Tarot History Forum

The information is taken from ...

Un'industria di lusso al servizio del grande commercio:
il mercato dei drappi serici e della seta nella Firenze del Quattrocento
Sergio Tognetti
L.S. Olschki, 2002 - 218 pages
http://books.google.de/books?id=GIa2AAA ... rch_anchor

I've only an excerpt of the appendix of the work. From this view alone it seems not possible to define the terminus "opera", which plays a deciding role in the questions about the income of common people.

Overviews:







The lower classes are the social winners of the big plague 1348-1350.
The following period shows a specific Florentine crisis, starting with the war of eight saints ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Eight_Saints
The best situation for the lower classes is the period 1394-1430.
In the period, when the renaissance produced a lot of wealth for the higher classes (second half of 15th century), the lower classes drop down from the rich table.
As lower classes are here assumed land workers and the helpers of the Muratori (qualified building worker). Both groups earn about 60% of the income of the qualified worker.

The list don't show, how large the part of "lower class" persons had been at specific time. It might well be, that in the specific time the part of the qualified persons has grown and the part of the unqualified persons was diminished in the 2nd half of 15th century. On the other hand the wealthy Florence under Lorenzo de Medici strands in very poor period under Savonarola, a clear sign, that social problems existed.

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Salary







Food prices

Grano




Vino




Olio




Carne



Pisces



Legumi



Wood for burning




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Well, our question should be, what you would get for the value of a cheap Trionfi deck in the 1440s and 1450s, which is about 9 - 12 Soldi. In the lists of Franco Pratesi the price is twice recorded as lower than 9 soldi:

1452-12-12 Florence - 8 Trionfi decks (8 Soldi)
Acquired by: Silk dealers Lorenzo di Bartolo / Matteo di Zanobi
From artist: Antonio di Dino

1455-04-02 Florence - 12 Trionfi decks (Piccolo 7.42 Soldi)
Acquired by: Silk dealers Lorenzo di Bartolo / Matteo di Zanobi
From artist: "uno dipintore"

For other price categories, only from sales and aquire actions of the silk dealers and the Lapini family (46 activities), I get:

about 16 deals in the category 9-12 soldi
about 16 deals in the category 14-20 soldi
about 5 in the category 25 soldi and higher (only from Manetto Agnoli)
and the rest is not clear.
(somewhere I miscounted, later I'll find the precise numbers)

The number of traded decks in the cheaper deals is higher than in the other deals. If I would include the other documents, the expensive deals would increase more than the cheaper deals, but the number of decks in the cheaper category would stay higher than the number of decks in the higher categories.

I get the following for 1451.

Agreed average wages of field dayworkers "braccianti" per job -
1451 - 10 soldi, 12 denari.

Agreed average wages of construction workers per job (surely this is per day as well)
1451 - masons "muratori" get an average of 18 soldi, 9 denari.
- basic workers "manovali" get 9 soldi, 6 denari.

Meat -
1451 - 21 denari for 339,5 grams (one or two servings) of mutton/lamb (castrone).
- 20 denari for 339,5 grams of veal (vitella).

Fish -
1451 - carp (tinche) 27 denari for 339,5 grams
- pike (lucci) 23 denari
- fish from the Arno river, 42 denari (must have been some good fish)

Vegetables (all beans, actually) -
1451 - chickpeas, 36 soldi per "measure" (staio)
- peas, 28 soldi, 4 denari
- fava beans, 17 soldi, 6 denari

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A mason might make 150 soldi in a week in 1451 (working six days at that rate), his helpers half that.

So by way of a very inadequate comparison, the minimum wage in France is 9 euros 40 cents per hour, but since at least 25 per cent of that is immediately given back to the government(s), the effective take home money is 7 euros. Most people work 39 hours (lucky who can get 35!), so take home is about 270 euros per week. So a Tarot pack costs roughly 5 per cent of weekly wages for a minimum wage worker in France today.

The "manovali", construction guys working with the mason, took home about 75 soldi a week in 1451 (since they would work six days, and no income tax or other payments deducted directly). So a pack of Triumph cards, the cheapest we know of, at 8 soldi, is a little more than 10 per cent of their weekly earnings.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:
So eating was much more costly than a pack of Triumph cards.

Of course. It depends only on the condition, how long you eat ... :-)

Even a humble dayworker could afford a pack after a day's work, but presumably he'd rather eat than play, so it would take some time to save money for such a luxury.
A mason might make 150 soldi in a week in 1451 (working six days at that rate), his helpers half that.

You seem to assume, that an "opera" means a day's work. This is NOT a clear point. It seems more plausible, that it mean's a work calculated to be done in a week.

If you were right, a muratori in Florence would earn as much as a noble man in Ferrara, who had to care for 1-2 servants and a horse and noble clothes. This seems rather not plausible.
Or the Lira Marchesana in Ferrara must have been much more than a Lira in Florence. This seems also not plausible.

It seems that an "opera" was calculated according a specific usual work, which should be done by him in one week. Maybe 500 or 1000 stones or something like this. If he could do more, then he got more. If he made less, he got less. Likely they had calculation tables for all usual works of a muratori ... these tables are also used for modern building working. Likely they were set up by the relevant guild. So this was an "opera", a specific definition.
Likely the opera was arranged in a manner, that a common muratori could do it in a week. A very good muratori might then make 150 or 200%
The we would have, that a common Muratori would have had about 4 Lira or 80 Soldi a month. And the Muratori helper had something like 2 1/2 Lira or 50 Soldi.

Servants in Ferrara had a wage between a 1/2 and 2 Lira, possibly connected with something to eat and a room to sleep.
Then the relations have some logic.

But we should search for some confirmation or for contradictions to this logic, I can't say from my limited information, that "this was so".

Well, you might be right about a week "per l'opera", but "bracciante" means "day labourer", where people get hired for a day and get paid at the end of the day. There is no longer term contract, and no obligation to show up the next day. But obviously, most will want to finish the season in the field, whatever it is.

It could be in the text, what he means here and there about "l'opera", but parts of the text are missing.

Maybe "the work" just means any agreed upon amount of time, in which case we really don't know how to define a specific amount. The mason I worked for sometimes had 4 jobs going at the same time. If those masons worked like that, and all the jobs took a week (running concurrently), then the mason could make 80 soldi in a week, and his team (helpers) could make their 50.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Well, you might be right about a week "per l'opera", but "bracciante" means "day labourer", where people get hired for a day and get paid at the end of the day. There is no longer term contract, and no obligation to show up the next day. But obviously, most will want to finish the season in the field, whatever it is.

It could be in the text, what he means here and there about "l'opera", but parts of the text are missing.

There's a snippet edition in the web. I gave the link in the first thread.

Maybe the word bracciante has transformed with the time. Here ...
http://en.bab.la/dictionary/italian-english/bracciante
... the word isn't translated with any connection to days.

I don't get from the texts, how many denari in a soldo. Do you know? We could more easily compare the price of a pack of cards with the price of a 1/3 kilo of mutton or veal, then.

Huck wrote: Maybe the word bracciante has transformed with the time. Here ...
http://en.bab.la/dictionary/italian-english/bracciante
... the word isn't translated with any connection to days.

Obviously the word is based on "arms", so it has the same meaning as "hired hands" in English (my French-Italian dictionary translated it as "journalier"). So "a pair of arms" for harvesting, usually. But this kind of work has been traditionally settled on a day to day basis, not at the end of a longer period. I have done much of that kind of work myself.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Maybe "the work" just means any agreed upon amount of time, in which case we really don't know how to define a specific amount. The mason I worked for sometimes had 4 jobs going at the same time. If those masons worked like that, and all the jobs took a week (running concurrently), then the mason could make 80 soldi in a week, and his team (helpers) could make their 50.

There is something like cars and streets for cars today ... and work is organized different.

If you want to build a house, and you asks an undertaker, he makes an offer, and he organizes this offer according specific lists (formed from that, what he thinks, how quick he can do it). Maybe another undertaker has cheaper lists, and you take the other. Then you make a contract ... and according the contract the undertaker makes other arrangements, that he has the manpower to get the job done. Sometimes he's winning in the arrangement, sometimes he loses and often he ends with trouble with you, if he had attempted to be too cheap ... :-)

I don't get from the texts, how many denari in a soldo. Do you know? We could more easily compare the price of a pack of cards with the price of a 1/3 kilo of mutton or veal, then.

12 Denari = 1 Soldo; 20 Soldi = 1 Lira.

So you get a kilo of mutton for 5 soldi (1 kilo for 63 denari; 63/12=5,25 soldi). For a cheap Triumph pack at 10 soldi, you could get two kilos of meat.

For my 10 euro pack of cheap cards, I could buy a little over 1 kilo today (sometimes almost 1 1/2 kilos).