Liazos, ArianeSmail, Daniel L.Spitaleri, Roxana P.2026-05-0120262026-05-012026Spitaleri, Roxana P.. 2026. The Poor in Renaissance Florence: A Comparative Study of the Fifteenth-Century Republic and the Ducal Regime of Cosimo I. Masters Thesis, Harvard University Division of Continuing Education.32671284https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42736360This thesis examines how public policies toward the poor evolved in Renaissance Florence under two distinct political regimes: the fifteenth-century oligarchic republic and the sixteenth-century princely state of Cosimo I de’ Medici. Combining political philosophy, moral thought, and empirical analysis, it investigates whether forms of government shaped assistance to the poor and whether political and moral ideas translated into concrete public interventions, particularly during moments of crisis. By comparing republican and princely governance within the same urban context, the study addresses a gap in Renaissance historiography, which has traditionally privileged republican ideology while paying less attention to non-republican states and to the relationship between ideas and social policy. The first part reconstructs the intellectual frameworks through which poverty was understood. Chapter II shows that Renaissance political thought treated assistance to the poor less as a policy objective than as an indicator of legitimacy. Republican writers invoked poverty to validate claims of justice and civic harmony, while tolerating sharp exclusions from political participation and material improvement. Princely writers, by contrast, framed concern for the poor within a language of mutua caritas, or reciprocity, and presented protection of the vulnerable as evidence of benevolent authority, preserving elements of medieval political theology while recasting them in moral and humanist terms. Chapter III demonstrates that fifteenth-century moral philosophy, shaped by Christian doctrine and humanist ethics, legitimated wealth and disciplined the poor, treating poverty as a condition to be managed rather than remedied. A decisive rupture occurred with Juan Luis Vives in the early sixteenth century, who reframed poverty as a human-made condition requiring organized state intervention, regardless of constitutional form. The final part tests these intellectual frameworks against empirical evidence. Chapter IV combines quantitative data on wages, prices, and wealth distribution with archival analysis of public policies during the famines of 1411 and 1557. It shows that most Florentines lived at or near subsistence level and that the condition of the working poor deteriorated over time. Although both regimes made efforts to alleviate poverty, such interventions were typically confined to moments of crisis, such as periods of famine. Within this shared pattern, their responses nevertheless differed in timing, moral framing, and administrative ambition. The oligarchic republic acted reactively under fiscal and institutional constraints, whereas Cosimo I articulated a more systematic and moralized approach to regulation. The thesis concludes that regime type mattered less in determining whether the poor were assisted than in shaping how assistance was justified and administered, revealing the limits of Renaissance political thought in translating ethical concern into sustained social policy.application/pdfenCosimo IFlorencepoorprincelyRenaissancerepublicHistoryThesis or Dissertation2026-05-010009-0001-8274-2897