Catasto 1427
The florentine Census of 1427
Machine-readable data file with a new search software under MS-Windows


 (Fai click qui per la versione italiana di questa pagina)

In 1427 the Commune of Florence radically reformed its taxation system: each household was supposed to file a declaration stating real estate, debts, credits, and a list of the household's members. This taxation system got the name of Catasto, a word that is related to the english cadaster.

These informations where used by the clerks of the Commune to calculate a taxable amount.

The files (beautiful, huge handwritten books) collecting this data, covering all the florentine dominions, are of course an enormous historical resource, and are today kept in the State Archive of Florence.

These data were later (I suppose at the end of the 70ies) entered by a group of researchers led by David Herlihy (Department of history, Harvard University) and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris), and punched into cards.

Nowadays these files have been made available: they total about 32 Mbytes, and you can get them on diskettes from the Data and Program Library Service of University of Wisconsin-Madison (http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu).

The problem is that these files are just some enourmous text files, without any search program, and full of numeric codes: each household looks thus: 


25 64100202ANTONIO   IACOPO    PESTELLI  247846 110  2    0    0   148    0  148

25 641121601010150102023610102361020107211020621102892110111212010621202052120  

25 641221220130      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0      0  

0                                                                               

0                                                                               

0

There is a huge series of codes representing occupation, income, household composition... I heve developped a simple program, allowing you to:

  • view these data in a more readable way: 
    
                     Family:   641   (Cat. 247, p. 846)

                     Place:         00202          S. Croce

                     Head of family:   ANTONIO di IACOPO PESTELLI

                     Works leased land

                     Dwelling: Owns the house where he lives

                     Animalc: Owns cattle



                     Pr.Inv.:      0   Pub.Inv.:     0

                     Income:     148   Deduct.:       0 

                     Taxable:    148

    

                     Household members: 11

                      M 01    60    married

                      M 02    50    married

                      F 01    36    married

                      F 02    36    married

                      M 11    7     single

                      F 11    6     single

                      F 11  newborn single

                      M 12    11    single

                      M 12    6     single

                      F 12    5     single

                      M 13    22    unknown
  • perform searches on these data:
  • build simple reports with the data you found
  • keep on your hard disk just part of the enormous archives, and (if you wish) decompress only the part of data you are working on

    The program runs under MS Windows, comes in an italian aand an english versione and - together with the data - fits in 5 diskettes.

    The program is distributed by the Data and Program Library Service (http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu), and they have authorized me to distribute the diskettes locally.

    Should you be interested, please contact me through snail-mail: 

    

                Francesco Bonomi

                Le Pialle

                50022 Greve in Chianti Fi

                                    Italy
    or (preferred) by email:
    
                f.bonomi@agora.stm.it
    If you are interested, you can read a copy of the program's User Manual. I apologize in advance for the poor formatting of the text, that was atomatically converted to HTML. I am sorry, but because of the huge size of these data files, I can't put here even a demo copy of the program.

    New! The Catasto data searchable on-line!

     Finally the Catasto is now searchable on-line! Follow the link to Http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/catasto/overview.html. to have search engine with a WWW interface, with functions that are very similar to the ones of my program.

    Please note that I have no connection with them!

    Of course, having the chance to search these data both on-line (at their site) and off-line (with my disks) is the best thing!

    Acknowledgement:

    The data utilized in this archive were made available by the Data and Program Library Service, University of Wisconsin-Madison. The data for the Census and Property Survey of Florentine Domains in the Province of Tuscany, 1427-1480 were prepared by David Herlihy, Department of history, Harvard University and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, France. Neither the principal investigators nor the Data and Program Library Service bear any responsability for the analyses or interpretations presented here.

    I dati utilizzati in questo archivio sono stati resi disponibili dal Data and Program Library Service, University of Wisconsin-Madison. I dati del Census and Property Survey of Florentine Domains in the Province of Tuscany, 1427- 1480 sono stati preparati da David Herlihy, Department of history, Harvard University e Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, France. Né i ricercatori principali n‚ il Data and Program Library Service sono da ritenere responsabili per le analisi qui contenute. 

    


 F. Bonomi Home page       Versione italiana
    © Francesco Bonomi 1995 - MS-DOS and MS Windows, and other mentioned names are trade marks of the respective owners