ABSTRACT
Pietro Aretino’s sonnet satirizes the large numbers of Florentines who descended on Rome in 1513, the year the first Medici pope, Leo X, was elected, in the hope of obtaining favours and benefices from the papal court. While there was doubtless a basis of truth to this verse, it only captures a part of the nature of a much more complex phenomenon. The story begins, however, rather further back in time…
1. Foreigners in Rome during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
The return of the papal seat to Rome from Avignon restored vigour to a city that had become a mere shadow of its former self. The exact number of people living in Rome in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries can only be guessed at, as the first census of the Roman population was not carried out until the beginning of the sixteenth century, and there are no fiscal data relative to the previous years that provide reliable figures. Consequently, historians have given vague and at times conflicting estimates. In general, however, it is estimated that at the end of the fourteenth century there were 25,000 inhabitants, rising to 30-35,000 around 1450, to approximately 45,000 in 1480, reaching 55-60,000 in the 1520s, 75,000 in 1550, with the population reaching approximately 100,000 in 1600. This spurt in population growth was due in large part to the numerous immigrants who flocked to the city, and who, it should be pointed out, played a very significant role in various sectors of financial and commercial activity.
