Agents, authorities, and aqueducts: a book of accounts and water management in fourteenth-century Genoa

Abstract This article examines a little-studied fourteenth-century archival record relating to Genoa’s aqueduct. The aqueduct was a vital source of freshwater to areas within and beyond the city walls. The document is the only surviving record of its kind and the purpose underlying its production is not immediately clear. This paper places the source in the context of Genoa’s physical water infrastructures and what we know about their regulation. It argues that it is a record of sums paid to an agent of Genoese authorities for seasonal water access during the (relatively) dry summer of 1356. This study then uses the record to broaden understandings of the execution of water management in medieval Genoa. It illustrates how authorities engaged with a range of actors of different occupations and varied socio-economic status. The transactions reflect not only practical needs but also socio-economic hierarchies, moral and interpersonal expectations, and financial motivations. These dynamics are recognizable both in the entries themselves and through reflection on the role and position of Galeoto, the book’s scribe. While its entries are limited in the information they provide, the interactions that the book records shift focus away from the top-down perspectives of water management in medieval Italian cities gained from statutes, decrees, and other normative sources. Instead, it captures water management as an interpersonal process shaped by overlapping public and private interests–which, in turn, reflect the complexity of social and economic life in medieval Genoa.