as the names of several streets still remind us. From the ordinary kinds of cloth, with which they began, when the finer still came from the Levant, they advanced to better and best qualities, and strict regulations after the fashion of the guilds in the Middle Ages, certainly not to the disadvantage of the producers and their wares, guaranteed their excellence. The extensive sale and higher prices testified to their value. The wool was imported principally from France and Flanders, and also in considerable quantity from England and Scotland, especially from the wealthy abbeys and convents; and in the eighth decade of the thirteenth century we hear of Florentine agents in London buying up the wool for several years in advance. These agents stood in connection with no less than two hundred convents.[38]
In close and varied connection with the Arte della Lana was that of the Mercatanti, usually called Arte di Calimala, the oldest statutes of which date from 1339. As the native cloth manufacture did not suffice for the demand, and at first only supplied ordinary kinds, French and Flemish cloth was imported from abroad in great quantity, in a raw state, to Florence, where it was dyed, shorn and dressed, and returned to foreign countries, often to the place whence it had come. The skill of the dyers and other workmen in Florence, whose processes long remained a carefully guarded secret, made this profitable trade a monopoly until the rise of manufactures in the western countries of Europe. The guild had its representatives, couriers, settlements, and hostelries in France. It is clear that only the most conscientious honesty could sustain their credit, wherefore the strictest statutes respecting the different qualities of the cloth, the dyeing, and all other things to be taken into consideration, regulated the manufacture as well as the sale. The dyers formed a special guild, which, however, was subordinate to the consuls of Calimala, to whom also, rather singularly, the gold and silver smiths were subject. Another guild belonging to that of the Arte della Lana was that of the washers and combers of wool, which still exists as Compagnia dei Battilani, and has its meeting-place in Via delle Ruote, near Via San Gallo. Its church, whose sacristy is adorned by the portrait of Michele di Lando, was publicly exhibited every year on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin, the high festival of the company. That such subordinate connections gave rise to misunderstandings in troublous times, and that new guilds arose without being able to maintain themselves permanently, has been already stated.
In the year 1338 the number of workshops (botteghe) of the clothiers’ guild amounted to more than 200, which supplied from seventy to eighty thousand pieces of cloth at the price of 1,200,000 gold florins, the third of which sum at least remained in the city as workmen’s wages, not to mention the profits of cloth merchants. The number of workmen amounted to 30,000. In the first years of this century the number of workshops had been a third more, and that of the pieces of cloth above 100,000; but the quality and price were lower, as they had not then the excellent English wool. The number of the magazines (fondachi) of the Calimala guild amounted to twenty. These imported yearly more than 10,000 pieces of foreign cloth, to the worth of 300,000 gold florins, for sale in the city itself, besides those which were again exported.[39] Among the proprietors of such magazines, we find the names Acciaiuoli, Alberti, Albizzi, Bardi, Buonaccorsi, Capponi, Corsini, Peruzzi, Pucci, Ricci, Ridolfi, Rinuccini—names which are mentioned a hundred times in the annals of the city, and which mostly are still heard there. Even in the second half of the thirteenth century, and therefore some time before their political power, these two guilds were very active in France, and we find their agents in 1281, beside those of the Genoese in Nismes, where, fifteen years later, we meet with the representatives of the trading companies of the Cerchi, Mozzi, Spini, Scali, and Folchi. In 1325, Filippo Villani and Cione di Lapo Ghini conducted the business of the Peruzzi and the Scali as Florentine consuls at Paris. The great fairs of Beaucaire and Forcalquier, with those of Provins, Lagny, Troyes, Bar-sur-Aube, etc., were of the greatest importance for this branch of industry.[40] In Italy, Venice was an important emporium for this trade, for Germany and Hungary as well as for the Levant. Till a few years ago, the extensive barn-like building which served for the dyeing and washing of the wool was still to be seen on the Lung’arno above the Uffizi; and on several palaces we still see the rings for holding the wooden staves on which the woollen fabrics were hung out as an indication that the houses belonged to the guild. The guild-hall of the Arte della Lana was the present Canonica of Or San Michele, where the coat of arms—the lamb with the flag, and the comb with the lily above it, in a blue field—still reminds one of its former destination, as well as an inscription of the date of 1308. The guild-hall of the Calimala, which had as a device a golden eagle standing over a ball of wool in a red field, stood in the little street leading from the Piazza della Signoria to the New Market, which is now called Calimaruzza: though it was converted into private houses after the abolition of the guild, the old devices may still be seen upon them. The street leading from the New to the Old Market still preserves the name Calimala, respecting the origin of which only untenable conjectures exist, and which in its present aspect reminds us as little as does any part of the whole centre of the old city of the former flourishing state of the trade.[41]
Of no less importance, and perhaps hardly less ancient than the cloth manufactures, was the weaving of silk, which, after its introduction into Sicily by King Roger, had been in a short time transplanted to Central Italy, if, indeed, it was not previously cultivated in Lucca. Of all the great branches of industry of the Middle Ages, this is the only one which has preserved a certain importance down to our day. The Arte della Seta was usually called the Por Sta. Maria, after the St. Mary’s Gate, or Porta Regina, opposite the Ponte Vecchio, at the entrance of the street still called Via di Por Sta. Maria (usually Mercato Nuovo), where the former guild-hall still stands, near the church of Sta. Maria sopra Porta, in the Via di Capaccio, distinguished by the coat of arms, a closed red door in a white field. The silk-weavers appear already, in the twelfth and oftener still in the thirteenth century, as a corporation in public acts and treaties, in the conclusions of peace and other compacts. In the list of the masters of the guild in the year 1225 their number is given as more than 350, and probably they had even then statutes; but the oldest still extant date from 1335, and therefore from a time when this industry seems to have attained considerable importance under the Guelfs from Lucca, who had emigrated to Florence in great numbers in 1316. The dyeing of silk was pursued here with great skill, and in particular the crimsoned tissue stood in high reputation in the fourteenth century. We shall speak later of the most brilliant epoch, the fifteenth century. The Vicolo della Seta, in the vicinity of the former hall, and the Via de’ Velluti, on the left bank of the river, near Via Maggio, where numerous silk-weavers and other mechanics originally lived, and where the still flourishing family of the Velluti took its rise, remind us of their former great activity.[42]
Though the branches of industry we have mentioned contributed much to increase the wealth of the Florentine people, and make their name famous in foreign lands, they were not the chief source of national wealth. The business of money-changing seemed thoroughly at home here, and it is not surprising that the invention of bills of exchange, which we first meet with in 1199 in the relations between England and Italy, should be ascribed to Florence. The money trade seems to have flourished as early as the twelfth century, towards the end of which a Marquis of Ferrara raised money on his lands from the Florentines. In 1204 we find the money-changers as one of the corporations. In 1228, and probably from the beginning of the century, several Florentines were settled in London as changers to King Henry III.; and here, as in France, they conducted the money transactions of the Papal chair in conjunction with the Sienese. Their oldest known statute, which established rules for the whole conduct of trade (Statuto dell’Università della Mercatanzia) drawn up by a commission consisting of five members of the great guilds, is dated 1280. Their guild-hall was in the Via Calimaruzza, opposite that of the Calimala, and was later included in the buildings of the post-office, on the site of which, after the post-office had been removed to what was formerly the mint, a building was lately erected, similar in architecture to the Palazzo of the Signoria, which stands opposite. Their coat of arms displayed gold coins laid one beside another on a red field. At the end of the thirteenth century their activity, especially in France and England, was extraordinarily great. But if wealth surpassing all previous conception was attained, it not seldom involved loss of repute, and those who pursued the calling ran the risk of immense losses from fiscal measures to the carrying out of which they themselves contributed, as well as those which were caused by insolvency or dishonesty. These losses would indeed have ruined the trade and credit of the Florentines