La produzione tessile nella Roma medievale. Una rilettura attraverso le fonti scritte e materiali

Textile manufacturing had an important role in the economic development of many Medieval cities, as demonstrated by both written sources and material documents. The research on textile production in post-Classical Rome which has been conducted up until now seems to delineate a rather meager panorama both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view. The objective of this study is to re-examine a series of written and material documents focusing on the types of fibers that were used, the characteristics of production, the physiognomy of the artisans and of the buyers and managers working in this sector, the topographical locations of the places where the textiles were manufactured and sold, and the connection with the ancient traditions. The data that is presented and discussed here, despite their heterogeneous chronology and characteristics and difficulties in interpretation, reveal a situation for the 9th -12th centuries that is much more lively and complex than has been previously described and make it possible to formulate a hypothesis concerning the precocity of textile production in Rome with respect to many other Italian cities with distinctly “industrial” profiles. This fascinating possibility, if validated by other research, would integrate the development of production in the city into the evolutionary model of economic events in Medieval Rome, as has been recently sustained by authoritative historiographical studies. © 2020, Edizioni all'Insegna del Giglio s.a.s.. All rights reserved.