The Florentine Family
If you're
a wealthy man, you probably live in a palace as close to the middle of
Florence as you can get -- though just about everybody traveled and had
villas outside town, you don't want to live in your villa all the time.
You may live with your relatives as well as your wife, servants and
slaves, and your children. There isn't much privacy, outside your own
room, which isn't large compared to the total house area. Your relatives
may own their own "shares" of that palace, and you might not even know
where "your" part begins and ends. This is particularly true of country
residences, though Duby mentions that only 12% of hearths served more than
one nuclear family in the more crowded cities (158). That number goes up
to about 20%-50% in the country. Duby mentions that for "peasants and
members of the bourgeoisie, living in a large family (whether extended--
couple, children, and ancestors-- or multinuclear) was a familiar
experience" (161). While it was common for sons and daughters-in-law to
move in with the son's parents, it is very rare for a daughter and her
husband to do so.
Your family means everything to you. Even husbands who weren't around much corresponded regularly with wives and children, remotely dictating the running of the household. Family generally came before friends, though Florentines sometimes debated which was better to cultivate: Good friends or better familial relations and alliances? (Duby 163) Friends, relatives, and neighbors were the touchstone of a Tuscan's life.
Your House
Not much of your house is actual rooms; much of
the house is an open courtyard, so your house looks a bit like a doughnut
when seen from above. The courtyard is a real centerpiece for the house
and kept up lavishly. As for the house itself, it doesn't have many rooms,
but the bigger the palace, the bigger those rooms are. Most of the family
congregates in the kitchen, where meals are made, served, and eaten. Most
of the family lives on the upper floors; the lowest ground floor is
generally a storage area, or perhaps your shop (having your own shop is a
dream unattained by most Florentines, but once you get a shop, your future
is nearly assured).
Poor people's homes measured around 13x26' to 16x33'. They were made with cob walls and thatched roofs (Duby 170). Most had only one room and were very crowded. Renting did occur, with one-year leases commen (Duby 172).
As one went up the social scale, the houses got better. Middle-class rural families' homes were larger (33x16' or so), and were divided into several rooms. Walls might be made of stone, the roof of clay tiles. But even then, most houses were small, especially in cities, where many contained less than 300sf of living space, even for craftsmen and artisans (Duby 171). Brick was used for smaller homes in Florence, stone for larger ones. As soon as one could afford it, one split the house into two rooms -- one for the living area, and one to sleep in. That was the basic house unit, the sala (living room) and camera (bedroom) (Duby 179). Two-story and more houses existed; young people often sat up on the upper floors, where open-air porches called loggia were built, to watch the world go by.
Furniture and Decorations
Your furniture is lavish but
sparse; there isn't much of it, but what there is, is incredible. You
bought your bed first, like anybody else; just that you were wealthy, so
your bed was much bigger and nicer than most. It has several mattresses, a
wooden frame, and many sheets and blankets, with a canopy over it and a
thick curtain around its four posters. You also bought a low cabinet to go
under the frame. One merchant's diary mentions mulberry twigs put under
the mattress to attract the fleas (despite the Florentine habit of bathing
often, fleas are a problem). You might even have a rug on the steps
leading up to your bed. Other than the rug, of course, your floor is
covered with rushes, like just about every home throughout the Middle
Ages.
Your bedroom might have a second, smaller bed in it for a servant, or perhaps a child. You'd also almost certainly have wall hangings. Ironwork and other embellishment were everywhere, not just in the bedroom, particularly to hold lights. Most rooms have very little furniture in them, even those belonging to the wealthy.
Like anybody else, your next priority was your kitchen table, and then all those other things that made life civilized -- chests, cupboards, stools, chairs, hangings for the stone walls, etc. One piece of furniture you didn't buy was the wedding-chest your bride brought to your home; the cassone stored her clothing and personal belongings. It is probably one of the most lavish things in the house, painted, gilded, and altogether magnificent. You display that piece proudly. Aside from that chest, there were many other types to choose from, and most people had plenty of chests even if they didn't have much of anything else.
Mirrors, vases, and candlesticks, all of the most expensive metal you can afford (gold is nicest), adorn the walls. Sconces hung on the wall and glass-paned windows let in the light. Most people have at least one or two paintings, but even those we'd consider great today, like Giotto, have dirt-cheap work (the paintings in the Medici collection at one point ranged from 0 value to 30 florins or so). The Madonna, as one might expect in such a culture, was a favorite topic of expression.
Illuminated prayer books and manuscripts were also popular ways to spend money. Printing was beginning to hit Italy by now, but most people thought printed books were vulgar, cheapening the value of books. Macchiavelli was famous for riding around with books in his saddlebags -- a scandalous way to treat such precious possessions. Very wealthy men, like Duke Montefeltro, had people on staff whose entire job it was to hand-copy books. Others, like Macchiavelli's family, had to make do buying, trading, and borrowing what they could.
Your house is sparsely furnished on the inside, but it is downright austere from the outside. Forbidding stone walls, a relic of the medieval ages when private citizens really did get attacked and besieged, present a cold front to the narrow street. Some of the older houses even had the doors high in the air, accessible only by a ladder which was raised and lowered from inside (naturally there is always somebody home to do this for you). Windows facing the street, even these days, are strategic in nature, small and narrow, and barred over the glass (you may even have one of the newfangled gadgets meant to barricade windows, a folding array of metal plates that can be folded back to let sunlight and air in at will) (Duby 190).
Servants and Slaves
Depending on just how rich you are, you
have anywhere from 3 to 40 servants. Some might be servants, and some
might be slaves, purchased from the market for around 50 florins (you can
get a mule for around 10, or rent a decent house on the outskirts of
Florence for a year for 10 florins). Most slaves are women, and most were
from Eastern Europe. Slaves have very few rights; many bear their masters'
children or are even kept as mistresses. But slaves are better-tolerated
than servants. Few servants actually last the length of their contract --
most of them quit long before to find greener pastures. Though this is
technically illegal, hardly anybody actually gets in trouble for breaking
contract. Your servants (we'll include slaves in the term) do the cooking,
cleaning, weaving, and washing, though your wife and other female
relatives do some as well. If you're very wealthy, you might also have
musicians and the aforementioned hand-copyists on staff.
Even if you're financially not well-off, even one servant is absolutely essential. Families don't tend to be large. In 1427 Tuscany, the average household size is 3.8 people, but there were lots of different kinds of households counted in the average; only half of the families were what we'd consider traditional and some people even lived alone. (Duby, 158).
Eating and Drinking
When you eat, you dine on silk
tablecloths, embroidered on the ends with stripes or dragons or some other
simple repeating symbol. You use napkins, though not everybody does. You
don't have much in the way of cutlery or plates (you and your wife share a
plate), and unless you are fabulously wealthy, you drink out of metal
cups, not glass ones. Your plates are of pewter and you eat mostly with
your fingers. When you're done, you wipe your fingers on the tablecloth.
Forks are barely known, but you use the one you have to transfer food from
serving plates to your own plate, not to eat with.
There are two meals a day, at 10am and 5pm, though the fireplace is lit all day long. Most middle-class kitchens had few utensils, but most kitchens had lanterns, boxes to put foodstuff in, and basic pots and pans made of iron, wood, copper, tin, and ceramics (Duby 183). One man, a well-off farmer, had "a kneading trough, a grain bin, two tables (one small and round), a cauldron, a skillet, and a few pots. There was no chair or lantern or basin, no dishes or utensils" (Duby 181).
The World Outside Your Door
It is very dangerous to leave
home at night. Armed robbers and worse prowl even the nicest
neighborhoods. If you just have to leave, you have an armed escort of
guards. Around the time of the Pazzi Rebellion of 1478 particularly, riots
break out constantly over the smallest of excuses. Burckhardt writes of
how some remote areas of Italy would happily murder any passing stranger
on the slightest pretext, and it wasn't too different in Florence. Even
the great Cosimo was suspected of trying to poison fellow rulers from time
to time. Possibly worst of all, the mercenary bands Florence and other
cities hired to defend them against enemies turned into looting bands of
freebooting thieves when the main fighting was over. It was expensive to
rein in these footpads. By the time the rebellion was over, Tuscany was in
a shambles.
As we enjoy now, young people roaming freely could be a problem for Florentines. Sometimes the little clusters of youths were informal, sometimes very organized, with "uniforms, customs, names, and more or less secret rituals" (Duby 165).
On Names
By 1427, 1/3 of Florentines were using a last name.
In the small cities it was less common (20%), and in the country even less
so (9%) (Duby, 162). Duby also mentions that some families actually
formally organized their lineage and assigned leaders, formalized rules,
and institutions like a fraternal order (162). Family could be very
serious indeed to Florentines.
Godparents were another way that a child could get a name. Generally it was considered polite to give the new child its godparent's name. Godparents were very important to a child's life, taking their duties seriously. They frequently gave the child presents, taught the child, eve took in the child if the parents met with ill-fortune. Around half the godparents were from a higher class than the child's family, with most of the rest being from the same one. Some, however, were from a lower class (Duby 164); it is theorized that perhaps the parents wanted the child to have that name! You could have more than one godparent of each gender, of course. All godparents were part of the family and could visit freely.
More to come..
Last updated: April 30, 2003