Accesso al credito e beni di consumo nel Regno di Napoli (sec. XV). Il valore plurimo delle cose

With an approach aimed at analyzing the multiple value of objects of consumption in the fifteenth century Southern Italy, the paper proposes the results of a research conducted on the two and only Libri Giornali of the Strozzi bank in Naples (dated 1473 and 1476). People turned to the bank for various reasons, but mainly in order to access credit, which was easily provided by Florentine bankers. In addition to the Aragonese Crown, lords, high officials, merchants, artisans, and those able to discharge the debt, contracted in many cases (as the same causal statements of the accounts stated) especially to afford the purchase of a good or an object. And the objects are very often luxury; they are jewels, fine tissues, garments, manuscript or printed books, spices, but also shoes, riding saddles and food. Each of them satisfies a pleasure or a need, fulfills the individual or collective taste of the time, and possesses a value that is, at the same time, as well as material, symbolic, psychological, social, cultural, political, economic and more. The intent is to reflect on the different meanings and values attributed to the object or objects on which the attention and interest of the fifteenth-century consumer fell the most, for the possession of which - as attested by the bank’s accounts - it was customary to recur to the credit market.