Time, space and accounting at Nonantola Abbey (1350-1449)

Benedictine monasteries have attracted the attention of accounting historians by their ability to balance heterogeneous interests and promote a modern use of accounting and governance practices. Nevertheless, these studies have not explicitly considered the dimensions of time and space in the administration of the large and mainly agricultural patrimony of Benedictine monasteries. The work considers the surviving accounting records of the Benedictine abbey of Nonantola in northern Italy from 1350 to 1449 and seeks to document the impact of different conceptions of time and space on the abbey’s accounting and accountability practices. In the accounting books of Nonantola abbey linear and cyclical conceptions of time coexisted whilst the abbey was at the centre of a complex network of accountabilities whose main characteristic was not the accuracy of the records but the reach of its agricultural network.