1 Macinghi-Strozzi, Alessandra, Lettere di unagentildonna fiorentina (Florence, 1877)Google Scholar, 545, note B.

2 The introduction by Nicholas, David, The Domestic Life of a Medieval City: Women, Children, and the Family in Fourteenth-Century Ghent (Lincoln, NE, and London, 1985)Google Scholar, reviews the recent interpretations of, and bibliography for, European family structures in general, with a particular emphasis on northern Europe.

3 From the growing literature on the Florentine family, I refer here only to several divergent views and approaches: on family structures, Goldthwaite, Richard, Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence (Princeton, NJ, 1968)Google Scholar, and Kent, F. W., Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence (Princeton, NJ, 1977)Google Scholar; on family demographics, David Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, Les to scans et leurs families (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar, now translated as Tuscans and their Families (New Haven and London, 1985); on ritual kinship, Weissman, Ronald F. E., Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982)Google Scholar. By contrast with Florentine historiography, Venetian kinship and gender issues have been ably explored by Chojnacki, Stanley. See his two important articles, “Patrician Women in Early Renaissance Venice,” Studies in the Renaissance 21 (1974): 176–203 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Dowries and Kinsmen in Early Renaissance Venice,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5 ('975): 571-600. His more recent work adds an important perspective on age distinctions: “Kinship Ties and Young Patricians in Fifteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985): 240-70, and “Political Adulthood in Fifteenth-Century Venice,“ American Historical Review 91 (1986): 791-810.

4 Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1985).

5 Natalie Z. Davis. “Ghosts, Kin, and Progeny: Some Features of Family Life in Early Modern France,” Daedalus (spring 1977): 87-114.

6 On problems resulting from Florentine family structures, see Klapisch-Zuber, Women, 117-31. On the dowry system in Florence: Julius Kirshner, “Pursuing Honor while Avoiding Sin: The Monte delle Doti of Florence,” Stud/senesi 89(1978): 175-258. Venetian social structures mitigated to some extent against the kind of dowry wars seen in Florence; see Chojnacki, “Dowries.“

7 Kirshner and Molho, Anthony, “The Dowry Fund and the Marriage Market in Early Quattrocento Florence, “ Journal of Modern History 50 (1978)Google Scholar: 403-38; Herlihy and Klapisch, Tuscans, 222-26.

8 Serious attention needs to be paid to family changes during the Medici principate. For now, see Berner, Samuel, “The Florentine Patriciate in the Transition from Republic to Principato, 1530-1609,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 9 (1972)Google Scholar: 3-15. More specialized studies include Malanima, Paolo, J Riccardi di Firenze (Florence, 1977)Google Scholar, and Carter, Tim,“Music and Patronage in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence: The Case of Jacopo Corsi (1561-1602),” I Tatti Studies 1 (1985): 57–104 Google Scholar.

9 Diane Owen Hughes makes a similar point in connection with women's clothing in her article “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy,” 69-99 in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge, 1983).

10 Klapisch-Zuber, Women, 117-31.

11 Ibid., 120-21; Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans, 202-31.

12 Unless otherwise noted, all manuscripts cited are housed in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASF). See Conventi Religiosi Soppressi, 102, vol. 326. Testaments of San Pier Martire, 1421-1423; Catasto, vol. 185, fols. 763-796V.

13 San Pier Maggiore, vol. 38 (Summary of Obligations and Charges). According to the preface (unpaginated), this compilation was made in 1668 in order “to know the origins and foundations of all the [convent's] obligations,” since some programs had to be scaled down “because their income was not sufficient.” Although the preface states that the present book was based on older ledgers of mass obligations initially made in 1351, followed by a subsequent compilation of perpetual programs done in 1507, it appears that neither of these preceding documents has survived.

14 Detailed evidence from San Pier Martire is instructive here. Of the ninety programs the company reported in its 1427 Catasto return, sixty-six were still active in 1478; twenty-four programs had failed because of insufficient funding. The group of discontinued offices included thirteen celebrations sponsored by men and eleven by women; that is, perpetual programs at San Pier Martire lapsed in almost exact proportion to the gender composition of donors reported in 1427. Between 1427 and 1478 the company experienced a net loss of nine programs, as only fifteen new perpetual commissions (six made by men, nine by women) were instituted. The gender profile of perpetual donors in 1478 was thus remarkably similar to the company's portrait of fifty years earlier, with forty-two of eighty-one bequests (51.8%) made by men and thirty-nine (48.1%) by women. Catasto, vol. 185, fols. 763-796V; vol. 989, fols. 670-679V.

15 This equation is based on the figure of fourteen florins set by Catasto officials as the annual minimum cost of living for a single adult: waite, Goldth, The Building of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore and London, 1980), 348 Google Scholar; on the distribution of wealth in Florentine society, see Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans, 104.

16 Po-chiaHsia, R., Society and Religion in Munster, 1535-1618 (New Haven and London, 1984), 195-96Google Scholar, argues that memorial masses were not commonly requested in late sixteenth-century wills because a perpetual program required 500 guldens or dalers, “a figure out of reach for over ninety percent of the faithful.” Examples of mass costs in sixteenth-century Lyons, which were less onerous than in Muenster but still more expensive than in Florence, are given by Davis, , Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), 292 Google Scholar, n. 25. Perpetual programs made by and for the English aristocracy are discussed by Rosenthal, J. T., The Purchase ofParadise (London, 1972)Google Scholar, and in a more general way by Wood-Legh, K. L., Perpetual Chantries in Britain (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar.

17 For Giovanni di Torsellino Catasto, vol.43,fols. 798-800v, at fol.800, whose office cost the equivalent of 1.45 florins. All lire to florin conversions are based on Goldthwaite, Building, app. 1. For San Pier Martire, Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fols. 1-37. l8 Judith C. Brown, “A Woman's Place Was in the Home: Women's Work in Renaissance Tuscany,” 206-24 in Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, ed. M. Ferguson, M. Quilligan, and N. Vickers (Chicago, 1986). For a demographic and economic profile of wet nurses and domestic servants in Florence, see Klapisch-Zuber, Women, 132-77. As a problem for future research, it would be highly informative to compare Florentine women's commemorative patterns with their counterparts in northern European cities where, according to the recent work of Martha Howell and Merry Wiesner, women had a greater role in the urban economy as wage laborers.

19 Conv. Sopp, 102, vol. 326, fols. 1-37, which lists thirty-seven women donors: three are identified as notaries’ wives, one as a notary's daughter, and one woman only as a tertiary. The remaining women, who had hazier vocational associations, were nevertheless all identified by their surnames, including a large number from such prestigious families as the Alberti, Altoviti, Ardinghelli, Pazzi, Ricci, Rossi, Strozzi, and Tornaquinci. About 60% of these women can be securely identified as widows, which may have enhanced the autonomy with which they disposed of their goods. See also San Pier Maggiore, vol. 38, which identifies seven out of twenty-nine women as having artisan backgrounds.

20 Goody, Jack, “Inheritance, Property, and Women,” 10-36 in idem, et al., eds., Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800 (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar.

21 San Pier Maggiore, vol. 38, 74, 95.

22 Davis, “Boundaries and the Sense of Selfin Sixteenth-Century France,” 53-63 in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, ed. T. Heller, M. Sosna, and D. Wellbery (Stanford, 1986).

23 For San Pier Martire, seeConv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326. Under the directive of Pope Eugenius IV, who resided at Santa Maria Novella during his Florentine sojourn, the company was reorganized in the late 1430s and early 1440s, after which some of its finances and obligations were assumed by the friars. The larger sample is drawn from the following sources: Santa Maria Novella, sixty-one programs (Conv. Sopp. ,102, vols. 105, 106, pts. 1 and 2); San Pancrazio, four programs (Conv. Sopp., 88, vol. 65); San Pier Maggiore, seventy-five programs (San Pier Maggiore, vol. 38); Santo Spirito, eleven programs (Conv. Sopp., 122, vol. 75); and Santa Trinita, seven programs (Conv. Sopp., 89, vols. 15, 47, 75).

24 I Libri dellafamiglia, ed. R. Romano and A. Tenenti (Turin, 1969).

25 Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fol. 26v.

26 San Pier Maggiore, vol. 38, 68, dated 25 December 1415. The intentions of bequests like the one made by Niccolosa, widow of Ser Alberto Tigliamochi in 1468 are more difficult to decipher. Niccolosa stipulated separate offices for herself and her husband, rather than a single joint celebration; Conv. Sopp. 102, vol. 106, pt. 2, unpaginated, dated 5 August 1468.

27 Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fol. 13V. This bequest, dated 23 January 1387, was made by Giovanni di Giano, a wealthy setaiuolo of the parish of San Pancrazio, and his daughter Monna Agnesa, the wife of Niccolo di Marco Alberti; the ledger notes that Agnesa made the donation “con consentimento del padre e del marito.“

28 For example, see the 1386 bequest celebrating his marital union by the stonecutter Zanobi di Pacino and a bequest made the previous year by his neighbor in San Pier Maggiore from a more powerful notarial family, Piero di Ser Spigliato da Filicaia; San Pier Maggiore, vol. 38, 1,9.

29 Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fol. 19V.

30 See, for example, the programs established in the late fourteenth century at San Pier Martireby Nepo della Tosa and his widow Bicia: Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fols. 155, 169.

31 See the intriguing possibilities for inquiry posed by Chojnacki, “The Power of Love: Wives and Husbands in Late Medieval Venice,” 126-48 in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, GA, 1988).

32 San Pier Maggiore, vol. 38, 68, 94.

33 Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800, abridged ed. (New York, 1979), 420 Google Scholar; waite, Goldth, “The Florentine Palace as Domestic Architecture,“ American Historical Review 77 (1972)Google Scholar: 977-1012, and, more generally, his Private Wealth. Marvin Becker has also argued for a progressive nuclearization of the Florentine family in the fifteenth century, although in different terms than Stone's “affective domesticity,” in “Individualism in the Early Italian Renaissance: Burden and Blessing,“ Studies in the Renaissance 19 (1972): 273-97. Kent, Household, esp. 230, criticizes Goldthwaite's views on architectural changes as a response to a growing desire for domestic privacy. The positions on family development taken by both Goldthwaite and Kent are criticized by Molho, Anthony, “Visions of the Florentine Family in the Renaissance,“ Journal of Modern History 50 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 304-11.

34 For Dazino di Gualberto, Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 106, pt. 2, unfoliated, dated 14 October 1360; for the San Pier donations, Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fols. 14, 28, 32.

35 Catasto, vol. 185, fol. 772: “Questo lascio non metto nulla perche muovano lite lerede e dicono non essere tenuti piu che selvoglino fare e assai anni non gli danno assi a piatire alloro e pero rimane pendente.” The bishop's court decided in favor of the company, however, and the bequest was once again active by 1478. Catasto, vol. 989, fols. 670-679V. 36 Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fols. iov, 20, 26v. It is worth mentioning that, although a child who predeceased his or her parents must have prompted the commemorative impulse, there was nothing to prevent a living person or kin group from being named as part of a commemorative intention.

37 Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fol. 20; San Pier Maggiore, vol. 38, 59. Villana de' Rossi, widow of Stoldo Lensi, defined herself as a mother by reversing the conventional formula. In her 1444 testament, Villana left a house to the Compagnia del Tempio to finance her memorial program, provided that the executor never, under any conditions, cede any rights to her son Lodovico or to his children. Villana's will is printed in Stefano Orlandi, Necrologio di S. Maria Nopella (Florence, 1955) 2:232.

38 Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1985), 83.

39 Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 106, pt. 2, unfoliated, dated 23 May 1455.

40 Ibid., dated 1 July 1430.

41 Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fols. 8v, 97; San Pier Maggiore, vol. 38, 96.

42 On the legal status of women in late medieval and Renaissance Florence, Kuehn, Thomas, “ ‘Cum Consensu Mundualdi': Legal Guardianship of Women in Quattrocento Florence,” Viator 13 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 309-33; idem, “Women, Marriage, and Patria Potestas in Late Medieval Florence,” Revue d'histoire du droit 49 (1981): 127-47. Kirshner discusses the legal claims of wives and their natal families in “Wives’ Claims against Insolvent Husbands in Late Medieval Italy,” 256-303 in Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy, ed. idem and S. Wemple (Oxford, 1985).

43 Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fol. 25r-v. By 1427 this program had encountered financial difficulties, but was once again active by 1478: Catasto, vol. 185, fol. 778; Catasto, vol. 989, fol. 678V.

44 For Lapaccia's bequest, Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fol. 32V. The mistaken burial was noted by the abbot of Santa Trinita: “facto chiaro come la detta mona Lapaccia per suo testamento era giudicata a Santa Maria Novella rendemo il corpo et della cera che mi rimase di coscientia di Maestro Ubertino priore di Santa Maria Novella.” Whether her daughters intervened is not clear from this text. Conv. Sopp., 89, vol. 10, fol. 5.

45 Conv. Sopp., 88, vol. 23.

46 Conv. Sopp., 102, vol. 326, fol. 13V.

47 Compagnie Religiose Soppresse di Firenze, Capitoli, vol. 439, fol. 6: “E anchora ordiniamo che simile rinovale si faccia ongni [sic] anno del mese di genaio per tutti i nostri morti cioe padri e madre [sic] e frategli e sirocchie e figliuoli e ogni altro congiunto di nostra conpagnia.“

48 ASF, Archivio Bardi, ser. 3, vol. 132, bk. 3, “Discorso sopra l'ius sepolcrale delle famiglie,” fols. 112-20, atfol. 112: “Questa parola suorum si do vesse ragionevolmente intendere per generica, et per capace di abbracciare e d'invitare all'Ius del Sepolcro tutti gli Agnati e Consorti del Fondatore, di qualunque linea eziandio che fussero eglino, e che non debba intendersi per ristretta a i soli suoi figliuoli, o agli eredi di lui stesso, o a i suoi discendenti solamente, e non ad altri della stirpe.” Michael Rocke kindly brought this document to my attention. As Kent, Household, 6-7, points out, consorti had a double meaning of kinsmen and spouses. Whether Fantoni meant kinsmen or, as I have translated it here, spouses, his intention in either case was to signify a descent group traced through the male line.

49 Carte Strozziane, ser. 2, vol. 17 bis, Ricordi of Marco and Piero Parenti, 1447- 1519, fol. 71 v. See also the discussion of reverence shown lineal ancestors in Kent, Household, 252-73.

50 Hughes, , “Representing the Family: Portraits and Purposes in Early Modern Italy,“ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17 (1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 7-38.