| In
the early 1980s, Duccio Balestracci discovered in a Sienese archive
two account books kept from 1450 to 1502 by a Tuscan peasant named
Benedetto del Massarizia. Benedetto knew how to read but not how to
write. Infected by the urban habit of detailed personal record keeping,
he asked various of his literate acquaintances to put into writing
the details of his daily affairs. The resulting account books offer
an unparalleled glimpse into the economic and social world of late
medieval peasants.
In Renaissance in the Fields, Balestracci uses these account
books and a host of supporting archival records to explore the lives
of Benedetto and his family over the course of the fifteenth century.
In Benedetto we see how country people could organize land and capital
and protect themselves, at least a little, from rapacious landlords
and urban administrators. By capturing the changing realities of
life in the countryside, Renaissance in the Fields offers
the best introduction to how the peasant economy really worked,
and to how most people actually lived during the Italian Renaissance. |
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Duccio
Balestracci is Professor of History at the University of
Siena, Italy. Renaissance in the Fields is an edited and
revised translation of his 1984 book, La Zappa e la retorica.
Paolo
Squatriti teaches history at the University of Michigan,
where Betsy Merideth pursues her graduate studies. |
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