Accounting education and ethics in the 15th century

What were the ethics of the first double entry bookkeepers in Italy from the end of the 12th to the beginning of the 16th century? Did ethics impact their work? How were they taught and who were they? What was this person we call a “bookkeeper” in the 13th century? Was bookkeeping all that they did? How did those that used the account books they produced know that they could be trusted to show a true and fair reflection of the activity of the business? Did all this really matter, or is ethics in accounting, accounting education and ethics in accounting and other aspects of business education a relatively recent phenomenon? This chapter seeks to address these and other issues through a description of the working world in which double entry first emerged and from the writings of merchants and bookkeepers of those times.