Deception and Marriage Strategy in Renaissance Florence: The Case of Women's Ages

Abstract

Sostrata. Io ho sempre mai sentito dire che egli é uffizio d'un prudente pigliare de' cattivi partiti el migliore.— Niccoló MachiavelliIn their magisterial work, Les Toscans et leurs families, David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber examined in considerable detail a problem faced by many historians studying late medieval tax censuses such as the Florentine catasto: how much credence to give to the ages of individuals whose names are included in these documents? Following a lengthy investigation of the catasto of 1427-1429, they reached the wistful conclusion that “Tuscans in 1427 had only a vague knowledge of their own ages or were loath to report them accurately.“ In the course of their inquiry, Herlihy and Klapisch compared the ages of some individuals recorded in the catasto with the ages of the same individuals found in other documents.

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