Arte di Calimala

[4] The merchants of the Arte di Calimala imported woollen cloth from northern France, from Flanders and Brabant, which was dyed, stretched, fulled, calendared and finished in Florence.

With the profits from the cloth trade, closely monitored by the Arte di Calimala itself, and usually constrained within the limitations on usury laid down by the Church, true capitalism emerged in Florence by the thirteenth century.

[9] The earliest documentation of the Arte di Calimala dates circa 1182, in which the Florentine cloth traders were among the first to band together in a confraternity to control the trade that was their livelihood.

With better fortunes in the early fourteenth century, the Scali were procuring wool in England and Burgundy, were active in France and Germany, with factors in Perugia, Milan and Venice, and exported grain from Apulia to Ragusa across the Adriatic, until a liquidity crisis brought them before the Mercanzia and briefly shook Florentine credit abroad.

Here the guild members met weekly to discuss and regulate their closely guarded and exclusive activities, placing all business contention before the council, with the resoundingly Roman name of the Collegio dei Consoli.

At its own expense the corporation maintained an armed night guard protecting the shops and warehouses, and interceded with innkeepers for the lodging of their foreign clients, a service that kept these stranieri under the Calimala's watchful eye.