«Maneggiare dalla carità all'economia». Le rendite vitalizie tra previdenza e provvidenza (Italia settentrionale, secoli XVII-­XVIII)

The article focuses on the development of life annuities in the old regime by looking at the contracts drawn up by different charities in northern Italy. Such instruments al-lowed their signatories to use resources (money, credits, real estate) to open pensions for themselves and/or for a third party, which might include other, additional services (funeral services, Requiem Masses, dowries for daughters or granddaughters). Between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, life annuities were a case study and a field of application for the upcoming probability theory. The development of such practices became therefore a special observation point for the progressive math-ematization of socio-economic life, which helps understand the pervasiveness of the innovation as well as at the factors of resilience that are inbred in contracting. The sources suggest that the introduction of life tables, while making the life expectancy of the recipients somehow more predictable, did not reflect all their needs and, most im-portantly, could not control other unknown factors, such as those related to the type and quality of the capital allocated to such annuities. Due to the great variety of social expectations, in most cases contracts cannot be pigeonholed into a preestablished grid but require, instead, a more far-ranging assessment of each specific context.