FRANCESCO DATINI (1374)

International merchant and banker whose business and private papers, preserved in Prato, constitute one of the most important archives of the economic history of the Middle Ages.

Datini lost both parents, two brothers, and a sister in Prato to the Black Death of 1348.

After a year of apprenticeship to a Florentine shopkeeper, he went in 1350 to Avignon where the wealthy papal court spent its Babylonian Captivity (the name for the papacy´s  exile from Italy, 1309-77). Remaining there for 32 years, he made his fortune by trading in armour, cloth, religious articles, paintings imprted from Florence, jewelry and other objects; he opened a tavern, a draper´s shop and a money-changer´s table.

When the papacy returned to Italy in 1378, Datini followed, moving back to Prato where he opened a cloth manufacturing and importing business.

In 1386 he transferred his headquarters to Florence, continuing to maintain a branch in Avignon. He also opened a series of other offices in Italy and Spain and transacted business in Bruges and London. He diversified his interests joining the silk merchant´s guild of Florence, underwriting insurance and opening a bank. His companies were among the earliest to employ doubleentry bookkeeping, to make extensive use of the bill of exchange (a means of transferring funds abroad and of speculation on rates of exchange) and to use the written check to transfer money.

When the Black Death again struck Florence at the end of the 14th century, Datini fled to Bologna, then returned to Prato, where he spent the rest of his life. His house and the greater part of his fortune were willed to the poor people of Prato.

In 1870, during alterations to the house, his letters, documents and account books were discovered in a pile of sacks stuffed into a disused stairwell; included were some 150,000 letters, more than 500 account books and ledgers, 300 deeds of partnership, 400 insurance policies and thousands of miscellaneous commercial instruments.