Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nr4z6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-31T23:58:50.185Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Revenue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2009

Get access

Summary

The emphasis of this chapter will be on the relative importance of different forms of revenue and on how Siena's fiscal system affected the citizens. The commune's fiscal institutions and their functioning at this time and later have been depicted very thoroughly in William Bowsky's pioneering The Finance of the Commune of Siena 1287–1355 (1971). The view offered here, less detailed and less institutional, also differs in that it attempts a more general assessment of the commune's fiscal policies and their impact. One feature common to Bowsky's approach and mine is the cautious treatment of quantitative matters, necessitated by the nature of the surviving source material.

Some general points need to be clarified about the commune's fiscality before considering the revenues under the various forms in which they were gathered. The institution central to revenue-collecting activities was the Biccherna and the principal surviving source for the subject is the series of volumes of the Entrata and Uscita (Revenue and Expenditure) of that office which, with some gaps, go back to 1226. From the later thirteenth century, however, the organization of indirect taxation by a separate office (the Gabella) achieved increasing independence, and money received by it is not recorded, or only indirectly reflected, in the Biccherna volumes. It is fundamental that the concept of a ‘budget’ is absent from the philosophy of the medieval communes. Fiscal policy was hand-to-mouth and consisted of a series of reactions to the city's constantly changing financial situation.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Revenue
  • Daniel Philip Waley
  • Book: Siena and the Sienese in the Thirteenth Century
  • Online publication: 03 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511583865.012
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Revenue
  • Daniel Philip Waley
  • Book: Siena and the Sienese in the Thirteenth Century
  • Online publication: 03 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511583865.012
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Revenue
  • Daniel Philip Waley
  • Book: Siena and the Sienese in the Thirteenth Century
  • Online publication: 03 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511583865.012
Available formats
×