...tre cassette entroivi nelle due, due tasche di scritture di banbagia e alchuna carta di pecora. E nellaltra cassetta avea uno suggello darjento e uno cristallo piccolo.
Of the eighteen folios comprising the dossier of cloth merchant Simone Baroncelli, only three contain an inventory of his moveable goods, many of which were commonplace items in medieval Florentine households. On the third of these three folios, however, is a remarkable find: a listing of, “all the books and writings found at the Arte di Calimala (the cloth finishers guild)," one of medieval Florence's most wealthy and powerful professional organizations. The folio in Simone's dossier not only contains a list of several books, notebooks, and accounting documents produced for the guild, it also reveals details about the materials the accounts were recorded on and clues as to how the guild's financial records were organized.
The inventory begins by noting that several sheets of sheepskin parchment, accompanied by over a dozen parchment-bound books and notebooks, were collected in two cotton-wrapped bundles and stored in two of the three large cases inventoried. The books mentioned were of different sizes, some fabricated from full-, half-, or quarter-sized sheets, others produced by gathering multiple sheets of writing thickly together, and still others made from only a few fastened sheets of paper or parchment. Some of the writings were also bound and covered in parchment, while others remained as stand-alone loose sheets. The accounts were written by a few named authors, including Pagolo di Pistoia, Michele Baroncelli, and the decedent Simone Baroncelli himself, and chronicled several individuals' transactions, including those of a woman named Monna Ginevra, for instance. Along with the writings' contents and physical characteristics, the inventory noted the books' shelf marks, indicating what series the accounts belonged to within the guild's record-keeping system (marked with an "A" or classified as personal accounts, for example).
Aside from these books and writings and the details included about them, the inventory lists several accessories necessary to support the guild's financial activities. In the third box, separate from those containing the books, several seals used to authenticate the records were found, including one made of crystal and another of silver. Two leather pouches, one designated to send materials to the bank or counting house and another for records that needed to be sealed or stamped, were also listed among these goods. Six canvas money bags, presumably used to transport currency for safekeeping were also items that supported the management of the guild's finances.