Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Note on citations, dates, and measures
- Introduction
- PART I CULTURE, DEMOGRAPHY, AND FISCALITY
- 1 Networks of culture and the mountains
- 2 Mountain civilization and fiscality, 1393
- 3 Fiscality and change, 1355–1487
- PART II PEASANT PROTEST IN THE MOUNTAINS: THREE VIEWS
- PART III GOVERNMENTAL CLEMENCY AND THE HINTERLAND
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Regression models: wealth, migration, and taxes
- Appendix 2 Tax coefficients, 1354–1423
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Fiscality and change, 1355–1487
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Note on citations, dates, and measures
- Introduction
- PART I CULTURE, DEMOGRAPHY, AND FISCALITY
- 1 Networks of culture and the mountains
- 2 Mountain civilization and fiscality, 1393
- 3 Fiscality and change, 1355–1487
- PART II PEASANT PROTEST IN THE MOUNTAINS: THREE VIEWS
- PART III GOVERNMENTAL CLEMENCY AND THE HINTERLAND
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Regression models: wealth, migration, and taxes
- Appendix 2 Tax coefficients, 1354–1423
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
A long-term examination of Florentine tax registers from the late fourteenth through the fifteenth centuries is fraught with dangers. Not only do tax assessments for single years show the pitfalls of most tax records — evasion, deceit, and missing records — but changes in the rules and even the culture of taxation compound the difficulties of assessing change over time. From 1355 to 1427, these tax surveys progressed in the quantity and quality of information rural syndics and city officials demanded from each household. The most important change in the principles of rural taxation came with the catasto of 1427, which eradicated the medieval system of community taxation to assess individuals according to the same principles regardless of residence. This transformation in rural taxation, moreover, was not one the Medici would brush aside after their return from exile in 1434, when patronage politics returned to normal. A standard rate for the contado endured even into the sixteenth century with the new tax system of the decima. However, before 1427, the mosaic of different tax rates shows that the community inequalities in fiscality between mountains and plains in 1393/4 were not an aberration of that year (see table 2.2 above and figure 3.4 below).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Creating the Florentine StatePeasants and Rebellion, 1348–1434, pp. 80 - 110Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999