Digitalising medieval accounting research: Andrea Barbarigo’s Venetian Cash Account 1430–1434

Abstract

This article reports the research process, methodology and findings of a digital investigation of a Venetian merchant's journal and ledger from the first half of the fifteenth century. Several unexpected findings resulted, including a cash account that had a continuous credit balance for almost a year, and cessation of the journal for two months during a lengthy period when the business appeared to downsize and shrink before re-emerging after the journal was restarted. The contributions of this article relate (1) to its presentation of a digital research methodology that can be utilised by anyone with an interest in exploring beneath the numbers of archival account books; and (2) as exemplified in the unexpected findings, to the benefit of adopting this digital methodology that presents the journal and ledger in a way never previously attempted, vastly increasing the opportunities for investigation and discovery compared to traditional approaches and methods.