Neither Poor nor Rich: Shopping, Investing, and Retiring in Renaissance Europe

This workshop focuses on the middle classes of 15th and 16th-century western Europe. As social and eco- nomic actors, these people in-between – neither the wealthiest nor the destitute – bought, sold, invested, and consumed, in distinctive ways that have been overlooked in much scholarship on the Renaissance. Each exploring a different region in Spain, Italy, and Germany, the papers examine shopping for fashion- able fabrics, managing finances for a comfortable livelihood, and planning for retirement.

Aina Palarea is a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence. She is working on her dissertation entitled “Standards of Living and Consumption Patterns in Late Medieval Catalonia (1400-1460).”

Éric Pecile is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. He is completing his dissertation entitled “Private Wealth, Public Profits: Moral Economies in Sixteenth-Century Italy.” Éric is also a researcher for the Digitally Encoded Census and Information Mapping Archive project.

Johannes Ludwig Maria Pelzl is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence. He also holds a master’s degree in Political Science from Heidelberg University (2017) and another in Economic History from the University of Lund (2018).

To attend this workshop, please RSVP to italian.studies@utoronto.ca. One day before the event you will receive an email containing access information for the workshop.