accounting system of the venerable society of the living and the Dead of Parma in medieval times, The

Accounting History,  May 2003  by Bisaschi, Alberto

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Abstract

The Venerable Society of the Living and the Dead of Parma was formed in 1304, and a large archive of documents relevant to the organisation has survived to the present day. These documents include accounting records which appear to offer some vital clues relevant to the emergence of the double-entry system of accounting. While the Society did not at any stage during its 600 hundred year existence adopt full double-entry accounting, the surviving records examined provide an indication of how the double-entry system may have evolved. In particular, records from the fourteenth century indicate how the Society's record keepers began to adopt the practice of recording precursors to "debit" and "credit" entries in connection with sales and expenditure transactions.

Keywords: medieval non profit entity; Italian medieval accounting; "tabular" accounting system; "Libri Reddictum" (income accounts); double-entry bookkeeping.

Introduction

The Venerable Society of the Living and the Dead of Parma1 was established as a private corporation, more precisely a foundation with legal status, on 27 February 1304 by a deed under the seal of Pietro Zeffi, notary in Parma. The Society was established in honour of God, the Holy Virgin and all the Saints venerated in the Church of Parma, and founded by priests and laymen alike to better administer a patrimony which existed by virtue of donations and bequests to the minor Incumbents of the Cathedral of Parma. The Society had the following institutional objectives:

* to provide suffrages for the souls of benefactors throughout eternity;

* to engage in charitable works to support the town's poor, sick and widows, as well as "girls to be married off who could not afford a dowry;

* to promote the liturgical service of the Cathedral of Parma in the form of Gregorian chant.

The financial means to pursue these objectives came from benefactors' bequests some of which were very considerable - and economic activities. In the course of more than six centuries the Society accumulated an enormous patrimony (including approximately 1,700 hectares of land spread across more than sixty estates, dozens of houses in the city of Parma, farmhouses, mills, and so on) before the Italian Government in 1895 decided to transform it for the benefit of the Civil Hospices. Actual possession was not transferred until 1912 and on 31 October 1915 the Ospedale Maggiore of Parma was founded with the huge patrimony of the Society.2

The six-century old archives of the Society also passed into the possession of the Civil Hospices and then, in the 1920s, to the Public Record Offices of Parma. These archives are one of the most important sources of the economic history of the region, and have survived to the present day almost completely intact. The archives encompass numerous series of books that could open the way to manifold areas of research, including history, economics, law, statistics, farm produce and land policy, sociology and religion. However, the archives have remained mostly unexplored and unpublished due to the great difficulties encountered in accessing them. There are no comprehensive indexes and the Pilotta Palace, where the Record Offices were located, was bombed in 1945.

The research presented here is informed mainly by original documentary sources and, in particular, centres on the analysis of the account books found in the Record Offices of Parma. These books were first examined as a whole, and then the most ancient specimens dating back to the Middle Ages were subject to further analysis. The motive for undertaking this study was the belief that the books - as well as constituting a significant source for understanding the economic activities of the Society - might assist in revealing the evolution of bookkeeping techniques in medieval Italy, including the emergence of the full double-entry system in the fifteenth century.

The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. In the next section further background information on the Venerable Society of the Living and the Dead of Parma is provided. This is followed by a general discussion concerning the Society's archives. Particular sources from the archives are then examined and illustrated in detail. Conclusions arising from this examination are presented in the final section.

The Venerable Society of the Living and the Dead of Parma

The Venerable Society of the Living and the Dead was incorporated in 1304 in the Basilica Cathedral of Parma. Within such cathedral churches were located many priests who held a range of offices and performed special duties. The Basilica Cathedral functioned as the vital centre of the whole town, the place where social and economic activities thrived.

Consistent with the social importance of this setting, benefici (benefices or endowments) had already been instituted in the Cathedral before the tenth century in order to provide an adequate living for the priests in charge.3 From the tenth century to the foundation of the Society in 1304, the number of minor Incumbents grew to about 40. A salient date to search for the actual origin of the Society is 1275, the year when Canon Saladino Baratta made a donation post mortem (after his death) to the Incumbents of the Cathedral.4 The Incumbents thereby found themselves with annuities and a small patrimony to administer, along with an onus to provide suffrages. While the Baratta donation and the establishment of the Society were not simultaneous, it is likely that this donation highlighted the need to establish an organisation in order to better administer assets and to supervise carefully the annexed liens. This would be consistent with the stipulations of Bishop Papiniano, who had delegated his two Vicars to create order where it had previously been lacking (Affo, 1795).