Margherita Datini at Work, 1381–1410

Early Modern Women:
An Interdisciplinary Journal
2008, vol. 3
Gaining Honor as Husband’s Deputy: Margherita
Datini at Work, 1381–1410
Ann Crabb
I
n 1376, in Avignon, Margherita Bandini, aged sixteen, married forty-one
year old Francesco di Marco Datini of Prato, and as a married woman
her economic activities would remain closely tied to those of her merchant
husband.1 Francesco, from a lower middle class background in Prato, had
arrived in Avignon, the seat of the papacy in those years, and, starting as a
young man, he had acquired a fortune by trading in armor, salt, jewels and
other lucrative merchandise. Margherita’s elite but dispossessed Florentine
family had moved to Avignon after her father’s political execution, and
there they met the already successful Francesco.2
The young Margherita already participated in Francesco’s business
in a small way in Avignon, sewing helmets while, according to Francesco,
other wives were amusing themselves. Francesco worked continually and
expected her to do the same, which suited her serious temperament.
Francesco paid her for her work, judging by her brother-in-law Niccolò’s
remark to Francesco: “You say that Margherita has 100 florins between
money she earns and money for household expenses and that she does
not want to give them into your care; I don’t know where they would be
better placed,” suggesting Margherita’s strength of will and competence.
Then Niccolò goes on to say, “but I would rather see her become fatter by
making children than in gathering in money . . . although I know that that
comes from God and she should pray for it. ”3 Here Niccolò, a moralist,
touches on the contrast often made between money, sterile and godless,
and human fecundity, which came from God,4 and hints at a connection to
the Datinis’ childlessness, already a source of worry.
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Margherita and Francesco returned to Italy in 1383, where Francesco
directed, often by letter, a network of merchant banking companies in Italy,
Avignon, and Spain.5 Margherita, plagued by ill health, remained infertile,
a canker at the heart of the marriage, since Francesco badly wanted an heir
to establish a Datini family line; he had two illegitmate children during the
marriage, but only a girl survived, and in Italy in this era even legitimate
girls were rarely heirs.6 The couple moved between Prato, where Francesco
had his principal residence and some businesses, and Florence, eleven miles
away, where he had a lesser residence and his most important international
companies. They often preferred to be apart, with one staying in Prato
while the other was in Florence and vice versa, partly because of friction
between them. However, they also wanted one of them present to oversee
their properties, with Margherita acting as Francesco’s agent in Francesco’s
absence—a “deputy husband” in household matters broadly defined.7
Their common concerns led to an extensive correspondence, the bulk
of which has been preserved, with Margherita mostly dictating her letters.
Literacy was a professional qualification for merchants, but was considered
unnecessary for women in merchant families in the fourteenth and earlyfifteenth centuries. Margherita was unusual in that, needing to send letters
and inspired by merchant letter writers around her, she worked to improve
her reading and writing skills as an adult.8
The Datini correspondence frequently uses the word “honor,” to
refer to a good reputation. It could mean overall reputation, as when
Margherita, the good wife, asserted, “you have no one . . . who guards
your honor better than I will. ” 9 Honor was also something to be gained or
lost through large and small deeds, and, for women, chastity. Margherita,
her chastity taken for granted, strove to win honor through execution of
her duties, telling Francesco, “I try to the best of my ability to do what . . .
is for your pleasure and my honor, but I don’t write what I do when it is
unnecessary: you should find it enough that I do it. ”10
Margherita’s activities had a stronger economic aspect in Prato than
in Florence. The Prato firm centered on the family home, the palazzo
Datini, and was a mixed enterprise that included business, farming, and
building, with a paid manager, Barzalone, sharing responsibilities with
Margherita.11 A couple of times, Francesco wrote that Barzalone should
Gaining Honor as Husband’s Deputy
227
follow Margherita’s decisions about the farms, and another time he told
Margherita: “As for the harvest and everything else . . . do what brings
you honor. ”12 Margherita oversaw the young clerks who lived in the palazzo Datini, and she entertained visitors who passed though Prato. When
Francesco compared her unfavorably to another man’s wife, she fired back
that the other man “keeps his wife like a lady and not like the wife of an inn
keeper,” indicating partly a desire for a more leisured life, but even more a
desire for greater appreciation from Francesco.
Some of Margherita’s business-related activities extended into the
city of Prato and its countryside. Francesco had his hand in many concerns,
one of which was acting as a broker in finding wetnurses, and the search
fell to Margherita.13 Even in this, she showed her anxiety to do well. When
an important Florentine sent a baby to Prato to be nursed, she wrote, “I
gave him to that nurse until we can find a better one. God give me grace
that it brings me honor—[not] shame . . . because of the many things
that could happen. ”14 She was also involved in the collection of outstanding
debts. Francesco, like other merchants, lent money, bypassing by various
expedients the church’s rules equating all interest on loans with usury.15
Following Francesco’s instructions, Margherita organized collecting expeditions and received visits from debtors, although she did not go out to
collect debts personally.16 Margherita was a religious woman who encouraged Francesco to be less worldly and more charitable, but she showed
no qualms about the merchant profession, nor about making a profit on
loans. Instead, Margherita worried about Francesco’s lack of moderation
in his approach to his profession (and Francesco himself had a strong if
unspecified sense of sin).17
Writing letters and keeping accounts figured large in both household
and business (which in Prato were not clearly distinguished). Even before
Margherita improved her own skills, she managed the writing of business
letters by young clerks when Francesco was away. Thus, she told Francesco
in 1394: “The quality of my secretary’s writing gets worse each day, but he
doesn’t care because a woman is in charge. . . . You have left me so much
to do that it would be too much if I were a man and had the secretary of
a lord. ”18 Margherita’s comment, “it would be too much if I were a man,” is
an example of her pride in being the best sort of woman, while at the same
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time expecting women to be less literate than men. As for her comment
about the secretary or clerk’s attitude to writing under the direction of a
woman, it should be noted that she was here carrying on a conversation
with her scribe, as well as with Francesco, successfully shaming the scribe
into doing better.19
Francesco wanted meticulous accounts of expenditures, personal or
business, and account-keeping in his absence formed part of Margherita’s
duties. In the early 1390s, when her skills were undeveloped, she had
the clerks do the writing.20 Later she could do it in her own hand, telling
Francesco, for example, “I received this evening . . . from Mastricia 30 lire
and I wrote nothing in the main account book, but I entered in his book
. . . that I had received the money . . . and I also put it in my notebook
that I keep for expenses, so tell me if you wish to have [it] written in the
main Libro. ” 21
In Florence, where Margherita spent half her time, she had less contact
with business because the specialized merchant banking companies were
in separate buildings from the personal household. The personal household still included clerks who went back and forth between Florence and
Prato, and she still oversaw a correspondence to others besides Francesco;
indeed, it was in Florence that she wrote her surviving autograph letters
to Francesco.22
How did a merchant household like the Datini’s (highly respected
in Prato) fit into the more demanding social hierarchy in Florence? 23 In
Florence, the big merchant families possessed great prestige, and Francesco
Datini would have lost honor not for being a merchant, but for being a
nouveau riche merchant. Margherita accepted without hesitation the common assumption that as a wife she had married into Francesco’s way of life,
whatever his status and in spite of personal quarrels with him.24 She contributed to their honor as best she could by acting as Francesco’s deputy,
and through the standing of her well-born (although politically and economically weak) relatives, while Francesco contributed his notable success as
a merchant. Margherita and Francesco’s combined strengths allowed them
to mix socially with upper-level patricians25—although their exact social
position remained untested, since they had no children to reveal it through
the quality of marriages arranged.26
Gaining Honor as Husband’s Deputy
229
Notes
1. For descriptions of married women’s economic activities, see Merry Wiesner,
Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), 60–110. See also Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the
Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650–1750 (New York: Vintage Books, 1991),
part 1. The roles of wives in early modern European and colonial societies were so similar
over time and place that Ulrich’s comments apply quite well to Margherita Datini. On
Margherita and Francesco’s wedding, see Francesco Datini in Avignon to monna Piera
di Pratese in Prato, 28 Aug. 1376, Archivo di stato di Prato Datini, vol. 1114, 6101225;
and Cesare Guasti, “proemio” to ser Lapo Mazzei’s letters to Francesco Datini, in Lettere
di un notaro a un mercante del secolo XIV con altre lettere e documenti, ed. Cesare Guasti
(Florence: Le Monnier, 1880), XXXIV–VI.
2. On Margherita’s family background, see, for her father’s execution, Gene
Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343–1378 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1962), 185–7; and for her mother’s magnate family, the Gherardini, see Christiane
Klapisch-Zuber, Retour à la cité: Les magnats de Florence, 1340–1440 (Paris: Éditions
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociale, 2006), 316–19. The most accessible
description of Francesco’s family background and of the growth of Francesco’s business
in Avignon is Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini, 1335–1410
(Boston: David R. Godine, 1986), 1–33. Other information throughout this essay is
based on letters and account books in the archivio Datini in the Archivio di stato di Prato,
hereafter abbreviated ASPO Datini, and on published editions of these documents:
Francesco Datini, Le Lettere di Francesco Datini alla moglie Margherita (1385–1410), ed.
Elena Cecchi (Prato: Società pratese di storia patria, 1990); and Margherita Datini, Per la
tua Margherita: Lettere di una donna del ‘300 al marito mercante, (Prato: CD Rom, ASPO,
2002). This CD is particularly useful because it includes images of the letters’ handwriting. When citing the published letter collections as a whole, I refer to F. Datini 1990 and
M. Datini 2002, but for individual letters contained in these collections, I cite only the
dates of the letters. Useful secondary sources include Origo, Merchant; Guasti, I–CXLIII;
and Frederigo Melis, Aspetti della vita economica medievale (Florence: Olschki, 1962).
3. For the quotation, see Niccolò dell’Ammanato Tecchini to Francesco Datini,
February, 28, 1382, ASPO Datini vol. 1103, 13334: “Tu di’ che lla Margherita à fiorini
.C. e tra guandagnati e d’uscita e che no lli ti vol più affidare; io no so dove lli stessono
melglio e più salvi; ma io piuttosto vorrei che la ingrassasse e faciesse fanciulli che atendere
a raghunare denari; e benso che ... vengha da ddio e ella ne prieghi. ” For Francesco’s later
description of Margherita’s work, see Francesco to Cristofano da Barberino, s.d. [1401],
ASPO Datini, vol. 1110, 9142552. I cite the index numbers of unpublished archival letters and when, in the case of Margherita’s published letters, there is more than one letter
from the same day.
4. See Ann Derbes and Mark Sandona, “Barren Metal and the Fruitful Womb:
The Program of Giotto’s Arena Chapel in Padua,” The Art Bulletin 80 (1998): 274–91,
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and their “Reading the Arena Chapel,” in The Cambridge Companion to Giotto, ed. Anne
Derbes and Mark Sandona, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 197–220.
5. On Francesco’s companies, see Melis, Aspetti della economica medievale, esp.
295–335.
6. Margherita’s principal ailment was endometriosis, which brings great pain
around menstrual periods and inhibits conception, but she also had other bouts of ill
health. For the boy baby born in 1387, who died soon afterwards, see ASPO Datini 198:
123v, 124v, 166v. Ginevra, born in 1392, is mentioned frequently in the Datini correspondence after she went to live with them in 1398. For the position of daughters in inheritance in Florence and Tuscany, see Ann Crabb, The Strozzi of Florence: Widowhood and
Solidarity in the Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 35–41.
7. Margherita’s letters explicitly stating the need to set the household in order
before going to join Francesco come from 1398 (Aug. 25, Dec. 1, 1401863, Dec. 2, Dec.
3) although she implies it at other times. Francesco frequently says that he has to finish business and building activities before joining her. For the idea of deputy husband,
see Ulrich, Good Wives, 35–50. The term “subordinate agent” is used for the concept of
“deputy husband” by Linda Pollack, “Teach Her to Live under Obedience: The Making of
Women in the Upper Ranks of Early Modern England,” Continuity and Change 4 (1989):
231–5 and by Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women 1450–1550: Marriage and
Family, Property and Careers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), but “deputy
husband” is more descriptive.
8. For Margherita’s letters to her husband, see M. Datini, and for Francesco’s to
her, see F. Datini. On Margherita’s literacy, see Ann Crabb, “‘If I could write’: Margherita
Datini and Letter Writing, 1385–1410,” Renaissance Quarterly 60 (2007): 1170–1206.
9. Margherita to Francesco, March 31, 1387: “N’abi niunoche … che ghuardi melglo l’onore tuo che farò io. ”
10. Margherita to Francesco, Sept. 1, 1395: “O atendo giusta mia posa a fare quelo
ch’ío credo che sia di tuo piacere e di mio onore e no mi churo di scriverti ciò che io fo
perché no mi pare sia di bisogno: parmi che ti deba abastare chío [lo] faccia. ”
11. On the Prato company, see Melis, Aspetti della economica medievale, 281–94.
12. Francesco to Margherita, July 23, 1395, Feb. 6, 1394, pp. 144, 61 and 22; and
July 1395, p. 142: “Di quanto ai seguito de fatti della richolta e di tutte l’altre chose … fai
quello ché di tuo onore. ”
13. There are, for example, nine letters to Francesco in M. Datini describing her
searches during the month of August 1398.
14. Margherita to Francesco, Aug. 23, 1398: ”Abiallo mandato a quella femina che
ce [lo deve] tenere tanto che noi n’abiamo una buona. Idio mi dia grazia ch’io n’abia onore
… [e non] verghona … per molti chasi che posono avenire. ”
15. For a concise and clear discussion of merchants’ money lending, see Raymond
de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494 (New York: Norton,
1966), 10–14.
16. On Margherita and debt collection, see Margherita to Francesco, March 17,
Gaining Honor as Husband’s Deputy
231
1394; March 27, 1394; March 31, 1397; April 3, 1397 and Francesco to Margherita, Feb.
19, 1394; March 20, 1394; April 3, 1394; March 19, 1397; April 13, 1397, pp. 68, 88,
98–99, 151, 186.
17. For her pleas that he improve his attitudes and behavior, see, for example, M.
Datini: Jan. 16, 1386; April 5, 1386; March 31, 1387; Sept. 2, 1389; May 12, 1394; Jan.
23, 1394; Aug. 13, 1395; June 29, 1396; Dec. 3, 1398. Francesco’s sense of sin, probably
including financial sins and sexual ones, is expressed most forcefully in his letter of May
13, 1394, pp.120–3.
18. Margherita to Francesco, April 15, 1394 1401751: “Del chanceliere mio iscrivo
pegio l’un dì che l’atro: me ne grava, ma no’si disdicie, perché stane a ghovemamento di
femina; ma tu m’ài bene lasciata a fare più faciende, che s’io fosi uno huomo basterebe, ché
non ebe mai sì fatta faccienda, il chancielere de’ Signori. ”
19. Her previous letter, written by the clerk called Fattorino earlier the same day,
had been carelessly done. This letter and subsequent letters were well written. For the
handwriting of the previous letter of April 15, see M. Datini 1401750.
20. Francesco to Margherita, Feb. 20, 1394; May 22, 1397, pp. 70, 192.
21. Margherita to Francesco, Oct. 16, 1398, 242: “Io si o auto questa sera … dal
Mastricia, lire trenta piccoli, e non n’o fatto iscritura niuna a Libro, se nonne ch’io o iscritto
a libro suo a pie della ragione, chom’i’o ricevuti I detti danari, chome s’usa di fare, ed ogli
mesi ad entrata al quadernuccio ch’io tengho per ispese; se che dite per la prima se volete
ch’io achonci a Libro. ” See also Nov. 20, 1398.
22. The twenty autograph letters she wrote between February and November
1399 show clearly the effort she made to improve her letter writing and her resultant
progress, and also the separation of residential and business quarters in Florence. On the
autograph letters, see Crabb, “‘If I could write…’”
23. On the Florentine social hierarchy, see Lauro Martines, The Social World of
the Florentine Humanists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963); and Anthony
Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1994).
24. For the assumption that wives took on their husbands’ identities, see Ulrich,
Good Wives, 35–50.
25. Jerôme Hayez, “Le rire du marchand. Francesco Datini, sa femme Margherita
et les ‘gran maestri’ florentins,” in Les femmes et le quotidien (XIVe–XVIIIe siècle): Textes
offerts à Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, ed. Isabelle Chabot, Didier Lett, and Jerôme Hayez,
(Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2006), 407–58.
26. For the social ramifications of Florentine marriages, see Crabb, Strozzi, chap. 8.