“This is the best income of the commune: for God’s sake, let it be maintained!” The tendering systems of the Dogana dei Paschi of Siena in the 14th and 15th centuries: operation, profits and profile of the contractors

Abstract

The paper examines the different tendering systems developed before and after the establishment of the Dogana dei Paschi of Siena for the management of pasture revenues in Southern Tuscany between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It focuses on the tendering system of the first half of the fourteenth century, the one temporarily established in the 1370s, and the one developed in 1412. In particular, the paper focuses on the latter, which developed as a public-private ‘mixed’ tendering system with private contractors elected as and with the same procedures of public officials, and for which more sources are available, in order to study its financial impact and the subsequent institutional adjustments, together with a study of its contractors. For some of them, the paper reconstructs the socio-economic profile, together with the profits and the political and economic advantages of participating in the revenues of the Dogana, suggesting the role of the ‘mixed’ tender system in maintaining the political and economic balance between the different factions (Monti) in which the Sienese urban elite was organized in the fifteenth century.