ABSTRACT
One of the problems in study of the princely court is to establish the contours and character of court personnel.l For the Este court at Ferrara there exist numerous series of financial records that help us to do this.2 Two of these series are the Bolletta dei salariati and the Memoriale del soldo. These have often been used in the past, but only to ascertain the presence of specific individuals (such as the architect Biagio Rossetti) or of specific groups (such as musicians).3 The aim here is to study one year's list as a whole. First the character of the document must be established. The Bolletta and the Memoriale were different in scope, layout and purpose. Broadly speaking, the Bolletta tends to list those who served the prince, while the Memoriale listed those who serviced the court. Thus the Bolletta includes judicial counsellors, ambassadors, accountants, notaries, and officials both major and minor; while the Memoriale includes the palace staff of guards, footmen, cooks, falconers, stable-lads and muleteers. Few appear in both lists (about two dozen in 1494, including for example, Biagio Rossetti). Secondly, where the Bolletta is organised by name, with most individuals being given a double-page spread on which both debits and credits were entered, the Memoriale is a day-to-day 'journal' of payments, with each individual identified by name and number. Thirdly, the type of payment recorded seems to be different: the Memoriale appears to list cash payments actually made; the Bolletta lists assignments and debts as well.
