Filippo di Amedeo de Peruzzi

Peruzzi and his family founded one of the great banking and trading companies of the medieval era with offices in Naples, Paris, and London, as well as throughout Italy, Sicily, and Asia Minor.

Filippo di Amideo Peruzzi, better known as Filippo di Peruzzi was born in Florence around 1240. As a young man he supported the Ghibellines, one of the two Florentine political factions, and after their defeat he lived for some time in exile as a mercenary. According to the historical records, by 1274 he succeeded to return to Florence and start business.

Membership in the Arte di Calimala, a guild of merchants and cloth finishers, and the Arte del Cambio, the guild of bankers and moneylenders gave the framework for the business operations of the Peruzzi.

They actively participated in international trade, both in luxury commodities such as finished cloth, and in the ordinary such as large quantities of grain. Banking activities of the firm included lending money with interest to the highest social class, to kings, popes, and nobility, as well as to various businessmen throughout Europe.

By 1300 structure of the company was established with the capital assets in that year amounted to 124,000 lire or 85,000 gold florins. Partners of the firm could own around 40 percent of the firm’s shares, while the members of the Peruzzi family always had control of the company. The investors were attracted to the Peruzzi Company by the guarantee of a fixed annual rate of 8 percent return.

Filippo was also interested in politics, as means of improving his business. In 1284 he was appointed a prior, that is, councilor in Florence, and ten years later he became a captain of Orsanmichele, an important religious confraternity that distributed alms to the poor.

In a meantime, the Peruzzi also acquired real estate in the Florentine countryside, and short before his death in 1303, he was consecrated as a knight.

Thus, his life’s work and elevation of his family above the common merchants into the popolo grasso, the wealthy merchant class in time of his death was realized.