Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Aug. 25, 2024. Florence 1430: Naibi found again

This is a translation of "Firenze 1430: naibi ritrovati," at https://www.naibi.net/A/CHARLO.pdf, posted there Aug. 25, 2024. Comments in brackets are mine for clarification purposes after consulting with Franco. Numbers by themselves on the left margin are the page numbers of Franco's pdf. This short note, besides documenting the presence of naibi (as the earliest playing cards in Italy were called), also offers some insight about the scarcity of such records.

Florence 1430: Naibi found again

Franco Pratesi

1. Introduction

My research on the Magistracy of Minors prior to the Principality section has been characterized by a long reading of lists of inventories of household goods forming part of inheritances. Each manuscript is much thicker than average in size and there are always thousands of items listed. The effort required is evident. There was, however, a singular case in which even the search for the manuscript was laborious: No. 164, Sample of inventories and revised accounts for the quarters of Santo Spirito and Santa Croce: 1 Oct. 1429 - 20 Mar. 1430/1, 239 ff.

This member of the series was listed as unavailable for consultation because it was being restored. After checking for months to see if it had finally returned to the library, I decided to ask about it, suspecting some error in the digital cataloging systems. In fact, I was informed almost immediately that the manuscript was in fact back on site and would be available for a future request, as they had currently included it among the manuscripts available for online requests.

The story does not end here, because in the meantime the reservation system for access to the reading room had changed, and the new national system of requests was based on an inventory taken directly from the local one of some time before, which means that in the national system, No. 164 was still not available for reading in the room and therefore not bookable. Somehow, the archivist on duty in the reading room then managed to make the program understand that I was entitled to the consultation, and so the story of the search for the manuscript ended.

Once we had the long-awaited object in our hands, the real search inside it began, which ended with the identification of only one pack of naibi. Let's be clear, given the rarity of finds of this kind in the whole series of these manuscripts, one example would already have been no small thing. What makes this find special, however, is the fact that I had already encountered these same naibi as ”naibi tristi” [worn-out naibi] in a previous register, and I had reported them together with others for sale in San Giovanni Valdarno. [note 1]

The first inventory was from the year 1424; this one is from the year 1430, so we can check if something had changed in the meantime and benefit from a better reading of some names.

2. New data and comparison with that previously



 

ASFi, Magistracy of Minors prior to the Principality, No. 164, f. 217r – detail
(Reproduction prohibited)

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1. https://www.naibi.net/A/NAIBBI.pdf

 
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Report done by me, Carlo di Ser Tomaso Aldobrandi, Accountant of the Officials of the Minors of the quarters of Santo Spirito and Santa Croce, to whom this Inheritance of Carlo di [son of] Matteo dello [son of] Scielto and under their government and of the substance with the above written the twenty-first day of August 1430 and of the balance made by the custodian, that is, Giovanni di [son of] Matteo dello [son of] Scielto, from the twenty-first of June 1429 up to the twenty-first of August 1430, that is

The following are the remaining persons of said Inheritance:
Scielto di [son of] Carlo, age in years xii
Alessandro di [son of] Carlo age in years around xiii
Caterina di [daughter of] Carlo age in years xiii
They have in the present catasto [tax assessment] L vi s 1 d 5
There follow eight inventory pages of household goods, one and a half of real estate, and finally a list of debtors. Unlike the majority of cases, here the items (possibly grouped) have associated [with them] the corresponding value. The group of objects of interest to us, valued at ten soldi in total, is the following: iii Jars, ii Candle holders, ii Wooden salt cellars, 1 Wooden ink pot, ii Earthen bowls, 1 Pack [paio = pair] of naibi, 1 Iron ladle.

The main real estate assets were two farms with houses and other properties, one in Val Marina and one in Monte San Savino. In this case, it was clearly not a rich Florentine family of merchants with houses and land in the countryside: this was a family that based its income on agricultural work; like most of these country families, it did not yet have a surname. Among other things, this can provide us with a further useful detail to define the context for the use of naibi, the only item in the inventory of specific interest to us.
ASFi, Magistracy of Minors prior to the Principality, N. 164, c. 220r - detail
(Reproduction prohibited)
 
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It is useful to compare what was found in 1430 with the corresponding elements recorded six years prior: the following table shows the comparison of the entries in the two inventories.

The first list includes 15 objects of ten different types; the second, 12 of seven types; the entire group is valued at 10 soldi in both cases. I do not believe that at the time we can speak of a devaluation of the lira capable of compensating for the decrease in the goods, while it seems plausible that the group of objects maintained more or less the same value even if missing three elements.

4. Comments and conclusion

An important consideration is that this is still a presumed value for objects put up for sale. This is significant because the value no longer depends directly on that of the new product: there may be objects that even after prolonged use maintain their value almost unchanged and are widely requested by the public, while there may be others that were originally very expensive but with a value reduced to almost zero even after limited use.

The previous consideration is particularly relevant for playing cards in general, and here in particular for naibi. What can be the value of a used pack of cards in general? They are not objects that can be used for several different purposes: they are only used for playing, but in order to be used, it is not necessary that the pack of cards was originally of superior quality; what is required is that all the cards in the deck are still present and that each one is still of sufficient quality, without obvious signs of wear, such as creases or worse, tears. Not even one card in the deck, if covered, should be easily recognizable from the others. Statistically, it took very little to reduce a deck of new cards to an object absolutely worthless, at least in the sense that no one would decide to buy it.

It also seems significant to me that we find these naibi, which had already been indicated as worn-out, in a group of objects put up for sale together. It seems probable to me that it is precisely thanks to this grouping that we find the news we were looking for about the naibi present in the house. I imagine that the battered naibi themselves would not even have been listed if they had not been bundled with other objects of little value, so as to constitute a saleable unit

I do not think that one can give importance to the fact that the naibi of the same deck were indicated as worn-out in 1424 and without specifications in 1430; obviously, their quality could not have improved in the meantime. It would have been easier to accept an indication in the opposite sense; but on reflection, any significant variation could not have been expected for objects kept in custody, except in the case of deletions from the list due to sales or other reasons.

A deck of cards with signs of use was not always an object to be thrown away; it could still be used in the family; at most, it could be a memento to be kept anyway, even without being usable for playing; that is, it could have an emotional value, perhaps as a memory of pleasant times gone by. All this did not change the estimate of its current value in relation to the money that could be obtained from


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an upcoming sale, an estimate that could not take into account anything other than the price that someone would decide to pay to purchase it.

Beyond the specific case, I believe that the above can also serve as an explanation for the fact that both the naibi before and the playing cards after, the triumphs in particular, are only very rarely present in the inventories of the [inherited] household goods found in the houses of the heirs.

Florence, 08.25.2024

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