Gregorio Dati: Difference between revisions

Gregorio Dati
15th-century page of La Sfera manuscript attributed to Gregorio Dati or his brother Leonardo
Born	(1362-04-15)15 April 1362 Republic of Florence
Died	17 September 1435(1435-09-17) (aged 73)
Nationality	Florentine
Occupation	Silk merchant
Known for	14th-century diary
Spouse	4
Children	26
Parents	Stagio Dati (father) Monna Ghita (mother)
Relatives	Leonardo Dati (brother)

Gregorio (Goro) Dati (15 April 1362 – 17 September 1435) was a Florentine merchant and diarist best known for the authorship of The Diaries of Gregorio Dati, which represents a major source for social and economic historians of Renaissance Florence, alongside the diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti. He kept a detailed diary outlining his business dealings as well as personal information about the births and deaths of his four successive wives and his 26 children.

Life

Career

Gregorio Dati is perhaps best known for exemplifying the late 14th and early 15th century Florentine silk merchant. Dati was a partner in numerous silk-producing firms over his lifetime, entering the industry when it was still young in Florence. The tumultuous financial situations he describes in his Libro Segreto are testament to risk of the industry. Typical of silk merchants, rather than rely on exporters, Dati's firm sold silks directly in Valencia, a burgeoning Mediterranean trading hub. Complicating his commercial life were piracy, bankruptcy and litigation.

Dati was politically active in Florence, repeatedly serving as consul of the Silk Guild and, later in life, holding a series of public offices. In government, he served as head of the Florentine Signoria and in two bodies of government advisors. He was also overseer of the prestigious Ospedale degli Innocenti and served in the judicial body Ten on Liberty and among the Five Defenders of the County.

Dati's writings have proven useful to historians and scholars alike due to his unique placement within Florentine society. Dati's diary and Libro Segreto represent a major source of information on the economics and social aspects of Florence during this time. His other works include Istoria Di Firenze dal 1380-1405, a chronicle of the Milanese-Florentine wars set in a cautionary tone rather than traditional chronicle, and La Sfera, a manuscript containing astronomical charts and navigational maps. The complexity and thoroughness of his public works demonstrate that he had access to an informal education that involved Classical writers. Dati's writing has been credited as a self-conscious portrayal of Florentine politics, economy and culture.

Dati survived two bouts of bubonic plague that struck his family, and would go on to outlive three of his wives and 19 of his children. Dati did not keep his diary for the last eight years of his life, and he died in 1435.

Early life

Gregorio Dati, also known as Goro, was born April 15, 1362, to silk merchant Stagio Dati (1316–1374) and Monna Ghita (d. 1414) in Florence, Italy. Gregorio had 16 siblings, including Fra Leonardo Dati (1360–1425), a Friar and Master General of the Dominican Order At the age of 13, Gregorio quit school to work in the silk shop of Giovanni di Giano, the beginning of his own career as a silk merchant.

Personal life

Marriages and children

In his diary, Dati kept an extremely detailed account of the dates surrounding the births and deaths of his four successive wives and his 26 children. With his wives, Dati kept an exact recording of the dowry received and how he invested and spent those florins, handling his personal affairs in the same way he might handle his business affairs. As well as exact dates, Dati kept a record of the godparents of each child and even, in a few cases, what the weather was doing on the day of their births.

Dati's first wife was Bandecca, who died in 1390 following a miscarriage in the fifth month of pregnancy. Consequently, there were no children produced from this union.

After the death of his first wife, Dati travelled to Valencia on an extended trip from 1390 to 1391. During his time in Valencia he fathered an illegitimate child with his Tartar slave, Margherita. He called the child Thomas, but refers to him as Maso in his diary (born December 1391).

In June 1393, Dati married Isabetta (Betta) Villanuzzi after they had been betrothed for several months. According to his diary entry, her dowry of 800 gold florins that came from Betta's first cousins was soon invested in the shop of Buanccorso Berardi, another silk merchant. Dati and Isabetta lived together in Florence, though Dati was often travelling to Catalonia and Valencia on business. Together, they had eight children: Bandecca (1394–1420), Stagio (1396–1400), Veronica (1397–1420), Bernardo (1398–?), Mari (1399–1400), Stagio II (1401), and Piero Antonio (1402). Isabetta died from complications during childbirth in 1402.

Dati married his third wife Ginevra (d. 1419) in 1404 and together they had 11 children before she died from complications during childbirth in 1419. In Gregorio's account of the specifics of each birth, he gives details on only nine. They lived in Florence but moved several times in an attempt to avoid the plague. These children included Manetto (1404–1418), Agnolo (1405), Elisabetta (1406–1414), Antonia (1407–1420), Niccolo (1411), Girolamo (1412–?), Filipo (1415–1419), Ghita (1416–?) and Lisa (1419).

Dati then went on to marry his fourth wife Caterina, daughter of Dardando di Niccolo Guicciardini and Monna Tita. They were married in March 1421, Dati at the age of 59 and Caterina, age 30. Dati recorded that he received a dowry of 600 florins from Caterina's uncle Niccolo d’Andrea. Caterina gave birth to six children including Ginevra (1422–1431), Antonio (1424–?), Lionardo (1425–1431), Anna (1426–?), Fillipa (1427–1430) and Bartolomea (1431–?).

Dati's family would suffer from the bubonic plague twice, once in 1400 and once in 1420. In 1400, two of Dati's children, Stagio and Mari succumbed to the disease. Following that tragedy, the Dati family moved houses several times in an attempt to avoid the plague until they were infected again in 1420, this time losing several servants and three children, Veronica, Bandecca and Antonia, on the same day. According to Cohn and Alfani, one quarter of all plague deaths in Italy occurred within households on the same day, so this phenomenon was not uncommon. In total, Dati fathered 26 children, seven of whom were surviving at the conclusion of his diary. Five children succumbed to plague; several died from other early childhood ailments such as being born prematurely, dysentery and the common cold.

Relationship with brother

Dati's younger brother Fra Leonardo Dati (1365−1425) was a Dominican Friar and Master General of the Dominican Order during the Great Schism. They seemed to be close; Leonardo was godfather to several of Dati's children, and Dati made a point of mentioning his brother's achievements in his diary entries. This suggests closeness between the two, as Dati never mentions any of his 15 other siblings in his writings. The two men are both associated with the authorship of the cosmographical poem La Sfera.

Death

Dati did not keep a diary for the last eight years of his life, and he died on September 17, 1435, from an unknown cause.

Commercial life

Gregorio Dati is best known for his career as a silk merchant, which he documents in his Libro Segreto. His mercantile life is typical of what we know about the Florentine silk trade at the time. His father worked in the wool guild and Dati followed in his footsteps for a stint in his youth, but in the late 14th and early 15th centuries the wool industry in Florence went into a slump, perhaps encouraging Dati to take a different path. He may also have been enticed by the greater potential for profit in the silk industry. Dati apprenticed in a silk producing shop in 1375 at 13 years old, when it was still a fairly new industry in Florence.

He was first made partner in 1385 and later formed a number of partnerships throughout his career. Dati's partnerships often lasted less than three years (which was shorter than the average of three to five) and were usually composed of himself and two-three other investors (which was typical). He frequently entered into partnerships with Buonaccorso Beradri from 1387–1394 and Michele di Ser Perente from 1395–1403. The exact terms of the contracts, including how long they would last, who was involved, their initial investments and their corresponding share of the profits were decided and recorded in a ledger—Dati records such contracts in his Libro Segreto. Dati was usually a minor partner in these contracts with a smaller stake in the company, but in 1403, at 41 years old, he tells of a partnership in which the company bears his name, indicating he was the major partner.

While the silk industry had greater potential profitability, it was also riskier. At this time, merchants used the putting-out system, which meant that the silk firm owner, like Dati, would buy raw materials and have them processed by workers (e.g. weavers) for a price set by the guild. Since silk took a long time to make and spent more time on the loom, weavers would require an advance. As a result, initial investment in silk firms needed to be quite high to buy the costly raw silk and give the weavers cash advances, and it could be 3–4 months before the first silks were saleable. Thus we see Dati investing all of his money into companies and often struggling to afford the initial investments. He chose his wives based their dowries; borrowed from banks, friends and his brother Leonardo; and used his own money in order to raise the capital necessary to have a substantial stake in the company and its profits.

Overall, Dati was a successful merchant. According to the 1427 catasto (Florence's tax survey), Dati's total wealth—including private investments, e.g. cash and silk; real estate; and public debt investment—at 64 years old was 3,368 florins. This made him within the wealthiest 10% of Florentines on record.

Silks were a far less standardized finished product than wool; rather, they were personalized by the merchant in the production process. Goldthwaite notes that silk merchants would often try to sell their customized fineries to princes and other nobility, which is attested to by Dati's diaries. Dati's brother and business associate, Simone, attempts to sell silk to the King of Castile, and Dati mentions selling John XXIII, the Pisan pope supported by Florence during the Great Schism, some cloths for 150 Bologna florins.

Spanish trade connections

Another implication of the high degree of personalization of silk is that the silk producers had a harder time selling to exporters in Florence, who preferred to deal in standardized woolens. As such, silk merchants often tried to sell their product abroad more directly. This is demonstrated by Dati, who seems to have sold a lot of his product in Valencia, a bustling emporium in southern Spain that was well-populated with Florentine merchants and served as an important trading hub for the Mediterranean rim. Dati's brother, Simone di Stagio Dati, lived there for 28 years and was well-positioned to sell Dati's products on consignment, for which Dati paid him a salary of around 60 fl. Dati also personally travelled to Valencia, sometimes for several years at a time. He would often stop to conduct business along the way in Barcelona—the main route to Western Europe—Catalonia, Majorca, and sometimes he travelled further along the Spanish coast to Murcia.

In September 1390, at 28 years old, Dati left for Valencia with his partner Bernardo, arriving on October 26. He laments that this trip would not be expensed by the business and that he did not manage to collect 4000 Barcelona pounds—a considerable sum—from one client, instead returning to Florence in 1392 with a notarized deed.

Shipping goods between Florence and Valencia, while perhaps more profitable, carried with it a certain amount of risk from pirates and inter-state conflict. On September 10, 1393, while returning to Valencia (perhaps in another effort to collect the outstanding debt—he mentions he wants to "finish up business") he was robbed by a Neapolitan galley and taken prisoner to Naples. He was released after being ransomed and managed to retrieve some of his goods with difficulty, but the episode was costly—Dati lost 250 fl worth of pearls, merchandise and his own clothes and 300 fl of company property. He made it back to Florence on December 14.

On April 20, 1394, Dati tried for Valencia again and was successful, staying for about 8 months and returning January 24, 1395. However, later in 1395, his brother Simone was captured by the Neapolitan King Louis of Anjou. He was taken to Gaeta, near Naples, and Dati's firm had to ransom him for 200 fl through Doffo Spini of the Compagnacci, a Florentine political group.

Dati left for Spain again on November 11, 1408, and set out for Florence in May 1410. However, a war between the Florentines and the combined forces of the Genoese and Neapolitans under the aggressive expansionist King Ladislaus caused him to delay in Valencia. He finally returned to Florence in March 1411, but the delay, robberies and kidnappings speak to the volatile environment 15th century merchants operated in due to tensions between the northern Italian city-states.

Litigation

While in a partnership with Pietro Lana, he was sued twice in the Merchant's Court or Mercanzia. Dati left for Spain without repaying Antonio di Ser Bartolomeo, who then took action against Lana while Dati was away. Dati reports that Lana did a poor job of defending them and focused only on exonerating himself. Significantly, Dati notes the Lana did not even try to use their account books to defend them. It is evident that the use of account books was standard practice in the thousands of surviving Mercanzia documents today, and Lana's failure to do so left Dati bitter. Dati and Lana lost and were fined 2000 silver fl.

Lana then took Dati to the Mercanzia upon Dati's return in 1411, asking the heralds to denounce Dati as bankrupt. Dati had enough money from his trip to Spain to settle accounts and Lana lost his action, but before the dispute could be settled Lana died of plague. Dati settled with Lana's heirs.

Political life

Dati served frequently as guild consul of the Arte di Por Santa Maria, reporting that in May 1423 he was chosen for the 8th time. The Arte di Por Santa Maria was a conglomerate guild that originally governed Florence's retail cloth merchants, silk manufacturers, and small artisans like tailors. The guild set out regulations, product quality standards and industry definitions used in the silk trade, officially distinguishing in 1404, for instance, between the setaioli, the silk manufacturers like Dati, and the setaioli a minuto, who crafted small silk items like ribbons. Toward the end of Dati's life, the Florentine silk trade had become prominent enough that the Arte di Por Santa Maria was often referred to simply as the Arte della Seta—the Silk Guild. The guild consul took part in government and helped protect the guild through legislation—for instance, in 1408 Florence taxed the export of silkworms and mulberry leaves (vital to silkworm husbandry).

Later in life, from 1405 onwards, Dati began to be selected to participate in Florentine communal government. Unlike, for instance, its neighbours to the south in Naples, Florence operated a communal government, in which guild members in good financial standing were selected by draw and served short terms in government offices.

The Signoria was the most powerful body of government, drawing up and ratifying legislation. The most prestigious position in the Signoria and the head of government was the Standard Bearer of Justice, which Dati held for a standard two-month term from March 1, 1429. Also in the Signoria and working alongside the Standard Bearer of Justice was a council of eight Priors, who voted on and decided important legislation—Dati held a position as one in 1421.

Dati also reports serving on the two advisory councils which worked closely with the Signoria, advocating for their parts of the city and voting on important issues. In 1412 and again in 1430, he was chosen as one of the Sixteen Standard Bearers of the Militia, which represented each of Florence's sixteen electoral districts (Dati lived in the district of Ferza). In 1421 he served as one of the Twelve Good Men, which in groups of three represented each of the city's quarters—Dati represented his quarter, Santo Spirito.

He also served as among the Ten on Liberty in 1405, primarily settling small quarrels between citizens but also handling foreign affairs, and among the Five Defenders of the Contado and District through which he advocated for peasants in his neighborhood.

He also held the position of Overseer of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, a lavish orphanage patronized by the Arte di Por San Maria, Dati's guild.

Religious life

Dati's religious life is well presented in his ledger, which was originally written to keep transaction records of his silk business. Dati begins his book by stating that, "In the name of God, his Mother and all the Saints of Paradise, I shall begin this book wherein I shall set forth an account of our activities so as to have a record of then, and wherein having once more and always invoked in the name of God, I shall record the secret affairs of our company and their progress from year to year."

The Church from the late 14th to early 15th century in Florence was very prominent, following the medieval church architecture. Its frequent processions throughout the streets and its symbols and monuments that were visible everywhere – the street corner crucifix and the Virgin Mary's illuminated portrait, the small, cramped parish church and the grandiose monastic foundation – provided an active and vivid religious atmosphere in the city. With its ubiquity and pervasiveness, the church affected the life of every Florentine substantially. As Gene Brucker argues in his book, Renaissance Florence, the church was so venerable and so deeply enmeshed in the city's history and traditions that it was one of the most conservative forces in Florentine life. Florentines continued to grow in their faith, like Dati, despite death, plague, famine, and war striving to atone for previous sin.

Considering the prevalence of Christianity in Florence, Gregorio Dati would have been baptized at birth, which was the normal initiation process for Christians and the standard for Florence at his time, and continued to grow his faith for his lifetime. Throughout the ledger, Dati admits the provision of God in every aspect of his life, praying and trusting for the fortunes and blessings of God.

Oftentimes, throughout the ledger, Dati praises and appreciates God for his good fortune in business, and he acknowledges God's help and guidance. When he enters a new business partnership with Michele, Dati's debits were exceeding the credits and yet, he writes in his book, "God will grant us His grace as He has always done."

When his first wife, Bandecca died on July 15, 1390, as a result of illness from miscarriage, Dati states in his book that "she peacefully returned her soul to her Creator". Also, for his first child's death, Dati states that, "Our Lord God was pleased to take Himself the fruits which He has lent us, and He took first our most beloved, Stagio, our darling and blessed first-born."

Like the vast majority of Florentines, Dati followed the ritual services and ceremonies in church frequently and fervently. According to the children section on his ledger, Dati states he had one boy with his first wife Bandecca, eight children with the second wife Betta, eleven children with the third wife Ginevra, and overall Dati had a total of twenty children. And of all the children, except for ones who died on miscarriage, Dati states they were all baptized in the love of God on the Sunday after they were born.

Writings

Diary

Dati, like other merchants of his time such as Buonaccorso Pitti, kept a diary as a proof of accounts. The commonly used version of Dati's diary is translated by Julia Martines, from a printed text edited by Carlo Gargiolli and published in Bologna in 1865, however, Gargiolli makes no comment on which manuscript he used. Dati's diary has several sections, but its purpose was to record his investments, partners, transactions and profits. Dati includes information about his genealogy and heritage, which provided him credibility. The diaries represent contracts, ledgers, familial history, and consequently recorded members of households that would otherwise not be known. Everything known about Dati's personal life has been extrapolated from his diary.

Dati's diary reveals social trends in Florence during the fifteenth century. Dati continually praised God for his success and failure, his wives' deaths, his children's births and his political career. When his eldest son Stagio (1396–1400) died, Dati prays that Stagio will intercede on his behalf to God and the Virgin Mary. All subsequent deaths of his children have the same wish. This was part of a popular movement that entreated all innocents to pray and that asked deceased children to intercede on their parents’ behalf.

Dati's diary contains accounts, memorandums, and partnerships. The details within each section pertain to how many florins each partner invested, locations of investment, notably Valencia, and the outcome of each venture. Dati admits several times that without monetary aid from his brother, and god's favour, several of his business ventures would have collapsed, possibly due to not having large amounts of liquid assets on hand as they were always invested.

Dati's diary is an example of a Florentine trader who struggled in making a successful business and had a marginally more prominent civic career. He was meticulous in record keeping, demonstrated in recording each of his wives’ personal accounts and when he and new partners invested in shares. Dati recorded daily life and proceedings, providing historians with an alternative perspective on Florentine politics and culture compared to other Florentine diarists and writers.

Libro Segreto

Dati's Libro Segreto was started later in his life, around 1404, in attempts to atone for what he felt as his first forty years of sin. This book is much more private than his diary and was referenced as a "…secret ledger…to keep our [his] partnerships affairs." It was edited by Carlo Gargiolli in 1869.

Dati recorded in vernacular Italian household accounts, private business that he conducted himself and records of penance. Dati also confesses financial disasters that result in him closing companies or losing shares. Self-prescribed penance includes not going to work on feast day, allowing people to work for him those days and striving to keep Friday nights chaste. Failure to do so would lead to paying 5-20 solidus to "God’s poor," distributing alms, and doing 20 Hail Mary's, depending on the severity of the pledge broken. During Dati's civic career, he pledged never to put forth his own name or lobby for more offices other than the ones he has been deemed fit by others to occupy. Dati also refused to occupy an office that would result in passing the death penalty on someone: his writings relating to family suggest that he struggled with death as it affected him heavily. Dati followed more conservative teachings of the church, believing that one must suffer body and soul to be saved, which are reflected in his writing.

Libro Segreto was created for recording transactions of partnerships separately for protection. Antonio di Segna caused Dati to review all assets when he was discovered taking more than his share, verified by Libro Segreto. Dati's private worries about being on his own in business for eight months with a chance of breaking even are revealed. He admits to being near bankruptcy several times, relying on friends and his brother to procure the funds, admitting to paying off a creditor hours before being elected standard bearer for his company. The final section of his Libro Segreto is of the horrendous partnership with Peitro Lana in 1408.

The reality of daily life recorded by Dati reflects an unstable political environment; people were caught between agreeing with the papacy or the Commune of Florence itself regarding supremacy and obedience. Dati's secret book reflects his ability to discern right and wrong through his criticisms of partners and government.

Istoria Di Firenze dal 1380–1405

Dati is believed to have started the Istoria around 1409, after the events it describes, and is considered a reflective history rather than a chronicle. Hans Baron argued in 1955 that it was composed in 1407–1408, making it likely that Dati wrote it abroad.

Dati provides a coherent representation of Florence that almost spans his life and focuses on Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, and his attempted conquest of Florence. The focus on the Milanese-Florentine war unified his work, allowing him to write Istoria for future guidance, not relying overmuch on morality or historical examples like previous chroniclers. The "anonymous chronicle" of Florence wrote of the same events while they were happening, including them in a larger chronicle without much political or economic context, consequently depriving himself the opportunity to record the effects of the decisions made. Dati was of a younger generation, writing after the attempted conquest, offering a simplified, single-focus chronicle.

Dati's delivery of political and economic undercurrents in Istoria is similar to how history is taught today, through relation of undercurrents and how they affect action. The humanist movement at this time is not reflected in Dati's writing style, instead maintaining scholastic style: more organic and analytical of underlying political themes, resembling medieval historians’ styles in writing.

Dati uses "fortune" as a participatory force when describing the conquest. Dati argued fortune was predictable, acting in response to action and reaction by people and events. This allowed Dati to attribute an active force of human agency and that punishment would be akin to moral consequences, not divine intervention. He states that it was the Duke's impatience that caused his downfall because fortune ceased to favour him due to immoral actions. Fortune could be deduced directly from political action and reaction, it was not a wheel as described by Villani or would be by Machiavelli. Fortune was actively manifested and personified in human action and reaction: the rise and fall of the Duke was because he could not see that his greed was a temptress, luring him. Dati believes that the Duke's blindness was due to his obsession with obtaining Florence. Failure was due to the Duke's character, not Divine intervention; a regressive understanding of events at this point in time. The description of fortune by Dati shifted beliefs that outcomes were fated by God. Instead, Dati views outcomes as fated due to the predictability of fortune but he attributes human passion as the motivating agent causing the rise and fall action of fortune.

Dati engendered civic pride when discussing past events and the mood of the people when confronted with an oligarchical power, believing that the government of the Commune was superior to that of Milan and fell into agreement with the papacy. Dati saw the Guelphs representing liberty against the Roman Republic tradition of uniformity. The community of Florence had strong foundations to remain constant in their values during upheaval. Dati admitted that while the church provided stability to guide people, it was the quality of religious beliefs, not quantity, that should be favoured. This attitude allowed Dati to examine several perspectives that shared similar underlying opinions with little bias. Finally, Dati's Istoria succeeded his contemporaries because he removed divine intervention as the central agent, replacing it with human nature.

La Sfera

An La Sfera Manuscript attributed to Leonardo Dati, 1470-80

La Sfera is a composition of four books pertaining to the introduction of basic uses of geography, astrology and cosmology. As noted by the Official The La Sfera Project website, the composition served as a didactic poem introducing young Florentine merchants to cosmology, navigation, and the topography of the Mediterranean. A quote from the page reads: "Dati's work also shows how connected mercantilism and navigation were during a time of increased maritime trade. His treatise provides a concise introduction to medieval cosmology, science, geography, and navigation: all the basic information a young Florentine student or apprentice would need to understand the natural phenomena affecting travel and trade around the turn of the fifteenth century." Filiberto Segatto determined that La Sfera was written between the early fifteenth century and Dati's death in 1435 because there is a 1403 codex in the library of the University of Pavia. However, it is argued that it may have been written and unfinished at the time of Dati's death due to later copies adding more. Tolosani's 1514 copy included portions of Eastern Europe and Africa and marginal notes, currently in the Library of Laurenziana. There is a mid-fifteenth century copy at the University of Kansas, Kenneth Spencer Research Library. The manuscript previously belonged to Sir Thomas Phillipps, a nineteenth-century manuscript collector. There is a 1475 copy from Venice, published by Gabriele di Pietro, in the Library of Congress.

As the The La Sfera Project Website Notes "The text starts with an appeal to God and an invitation to the reader to learn about His role as prima cagione, the Prime Mover or creator of the universe." Much of the framing text for the work is framing language is taken directly from Dante and earlier Tuscan poets and was written in ottava rima, a construction of stanzas of eight. As such, La Sfera is considered an important early Italian source for vernacular writing pertaining to geography, called "geografi metriche". The work would have been useful for ascertaining rough distances between ports of call and possible weather patterns but the maps and charts are inaccurate, even by contemporary standards, which were also inaccurate. This suggests La Sfera was not intended as a manual but represented an encyclopedic compilation of knowledge regarding trade and navigational tools. The content of this manuscript suggests a foreign audience of middle class merchants.

A close up of an illustration of the four elements included within a La Sfera Manuscript attributed to Leonardo Dati, 1470-80

The four books of La Sfera follow a progressive scheme as they illustrate and discuss various topics on the Earth, the heavens, and their creation, as well as the ways in which they are connected. Book I explains the globe, heavenly bodies, cosmology, astrology, and natural phenomena such as phases of the moon and eclipses; emphasizing how interconnected they are. Book II discusses larger-scale natural phenomena such as the four elements, weather, tides, seasons, and the four humors; since through them the human body was believed to be affected by cosmological forces. Book III explains the winds, compassing, time keeping, and depicts nautical charts as well as navigation systems. This portion also shows the arrangement of the three continents, emphasizing an understanding of geography and a round Earth. Book IV completes the work with an itinerary of major Black Sea ports as well as Southern and Eastern Mediterranean ports; ending abruptly at the Black Sea port of Tana, often taken to imply incompletion due to Dati’s death in 1435. The variety of topics discussed in the manuscript reflects interests Florentine merchants had in trade and commerce. The exclusion of the rest of the Mediterranean ports despite other sources documenting Florentine trading suggests that the manuscript was incomplete. A number of continuations of the text were made, most notably by the Dominican friar Giovanni Maria Tolosani in 1514, who added the itinerary along the coasts of eastern and southern Europe that Dati's text omits.

Of the over 150 surviving manuscripts, each differs in form as they range from elaborately gilded, portolan-style copies to simpler working versions. This breadth of witnesses indicates a wide audience and helps explain why the poem has been described as a “verbal portolan,” that is, a textual counterpart to contemporary portolan charts that lists coasts, harbors, and sailing knowledge in ordered sequence. It is particularly “verbal portolan” for its manner of methodically describing cities and land features encountered counterclockwise along the southern and eastern Mediterranean coasts. Dati’s treatise is unique in the way that it spans the practical world of cartography specifically, portolan charts and the history of cartography in addition to the more impressionistic world of travel literature such as the works of Marco Polo or Ibn Battutah.

Authorship

According to a study by Bertolini, of the 148 manuscripts examined, only 25 name Dati as sole contributor while 6 claim Dati and Fra Leonardo Dati as authors. Leonardo is considered Dati's only contact of philosophical thinking. Leonardo had the benefit of education within the church, but Gregorio, who left his education around the age of thirteen, demonstrates he had informal education or access that continued. A 1514 manuscript by Tolosani (the same as above), a Dominican belonging to the same monastery as Leonardo, claims that Dati was the author of La Sfera.

To further this discourse, new research revealed a different perspective with scholar Carrie Beneš writes on the The La Sfera Project website "Until about thirty years ago most scholars assumed that the level of erudition displayed in La sfera made Leonardo the more likely author, although some hedged their bets by arguing for collaboration between the brothers. Recent research into the quality of vernacular (that is, non-Latinate) education in Quattrocento Florence, however, suggests there's no reason to disbelieve the more common attribution to Goro. Furthermore, in many ways Goro is the more likely guide for the text's audience of the future merchants of Florence."

Scholarly debate over the authorship of La sfera has long noted that while at least twenty-five of the more than 150 surviving manuscripts name Gregorio (Goro) Dati as author and at least six attribute the work to his younger brother, the Dominican friar Leonardo Dati, the case for Gregorio remains strong on social, educational, and documentary grounds. Arguments for Leonardo typically stress his formal ecclesiastical education and Goro’s departure from schooling at about thirteen. Yet such reasoning underestimates the intellectual formation of Florentine merchants and the kinds of practical and humanistic knowledge embedded in mercantile life. As the record of Florentine cloth merchants shows, Goro’s apprenticeship and long career in the silk trade, onducted across Europe and Asia Minor, would have equipped him with precisely the cosmological, geographical, and navigational frameworks distilled in the poem. Moreover, as Raymond Clemens observes, “Dati was ... [not] a typical humanist[,] ... he was a member of a group of humanist merchants who viewed the humanities ... [in part] as a means for expressing the virtues of civic humanism that combined the study of letters with service to the state,” and the act of composing La sfera “in part ... [as a] textbook of world geography directed at children of the Florentine merchant class” exemplifies that civic commitment. Dati’s repeated civic appointments—including service as “one of the Five Defenders of the County and District ... [a job in which he recounts to have done] a great deal to improve the lot of the unfortunate peasants” further align with a profile of a merchant-intellectual capable of authoring the poem. In this light, the attributions to Leonardo can be read as part of a complex transmission history rather than definitive evidence against Dati's authorship.

A plate featuring copied and consolidated pages of La Sfera in black and white, Nordenskiöld 1897 Plate 03 Tabulae Litorum Maris, e Codice Seculi XV Dati - La Sfera

Digital Editions & The Sfera Project

In 2024–2025, The La Sfera Project launched an open-access, multimedia digital edition on the La Sfera Project website that integrates a critical Italian text-in-progress, an annotated English translation-in-progress, a cartographic interface, and IIIF manuscript images. This digital edition is stewarded by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in collaboration with New College of Florida, and functions alongside the project’s organizational hub and primary website at New College of Florida’s Google Sites portal, which coordinates donations, news, and project-wide information as the central point of contact. The project’s RRCHNM site presents the Edition, Gazetteer, Gallery, Resources, and About sections, offering manuscript images, contextual essays, and geospatial tools that reimagine the work’s fifteenth-century understanding of the world; the Google Sites hub serves as the administrative and organizational center for the team, fundraising, and public communications.

The digital initiative arose from two 2020 crowdsourced “La Sfera Challenge” transcription events, during which more than one hundred scholars produced eight new transcriptions across multiple repositories during the pandemic, laying a foundation for the current edition and its data model.The project is co-directed by Carrie E. Beneš (New College of Florida), Laura Ingallinella (University of Toronto), Amanda Madden (George Mason University), and Laura Morreale based in Washington, D.C., with regular contributors including Caterina Agostini, Winston Black, Elena Brizio, Monica Keane, and Matthew Westerby, and technical support from the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media in addition to students from New College of Florida who assisted in data gathering and visualization.

A central feature of the digital edition on one website is its Gazetteer, an interactive index of placenames or toponyms mentioned in La Sfera or appearing on the marginal maps found in many manuscripts. Users can discover places by selecting a toponym from a filterable, fuzzy-matching index list, by typing into a fuzzy-matching search box, or by selecting points directly on the map to reveal the associated toponym and linked manuscript data. Each entry presents representative variant spellings from across the manuscript corpus; because fifteenth-century orthography is highly variable, especially in doubled letters (for example, angolo to angollo), c/ch and g/gh alternations (for example, angolo to angholo), and vowel variation (for example, angolo to angelo), the list is intentionally illustrative rather than exhaustive. Toponyms with few or no variants tend to be either very common and thus standardized (for example, Asia) or less commonly labeled in the Sfera maps (for example, Livorno). Abbreviations are typically expanded except where the label itself encodes the genre of feature, such as f[iume] or m[are], which the Gazetteer preserves to display variation. In addition to the Gazetteer’s interface, the RRCHNM site also includes a toponyms endpoint that links these data to map-based exploration and manuscript evidence.

Sample Images, and Resources

The Sample Images section of the website presents digitized manuscript pages, diagrams, and two-page regional maps from dozens of illustrated witnesses, enabling side-by-side visual comparison across collections, while the Resources section curates pedagogical guides, explanatory essays, and teaching modules. Together, these sections support the project’s educational mission and its long-term aim to integrate textual, visual, and geospatial evidence for students and scholars. The project’s Education page titled “Sfera in the Classroom” outlines classroom applications, primary source activities, and alignment with the digital edition’s tools. Most illustrated manuscripts of La sfera share a standard set of diagrams and maps; with over 160 manuscripts to keep track of, it can be hard to remember which is which. This page provides thumbnails of the two-page map of the Eastern Mediterranean that normally accompanies Book 3, stanzas 16–21, for the fifty-two illustrated manuscripts for which digital images are currently available; it does not include unillustrated manuscripts, illustrated manuscripts that lack maps, or manuscripts for which no digital images exist. This array gives general viewers a sense of how the manuscripts are visually similar and/or different from one another, while at the same time providing project team members with an aide-memoire or visual index to particular manuscripts.

Archiving Dossier and Translation Project (2021–2022)

An archival dossier documents the translation phase that followed the crowd-sourced transcription challenges, running from May 27, 2021 to May 22, 2022. The dossier’s catalog record is available as an OSF preprint and the project files are preserved under a persistent OSF identifier. During this project, a small team of medievalist scholars produced a collaborative English translation of La sfera, working primarily from the digitized, IIIF-compliant copy of Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Arsenal MS 8536, as transcribed during The International La Sfera Challenge, and consulting an 1865 printed Italian edition; the in-progress translation is publicly viewable on FromThePage and mirrored (in exported XML, HTML, TXT, PDF, and IIIF manifest formats) within the OSF archive.

The contributors, as listed in the dossier at the time of the project, were Caterina Agostini (Rutgers University), Carrie Beneš (New College of Florida), Winston Black (St. Francis Xavier University), Elena Brizio (Georgetown University – Villa Le Balze), Laura Ingallinella (Wellesley College), Monica Keane an independent scholar, and Laura Morreale an independent scholar. Institutional and financial support came from the IIIF Consortium, FromThePage, and Stanford Libraries.The rationale was threefold: to produce a digital, scholarly translation ready for college-level adoption; to explore collaborative translation workflows using digital humanities tools; and to demonstrate how completed transcriptions can catalyze subsequent scholarship in an online environment.

Work proceeded in stages. From late May to late September 2021, participants undertook rough translation by assigned folios, meeting twice weekly on Zoom to negotiate consensus readings and revise the draft. From early October 2021 through March 2022, the group continued biweekly sessions to improve readability and consistency, to mark editorial interventions, and especially to identify and verify English toponyms and the itineraries described in the poem. At the close of this phase, the team presented preliminary results in a roundtable, “Digital Humanities in the Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean: The #lasferachallenge and Beyond,” at the New College Conference on Medieval & Renaissance Studies (Sarasota, March 5, 2022), with papers by Morreale, Keane, Ingallinella, and Brizio; related conference programs and abstracts are archived with the OSF record. In March 2022 the project entered an ongoing third phase devoted to publication planning and to parallel initiatives such as GIS mapping of toponyms and routes; discussions noted in the dossier include outreach to Medieval Institute Publications (Western Michigan University) and TEAMS for a classroom-oriented bilingual edition. The project selected a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license for its outputs, as reflected in the OSF archive metadata. For additional context on the geospatial program that complements the translation effort, see Agostini and Beneš (2021), “A Geospatial La Sfera.”

A contemporaneous project summary reiterates that the translation is now complete and slated for a bilingual publication by Italica Press in Fall of 2025, accompanied by extensive introductory materials, explanatory notes, and images illustrating the diversity of the manuscript tradition; documentation of the translation process is deposited in the BodoArXiv/OSF record.

Books

La sfera: Cosmology, Science, and Geography in the Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean, eds. and trans. Caterina Agostini, Carrie Beneš, Winston Black, Elena Brizio, Laura Ingallinella, Monica Keene, and Laura Morreale. New York: Italica Press, 2025.

Public-facing events

Imagining the World in the Italian Renaissance, Mildred Sainer Pavilion, New College of Florida, Sarasota, Florida, 5 December 2024.

“The Sfera Project: Florentine Cosmology in the Computer Age.” Medieval Academy of America Centennial Digital Humanities Showcase, 24 January 2025 (virtual).

Teacher Training Workshop, “The World in the Renaissance: Digital Tools and Primary Sources.” New College of Florida, Sarasota, Florida, 8 March 2025 (sponsored by the Mellon Foundation).

Talks and lectures

Carrie Beneš, “Dati’s Sfera: Between Merchants, Mapmakers, and Humanists,” “Mappings at Leeds,” International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, July 2025.

Carrie Beneš, “The 15th-Century Globe (La sfera) between Manuscript and Print,” Early Modern Rome 5, Rome, Italy, 14 November 2024.

Amanda Madden and Laura Morreale, “Digital La sfera: Florentine Cosmology in the Computer Age,” Ca’ Foscari, Venice, Italy, 19 September 2024.

Carrie Beneš, “The Analysis & Presentation of Global Knowledge in the Manuscript Tradition of Dati’s Sfera," Spatial Humanities 2024, Bamberg, Germany, 26 September 2024.

Laura Morreale, “When the Crowd Goes Home: Transcribed Texts Revived and Reused,” MANUSCRIPT (HE)ART, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (virtual), 24 February 2024.

Carrie Beneš, “Imagining The Globe: Digital Approaches to Merchants, Mapping, & Manuscripts,” The Warburg Institute, London, 18 January 2024.

Carrie Beneš, “Immaginare La sfera: Mercanti, mappe e manoscritti nell’Italia del primo Quattrocento,” Circolo medievistico romano, Rome, Italy, 11 December 2023.

Carrie Beneš, “Florence in Tunis, Ancona on the Black Sea: An Italian Geography of the Mediterranean in Goro Dati’s La sfera," International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, 4 July 2023.

Carrie Beneš, “Armchair Merchant and Vulgar Humanist: Goro Dati, 15th-Century Florence, and the Imagined East.” Invited presentation to the St Louis University Crusade Studies Forum, 24 March 2023.

Laura Morreale, “Transcription’s Children: The La Sfera Challenge and What Came After,” Between Technology and Theory: Digital Humanities Projects in Progress, The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London (virtual), 9 June 2022.

Carrie Beneš, “Assessing Audience in the Manuscript Tradition of Dati’s La sfera," New College Conference on Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Sarasota, Florida, 5 March 2022.

Carrie Beneš, “New Technologies IV: Digital Collaborative Editing Best Practices: The View from La sfera," Renaissance Society of America (virtual), 15 April 2021.

Laura Morreale, “Of Manuscripts, Merchants, Monsters, and Maps, or: Creating Virtual Research Spaces for Medievalists,” 16th Annual Marco Manuscript Workshop, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 6 February 2021.

Laura Morreale, “Distant Gatherings: A Text-Case for Digital Manuscript Collaborations,” 13th Annual Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age (virtual), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 19 November 2020.

Carrie Beneš, “Exploring the Digital Humanities with La Sfera," Department of History Colloquium Series workshop, Washington University in St. Louis, Busch Hall (Busch 18), 27 March 2025

Articles and book chapters

Caterina Agostini and Carrie Beneš, “A Geospatial La Sfera: Navigating the Renaissance in the Mediterranean.” Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Geospatial Humanities (GeoHumanities ’21), November 2021, 22–27.

Laura Morreale, “Global Exchange, Then and Now: The Original and Digital Discoveries of Goro Dati’s La sfera," in Cultures of Exchange. Mercantile Mentalities between Italy and the World (XII–XVI c.), ed. Germano Barduini, Susanna Barsella, and William Caferro. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2025.

Newsletters, and digital publications

Carrie Beneš, “Socially-Distanced Manuscript Fun, or: A Summer with La sfera," Manuscripts on My Mind 31 (September 2020): 4–5.

Sara Carlstead Brumfield, “La Sfera Challenge.” Tableau Public, 18 July 2020.

N. Kıvılcım Yavuz, “Manuscript of the Month: To Transcribe, or Not To Transcribe, That is Not the Question,” Inside Spencer: The KSRL Blog, 28 July 2020.

Monica Keane, “La Sfera Challenge II.” San Jose State University Special Collections and Archives Blog, 3 August 2020.

Laura Morreale et al., “La Sfera Challenge Project 1st Edition (September 2020) Archiving Dossier Narrative.” BodoArXiv/OSF preprint, 10 September 2020. — “La Sfera Challenge” project site (accessed 15 November 2022).

Bibliography

• Alfani, G., and S. Cohn. "Households and Plague in Early Modern Italy." Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 38, no. 2 (2007): 45-69.
• Branca, Vittore, (Ed.) and Murtha Baca, (Trans). Merchant Writers of the Italian Renaissance: Boccaccio to Machiavelli. New York: Marsilio Publishers (1999).
• Bruker, Gene. The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977.
• Brucker, Gene. Renaissance Florence. New York: John Wiley & Sons (1969).
• Brucker, Gene (Ed.), and Julian Martines (Trans). Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence: The Diaries of Buannaccorse Pitti and Gregorio Dati. New York: Harper and Row (1967).
• Cook, Karen Severud. "Dati's Sfera: The Manuscript Copy in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas". Mediterranean Studies. Vol. 11 (2002): 45-69.
• Crum, Roger J., and John T. Paoletti, (Eds.). Renaissance Florence: A Social History. New York: Cambridge University Press (2006).
• Dati, Gregorio, and Leonardo Dati. La Sfera. Washington D.C.: Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division. PQ4621.D17 S4 1475. Accessed May 24, 2021. https://lccn.loc.gov/70277411.
• Clemens, Raymond. "Medieval Maps in Renaissance Context: Gregorio Dati and the Teaching of Geography in Fifteenth-Century Florence," in Richard J.A. Talbert and Richard W. Unger (eds), Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Fresh Perspectives, New Methods (Leiden: Brill, 2008) (Technology and Change in History, 10).
• Epurescu-Pascovici, Ionut. "Gregorio Dati (1362-1435) and the Limits of Individual Agency". Medieval History Journal Vol. 19, no. 2 (2006): 297-325.
• Golthwaite, Richard A. The Economy of Renaissance Florence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (2009).
• Green, Louis. Chronicle into History: An Essay on the Interpretation of History in Florentine Fourteenth-Century Chronicles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1972).
• Martines, Lauro. Scourge and Fire: Savonarola and Renaissance Florence. London: Jonathan Cape (2006).
• Najemy, John M. A History of Florence: 1200-1575. Malden: Blackwell (2006).
• Online Catasto of 1427. Version 1.3. Edited by David Herlihy, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, R. Burr Litchfield and Anthony Molho. [Machine readable data file based on D. Herlihy and C. Klapisch-Zuber, Census and Property Survey of Florentine Domains in the Province of Tuscany, 1427-1480.] Florentine Renaissance Resources/STG: Brown University, Providence, R.I., 2002.

External links

• La Sfera From the Incunable Collection in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress