‘THE HIGHEST EXPRESSION OF EARLY BOOKKEEPING’
FLORI, Lodovico.
Trattato del modo di tenere il libro doppio domestico col suo esemplare … Per uso delle case, e collegii della medesima Compagnia nel Regno di Sicilia.
Rome, Lazzari Varese, 1677.
Three parts in one vol., folio, pp. [iv], 126, [2]; ff. [ii, including special title], 32, [2, without blank 2H6, with a nineteenth-century blank leaf inserted in its place, crudely repaired at foot]; ff. [i], 50, [3]; complete with two folding printed tables at end of part I; woodcut devices to titles and at end, woodcut initials and headpieces, typographical ornaments; foxing and browning in places (most severe to part I), intermittent light waterstain to upper outer corner of first half of text and final few leaves, minor restoration to the gutter of a few leaves, repaired tear to gutters of 3A1.4; bound in contemporary vellum over boards, author and title in manuscript to spine; front endpapers renewed; three manuscript slips loosely inserted (see below).
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Trattato del modo di tenere il libro doppio domestico col suo esemplare … Per uso delle case, e collegii della medesima Compagnia nel Regno di Sicilia.
Rare sole reissue of the even rarer first edition (Palermo, 1636) of ‘the highest expression of early bookkeeping. One has to reach the nineteenth century to find another author of Flori’s calibre’ (Peragallo).
Flori, an Italian Jesuit who spent most of his life in Sicily, wrote his Trattato for the benefit of the island’s Jesuit houses. ‘It is an outstanding work. Flori’s precise and clear-cut definitions and his illustrations of double-entry books testify to his firm grasp of the subject of bookkeeping. He was well acquainted with the writings of previous authors, whom he divides into two groups: writers of mercantile bookkeeping, such as Paciolo, Casanova, Manzoni, Tagliente, Moschetti, Grisogono, and others; and writers of administrative bookkeeping (libri nobili), such as Simon Stevin and Don Angelo Pietra. He believes Pietra’s work is of such a high order that it cannot be improved upon, but he is induced to write his book because Pietra’s work was unknown in Sicily. He naturally follows Pietra very closely, but his more detailed and careful elucidation of bookkeeping principles and technique distinguishes his book as a masterpiece in its own right. ...
‘Flori … also states the object of his work: to write and arrange his book so clearly that one could easily trace the course of transactions through the accounts and also learn how income and expenses are properly allocated to the fiscal periods in which they arose. The ledger, he said, should be kept up to date so that information on the financial status of the monastery would always be available. This is the first time that an author mentions the placing of transactions in their proper fiscal periods; Flori makes it one of the principal points of his book. This is a great advance and shows Flori’s deep understanding of bookkeeping … Flori’s outline of a crude petty-cash system is also of interest. It is much nearer to modern practice than Paciolo’s spese di casa, which is nothing more than a cash allowance for household expenses … The first mention of a suspense account (conto pendente) is found in Flori’s book … Flori also was the first to distinguish between the trial balance, ledger closing, and financial statements. His precise definitions, his profound knowledge and very detailed elucidation of bookkeeping principles and mechanics, all contributed to make his book the highest expression of early bookkeeping. One has to reach the nineteenth century to find another author of Flori’s calibre’ (Peragallo, pp. 83–88).
Flori explicitly conceived his treatise as a guidance for the administration of the Jesuit Province of Sicily: perhaps the most important, both in number of Colleges and in economic weight, a strategic hub of prime relevance for the Order. The Trattato was widely adopted in Sicilian Jesuit Colleges and Houses. This Roman reimpression testifies to a template that became successful well beyond the remits for which it had been conceived.
Our copy seems to have been put to use by an eighteenth-century reader. The three manuscript slips of paper inserted into the work show jottings of accounts: one, dated 1795, on one side totals prices of livestock (including oxen, sheep, and suckling pigs), and on the other shows a list of money owed to various accounts; another is a receipt; the third comprises a fragment of a calculation.
BM STC Italian, p. 349; USTC 1730806; Cerboni, p. 54 (‘raro’); Kress 1433; Kress Italian 181; Sommervogel III, 804–5.1; not in Einaudi. See ICA, p. 3; Peragallo, Origin and evolution of double entry bookkeeping: a study of Italian practice from the fourteenth century (1938).
