4 Alan Sangster
Double entry bookkeeping had first emerged in Italian banks no later than
the early 13th century ( Sangster, 2016 ). As a shortage of cash and bullion
( Cipolla, 1956 ) created a need for a sound and reliable method of recording
debt, its use spread to Italian merchants ( Martinelli, 1974 ), primarily the
larger international wholesale merchants, with their businesses heavily
dependent on credit and relatively high volume of activity and transaction
values. Because many of the international merchants also acted as agents for
other merchants, this stimulated the need for “the comprehensiveness and
orderliness which double entry did in a sense compel” ( Lane, 1977 , p. 191).
By the mid-15th century, the double entry system had standardized in
each of the principal commercial regions of Italy: Lombardy, Genoa, Tus-
cany (including Florence) and Venice. However, whereas the basic con-
cepts of double entry were clear and defined the method—in the ledger,
make one debit entry and one equal credit entry for each transaction,
include in each entry an indicator showing the location of the contra
entry and record every entry in the same money of account—the con-
struction of each entry, the accounts used, the manner in which each
account was organized, how accounts were balanced and the ways in
which books of account were organized was not standardized. Each firm
did it differently. At a regional level, the double entry account books in
use, the layout of the ledger accounts and the language used in entries var-
ied between Lombardy, Genoa, Tuscany and Venice.
1
Small Italian busi-
nesses based on low-volume-low-transaction-value trade had little need
for anything beyond a simple record of debt to survive. Many contented
themselves with their own forms of single entry bookkeeping, such as can
be seen in the surviving records of merchants in the Tuscan town of Prato
in the 14th century ( Marshall, 1999 ).
Whereas Italian merchants and bankers used double entry, they did not
spread knowledge of the method to non-Italians. As a result, until the late
15th century, double entry was only used by Italians; their foreign agents;
a few southern Germans who had been trained in Italy; and Catalans—
the only region other than Italy that had established its own banks; and
it had also copied the business methods of the Italians ( de Roover, 1963 ;
Edler, 1934 ).
2.1 Education
The Italians were considerably more advanced than the rest of Europe,
not only in their development and use of double entry, but also in their
Florentine-driven system of formal mercantile education: the abaco schools
that began to emerge in the mid-13th century. This was the second stage
in school education. It lasted approximately two years, depending on
the student and was attended by boys, typically when they were 11–14
years of age ( Cherubini, 1996 ; Goldthwaite, 1972 ; Grendler, 1989 , 1990 ,
2002 ; Black, 2007 ).