A Profile of Melis
by Giovanni Padroni

Federigo Melis, born in Florence on August 31st, 1914, studied at the University of Rome, where, in 1939, he took a first-class degree in Economy and Commerce. He was then appointed to a junior, but permanent, teaching post at the same University and in 1948 took the Italian equivalent of a doctoral degree.

In 1949 he was given a lectureship in Economic History at the University of Pisa. He was later awarded a Chair in the same subject at the University of Cagliari, moved to the University of Pisa as a full professor in 1957 and then, in the same capacity, to the University of Florence in 1963, while still continuing to lecture at the University of Pisa.

From 1962 until the time he took up his appointment at Florence he was Dean of the Faculty of Economy and Commerce at Pisa where, moreover, from 1958 to 1962, he was a member of the University Administrative Council.

From 1951 to 1962 he also lectured in the History of Economic Doctrines at the University of Pisa.

In 1960 he was appointed Italy’s permanent member on the Inter-national Maritime History Commission and, from 1963 on, he was also President of the Italian sub-committee of the same body.

In 1961 he was elected a member of Italy’s foremost assembly of historians, the Central Council for Historical Studies, and, furthermore, became the Council’s representative on the International Committee for Historical Sciences. In this capacity he organized the 1965 International Congress of Historical Sciences which took place mainly in Vienna and included some sessions in Munich.

He was also a particularly active member of many other institutions, including the lnstituto di Storia della Tecnica in Milan, editing its edition of source material in that field.

He belonged to various learned academies, including the Royal Flemish Academy of Science, Letters and the Arts. He became a member of the Ferdinando el Catolico Institute of History at Sara-gossa, Spain, of the Petrarch Academy at Arezzo, Italy, of the Lucca Academy of Science, Letters and the Arts, and, many other similar bodies.

Because of his original and conclusive contribution to knowledge in many fields of learning, he was entrusted with numerous inaugural speeches on important, official occasions, such as the fifth centenary celebrations, in 1954, of Amerigo Vespucci’s birth, at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and, the following year, the International Exhibition of the Datini archives at Prato, which he also organized. On both these occasions the President of the Italian Republic was present to hear him. Other such memorable addresses include the one given at the opening of the Pisa sessions of the International Congress on the History of Science in 1956, the speech given at the session held at Prato of the International Archive Congress, the highlight of which was the visit to the Datini exhibition; lastly, the inaugural speech at the official commemoration of Giovanni da Verazzano, given in 1961 in the town he was born in, Greve in Chianti.

Twice he gave the opening address, to mark the beginning of the academic year, at the Lucca Academy (1952 and 1961) and at the Petrarch Academy at Arezzo (1962).
By reading or sending papers, he took part in the International Congresses of Historical Sciences at Rome (1955) and Stockholm (1960); in the International Congress of Renaissance Studies (Florence, 1952); in the International Congress on the History of the Crown of Aragona (Saragossa, 1952); in the International Congress on the History of Discovery (Lisbon, 1960); in the International Conferences on the History of Shipping and Maritime Economy (Stockholm and Lisbon, 1969); in the International Congress on the History of Thermal Baths throughout the World, dealing with certain socio-economic features of the question (Montecatini, 1962); in the Conferences held by the International Maritime History Commission at Venice and Rome (1962-1963); in the International Congress on Public Accountancy and Finance in the 13th-16th Centuries, (Blank-enberge, 1962); in the Congress on the History of Thermal Baths (Salsomaggiore, 1963). He also accepted invitations to lecture in a large number of universities and important cities such as Madrid, Seville, Bâle, Feiburg, Wervicq and Locarno.

Federigo Melis worked with extraordinary devotion for 30 years in the most important archives, together with his own pupils and those of others, entrusted to his guidance by famous scholars in other countries.

His interests, which were many and wide, were centered especially on the period when the economic revival was at its height (14th-16th centuries) and in this field he frequently worked on virtually totally unpublished source material. His most penetrating research was carried out on sectors of economic history which had hitherto been largely neglected or remained incomplete: communications (shipping in particular, where he threw new light on what was a truly revolutionary factor in its evolution, that is, the new way in which freighting was organized in relation to the value of the goods to be transported); banking (his book published in 1955 showed how the origin of modern banking goes back to the 14th century, and provided new information on the birth of financing and operating credit, of correspondence current accounts, of cheques, of cash credit for the supply of goods, etc.); the wool industry (including questions of international trade in this field); accountancy (with interesting analyses of the origin of double entry and of the connection between this and the growth of capitalist business practices).

Federigo Melis left to scholarship a thorough knowledge of medieval accountancy practices and budgeting, business procedure and insurance (he brought fresh light to bear on every detail of this last topic, providing a host of new facts and figures and setting it in its correct economic background, thereby putting the entire question into true perspective). In the field of international trade he made an original reassessment of the part played by numerous cities, ports and markets.

The international fame surrounding the name of Federigo Melis springs above all from the highly fruitful research, begun in 1950, into the Datini archives at Prato, which gave rise to such outstanding publications as “La Mostra internationale dell’Archivio Datini (1955-1956)” and the monumental volume, published in 1962, entitled “As-petti della vita economica medievale (Studi nell’Archivio Datini di Prato).