Davide Cristoferi, Inside and Outside a Monopoly: Transhumant Pastoralists and the Public Management of Pastures in Southern Tuscany (14th–15th c.)

TOME LXII 2024
P. 35-56
Online publication date: 
10/15/2024
Keywords: 
Transhumance, Dogana dei Paschi, vergaria, Tuscany, late Middle Ages
Abstract: 

This article focuses on the interaction between transhumant pastoralists and Sienese officials within the public management of pastures in the late medieval city-state of Siena. Between 1353 and 1419, a monopolistic system of accessing common and private pastures in Southern Tuscany, called Dogana dei Paschi, was developed and established by Siena by means of law enforcement, commons expropriation and military conquest. The aim was to provide winter grazing to transhumant herds from the Apennines, the Latium and the Sienese territory in exchange of fiscal revenues. The Dogana, however, suffered from external competition and lack of control, while highly depending on foreign herds from beyond the Sienese borders. Outside the Sienese monopoly of pasturages, transhumant pastoralists were entrepreneurs, livestock owners, and shepherds with freedom of movement because of their citizenship, while under the rule of the Dogana they formed an heterogeneous pastoral community, called vergaria, provided with a special legal status, rights and duties. In both cases, pastoralists and the vergaria were in constant bargaining with Sienese officials in order to be able to graze as much and to pay as less as possible. In this regard, they contributed to shaping the legal framework of the Dogana. Examining archival records from Siena, such as laws, deliberations and trials recorded in the 14th and 15th centuries, this paper explores the legal definition, regulation and perception of transhumant pastoralists in Tuscany. It moreover analyses their bargaining power and interactions with Sienese officials concerning frauds, collusion and trespassing inside and outside Sienese borders, in order to shed light on the social structure and provenance of herders and livestock owners in late medieval Tuscany.