Using accounting records to enhance an understanding of a seventeenth-century Italian feudal community: the case of the Commune of Penne (1664-1690)

Through the analysis of recently discovered accounting records of the Commune of Penne, this study is concerned with enhancing an understanding of a seventeenth-century Southern Italian feudal commune. Surviving public records and other primary sources are used to both elucidate the commune’s organization, administration and accounting procedures and to portray key aspects of community life through a classification analysis of the entries contained in the town Register of the Exchequer. The analysis of these original documents discloses the ways in which money was spent in the Commune of Penne in the period 1664–90, thus specifying the major homogeneous groups of expenses of the Commune and thereby elucidating the adopted social priorities and concerns of the time. Such studies are important in enhancing an understanding of life and times in specific local, time-specific contexts, thus offering the potential to augment our literature on social history.