Francesco Balducci Pegolotti

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Practica della mercatura; Handwriting Ricc. 2441 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence, fol. 1r with the title of the font. The miniature in the second initial Q is supposed to represent the author of the work.

Francesco Balducci Pegolotti , actually Francesco di Balduccio Pegolotti , (* around 1290 in Florence ; † after 1348 there ) was a Florentine merchant and politician, known for his work practica della mercatura (practice of trade).

Life

Pegolotti was a businessman who ran the London branch of the Florentine private bank Compagnia dei Bardi between 1317 and 1321 .

Although he had his will drawn up on May 5, 1347, probably because of the dangers of the plague , in 1348 he is still documented as an employee of the Alberti company. He probably died in 1349; his wife Tessa and his underage son Pegolotto are named in the documents regulating the estate. One of the estate administrators was the Franciscan Bernardo de 'Pegolotti, probably a relative, whose convent received a total of 50 gold florins .

plant

Between 1335 and 1343 he wrote the Book of Descriptions of Countries and Measures Used in Economics (Italian: Libro di divisamenti di paesi e di misure di mercatanzie ed'altre cose bisognevoli di sapere a mercatanti ), commonly known as The Practice of Commerce (practica della mercatura) .

Starting with a glossary of Italian and foreign terms that were used in trade at the time, the Practica della mercatura describes almost all of the major trading cities known to Italian traders at the time, the imports and exports of the various regions, the business practices and prevailing in each of these regions the comparative value of coins, weights and measures. The most distant trade route described by Pegolotti is the journey to Gattaio from Azov via Astrakhan , Khiva , Otrar and Kulja to Beijing . He also describes the route from Ajas on the Cilician coast of Turkey via Sivas , Erzingan and Erzurum to Tabriz in Persia .

literature

  • Allan Evans: Francesco Balducci Pegolotti. La Pratica della Mercatura . Cambridge Mass. 1936 (The Medieval Academy of America, Publication n ° 24) ( Html version ) on the author pp. XV – XXVI.
  • Maria Elisa Soldani:  Pegolotti, Francesco di Balduccio. In: Raffaele Romanelli (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 82:  Pazzi-Pia. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2015, with archival sources and literature.

Web links

Commons : Pratica della mercatura  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernd Roeck : The morning of the world . 1st edition. CH Beck, 2017, p. 366 .
  2. ↑ Pegolotti, Francesco Balducci . In: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica . Volume 21 ( wikisource.org [accessed April 26, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Pegolotti, Francesco Balducci
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pegolotti, Francesco di Balduccio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Florentine merchant and politician
DATE OF BIRTH around 1290
PLACE OF BIRTH Florence
DATE OF DEATH after 1348
Place of death Florence