Catholic churches in Renaissance Florence supported themselves overwhelmingly from the contributions of wealthy citizens. The sale of private chapels within churches to individuals was a significant source of church funds, and facilitated a church construction boom. Chapel sales offered three benefits to churches: prices were usually far above cost; donor/purchasers purchased masses and other tie-in services; and they added to the magnificence of the church because donors were required to decorate chapels expensively. Donors purchased chapels for two primary reasons: to facilitate services for themselves and their families, such as masses and church burials, that would speed their departure from Purgatory; and to gain status in the community. Chapels were private property within churches, but were only occasionally used directly by their owners. The expense of chapels and their decorations made them an ideal signal for wealth, particularly since sumptuary laws limited most displays of wealth. To overcome the contributions free-rider problem, these churches sold private benefits not readily available elsewhere, namely status and salvation.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
9173.
Length: Date of creation: Sep 2002 Date of revision: Publication status: published relationship to a non-chapter. This should not happen. Please contact NBER. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9173
Note: PE Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Did you know? You can import bibliographic info in various formats into you bibliographic tool, or just into your word processor. See under "publisher info" on each abstract page.