Margherita Datini

The 252 extant letters of Margherita Datini (b. 1360–d. 1423) to her husband, the merchant Francesco di Marco Datini (b. c. 1335–d. 1410), represent the largest collection of early Italian vernacular correspondence by a lay woman to have come to light. They are all the more unusual because Francesco’s letters to Margherita also survive, enabling us to follow a marital conversation that continued for almost three decades. The couple’s exchanges reveal a very different portrait of marriage than was envisaged by prescriptive texts of the period. Or rather, the letters provide evidence that Margherita and Francesco had a conventional enough view of how their relationship should be conducted, but the challenges of everyday life in an urban environment riven by factionalism and competitiveness forced them often to ignore the gender stereotypes of their day. Fourteenth-century advice manuals, such as Paola da Certaldo’s Libro di buoni costumi, described female virtue in narrow terms and demarcated the roles of husband and wife strictly, recommending that women be confined to the household and restrained from participating in men’s affairs. Margherita, however, collaborated in the supervision of Francesco’s building projects, even occasionally pursued the merchant’s debtors, and offered her husband shrewd advice, revealing the extent to which she was fully conversant with contemporary politics. She was cognizant of the need to participate in the social networking that was a fundamental feature of Florentine society and cultivated the magnate connections of her own aristocratic family to secure useful allies for the more humbly-born Francesco. Margherita’s inability to bear children was a source of bitter disappointment to the couple, but it indubitably facilitated her ability to take on a greater role in her husband’s affairs than was usual. The Datini couple’s letters also reveal many details about their households in Florence and Prato. The routines and experiences of the servants, neighbors, friends, and relatives with whom Margherita associated are documented in colloquial and evocative prose, providing a rare view of women’s social interactions and emotions in a period blighted by recurring outbreaks of plague, an unstable political climate, and difficult economic conditions.