The Circulation of Interpersonal Credit in Renaissance Florence

Abstract

AbstractWe analyze a network of 3,590 interpersonal credit ties among Renaissance Florentine elite households to determine how Florentine personal credit was socially structured. We assess the network in light of various social and economic motivations Florentines might have had to exchange credit with each other. We explore the extent of participation by people from different categories, such as neighborhoods, factions, and guilds, and we determine whether loans flowed primarily within or between such groupings. We observe considerable homophily within families and neighborhoods, but also extensive circulation of credit among the most commercially and politically active Florentines. The overall connectivity of this network of interpersonal credit transactions resembles the social structure of other contemporaneous Florentine networks, such as marriage and business, suggesting that interpersonal credit was an important and distinct domain in which elite membership was confirmed and elite social solidarity achieved.