![Coa_fam_ITA_peruzzi2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Coa_fam_ITA_peruzzi2.jpg)
The Peruzzi were bankers of
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...
, among the leading families of the city in the 14th century, before the rise to prominence of the
Medici
The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Mu ...
. Their modest antecedents stretched back to the mid 11th century, according to the family's genealogist Luigi Passerini, but a restructuring of the Peruzzi company in 1300, with an infusion of outside capital, marked the start of a quarter-century of prosperity that brought the family consortium to the forefront of Florentine affairs.
Patronage
Semi-public patronage reaffirmed the Peruzzi status in Florence: in his will in 1299, Donato di Arnoldo Peruzzi left money for a memorial chapel in a transept of the
Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence. It was probably his grandson Giovanni di Rinieri Peruzzi who was
Giotto
Giotto di Bondone (; – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto ( , ) and Latinised as Giottus, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the Gothic/ Proto-Renaissance period. G ...
's patron in frescoing the walls with murals honoring John the Evangelist and John the Baptist, which Giotto executed, starting in 1313.
For economic historians, the surviving account books of the Peruzzi from the years 1335–1343 provide an indispensable primary source for the economic history of the city on the cusp of the late Medieval and
Early Modern period. The contemporary chronicler
Giovanni Villani
Giovanni Villani (; 1276 or 1280 – 1348)Bartlett (1992), 35. was an Italian banker, official, diplomat and chronicler from Florence who wrote the ''Nuova Cronica'' (''New Chronicles'') on the history of Florence. He was a leading statesman of ...
is the other prime source for the family's affairs.
Company
The company that bore the Peruzzi name was run by a half-dozen family members, and there were many Peruzzi who were neither active nor silent partners, pursuing other careers, even amassing independent capital. The company's courier system acted as an intelligence-gathering system often embroiled in diplomacy. The size of the bank should not be understated: by the 1330s, the Peruzzi bank was the second largest in Europe, with fifteen branches from the Middle East to London, all capitalized to the sum of more than 100,000 gold florins and manned by approximately 100 factors.
Peruzzi capital had been amassed in the textile business that was the main engine of Florence's prosperity. English wool finished as high-quality cloth in
Bruges
Bruges ( , nl, Brugge ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium, in the northwest of the country, and the sixth-largest city of the country by population.
The area of the whole city a ...
was bought by Peruzzi ''fattori'' and distributed to the luxurious courts of
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
,
Avignon or returned to
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
. Peruzzi connections with the
Knights Hospitallers
The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem ( la, Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani), commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (), was a medieval and early modern Catholic military order. It was headq ...
gained them important local leverage in
Rhodes
Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the S ...
, the economic capital of the Aegean and a transshipping port for silks, drugs, spices and luxuries from the East. Trade beyond Italy required agents and instruments of credit, extending the family business beyond its extended membership into an international network. In Italy was developed the
double-entry bookkeeping
Double-entry bookkeeping, also known as double-entry accounting, is a method of bookkeeping that relies on a two-sided accounting entry to maintain financial information. Every entry to an account requires a corresponding and opposite entry t ...
that made such complicated financial transactions possible. By the opening of the 14th century, the main activity of the Peruzzi had switched to wholesale commodities trading on a very large scale, especially in grain exported from France to the central Italian cities—for which they were granted a monopoly— and to banking, the field for which they are remembered: popes, nobles, bourgeois, towns and abbeys drew loans from the Peruzzi. But great clients incurred great risks. In 1343 the Peruzzi consortium collapsed and was bankrupt in 1345, with their partners in risk-capital, the
Bardi.
Unsecured loans
The traditional explanation, of unsecured loans extended to
Edward III of England
Edward III (13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377), also known as Edward of Windsor before his accession, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from January 1327 until his death in 1377. He is noted for his military success and for restoring ...
, is currently considered simplistic. In fact, several factors destabilized the network of trade. The war with
Castruccio Castracane of
Lucca
Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957.
Lucca is known as one ...
bled Florentine specie to pay for mercenaries, while France and England went to
war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
over
Aquitaine
Aquitaine ( , , ; oc, Aquitània ; eu, Akitania; Poitevin-Saintongeais: ''Aguiéne''), archaic Guyenne or Guienne ( oc, Guiana), is a historical region of southwestern France and a former administrative region of the country. Since 1 Janu ...
, and the peasants of
Flanders
Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to cultu ...
rose up in a revolt that was put down with the aid of mercenaries purchased with Peruzzi
florins.
Not all of the family fortunes were lost in the bankruptcy, and the Peruzzi continued to figure among the prominent families of Florence, the ''patrizii di Firenze''. Even as late as 1849, in the wake of the disturbances of 1848, the
gonfaloniere
The Gonfalonier (in Italian: ''Gonfaloniere'') was the holder of a highly prestigious communal office in medieval and Renaissance Italy, notably in Florence and the Papal States. The name derives from ''gonfalone'' (in English, gonfalon), the ter ...
of Florence was Ubaldino Peruzzi.
[Giuseppe Conti, ''Firenze Vecchia'']
Family commune
The tower of the fortified Villa Peruzzi in the commune of Antella south of Florence controls the main road into the
Chianti
A Chianti wine (, also , ) is any wine produced in the Chianti region of central Tuscany. It was historically associated with a squat bottle enclosed in a straw basket, called a ''fiasco'' ("flask"; ''pl. fiaschi''). However, the ''fiasco'' is ...
district.
Members of the family who emigrated to America in the late 19th century and settled in Pennsylvania founded the Peruzzi chain of automobile dealerships and the
Planters Nut and Chocolate Company.
References
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External links
Scenes from the Peruzzi Chapel frescoesEphraim Russell, "The societies of the Bardi and the Peruzzi and their dealings with Edward III, 1327–45"
Further reading
*
Review
{{Banking families, state=collapsed
Families of Florence
Banking families
Italian bankers
Medieval banking
14th-century people of the Republic of Florence
Economic history of Italy
Economic history of the Holy See
Defunct banks of Italy
Economy of Florence