MARRIAGE AND ELITE STRUCTURE IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE, 12821500

John F. Padgett
Political Science
University of Chicago
October 7, 1994

Paper prepared for delivery to the Social Science History
Association, Atlanta, Georgia, October 14, 1994. Paper orinformation herein not to be cited without permission. c

1
MARRIAGE AND ELITE STRUCTURE IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE, 12821500
John F. Padgett
University of Chicago

This conference paper is an interim report from a largescale project to trace transformations in Florentine elite
network structures over two centuries. In this paper, I
confine myself solely to a description of previously unknown
trendsinbroadpatterns
ofFlorentineinter-marriage.
Knowledgable readers will immediately see that these trends
have
important
implicationsfordebatesin
Florentine
historiography(whichI
willdevelopinthefuture).
Ultimately, I am primarily interested in the political
implications of the trends I herein describe. But for now I do
not engage in interpretation, explanation, or argumentation. I
intend simply to lay out some new facts. In particular, mylack of citation to relevant secondary literatures [a flaw to
be corrected in future drafts] should not be taken as anindicator of my lack of knowledge of these excellent works.
Data and Sources
The data set, only a portion of which is used here,
comprises probably the most extensive collection of historical
network information ever assembled. The eventual book-length
goal of this project is no less than an Annales-style "total
history" of interlinked transformations in Florentine social,economic,
andpolitical
structuresovertwocenturies.
Needless to say, this goal is even conceivable only because of
the astonishing richness of the Florentine archives, andbecause of the impressive diligence of many Florentine
historians besides myself. The data set itself can be
described in five parts: marriage networks, economic networks,
othersocialnetworks,
attributional
information,andpolitical party/faction memberships.
About 10,500 dated marriages among Florentine surnamed
families, over the period 1282-1500, have been collected andcomputerized from a variety of sources. Through travel to six
rare-book collections in the United States, I coded andcomputerized 38 Renaissance Florentine family-trees from theexcellent early-nineteenth century geneologies of celebrated
Italianfamilies,
compiled
byPompeo
Litta
and
Luigi
Passerini. Through two separate month-long trips to theArchivio di Stato in Florence, I coded and later computerized
the marriages of 298 families of somewhat lesser renown from2
the 13-volume compilation of Pierantonio dell'Ancisa, whoworked in the mid-1600's. These compilations were based inturn for the most part on series of notarized contracts (e.g.,regarding dowries), the bulk of which are now lost. In
addition, I coded and computerized 12 family-trees from a
miscellany of histories available in the U.S. In all, I coded
as many marriages as I could find in the sources for 335
family-clans. (Numbers do not add because of some multiple
codings.) Since I coded all the marriages engaged in by these335
targetfamily-clans, the number of total families
represented in the data set is far more than this. (I haveattributional information on 960 families; thus 960 is theeffective limit on sample size. In most analyses herein, themarriages of 500-600 family-clans are being analyzed at atime.)
Details of sampling, coding, and sources of error will bereported in future documents. Suffice it to say here thatsnowball sampling was employed, via multiple trips to thearchives. Given the percent coverage that eventually wasattained,theusual
statisticalcriticismsofsnowballsampling do not much pertain here. As is shown in figure 1,
which links these marriages to various tax censuses of theentire Florentine population (about which more below), I
estimate that my 10,000+ sample covers about 40% of all
marriages ever made among families with last names. Dueprimarily to the sources and only secondarily to the samplingtechnique,percent
coveragedeclinesassocialstatusdeclines. At the upper end of the scale, percent coverage forthe richest 500 households in the city increases from 65% to
90% over time, as is also shown in figure 1.
Economic networks do not figure in this paper, but I will
briefly note for the record two data sets that have beenassembled to date. An advanced student colleague of mine, Paul
McLean, has coded and computerized from the 1427 tax catasto(essentially,
I.R.S.-type
tax
returns)
about
14,000endebtedness relations--that is, who owes money to whom, forwhat type of prior transaction. This massive cross-sectional
coding was done in its first wave at the Univerity of Chicago,
using a microfilmed copy deposited here by the late David
Herlihy, and in later waves by Paul at the Archivio di Stato,
to fill in gaps in the microfilm.
Paul and I also have assembled data on economic
partnerships across time. From guild records in the Archiviodi Stato, I have assembled (but not yet computerized) an
almost complete time- series of all partnerships and firms in
one industry--banking--over the period 1340 to 1480. From the1427
catasto,
McLeanhas
assembled
andcomputerized
essentially a census of all partnerships and firms in thecity, across all industries. And for 1451, Anthony Molho has

3published a similar almost-complete list of partnerships andfirms, across all industries. We anticipate much valuable
information on changing market, industrial, and firm structurefrom these data sources in future (joint and otherwise)
publications.
Under the topic of "other social networks" are two items:(1) From a rich prosopographical secondary source, a book byDale Kent entitled The Rise of the Medici, a previous
coworker, Christopher Ansell, and I coded nine different typesof social ties, along with political party memberships, forthe period 1420-1434. Analyses of these data have already beenreported in a 1993 article by us in the American Journal of
Sociology.
(2)
For
his
dissertation,
Paul
McLeanhascollected,
transcribed,
and
coded
869
fifteenth-century
patronage letters, which request favors of various sorts. Paulhimself will report on these texturally-rich qualitative
documents in future publications.
In addition to these systematic social network data, overtime, I have assembled and computerized a variety of
attributional data on each of 960 family-clans whom I havedetected in Florentine marriages sometime over the two-century
period. (A number of these families, of course, flow into andout of history over time.) Often, but not always, I candisaggregate further to the household level of analysis. These
attributional data can be summarized in three categories:
social status, wealth, and residence.
During this period of republicanism, Florentines judged afamily's social status by how politically old it was--that is,by the date the first member of the family was admitted to thePriorate, the governing body of Florence. Najemy and Kent havepublished
this
informationformanyfamilies.
A
moreexhaustive listing is the eighteenth-century Mecatti volumes,
located in the special collections of the Newberry Library in
Chicago. This source not only contains many more families'
first dates than Najemy and Kent, but also it contains thedates of every Prior every family ever had--in other words, it
records the political histories of all families' participationingovernance.
For
all
960
of
my
family-clans,
thisinformation has been coded and computerized.
As is well known among Florentine historians, magnates
were an important special category of socially old andprestigious
families
who
werelegally
barredfromparticipation in offices. Lansing provides a tabulation of
their identity.
Wealth data over time for so many households and clans isquite difficult to obtain, but with the aid of other
Florentine historians numerous tax censuses have now been

4computerized. The 1427 catasto was computerized and generously
made available for public access by the late David Herlihy andChristiane Klapisch. They also computerized 10% samples of the1458 and 1480 catasti. Samuel Cohn gave to me his microfilm
copies of the 1351 estimo and the 1378 prestanze, the lastnamed families of which I have (with much effort) transcribedand computerized. Lauro Martines and Anthony Molho published,in appendices to their books, the wealthiest 500 households ofthe 1403 prestanze and of the 1458 and 1480 catasti,
respectively. [Julius Kirshner and Anthony Molho have also
computerized the entire 1480 catasto. Perhaps they may grantme access to it in the future.] The sum total of these
documents gives me a wealth time-series for 1351 (complete),1378(complete),1403(partial),
1427(complete),1458(partial), and 1480(partial).
The information assembled by me from these tax sources isasfollows:
eithertax
assessment
ordeclared
wealth(depending on the document) of head of household, residence ofhead of household (at the gonfaloni or ward level), and forcomplete censuses, number of households per family-clan.
Wealth and residence of course also can be aggregated to thetotal clan level. Dispersion of clan residence acrossgonfaloni is a useful measure of clan "cohesiveness" or"solidarity" (at least as a first cut), which can be tracked
acrosstime.
Pre-1351
residence
information,formanyfamilies, is contained in the tables of Raveggi et al.
Finally, membership in political factions or parties has
been coded, mostly from secondary sources. Raveggi et al.
provide membership listings of Guelfs vs. Ghibellines (1260's)
and of Blacks vs. Whites (1300's and 1310's). From the text ofBrucker's book the composition of the Albizzi and Ricci
factions (1340's and 1350's) has been identified. Najemy
provides useful information on elite supporters and opponentsof the Ciompi rebellion (1378). D. Kent gives a list of Medici
supporters and opponents, on the eve of the Medici takeover(1434). Rubinstein provides information useful for identifying
Medici supporters thereafter. Sapori has also published a listof 1449 Medici partisans. In the 1964 Bollettino Senese diStoria Patria, there is a reprinted list of signators usefulfor identifying anti-Mediceans in 1466. Only anti-Mediceansfrom later Pazzi (1470's) and Savonarola (1490's) revolt
periods have not yet been identified and computerized.
Elite Concentration
A convenient starting-point for tracking broad trends in
Florentine inter-marriage is to focus on the degree to which
theFlorentine
elite
as
a
whole
was
centralizedorconcentrated--that is, the degree to which there were sharp
inequalities across various families' individual network

5
centralities in marriage. The more sharp the inequalities
across families, the more concentrated the core within theelite.
Two standard measures of relative centrality in networks
are:(a)degree--thatis,therelative
numberofties/marriages a family engaged in, each time period, and (b)betweenness--that is, the relative number of (shortest)
connected "paths" between all other pairs of families in the
network that a focal family is situated on. "Degree" measures,
essentially, the demography of the situation. Barring wide
disparities in marriage rates, it is a proxy for clan size-the number of eligible sons and daughters the clan had.
Betweenness is a more structural concept. If resources orcommunication flow through a network, then "betweenness"measures the percent of flows between everyone else in thesystem that a focal family could intercept (or block). For
this reason, it is often interpreted as a measure of
positional "power".
For various time periods, such measures were calculated
for all (reachable) families in my data set [typically, 500 to
600 families per time period]. These family centrality scores
were arrayed in normalized cumulative-distribution-function or"Lorenz curve" fashion (not presented here), and an overall
Gini-index calculated. The Gini-index is a standard measure ofinequality. (Literally, it is the percent of the area above a
45-degree line that the empirical Lorenz-curve "bows" above[or below, depending on orientation].)The results are presented in figure 2. Clear differences
both over time and across measures are observed. The firstpoint to note is that absolute numbers are very high,indicatingthat
theFlorentine
elite
was
very
concentrated/centralized--a fact that we more or less alreadyknow. Of course some of this concentration was due solely toskewed family sizes. In Florence, this was not primarily amatter of random variation in birth rates. For a clan to havea last name at all was itself an assertion of status--it
indicated a concern with patrilineage, family history, andhonor. About 2/3 of the people in the society had names like
"Peter, son of Paul." Thus, variation in family size is nothere a random variable to be controlled away; concentration ofhouseholds
intopatrilineages
isitselfone
importantmechanism for the concentration of elites as a whole.
The Gini-index of "degree" measures how family size
concentration changes over time. Note the huge increase inelite concentration from 1282-1342 to 1343-1377. The Black
Death of 1348 (and of 1360) represents an obvious candidate
for explanation, although the precise link between plague andfamily-size concentration is not yet obvious to me. But also,

6
the political turmoil of 1343 is a candidate explanation.
Whateverthereason,
it
is
clear
that
"betweenness"concentration exactly tracks that of degree. In other otherwords, there was a dramatic increase in the structuralconcentration of the elite around 1343 or 1348, due tounderlying patrilineage dynamics.
From 1343 or 1348 onwards, there was a decline in familysize concentration. This was due both to the decline of reallyhuge magnate clans, like the Bardi and the Buondelmonti, andto the rising numbers of middle-class households who assumed
last names. (The percent of the population with surnames
increased from about 1/4 to about 1/2 over this longue duree.)Except for a modest drop from the republican (1343-1434) tothe Medicean (1435-1494) periods, however, this decline infamily-size/degree concentration was not matched by a parallel
decline in "structural"/betweenness concentration. In otherwords, once set into place by the events of 1343 or 1348,
elite network concentration maintained itself in spite ofstrong demographic pressures to the contrary.
The gap between the degree and the betweenness curves,indeed, can be taken as a measure of the network/intermarriagepressures toward elite concentration, net of family-size
patrilineage dynamics. This centralizing network pressure
increased
over
time,
with
notablestep-function
shiftsimmediately after the Ciompi rebellion (1378) and after the
onset of the Medici regime (1434). Despite increased Mediceanpressure toward elite concentration, however, demographic
forces were not entirely offset.
Dyads and Triads
Further insight into the character of these elitetransformations can be gleaned from examining censuses ofdyads and triads--that is, distributions of the microrelations which underlay the global portrait of figure 2. Two
features of common interest to network analysts are asymmetry
and transitivity.
Asymmetry--that is, the prevalence of same direction ties(), relative to both-way ties ()--is commonlyinterpreted as an indicator of micro-concern with hierarchy.
Here, we are speaking of marriage ties; therefore, asymmetry
means one clan sending only daughters or sons to another clan
(more likely than chance). Symmetry, on the other hand, means
making alliances through exchanging children irrespective ofgender. Asymmetry in networks arises because directionality offlow is culturally meaningful to participants--usually, it
connotes
relative
status.
[Asymmetryasmeasuredhere,
however, does not differentiate daughters from sons; justexclusive one-way flow from indifferent symmetric flow.]

7
Figure 3a plots the observed asymmetry pattern over time.
Before 1343, there was an extremely strong micro-concern withrelative status [assuming that is what marriage asymmetry
culturally means--an assumption that will be investigated moredeeply in the future.] But in the plague years of 1348, orthereabouts, this intermarriage dyadic preoccupation withrelative status immediately vanishes. Over time, it gradually
reasserts itself--finally returning to pre-1343 levels by theperiod of Lorenzo de' Medici (1465-1494).
On the surface, the micro-data on asymmetric dyads infigure 3a seems directly contradictory to the macro-data on
global network concentration in figure 2. "Hierarchy" trends
are moving in opposite directions. This apparent contradiction
will be (partially) resolved below, after more clues have beenassembled.
Figure 3b presents trends in transitivity--that is, thepercent of transitive triads (), relative to cycles ().
Transitivity of course is not itself a measure of micro-dyad
concern with asymmetry; it is a measure of how consistently
asymmetric dyads aggregate themselves together across multiple
families. Asymmetric dyads under conditions of transitivity
aggregate
themselves
together
into
self-consistenthierarchical"pecking
orders";intransitive
triads(or"cycles") inhibit even hierarchical dyads from assembling into
ranks. Instead, cycles induce group boundary closure, withscrambled hierarchy within the group.
Overall,
there
was
a
noticeable
tendency
towardtransitivity, although not as striking as I had anticipated.
Hierarchical tendencies between two families, in other words,
usually were reinforced, not undercut, by marriages of those
two families with outside third families. However, theFlorentine elite was hardly monolithic or tightly structured.
Inconsistencies, contradictions, and (apparent) confusions in
network structure were rampant. Because of this, there wasalways structural room for maneuver up and down loose peckingorders (something the economic and political turbulence ofFlorentine history should have led us to expect).
The one glaring exception to this overall (loose)tendency toward transitivity is the period 1378-1404, which
exhibited a greater-than-chance tendency toward cycles. In my
1993 article, I offered an explanation of the Ciompi-rebellion
causes of these unusual marriage cycles, and of the politicalcooptation consequences of these period-specific cycles.
Naturally, I am pleased to see (some of) my earlier hypotheses
confirmed by more extensive data.
Residential Endogamy

8
Figure 4 presents trends in residential endogamy--that
is, the rates at which Florentine elite families married their"neighbors," defined as co-residents within the four quartersof Florence (Santo Spirito, Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella,
and San Giovanni). These residential trends are further
subdividedbysocialclass--(a)magnates,thoseoldprestigious families legally excluded from holding public
office;(b)popolani,thoseold(pre-1343)
prestigious
families who participated in Florentine governance; and (c)new men, those participants in Florentine governance whosefamilies were admitted to the priorate only after 1343.
In general, the data in figure 4 confirms what is alreadyknown--that the importance of residential endogamy within the
Florentine elite declined over time. [Among the lower popolominuto classes it increased.] What is new here, however, istiming and class composition.
Among popolani families, residential endogamy started out
at an extraordinarily high initial level--45% in-marriage
during 1282-1314. Throughout the fourteenth century, however,it continuously declined, until by the fifteenth century,neighborhood was irrelevant to marriage. The fifteenth-century
popolani
werethoroughlyintermixed
andresidentiallyhomogenous.
Magnatefamilies
experienced
a
sharp
and
precipitous decline in intra-quarter marriage very early intime--from 1282-1314 to 1315-1342. After that, residential
cleavages within the magnate class were irrelevant.
In contrast to these two trends, which differ in timing
and magnitude but not in pattern, new men experienced
essentially no change over time [until, arguably, Lorenzo's
period when all three groups decline even further from alreadylow levels--a phenomenon to investigate in the future]. For
this reason, I interpret the new men as a control group. This
enables me to say that about 32% of all Florentine families
would marry fellow-quarter neighbors for reasons of physicalpropinquity alone, absent any other considerations. [Thusphysical propinquity raises the expected null baseline fromits purely random 25% level.] Therefore, among popolani andmagnati,
both
the
high
fourteenth-century
levelsofresidential
endogamy(especiallypre-1343)
and
the
low
fifteenth-century levels of endogamy (beginning after 1378)
are important substantive phenomena that require historicalexplanation.
Much of my 1993 article is taken up with explaining thepost-Ciompi decline in popolani residential endogamy. But thedata here suggest an important amendment to the pre-1378 partof my earlier argument. I had suggested that a baseline"medieval" intermarriage structure in Florence could be9characterized(inidealized
form)
as
a
federationofneighborhood-based marriage hierarchies. That is, competing
local"baron"familiesorganized
neighborhood-patrician
followers through asymmetric hypogamous marriages, but werelinked among themselves only thinly at the very top through a
few super-elite cross-neighborhood marriages. In other words,
within the elite, strongly hierarchical concentration withinneighborhoods obtained, but only loose concentration in thecity as a whole.
Figures 2 through 4 are totally consistent with thisportrait, but only for the period before 1343 (not 1378, as I
implied). [In my defense, I did insert a caveat footnote in
the paper about possible vagaries in timing.] All the figures
point to an extremely important intervening transformation in
Florentine elite structure around 1343 or 1348, of which I did
not know the existence earlier. Future stages of research willprobe this important matter more.
Social Class Endogamy
Figure 5 (three parts) presents rates of social classintermarriage, over time. Panel 5a presents rates of marriageof popolani males to popolani, magnate, and new-men females.
Panel 5b does the same for magnate males, and panel 5c does
the same for new-men males. The heavy lines on all thesegraphs are the actual empirically observed rates; the lighter
lines are the statistically expected rates, based only on
relative numbers of marriages in these three categories.
Asterisks
indicate
statisticallysignificant
differences
between expected and observed rates, based on Chi-square tests(not reported here). It is important to take into accountstatistically-expected rates in interpretation here, sincemagnate families declined dramatically in size and number (andimportance)
over
time,
while new-men families did the
opposite. [Recall the remark above about "degree" over-time.]
Perhaps the most surprising finding in all of thesegraphs is the fact that popolani families married other social
classes at rates no different than what would have been
expected statistically by chance (that is, by relative sizes
alone). Magnate, popolani, new-men: such social class labels
mattered not a whit for popolani marriage behavior. Popolani
families were astonishingly catholic in whom they married.
Popolani families, remember, were the most powerfulfamilies in Florence. As a set of individual families, theyclearly dominated Florence for centuries. The data here,
however, are unambiguous: as a behavioral group, at least as
expressed in intermarriage, the popolani simply did not exist.
Popolani sat at the intersection of social prestige and10political power, but the multiplicity of their bases ofdominance
apparently
led
to
the
dissolution,
nottheconfirmation, of their group identity. Whatever others may
have thought of them, they continually thought of themselves
only as "public citizens of Florence"--that is, as a set ofindividual families with a natural right to rule, but not as adominant group with special corporate self-consciousness. [Irecognize that this conclusion extrapolates a bit from thedata--a flaw to be corrected in future drafts.] Perhaps thisis one corollary of "hegemony": group identity is a matter ofconcern for folks out of power, not for folks who possess it.
[This is consistent with what I argued, for a more limited
time period, in my earlier article.]
Bolstering this interpretation is the fact that magnate
families became markedly endogamous as a group precisely at
the moment that they finally lost all claim to power. They had
been first excluded in the 1290's, but they nonethelessstruggled within the system until their final attempt at acome-back coup, which failed in 1343. Before 1314, the data
show magnates behaviorally to be no different from popolani-despitelegal
sanctions,
they
temporarily
intermarried
popolani and new men just as freely as did popolani. Between
1315 and 1343, however, magnate endogamous behavior appeared,
to be locked in "forever" by the events of 1343, even as theircollective fortunes (and numbers) gradually sank under thehorizon thereafter.
The data are even more specific than this. Magnate
endogamy was purchased primarily at the expense of lowered
rates of marriage with new-men, not popolani. While it is truethat magnate males resisted marrying popolani females from1343 to 1400 (or so), before 1343 and after 1400 magnates did
not discriminate against popolani (whom, as we have alreadyseen, never discriminated against them in the first place).
The mutual antipathy really was between magnates and new-men.
[This statistical finding is quite consistent with narrative
accounts.]
Conversely,
new-menendogamy,
present
assoon
assignificant numbers allow us to observe it with confidence(i.e., after 1343), was purchased exclusively at the cost oflowered marriage with magnates. Not even temporarily did newmen families discriminate against popolani. [For new men, thisis not a surprise--the popolani were precisely the club newmen wanted to join. The surprise is the reverse--popolani notdiscriminating against new men.] Not until the Medicean regime(post-1434) did the new men relinquish their antipathy tomagnates. At that point, legal banishment from office had been
lifted; perhaps more to the point, magnates by then were nolonger any threat. It is interesting to observe, however, thateven at such a late date, magnates themselves continued to11hold a grudge against new men (not popolani), who by then had
far surpassed them in numbers and power. Old memories infading aristocrats die hard.
Wealth Endogamy and Hypogamy
There is also the matter of endogamy and (possible)
hypogamy defined, not across social classes, but acrosseconomic classes--that is, across wealth. This is a tricky
matter on which there has been some controversy recently
between Anthony Molho and the late David Herlihy.
In the sections above, I did not discuss the (rather
enormous) detailed research underpinnings of data sources &coding, data linkage & management, and computer algorithms-because I at least have confidence in my ability to back all
this up in due course. [Of course, this will all be explainedin full-scale publication.] In the matter of wealth across two
centuries, however, certain practical difficulties require
discussion, in order to underline the tentative, rather thandefinitive, nature of the following conclusions.
As mentioned in the data section, I have tax-assessment
wealth at the level of all last-named households for 1351,
1378, and 1427. [The first two coded by me; 1427 coded by
Herlihy and Klapisch.] For 1403, 1458 and 1480, however, I
currently possess only partial enumerations--the wealthiest
500 households for all three years (courtesy of appendices in
Martines and in Molho), and 10% samples for 1458 and 1480
(courtesy of Herlihy and Klapisch, again). This means that if
I want to make statements covering the entire swath of time, I
must aggregate to the total clan level--that is, I must sum
the wealth of all households with common last names (adding
no-named households where I know these to be actually clan
members). Naturally, this does not cover most of the (unknown)poorer members of clans in 1403, 1458 and 1480, but I argue
that it nonetheless does a reasonable job of recreating(approximately) the relative wealth rank-orders of the 960
clans in my data set. Average wealth of households per clan
can then be estimated (again approximately) by dividing totalclan wealth by numbers of households per clan--known exactlyfor 1351, 1378 and 1427; and estimated for the other years,
either by extrapolation from 1351, 1378 and 1427 or by
estimation from numbers of marriages in my data set. [Thelatter method of estimating clan size is more accurate, buthere I confine myself to the (easier) first method.]
Placing the whole analysis on a household level ofaggregation certainly would eliminate much potential error,
but currently I cannot (yet) do this.
Caveats notwithstanding, the (approximate) findings about

12
wealth endogamy are presented in table 1. Because of theissues just discussed, I focused only on quartiles of wealth,thereby treating only large differences in measured average
wealth as meaningful. I further collapsed the full 16 cells of
the 4x4 tables into 5 cells, according to the scheme shown intable 1, in order to smooth out obvious noise fluctuations(which presumably would not be there with cleaner data).
In all six subtables, one for each period, the data aresaddle-functions. That is, in all time periods, the rich wereendogamous; the poor were (even more) endogamous; but the
middle classes were not. Moreover (not surprisingly), the rich
did not marry the poor, and conversely.
Hypogamy is an intermarriage pattern where all (butespecially upper) classes are more likely to send daughtersdown the social ladder than to receive them up. There is noevidence of hypogamy in any of these wealth tables. (Nor was
there any evidence of hypogamy across social classes, defined
non-economically as "date of first prior".) To be fair to
Herlihy, these analyses do not yet take into account the
impact that dowry had on wealth--a matter he regarded as quite
crucial in the measurement of hypogamy--and so must be
regarded as only provisional. But so far the data support theposition of Molho--namely, that elite [i.e., rich] Florentine
marriage was both endogamous and homogamous.
Consistent with Cohn, but not emphasized by Molho, is thefurther fact that the poor were even more endogamous than therich.
Indeed,theendogamous(andhomogamous)
marriage
behaviors of the rich and the poor in Florence may not be
independent phenomona--mutual aversion may have driven mutual
endogamy.
The quantitative degree of this otherwise constantfeature of Florentine society, however, does appear to havechanged somewhat over time. Holding aside the perhaps abberant
1388-1418 subtable (which contains the dirtiest data), thefourteenth century [that is, both the 1336-1366 and the 13631393 subtables] exhibited more intense wealth endogamy (andmutual aversion) than did the fifteenth century [i.e., the1402-1442, the 1443-1473, and the 1465-1495 subtables]. This
is indicated by the "En=" and "Ex=" statistics below eachtable, which simply add the northeast and southwest cells, andthe northwest and southeast cells, respectively. [Such sums
measurethe"slopes"ofthesaddle-function.]These
statistics, high always, are especially pronounced in the twoearliest time periods. This time trend to me (and probably to
Molho) is counter-intuitive; I do not know at the moment how
to explain it.
An unresolved tension between the analyses above is that13
figure 3a's asymmetric marriage dyads showed such clear
historical variation over time, whereas apparently neither
hypogamy nor hypergamy existed--at least with respect towealth or social class. A sharp dyad-concern with relative
ranking between marriage-exchange partners, in other words,
was manifest both early and late in the Renaissance, but this(apparently) was not based on the usual attributional
criteria. What in fact such relative rankings were grounded in
is another important topic for future research.
Multidimensional Scaling of Path Distances
Finally, in an appendix, I present a series of twodimensonal scaling plots, one for each time period, of therelative distances between top families on marriage. (A "pathdistance between families" here is simply the shortest numberof chained marriages it takes for one clan to "reach"another.) When viewed as a series, these plots give a "moving
picture" of how elite marriage structure was changing overtime, as viewed from the "birds-eye" perspective of looking
down at the structure. [This is in contrast, say, to the"sideways" view of centrality, which looks at the (changing)
relative slope of the "mountain".]
There were far too many clans in the actual MDS analyses
to present visually in any picture, so for plotting purposes I
show only the 60 or 70 largest (in degree) clans in the
appendix. Please remember, however, that the statisticalanalyses underlying these spatial plots are based on all 500600 clans, not just on the 60-70 shown.
The information contained in these MDS diagrams is too
rich and impacted to be absorbed on first glance. One needs toknow a lot about who these families are to be able tointerpret them at all. Nonetheless, in lieu of the detailed
discussion to occur in future drafts of this paper, I will
simply note a few highlights.
1. One remarkable feature of the shift from 1282-1342 to
1343-1377 (a transition noted above as very significant) isthat in 1282-1342 magnates were distributed more-or-lessevenly around this space of very elite families [albeit with aclear skew toward the left of the diagram], whereas in 13431377 magnates moved tightly into the center of the space.
[Note at the bottom of the second plot the change inmagnification.]
Later,
magnatesstarted
to
break
apart
spatially and then, eventually, to disappear (since they nolonger were among the top 60 or 70). Magnate endogamy, while
real, was insufficient to offset the sheer loss of numbers.
Various pieces can now be assembled into a tentatively
clear portrait of the mysterious (to me at least) 1343-1377

14transitional marriage structure. Figure 2 showed a dramatic
centralization of the Florentine elite as a whole at 1343 (orso); figure 3a showed an equally dramatic decline in asymmetry
within micro-dyads; and figure 5b showed that magnate endogamy
emerged around that same time. Putting the MDS plot together
with these other clues reveals the paradoxical fact that, in
1343 or 1348, the Florentine elite as a whole concentrated
through marriage precisely around that group, the magnates,that it had just politically evicted for good. Figure 5c, as
well as 5b, suggests a reason: Concentration was driven
primarily by sharp magnate-new men polarization, which drove
apart the top and bottom of the overall elite-marriage
distribution. Vertically-oriented asymmetry ties shredded, as
the system tended to stratify into separate layers. Popolani
resisted this trend, however, and more-or-less successfully
maintained
their(somewhat
frayed)positionasbridge.
Magnates stayed at the center because popolani continued tohold them individually in high regard, even though magnates
did not reciprocate (popolani having joined the new men aspolitical allies in 1343).
Thus, while the role of the plague has not yet been
folded into this account [it can hardly not have been
important], it seems plausible that the political events
surrounding 1343 are at least part of the story about thedramatic first transition in Florentine elite structure.
2. The last two plots, covering 1435-1465 and 1465-1494(the periods of Cosimo de' Medici's and Lorenzo de' Medici's
reigns, respectively), are extremely revealing about thechanging basis of Medicean control, insofar as these weremanifest through marriage.
After Cosimo's rise to power in 1434, the Medici
continued to marry old prestigious families, continuing apattern discussed at length in my 1993 article. Instead of
this Medici marriage cluster moving to the center of theFlorentine social elite, however, (as certainly the Medici didin politics) the Medici and their Florentine marriage partners[there were also important extra-Florentine marriages by the
Medici] remained aloof, on the fringes of the rest of
Florentine society, just as before. Unlike in 1378-1420,
however, this 1435-1464 distancing was presumably voluntary.
Some of the details of this Medici marriage cluster areof great historiographical note: Within the marriage clique ofthe Medici were the Strozzi, one of the most vigorously
proscribed families of the period, banished from Florence by
the Medici; the Pazzi, infamous conspirators who later tried
to assassinate the Medici; and the Pitti, leaders of the 1466
anti-Medicean republican party which emerged at Cosimo's
death. Among the closest in-laws of the Medici, only the15
Capponi seemed never to have given the Medici serious trouble.
But the Capponi were considered one of the few independently
powerful rivals of the time capable of autonomously standing
up to Cosimo's will.
One would think that a clique of old prestigious
troublemakers, far removed from the center of the Florentine
elite, would be highly unpromising soil upon which to build
Medicean domination. And insofar as we are speaking of themarriage clique itself, this was clearly true. However, notewell that there is a hole in the center of the rest of theFlorentine elite, as well as some distance between the Medici
marriage clique and the others.
A spatial hole indicates an absence of marriage ties-extremely peculiar at the dead center of any MDS plot [which
after all is algorithmically designed to try to minimize pathdistances, a minimization usually accomplished through trying
to construct a dense center]. Furthermore, pre-1434 Medici
supporters and opponents are somewhat intermixed around thishole--quite the opposite of the situation that prevailed
before 1434.
Control under Cosimo, in other words, would seem to havebeen based once again (in different form, but not different
logic, from that discussed in my 1993 article) not on theinteractionist principle of bringing close friends closer toyou, but rather on the structuralist principle of driving
barriers between your opponents. In this context, marrying
highly problematic others may not just be a way of keeping abetter eye on them, but also a device for removing them fromthe center of the rest of the action. How under Cosimo astructural hole was created and sustained in the very centerof the Florentine elite, however, is a matter of possibly deep
import, which I cannot yet explain.
3. Compare this Cosimo marriage system to that ofLorenzo. Lorenzo's Medici, like the Medici of Cosimo, were offon the marriage fringes of the Florentine elite. But there thesimilarity ends. Visually illustrated by a flip in their
spatial location to the exact opposite end of the social spacefrom where Cosimo's Medici were, Lorenzo's Medici marriedmostly political allies--often new-men allies at that. Moreinteractionist in his network logic, Lorenzo sent marriage
ties to friendly families who already supported him for otherreasons. No doubt this made followers (especially new men
followers) even more loyal than before, but it provided noleverage on Florentine elite structure as a whole. Quite theopposite perhaps--it isolated the Medici party, and it removed
Lorenzo's supporters from their positions deep in the bowelsof the rest of Florence, where they could do more good. Most
ominous for Lorenzo was the fact that the structural hole at16
the center of the Cosimo elite vanished.
I suspect that Lorenzo turned to this "surround yourself
with friends" marriage pattern because of his close brush withdeath during the Pazzi conspiracy, and all that. But I do notbelieve this courtly approach to marriage was an effective
control mechanism. Of course other things besides marriage are
involved in control, but to the extent that the Medici could
not longer control the Florentine elite at its constitutive
base, more and more formal-institutional devices had to be
employed, for which Lorenzo was famous (or infamous). Suchmethods (the Council of Seventy, etc.) are more visible andobvious to everyone.
The rapid fall of the Medici regime, immediately after
Lorenzo's death, is perhaps testament to the possible veracityof the admittedly speculative remarks here.
Much more could be said about these spatial analyses,
especially about the middle two 1378-1404 and 1405-1434 plots.
But the 1378-1434 period was examined at length in my 1993
article. And besides, a conference deadline looms. So for now
I will just leave it at that.
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was neither interpretation nor
explanation, much less general theory. Rather I simply wanted
to develop a few previously unknown facts about the longue
duree of elite marriage structure in Florence, in order toconstrain my future interpretive/explanatory efforts. The
next, more focused steps of my research will be guided by thevery broad-brush patterns uncovered in this first-draft study.