Abstract

This paper illustrates the University of Turin’s budgeting for professor salaries in the fifteenth century. «Pro Studio» funds were strictly managed by seigneurial power (Prince Ludovic of Achaea and, from 1418, Savoy dukes), which in the first two decades levied extraordinary taxes on the city of Turin and major towns in the principality and also attempted to tax local ecclesiastical institutions. In 1424, the Duke of Savoy, Amedeo VIII, opted for an ordinary tax deriving from the reform of the «gabella» levied on salt in Piedmont, a tax that was soon replaced with a «pro Studio» ducal contribution and a tax paid by the Commune of Turin. The analysis of surviving financial records of the Commune revealed various sources of public revenue that were paid by the city into university salaries. Of these, the most important was from the second half of the fifteenth century: the «gabella grossa».