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Eleonora Serra DOI: 10.4312/linguistica.63.1-2.273-300
University of Ghent
Eleonora.Serra@UGent.be
LEARNING TO WRITE LETTERS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY 
FLORENCE: EPISTOLARY FORMULAE IN THE CORRESPOND-
ENCE OF LUCREZIA ALBIZZI RICASOLI*
1 INTRODUCTION
With historical letters having become the genre of choice in historical sociolinguistic 
investigations, epistolary formulae – ‘formulaic strings found repeatedly in letters, and 
[…] largely restricted to the language of letters’, to use Rutten and van der Wal’s defini-
tion (2014: 75) – have attracted more and more attention cross-linguistically. Not only 
do they complicate the view of letters as the ‘next best thing to speech’ (Nevalainen/
Raumolin-Brunberg 2012: 32). They also appear to have been used differently, and 
perhaps to different purposes, by individuals from different walks of life.
In fact, studies on the history of Germanic languages (Austin 2004; Elspaß 2005; 
Rutten/van der Wal 2012, 2014) and French (Große et al. 2016) have found that epis-
tolary formulae – and in particular, those that were optional – were more used by indi-
viduals of low-status compared to high-status, and by women compared to men. Since 
literacy and schooling, historically, were socially stratified and gender-dependent, these 
studies have hypothesised that optional epistolary formulae served the primary function 
of reducing the writing effort: they would have represented a conventionalised ‘safe op-
tion’ (Rutten/van der Wal 2014: 129) that helped less experienced writers to compose a 
text and verbalise experiences. In this view, more experienced writers (i.e. high-status 
writers, male writers), who did not have the same difficulties in formulation, would use 
less formulae and resort to a higher degree of compositional creativity.
Other studies, however, have underlined the role that epistolary formulae could play 
in signalling in-group membership (e.g. Laitinen/Nordlund 2012; but see also Rutten/
van der Wal 2014: 185–187), even for writers who had a high level of writing experi-
ence (Conde-Silvestre 2016; Evans 2020: 75). In these works, formulae are viewed 
primarily as social conventions related to specific group practices. This interplay of 
* This research has been made possible by an FWO (Research Foundation Flanders) postdoctoral fellowship, 
project n. 12ZT522N. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions. I am 
also grateful to Prof Claudia Crocco for providing support and feedback on this ongoing research, to the staff of 
the Florentine State Archive for their kindness, to Ruben Celani for palaeography-related advice, and to the staff 
of the Medici Archive Project for their precious help and suggestions during my stay in Florence. Aspects of this 
research have been presented at the EVWRIT reading group in Ghent, at the 2023 Historical Sociolinguistics 
Network conference in Brussels and at the 2023 conference of the Società di Linguistica Italiana in Turin, and 
I would like to thank the audiences for their feedback.
274
writing experience and community practices in the use of formulae is still unclear (Rut-
ten/van der Wal 2012: 195). In this paper, I intend to investigate it in the context of 
sixteenth-century Florence, by presenting a case study focused on a corpus of letters 
written by a woman who might well have acquired literacy in adulthood, and whose 
writing experience was considerably low. Aiming to engage with the cross-linguistic 
debates that have arisen over the use and social functions of formulae in historical so-
ciolinguistics, this work will also contribute to including women’s language in Italian 
linguistic historiography.
After discussing why sixteenth-century Florence is interesting for investigating the 
use of epistolary formulae as well as women’s language (Section 2), I will present the 
data and sketch a biographical and letter-writing profile of the letter writer in question 
(Section 3). The research questions are explicitly formulated in Section 4 and meth-
odological issues are dealt with in Section 5, while the analysis, focusing on the su-
perscription and the epistolary frame, is presented in Section 6. The paper closes with 
a discussion of the role of formulae for little experienced writers in sixteenth-century 
Florence and proposes directions for further research (Section 7).
2 LETTER WRITING, EPISTOLARY FORMULAE, AND WOMEN’S 
LITERACY IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE
The context chosen, that of sixteenth-century Florence, offers fertile ground to in-
vestigate the social functions of epistolary formulae: in this respect, Renaissance 
Italy stands out because here vernacular letter-writing was more intensely codified 
than in other traditions. This is testified by the numerous, widely circulating manu-
als for vernacular letter-writing – such as Bartolomeo Miniatore’s Formulario, first 
published in 1485 and reprinted more than forty times in the sixteenth century – 
which offered model letters to be imitated and, frequently, lists of formulae to be 
used in specific situations. ‘Real’ vernacular epistolaries by famous people also en-
joyed immense popularity from the late 1530s, following Pietro Aretino’s initiative 
to print his own letters (1538), while anthologies of letters – not simply conceived 
as entertainment reading, but also intended as models of good style – were readily 
compiled by printers and polygraphs from the beginning of the 1540s.1 What the 
success of this body of literature proves is that, in sixteenth-century Italy, a desire 
was felt for norms that would regulate letter-writing practices. Hence, this intensely 
normative tradition is an interesting one to investigate if we want to understand the 
relationship between the respective roles of writing experience and social conven-
tions in writers’ use of formulae.
Contrary to studies on other linguistic traditions, work carried out in the Italian 
context has not so far put forward a view of epistolary formulae as a ‘safe option’ 
for less skilled writers. If Telve’s observation that semi-literate writers were, at times, 
surprisingly familiar with epistolary conventions (Telve 2019: 246) may be interpreted 
in this light, scholars in this tradition have usually tended to emphasise the role of for-
mulae as social conventions, related to specific group practices (e.g. Barucci 2009: 10; 
1 For a seminal discussion of this production, see Quondam (1981).
275
d’Amelia 1999: 86–87). In a study on the use of a set of discourse-ending formulae in 
Michelangelo Buonarroti’s own letters (Serra 2023), I have proposed that for this writer 
optional epistolary formulae functioned primarily as in-group conventions, rather than 
formulation aids, as their use was much more frequent in letters to family members, and 
did not decrease as the artist’s writing experience grew. But does the same hold true if 
we look at the language of writers who were less experienced than Michelangelo? In 
this article, I ask whether, in a context where letter writing was becoming increasingly 
conventionalised, epistolary formulae functioned primarily as aids for formulation for 
writers with low levels of writing experience.
When it comes to writers of this kind, women are particularly interesting because 
sixteenth-century Florence was a decisive time in the progressive path towards female 
literacy. Until the late Middle Ages, laywomen (with a few notable exceptions) had 
been largely excluded from the writing world (Miglio 2008: 62) but, in the sixteenth 
century, female literacy increased as a result of political and cultural changes. Locally, 
these changes have been linked with the establishment of the Medici duchy and grand 
duchy, under which vernacular literacy gradually became a requirement for patrician 
girls who aspired to a place at court (Barker 2015: 124–125). More globally, an in-
crease in women’s literacy is to be viewed against the background of the expanding 
printing market (Plebani 2019: 58–63). By greatly reducing the price of books, the 
printing press had contributed to a democratisation of literacy and had progressively 
sought to make its products appealing to broader audiences, women included (Sanson 
2011: 45–56). The press also launched the phenomenon of women writers in the public 
arena, which was of a magnitude unparalleled elsewhere in Europe (Kaborycha 2015: 
13). While letter-writing manuals, epistolaries by famous authors, and books of letters 
by both men and women became one of the market’s favourite genres, more and more 
women from the middle and upper classes began to actively participate in the practice 
of private letter writing, not just by delegating their writing to others – as had previous-
ly been the custom – but by taking up the pen themselves. This sharp rise in women’s 
literacy makes letters by women particularly interesting for exploring the relationship 
between use of formulae and writing experience.
In this respect, while the language of the semi-literate and the selection of oral-
like texts have concerned Italian linguists for decades,2 the role of women in the lin-
guistic history of Italian has attracted less attention. One reason behind this has to do 
with the difficulty of finding everyday texts produced by women, and this difficulty 
is greater for medieval and early modern times when the gap in literacy rates was 
wider (Balestracci [2004] 2010: 52). Documents penned by women also had a minor 
chance of being preserved. Even those that have come down to us are often invisible 
(Plebani 2019: 15), buried in family archives that might be summarily inventoried (if 
at all), and can only be discovered by browsing the actual letters contained in archival 
collections. Another element that has hindered the study of women’s language his-
torically is the difficulty in establishing autography. Authoriality is frequently given 
2 See, for example, D’Achille (1994) and Fresu (2014) for an overview on the language of the semicolti 
[semiliterate], and Telve (2014) and Serianni (2015: 138-154) on sources used to reconstruct speech.
276
primacy over autography in the context of historical and cultural studies on women 
(see, for instance, Kaborycha 2015: 17), but an assessment of autography is crucial 
for linguistic analyses.
However, over the last few decades several efforts have been made to include wom-
en in Italian language histories.3 As regards the medieval and early modern period, 
most of this research has focused on the language of women who belonged to one of 
three major categories: low-ranking women, the most famous example being the auto-
graph confession of the ‘witch’ Bellezze Ursini (Trifone 1988); religious women, such 
as Caterina da Siena (Fresu 2011), Caterina Paluzzi, Orsola Formicini (Fresu 2019), 
Margherita Lambertenghi (Brown 2021); and exceptionally prominent and learned no-
blewomen, widely known even among their contemporaries, such as the marchionesses 
Vittoria Colonna (Sanson 2016) and Isabella D’Este (Basora 2017, Vetrugno 2018), 
and the duchess Lucrezia Borgia (Fresu 2004).
Nevertheless, studies on the language of early modern laywomen from the mercan-
tile patriciate, who were neither exceptional cases of low-status women able to write, 
nor noblewomen of wide renown, are rare. The most notable exception is represented 
by the letters of Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi (c. 1408–1471), a Florentine widow who, 
in the late Middle Ages, corresponded with her exiled sons. These letters were first sub-
ject to a linguistic analysis by Trifone (1989) – who used them to discuss the duality of 
letters as both oral-like and stylistically crafted texts, as well as the relevance that fam-
ily practice had as a writing ‘school’ for Florentines – and have recently been studied 
to track a series of changes that had occurred in fifteenth-century Florentine (Bersano 
2022), as well as to ante-date a range of lexical items (Bersano 2023).
Whereas Alessandra Macinghi’s letters have attracted interest perhaps because she 
was one of the first laywomen from the mercantile class to write many letters in her 
own hand,4 less attention has been paid to the language of letters by ‘ordinary’ upper-
class and bourgeois women in the sixteenth century – a time when, as I have mentioned, 
it became more common for women to write in their own hand. My article, therefore, 
zooms in on one such writer: Lucrezia di Matteo Albizzi Ricasoli, a widow from the 
Florentine elites who started to write quite late in her life, and might have been the 
first lay woman in her family to do so. Having largely relied on delegate writers in her 
youth, the first autograph letter I could retrieve by Lucrezia dates to 1539, a time when 
she was probably approaching her forties. For the next twenty-six years, she would cor-
respond with her sons about a variety of private issues and business matters.
This corpus of correspondence, written by a woman with very little writing experi-
ence, but whose involvement in letter writing progressively grew with time, is well-
suited for exploring the functions that epistolary formulae served in the first stages 
of Florentine women’s acquisition of vernacular literacy and vernacular letter-writ-
ing. The aim of this case study is to assess whether, in the Italian context, epistolary 
3 For an overview of these studies, see Fresu (2008, 2019).
4 Earlier examples of female letter-writers from a mercantile background include Margherita Datini (c. 1360-
1423), the wife of the famous businessman from Prato, Francesco Datini, and her mother Dianora: these letters 
(on which see Crabb 2007; James 2008) still await linguistic investigation.
277
formulae functioned as formulation aids for little-experienced writers, as was found to 
be the case in other linguistic traditions. In order to do this, I assess the extent to which 
Lucrezia relied on formulae that assisted her in composing a text, examine the degree 
to which such formulae were fixed, and investigate possible lifespan changes in relation 
to her progressive increase in writing experience.
3 THE DATA
The data analysed here consist of a corpus of twenty autograph letters written by Lucre-
zia di Matteo Albizzi Ricasoli. The letters are preserved in the fondo Ricasoli, a collec-
tion housed in the Florentine State Archive (ASF).5 I came across this correspondence 
during my research in Florence, where I was looking for letters by sixteenth-century 
Florentine women across a number of family archives. I found a total of sixty-seven 
letters by Lucrezia, scattered across different folders. Since I did not examine all the let-
ters in all the folders, it is possible that further research would yield even more letters.
The great majority of the letters (forty-six) are written by delegate writers. The 
twenty letters that I have selected and transcribed for analysis – listed in Table 1 – are 
the autograph ones, making up a corpus of 9321 words (modernising word division). 
In fact, the last letter (#r22) is only partly autograph:6 it is begun in Lucrezia’s hand 
but, around the middle, her daughter Maddalena takes over and finishes the letter in her 
mother’s name.7 For the purpose of this analysis, I have only included the part of the 
letter written by Lucrezia. In addition, I have found a small piece of paper containing 
an autograph message addressed by Lucrezia to a worker (ASF Ricasoli Filze 40–I-V, 
c. 141) but, since the relationship between writer and addressee was very different in 
comparison to the other letters, I have excluded it from analysis.
Each letter has been assigned an ID number within a bigger dataset that I have built, 
which from now on I will use to refer to each letter.8
5 The fondo Ricasoli, once held at the Castle of Brolio in Chianti, is a vast family archive divided into three 
sections: an old section (‘Parte antica’), a modern section (‘Parte moderna’) and a section (‘Carteggio’) 
that includes the correspondence of Bettino Ricasoli (1809-1880), Italy’s second prime minister, and other 
documents that concern him and his brother. The part that concerns us here is the ‘Parte antica’, which is in turn 
subdivided into parchments (‘Pergamene’), account books (‘Libri di amministrazione’), and other documents 
which include the family’s correspondence (‘Filze’). This part of the archive is only summarily inventoried, so 
that only by physically browsing the documents can one learn which letters by which individual are in which 
folder.
6 As explained later, throughout the article Lucrezia’s autograph letters will be cited by the ID numbers given in 
table 1.
7 There is no indication as to why, but in a culture where delegate writing was frequent, this was not uncommon. 
In the Ricasoli archive, I have come across other women’s letters in which the hand changes without any 
explanation, for example a 1579 letter by Cassandra Anselmi to her brother-in-law Nicolò Anselmi (Ricasoli 
Filze 49-I-IV, c. 1), and a 1589 letter by Selvaggia Rucellai to her daughter Cassandra (Ricasoli Filze 49-I-IV, 
c. 3).
8 These ID numbers mirror the order in which I have catalogued the letters. I am using these numbers to make it 
easier to refer to the same document across multiple articles.
278
Table 1. Lucrezia’s autograph letters, presented in chronological order. Dates have been mod-
ernised according to today’s calendar (the Florentine year began on 25 March). The number of 
words was counted after modernising word division (and excludes the superscription). The label 
‘Archival location’ specifies the letters’ location within ASF, fondo Ricasoli, Parte antica Filze. 
It should be read this way: 46–I-IV means Filza 46, Fascio I, Fascetto IV.
ID number Date Addressee N. words Archival location
#r511 11/10/1539 Matteo 569 46–I-IV, c. 63
#r221 2/07/1542 Matteo 298 40–III-IV, c. 1
#r224 18/07/1542 Matteo 238 40–III-IV, c. 6
#r237 28/10/1542 Matteo 1857 40–III-IV, c. 38
#r240 20/11/1542 Matteo 921 40–III-IV, c. 45
#r242 4/12/1542 Matteo 427 40–III-IV, c. 48
#r243 14/12/1542 Matteo 574 40–III-IV, c. 49
#r246 2/01/1543 Matteo 1152 40–III-IV, c. 55
#r247 10/01/1543 Matteo 426 40–III-IV, c. 56
#r690 29/10/1549 Braccio 271 41–II-III, c. 72
#r271 1/02/1550 Matteo 470 40–III-VI, c. 37
#r691 13/08/1553 Braccio 379 41–II-III, c. 86
#r302 17/02/1554 Braccio 218 32–I-VI, c. 26
#r335 29/04/1554 Braccio 246 32–II-II, c. 93 
#r16 3/09/1565 Matteo 393 40–II-V, c. 46
#r17 5/09/1565 Matteo 316 40–II-V, c. 47
#r18 7/09/1565 Matteo 188 40–II-V, c. 48
#r19 8/09/1565 Matteo 198 40–II-V, c. 49
#r20 8/09/1565 Matteo 89 40–II-V, c. 50
#r22 (partly autograph) 13/09/1565 Matteo 91 40–II-V, c. 52
The twenty autograph letters are all addressed to Lucrezia’s sons, Matteo (sixteen) 
and Braccio (four). This makes them suitable to analyse for epistolary formulae, be-
cause the relationship between writer and addressee, which has been shown to signifi-
cantly affect the amount and type of formulae used (e.g. Clarysse 2017), remains con-
stant. The letters are also written across a time period of twenty-seven years, making an 
evaluation of lifespan change possible: in particular, I will draw a distinction between 
the nine letters written between the late 1530s and early 1540s (early block), the five 
letters written between 1549 and 1554 (middle block), and the six letters penned in 
1565 (late block).9
As for the writer’s identity and her letter-writing practice, Lucrezia was a patrician 
woman born into a very prominent Florentine family, the Albizzi. Considering that she 
married in 1513, and that Florentine women married early, she was probably born in 
9 This distinction was operationalised after inspection of the data, as the autograph letters I found seemed to 
cluster around particular time periods. The first of these represents a time at which Lucrezia had only recently 
begun to write letters in her own hand. A 6 year-long timespan separates letters from the early and the middle 
block, and a 10 year-long timespan separates letters from the middle and late block.
279
the last decade of the fifteenth century. Her father’s name was Matteo (Passerini 1861: 
table 14), and the Ricasoli archive preserves letters by her mother Nanna10 and her 
siblings Francesco,11 Andrea12 and Maddalena.13 Given these clues, her parents must 
have been Matteo di Andrea degli Albizzi (b. 1459) and Nanna di Niccolò Tornabuoni 
(b. 1564/5), who, according to Litta (1876: table 2), were married in 1485, although 
Lucrezia’s name does not figure in Litta’s family tree.14
As was the norm for the Florentine aristocracy, Lucrezia married into another pa-
trician family, the Ricasoli. The Ricasoli belonged to the old Florentine feudal aris-
tocracy, but by the sixteenth century they had largely assimilated to the new ruling, 
mercantile elite (Moran 2017: 387). They owned vast properties of land in the areas 
of Chianti, Mugello, and southern Valdarno, and a significant part of their income was 
based on the exchange of the agricultural goods produced here.
Lucrezia had at least six children: Maddalena, Piergiovanni, Braccio, Matteo, Ales-
sandra and Raffaello (Passerini 1861: table 14). Her married life was not an easy one, 
as her husband, Filippo di Piergiovanni Ricasoli, was exiled from Florence in 1523. 
Filippo returned to Florence as the Medici were driven out of the city in 1527, only to 
die in 1531, a few months after the capitulation of the Last Republic and the restoration 
of the Medici regime (Passerini 1861: 169). Lucrezia makes vague references to these 
difficult times in one of her letters, recalling the troubles endured while her husband 
was alive (#r237). Probably in her thirties at the time of her husband’s death, Lucrezia 
did not remarry, and lived on until 1570.15
From Lucrezia’s early autograph letters, written between the late 1530s and the 
early 1540s, it is clear that the family was undergoing financial difficulties. At that 
time, she was living in Florence with at least two of her younger children, Maddalena 
and Braccio, while her elder sons, Matteo and Raffaello, resided in Chianti, conducting 
a fashionable lifestyle that they could not afford and that left the family riddled with 
debts (#r237, #r243). Lucrezia’s long letters repeatedly describe her frustration at hav-
ing ‘tutto el di deditori alucco ora loispelziale ora legrauezze ora labalia ora gouani 
chorssi ora elsermano ora questo ora quelo’ [all day long creditors at the door, now 
the apothecary, now the taxes, now the wet-nurse, now Giovanni Corsi, now Sermano, 
now this one, now that one] (#r240).16 It is at this difficult time that – it would appear 
– Lucrezia started to pen letters in her own hand.
10 Ricasoli Filze 41-II-III, c. 6; 56-I-I, cc. 65, 83, 107, 169, 173.
11 Ricasoli Filze 32-I-VI, c. 2; 40-II-V, c. 2; 40-III-III, cc. 50, 54; 40-III-V, cc. 80, 82, 85; 56-I-I, cc. 24, 172. 
12 Ricasoli Filze 56-I-I, cc. 13, 15, 35, 58, 135; 56-I-IV, c. 14.
13 Ricasoli Filze 41-II-III, c. 3.
14 If Litta’s inclusion of the names of Francesco, Andrea and Maddalena among the children of Matteo Albizzi and 
Nanna Tornabuoni were not enough to demonstrate Lucrezia’s belonging to this branch of the family, definite 
proof comes from a 1528 letter by Lucrezia’s brother Andrea Albizzi who refers to ‘Bancho n[ost]ro zio delli 
sp[e]t[tabi]li S[igno]ri Dieci’ [Banco our uncle of the distinguished Ten] (Ricasoli Filze 56-I-I, c. 135). Matteo 
Albizzi’s brother Banco was indeed part of the Dieci di Balia (the magistracy in charge of the conduct of war) 
during Florence’s Last Republic (see, again, Litta 1876: table 2).
15 ASF Ricasoli Amministrazione 275, fol. π1r.
16 On the criteria adopted for transcripton, see Section 5.
280
Although I can only make hypotheses on the instruction she might have received 
in her youth, her graphic competence tells us that she had not gone beyond the first 
stages of education. Her script displays a large size, separate letters, and very few liga-
tures. There is no graphic variation that would characterise usual or professional levels 
of graphic execution. Although the lines she traces are fairly straight, and her hand 
relatively steady, she employs no shading, no punctuation and, contrary to what was 
common in merchants’ letters, no paragraphs: everything, except for the signature, is 
written in one continuous flow. If we were to apply Petrucci’s classification of hand-
writing into three different levels of graphic execution, Lucrezia’s hand would fall into 
the lowest, called by Petrucci ‘elementare di base’ (Petrucci 1978: 167–168).
We also know that Lucrezia had real difficulties in reading her son’s handwriting. 
Already in #r224, she apologises for not replying to everything that was asked of her 
‘perche odimentichato elegere uostre letere’ [because I have forgotten how to read your 
letters]. She also repeatedly asks her son to write more clearly or to have someone else 
write for him (#r17, #r18). These requests are typical of semi-literate writers: a similar 
request, for example, is addressed by a semi-literate worker of the Ricasoli family to 
his employer (Ricasoli Filze 40–III-III, c. 75).17
All of this suggests that Lucrezia had not gone beyond the very first stages of 
graphic learning. As a girl from an elite family, she might have learned basic literacy 
in her own household, perhaps taught by a family member or by a servant (Sanson 
2011: 26–27); or she might have acquired reading skills and some rudiments of writ-
ing, along with sewing and other ‘virtues’, in a convent (Strocchia 1999). Consider-
ing the availability of self-teaching manuals at her time (Plebani 2019: 16), however, 
the possibility that she might have taught herself to write also exists. It cannot be 
excluded that she learned in her adult life, considering that she apparently relied 
almost exclusively on delegate writers until around her forties. All but one of the 
forty-six allograph letters I have found date back to the period 1532–1542. Prior to 
1539 – the date of her first autograph letter (Fig. 1) – I could only retrieve few auto-
graph attestations dating from the previous couple of years: two postscripta, one of 
which added to a letter by the family’s worker Jacopo Lapini in 1537 (Fig. 2), and the 
other added to a letter written in her name, again by Jacopo Lapini, in 1538 (Fig. 3); 
her signature, added to a 1538 letter by the same delegate writer (Fig. 4); and some 
notes on the receipt of goods scribbled at the back of a letter she received in the same 
year (Fig. 5). Over the following years, Lucrezia gradually abandoned the practice of 
delegate writing, so that from the 1550s and 1560s we have letters in her own hand 
almost exclusively.
17 On similar requests by Margherita Datini, asking her husband to have a clerk copy his letter, see Crabb (2007: 
1186).
281
Figure 1. Lucrezia’s first autograph letter, dating 1539 (#r511).
Figure 2. Lucrezia’s first autograph postscriptum, added to a 1537 letter signed by Jacopo Lapini 
(Ricasoli Filze 41–II-III, c. 19).
282
Figure 3. Lucrezia’s autograph postscriptum added to a 1538 letter written by Jacopo Lapini in 
her name (Ricasoli Filze 32–I-VI, c. 10).
Figure 4. Lucrezia’s autograph signature in an allograph letter written in 1538 (Ricasoli Filze 
40–I-V, c. 76).
283
Figure 5. Lucrezia’s autograph notes on the back of a letter she received in 1538 (Ricasoli Filze 
32–II-II, c. 37).
As discussed earlier, Lucrezia’s transition from delegate to autograph writing must 
be viewed in light of the changes that were taking place in Florentine and Italian so-
ciety more broadly. However, practical necessities tied to her status as a widow might 
have also played an important role, as they had for Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi a 
century before. As would later be the case for her daughter Maddalena,18 as a widow 
Lucrezia appears to have had an active role in the family’s business. From her house 
in Florence, she would be the one to receive the Ricasoli agricultural products, co-
ordinate their dispatch and sale, send regular reports to her sons, and make sure the 
family’s workers received their payments. These tasks would obviously be facilitated 
by being able to write without intermediaries; and perhaps, being able to write was 
also a means to achieve more agency. Her desire to be more independent is reiterated 
in several letters, where Lucrezia complains about being kept in seruit(t)u [servitude] 
(#r511, #r237, #r221) and being left in the dark as to the family’s economic activities 
(#r237, #r240).
Her difficult financial circumstances, forcing her to constantly deal with the fam-
ily’s creditors, might have been a further motive to acquire literacy. Lucrezia’s letters 
reveal a constant struggle to keep up appearances, and acute feelings of shame for 
18 On Maddalena’s involvement in the family business, see Moran (2017).
284
herself and her family:19 in this sense, graphic abilities might have exerted an additional 
appeal, as argued by Strocchia (1999: 25), as an assertion of status.
As to the way Lucrezia might have learned her letter-writing conventions, some 
means of instruction would have been precluded to her. Clearly, the letter-writing train-
ing that was typical for boys from the minor aristocracy (D’Onghia 2014: 93) would 
not have been an option. From Florentine family books there is some evidence that the 
writing of vernacular letters was taught even at the level of elementary school (Witt 
1995: 106–107), but it is unlikely that Lucrezia had attended school.20 An influence 
from vernacular letter-writing manuals and printed letter books cannot be ruled out, as 
we have seen that this type of literature was flooding the printing market, especially 
from the end of the 1530s (the very years in which Lucrezia started to write).21 Howev-
er, her primary source to learn letter-writing conventions would undoubtedly have been 
the actual practice of correspondence. In his study on Alessandra Macinghi’s letters, 
Trifone (1989) finds a striking similarity in terms of language and style in the letters by 
Alessandra and her relatives, which leads him to conclude that letter-writing – just like 
speech – was learnt within the family nucleus, by actually corresponding with one’s 
family. To this family training, it should be added that Florentine merchant families 
were used to preserving their personal correspondence in family archives: letters re-
ceived from outside the household might have also served as models for letter-writing.
4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The aim of this article is to explore the functions of epistolary formulae for little expe-
rienced writers in the context of sixteenth-century Florence. In particular, by analysing 
the case study of the correspondence of a semi-literate woman, Lucrezia Albizzi Ric-
asoli, the paper seeks to assess whether formulae functioned primarily as formulation 
aids for little experienced writers.
Rutten and van der Wal (2012) argue that it is formulae’s holistic nature – i.e. the 
possibility to retrieve them as a whole from memory, without grammatically analysing 
them – that made them an ideal tool for less experienced writers: recurring to formulae 
as single, unanalysed chunks would have reduced the writing effort, just as the use of 
formulae in speech production has been shown to reduce the processing effort (Rutten/
van der Wal 2012: 182–183). In order to prove that formulae served as Formulierung-
shilfe (Elspaß 2005: 157), therefore, I first need to ask whether the formulae used by 
Lucrezia were holistic units or are at least compatible with an interpretation that views 
them as holistic (research question 1).
19 These emerge, for example, when she describes having to send a servant to sell rags at the market because she 
has nothing else to sell (#r237), or when she is forced to be seen at the market buying the salt ‘a libbra’ [by 
pound], because ‘lanecesita nonaleghe’ [necessity knows no law/leagues] (#r246). The old, worn clothes she 
and her daughter Maddalena have to wear are an additional source of shame (#r237, #r246), as well as a growing 
cause of concern in relation to Maddalena’s marriage prospects.
20 From a much-quoted excerpt from Giovanni Villani’s fourteenth-century chronicle, we know that even in 
medieval Florence there were girls who went to school (Villani 1979: 208), but it seems unlikely that they were 
many. However, in his discussion of lay vernacular schools in late medieval Tuscany, Black cites the example 
of four female teachers who taught boys as well as girls (Black 2007: 203).
21 On women’s access to texts in Renaissance Italy, see Richardson (2020: 149-224).
285
According to Rutten and van der Wal (2012: 186), the prefabricated nature of epis-
tolary formulae is revealed by the fact that, in their Dutch letter corpus, these items 
are fairly fixed, and are combined in a discourse structure whose order also tends to 
be fixed (although one or more formulae may be left out). Fixedness of the individual 
formulae and of the larger discourse structure that they form will therefore be taken as 
evidence of the prefabricated nature of these elements. A range of other criteria can 
also be used to identify holistic units, including non-compositionality (see Wray 2002: 
19–43). One criterion proposed by Hickey for formula identification in child language 
is that formulae ‘may be used inappropriately, either syntactically or semantically’ 
(Hickey 1993: 32). Another is that ‘the utterance is grammatically advanced’ compared 
to the rest of the language (Hickey 1993: 32), something also pointed out by Elspaß for 
epistolary formulae in German letters (Elspaß 2005: 170). These criteria will be used 
to assess whether epistolary formulae could be learned and retrieved by Lucrezia as 
prefabricated sequences.
After establishing whether formulae could function as holistic units, and there-
fore had the potential to facilitate Lucrezia’s writing effort, I will assess whether her 
use of optional epistolary formulae decreased with an increase in writing experience 
(research question 2). Although Lucrezia’s writing experience remained rather low 
even in her latest letters, it must have increased with time, since, as we have seen, she 
eventually stopped relying on delegate writers. Hence, if epistolary formulae served 
the primary function of aids for formulation, then it would be reasonable to expect 
their frequency to decrease with time, as Lucrezia’s writing experience grew. On the 
other hand, if Lucrezia used formulae as conventions to style her social identity and 
conform to specific group practices, we would not necessarily expect their number 
to decrease. 
Possible lifespan changes in Lucrezia’s use of formulae over time could also re-
veal whether these elements were used to style her social identity. As mentioned 
before, an intensely normative pressure – proven by the popularity of printed letter 
books – increasingly formalised the practice of letter-writing in sixteenth-century 
Italy. This might have led writers to adopt more formulae, and/or more complex and 
elaborate ones, as the century went by, and might have led Lucrezia to adopt more 
formulae, and more complex formulae, as her writing experience grew. My third 
research question therefore asks whether the formulae used by Lucrezia changed 
over time and became increasingly more complex and elaborate. A positive answer 
would suggest that this writer used formulae to signal her belonging to specific group 
practices and was possibly influenced by an increasingly codified epistolary practice. 
Complexity, in this context, will be operationalised by relying on the word length of 
formulae. Szmrecsányi (2004) notes that using length as a proxy for syntactic com-
plexity is probably the most frequently used method, and ‘has the obvious advantage 
that this is a straightforward method which does not even necessarily involve manual 
coding’ (Szmrecsányi 2004: 1033).
286
In summary, my article addresses the following research questions:
1) Were the formulae used by Lucrezia learned and retrieved as holistic 
units?
2) Did Lucrezia use more optional formulae in her early letters than in 
her late ones?
3) Did she adopt different and more complex formulae as the years 
went by?
Positive answers to the first two questions would lead us to hypothesise that formu-
lae, for this writer, functioned primarily as aids to reduce the writing effort. A positive 
answer to the third question would instead lead us to hypothesise that, as Lucrezia’s 
writing experience grew, she also relied on formulae to style a letter-writing persona 
and to signal participation in certain group practices.
5 METHODOLOGY
The twenty autograph letters Lucrezia wrote to her sons were transcribed following 
conservative criteria. I offered a semi-diplomatic transcription, meant to mirror as close 
as possible the original text: the only change implemented is a distinction between s 
and z, which in Lucrezia’s hand are rendered through the same grapheme. Each letter 
was then tagged with metadata including date, addressee’s name, sender’s and address-
ee’s location, archival location, along with an identifier that serves to locate the letter 
within a bigger dataset that I have built.
I chose to restrict the analysis to those formulae that were used in the superscription 
and in the epistolary frame, leaving out, for the time being, those used in the body of the 
letter. The term ‘epistolary frame’ (Bentein 2023: 433) or ‘pragmatic frame’ (Palermo 
1994: 113) refers to the opening and closing, which represent the most ritualised and 
conventionalised part of the letter. This part is largely made up of fixed formulae and 
is characterised by a somewhat constrained thematic development, in opposition to the 
referential content, i.e. the part of the letter where formulae are much less frequent and 
where the thematic development is free (Palermo 1994: 113–119). This dichotomic 
structure that sees letters divided into an epistolary frame and a referential part has been 
adopted to describe the structure of Italian private letters, for example by Antonelli 
(2003: 59) and Magro (2014: 132–133), and was first proposed to describe Italian mer-
chants’ letters by Palermo (1994), who has argued that it would be fruitless to search, 
in this text type, something similar to the rhetorical subdivisions of salutatio, exor-
dium, narratio, petitio and conclusio discussed in medieval treatises of ars dictamini 
(Palermo 1994: 113–114). In her study of Cassandra Chigi’s sixteenth-century private 
letters, Fantini has argued the same, identifying the richly formulaic epistolary frame 
as the only recognisable rhetorical structure (Fantini 1999: 133).
The choice to restrict the analysis to the epistolary frame (as well as the superscrip-
tion) was not only driven by the formulaic nature of this part. It was also dictated both 
by reasons of space and by the observation that the most frequent word strings in the 
body of Lucrezia’s letters seemed more a reflection of orality than markers specific to 
287
the letter genre – in other words, they looked like formulae, but not necessarily like 
epistolary formulae. For example, a very frequent word string used in the body of the 
letter, ‘ui dicho (che)’ [I tell you (that)] (forty-four occurrences), might be interpreted 
as a text-structural formula – i.e. a formula realising the transition from one part of the 
discourse to another (Rutten/van der Wal 2014: 82) – but is in fact almost exclusively 
used to convey emotionally charged information.22
The formulae used in the epistolary frame and in the superscription were then 
extracted through close reading and categorised according to their pragmatic func-
tion, adopting the classification developed by Rutten/van der Wal (2014: 81–85). 
This classification distinguishes between text-type formulae – such as signature, 
address formulae and opening formulae – which identify the text as a letter and are 
obligatory elements, text-structural formulae, which realise the transition from one 
part of the discourse to another, intersubjective formulae – such as greetings and 
health formulae – which focus on the relationship between writer and addresse, 
and Christian-ritual formulae, which place the writer and/or the addressee under 
religious protection. 
The formulae, extracted and categorised, were then tabulated in an Excel spread-
sheet that allowed me to visualise them and to count their occurrences.
6 ANALYSIS
This section reports the results of the analysis for the superscription (Section 6.1), the 
opening (Section 6.2) and the closing (Section 6.3).
6.1 Superscriptions
As noted by Nevala (2007), superscriptions – formulae placed outside of the letter to 
identify the recipient and their location – are not private in the same sense that address 
formulae inside the letter are: they are intended to be read not only by the recipient but 
by other people too, for example the mail carrier, or other family members. Hence, 
compared to address formulae inside the letter, these formulae are more likely to dis-
play negative politeness strategies, to follow normative schemes more rigidly, and to 
be influenced by letter-writing manuals (Nevala 2007).
Among the letters by Lucrezia that are entirely autograph, only two bear allograph 
superscriptions (#r511, #r246). It is probably not by chance that both are letters from 
the earlier block: while Lucrezia’s writing experience was still limited, she might have 
felt it safer to delegate to others the less private part of the letter.
In those cases where the superscription is autograph, the letters from the early and 
middle block consistently display the same formula, with the empty slot filled by the 
name of Lucrezia’s son, either Braccio, or Matteo (the latter, as the first-born son and 
head of the family, is the only one to be constantly attributed the title messere):
22 See the following examples: ‘uidicho che nouolio piuuiuere aquesto ghouerno’ [I am telling you I don’t want to 
live like this anymore] (#r237); ‘uidicho setenette diquesti modi andrette irouina’ [I am telling you if you keep 
these habits you will go broke] (#r237), etc.
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Al (s)uo fig(l)uol(o) charisimo (meser) ____ de richasoli inciant(t)i [To her dear-
est son (messer) ____ de Ricasoli in Chianti]
This lack of variation suggests that this formula was learned holistically and re-
trieved as a whole from memory.
In letters from the late block, we find one instance of the old formula (#r20) and four 
instances of a new variant, which slightly increases in complexity through the addition 
of the deferential adjective onorandd(o), coordinated with charisimo: 
Al suo onorra(n)dd(o) e charisimo filiuol(o) meser ____ richasoli inciantti [To 
her honourable and dearest son messer ____ Ricasoli in Chianti] (#r16, #r17, 
#r18, #r19)
The superscription formula, therefore, shows some evidence of lifespan change to-
wards increasing complexity. This slightly more elaborate formula is, however, once 
again used multiple times without any variation, suggesting that, like the previous for-
mula, it was also learned holistically.
6.2 The opening
The opening of Lucrezia’s letters is made up of two obligatory, ‘text-type’ elements, 
i.e. the address formula and the opening formula. These formulae are only missing in 
one letter from the early block (#r221), which begins in medias res (‘quando partisti di 
qui …’ [when you left from here …]) and where the only opening element is a visual 
one, i.e. a cross (an ancient epistolary convention that is almost constant throughout 
Lucrezia’s correspondence).23 In addition to these obligatory elements, in a minority of 
cases the opening formula is followed by another formula which acknowledges receipt 
of the information (#r240, #r271, #r16), performs a Christian-ritual function (#r237) or 
realises the transition from the opening formula to the body of the text (#r302).
In all cases, the address formula is a two-word string, ‘fil(i)uo(l(o)) charisimo’ [dearest 
son] (19 occurrences), which remains fixed throughout twenty-seven years. In line with 
Nevala’s (2007) finding that superscriptions tend to be more deferential and more subject 
to normative pressure than address formulae inside the letter, Lucrezia’s address formula 
is more geared towards positive politeness – dispensing with titles such as messere or 
deferential adjectives like onorando – and does not increase in complexity over time.
By contrast, opening formulae are more varied. In their study of French soldiers’ 
letters from the Great War, Große et al. (2016) note that opening formulae function 
as a thematic starting point to establish communication and inscribe the letter in the 
thread of epistolary exchange. Hence, they consider the sharing of information on mail 
or health at the opening of letters as part of the ritual structure of the text. Opening 
formulae are distinguished into responsive or declarative, on the basis of whether the 
letter constitutes a response or initiates a conversation.
23 Petrucci has noted that the signum crucis started to appear at the opening of letters between the third and fourth 
century AD (Petrucci 2008: 20).
289
In Lucrezia’s letters, all opening formulae touch on the ‘mail’ theme – either the 
means of communication (i.e. the mail carrier), or letters or parcels received or sent. 
The most common formula that identifies the mail carrier is the following, with the 
empty slot filled by the name of the carrier:
e ariuat(t)o (qui) ____ [___ has arrived here] (#r237, #r240, #r246, #r247, #r691, 
#r302, #r19, #r20)
This formulation – occurring across eight letters – is not affected by lifespan 
change, appearing in early as well as late letters. In one case, the subject is plural 
while the verb inside the formula remains singular: ‘eariuato qui giouani di domeni-
cho emichele dimateo’ [Giovanni di Domenico and Michele di Matteo has arrived 
here] (#r20). This suggests that this formula might have been memorised as a whole 
without being subject to analysis, although lack of agreement between verb and post-
verbal subject is common in Tuscan varieties today (and not unheard of in old Italian; 
see Durante 1981).
Reference to the mail carrier is also made by means of other strategies:
- through the declarative formula ‘per ___ ui/ti mand(d)o …’ [By ___ I send 
you…] (#r335, #r17)
- through the responsive formulae ‘per (le man de) ___ se autto’ [through (the 
hands of)___ I have received] (#r242, #r18)
In other cases, what is referred to is the actual mail or goods, rather than the carrier. 
Most common in this category is a responsive formula acknowleding receipt of the let-
ter (3 occurrences):
tengho una uostra [I have your letter] (#r224, #r271)
tengho lauostra ame ghratisima [I have your letter very dear to me] (#r16)
This formula shows some evidence of lifespan change towards increased complexi-
ty and conventionalisation: the first instance is used in letters from the early and middle 
block, the second and more complex one is found in a late letter. This is a widespread 
formula also found in printed books: ‘ho riceuuta una uostra a me gratissima’ [I have 
received your letter very dear to me] is found, for example, in the letters by Saint Os-
anna from Mantua, published in 1524 inside a devotional book by Girolamo da Monte 
Oliveto (fol. 147v).
In one case, reference to a letter received is made through a rather common formula 
that underlines the success of the communication effort: ‘per una tua intenddo quanto 
di’ [through your (letter) I have understood what you said] (#r690). In another, the 
opening states the receipt of goods: ‘essi riceutto granno’ [grain was received] (#r511). 
In another case, a declarative formula makes reference to the letter being sent: ‘questa 
per farui intendere chome…’ [This (letter) (is) to let you know that…] (#r243).
290
In a letter from the late block, the mail is referred to by combining two opening for-
mulae, one responsive and one declarative, through co-ordination: ‘oafare risposta adua 
letere eperdarui auiso chome’ [I must reply to two letters and to let you know that…] 
(#r22). The result does not work syntactically, suggesting that Lucrezia was not analys-
ing these formulae, treating them instead as holistic units.
6.3 The closing
Counting the number of formulae in the closing of Lucrezia’s letters yields the results 
reported in Table 2.
Table 2. Number of formulae in Lucrezia's letter closings, classified according to type.
ID Year discourse-
ending
health greetings take care 
formulae
location date total
#r511 1539 1 1 1 1 4
#r221 1542 1 1 1 3
#r224 1542 1 1 1 3
#r237 1542 1 1 1 1 4
#r240 1542 1 1 1 1 4
#r242 1542 1 1 1 1 1 5
#r243 1542 1 1 1 1 4
#r246 1543 1 1 1 1 4
#r247 1543 1 1 1 3
#r690 1549 1 1 1 1 4
#r271 1550 1 1 1 1 4
#r691 1553 1 1 1 1 4
#r302 1554 1 1 1 1 4
#r335 1554 2 1 1 1 1 6
#r16 1565 2 1 1 1 1 1 7
#r17 1565 2 1 1 1 1 6
#r18 1565 1 1 1 1 1 1 6
#r19 1565 1 1 1 1 1 5
#r20 1565 1 1 1 1 1 5
Keeping in mind that location and date were obligatory, ‘text-type’ formulae, visual 
inspection of this table shows that, in the letter closing, Lucrezia’s use of formulae did 
not decrease with time. In fact it increased, and this increase is mostly accounted for by 
a duplication of discourse-ending formulae and – to a greater degree – by the addition 
of intersubjective formulae (especially greetings) in Lucrezia’s late letters.
In all letters the closing is marked by at least one discourse-ending formula, i.e. a 
text-structural formula that realises the transition from the body of the letter to the clos-
ing (on which, see Serra 2023). The most ubiquitous discourse-ending formula consists 
in the two-word string ‘ne/non altro’ [nothing else], which is always used (eighteen 
291
occurrences), except for #r221 where this is replaced by ‘editantto uidicho’ [and of this 
I tell you]. This formula marks the transition to the letter closing, beginning a sequence 
usually structured as follows:
closing-discourse formula ‘ne/non altro’ [nothing else] – health formula 
‘ista(tte) sano’ [stay healthy] – location ‘di firenz(z)e’ [from Florence] – date 
‘ali/di/adi di’ + month + year
This sequence, in turn, is followed by the signature, although in early letters non-
formulaic parts often intervene between this sequence and the signature (#r551, #r221, 
#r224, #r237, #r243), suggesting that at this time Lucrezia’s textual planning was still 
quite limited.
Although a few letters depart slightly from this model,24 this structure appears quite 
fixed, both in the individual formulae and in the order in which they are combined. This 
structure, therefore, represents the basic backbone of the closing of Lucrezia’s letters, 
and this is true for the earliest as well as the latest texts.
However, the closing of Lucrezia’s letters is subject to lifespan change. On the 
one hand, the addition of intersubjective formulae marks a clear distinction from the 
early to the middle and late block, as intersubjective formulae are rare in letters from 
the early block, appearing only once (‘fateui uezzi’ [treat yourself well], #r242). They 
sometimes appear in letters of the middle and late block in the form of a ‘take care’ 
formula, an optional element that is found before the closing sequence:
abiateui chura situ esirafaello elsi liaatri echosi e bestiami [take care both you and 
Raffaello and so the others and so the cattle] (#r335)
ingeniateui di riguardarui e farui uezzi [take care and treat yourself well] (#r16) 
fateui uezzi [treat yourself well] (#r18)
However, the element that marks the most important novelty is the greeting, absent 
from the early letters, but always present in the late block, where it is expressed by 
means of a recommendation formula (consisting in the verb raccomandarsi [to recom-
mend oneself] + dative): 
a tut(t)i mi rachomando [to all I recommend myself] (#r16, #r18, #r19, #r20)
eauoi ealaghostansa earafaello eabracco mirachomanddo [to you and to Gostanza 
and Rafaello and Braccio I recommend myself] (#r17)
24 In #r224, the location is missing and the health formula is added after the date, probably as an afterthought. 
In #r242, an intersubjective element (‘fateui uezzi’ [take care]) is inserted between the discourse-ending and 
the health formula. The health formula is missing in two early letters, i.e. #r221 and #r247 (in the former, the 
discourse-ending formula ‘ne altro’ is replaced by ‘editantto uidicho’).
292
Within the fixed closing structure described above, accommodating these new ele-
ments posed some challenges. Their position oscillates, as Lucrezia does not seem 
quite sure where to place them, and whether these elements should precede, or follow, 
the closing.
One solution is to duplicate the discourse-ending formulae, so that greetings or oth-
er intersubjective formulae become encapsulated between these elements. This is what 
we find in #r335, where the formula ‘ne altro’ [nothing else] is repeated twice, and in 
#r16 and #r17, where the first discourse-ending formula is a much more complex alter-
native to ‘ne altro’: this alternative, ‘ne saro piu lungha a(lo i)criuere faro fine’ [I will 
not write longer, I will put an end to writing], is stylistically higher than the surrounding 
text and is in fact a combination of two discourse-ending formulae. However, it is used 
twice in the same formulation, suggesting that the whole macro-sequence was learned 
and retrieved as a unit, perhaps under the influence of some written model.25
ne altro abiateui chura situ esirafaello elsi liaatri echosi ebestiami nealtro istatte 
sani difirenzze adi 29 daprille 1554 [Nothing else. Take care both you and Raf-
faello and so the others and so the cattle. Nothing else. Stay healthy. From Flor-
ence on the day 29 April 1554.] (#r335)
nesaro piu lungha alo icriuere faro fine ingeniateui di riguardarui e farui uessi 
(…) ne altro atutti mirachomando istate sani di firenze adi 3 disetenbre 1565 [I 
will not write longer, I will put an end to writing. Make sure to take care and treat 
yourself well (…) Nothing else. To all I recommend myself. Stay healthy. From 
Florence on the day 3 September 1565.]26 (#r16)
nesaro piu lungha acriuere faro fine eauoi elaghostansa earafaello eabracco 
mirachomanddo (…) ne altro istate sani di firenzze adi 5 di setenbre 1565 [I will 
not write longer, I will put an end to writing. And to you and to Gostanza and 
Raffaello and Braccio I recommend myself (…). Nothing else. Stay healthy. On 
the day 5 September 1565.] (#r17)
Another solution, adopted in Lucrezia’s last three letters (#r18, #r19, #r20), is to 
accommodate the greetings at the very end of the closing sequence, as in: 
nealtro istate sani di firezze adi 8 di setenbre 1565 eatuti mirachomando [Noth-
ing else. Stay healthy. From Florence on the day 8 September 1565. And to all I 
recommend myself] (#r19)
In summary, the closing of Lucrezia’s late letters includes more epistolary formulae 
in comparison with her early letters: it makes space for intersubjective formulae such as 
25 This is not surprising, as the semi-literate are known to make use of prefabricated, prestigious formulae, which 
results in an uneven register (D’Achille 1994: 75).
26 Here, a further intersubjective element – ‘atutti mirachomando’ – breaks up the closing sequence.
293
greetings, and frequently contains more than one discourse-ending formula. While not 
abandoning the formulae she used in her early letters, Lucrezia complements them with 
alternative, semantically equivalent variants that are grammatically more complex, as 
seen in the case of the discourse-ending formulae.
7 CONCLUSION
Epistolary formulae mark private, everyday letters as written texts, drawing attention 
to the existence of genre-specific conventions. Their use – which has been shown to 
be abundant in texts by semiliterate writers – challenges the view of letters as the best 
approximation of speech (Elspaß 2005: 156–157).
In many respects, Lucrezia’s letters reflect quite closely a language of immediacy. 
Words are often repeated or left out, the same concept is reprised multiple times, there 
are digressions and postscripts – all of which attests to a scant level of textual planning. 
Dialogue is sometimes reported by means of direct discourse (#r240), interjections are 
frequent, and idiomatic expressions are plentiful, as in Lucrezia’s reminder to her son 
that ‘cinosi misura nondura’ [who does not measure themselves, does not last] (#r224, 
#r240). However, my analysis has shown that Lucrezia was not unaware of epistolary 
conventions. Possibly the first (lay) woman in her family to write a letter in her own 
hand, she made use of several epistolary formulae when opening and closing her letters.
Returning to the research questions set out in Section 4, I had first asked whether 
Lucrezia might have learned and retrieved formulae as holistic units, i.e. prefabricated 
sequences that are not subject to analysis. Indeed, many of the formulae used by Lu-
crezia are compatible with an interpretation that views them as holistic. First, most for-
mulae were highly fixed, displaying very little internal variation or lexical substitution. 
For example, the address form used towards her sons remained the same throughout 
Lucrezia’s twenty-seven years of letter-writing. The same holds true for the health 
formula ‘istatte sano’, for the discourse-ending formula ‘ne altro’, and for the formulae 
used to indicate location and date. As we have seen for the letter closing, the discourse 
structures in which these formulae were inserted could also be highly stereotypical. 
With time, as Lucrezia’s writing experience grows, we see her adopt more formulae 
and more complex formulae. However, several of these new formulae – including the 
superscription, the greetings, the discourse-ending formulae – are also fixed, being re-
peated time after time with little variation. As seen for the closing, these new formulae 
needed to be accommodated into the rigid structure that Lucrezia knew, which resulted 
in a modified, but still stereotyped macro-structure. 
Moreover, some of the formulae she used were employed inappropriately within 
the syntax of the broader sentence and, as seen before, inappropriateness of use is a 
criterion for the detection of holistic units (Hickey 1993: 32). This was the case for the 
opening formula ‘e ariuat(t)o (qui)__’ [__ has arrived here] which did not always agree 
with its subject (#r20), and for the combination of two opening formulae which yielded 
a sentence that did not work syntactically: ‘oafare risposta adua letere eperdarui auiso 
chome’ [I must reply to two letters and to let you know that…] (#r22). Finally, a further 
potential characteristic of prefabricated units is that they are grammatically advanced 
294
compared to the rest of the text (Hickey 1993: 32). I found some evidence of this in the 
discourse-ending formula ‘ne saro piu lungha a(lo i)criuere faro fine’ [I will not write 
longer, I will put an end to writing] (#r16, #r17), which appeared to be a case of influ-
ence from above.
All of this suggests that formulae could be memorised by Lucrezia as single units 
and potentially serve her as a ‘safe option’ to compose a text. Now that it has been 
established that formulae could represent holistic units for this writer, I will turn to the 
second research question: given that Lucrezia’s writing experience increased in the 
course of her life, did the number of optional formulae she used decrease with time? In 
this case, the answer is negative. If anything, the number of formulae slightly increases, 
mostly in the closing with the appearance of greetings that were absent from the earlier 
letters, and with a multiplication of discourse-ending formulae. This does not suggest 
a simple inverse correlation between level of writing experience and use of epistolary 
formulae, of the type that has been proposed for other linguistic traditions. It suggests 
instead that formulae might have been more than aids for formulation. 
As for research question 3, i.e. whether the formulae used by Lucrezia show evi-
dence of lifespan change and increase in complexity and elaboration, the answer is 
affirmative. We have seen this in the change of the superscription to a more elaborate 
formula geared towards negative politeness; in the replacement of the opening formula 
‘tengho una uostra’ with ‘tengho la uostra a me ghratissima’; in the adoption of an 
alternative, longer and ‘bookish’ discourse-ending formula; and in the writer’s attempt 
to string together different opening formulae. This suggests that, as Lucrezia’s writ-
ing experience grew, epistolary formulae were also a means by which she attempted 
to construct a letter-writing persona. In a society where letter-writing was becoming 
more and more codified, she seems to have relied on formulae more, not less, with the 
passing of time. This role of formulae as a means to signal participation in certain com-
munity practices, however, is not itself incompatible with them having a role also as a 
‘safe option’ for formulation.
To explain these data, I hypothesise that the relationship between (low) writing 
experience and (high) use of formulae was not necessarily linear. A writer at the begin-
ning of an acquisition process might simply not know many formulae: at extremely 
low levels of writing experience, a writer’s reliance on formulae would thus be limited. 
This would have been the case for Lucrezia in the late 1530s and early 1540s, a time 
when she had just started to write: as seen before, her early letters showed evidence of 
a lower ability of textual planning, and in one of them (#r221) she even forgot text-type 
formulae that are usually obligatory – i.e. the address formula and the opening formula 
– beginning the text in medias res. The fact that, during these years, Lucrezia some-
times delegated to others the writing of the superscription is a further sign that she was 
insecure when it came to epistolary conventions. After this first stage, as a writer’s ex-
perience slightly increases, familiarising them with letter-writing conventions, writers 
would start to rely on formulae more heavily, using them as a ‘safe option’ to compose 
a letter. It is important to stress that Lucrezia remains, until the end of her life, some-
one with limited writing experience, retaining a low level of graphic competence and 
295
continuing to delegate to her son (Braccio) the writing of her account book (ASF Ric-
asoli Amministrazione 275). If a writer were to acquire even more writing experience, 
we might find that their use of formulae would again decrease, in keeping with what has 
been shown for other linguistic traditions. The formulae themselves might also become 
less fixed, as the ability to vary formulae has been observed to increase with increasing 
writing experience (De Blasi 1982: 35). Indeed, while Lucrezia’s use of formulae was 
shown to increase over time, some elements that she added to the closing in her middle 
and late letters – especially the ‘take care’ formula – appear more subject to variation. 
These are hypotheses that I intend to test in future studies, where I will explore formu-
laic usage across subsequent generations of Ricasoli women who differed in their level 
of writing experience, thereby extending the analysis to the many letters that have come 
down to us by Lucrezia’s daughter Maddalena and by her granddaughter Cassandra.
In conclusion, the results suggest that many of the formulae used by Lucrezia might 
have well been prefabricated units, retrieved as a whole from memory. As such, these for-
mulae could have helped this little experienced writer as aids for formulation. However, 
tracking the use of these formulae over time has revealed that the relationship between 
the use of formulae and (low) writing experience was not necessarily linear. The fact that 
Lucrezia used more, and more complex formulae as time went by suggests that these ele-
ments also served other functions, related to group practices and social identities.
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Abstract
LEARNING TO WRITE LETTERS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE: 
EPISTOLARY FORMULAE IN THE CORRESPONDENCE OF LUCREZIA  
ALBIZZI RICASOLI
In sixteenth-century Italy, more and more women began to actively participate in the 
practice of private letter-writing. This contribution presents the analysis of the language 
of twenty archival letters written in the Florentine vernacular by Lucrezia di Matteo 
Albizzi Ricasoli, a Florentine patrician woman who had a low level of writing expe-
rience. Lucrezia began to write quite late in her life and went on to correspond with 
her sons over the next twenty-six years (1539–1565). Focusing on the formulae she 
used in the epistolary frame and in the superscriptions, my analysis assesses the de-
gree of fixedness of these elements, discusses the functions they might have played in 
her letter-writing process, and investigates possible lifespan changes in relation to her 
progressive increase in writing experience. Drawing from hitherto unknown archival 
material, this study offers a contribution to the historical sociolinguistic debates on the 
use and social functions of formulae.
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Keywords: epistolary formulae, private letters, women's language, writing experience, 
Renaissance Florence
Povzetek
KAKO PISATI PISMA V FIRENCAH V 16. STOLETJU: PISEMSKE USTALJENE 
ZVEZE V KORESPONDENCI LUCREZIE ALBIZZI RICASOLI
V 16. stoletju je v Italiji vse več žensk začelo pisati zasebna pisma. Prispevek ana-
lizira jezik dvajsetih pisem, najdenih v arhivih, ki jih je v florentinskem vernakularnem 
jeziku napisala Lucrezia di Matteo Albizzi Ricasoli, ženska iz florentinske patricijske 
družine, ki je imela s pisanjem malo izkušenj. Lucrezia je s pisanjem začela dokaj poz-
no in si nato naslednjih šestindvajset let (1539–1565) dopisovala s svojima sinovoma. 
Pričujoča razprava se osredotoča na ustaljene zveze, ki jih je Lucrezia uporabljala v 
uvodnem in zaključnem delu pisem ter v segmentu, namenjenemu identifikaciji na-
slovnika. Oceniti skušamo, do kakšne mere so ti elementi ustaljeni, in ugotoviti, kakšne 
vloge bi lahko imeli pri njenem procesu pisanja. Ukvarjamo se tudi z morebitnimi 
spremembami, povezanimi z njeno vse večjo izkušenostjo v pisanju. Na osnovi doslej 
neznanega arhivskega gradiva ta raziskava prispeva k razpravam o rabi in o socialnih 
funkcijah ustaljenih zvez s stališča historične sociolingvistike.
Ključne besede: pisemske ustaljene zveze, zasebna pisma, ženski jezik, izkušnje s 
pisanjem, renesančne Firence