Faith, food and benevolentia in the Sarzana Cathedral Chapter: Evidences from the eighteenth century

The study is part of the renewed taken interest by researchers, in the last decades, in the study of the clergy and religious orders from an accounting history perspective (Laughlin 1988, Booth 1993, Quattrone, 2004, Prieto et. al. 2006, Baldarelli, 2013; Gatti, Poli, 2014; Madonna, Maran, Cestari 2014). Undoubted is the economic role played by the clergy in the modern era. Actually churches, monasteries and convents were not mere places of worship or caskets of precious art treasures but they represented a real lintel for the whole economic and social system. They were main custodians of culture and education, acting to form intellectuals able to maintain, enhance and transmit knowledge. In the same development of accounting history a primary role was played by religious. Notable bookkeepers and accountants such as Fra Luca Pacioli, Angelo Pietra and his disciple Lodovico Florio belonged to religious orders (Gallizzi, 2012). Wide were also the patrimonial estates, the buildings, the financial resources and the rights and privileges on property and persons accumulated by the church over the centuries as a result of the endowment of emperors, nobles or more simply by legacies of the faithful (Landi, 2005). In this perspective is the system of the tithe a tax on the property, based on the obligation to pay in nature or in cash a percentage of the product of the land, exact from the church under its authority and for purposes of general interest. The tithe was calculated as one tenth of the net product of the land and hit all owners; the system of the tithe interested mainly cereals, legumes, wine, fruits and livestock. Only since the mid-nineteenth with the Siccardi laws, these kinds of privileges enjoyed until then by the Catholic clergy were abolished (Mellano, 1973; Anselmi, 1993). This work aims to contribute to literature by explaining the different forms and modality by which the Cathedral Chapter, a particular subsystem of the wider clerical world, managed its’s wide landholdings. Basically the study will be focused on the Chapter of the Cathedral of Sarzana an important entity already mentioned in ancient documents such as the Pelavicino code of 1241. More specifically the aim of the study is to highlight the relationships between clergy and rural world among the XVII and XVIII century. The town of Sarzana is a particularly interesting case because it was for several centuries the venue of the ancient Diocese of Luni and consequently an unifying center of ecclesiastical traditions. This ecclesiastical district was identified beyond the political and feudal divisions with that common geographical, linguistic and civil region recognized as "lunensis provincia". Agriculture was the primary industry in the economic system of the town. The most common crops were those of wheat, rye, grapes and, in the hills, the olive. While wheat, rye and oil were sold in the local market of Sarzana, the wine was exported in large quantities even in foreign countries