The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study

First published in 1971 by Harper & Row, The Society of Renaissance Florence is an invaluable collection of 132 original Florentine documents dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and covering a wide range of subjects from taxes to social mobility, to family, death, and civic life, to violence, crime, and morality. Also included are seldom seen documents addressing the state of the poor and such groups as Jews, heretics, sorcerers, and homosexuals.

'I have made a conscious effort to select material which reveals something about the emotions, passions, and temperaments of Renaissance Florentines.

'These documents are examples of the raw material with which the historian works, as he attempts to describe social structures, patterns of behavior, and value systems. They should convey some sense of the complexity of this society, and of the formidable task which confronts the student who seeks to generalize about its character... They can serve as models for the student interested in the problems of urban history in pre-industrial Europe.' - From the Preface.

Gene A. Brucker is Professor Emeritus of the History Department at the University of California, Berkeley.