Miscellanea Medicea
Item
Country
IT
Name of institution (English)
State Archives of Florence
Name of institution (official language of the state)
Language of name of institution
ita
Contact information: postal address
Viale Giovine Italia 6, 50122 Florence
Contact information: phone number
0039 055263201
Contact information: web address
Contact information: email
asfi@archiviodistato.firenze.it
Reference number
Miscellanea Medicea
Type of reference number
Archival reference number
Title (English)
Medici Miscellaneous records
Title (official language of the state)
Miscellanea Medicea
Language of title
ita
Creator / accumulator
Archivio mediceo del principato
Date note
16th century/18th century
Language(s)
ita
lat
Extent
730 storage units
Type of material
Textual Material
Scope and content
The Miscellanea Medicea fonds comprises documentation of various types and subjects from the entire period of the Medici period, from the early 1530s to 1737, when the last Medici Grand Duke died and the Lorenese dynasty rose to power. Thus, it gathers documentation from the "golden age" of the New Christians and Iberian Jews in Tuscany. Therefore, in the Miscellanea Medicea fonds, it is possible to find pieces of evidence regarding their presence in the region. It is the case of safe-conducts issued to Portuguese New Christians to trade and live in Florence in the mid-16th century, included in file 611 of this collection. Among these New Christians, there were some illustrious figures, such as Pedro Furtado (see the publication of this document in Mateus and Nóvoa (2005)), Sebastião Pinto, Duarte Gomes or Tomás Gomes. Other examples of documents regarding the Sephardic diaspora in the Grand Duchy territories are the following:
23, no. 11: Information given by Paolo Vinta, auditore fiscale to his brother and first Secretary of State Belisarion Vinta regarding the privileges provided to the Jews in Livorno and Pisa. May 7, 1602. This document was published in Toaff (1990).
42, no. 25: Information given by the Massari of the Jewish community of Pisa to the commissary of Pisa about a quarrel between two Jews. 1653.
45, no. 3: "Sbozzi della Memoria Sopra gl’Ebrei": notes on several subjects regarding Judaism, the Jewish people and the Jewish presence in Tuscany. First half of the 19th century.
106, no. 6: Project of law on public order related to the Jewish ghetto of Florence. Late 16th century - early 17th century.
292: Documentation on the Council of Trento and diplomatic treatises regarding the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which includes some records regarding the Jewish question.
311: "Arte della seta e della lana": collection of records, some of them with references to Jewish traders and manufacturers operating in these businesses.
326, no. 80: Copy of Pope Paul III's decree favouring the Jewish merchants of Ancona. January 28, 1543.
335, no. 9: Copy of the privileges given by Grand Duke Ferdinand I to the Jews — the so-called Livornina. January 10, 1593.
366, fols. 995-997: Copy of a plea submitted by Gabriel Ariaz, Raffaello Crespino, Raffaello Medina and Raffaello Faro, all Jews, to Grand Duke Cosimo III, and another copy of a letter from the same individuas to Manuele di Belmonte. 1691.
23, no. 11: Information given by Paolo Vinta, auditore fiscale to his brother and first Secretary of State Belisarion Vinta regarding the privileges provided to the Jews in Livorno and Pisa. May 7, 1602. This document was published in Toaff (1990).
42, no. 25: Information given by the Massari of the Jewish community of Pisa to the commissary of Pisa about a quarrel between two Jews. 1653.
45, no. 3: "Sbozzi della Memoria Sopra gl’Ebrei": notes on several subjects regarding Judaism, the Jewish people and the Jewish presence in Tuscany. First half of the 19th century.
106, no. 6: Project of law on public order related to the Jewish ghetto of Florence. Late 16th century - early 17th century.
292: Documentation on the Council of Trento and diplomatic treatises regarding the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which includes some records regarding the Jewish question.
311: "Arte della seta e della lana": collection of records, some of them with references to Jewish traders and manufacturers operating in these businesses.
326, no. 80: Copy of Pope Paul III's decree favouring the Jewish merchants of Ancona. January 28, 1543.
335, no. 9: Copy of the privileges given by Grand Duke Ferdinand I to the Jews — the so-called Livornina. January 10, 1593.
366, fols. 995-997: Copy of a plea submitted by Gabriel Ariaz, Raffaello Crespino, Raffaello Medina and Raffaello Faro, all Jews, to Grand Duke Cosimo III, and another copy of a letter from the same individuas to Manuele di Belmonte. 1691.
Archival history
The origin of the Miscellanea Medicea 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 series of correspondence was ever considered the most precious element of the whole Medici archive. Besides, the remaining records essentially resulted from ordinary government activity, and they were preserved and aggregated independently. This autonomy was reinforced by the reorganisation interventions of the archive that took place over time. Such interventions tended to isolate the documents that did not fit into the typology of letters, neither were prone to be attached to them in the form of annexed papers. These processes gave rise to the Miscellanea Medicea.
The first reference to a collection of miscellaneous documents in the Medici archives dates back to the second half of the 17th century. Canon Fabrizio Cecini, the archivist of the Segreteria vecchia from 1682 to 1717, undertook to reorganise the archive's documents. 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. Then, Cecini rearranged the documentation, following the Medici correspondence as a reference and treated all other records as annexed papers. In addition, he proposed to gather in separate files the materials unrelated to the epistolary series. Indeed, there is a mention of a "Miscellanea" preserved in the "Armadio XIV" in an inventory partially elaborated by 1716.
From this moment on, this collection of miscellaneous documents gained consistency and was gradually isolated from the correspondence series. After the advent of the Lorena dynasty in 1737, Carlo Bonsi, Federico Fossi and Riguccio Galluzi were entrusted with the responsibility of mapping the archives inherited from the Medici. On this occasion, they elaborated an index of the miscellaneous records unrelated to any other organised collection ("Indice delle Scritture intitolate Miscellanea esistenti nell'armadio IX della stanza VI").
Following the French occupation, the Segretaria vecchia archives were 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. From 1819, Prince Leopoldo ordered the extraction of art and literature-related documents from the Archivio Mediceo to be copied. Although the documents were recommended to return to their original place, the procedure was not always followed, which also increased the Miscellanea collection.
In the mid-19th century, Filippo Moisè, archivist of the Archivio Mediceo, followed Cecini's steps and tried to reduce the fonds to a single homogeneous archive. After having extracted the minutes and registers that he gathered with the correspondence, he divided the remaining documents into five different miscellaneous series: Miscellanea I, Miscellanea II, Miscellanea storica, Miscellanea di notizie per servire alla storia di varie corti d'Europa, and Materie diverse.
Following the establishment of the Archivio centrale di Stato in 1852, Francesco Bonaini charged Gaetano Milanesi to reorganise and catalogue the Archivio Mediceo. Milanesi analysed the documents that composed the miscellaneous series and divided them according to the subjects of the main series, the Mediceo, in order to reconstitute a single archive. However, this project was not completed. It was only in 1875 that Guglielmo Enrico Saltini undertook a systematic intervention on the Miscellanea. He extracted 3,000 minutes of letters and inserted them in the Mediceo, and catalogued each miscellaneous file in relation to the epistolary series. However, he did not succeed in his project since it was impossible to identify the alleged correspondence of origin for each file. Then, it was decided to place some files extracted from the Miscellanea at the end of the shelves where the supposed original correspondence was placed. It was also created an Appendix to the Mediceo with the files removed from the Miscellanea, whose origin was not possible to identify.
In the 20th century, a new perspective on the Miscellanea as an autonomous fonds arose and encouraged efforts to create a research tool to make its consultation possible. A work of analytical cataloguing of the Miscellanea records began in the early years of the century. Around 1940, it was created an inventory in four volumes based on this previous work. In 1950, Francesca Morandini composed a summary inventory of the Miscellanea, to which she added 83 pieces gathered in an Appendice.
The last intervention that changed the fonds' physiognomy was carried out in 1951. Marcello Del Piazzo and Giovanni Antonelli, who published the summary inventory of the Archivio Mediceo del Principato, extracted from the Miscellanea those files they thought of to rejoin the series of correspondence. Once again, the Miscellanea was considered a temporary deposit of documents waiting to be relocated to their natural location. The most important consequence of this intervention was the new numbering of the remaining records of the Miscellanea.
Until the 1970s, the cataloguing work continued without reaching a complete inventory of the entire fonds. In 1986, Silvia Baggio, Tiziana Di Zio and Piero Marchi elaborated tables in order to compare different signatures on the records, and thus make their consultation possible. They also gave a new continuous numbering to the whole collection, integrating the Appendice isolated by Francesca Morandini.
During the relocation of the Archivio di Stato from the Uffizi palace to the new building in Viale Giovine Italia in 1988, some sets of documents were aggregated to the Miscellanea, including those relating to the Stamperia orientale.
In 2002, Silvia Baggio and Piero Marchi published the first volume of the analytical inventory of the collection. With the publication of the second and third volumes in 2009 and 2014, both edited by Beatrice Biagioli, Gabriella Cibei and Veronica Vestri, with the scientific coordination and revision of Piero Marchi, the Miscellanea Medicea was finally provided with a complete research tool and indepth analysis of the entire fonds.
The first reference to a collection of miscellaneous documents in the Medici archives dates back to the second half of the 17th century. Canon Fabrizio Cecini, the archivist of the Segreteria vecchia from 1682 to 1717, undertook to reorganise the archive's documents. 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. Then, Cecini rearranged the documentation, following the Medici correspondence as a reference and treated all other records as annexed papers. In addition, he proposed to gather in separate files the materials unrelated to the epistolary series. Indeed, there is a mention of a "Miscellanea" preserved in the "Armadio XIV" in an inventory partially elaborated by 1716.
From this moment on, this collection of miscellaneous documents gained consistency and was gradually isolated from the correspondence series. After the advent of the Lorena dynasty in 1737, Carlo Bonsi, Federico Fossi and Riguccio Galluzi were entrusted with the responsibility of mapping the archives inherited from the Medici. On this occasion, they elaborated an index of the miscellaneous records unrelated to any other organised collection ("Indice delle Scritture intitolate Miscellanea esistenti nell'armadio IX della stanza VI").
Following the French occupation, the Segretaria vecchia archives were 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. From 1819, Prince Leopoldo ordered the extraction of art and literature-related documents from the Archivio Mediceo to be copied. Although the documents were recommended to return to their original place, the procedure was not always followed, which also increased the Miscellanea collection.
In the mid-19th century, Filippo Moisè, archivist of the Archivio Mediceo, followed Cecini's steps and tried to reduce the fonds to a single homogeneous archive. After having extracted the minutes and registers that he gathered with the correspondence, he divided the remaining documents into five different miscellaneous series: Miscellanea I, Miscellanea II, Miscellanea storica, Miscellanea di notizie per servire alla storia di varie corti d'Europa, and Materie diverse.
Following the establishment of the Archivio centrale di Stato in 1852, Francesco Bonaini charged Gaetano Milanesi to reorganise and catalogue the Archivio Mediceo. Milanesi analysed the documents that composed the miscellaneous series and divided them according to the subjects of the main series, the Mediceo, in order to reconstitute a single archive. However, this project was not completed. It was only in 1875 that Guglielmo Enrico Saltini undertook a systematic intervention on the Miscellanea. He extracted 3,000 minutes of letters and inserted them in the Mediceo, and catalogued each miscellaneous file in relation to the epistolary series. However, he did not succeed in his project since it was impossible to identify the alleged correspondence of origin for each file. Then, it was decided to place some files extracted from the Miscellanea at the end of the shelves where the supposed original correspondence was placed. It was also created an Appendix to the Mediceo with the files removed from the Miscellanea, whose origin was not possible to identify.
In the 20th century, a new perspective on the Miscellanea as an autonomous fonds arose and encouraged efforts to create a research tool to make its consultation possible. A work of analytical cataloguing of the Miscellanea records began in the early years of the century. Around 1940, it was created an inventory in four volumes based on this previous work. In 1950, Francesca Morandini composed a summary inventory of the Miscellanea, to which she added 83 pieces gathered in an Appendice.
The last intervention that changed the fonds' physiognomy was carried out in 1951. Marcello Del Piazzo and Giovanni Antonelli, who published the summary inventory of the Archivio Mediceo del Principato, extracted from the Miscellanea those files they thought of to rejoin the series of correspondence. Once again, the Miscellanea was considered a temporary deposit of documents waiting to be relocated to their natural location. The most important consequence of this intervention was the new numbering of the remaining records of the Miscellanea.
Until the 1970s, the cataloguing work continued without reaching a complete inventory of the entire fonds. In 1986, Silvia Baggio, Tiziana Di Zio and Piero Marchi elaborated tables in order to compare different signatures on the records, and thus make their consultation possible. They also gave a new continuous numbering to the whole collection, integrating the Appendice isolated by Francesca Morandini.
During the relocation of the Archivio di Stato from the Uffizi palace to the new building in Viale Giovine Italia in 1988, some sets of documents were aggregated to the Miscellanea, including those relating to the Stamperia orientale.
In 2002, Silvia Baggio and Piero Marchi published the first volume of the analytical inventory of the collection. With the publication of the second and third volumes in 2009 and 2014, both edited by Beatrice Biagioli, Gabriella Cibei and Veronica Vestri, with the scientific coordination and revision of Piero Marchi, the Miscellanea Medicea was finally provided with a complete research tool and indepth analysis of the entire fonds.
Administrative / Biographical history
The Miscellanea Medicea, together with the Mediceo avanti il principato and the Mediceo del principato 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.
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.
Access points: locations
Access points: corporate bodies
Access points: subject terms
Access points: document types
System of arrangement
Records are numbered sequentially. However, since the fonds was renumbered several times, it is recommended to consult the comparison tables available in the reading room, as well as the inventory organised by Silvia Baggio and Piero Marchi, available on the archive website.
Access, restrictions
Records number 93/I-IV, 97/91, and 223 are only available for consultation in digital support. The following records are missing: 281/6, 281/26, 281/34-36, 281/40-44, 282/1, 320/13, 322/1, 322/17, 322/53-54, and 362/12.
Finding aids
Unpublished finding aids available in the archive:
"Indice della Segreteria vecchia, tomo XXI. Indice di documenti originali e scritture più interessanti esistenti nell'armadio II nella stanza II". 1776 (sala di studio, N/295/XXI)
"Indice della Segreteria vecchia, tomo XI". 1777 (sala di studio, N/295/XI)
Tanfani, Giuseppe, and Reginaldo Tanzini, "Indice delle notizie storiche, scientifiche, letterarie estratte dall'archivio mediceo". First half of the 19th century (sala di studio, V/363, V/364, and V/365)
Links to finding aids
Author of the description
Carla Vieira, 2021
Published primary sources
Linked resources
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