and earlier times’. 51
One of the most significant aspects of these institutional changes was the growing production of diplomatic dispatches and letters throughout Italy. 52 This is particularly well highlighted by the story of the magistracy of the Dieci (or Ten) in Florence, a body whose creation was a consequence of the newly arising diplomatic and military requirements facing the Republic. From 1384 onwards, and especially during the Quattrocento, the Dieci were granted special power (balìa) in times of war that extended to the conduct of diplomacy. 53 By the end of the fifteenth century, this magistracy and its authority had become a permanent body, reflecting a significant turning point in Florentine politics and administration. 54 The Dieci had its own chancery – staffed by a specially appointed secretary and provided with an administrative (or ‘current’) archive for documents – as well as its own diplomatic envoys. 55 Thus, the new institutional figure of the secretary created by Scala's aforementioned reform came to be especially employed in the chancery of the Dieci.
The growing importance of diplomacy in Renaissance Italy as a whole also necessitated similar archival procedures and practices, especially for the preservation and organization of diplomatic letters alongside the wider body of public records. 56 Leonardo Bruni's 1437 reform, for instance, generated several new archival series, including the Missives of the second chancery instituted four years later. 57 Florentine chancellors were now required to make copies of letters pertaining to both the Signoria and other government magistracies in special registers for official internal use. This practice was soon regulated by government legislation, such as the Provvisione of 13 March 1431, which instructed secretaries to ‘copy in suitable books the letters written to and received by both Florentine ambassadors and commissioners’. 58 The decree even gave examples of the expressions to be used in the copying process, with the intent of creating effective and well-organized registers (such as ‘written/received on this day to/from this ambassador…’), 59 as well as making stipulations on their preservation ‘in the chancery’ archives. 60
Another important step in the formation of new archival records, once again relating to the development of diplomacy, was a Provvisione of 1466 which explicitly acknowledged the importance of the production of letters and documents by regulating even the material aspects of those received from abroad or due for departure. These were to be accurately copied (‘word for word’) 61 on ‘clean and smooth’ parchment, 62 whilst copies were also to be preserved in the archives (‘always having and keeping [the copy book or register] in the chancery’). 63 Following this, a further reform by Bartolomeo Scala in 1483 established a new way of registering the transcripts, and archiving the originals, of diplomatic letters by geographical subdivisions ‘in order to make it easier to find any document’ – that is, by filing letters in ‘separate registers’ for each respective head of state: one for the Pope, one for the king of Naples, one for the Duke of Milan, and one for the rest. 64 Scala's reforms thus give a further indication of the growing importance of diplomacy relating to the formation of the archives of the Florentine chancery.
The importance of diplomatic correspondence, as we have mentioned, coincided with a growth in documentary production relating to the territorial expansion of city-states. As scholars of late medieval Italy have explained, this had led to an increasing demand for public records, especially in response to the growth in correspondence between the capitals and the territories under their control, as well as the need to keep lists of their public officers and commissioners. 65 During the fifteenth century, this subsequently led to the formation of a more definitive system of information, another significant factor in the administrative development of the archives of Florence. 66
A large part of the extensive documentation of Florence's network of correspondence can still be found in the archives today. This vast body of material serves as a useful sample of both the frequency and volume of state communication, particularly from the second half of the fifteenth century onwards, the majority of which remains unpublished. 67 Amongst the most widely studied and published of these records are those relating to the chancery career of Niccolò Machiavelli, who, alongside his diplomatic responsibilities, took charge of the administration of the territories under Florence's control, and thus of the correspondence between the city magistrates and their officials in the territories. The dispatches written by Machiavelli, known in modern editions as the ‘scritti di governo’, attest to both the frequency and extent of the city's network of documentary information. For instance, during the period 1498–1505 alone, less than half of Machiavelli's 15 years in the chancery, the mass of documentation he produced reached the astonishing number of 5493 letters, all of which he wrote in his own hand, consisting mostly of communications prepared in the name of the Dieci and of the Signoria. 68 If we also consider those produced by up to 16 similar officers employed in the chanceries of both the Dieci and the Signori, the two bodies responsible for communications with the territories, we can thus begin to picture the vast scale of documentary production undertaken at this time. 69
Another significant aspect of this documentary expansion was related to warfare and military organization. Recent scholarship has traced the origins of military documentation to the Italian states of the late Middle Ages. As illustrated by William Caferro, in Florence this prompted an increase in the production of records relating to a series of investigations into the city's wartime finances. 70 The endemic state of warfare that plagued the peninsula in the decades following the French invasion of 1494 led to a further step in these developments in archival and documentary practices.
At the end of the fifteenth century, the Dieci di Balìa, which held special authority in times of war, re-emerged as the Dieci di Libertà e Pace: a new magistracy which, although in principle still a temporary body, soon acquired a de facto permanency. Alongside their role in the conduct of diplomacy, the Dieci also took responsibility for the administration of the Florentine army during this period. As a result, the chancellors of the Dieci held new responsibilities for communicating with both Florentine envoys and military officers stationed abroad. Over the subsequent decades, the documents produced by the Dieci thus increased in both number and variety as the magistracy assumed authority in matters such as the payment of mercenaries and condottieri, leading in turn to an increasing number of records of military expenses. 71 This growth can be seen in the wider archival practices of the magistracy itself, beginning with the Dieci’s books of accountancy. Known today as the Entrata e uscita, they were first commissioned in 1369 and were followed by the registers of military deliberations, including the employment contracts (condotte) of mercenaries and their funding from 1384, 72 as well as the Debitori e creditori series with holdings which date from 1424 onwards. Moreover, by 1413, the chancery of the Dieci was also producing a wider series of Missive (the series of ‘missives’ still extant in the archives of Florence), separate from their other diplomatic records, which further developed the network of communications between officials and military commissioners in the territories, alongside other new series such as the Ricordanze from 1425, and finally the Sommari di missive e responsive and the Ricordi from 1478. 73
By the end of the fifteenth century and the commencement of the so-called Italian Wars which followed the descent of Charles VIII and his French army into the peninsula, the vast number of military operations such as the enrolment, movement and payment of troops throughout Italy led to a sudden and significant acceleration in documentary practices and the production not only of missives, payments, memos and annotations, but also muster rolls, billeting and pay lists, safe conducts, lists of prisoners, and so on. In Florence in particular, the constant danger of foreign invasions from 1494 onwards led to the creation of new military offices and institutions that also precipitated an intensification of correspondence with both commissioners of the army and officials throughout the state. The early construction and development of these Florentine communication networks through the use of public records illustrate a growing recognition of their role as a tool for information management. For instance, as soon as news broke in Florence of the march of the Spanish and Papal armies towards Tuscany in late August 1512, Machiavelli was sent to raise troops in the contado, the territories under the control of the city of Florence, in a desperate, and ultimately fruitless, effort to defend the Republic. 74 After the threat of invasion had become clear in July, the letters sent by the Florentine officials (rettori) in the areas threatened by the enemy had been regularly collected, selected and organized by the chancellors to be read aloud in the city-councils (‘several dispatches from our officers in Firenzuola, Mugello and other nearby places were read…’). 75
The impressive increase in the number of copy-registers for the Missives of the second chancery by the end of the fifteenth century also provides clear evidence of this phenomenon. Despite the inevitable losses in this archival series, it is notable that, of a total of 71 registers of the Missive of the Signori, only 18 date from 1443 (the year in which the series begins) to 1494 (the beginning of the Italian Wars). The last 53, by contrast, date from 1494 to 1532. Similarly, of 108 registers of the Missive of the Dieci, only 30 date from 1413 to 1494, whilst only 14 of the 48 registers of diplomatic records of the Dieci, known as the Legazioni e commissarie, date from before 1494. 76 Political instability and the pressures of war prompted a dramatic increase in both military organization and warfare, as was reflected in the writing of official letters to representatives in the territories and abroad.
Added to this was the production of new public records, such as those pertaining to the recently created Nove di Ordinanza e Milizia (Nine of the Militia), a new city magistracy established in 1506 as the brainchild of Machiavelli and which provides yet more evidence of the increasing production of military records in Florence after the beginning of the Italian Wars. The establishment of the Nove, once again with their own chancery 77 and with the creation of a Militia under their control, also generated a new series of documentary practices relating to the enrolment and organization of militiamen. 78 Such administrative practices, from the dispatches and administrative letters sent to officials in the Florentine territories to the orders and instructions for military commissioners of the militia, were crucial for the establishment of communication networks and information management based on the writing and preservation of papers in the archives. The list of offices, tasks and documentation required for the militia, as outlined in detail by Machiavelli's Militia Act of 1506, was reflected in the growing bureaucratic and documentary practices which became necessary for their support. For instance, as Jean-Jacques Marchand has demonstrated, the first task for the new militia was to compile a census of its militiamen. 79 Such records had to be periodically reviewed in response to any changes and additions. 80 Moreover, a local chancellor was charged with creating new lists of militiamen and other logistical records, 81 such as the details of those who received weapons. 82 Previous census records relating to the inhabitants of the territories, where available, were requested, collated and copied for the purposes of recruitment. 83 Finally, for judicial purposes, the chancellor was obliged to produce a number of records pertaining to the administration of justice. For instance, allegations of illegal armed gatherings by the conscripts, a case punishable by death, needed ‘to be recorded in the registers’ of the Nove ‘in the very same day of the notification’. 84
Whilst the organization of the militia was already a well-established chancery tradition in which Machiavelli had been involved for several years (e.g. the documentation required to ensure the conscription of one man per household), and which he later applied to the administrative methods of enrolment, his reforms brought about unprecedented changes in both its size and systematization. 85 If we compare this with previous attempts at military reform in Florence, we can better appreciate the novelty of this situation. Previous proposals for a militia, such as that posited by Domenico Cecchi in 1497, had been predicated on a theoretical rather than practical basis, and were therefore informed by the tradition of fifteenth-century literature on the militia without any pragmatic consideration of its military and bureaucratic implementation. 86 By contrast, the bureaucratic system which underpinned the Machiavellian militia was so efficient that it was later kept in use by the Medici after the fall of the Republic in 1512: the Provvisione of 1514, which re-established the Ordinanza in the contado under the control of the Medici, followed the basic framework of the Militia Act of 1506. 87
A major turning point in the history of archives has traditionally been associated, most notably by Robert-Henri Bautier, with the European monarchies of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. According to Bautier, archives came to be considered as the ‘arsenal’ of the authorities during this period. 88 As such, they began to be used as tools for the substantial task of administering and controlling the state, based on the collecting, filing and managing of information for political purposes, not least in the attempt to undermine potential antagonists. 89 This in turn also had ties to the conduct of war. According to Max Weber and his successors, amongst the defining characteristics of the modern state was the emergence of a standing army under the direct control of central authorities; this required payments, financing, and so took a prominent role in the formation of state bureaucracy and administration. 90 Once again, this phenomenon is generally associated with the growth of the larger European monarchies, 91 following the same historiographical framework set out by Bautier. We can also add to this historiographical tradition the fact that military bureaucracy – from its very earliest Florentine developments as documented in this article – required new archival repositories in order to store the increasing amount of records generated by these new administrative undertakings (especially fiscal and military) related to the growth of so-called ‘national’ armies.
However, studies of diplomacy, such as those by Dover, provide evidence that this traditional periodization must be reconsidered in the light of the history of Italian archives between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. 92 This period reveals numerous aspects of the procedures for collecting and filing public records, which, although only rudimentary, were certainly comparable to those practised by the European monarchies in the following centuries. Italy's political entities remained composite or agglomerate states throughout the course of the Renaissance: a mixture of not only a variety of political and institutional bodies of the dominant city, but also of several distinctive local authorities in the territories. Yet this did not exclude the possibility of integrating government policies within a more centralized system of documentation, especially as such a system facilitated the construction of a political identity, acted as a deterrent against political dissidence within the city and its territories, and allowed for the mobilization of rapid and substantial military responses. The development of such documentary practices must therefore be interpreted as a long-term process of transition in the history of archives. In his discussion of Bautier's thesis, Olivier Poncet has illustrated how the Papal States experienced an early form of ‘bureaucratization’, tied to a growth in both the volume of, and control over, its finances and, as a consequence, its archives. Doubtless, this was a non-linear development, consisting of numerous interruptions and backwards steps, which had its roots in the early sixteenth century at least, and certainly before the creation of the central archives at the beginning of the seventeenth century. 93
We must therefore consider the shifting practices in European administration and record-keeping as an earlier and more long-term process than the traditional ‘turning point’ of the late sixteenth century. As we have seen, in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Florence, public records and state communications were managed by a complicated early modern system of documentary production and preservation which, although based on a series of often contradictory and incoherent reforms, nevertheless had profound effects on the uses of their archives. This process emerged more clearly in the case of the Florentine republic, particularly in the development of innovative new techniques for the production and preservation of documents throughout Tuscany. The rising demands of government and diplomacy, as shown by Dover, as well as the military needs discussed above, generated new legislative and administrative practices, leading in turn to the creation of new magistracies and, consequently, new chancery offices (such as those of the Dieci, the Otto and the Nove in Florence). These innovations in the production and storage of an ever-growing mass of state papers facilitated a series of important correspondence networks based on an information system centred on both the chancery 94 and the archives of its documents. Archives became both a tool of state control, and a source of information for rulers concerning the scribal and documentary practices on which the ‘art of government’ was based.
Within this process of transition, however, the outbreak of a long-term period of conflict in the Italian Wars (1494–1550) was a major turning point that accelerated the already emerging tendencies in archival practice. This moment of crisis made a significant contribution to the creation of large-scale communication networks in the city-states of Renaissance Italy, based on new techniques for the collection and use of public records for the purposes of governance, warfare and diplomacy. These networks became increasingly necessary for an efficient and rapid response to political and military demands.
The archival and chancery institutions of Renaissance Florence were divided among several distinct offices, at times drawn into direct conflict with each other, and a full unification and centralization of the city's bureaucracy was far from forthcoming during this period. Nevertheless, the necessary creation of documentary tools for governmental activities and political purposes, the establishment of communication networks for both administrative and military purposes, and finally the coordination of military responses in a time of crisis, inspired several advances and a great expansion in the recording, collating and preserving of state information.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant agreement n° 284338. I thank the reviewer and Fabio Antonini for their advice. All translations are the author's, except where otherwise noted.