Il «reame» di Siena. La costruzione della Dogana dei Paschi e la svolta del Tardo Medioevo in Maremma (metà XIV-inizi XV sec.)

This book explores the re-distribution of the impact of the late medieval crisis by studying the development of the transhumant pastoralism in Southern Tuscany between 1353 and 1419. Within this period the city-state of Siena transformed its surrounding territory depopulated by the Black Death (1348) in a vast grazing land for sheep flocks from the Apennines. The aim was to «gain as much revenues as possible» in order to cover increasing military expenses against decreasing fiscal revenues. Siena succeeded by reorganising the common pastures plundered from its rural communities through a monopolistic office, the so-called Dogana dei Paschi. Within 70 years such an institution gained over 300.000 golden florins, becoming the «most relevant source of revenue» of the Sienese city-state. In change, the monopoly of the common land reinforced the negative impact of the military, demographic and economic crisis on Southern Tuscany by influencing the resilience of settlements and by favouring the proletarianisation process among the peasantry. The book explores in the first chapter the development of the institution Dogana dei Paschi, in the second the forms of legal plundering of the collective resources and in the third the office and its balances. It provides also a comparison with other contemporary institutions to manage transhumant flock and pastures developed in Central Italy. This way, it shows the uniqueness of the Sienese study-case and its relevance to understand the mechanism of the redistribution of the crisis of fourteenth century among different layers of the Late Medieval European society. Furthermore, it suggests the relevance of pre-Black Death social structures and level of inequality in access to resources to understand the impact of the late medieval crisis.