Convergences/Divergences. Nominal and Real Wages in Building in Rome in the Sixteenth Century

Rome, capital of the State of the Church, experienced a strong demographic increase which favoured the increase in demand for foodstuffs, private buildings, public spaces, services and workers during the early modern age. Many foreigners arrived in the city attracted by the possibility of finding well-paid work. Therefore, we can consider Rome in the early modern age a clear example of an urban society conditioned by growth. The objective of this paper is to examine to what extent the expansive dynamics of the city influenced the trends of nominal and real wages. In order to compose a representative set of data for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we will make a comparison between different fields of work. The case studies chosen are construction in the travertine quarries of Tivoli and the large farms that surrounded the city. In the light of the available literature our starting hypothesis is that we should not assume a single and rigid wage system, as different wage models coexisted even within single productive sectors. We look into how the dynamics originating in a growing economy and society conditioned the formation of a diversified wage market.