Merchants (Medieval Studies)

In the paper are published three vernacular extracts from account books drawn up by Venetian merchants and bankers in the second half of the thirteenth century. The first two are contained in judgments rendered by the civil court of Petizion (established in 1244): therefore they are an early example of the probative value assigned to the account books in the commercial law of medieval Venice and they will occupy an important place in the Venetian dossier of the «Chartae Vulgares Antiquiores» research project. These extracts, which are among the oldest Venetian texts survived, are provided with a historical and linguistic commentary.

Chaucer’s depiction of the merchant in the Prologue presents the modern reader with a curious dichotomy. Many of medieval literature’s iniquitous mercantile stereotypes, such as Langland’s Covetise or Haukyn, are described as deceitful and avaricious with little hope of salvation. Yet Chaucer’s estimable merchant is portrayed as a worthy man: well-dressed, expert in business and skilled in negotiation. Chaucer has been interpreted as speaking ironically of the entire merchant class of his day. However, Chaucer came from a mercantile family (his father was a vintner), he was controller of Customs at the port of London and he had commercial dealings with London merchants. So, for much of his career, he was surrounded by exactly the sort of merchants he describes in his Prologue. They may have also have made up some of his potential audience. Of equal importance is the changing attitude to trade which was founded upon merchants’ virtuous role in enriching the state and its rulers.

The account-books left by medieval merchants have mostly been studied to analyze their degree of technical development and the activity and volume of the companies that produced them. In order to identify the limit between commercial exchanges and non-commercial exchanges, we have first to understand how the transactions were filtered, decomposed and recomposed as inputs to fit into a system of written recording aimed at tracking flows of wares and capital as well as the shift of debts and credits with numerous partners. In the case of the Datini agency in Avignon around 1386, mostly specialized in armory and ironmongery, the bookkeeping in simple entry is distributed on about ten books. Among these, the memoriale contains most information about customers but partly conceals the transactions by recomposing them in personal accounts which usually sum up debits and credits resulting from several exchanges. This book also gathers about 300 customers, among whom craftsmen and men-at-arms predominate, without excluding a few traders living in town or abroad. All these individuals were not identified unambiguously by the staff of the shop. The tendency to present each person in a homogeneous and abstract form is thwarted by a reading of social links in terms of households and patronage. The memoriali of the agency do not completely exclude exchanges identifiable as gifts, but relegate them to the margins, as an explanation of some of the cash advances required from the company by its staff. Agency accounting can thus be seen as part of a device establishing a boundary between the professional and private spheres. The material layout of the agency distinguishes the shop from the living quarters and signals it to customers as a professional and masculine space. At the same time, account-books invite the staff to distinguish between their personal assets and those of the company by having them open personal accounts similar to those of the customers for their own expenses and earnings, dissociating thus the flows of cash they manage on one side for the company, whether in the shop or during missions, on the other side for their practices of consumption.

The article is aimed at identifying the role, character and wealth of two main occupational groups of late mediaeval Warsaw –merchants and artisans. The analyzed data include: change in the number and value of record entries, asset and business structure as well as loan market involvement.

The overt mercantilism of The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye has overshadowed important questions surrounding the poem’s purpose and literary form. As the work attempts to justify economic protectionism, its preoccupation with legal and bureaucratic practices breaks new ground for the hybrid genre of bill-poems. This article associates The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye with civilian bills, or libelli, and re-evaluates the immediate historical context surrounding the poem’s composition. The wealth and accuracy of economic, political, and legal information that is contained in the poem points to the poet’s intimate familiarity with the highest functions of the King’s writing offices at Westminster. I argue that The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye must have been composed from within the closest circle of Henry VI’s senior administrators. The poem, I shall contend, formed part of the Privy Seal’s strategy to identify the adolescent monarch, who had only just begun to exercise the royal privilege of granting petitions, with a defence of Calais and an ideological pursuit of peace. Central to this process were William Lyndwood, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Walter Hungerford, the poem’s sponsor. In additionto historical and circumstantial evidence, Lyndwood’s association with The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye is supported by the centrality the poem assigns to seals and documentary validity, its legal mode as a libellus, and its programmatic emphasis on peace and unity, which Lyndwood had championed in a parliamentary sermon of 1431.

This article presents some new archive documents which help to understand better the evidence of Emmanuel Piloti, a Venetian merchant born in Crete and settled in Alexandria and in Cairo during many years in the first half of the fifteenth century, according to his editor, P.H. Dopp. Piloti could thus observe very well the economic and social situation of Egypt of his times; he had for example exceptional contacts with the Mamluk sultan himself who entrusted him several diplomatic missions to Christian powers. However, his evidence was written twenty years after his stay in Egypt, when he lived in Italy, and is thus sometimes confuse, because he often mixed up the dates of the events. Consequently, the historians who used his text also mistook and are in contradiction; finally they considered it as an unreliable source.
But thanks to new documents discovered in the archives of Barcelona and in Venice, it is possible to date exactly some events that Piloti related, restoring the right chronology. These documents also allow to correct the exact period he stayed in Egypt. In fact, it seems that he spent there about twenty years at the beginning of the fifteenth century, certainly between 1396 and 1419. These corrections allow to make use again and to understand better the essential evidence of Emmanuel Piloti.

This paper focuses on some important features of the economy of Brescia in the Late Middle Ages. Particular attention will be paid to agricultural trades and to some important local productions, but also to the active role played by Tuscans, local merchants and aristocracies in shaping the economic activity of the city and its contado.

Nella tradizione storiografica le ricerche sui radicali mutamenti politico-istituzionali che interessarono le città comunali italiane nel Duecento, e che si manifestarono soprattutto nell'affermazione dei movimenti di Popolo, e quelle sul ruolo centrale svolto dai mercanti italiani nella rivoluzione commerciale duecentesca sono per lo più procedute parallelamente, senza incontrarsi. Eppure i protagonisti dei due fenomeni, la "rivoluzione politica" del Popolo e la rivoluzione commerciale duecentesca, sono gli stessi. Questo libro è il tentativo, applicato a un case study specifico, la città di Lucca, di integrare le due prospettive. Esso è cioè uno studio sul cambiamento sociale che caratterizzò il Duecento lucchese, del quale furono parte il cambiamento economico e il cambiamento politico, la rivoluzione commerciale della seta e la rivoluzione politica del Popolo, e anche il mutamento delle strategie di affermazione individuale e familiare e dei canali di mobilità sociale. I diversi cambiamenti sono analizzati nel loro complesso intrecciarsi e nel loro imperfetto sovrapporsi, come elementi di un unico processo di trasformazione del tessuto sociale cittadino.
Ricollocate nel contesto delle loro interazioni, sia l'espansione economica duecentesca che l'evoluzione politico-istituzionale sono apparse in una luce in parte nuova. Il diverso punto di vista, cioè, ha consentito di giungere ad alcuni risultati inediti tanto sulla storia dell'industria e del commercio di Lucca quanto sulle vicende del Popolo nella città toscana.

This paper is intended to be a “cultural history of trade” rather than the “economic history of Diaspora” in a strict sense. In this paper, the focus will be on Armenian trading Diaspora’s role as a trans-cultural agent. I shall try to avoid an artificial isolation of Diaspora from the processes and phenomena taking their place in the host society – an approach used by many previous scholars in the field. For these reasons, this paper will contextualize the history of Armenian Diaspora in simultaneous processes in Moldavian principality as well as on the European scale. I shall study dynamics of mutual influences between Diaspora and the host society. Since Armenian merchants in Moldavian principality constituted part of a larger Armenian merchant network, a special attention will be paid to the study of connections and cooperation between Armenian merchants – subjects of Moldavian princes, Polish kings and Ottoman sultans. Pre-modern Armenian trading Diaspora as well as many other diasporic groups can be adequately understood only if their emergence is viewed in a “longue durée” perspective. That is why this paper tries to embrace such a lengthy period – from the mid-thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth century. The focus on a single diasporic group makes generalization difficult and prevents scholars from understanding the historical diversity of such trans-national experiences. For these reasons, this paper will focus on Armenian trading Diaspora in Moldavia in comparison with Greek and Jewish ones.

"[It] Le città italiane degli ultimi secoli del Medioevo videro ancora, accanto a un progressivo irrigidirsi delle gerarchie sociali, l'ascesa economica e sociale di individui appartenenti al 'ceto medio': homines novi che, senza ricorrere a legami di casata e spesso rifiutando il modello associazionistico delle corporazioni, riuscirono a costruirsi fortuna e dignità grazie al commercio, all'imprenditoria, allo sfruttamento della terra, alle solidarietà di quartiere e di parrocchia, alla gestione dell'assistenza. Emblematica di questi percorsi di affermazione è la figura di un operatore economico originario del contado, Donato Ferrario da Pantigliate, fondatore nel 1429 a Milano di un ente devozionale e assistenziale, la Scuola della Divinità, personaggio del quale si vanno qui a ricostruire i comportamenti sociali, economici e spirituali inserendoli nel contesto urbano milanese della prima metà del Quattrocento.

[En] Despite a progressively greater rigidity in the social hierarchy, the last centuries of the Middle Ages continued to witness the economic and social rise of individuals belonging to the "middle class". These hominis novi, without resorting to family claims, and often rejecting the associative model of the guilds, succeeded in achieving fortune and self-respect through commerce, enterprise, the exploitation of the land, local and parochial solidarity and the administration of charity. Emblematic of such ascent to fortune is the figure of a businessman of rural origin, Donato Ferrario da Pantigliate, who in 1429 founded in Milan a devotional and charitable institution, the Scuola della Divinità. It is the social, economic and spiritual life of this merchant which is reconstructed in this book, inserting it within the urban context of Milan during the first half of the fifteenth century. "

"Il contributo segnala la riscoperta del quattrocentesco ms. Laur. Acquisti e doni 401, già noto all’erudizione ottocentesca, ma di cui si erano perdute le tracce e si era addirittura sospettata una falsificazione. Il codice, restituito a Luigi di Ridolfo Peruzzi (1410-1484), un mercante fiorentino esiliato ad Avignone, contiene, tra l’altro, una interessante biografia petrarchesca, la cui edizione è pubblicata in appendice. Essa contiene intriganti
notizie sull’identità storica di Laura, una delle primissime attestazioni del titolo Canzoniere per il libro di rime volgari di Petrarca e appare bipartita in due sezioni, di cui l’ultima dedicata alle origini di Laura: una struttura che influenza la fortunata vita petrarchesca di Vellutello.

This contribution points out the rediscovery of the fifteenth-century ms. Laur. Acquisti e doni 401, already known to nineteenth century antiquaries, but whose traces had been lost, even going so far as to suspect a fake. The manuscript, restored to Luigi di Ridolfo Peruzzi (1410-1484), a Florentine merchant exiled in Avignon, includes, among the rest, an interesting biography of Petrarch, edited in the Appendix. It contains some interesting information on the historical Laura, one of the first attestations of ‘Canzoniere’ as a title for the book of Petrarch’s vernacular poems, and appears divided in two parts, the last being dedicated to the origins of Laura: a structure which will influence Vellutello’s celebrated life of Petrarch."

While scholars may know that the 'sultan of Babylon' sent Frederick II a 'white parrot', few are aware of the existence of four sketches, indicating it was a Sulphur or Yellow-crested Cockatoo. As these were made two and a half centuries before what was thought to be the earliest European image of the Australasian cockatoo - in Andrea Mantegna's 1496 Madonna della Vittoria - the authors consider the events and shared interests that led the sultan to give this bird to Frederick and how it would have arrived on the Apennine Peninsula in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Published with Jukka Salo, Pekka Niemelä and Simo Örmä.

El enorme volumen de recursos fiscales percibidos por los monarcas castellanos a finales de la Edad Media en la Andalucía Atlántica permite considerar este espacio, en el que la ciudad de Sevilla ocupaba un lugar de centralidad, como uno de los más rentables en términos tributarios de toda la Corona de Castilla, en consonancia con su elevado nivel demográfico y la importancia de las actividades productivas y de intercambio allí desarrolladas. El presente libro no solo trata de ofrecer una descripción sintética de las principales fuentes de renta ordinaria recaudadas por el fisco regio en este territorio, de su cuantía y evolución en el siglo XV y comienzos del XVI, y de la articulación del espacio fiscal a efectos de organización de la colecta. También presenta un modelo analítico que permite avanzar en la comprensión integral del “negocio” ligado a la gestión de la fiscalidad regia, de los intereses que se ocultaban detrás de las iniciativas empresariales puestas en marcha por los recaudadores de rentas y sus avalistas, de sus estrategias cooperativas, y de las posibilidades que el negocio fiscal brindaba a los operadores a la hora de integrarse en redes socio-económicas que, partiendo del espacio local y regional, se extendían por toda la Corona de Castilla.

Basandosi sulla documentazione notarile, il saggio analizza il trend della manifattura laniera milanese del secondo '400. Ne emerge un incremento globale della produzione-in particolare per gli articoli di lusso (saie e berretti) confezionati con lana inglese-negli ultimi tre decenni del secolo e all'inizio del successivo, dopo alcuni anni di difficoltà. La ripresa scaturì da diversi fattori concomitanti: la politica sforzesca volta a sostenere le produzioni di lusso; l'incremento della domanda di tessuti di lusso milanesi da parte della corte pontificia; il ruolo strategico della colonia di mercanti inglesi a Milano, importatori di materia prima ed esportatori di berretti a maglia tinti in grana. Tali mercanti erano collegati a uomini d'affari fiorentini e genovesi, e avevano interessi commerciali anche a Firenze.
parole chiave: Manifattura laniera, Ducato di Milano, mercanti inglesi, manifattura tessile, prodotti di lusso

Analyzing the notary documentation, this paper shows the trend of wool industry in Milan in the second half of the 15th century. The result is a global increase in production particularly for luxury items (saies and caps) packaged with English wool in the last three decades of the century and at the beginning of the next, after some years of difficulties. The recovery arose from several concomitant factors: the policy of the Sforza to support luxury production; the increase in papal court demand for Milanese luxury goods; the strategic role of the group of English merchants in Milan, importers of raw material and exporters of knitted caps dyed with cochineal, linked in turn to Florentine and Genoese businessmen, and with business interests in Florence as well. Wool industry, Milan under Visconti and Sforza,

English merchant, textile industry, luxury goods | Previous | Storia economica XXII (2019) 1

Sokolov I.A. Russian "the Tea Fairy tale": the beginning, until the end of the XIX century // Coffee & tea in Russia: the business magazine, No. 3 (105), 2013 – PP. 20 – 23.
Соколов И.А. Российская чайная сказка: от истоков до конца XIX века

In order to portray the “Greek” merchant by elucidating the confidential aspects of his
affairs (basically related to money and merchandise), starting the investigation from the virtues and emotions previously resulted, while exploiting, as storage media for any such information, the Greek documentary sources (the accounting books and acts and the commercial correspondence within the remaining archival fonds), as well as data from medieval juridical literature (mostly drawn up in Latin), this paper analyzes the dimensions of the secretiveness that pervades the practical and scriptural usages specific to the old medieval mercantile humanity in the Euro-Balkan region (XVth – mid-XIXth century).

Generously illustrated with inedited fragments from documents (also including fifteen
photoreproductions), the study aims at unifying the coordinates – communication, scriptural act, archivology – that clarify the extent to which the commercial archives testify to the secretive obsessions and compulsions of the merchants, especially the “Greek" ones, and of those who have inspired their customs.

The Greek documents within the fonds of Aromanian trading houses and companies
attest encoding reflexes for messages, contexts and names belonging to the entrepreneurs involved in the Euro-Balkan trade. The analysis of such communication methods has been structured on an array of mercantile risks that impose precautionary measures: economic and political espionage, Arcana Artis, great businesses, money, travelling, characterizations and recommendations, loan, trials, the “economy of secrets”. Cryptic writings, forged words and the use of pseudonyms and nicknames ‒ beyond being major palaeographic hindrances ‒ represent scriptural practices that conceal commercial realia (prohibited goods, forbidden currencies, hidden fees and profits, loans, favors, etc.).

The regulatory instruments of medieval bookkeeping disclose the theoretical vision of
the epoch (the one that has generated the historiographic concept of the “economy of
secrets”) regarding the range of merchants' mystical consuetudes ‒ starting from protecting the correspondence, keeping secret records, concealing the archives ‒, in the interest of debating mainly the excessive prudence displayed towards the juridical requesting of these private archives. A certain discretion reveals itself as one of the defining features of the bookkeepers; in the spirit of the professional secrecy, so sacredly guarded by the medieval guilds (Arcana Artis) and even more so by the merchants' branch, this discretion occults the methodology of the accounting books and, consequently, the very “art” of counting and justifying the flow of money.

In conclusion, after outlining these levels of mercantile secretiveness, by means of
stepping, then, further into the family secretiveness (the trade house and firm correspond to the founding social entity), the research leads will be possible to be followed in order to disclose the personal categories of informations that prove to be sensitive inside the “Greek” merchants network and to create echoes in their social norms and emotions: blood ties, affinities or dissolutions, psychomental medical history.

Saint-Amand P., 2018, « Enrichissement et ascension sociale des familles de marchands
batteurs à Dinant et à Bouvignes au 15e siècle », in Thomas N., Dandridge P. (éd.), Cuivre,
bronzes et laitons médiévaux : Histoire, archéologie et archéométrie des productions en
laiton, bronze et autres alliages à base de cuivre dans l’Europe médiévale (12e-16e siècles).
Medieval copper, bronze and brass: History, archaeology and archaeometry of the production
of brass, bronze and other copper alloy objects in medieval Europe (12th-16th centuries),
[Actes du colloque de Dinant et Namur, 15-17 mai 2014. Proceedings of the symposium of
Dinant and Namur, 15-17 May 2014], Namur, Agence wallonne du Patrimoine, p. 181-190.
(Études et documents, Archéologie ; 39).

The Atlantic ports of Andalusia were privileged centres to develop foreign merchant’s commercial interests, as a huge bibliography and a consolidated tradition of studies has established. The present paper focuses on a matter that has not been equally and conveniently deepened, the degree of social mobility of the Italian nations –Genoese, Florentines and Venetians– established within the urban societies of the Crown of Castile at the end of the middle ages. Considered as nations in the medieval sense of the term, we first determine the importance of economic success to enable the insertion in the local élites, the urban oligarchies that controlled economical and political power resources, and determined the contacts with the Castilian nobility and the Crown. In second place, we take into consideration the instruments to measure social ascent. Third and last, from the data gathered we try to establish if group dynamics can be identified inside Italian communities, or if we are facing isolated and exceptional cases. The comparative perspective resulting offers a complex picture in which the Genoese community was the only foreign nation to achieve an effective process to integrate in upper social networks of the territory.