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Country
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IT
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Name of institution (English)
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State Archives of Florence
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Language of name of institution
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ita
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Contact information: postal address
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Viale Giovine Italia 6, 50122 Florence
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Contact information: phone number
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0039 055263201
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Contact information: email
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asfi@archiviodistato.firenze.it
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Reference number
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Mediceo del principato
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Title (English)
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Medici archive of the Principato
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Title (official language of the state)
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Mediceo del Principato
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Language of title
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ita
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Creator / accumulator
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Archivio mediceo del principato
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Date(s)
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16th century/18th century
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Language(s)
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ita
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Extent
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6,610 storage units
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Type of material
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Textual Material
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Scope and content
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The Mediceo del Principato fonds comprises documents dating from 1537 to 1743, and produced in the course of both the public activity of the Medici government and the management of the interests and properties of the Medici family. It is one of the few dynastic fonds that remained almost intact until the present day.
The Mediceo del Principato is essentially an epistolary collection, containing more than four million letters, most of them written by the Medici's wide network of diplomats and informants. Besides recording the diplomatic activity of the Grand Duchy, the Mediceo del Principato also provides essential data on the interaction of the Medici court with the different branches of its government.
The fonds is composed of the following series: "Minute di lettere e registri" (letters and registers' minutes); "Carteggio universale" (universal correspondence); "Carteggio dei segretari" (correspondence of the secretaries); "Affari di Stato e di Guerra" (state and war affairs); "Governi di città e luoghi soggetti" (governments of submitted cities and localities); "Istruzioni ad ambasciatori" (instructions to ambassadors); "Relazioni con stati italiani ed esteri" (relations with Italian and foreign states); "Carteggi dei prinicipi, delle granduchesse e delle principesse" (Correspondence of princes, grand duchesses and princesses); and "Appendice" (Appendix).
The Mediceo del Principato fonds gathers generous information regarding Sephardic Jewish and New Christian individuals and families living and operating in Tuscan cities from the 16th to the 18th century. It is the case of the Mendes/Naci family and other figures of its entourage. Some examples are the following:
Vol. 1170a, fols. 169, 455: letter by Giorgio Dati to Pier Francesco Riccio, from Antwerpen, informing about the intention of the Mendes family to leave Antwerpen. As Duke Cosimo I intended to attract prominent Jewish merchants to Tuscany and, in particular, the Mendes, Dati recommends secrecy on the negotiations to convince them to settle in the Grand Duchy territories. October 26, 1545.
Vol. 6429, fol. 14: safe-conduct issued to Brianda de Luna and her daughter Beatriz, allowing them to circulate in Tuscany accompanied by their servants and family. December 29, 1550.
Vol. 2968, fol. 351: letter by Donato de' Bardi, from Venice, reporting that Suleyman I had sent an agent from Istanbul to take to Constantinople Doña Gracia Mendes and her daughter. November 12, 1551.
Vol. 2969, fols. 58-59: report informing about a dispute between Beatriz Mendes and her sister Brianda, wife of late Diogo Mendes, regarding the estate of the latter. June 14, 1552.
The subseries "Congregazione o Consulta di Livorno" (vols. 2475-2532) includes several documents related or produced by the Jewish community of Livorno, as well as information regarding Sephardic merchants operating in the city in the 1720s and 1730s, such as the Ergas family and the Franco brothers.
The "avvisi", or manuscript compilations of political and economic news, include relevant information regarding economic activities in Tuscany and, thus, also about Jewish merchants. The consultation of the following volumes is recommended: 2328A (“Avvisi di Livorno", 1686–1704); 1540–1561, 1612–1628 (“Avvisi di mare,” 1664–1715); 4277–4278 (“Avvisi da Costantinpoli e da altre località del Levante,” 1543–1625); and 1605–1606 (“Avvisi di Levante, India et Barberia,” 1665–93).
We recommend using the BIA platform developed by the Medici Archive Project, which includes transcriptions and some digital copies of documents of the Mediceo del Principato's fonds, as well as English abstracts of the records. The platform allows users to search data by name and subject.
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Archival history
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The origin of the Mediceo del Principato fonds is closely related to the formation and events of the Principato. Its records were produced or acquired by the Medici family in its double role as a private dynasty and a reigning house.
The first substantive intervention to organise the archive occurred in the 1680s, when Canon Fabrizio Cecini, the archivist of the Segreteria vecchia, was charged by Cosimo III with this mission. At the time, Cecini identified a core collection of correspondence, already ordered by origin and arranged in chronological order. He considered the remaining records as papers that originally would accompany the letters. However, a fire in Palazzo Vecchio in 1690 compromised his mission. In order to save the documents from the flames, they had been piled up in bulk and disorganised. In addition to this incident, the continuous incorporation of new records from the secretariats also comprised the collection's integrity.
After Cecini death in 1717 and during the last twenty years of the Medici government, no further intervention was undertaken in the Segretaria vecchia's archive. However, following the advent of the Lorena dynasty in 1737, the archive passed to a new phase of its evolution. By ceasing the continuous incorporation of papers coming from the secretariats, it became a closed archive. Then, after the change of dynasty, Carlo Bonsi, Federico Fossi and Riguccio Galluzi were entrusted with mapping the records inherited from the Medici. The attention was then focused on conserving and making the records available for consultation.
Following the French occupation, the archive was transferred to the Uffizi palace. In 1818, the so-called Archivio Mediceo was placed under the direction of the Avvocato regio, who also supervised the Archivio delle Riformagioni and the Archivio delle Regie Rendite.
After the establishment of the Archivio centrale di Stato in 1852, the Archivio Mediceo was incorporated into its collection. Under the direction of Soprintendente Francesco Bonaini, the largest fonds of the new Archivio centrale, including the Mediceo, were reorganised according to the institution that had produced them.
Following this criteria, the Medici fonds, namely, the Mediceo del principato, the Mediceo avanti il Principato and the Miscellanea medicea, were merged. Filippo Moisè, the first Vicesoprintendente and Archivista generale per gli archivi storici (deputy superintendent and general archivist of the historical archives), composed an inventory of the Mediceo's correspondence records from Duke Alessandro to Grand Duke Cosimo II. His successor, Gaetano Milanesi, undertook a more organic and complex intervention by reorganising the whole collection and composing a summary inventory. This work lasted for two years and resulted in the description of 6,414 units. During the following years, Guglielmo Enrico Saltini also tried to give a new order to the Mediceo fonds. However, the endeavour to produce a more analytical catalogue of the fonds only started in the early 20th century, although without a systematic inventory of the collection.
The last stage of the Archivio Mediceo's history dates back to 1951, when the "Inventario sommario", organised by Marcello del Piazzo and Giovanni Antonelli, under the auspices of the then director of the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Antonio Panella, was published. Once again, del Piazzo and Antonelli attempted to integrate parts of the Miscellanea series within the Mediceo. Files and folders were then extracted and relocated in the supposed original series or in the "Appendice". This intervention resulted in changes in the records' numbering.
Since the early 1990s, the Medici Archive Project (MAP) has fostered the knowledge of the Mediceo del Principato fonds. In order to facilitate the access to its records, the MAP built the BIA (bia.medici.org) platform, available online since 2012. It comprises over 26,000 transcribed searchable documentary records and almost one million digitised images. Recently, in July 2020, the MAP launched the MIA (mia.medici.org) platform, whose principal aim is to allow the users to organise, store, share, qualify, and preserve the records of the Mediceo del Principato, as well as other documents from other collections, yet still related to the Medici dynasty.
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(source: SIAS Archivio di Stato di Firenze: Mediceo del principato)
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Administrative / Biographical history
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The Mediceo del principato, together with the Mediceo avanti il principato and the Miscellanea Medicea fonds, was originally part of the Archivio Mediceo. The Archivio Mediceo was a family, a dynasty and a government archive, and it accompanied the background, establishment and evolution of the Medici domination.
The Medici entrusted the management of internal affairs and correspondence with foreign courts to various secretaries controlled by the "primo segretario" (first secretary). However, there was no organic structure of the secretariats, except for the Secretariat of War, established in the early 17th century. The importance and quantity of other secretaries' duties varied depending on the favour they enjoyed with the sovereign, and they were also part of the court staff.
Since the 1550s, the Medici archive was divided between the Palazzo Vecchio (or Palazzo della Signoria) and the Pallazzo Pitti. Cosimo I moved his family archive from the Medici residence in Via Larga to the Palazzo Vecchio in 1540. About fifteen years later, the court and the offices of some secretaries moved to the Palazzo Pitti. Then, in the Palazzo Vecchio, remained the documentation that was no longer being used, which was preserved in a storage archive, the Segretaria vecchia, as well as the records produced by the secretariats that stayed operating in the palace, and also the so-called Archivio segreto, which included a set of records necessary to legitimise the Medici power, such as imperial privileges, international treaties, marriage agreements, notarial deeds related to the family's estate, etc. The Archivio segreto was transferred to the Palazzo Pitt in the first half of the 17th century and remained there until 1773. The Palazzo Pitti also holds the records produced by the secretariats established there. These records, as well as those produced by the secretariats settled in the Palazzo Vecchio, were relocated to the Segretaria vecchia when they were considered unnecessary for current affairs. Therefore, the documentation stored in the Segretaria vecchia was continuously increasing, and, in 1592, it became necessary to rearrange the archive and relocate its facilities to a more suitable room of the palace. During the 17th century, the need for reorganisation of the evergrowing documentation of the Segretaria vecchia was constantly reinforced. However, it was only at the end of the century and the beginning of the following that a concrete intervention to organise the archive was undertaken.
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(source: Baggio, Silvia, and Piero Marchi, "Introduzione", Miscellanea medicea. vol. I (buste 1-200). Roma: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, Direzione generale per gli archivi, 3-21).
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System of arrangement
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The Mediceo del principato fonds is divided into series and subseries. Each of them is organised by date (most currently), place (e.g. "Governi di città e luoghi soggetti") or subject (e.g. "Appendix"). At the level of the units, most of the records are chronologically arranged. The numbering is sequential and unique for the whole fonds.
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Finding aids
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Unpublished finding aids available in the archive:
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Tanfani, Giuseppe and Tanzini, Reginaldo. "Indice delle notizie storiche, scientifiche, letterarie estratte dall'archivio mediceo", 3 vols. First half of the 19th century (V/363, V/364 and V/365).
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Milanesi, Gaetano. "Inventario dell'Archivio mediceo, a cura di Gaetano Milanesi, inventario sommario", 3 vols. [1857-1859] (V/360/I-II, V/361/I-II and V/362/I-II).
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"Prospetto di corrispondenze tra le segnature dell'indice Brunetti e le moderne, indice". 1900s-1950s (N/2).
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Author of the description
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Carla Vieira, 2021
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Bibliography
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Cassandro, Michelle. 1984. “Gli ebrei di Livorno nel Seicento. Aspetti economici e sociali.” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 50 (9–12): 567–82.
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Cooperman, Bernard Dov. 1976. “Trade and Settlement: The Establishment and Early Development of the Jewish Communities in Leghorn and Pisa (1591–1626).” PhD dissertation, Harvard University.
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Filippini, Jean Pierre, ed. 1989. “Le rôle des négociants et des banquiers juifs de Livourne dans le grand commerce internationak en Méditerranée au XVIIIe siècle.” In The Mediterranean and the Jews. Banking, Finance and International Trade (XVI-XVIII Centuries), Ariel Toaff&Simon Schwarzfuchs, 1:123–49. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press.
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Frattarelli Fischer, Lucia. 1983. “Proprietà e insediamento ebraici a Livorno dalla fine del cinquecento alla seconda metà del settecento.” Quaderni storici 18 (54): 879–96.
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Frattarelli Fischer, Lucia. 1984. “Tipologia abitativa degli ebrei a Livorno nel Seicento.” La Rassegna Mensile di Israel 50 (9–12): 583–605.
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Frattarelli Fischer, Lucia, ed. 2000. “Cristiani nuovi e nuovi ebrei in Toscana fra cinque e seicento. Legittimazioni e percorsi individuali.” In L’identità dissimulata: giudaizzanti iberici nell’Europa cristiana dell’età moderna, Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, 99–149. Firenze: L. S. Olschki.
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Frattarelli Fischer, Lucia. 2002. “Reti locali e reti internazionali degli ebrei di Livorno nel Seicento.” In Commercial Networks in the Early Modern World, Diogo Ramada Curto and Anthony Molho, 148–75. Florence: European University Institute.
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Trivellato, Francesca. 2009. The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period. New Haven London: Yale University Press.
