This work aims at highlighting the contribution provided by the sixteenth century treatises to the development of double entry bookkiping. In fact, some of them had a very important role in the improvement and complete affirmation of this method invented by merchants at the end of the Middle Age. In the previous century only one book was published: Luca Pacioli’s “Summa”. In the sixteenth century, although limited, the number of authors who described the double-entry method inevitably grew. In chronological order of publication, in Italy there are the volumes by Giovanni Antonio Tagliente (1525), an anonymous author (1525 and 1529), Gerolamo Cardano (1539), Domenico Manzoni (1539), Alvise Casanova (1558) and Angelo Pietra (1586). To these we must add the manuscript of Gian Francesco Aritmetico (1516), as well as the printing – posthumous – of the manuscript by Benedetto Cotrugli (1573), written in 1458. The most important work is undoubtedly that of Angelo Pietra, who applied the double entry to non-commercial firms for the first time. He also introduced the first adjustment records and forecast accounts. However, the books by Domenico Manzoni and Alvise Casanova also contributed to the growth of the discipline, especially from the point of view of the practical dissemination. The works of “minor” authors should also be remembered because they contributed to the growth of the discipline also by helping to spread it through their writings, in a period characterized by a lack of knowledge of double-entry bookkeeping. Furthermore, the foreign treatises of that century, all subsequent to the first Italian ones, drew largely from the latter.
Keywords: Accounting history, Double entry bookkeeping, Angelo Pietra, XVI century
