TRANSLATION:
Fourth Day of August [1570] Presented herself freely in person Piera, daughter of Giuliano di Andrea da Menabbio, was asked under oath if she had worked in the house of any of these [Jews: crossed out] residents of Pescia; she replied, "I have worked only in the house of these Jews." When asked what services she performed for them in the house, she replied, "I did their laundry and when I brought back their clean clothes, they would have me do some housework, like cleaning the tinware, cleaning the copperware, washing the dishes, scrubbing down the tables and such things, also sweeping and tidying up. For services like these, they would give me a bit of flour, or else a bit of bread or a bit of oil. One time they gave me eight coppers in money for carrying a lot of water to their house." When asked if there had been any Christian maidservants or menservants or wet-nurses in the house, she replied, "I don't know if there was anyone other than a sister of mine who now lives in Collodi. She stayed in their house on Fridays and Saturdays in order to make fires, because they won't touch fire." Formal warning [to the witness regarding the veracity of her statement.]

TEXT:
Die 4 augusti [1570] Constituta personalmente Piera di Giuliano d'Andrea da Menabbio, et con giuramento domandata se habbi praticato in casa di nessuno di questi [ebrei: depennato] pesciatini, rispose io ho praticato solamente in casa questi ebrei. Domandata che servizii gli habbi fatto in casa, rispose io gli facevo e bucati de li panni, et quando gli riportavo e panni imbianchi, mi facevano far fare qualche cosa per casa, come nettare li stagni, nettare i rami, rigovernare i piatti, lavare le tavole et cose simili, spazzare et rassettargli, et per questi simili servitii mi davano quando un poco di farina, un poco di pane, un poco di olio, et una volta mi diede otto soldi che gli fu portata assai acqua in casa. Domandata se sa che vi sian state alcune fanciulle per serve, o servitori o balie cristiane, rispose io non so che vi sia stato altro che una mia sorella che sta adesso a Collodi, che stava in casa loro a far loro il fuoco il venerdì e'l sabato perchè loro non toccan fuoco. Monit(ore)

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:
Though high life at the Florentine court is amply documented in the granducal archive, the influence of the Medici family extended throughout Tuscany, affecting people at every level of society and in every sphere of activity. This vignette of daily life in Pescia (a small town in northwestern Tuscany between Pistoia and Lucca) emerges in a particularly intriguing historical context.

In the summer of 1570, Grand Duke Cosimo I de'Medici and his son Crown Prince Francesco (later Francesco I) were gathering data regarding the state of Jewish settlement in the Florentine dominion, an essential preliminary to the creation of the first Florentine Ghetto in 1571. An official census was taken of all Jews and legal depositions were solicited from anyone willing to talk about their experiences with these "strangers next door."

Piera was in fact working for the well-documented "Emanuel di Davit Sforno hebreo da Bologna", agent in Pescia of the great da Pisa family of Jewish bankers. The kind of humble tasks that she describes would have been typical of those carried out by lower servants in any middle class household, with one notable exception--the kindling of fires which observant Jews would have been unable to do for themselves during the Sabbath.

Though Piera was loathe to name names, five other Christian women and two men in fact admitted to having worked for Emanuel, though they usually insisted that their responsibilities were limited to casual outside tasks (doing laundry, carrying water and running errands.) However, a girl named Pasqua noted that on one occasion she helped the Jews prepare sausages ("gl'aiutai punzecchiare loro della salsiccia"), an activity about which we would like to know more.

The general unwillingness to claim too much direct involvement in Jewish domestic affairs is understandable, since one laundress was warned off by her priest and another reached the same conclusion on her own after suffering a miscarriage "due to these Jews." This and a large body of related material is included in "The Prehistory of the Florentine Ghetto: Magistrato Supremo 4449 and 4450", a documentary study now being prepared for publication by The Medici Archive Project.