OCCUPATIONS

To start on the true topic of this volume, Siena's people, it is convenient to begin with their work. Lists of inhabitants citing their employments are hard to come by for the Middle Ages, though there were men (and some women) who seem to have habitually added their occupation when giving their name. Since the normal form of nomenclature in thirteenth-century Italy was merely a personal name followed by a patronymic, the addition of an occupation must quite often have been necessary to avoid errors of identity.

The Biccherna Revenue and Expenditure series1 records each payment made in 1285 towards a direct tax (dazio) of one-twentieth levied in Siena in that year. Payments totalling 5,256 are noted and in 1,236 cases an occupation is given, so that the trade or profession of nearly 25 per cent of the payers is known. What follows is a table setting out in numerical order the twenty-six occupations which occur at least ten times in the list: see table 1 (p. 17).

It is interesting to set out beside this table another in which the same information is augmented and presented in a different order, arranged according to the average amount of tax paid: see table 2 (p. 18).

To use a list of tax payments as an indication of wealth is to take a very short cut indeed, and requires discussion. If the assessments were inequitable, if the sums paid do not reflect the assessments accurately, if a sizeable proportion of the population did not pay – to raise some of the difficulties – the figures in table 2 will not constitute an unbiassed representation of the wealth of the various occupations.