money, markets and trade in late medieval europe

Money, Markets and Trade

in Late Medieval Europe

Later Medieval Europe

Managing Editor

Douglas Biggs Waldorf College

Editorial Board Members

Kelly DeVriesLoyola College

William Chester JordanPrinceton Iniversity

Cynthia J. NevilleDalhousie University

Kathryn L. ReyersonUniversity of Minnesota

VOLUME 1

Money, Markets and Trade in

Late Medieval Europe

Essays in Honour of John H.A. Munro

Edited by

Lawrin ArmstrongIvana Elbl

Martin M. Elbl

LEIDEN • BOSTON2007

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ISSN 1872–7875ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15633-3ISBN-10: 90-04-15633-X

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J. H. A. MUNROAT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE (UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO)

OCTOBER 2006

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LIST OF FIGURES

Changing Composition of the Exchequer Assignment(Household) ............................................................................ 219

Changing Composition of Assignments for Moradiasof the Portuguese Royal Household ..................................... 230

Flanders and Adjacent Regions (Map) ................................. 317

Regional Groupings in Flanders and Its Environs(Map) ....................................................................................... 318

Places with Regulated Textile Industries by 1382,Castellany of Ypres and Environs ......................................... 323

Von Thünen Rings with an Interaction Model .................... 366

A Von Thünen System with Multiple Market Centres ......... 367

Price of Gold (1360=100): Mediterranean“Levantine” Ports .................................................................... 384

Price of Gold (1360=100): Northern Europe ...................... 385

Price of Gold (1360=100): The WesternMediterranean ........................................................................ 386

African Gold Trade, 1310-1370 (Map) ................................. 388

African Gold Trade, 1445-1454 (Map) ................................. 390

Price of Gold (1360=100): The Maghrib ............................ 395

Price of Gold and Silver (1360=100): Egypt ....................... 397

Bi-Metallic Ratios ................................................................... 398

West-Central Sahara and the Maghrib (Map) ...................... 414

The Tuat and Gurara (Map) ................................................. 422

Selected European Copper Mining Centers (Map) ............. 443

The Borromei Family (Selected Genealogy) ......................... 462

, 1438

LIST OF TABLES

Revenue-Generating Approaches ........................................... 96

Gold and Money Receipts of the Guinea House,1476-1505 ............................................................................... 116

Manresan Annual Tax Revenues, 1254-1418 ....................... 125

Revenue from Some Specific Taxes in Manresa .................. 127

Nominal and Real Royal Income from Manresa,1254-1380 ............................................................................... 128

Known Extraordinary Payments Levied at Manresa,1325-1378 ............................................................................... 130

Tolls on Some Common Trade Goods Occurringin Local Toll Lists .................................................................. 158

Tolls on Some Common Trade Goods Occurringin Lists of Public Works Tolls ............................................... 159

Revenues for Household Assignment (Exchequer) .............. 218

Revenues Assigned to Pay the Moradias of thePortuguese Royal Household ................................................. 229

Ships in Naval Service, the Bordeaux Wine Trade,and Pilgrim Transport ........................................................... 246

Percentage Distribution of Complementary InputSupply Clauses in Sample, by Time Periods ........................ 282

Estimated Coefficients of Multinomial Logit ....................... 288

Number of Debt Recognitions per Year ............................... 335

Regional Groups ..................................................................... 336

Cases by Region ..................................................................... 337

Fairs as Percentage of Regions’ Total Cases ......................... 338

Debts Payable at Fairs .......





xviii CONTRIBUTORS

JOHN DRENDEL received a doctorate in Medieval Studies from the Uni-versity of Toronto in 1991 and now teaches at the Université du Québecà Montréal. His published work on medieval Provence includes studiesof Jews, credit, women and family. He is currently editing a collectionof articles for Brill devoted to the influence of Michael Postan uponFrench historiography.

IVANA ELBL (Ph.D., University of Toronto, 1986) is Associate Professor ofHistory, Trent University, and Chief Editor of the Portuguese Studies Re-view. Her research focuses on the societal dynamics of late medieval Por-tugal and on the early Portuguese overseas expansion.

MARTIN ELBL (M.A., University of Toronto, 1981) is an adjunct memberof the Department of History, Trent University, Managing Editor of thePortuguese Studies Review, and a professional computer graphics artist andcartographer. His research and publications focus on late medieval Ita-lian and Iberian relations with North Africa, as well as on Jewish history,the Balearic Islands, and colonial military presence in the Maghrib. Hecurrently works on a study of decision-making in the Datini Compagniadi Catalogna.

SUSANNAH HUMBLE FERREIRA received her Ph.D. from Johns HopkinsUniversity, and now teaches Medieval History at the University ofGuelph in Canada. She specializes in the political culture in late medi-eval Europe and is currently working on a study comparing the develop-ment of the royal court in England and Portugal.

JEFFREY FYNN-PAUL received his Ph.D. from the University of Torontoin 2005. His dissertation was entitled “The Catalan City of Manresa inthe Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: A Political, Social, and Eco-nomic History.” His research focuses on structural aspects of WesternMediterranean society during the decades following the post-Black Deathcrisis.

FRANCESCO L. GALASSI was a student of John Munro both in undergrad-uate and graduate courses. He received his Ph.D. from the University ofToronto and subsequently taught in Spain (Universidad Carlos III) andEngland (University of Leicester and Warwick University) before return-ing to his native Italy. He is currently an Associate Fellow of WarwickUniversity, a lecturer in Economic History at the University of Ferrara,and the Technical Director of InMetrica srl, a consultancy.

xixCONTRIBUTORS

FRANCESCO GUIDI BRUSCOLI, a ricercatore in Economic History at theFaculty of Economics of the University of Florence and Senior ResearchFellow of the Department of History at Queen Mary, University of Lon-don, is a specialist in European banking history of the late medieval andearly modern periods.

MARTHA HOWELL is the Miriam Champion Professor of History at Co-lumbia University, New York. She specializes in the social and economichistory of the Burgundian Netherlands, with particular interest in gen-der, urban society, and commerce. Her publications include Women Pro-duction and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities; The Marriage Exchange; and(with Walter Prevenier) From Reliable Sources (in German as Werkstatt desHistorikers). She is completing a book called Commerce Before Capitalism.

LUTZ KAELBER received his Ph.D. from Indiana University and is Asso-ciate Professor of Sociology at the University of Vermont. His researchinterests include Weberian studies, social theory, comparative historicalsociology, and the boundaries between pilgrimage and tourism. He is theauthor of Schools of Asceticism: Ideology and Organization in Medieval Reli-gious Communities (1998), which received the 1999 Best Book award ofthe American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Religion section, andthe translator of Max Weber’s dissertation, The History of Commercial Part-nerships in the Middle Ages (2003). His most recent book, as co-editor, isThe Protestant Ethic Turns 100 (2005).

MARYANNE KOWALESKI is Joseph Fitzpatrick, S.J., Distinguished Professorof Social Science and History at Fordham University, where she alsoserves as Director of the Center for Medieval Studies. Her publicationsinclude books and articles on maritime history, towns and trade, andwomen and family.

CHARLOTTE MASEMANN teaches history at Carleton University in Ottawa.She is a recent graduate of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the Uni-versity of Toronto, where John Munro was her Ph.D. thesis supervisor.Her academic areas of interest are agrarian and environmental history,urban-rural relations, and material culture.

JAMES MASSCHAELE is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers Universityin New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he has also served two terms asDirector of Medieval Studies. He is the author of Peasants, Merchants, andMarkets: Inland Trade in Medieval England (1997) and his recent articleshave appeared in Speculum (2002), Past & Present (2006), and The Black-

xx CONTRIBUTORS

well Companion to the Middle Ages (forthcoming, 2007). He is currentlywriting a book on the medieval jury system.

DAVID NICHOLAS is Kathryn and Calhoun Lemon Professor Emeritus ofHistory at Clemson University. He is the author or editor of fifteenbooks and numerous major articles on medieval Flanders and compara-tive pre-modern urbanisation. He has received fellowships from theAmerican Council of Learned Societies and the John Simon GuggenheimMemorial Foundation. He is currently writing a study of elements ofregional cohesion in Germanic Europe in the late Middle Ages.

RICHARD W. UNGER succeeded John Munro teaching medieval economichistory at the University of British Columbia where he is a professor,specializing in the history of shipping, shipbuilding and energy use fromlate antiquity through the eighteenth century. His most recent worksdeal with the history of brewing in medieval Europe and with Renais-sance cartography.

HERMAN VAN DER WEE is Professor Emeritus and former holder of theChair of Social and Economic History at the University of Leuven (Bel-gium). He is a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium and a foreignmember of the Academies of the Netherlands, Great Britain and theUnited States. His main research is focused on socio-economic andfinancial history of Europe, in particular of the Low Countries, from theMiddle Ages to the present, and on the history of the world economyduring the twentieth century.

PREFACE

Herman Van der Wee

Three—a magical number and, in this case, the number of uniquereasons to accept with both hands the invitation to write a prefaceto the liber amicorum that is being offered to John H. A. Munro tomark his retirement. In the first place, this preface provides a for-mal framework within which to record, in an informal fashion, thejoys of many years of friendship. Secondly, it serves as a vehicle toexpress the admiration for and appreciation of John Munro’s im-pressive academic oeuvre. Lastly, it affords me the pleasure of intro-ducing the reader to the various chapters constituting the book,whether they address themselves to Munro’s own academic field ofwork or to his broader academic interests. It is surprising to notehow wide that field of work actually is and how many historians ofdifferent specializations it has brought together. For all thesereasons, it is a privilege for me, a fellow-traveller of long standing,to introduce this book.

My friendship with John Munro dates back to the beginning ofthe 1970s. At that time, he was preparing for publication his doc-toral thesis Wool, Cloth and Gold: Bullionism in Anglo-Burgundian Com-mercial Relations, 1348-1478, very successfully defended in 1964 atYale University. A sabbatical leave fellowship during the 1970-1971academic year allowed John to resume his research in Belgian ar-chives and libraries, with the intention to add to the original databank and to incorporate the analysis of the new data and its resultsinto the upcoming volume. A visit to a colleague in the course ofthat year brought us into chance contact, and the acquaintancegrew into a warm friendship, thanks chiefly to John’s regular tripsto England, the Netherlands and Belgium during the summer holi-days to indulge in a methodical plundering of our archives in or-der to satisfy his constant hunger for research.

However strictly John held to the opening and closing times ofarchives—no minute could be lost—many evenings and weekendswere kept free for cultural relaxation and get-togethers with friends.I can still see him, on his arrival in Brussels, making a detour to

2 HERMAN VAN DER WEE

pick up concert programmes in the ‘Bozar’ (Palais des Beaux Arts),in order to lose himself in music during the solitary after-workhours; music, indeed, is no mean rival in his life to historicalresearch. In fact, a weekend with John was never complete withouta musical event. More than once, moreover, we have spent delight-ful summer hours at the seaside, the flow of absorbing academicdiscussion giving way to chin-wagging about what was close to ourhearts—family, friends, the pleasure of being together and, ofcourse, music.

What for me has been the cement of such a long-lasting friend-ship is without doubt John’s generosity, a quality that I have cometo value more and more over the years. He has always been pre-pared to share new ideas and theories, as well as his own hypo-theses and discoveries, with anyone interested in them. He does sowith great openness, without waiting for the success of any publi-cation of his own. The same generosity is to be found in hisinterest in other people’s work. He is open to new approaches and,as a true academic, knows how to value a well-constructed piece ofwork, all the while reading and assessing everything with a sharp,critical eye. In a word, he has been and is an interested and livelytravelling companion along the sometimes lonely paths of latemedieval and early modern history.

The second reason for my pleasure at being asked to write thispreface involves my admiration for John Munro’s impressive aca-demic career. The publication in 1973 of his PhD thesis under thenew title of Wool, Cloth and Gold. The struggle for Bullion in Anglo-Burgundian Trade, 1340-1478 was a milestone in the historiographyof Anglo-Dutch relations during the Late Middle Ages. Subsequentresearch prompted him to analyse this complex problem moredeeply and, through contributions to various international journals,to make considerable improvements to his initial hypotheses. Inthis, his approach was two-pronged: it was aimed not only atrefining the monetary and financial analysis but also at deepeningthe research on the history of textiles. The results were staggeringand led the publisher Variorum to collect John’s most importantarticle-length contributions in two publications: Bullion Flows andMonetary Policies in England and the Low Countries, 1350-1500 andTextiles, Towns and Trade.

At the same time, John extended his field of work in space, intime and in theme. In the area of monetary history, he sought an

3PREFACE

explanation for the European depression of the Late Middle Ages:was its cause monetary, demographic, commercial or industrial?His conclusions produced important new insights into this episodein monetary history. In financial history, he focussed on the deve-lopment of modern financial techniques in North-Western Europe,including the innovations of the early modern period. Closelyconnected with this area of research was the analysis of thedevelopment of economic thought, with particular emphasis on theproblem of usury.

The extension of the geographical horizon also involved com-mercial development, a constant in John Munro’s oeuvre. In con-sequence, the trade between the Netherlands and the Hanseatictowns, and between North-Western Europe and the Mediterraneanregion, by both land and sea, became more integrated into hisresearch. John Munro’s work also continued to maintain its centralfocus on the industrial history of the Netherlands. Employing aninternational, comparative angle, he studied the development of thetextile industry, including the attendant technological and technicaladvances in that sector. He also analysed the industrial and com-mercial policies of both the central and local governments, theimpact of guilds and crafts, the history of prices and wages, andthe development of purchasing power and the standard of living.His two crucial chapters in the recently published Cambridge Historyof Western Textiles—entitled respectively “Medieval Woollens: Tex-tiles, Textile Technology and Industrial Organisation, c. 800-1500”and “Medieval Woollens: The Western European Woollen Industriesand Their Struggles for International Markets, c. 1000-1500”—notonly represent the pinnacle of years-long research but are as far-reaching in their effect (other things being equal) for the historyof textiles as the invention of the flying shuttle for the developmentof the textile industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In consequence of this impressive academic activity, John Munrohas become one of his generation’s most outstanding scholars inrespect to the history and economy of the Low Countries in medi-eval and early modern times. No topic of the social and economichistory of those regions during those periods has escaped his eagleeye, and his contribution to our profession has been immense.When discussing with him the writing of an article, a chapter, abook, or the preparation of a colloquium or a conference paper,I have always been amazed by his massive erudition, his analytical

4 HERMAN VAN DER WEE

power, his understanding of the underlying context and his masteryof economic theory. The combination of all these intellectual giftsenables him to fit all the pieces of a research puzzle togetheradmirably. He has not only constructed a huge data bank on socialand economic life in medieval and early modern times, but, as anoutstanding historian and economist, has also created a fully viableframework for historical explanation. Furthermore, his writings havenot only kept us wide awake, but have also prompted us—hiscolleagues and students alike—to get down to work as well. Thankyou, John!

Students and friends have indeed got down to work. On theoccasion of his retirement, they organized in March 2004 at theUniversity of Toronto a colloquium under the title “Money, Mar-kets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe: An International Work-shop in Honour of John Munro.” With their papers, the friendssought to demonstrate the extent of the inspiration they havedrawn from John Munro’s academic oeuvre. For their part, thestudents looked to emphasize how fruitful his teaching and super-vision have been in their university education and no less in theirown research. As could be expected, the colloquium was a resound-ing success. The papers are now presented here in book form and,insofar as a book can, reflect the broad range of academicinterest—“passion” would be a better word—apparent in John’spublications.

The central theme running through the book is the business oftrade, money, credit and finance during the Late Middle Ages andthe Early Modern period. In respect of trade, Mark Aloisio, IanBlanchard, Jeffrey Fynn-Paul, Martin and Ivana Elbl, FrancescoGuidi Bruscoli and J. L. Bolton present the results of their recentresearch on the Mediterranean region, Maryanne Kowaleski andJames Masschaele those of their research in England, and RichardUnger (having slipped across the Channel) those of his research oncommercial activities in the Netherlands. Studies on the develop-ment of finance and credit, and—closely linked to this—studies onthe problem of usury in economic thought are among the contribu-tions of Martha Howell, Lawrin Armstrong, David Nicholas, LutzKaelber, Susannah Humble Ferreira and Martha Carlin.

The contributions on institutional history by John Drendel andFrancesco L. Galassi are very much in line with John Munro’s ownimportant research in this field. For their part, Kelly DeVries and

5PREFACE

Maryanne Kowaleski (again) study certain aspects of the HundredYears War, especially with reference to England; their contributionshark back to one of the earliest themes of John Munro’s research,Anglo-Dutch relations. Unlike him, both authors focus particularlyon the problem of Anglo-French relations, although Anglo-Dutchrelations were never far from centre-stage in that troubled period.At first sight, the contribution of Charlotte Masemann on horti-culture in Lübeck appears to fall outside the scope of reference, butto say that would indicate only a superficial reading of her study.It is true that she takes horticulture as her subject, but the researchhas clearly been placed against the background of the interplaybetween purchasing power and consumption, a theme that has verymuch gripped John’s attention these last years and that has foundexpression in his most recent publications on prices and wages.

The way in which this collection of academic contributions of thehighest quality is presented is a clear reference to the remarkablywide field of research that John Munro has tilled during his aca-demic career. For him, detailed, in-depth research and a tenaciousattachment to primary source material are not goals in themselves,but a point of departure for setting out viable hypotheses, for thedepiction of a living society, in which the place and function ofeach actor are marshalled in the correct perspective. This liber ami-corum now offered to John is therefore a deserved tribute to anunrivalled master, teacher and faithful friend.

12 March 2004

INTRODUCTION

Lawrin Armstrong, Ivana Elbl, Martin M. Elbl

The essays in this volume have been compiled in honour of Profes-sor John H. A. Munro on the occasion of his retirement from theUniversity of Toronto in June 2003. During his thirty-five years inthe Department of Economics and the Centre for Medieval Studies,John Munro had a profound impact on medieval and early-moderneconomic history not only through his extensive publications, hiscollaboration on several large-scale research projects and his partici-pation in international colloquia and economic history associations,but also through his influence on several generations of doctoralcandidates in Medieval Studies, Economics and History. The ideaof a conference and Festschrift to honour John Munro was conceivedseparately by three of his formers students—Lawrin Armstrong,Maryanne Kowaleski and Ivana Elbl—who joined forces in 2002.They convened an international workshop under the title “Money,Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe” in Toronto on 12-14March 2004, at which seventeen of Munro’s colleagues and formerstudents presented papers. Thirteen of these appear in the presentvolume, along with six further papers solicited by the editors.

The essays reflect the wide range of John Munro’s own researchinterests and those of his colleagues and students: international, re-gional and local trade, public finance, war economies, peasantstudies and economic ethics. The conference organizers and editorssought to strike a geographical balance between the north—with anemphasis (in keeping with Munro’s own enduring focus) on theLow Countries, England and France—and the south: the Iberianpeninsula, Provence and Italy, along with commercial ramificationsin the Middle East, North and West Africa. Our aim was also toassemble a cross-section of junior, senior and mid-career historians,as well as a mix of scholars trained in Toronto and elsewhere. Allthe papers embody fresh research, in many cases (in the spirit ofMunro’s own work) based on archival sources or understudied texts.

John Munro is perhaps best known for his research on latemedieval trade and finance, topics reflected in four of the seven

8 L. ARMSTRONG, I. ELBL, M. ELBL

thematic sections that follow. International commerce is the focusof three papers. Ian Blanchard considers the impact of changingtrans-Saharan patterns of trade on Egyptian specie markets andultimately on gold prices in western Europe, manifested most dra-matically in the gold crisis of the early fifteenth century. Drawingon the rich resources of the Datini archive in Prato, Martin Elbl’spaper complements that of Blanchard with an exploration of thefourteenth-century trade in Venetian-supplied copper via the Bale-arics and the Sahara desert to the Western Sudan. The Datinimaterial is set in the context of an analytical synopsis of recentresearch on late medieval European copper mining, which rangesfrom the historical literature to geological and mineralogical stud-ies. Francesco Guidi Bruscoli and J. L. Bolton consider the role ofItalian merchant banks in adjusting international trade balances inthe mid-fifteenth century in a paper that outlines the initial resultsof their ambitious project to study and make accessible the recordsof the London and Bruges branches of the Borromei Bank in adigital format exploitable through software designed to manipulateledgers and account books kept in the double-entry system.

Mark Aloisio, David Nicholas and Richard Unger assess—orreassess—instances of market integration in high and late medievalEurope. Mark Aloisio’s examination of the Sicilian-Maltese graintrade in the fifteenth century challenges the assumption that royalpolicies necessarily facilitated regional market integration. DavidNicholas invokes the economic geographers’ concept of “centralplace” to sharpen our understanding of the function of thirteenth-century Ypres as a credit market integrated into wider economicflows in Flanders, northern France and at the Champagne fairs.Richard Unger reviews the economic factors at play in the southernLow Countries during the fifteenth century, arguing that the highdegree of market integration observed by historians in the sixteenthcentury was by no means an inevitable outcome.

Three papers highlight local and regional economies. MarthaCarlin maps the complex retail market of thirteenth-century Paris,with excursions across the Channel to England, using didactic anddictaminal texts to showcase evidence related to trade. The paperincludes, in appendix, new critical editions and translations ofselected key texts. Martha Howell takes up and develops themesshe has touched on in earlier studies in a paper on the shiftingsocial functions and juridical definitions of property in the rapidly

9INTRODUCTION

changing economic environment of late medieval Ghent. Finally,drawing on a range of documentary and, more importantly, archae-ological evidence, Charlotte Masemann creates a detailed profile ofthe market-garden economy of late medieval Lübeck.

Ivana Elbl, Jeffrey Fynn-Paul and James Masschaele examine therelationship between public finance and broader economic andsocial trends. Ivana Elbl offers a wide-ranging reassessment ofPortuguese royal policy in West Africa that stresses continuity withearlier, medieval models of revenue extraction and fiscal adminis-tration. Jeffrey Fynn-Paul’s close study of the relationship betweendemographic and fiscal crises in the late fourteenth-century Catalancity of Manresa proposes a model for interpreting similar phenom-ena in other European city-states dependent on funded public debt.James Masschaele focuses on surviving records of tolls and tollcollection to develop a model for assessing the volume and natureof trade in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England.

According to a medieval cliché, “money is the sinews of war,”and much of Munro’s research has focussed on the late medievalcrisis, in which warfare played such a key role. Three essays takeup this theme. Kelly DeVries examines the financing of the Hun-dred Years War and highlights the effects on military outcomes, aproblem hitherto largely ignored by traditional military history.Building on her pioneering research on medieval Exeter, MaryanneKowaleski offers a positive assessment of the war’s impact on theeconomies of English port towns. In an essay comparing the royalhouseholds of Henry VII of England and Manuel I of Portugal,Susannah Humble Ferreira argues that the tendency to enlarge theroyal household underpinned the fiscal reforms of both kings.

Peasant studies as such have not been a major focus of Munro’swork, but the two papers included here nevertheless reflect hismethods and approach. John Drendel brings economic criteria tobear on the question of the apparent revival of servile labour inlate medieval Provence. Francesco Galassi takes a quantitative lookat adaptations in Italian share-cropping contracts over a period ofseven centuries. The study develops a tentative, broadly applicabletheory of contract-clause adoption, invoking a biological analogyapproach to the emulation, mutation, and transmission of institu-tional norms.

One of Munro’s earliest publications revisited the “Weber thesis”and has proved prophetic of the current revival of Weber studies

10 L. ARMSTRONG, I. ELBL, M. ELBL

exemplified by the work of Lutz Kaelber, who here argues for thecentrality of the usury prohibition in Weber’s account of themedieval economy. Lawrin Armstrong’s paper takes up this themeby considering the vexed relationship between medieval canon lawand moral theology expressed in two influential fourteenth-centurytreatises on usury by the jurist Giovanni d’Andrea and the ethicistGerard of Siena.

The editors and contributors offer the essays collected here asa fitting tribute to an inspiring teacher, friend and colleague, anda testimony to the continuing vitality of the field to which he hasdevoted his career.

* * *The editors and conference conveners wish to thank the SocialSciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Centrefor Medieval Studies, the Centre for Reformation and RenaissanceStudies, the Departments of Economics and History (University ofToronto), the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto),and the Department of History, Trent University (Peterborough),for their liberal sponsorship of the workshop that gave rise to thisvolume. We are particularly grateful to the Social Sciences andHumanities Research Council and to the Department of Economics,University of Toronto, who underwrote the costs of preparing themanuscript for publication. We also wish to acknowledge the gener-ous assistance of Andy Orchard and Rosemary Beattie of the Centrefor Medieval Studies in planning the workshop; of Jamie Smith, adoctoral candidate in the Department of History, and ElizabethArchibald and Nicole Hamonic, graduate students at the Centre forMedieval Studies, in its execution; of several colleagues at theUniversity of Toronto who moderated sessions; and of KatherineWalker, formerly of Trent, now McMaster University, for her contri-bution to copy-editing the manuscript. Martin Elbl typeset thevolume, prepared the production versions of various maps, andfinalized the camera-ready copy for printing on the presses of theKoninklijke Brill NV, Leiden. Finally, we wish to record our grati-tude to Herman Van der Wee of the University of Leuven for hisencouragement of and participation in the workshop and for hiskindness in supplying an elegant preface to this book.

Lawrin Armstrong, Ivana Elbl, Martin M. ElblSeptember 2006

JOHN H. A. MUNRO: BIBLIOGRAPHYOF WORKS

Monographs and Books

Munro, John H. A. Wool, Cloth and Gold: The Struggle for Bullion in Anglo-Burgundian Trade, ca. 1340-1478. Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bru-xelles; and Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973. Pp. xii + 242.

Van Cauwenberghe, Eddy H. G., Rainer Metz, Franz Irisgler, and JohnMunro. Coinage in the Low Countries (14th-18th Centuries), Vol. I: Antwerp-Bruges-Brussels-Ghent. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988. Pp. 292.

Aerts, Erik and John Munro, eds. Textiles of the Low Countries in EuropeanEconomic History. Studies in Social and Economic History, Vol. 19. Leuven:Leuven University Press, 1990. Pp. 124.

Munro, John. Bullion Flows and Monetary Policies in England and the LowCountries, 1350-1500. Variorum Collected Studies series CS 355. Aldershot,Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1992. Pp.xvi + 312.

Munro, John. Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Essays in the Economic History ofLate-Medieval England and the Low Countries. Variorum Collected Studiesseries CS 442. Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: AshgatePublishing Ltd., 1994. Pp. xvi + 326.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History. Ed. by Joel Mokyr (editor inchief), Maristella Botticini (assistant editor), Maxine Berg, Loren Brandt,Erik Buyst, Louis Cain, Jan de Vries, Paul Lovejoy, and John Munro (areaeditors), in 5 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Articles in Scholarly Journals and Essays in Booksand Collected Studies

“Bruges and the Abortive Staple in English Cloth: An Incident in theShift of Commerce from Bruges to Antwerp in the Late FifteenthCentury.” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire/Belgisch tijdschrift voor filologieen geschiedenis 44 (1966): 1137-59; reprinted in John Munro. Textiles,Towns, and Trade: Essays in the Economic History of Late-Medieval Englandand the Low Countries. Variorum Collected Studies series CS 442. Alder-shot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1994.

13BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS

Thomson, and James McConica, eds. The Correspondence of Erasmus, Vol.4: Letters 446 to 593, A.D. 1516 to 1517. Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 1977.

“Industrial Protectionism in Medieval Flanders: Urban or National?” InThe Medieval City, edited by Harry Miskimin, David Herlihy, and A. L.Udovitch, 229-68. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977;reprinted in John Munro, Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Essays in the EconomicHistory of Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries. Variorum CollectedStudies series CS 442. Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont:Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1994.

“Wool-Price Schedules and the Qualities of English Wools in the LaterMiddle Ages, ca. 1270-1499.” Textile History 9 (1978): 118-69; reprintedin John Munro, Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Essays in the Economic Historyof Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries. Variorum Collected Studiesseries CS 442. Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: AshgatePublishing Ltd., 1994.

“The 1357 Wool-Price Schedule and the Decline of Yorkshire Wool Va-lues.” Textile History 10 (1979): 211-19; reprinted in John Munro, Textiles,Towns, and Trade: Essays in the Economic History of Late-Medieval Englandand the Low Countries. Variorum Collected Studies series CS 442. Alder-shot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1994.

“Bullionism and the Bill of Exchange in England, 1272-1663: A Studyin Monetary Management and Popular Prejudice.” In The Dawn of ModernBanking, edited by The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies ofthe University of California (Fredi Chiappelli, director), 169-239. NewHaven and London: Yale University Press, 1979; reprinted in John Mun-ro, Bullion Flows and Monetary Policies in England and the Low Countries,1350-1500. Variorum Collected Studies series CS 355. Aldershot, Hamp-shire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1992.

“Monetary Contraction and Industrial Change in the Late-Medieval LowCountries, 1335-1500.” In Coinage in the Low Countries, 880-1500: TheThird Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, edited by NicholasMayhew, 95-161. British Archeological Reports, International Series No.54. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1979.

Footnotes and headnotes on coinage, monetary, financial, and numismatictopics in the correspondence of Erasmus, in Sir Roger Mynors, DouglasThomson, and Peter Bietenholz, eds. The Correspondence of Erasmus, Vol.5: Letters 594 to 841, A.D. 1517 to 1518. Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 1979.

“Mint Policies, Ratios, and Outputs in England and the Low Countries,1335-1420: Some Reflections on New Data.” The Numismatic Chronicle 141(1981): 71-116 [formerly listed as: 8th series, Vol. I]; reprinted in JohnMunro, Bullion Flows and Monetary Policies in England and the Low Countries,

14 JOHN H. A. MUNRO

1350-1500. Variorum Collected Studies series CS 355. Aldershot, Hamp-shire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1992.


“Medieval Monetary Problems: Bimetallism and Bullionism.” Journal ofEconomic History 43 (March 1983): 294-98.

“Economic Depression and the Arts in the Fifteenth-Century Low Count-ries.” Renaissance and Reformation 19 (1983): 235-50; reprinted in JohnMunro, Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Essays in the Economic History of Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries. Variorum Collected Studies seriesCS 442. Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Pub-lishing Ltd., 1994.

“The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour.” InCloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E. M.Carus-Wilson, edited by Negley B. Harte and Kenneth G. Ponting, 13-70.Pasold Studies in Textile History No. 2. London: The Pasold ResearchFund and Heinemann Educational Books, 1983; reprinted in John Munro,Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Essays in the Economic History of Late-MedievalEngland and the Low Countries. Variorum Collected Studies series CS 442.Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.,1994.

“Bullion Flows and Monetary Contraction in Late-Medieval England andthe Low Countries.” In Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and EarlyModern Worlds, edited by John F. Richards, 97-158. Durham, NorthCarolina: Carolina Academic Press, 1983; reprinted in John Munro,Bullion Flows and Monetary Policies in England and the Low Countries, 1350-1500. Variorum Collected Studies series CS 355. Aldershot, Hampshire;and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1992.

“Monnayage, monnaies de compte, et mutations monétaires au Brabantà la fin du moyen âge.” In Études d’histoire monétaire, XIIe- XIXe siècles,edited by John Day, 263-94. Études de l’Université de Paris VII et duCentre National des Lettres. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1984;reprinted in John Munro, Bullion Flows and Monetary Policies in Englandand the Low Countries, 1350-1500. Variorum Collected Studies series CS355. Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate PublishingLtd., 1992.

“Mint Outputs, Money, and Prices in Late-Medieval England and the LowCountries.” In Münzprägung, Geldumlauf und Wechselkurse/Minting, MonetaryCirculation and Exchange Rates, edited by Eddy Van Cauwenberghe andFranz Irsigler, 31-122. Trierer Historische Forschungen, 7: Akten des 8th


International Economic History Congress, Section C-7, Budapest 1982. Trier:University Press, 1984.

“Hemp.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 13 vols., edited by Joseph R.Strayer et al., Vol. 6, Grosseteste-Italian Literature, 153-4. New York: CharlesScribner’s Sons/MacMillan, 1982-88, [1985].

“Linen.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 13 vols., edited by Joseph R.Strayer et al., Vol. 7, Italian Renaissance-Mabinogi, 584-6. New York:Charles Scribner’s Sons/MacMillan, 1982-88, [1986].

“Political Muscle in an Age of Monetary Famine: A Review.” Revue belgede philologie et d’histoire 64 (1986): 741-6.


“Money and Coinage of the Age of Erasmus.” Appendix A, on “TheCoinage of the Burgundian-Hapsburg Netherlands, Before and After1521.” Appendix B: “Official Coinage Rates: February and August 1521.”In The Collected Works of Erasmus: Correspondence, Vol. 8: Letters 1122 to1251, A.D. 1520 to 1521, edited by Sir Roger Mynors, Douglas Thomson,and Peter Bietenholz, 347-50. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1988. Alsoin this volume: Footnotes and headnotes on coinage, monetary, financial,and numismatic topics in the correspondence of Erasmus.

“Scarlet.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 13 vols., edited by Joseph R.Strayer et al., Vol. 11: Scandinavian Languages to Textiles, Islamic, 36-7. NewYork: Charles Scribner’s Sons/MacMillan, 1982-88 [1988].

“Silk.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 13 vols., edited by Joseph R.Strayer et al., Vol. 11: Scandinavian Languages to Textiles, Islamic, 293-6.New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons/MacMillan, 1982-88 [1988].

“Textile Technology.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 13 vols., edited byJoseph R. Strayer et al., Vol. 11: Scandinavian Languages to Textiles, Islamic,693-711. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons/MacMillan, 1982-88 [1988];reprinted in John Munro, Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Essays in the EconomicHistory of Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries. Variorum CollectedStudies series CS 442. Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont:Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1994.

“Textile Workers.” In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 13 vols., edited byJoseph R. Strayer et al., Vol. 11: Scandinavian Languages to Textiles, Islamic,711-15. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons/MacMillan, 1982-88 [1988];reprinted in John Munro, Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Essays in the EconomicHistory of Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries. Variorum Collected

16 JOHN H. A. MUNRO

Studies series CS 442. Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont:Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1994.

“Deflation and the Petty Coinage Problem in the Late-Medieval Economy:The Case of Flanders, 1334-1484.” Explorations in Economic History 25 (4)(October 1988): 387-423; reprinted in John Munro, Bullion Flows and Mo-netary Policies in England and the Low Countries, 1350-1500. VariorumCollected Studies series CS 355. Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield,Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1992.

“Petty Coinage in the Economy of Late-Medieval Flanders: Some SocialConsiderations of Public Minting.” In Precious Metals, Coinage and theChanges of Monetary Structures in Latin-America, Europe and Asia: Late MiddleAges-Early Modern Times, edited by Eddy H. G. Van Cauwenberghe, 25-56.Studies in Social and Economic History, Vol.2. Leuven: Leuven UniversityPress, 1989.

Footnotes and headnotes on coinage, monetary, financial, and numismatictopics in the correspondence of Erasmus, in Sir Roger Mynors and JamesEstes, eds. The Correspondence of Erasmus, Vol. 9: Letters 1252 to 1355, A.D.1522 to 1523. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.

“Urban Regulation and Monopolistic Competition in the Textile Industriesof the Late-Medieval Low Countries.” In Textiles of the Low Countries inEuropean Economic History, edited by Erik Aerts and John Munro, 41-52.Studies in Social and Economic History, Vol. 19. Leuven: Leuven Uni-versity Press, 1990; reprinted in John Munro, Textiles, Towns, and Trade:Essays in the Economic History of Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries.Variorum Collected Studies series CS 442. Aldershot, Hampshire; andBrookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1994.

“Industrial Transformations in the North-West European Textile Trades,c. 1290–c. 1340: Economic Progress or Economic Crisis?” In Before theBlack Death: Studies in the ‘Crisis’ of the Early Fourteenth Century, edited byBruce M. S. Campbell, 110-48. Manchester and New York: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1991. Reprinted by Manchester University Press in apaperback edition in 1992; and reprinted in John Munro, Textiles, Towns,and Trade: Essays in the Economic History of Late-Medieval England and theLow Countries. Variorum Collected Studies series CS 442. Aldershot,Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1994.

“Die Anfänge der Übertragbarkeit: einige Kreditinnovationen im englisch-flämischen Handel des Spätmittelalters (1360-1540).” In Kredit im spät-mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Europa, edited by Michael North, 39-69. Quellen und Darstellungen zur hansischen Geschichte, vol. 37. Cologne-Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1991.

“The International Law Merchant and the Evolution of Negotiable Creditin Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries.” In Banchi pubblici,banchi privati e monti di pietà nell’Europa preindustriale: Amministrazione,


tecniche operative e ruoli economici, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria,edited by Dino Puncuh, 49-80. Nuova Serie, Vol. XXXI. Genoa: SocietàLigure di Storia Patria, 1991; reprinted in John Munro, Textiles, Towns,and Trade: Essays in the Economic History of Late-Medieval England and theLow Countries. Variorum Collected Studies series CS 442. Aldershot,Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1994.

“The Central European Mining Boom, Mint Outputs, and Prices in theLow Countries and England, 1450-1550.” In Money, Coins, and Commerce:Essays in the Monetary History of Asia and Europe (From Antiquity to ModernTimes), edited by Eddy H. G. Van Cauwenberghe, 119-83. Studies inSocial and Economic History, Vol. 2. Leuven: Leuven University Press,1991.

Footnotes and headnotes on coinage, monetary, financial, and numismatictopics in the correspondence of Erasmus, in Sir Roger Mynors, AlexanderDalzell, and James Estes, eds. The Correspondence of Erasmus, Vol. 10:Letters 1356 to 1534, A.D. 1523 to 1524. Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 1992), xxi, 515.

Footnotes on coinage, monetary, financial, and numismatic topics in thecorrespondence of Erasmus, in Alexander Dalzell and Charles G. Nauert,Jr., eds. The Correspondence of Erasmus, Vol. 11: Letters 1535-1657, A.D.1525. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994, pp. xxiii, 476.

“Patterns of Trade, Money, and Credit.” In Handbook of European Historyin the Later Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, 1400-1600, Vol. I:Structures and Assertions, edited by James Tracy, Thomas Brady Jr., andHeiko Oberman, 147-95. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994.

“The Coinages of Renaissance Europe, in 1500.” In Handbook of EuropeanHistory in the Later Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, 1400-1600,Vol. I: Structures and Assertions, edited by James Tracy, Thomas Brady Jr.,and Heiko Oberman, 671-78. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994.

“Industrial Entrepreneurship in the Late-Medieval Low Countries: UrbanDraperies, Fullers, and the Art of Survival.” In Entrepreneurship and theTransformation of the Economy (10th-20th Centuries): Essays in Honour of Her-man Van der Wee, edited by Paul Klep and Eddy Van Cauwenberghe, 377-88. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1994.

“Urban Wage Structures in Late-Medieval England and the LowCountries: Work-Time and Seasonal Wages.” In Labour and Leisure inHistorical Perspective, Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries, edited by IanBlanchard, 65-78. Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und WirtschaftsgeschichteBeiheft series, no. 116. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994.

“Abwertung” [Debasement], “Aufwertung” [Revaluation/Renforcement],“Bullionismus” [Bullionism], “Diskont” [Discounting], “Gold-SilberRelation”[Bimetallic Mint Ratios], “Greschamsches Gesetz” [Gresham’s Law],

18 JOHN H. A. MUNRO

“Inhaber-Klausel” [Order Clause], “Inhaber-Schuldschein” [Bill Obligatory],“Instrumentum ex Causa Cambii,” “Münzkosten” [Brassage], “Schlag-schatz” [Seigniorage], “Wechsel” [Bill of Exchange]. In Von Aktie bis Zoll:Ein historisches Lexikon des Geldes, edited by Michael North, 15-6, 26, 66-7,85-7, 142-4, 146-7, 171-2, 172-4, 174-5, 263, 357, 413-8. Munich: C.H.Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1995.

“Textiles.” In The Garland Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, edited by WilliamW. Kibler, Grover Zinn, John Bell Henneman, Lawrence Earp, andWilliam Clark, Vol. II: Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, 903-5. New Yorkand London: Garland Press, 1995.

“Anglo-Flemish Competition in the International Cloth Trade, 1340-1520.” Publication du centre européen d’études bourguigonnes, 35 (1995): 37-60[Rencontres d’Oxford (septembre 1994): L’Angleterre et les Pays Bas bourgui-gnons: relations et comparaisons, XVe-XVIe siècle, edited by Jean-MarieCauchies].

“Varieties of Medieval Latinity, Section FJ: ‘Textiles’.” In Medieval Latin:An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, edited by Frank A. C. Mantelloand A. George Rigg, 474-84. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University ofAmerica Press, 1996.

“The Origins of the English ‘New Draperies’: The Resurrection of an OldFlemish Industry, 1270-1570.” In The New Draperies in the Low Countriesand England, 1300-1800, edited by Negley B. Harte, 35-127. PasoldStudies in Textile History no. 10. Oxford and New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1997.

“Crisis and Change in the Later Medieval English Economy.” Journal ofEconomic History 58 (1) (March 1998): 215-9. Review article based on Pro-gress and Problems in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller,edited by Richard Britnell and John Hatcher. Cambridge and New York:Cambridge University Press, 1996.

“Cloth Manufacture and Trade.” In Medieval England: An Encyclopedia, edi-ted by Paul Sarmach, M. Teresa Tavormina, and Joel Rosenthal, 194-7.New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1998.

“Precious Metals and the Origins of the Price Revolution Reconsidered:The Conjuncture of Monetary and Real Forces in the European Inflationof the Early to Mid-Sixteenth Century.” In Monetary History in Global Per-spective, 1500-1808. Proceedings of the Twelfth International Economic HistoryCongress at Madrid, August 1998, edited by Clara Eugenia Núñez, 35-50.Seville: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Sevilla, 1998.

“Textiles as Articles of Consumption in Flemish Towns, 1330-1575.” Bij-dragen tot de geschiedenis 81 (1-3) (1998): 275-88. Special issue on: ‘Proeve‘t al, ‘t is prysselyck’: Verbruik in Europese steden (13de-18de eeuw)/Consumptionin the West European City (13th-18th Century): Liber Amicorum Raymond VanUytven. With a Dutch summary.


Edmund King, Peterborough Abbey, 1086-1310: A Study in the Land Market(1975), reviewed in The Journal of Economic History 36 (1976): 767.

B. H. Slicher Van Bath et al., eds., Acta Historiae Neerlandicae (Studies inthe History of the Netherlands), 6 (1973), reviewed in Revue belge de philologieet d’histoire 55 (1977): 327-9.

Maureen Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages,1100-1600 (1981), reviewed in Business History Review 56 (1982): 487-8.

Terence H. Lloyd, Alien Merchants in England in the High Middle Ages(1982), reviewed in the American Historical Review 88 (1983): 661.

Artur Attman, The Bullion Flow Between Europe and the East, 1000-1750(1981), reviewed in The Journal of Economic History 43 (Sept. 1983): 748-9.

Kathryn Reyerson, Business, Banking, and Finance in Medieval Montpellier(1985), reviewed in The Canadian Journal of History 21 (Dec. 1986): 411-3.

Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism(1983), reviewed in The Journal of Economic History 46 (Dec. 1986): 1044-6.

Harry Miskimin, Money and Power in Fifteenth-Century France (1984), re-viewed in Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 64 (1986): 741-6.

James D. Tracy, A Financial Revolution in the Habsburg Netherlands: Rentenand Renteniers in the County of Holland, 1515-1565 (1985), in The AmericanHistorical Review 92 (April 1987): 434-5.

Raymond Goldsmith, Premodern Financial Systems: A Historical ComparativeStudy (1987), reviewed in The Journal of Economic History, 48 (September1988): 807-9.

Peter Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange (1986), reviewed in Specu-lum: Journal of Medieval Studies 63 (October 1988): 998-1000.

Martha C. Howell, Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities(1986), reviewed in The Journal of Modern History 60 (December 1988):735-7.

Terence Lloyd, England and the German Hanse: A Study of Their Trade andDiplomacy (1991), reviewed in The American Historical Review 98 (Oct.1993): 1233-4.

John J. McCusker and Cora Gravesteijn, The Beginnings of Commercial andFinancial Journalism: The Commodity Price Currents, Exchange Rate Currents,and Money Currents of Early Modern Europe (1991), reviewed in The AmericanHistorical Review 99 (April 1994): 544.

Elizabeth Gemmill and Nicholas Mayhew, Changing Values in Medieval Scot-land: A Study of Prices, Money, and Weights and Measures (1995), reviewedin Albion: Journal of British Studies 28 (3) (Fall 1996): 542-4.

24 JOHN H. A. MUNRO

Richard Britnell and John Hatcher, eds., Progress and Problems in MedievalEngland: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller (1996), reviewed in Journal ofEconomic History 58 (1) (March 1998): 215-9.

David Jacoby, Trade, Commodities, and Shipping in the Medieval Mediterra-nean. Variorum Collected Studies Series CS572 (1997), reviewed in TheInternational History Review 21 (1) (March 1999): 17-9.

David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythmof History (1996), reviewed for EH.Net Review <[email protected]>, 24February 1999.

Jean Favier, Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages, trans.Caroline Higgitt (1998), reviewed for The International History Review 21(4) (December 1999): 976-8.

S. M. H. Bozorgnia, The Role of Precious Metals in European Economic De-velopment from Roman Times to the Eve of the Industrial Revolution, Contri-butions in Economics and Economic History no. 192 (1998), reviewed forJournal of Economic History 59 (4) (December 1999), 1090-1.

Robert-Henri Bautier and Janine Sornay, eds., Les Sources de l’histoire éco-nomique et sociale du moyen âge. Les états de la maison de Bourgogne, tomeII: Archives centrales de l’État bourguignon (1384-1500), vol. I/1: Archives desprincipautés du Sud and, vol. I/2, Les principautés du Nord (supplément),Institut du Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, and Instituut voor Neder-landse Geschiedenis (2001), reviewed for the Journal of Economic History62 (3) (September 2002): 856-7.

François Crouzet, A History of the European Economy, 1000-2000 (2001),reviewed for The Journal of Economic Literature 40 (September 2002): 956-7.

Philip Jacks and William Caferro, The Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of aRenaissance Merchant Family ( 2001), reviewed for The International HistoryReview 24 (4) (December 2002): 876-7.

Sevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire (2000), reviewedin “EH.Net Review” <[email protected]>, 1 November 2002.

Alan Stahl, Zecca: The Mint of Venice in the Middle Ages (2000), reviewedfor Medieval Prosopography 23 (2002): 319-23.

Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy. Communications andCommerce, A.D. 300-900 (2001), reviewed for The International Journal ofMaritime History 15 (2) (December 2003): 377-80.

Roger Schofield, Taxation under the Early Tudors, 1485-1547 (2004),reviewed for <eh [email protected]>, 15 June 2005.

Stuart J. Borsch, The Black Death in Egypt and England: A Comparative Study(2005), reviewed for <eh [email protected]>, 13 March 2006.


Working Papers Posted on the Internet

Working Paper Archive of Department of Economics and Institute for PolicyAnalysis (http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/)

“The Maze of Medieval Mint Metrology in Flanders, France and England:Determining the Weight of the Marc de Troyes and the Tower Poundfrom the Economics of Counterfeiting.” JEL Classification: N1, N2, N4,E4, E5; READ PAPER/PDF [111 Kbytes]; [UT- ECIPA-MUNRO-98-01];http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/ UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-01.html

“The ‘Industrial Crisis’ of the English Textile Towns, 1290-1330.” JELClassification: N1, N6, N7, L1; READ PAPER/PDF [285 Kbytes]; [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-02]; http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-02.html

“The Symbiosis of Towns and Textiles: Urban Institutions and the Chang-ing Fortunes of Cloth Manufacturing in the Low Countries and England,1280-1570.” JEL Classification: N1, N3, N4, N6, N7; READ PAPER/PDF[296KBytes]; [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-03] READ PAPER/PDF [296KBytes];http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-03.html

“Textiles as Articles of Consumption in Flemish Towns, 1330-1575.” JELClassification: N3, N6, N7, L1, J3; READ PAPER/PDF [66 Kbytes]; [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-04]; http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-04.html

“Monetary Policies, Guild Labour-Strife, and Compulsory Arbitrationduring the Decline of the Late-Medieval Flemish Cloth Industry, 1390-1435.” JEL Classification: N1, N3, N4, N6, L1, J2, J3, E3, E4, F2; READPAPER/PDF [159 Kbytes]; [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-05]; http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-05.html

“English ‘Backwardness’ and Financial Innovations in Commerce with theLow Countries, 14th to 16th Centuries.” JEL Classification: N1, N2, N4,N7, E5l; READ PAPER/PDF [251 Kbytes] [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-98-06];http://www. chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT- ECIPA-MUNRO-98-06.html

“The Low Countries’ Export Trade in Textiles with the MediterraneanBasin, 1200-1600: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Comparative Advantages inOverland and Maritime Trade Routes.” JEL Classification: F1, F2, L1,N6, N7; READ PAPER/PDF [137 Kbytes]; [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-99-01];http://www.chass. utoronto.ca/ecipa/ archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-99-01.html

“The Monetary Origins of the ‘Price Revolution’ Before the Influx ofSpanish-American Treasure: the South-German Silver-Copper Trades,Merchant Banking, and Venetian Commerce, 1470-1540.” JEL Classifica-tion: E3, E5, E6, F4, G2, H5, H6, N1, N2, N7; READ PAPER/PDF [211Kbytes]; [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-99-02]; http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-99-02.html

26 JOHN H. A. MUNRO

“The ‘New Institutional Economics’ and the Changing Fortunes of Fairsin Medieval and Early Modern Europe: the Textile Trades, Warfare, andTransaction Costs.” JEL Classification: F1, F3-4, G2, K2, K4, N2, N4, N7,R4; READ PAPER/PDF [1580 Kbytes]; UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-00-01; http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-00-01.html

“Flemish Woollens and German Commerce during the Later Middle Ages:Changing Trends in Cloth Prices and Markets,1290-1550.” JEL Classi-fication: F1-2, J3, L1-2, L6, N4, N6-7; READ PAPER/PDF [1581 Kbytes];[UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-00-02]; http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-00-02.html

“Wage Stickiness, Monetary Changes, and Real Incomes in Late- MedievalEngland and the Low Countries, 1300-1470: Did Money Really Matter?”JEL Classification: F4, J1, J3, J4, J5, N1, N3, N4, N6; READ PAPER/PDF[538 Kbytes] [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-00-03]; http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-00-03.html

“Figures 1-34: Wage Stickiness, Monetary Changes, and Real Incomes inLate-Medieval England and the Low Countries.” PDF [29.3 Mbytes];http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/RWCharts3.pdf

“The West European Woollen Industries and their Struggles for Inter-national Markets, c. 1000-1500.” JEL Classification: F1, F2, F3, F4, H2,H3, J3, J5. K2, L1, L6, N2, N3, N4, N5, N6, N7, N8; READ PAPER/PDF[2872 Kbytes]; [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-00-04]; http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-00-04.html

“Wool and Wool-Based Textiles in the West European Economy, c. 800-1500: Innovations and Traditions in Textile Products, Technology, andIndustrial Organisation.” JEL Classification: F1, F2, F3, F4, H2, H3, J3,J5. K2, L1, L6, N2, N3, N4, N5, N6, N7, N8; READ PAPER/PDF [1320Kbytes]; [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-00-05]; http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT- ECIPA-MUNRO-00-05.html

“Money, Wages, and Real Incomes in the Age of Erasmus: The Pur-chasing Power of Coins and of Building Craftsmen’s Wages in Englandand the Low Countries, 1500-1540.” JEL Classification: B0, E3, E4, E5,E6, F2, F4, J1, J2, J3, J4, J6, N1, N3, N4, N7, Q1 READ PAPER/PDF[717 Kbytes]; [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-01-01]; http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-01-01. html

“The Origins of the Modern Financial Revolution: Responses to Impedi-ments from Church and State in Western Europe, 1200-1600.” JEL Classi-fication: B1, E5, E6, F3, F4, G1, G2, H3, H6, K4, N2, N4, P5; READPAPER/PDF [400 Kbytes]; [UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-01-02.html]; http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/ecipa/archive/UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-01-02.html

“Industrial Energy from Water-Mills in the European Economy, Fifth toEighteenth Centuries: The Limitations of Power.” JEL Classification: L6,


vain, Belgium) on 12 March 1971 (and published by this institute inmimeographed form as Report No. 7103 of the Centrum voor Econo-mische Studiën). This paper was subsequently delivered also to the Semi-narie voor Streeks- en Agrarische Geschiedenis of the RijksuniversiteitGent (Ghent, Belgium), on 25 March 1971.

“La lutte bullioniste anglo-bourguignonne: sa contribution à la chute del’industrie drapière de luxe et à l’essor des nouvelles draperies en Flandreet en Brabant, 1430-1480.” Paper delivered to the Seminarie voor Middel-eeuwse Geschiedenis of the Vrije Universiteit te Brussel (Brussels, Bel-gium) on 19 April 1971.

“Depression and Culture in Fifteenth-Century Flanders and Brabant.” Pa-per delivered to the American Musicological Society, 32nd Annual Meet-ing, at Duke University (Durham, North Carolina) on 18 November 1971.A précis of this paper has been published in Abstracts of Papers Deliveredto the Thirty-Second Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society(Chapel Hill and Durham, N.C., 1971), 40-1.

“The Coming of Spanish Wools to the Low Countries: An IndustrialTransformation of the Fifteenth Century.” Paper delivered to the MidwestMedieval Conference, 11th Annual Meeting, at the University ofWisconsin-Milwaukee, on 6 October 1973. Also delivered to the EconomicHistory Workshop, University of Toronto, in November 1973.

“Scarlets and the High Cost of Dyeing in the Middle Ages.” Paper deli-vered to the Colloquium on Medieval Textiles in the MediterraneanBasin, in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academyof America, at the Royal Ontario Museum of Toronto, on 11 May 1977.

“Mint Outputs, Monetary Change, and Economic Contraction in Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries.” Paper delivered to the Com-parative World History Workshop: Conference on Pre-Modern MonetaryHistory, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 30 August-3 September1977.

“Bullionism and the Bill of Exchange in England, 1272-1663: A Studyin Monetary Management and Popular Prejudice.” Paper presented tothe Conference on “The Dawn of Banking”, at the Center for Medievaland Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 23-26September 1977.

“Scarlets and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour in the Middle Ages.”A revised version of “Scarlet and the High Cost of Dyeing in the MiddleAges,” delivered to the “Five Colleges Medieval Seminar” at the Universityof Massachusetts, at Amherst, Mass. on 5 December 1977; and again tothe Social History Group of Ontario (Toronto) on 5 February 1978.

“Bullion Movements and Monetary Contraction in Late-Medieval Englandand the Low Countries. 1235-1500 A.D.” A revised version of “Mint Out-

30 JOHN H. A. MUNRO

puts, Monetary Change, and Economic Contraction in Late-MedievalEngland and the Low Countries,” delivered to the University of TorontoEconomic History Workshop, on 16 January 1978.

“Monetary Contraction, Depression, and Industrial Change in the LateMedieval Low Countries, 1335-1500.” Paper delivered to the “Third Ox-ford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History: Coinage and Eco-nomic Development in the Low Countries,” on 10 September 1978.

“The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour.” A veryconsiderably revised and expanded version of “Scarlets and the Economicsof Sartorial Splendour in the Middle Ages,” delivered to the Universityof Toronto Economic History Workshop, on 20 October 1980.

“Economic Depression and Culture in the Fifteenth-Century Low Count-ries.” A much revised version of “Depression and Culture in Fifteenth-Century Flanders and Brabant,” delivered to University College Sym-posium Four, “The Renaissance: Rediscovery and Exploration,” at theUniversity of Toronto, on 21 January 1982.

“Mint Outputs, Money, and Prices in Late-Medieval England and the LowCountries.” Paper delivered to the Theme C-7 section, on “Minting andMonetary Circulation,” of the 8th International Economic History Con-gress, Budapest, 18 August 1982.

“The Late-Medieval Bullion Famine and Deflation in North-West Europe:A Critique of the Postan Thesis.” Paper delivered to the Workshop on“Medieval Monetary Problems: Bimetallism and Bullionism,” at the 42ndAnnual Meeting of the Economic History Association, 23 September 1982,Baltimore, Maryland.

“The Luxury Trades of the Silk Road: How Much Did Silks and SpicesReally Cost?” Paper delivered to the Royal Ontario Museum ContinuingEducation Symposium “Silk Roads—China Ships,” 12 October 1983,University of Toronto.

“The Fullers’ Guild and Industrial Strife in the Low Countries, 1340-1500.” Paper delivered to the Thirteenth Medieval Workshop, Universityof British Columbia, “Late Medieval Urban Institutions,” 19 November1983.

“Minting, Moneys-of-Account, and Monetary Change in Late-MedievalBrabant.” Paper delivered to the Economic History Workshop, Universityof Toronto, 5 December 1983.

“Inflation, Deflation, and the Big Problem of Petty Coinage in Late-Medieval Flanders, 1334-1484.” Paper delivered to the Nineteenth Inter-national Congress of Medieval Studies, at Western Michigan University,Kalamazoo, Michigan, on 13 May 1984.

“Flemish Textile Production and the Changing Structure of Market De-


mand, 1270-1500.” Paper presented to the 44th Annual Meeting of theEconomic History Association, 21-23 September 1984, at Chicago, Illinois.

“Industrial Change in Textile Manufacturing in the Late Medieval LowCountries: Responses to Market Adversities.” Invited lecture given atRutgers University, Department of History and Center for MedievalStudies (New Brunswick, New Jersey), 16 April 1985.

“The Nature of Price Changes in the Late-Medieval Economy: A Critiqueof the Postan Thesis.” Lecture-seminar given at Rutgers University,Department of History and Center for Medieval Studies (New Brunswick,New Jersey), 17 April 1985.

“Environment, Land Management, and the Changing Qualities of EnglishWools in the Later Middle Ages.” Paper presented to the 20th Interna-tional Congress on Medieval Studies, 10 May 1985, at Western MichiganUniversity, Kalamazoo, Michigan.

“The Role of Petty Coinage in Monetary and Price Fluctuations in theLow Countries, 1334-1484.” Public lecture sponsored by the Departmentof History, University of Trier, Federal Republic of Germany, 7 June1985.

“Petty Coinage in the Economy of Late-Medieval Flanders: Some SocialConsiderations of Public Minting.” Paper presented to The StocktonColloquium of 1985: “Production and Transfer of Precious Metals andChanges in the Monetary Structures of Latin America and Europe, 1500-1800,” at the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California, on 3 October1985.

“The Behaviour of Wages During Deflation in Late-Medieval England andthe Low Countries.” Paper presented to the Ninth International EconomicHistory Congress, 26 August 1986, in Bern, Switzerland.

“Structural Changes in Late-Medieval Textile Manufacturing: The FlemishResponses to Market Adversities, 1300-1500.” Public lecture delivered atthe Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Louvain, Belgium) on 5 November1986.

“Wage Movements and Deflation in Late-Medieval England and the LowCountries.” Public lecture delivered to the Universitaire Faculteiten Sint-Ignatius, Universiteit Antwerpen (Antwerp, Belgium) on 13 November1986.

“The Central European Silver Mining Boom, Mint Outputs, and Pricesin the Low Countries and England, 1450-1550.” Paper delivered to theSecond International Conference on “The Production and Transfer ofPrecious Metals and Monetary Structures in Asia, America, and Europe,15th to 19th Centuries,” at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan, on 9 June1987.

32 JOHN H. A. MUNRO

“Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Industrial Urbanization in the Low Count-ries, 1200-1600.” Paper presented to the conference “An Urban Context:Medieval and Modern Cities,” organized by the Arizona Center forMedieval and Renaissance Studies and the Arizona State College ofBusiness, at Phoenix, Arizona, on 26 March 1988.

“The Flemish ‘New Draperies’: The Death and Resurrection of an OldIndustry, 13th to 16th Centuries.” Paper presented to the Anglo-LowCountries Conference on the New Draperies, sponsored by the PasoldResearch Fund, London, and the Workshop on Quantitative EconomicHistory, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, at Leuven, Belgium, on 14 April1988.

“The New Draperies: The Death and Resurrection of an Old FlemishIndustry, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries.” Paper presented to the Eco-nomic History Workshop, University of Toronto, on 24 October 1988.[Revised and extended version of “The Flemish ‘New Draperies’: TheDeath and Resurrection of an Old Industry, 13th to 16th Centuries”].

“Oriental Spices and Their Costs in Medieval Cuisine: Luxuries orNecessities?” Lecture delivered to the Canadian Perspectives Committee,Senior Alumni Association, University of Toronto, at University College,8 November 1988.

“International and Local Banking in Medieval and Renaissance England.”Paper delivered to the International School on the History of Bankingand Finance (University of Siena-C.N.R.), at the Certosa di Pontignano,Siena, Italy, on 20 June 1989.

“Industrial Transformations in the Northern Textile Trades, ca. 1290-ca.1350: Economic Progress or Economic Crisis?” Paper delivered to theHistorical Geography Research Group, Third Anglo-American Seminaron the Medieval Economy and Society, held at Chester College, Chester,England, on 15 July 1989.

“On the Origins of Negotiability: Some Credit Innovations in Anglo-Flemish Trade, c. 1360–c. 1540.” Paper delivered to the Second Salzau-Kolloquium, “Kredit im Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit,” sponsoredby Die Ministerin für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Jugend und Kultur desLandes Schleswig-Holstein und die Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel,held at the Herrenhaus Salzau, Schleswig-Holstein, 23 April 1990.

“Monetary, Price, and Wage Fluctuations during the Late-Medieval ‘GreatDepression’: Did Money Matter?” Paper delivered to the Tenth Inter-national Economic History Congress, Session C.16: “The Economic De-pression of the Renaissance Revisited,” at the Katholieke Universiteit Leu-ven, in Leuven, Belgium, 21 August 1990.

“Urban Regulation and Monopolistic Competition in the Textile Industriesof the Late-Medieval Low Countries.” Paper delivered to the Tenth Inter-


national Economic History Congress, Session B-15: “Textiles of the LowCountries in European Economic History,” at the Katholieke UniversiteitLeuven, in Leuven, Belgium, on 23 August 1990.

“The International Law Merchant and the Origins of Negotiable Creditin Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries.” Paper presented tothe Convegno internazionale: “Banchi pubblici, banchi privati e montidi pietà nell’Europa preindustriale: amministrazione, tecniche operative,e ruoli economici,” held at the Università di Genova, Genoa, Italy, on2 October 1990.

“On the Origins of Negotiability: Credit Instruments and the Law Mer-chant in Anglo-Flemish Commerce, 1353-1507.” Paper presented to theEconomic History Workshop, University of Toronto, on 5 November 1990.

“The Belgian Archives.” Lecture delivered to the Centre for MedievalStudies, Sources and Resources Committee, at the Pontifical Institute forMediaeval Studies, on 22 March 1991.

“Coinage Debasement as a Fiscal Policy: The Economics and Mechanicsof Medieval Mint Manipulations.” Paper delivered to the 38th AnnualConvention of The Canadian Numismatic Association, 1991 EducationalForum, at the Westbury Hotel, Toronto, Ontario, on 26 July 1991.

“Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Urban Institutions in the Decline of theMedieval Flemish Woollens Industry, ca. 1350-1500.” Paper delivered tothe 27th International Congress on Medieval Studies, at Western MichiganUniversity, Kalamazoo, Michigan, on 7 May 1992.

“Bimetallic Ratios, Exchange Rates, and Labour Strife in the Late-Medieval Flemish Cloth Industry.” Paper delivered to the Annual meetingof the Medieval Academy of America, at the University of Arizona,Tucson, Arizona, on 2 April 1993; Labour Economics Workshop, Depart-ment of Economics, University of Toronto, on 8 April 1993; EconomicHistory Workshop, Northwestern University, at Evanston, Illinois, on 22April 1993; Economic History Workshop, University of Illinois atChampagne-Urbana, on 23 April 1993.

“Monetary Fluctuations, Entrepreneurship, and Labor Strife in theFlemish Textile Industry, 1390-1435.” Paper delivered to the 28th Inter-national Congress on Medieval Studies, at Western Michigan University,Kalamazoo, Michigan, on 6 May 1993.

“Monetary Policies, Wage Fluctuations, and Labour Strife in the Late-Medieval Flemish Cloth Industry, 1390-1435.” Paper delivered to theEconomic History Workshop, University of Western Ontario (London,Ontario), on 23 November 1993.

“Maritime and Overland Trade in Textiles between the Low Countriesand Italy, 1200-1600: Which was the More Cost Effective?” Paper deliv-ered to the 29th International Congress on Medieval Studies, at Western

34 JOHN H. A. MUNRO

Michigan University (Kalamazoo, Michigan), Session 201 (“Trade andTransit Markets in Northwestern Europe, 1350-1550"), on 6 May 1994.

“The True Weights of the Marcs de Troyes in Late-Medieval France andFlanders: Evidence from Flemish Counterfeiting and Monetary Ordi-nances, 1388-1469.” Paper delivered to the First International MedievalCongress, University of Leeds, Session 419: Medieval Arithmetic andCalculation, on 5 July 1994.

“Urban Wage Structures in Late-Medieval England and the LowCountries: Work-Time and Seasonal Wages.” Paper delivered to the 11thInternational Economic History Congress, Session B-3a, “Labour andLeisure in Historical Perspective, Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries,” atthe Università Bocconi, Milan, on 13 September 1994.

“Anglo-Flemish Competition in the International Cloth Trade, ca.1340-1520: Endogenous and Exogenous Factors in the English ‘Victory’.”Paper delivered to the Colloque d’Oxford, of the Centre Européen desÉtudes Bourguignonnes, at St. John’s College, Oxford, on 24 September1994. Revised version delivered to the Economic History Workshop, Har-vard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 14 April 1995.

“Flemish Woollens and Hanseatic Commerce during the Later MiddleAges: Changing Trends in Markets and Cloth Prices, 1290-1550. [38 pp.].Paper presented to the Hanseatic conference, at the Burgkloster zuLübeck, 10-12 March 1997, “Wirtschaftliche Wechsellagen im hansischenWirtschaftsraum, 1300-1800: Vergleichende konjunkturstatistische und wirt-schaftsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Wirtschafts- und Handelsge-schichte im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit.” Lecture presentedto the Department of History, Universiteit Antwerpen—Universiteit Facul-teiten Sint-Ignatius te Antwerpen, 11 December 1997.

“Real Wage Determination and the Problem of Nominal Wage- Stickinessin the Late-Medieval European Economy.” Seminar paper delivered tothe Graduate Students Workshop, ECO 4060Y, Economics Department,University of Toronto, on 27 March 1997.

“The ‘Industrial Crisis’ of the English Textile Towns, c. 1290-c. 1330.” [64pp.] Paper presented to the Seventh Annual Conference on Thirteenth-Century England, at St. Aidan’s College, University of Durham, 1-4 Sep-tember 1997.

“English ‘Backwardness’ and Financial Innovations in Commerce with theLow Countries, 14th to 16th centuries.” [58 pp.] Paper presented to theColloque Universiteit Gent—Universiteit Antwerpen (IUAP—StedelijkeSamenlevingen in de Laatmiddeleeuwse Nederlanden): “InternationaleHandel in de Nederlanden (14de-16de eeuw: Kooplieden, Organisatieen Infrastructure/International Trade in the Low Countries (14th-16thcenturies): Merchants,Organisation,and Infrastructure),”at the UniversiteitAntwerpen, 13 December 1997.


“Disputes About Mint Metrology in Late-Medieval Flanders, France andEngland: Determining the Weight of the Marc de Troyes and the TowerPound from the Economics of Counterfeiting, 1388-1469.” [29 pp.] Paperpresented to the annual meeting of the Classical and Medieval Numismat-ics Society, at the Primrose Hotel, Toronto, on 21 February 1998.

“The ‘Industrial Crisis’ of the English Textile Towns, c. 1290-c. 1330.”[64 pp.] A revised version of “The ‘Industrial Crisis’ of the EnglishTextile Towns, c. 1290-c. 1330” above. Delivered to the Center for EarlyModern History, at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis), on 6March 1998.

“Precious Metals and the Origins of the Price Revolution Reconsidered:The Conjuncture of Monetary and Real Forces in the European Inflationof the Early to Mid-Sixteenth Century.” [56 pp.] Paper presented toSession B.6, “Monetary History in Global Perspective, 1500-1808,” at theTwelfth International Economic History Congress in Madrid, 25 August1998.

“The Low Countries (Export Trade in Textiles with the MediterraneanBasin, 1200-1600: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Comparative Advantages inOverland and Maritime Trade Routes.” [32 pp.] Paper presented toSession C.2: “Means of Communication, Spread of Information andEuropean and Mediterranean Commerce, 10th-17th Centuries,” at theTwelfth International Economic History Congress, in Madrid, 26 August1998.

“Determinanten der Entwicklung von Preisen, Löhnen unde des Geldes,1135-1820/The Chief Determinants of Price, Wage, and Monetary Move-ments in Western Europe, 1135-1820: A New View of ‘Long-Waves’.” [39pp.] A paper presented to the conference “Wirtschaftliche Wechsellagenim hansischen Wirtschaftsraum 1300-1800: Verleichende konjunkturstatis-tische und wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Wirtschafts- undHandelsgeschichte im Spätmittelater und in der frühen Neuzeit,” atLübeck, Germany, on 30 July 1999.

“Wage-Stickiness, Monetary Changes, and Real Incomes in Late- MedievalEngland and the Low Countries, 1300-1450.” [49 pp.] Paper presentedto the international conference on “New Trends in Late MedievalStudies,” at The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, in Copen-hagen, Denmark, on 24 August 1999.

Commentator on three papers in 19th-century German Demography:Stephan Klasen (Munich), “Gender Bias in Mortality in a ComparativePerspective: Excess Female Mortality in Germany in the late 18th andearly 19th Centuries;” Terence McIntosh (North Carolina at Chapel Hill),“Urban Demographic Stagnation in Early Modern Southwest Germany:A Computer Simulation;” Simone Wegge, “Self-Selection of Nineteenth-Century German Emigrants: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Hesse-

36 JOHN H. A. MUNRO

Cassel.” Papers presented at the First Conference on German Cliometrics,at the Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, 23-26 Sep-tember 1999.

“The ‘New Institutional Economics’ and the Changing Fortunes of Fairsin Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Transaction Costs, Warfare, andTextiles( [54 pp.] Paper presented to the Annual Conference, the 32ndSettimana di Studio, of the Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica“Francesco Datini,” on “Fiere e mercati nella integrazione delle economieeuropee, secoli XIII-XVIII,” in Prato, Italy, 10 May 2000; Revised versionof the paper presented to the Economic History Workshop, Departmentof Economics, University of Waterloo, on 13 October 2000.

“Wage Stickiness, Monetary Changes, and Real Incomes in Late-MedievalEngland and the Low Countries, 1300-1470: Did Money Really Matter?”[93 pp.] Paper presented to the Economic History and Labour Workshops,Department of Economics, University of Toronto, on 23 February 2001;Paper presented to the Workshop in Money, History, and Finance, De-partment of Economics, Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey):on 26 March 2001.

Commentary on and Agenda for “Symposium: New Approaches to Inter-national Trade, c. 1000-1500.” For the Seventh Anglo-American Seminaron the Medieval Economy and Society, held at Trinity College Dublinand the Royal Irish Academy, in Dublin, 13-16 July 2001.

“The Late Medieval Origins of the Modern Financial Revolution:Responses to Impediments from Church and State in Western Europe.”Paper presented to the 61st Annual Meeting of the Economic HistoryAssociation, on Finance and Economic Modernization, at Loew’s Philadel-phia Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 26 October 2001.

“Industrial Energy from Water-Mills in the European Economy, Fifth toEighteenth Centuries: the Limitations of Power.” Paper presented to the34th annual meeting of the Settimana di Studio, Istituto Internazionaledi Storia Economica “Francesco Datini da Prato,” on the theme “Econo-mia ed energia, secoli XIII-XVIII,” in Prato, Italy, on 16 April 2002.

“Prices, Wages, and Prospects for ‘Profit Inflation’ in England, Brabant,and Spain, 1501-1670: A Comparative Analysis.” Paper presented toSession 15: “Global Monies and Price Histories, XVIth-XVIIIth Centuries,”of the XIIIth International Economic History Congress, in Buenos Aires,Argentina, on 22 July 2002.

“Industrial Change in the Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century LowCountries: The Arrival of Spanish Merino Wools and the Expansion ofthe ‘Nouvelles Draperies’.” Paper presented to Session 16: “Wool:Products and Markets (XIIIth-XXth Centuries),” of the XIIIth Interna-tional Economic History Congress, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 26 July2002.


“Postan, Population, and Prices in Late-Medieval England and Flanders.”Paper presented to the Colloque de Montréal: Postan-Duby: Destin d’unparadigme. Peut-on comprendre les crises économiques de la fin dumoyen âge sans le modèle malthusien? Montréal: Université de Québecà Montréal, 10 October 2002.

“The Late-Medieval Origins of the Modern Financial Revolution: Over-coming Impediments from Church and State.” Paper presented to theEconomic History Workshop, Department of Economics, University of To-ronto; in the Coach House Conference Room, on 17 April 2003.

“‘Builders’ Wages in Southern England and the Southern Low Countries,1346-1500: A Comparative Study of Trends in and Levels of Real In-comes.” Paper presented to the the 36th annual meeting of the Settimanadi Studio, Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “Francesco Datinida Prato,” on the theme “Economia ed energia, secoli XIII-XVIII;” inPrato, Italy, on 30 April 2004, on the theme: “L’Edilizia prima della Rivo-luzione Industriale, Secoli XIII-XVIII,” Prato, 26-30 aprile 2004.

“Changing Patterns of Colours and Values of Woollen Textiles in theSouthern Low Countries, 1300-1550: The Anti-Red Shift—to the DarkSide.” Paper presented to the 12th International Medieval Congress, atLeeds, England, on 12 July 2005 (to session 804: “Transforming Tex-tiles”).

Commentary on the paper of Maristella Botticini, “Social Norms, Demo-graphic Shocks, and Dowries in Florence, 1250-1450.” Presented to the68th Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, on “War andEconomic Growth,” Session 4A, “Bombs, Germs, and Invaders,” WestinHarbour Castle Hotel, Toronto, Ontario, 17 September 2005.

“Flemish Woollens and Hanseatic German Commerce During the LaterMiddle Ages: Changing Trends in Cloth Markets and Textile Values,1290-1570.” Paper presented to the conference on “Medieval GlobalEconomies,” The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, 11November 2005.

“Real Wages and the ‘Malhusian Problem’ in Anwerp and South-EasternEngland, 1400-1700: A Regional Comparison of Levels and Trends inReal Wages for Building Craftsmen.” Paper presented to the SecondDutch-Flemish conference on “The Economy and Society of the LowCountries in the Pre-Industrial Period,” Universiteit Antwerp, 20 April2006.

“South-German Silver, European Textiles, and Venetian Trade with theLevant and Ottoman Empire, c. 1370 to c. 1720: A Non-mercantilistApproach to the Balance of Payments Problem.” Presented to theXXXXVIII (38th) Settimana di Studio, Istituto Internazionale di StoriaEconomica “Francesco Datini,” “Relazioni economiche tra Europa emondo islamico, Secoli XIII-XVIII,” 5 May 2006.

38 JOHN H. A. MUNRO

Research Projects in Progress(for more detailed information see

http://www.economics.utoronto/munro5/)

“Wage Structures and Wage Movements in Late-Medieval England andthe Low Countries: 1260-1530.”

“Recasting the Phelps Brown-Hopkins Price-Index for the ‘Basket of Con-sumables’, 1264-1700.”

“The Mint Outputs and Monetary Statistics of the Low Countries, 1334-1789.”

“Cloth Prices in the Low Countries (1300-1570) for: Forschungsprojekt“Wirtschaftliche Wechsellagen im hansischen Wirtschaftsraum, 1300-1800.”

x

MONEY AND ETHICS

x

1 This paper is offered to John Munro, mentor and colleague, on the occa-sion of his retirement. The usury prohibition has long been of interest toMunro, and my own research on the topic was inspired by his 1987-1988graduate seminar on the “Dynamics of the European Economy, 1350-1750.”An earlier version of the paper was presented at the panel on “Ethics and theHigher Learning” at the Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting inCambridge, April 2005, and I am grateful for the critical comments I receivedfrom colleagues there. The following legal abbreviations have been used in thenotes: Inst. (Institutiones Iustiniani); Dig. (Digesta Iustiniani); Decretum Grat.(Decretum Gratiani); X (Decretales Gregorii IX); VI (Liber Sextus DecretaliumBonifacii VIII); and Clem. (Constitutiones clementinae). Reference is to the criticaleditions: Theodor Mommsen et al., eds., Corpus iuris civilis, 3 vols. (Berlin:Weidmann, 1872-1895); and Emil Friedberg, ed., Corpus iuris canonici, 2 vols.(Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1879; repr. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt,1959). Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.

2 “Was ist ein Einbruch in eine Bank gegen die Gründung einer Bank?”Bertolt Brecht, Die Dreigroschenoper, Act 9, in Ausgewählte Werke, vol. 1: Stücke1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 267. A similar remark is commonlyattributed to Brecht: “Bank robbery is the business of amateurs: the realprofessionals found a bank” (“Bankraub ist eine Unternehmung von Dilettan-ten. Wahre Profis gründen eine Bank”).

3 “There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part ofhousehold management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary andhonourable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it isunnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hatedsort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of moneyitself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to beused in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest [tokos,lit. parturition, offspring], which means the birth of money from money, is

LAW, ETHICS AND ECONOMY: GERARD OF SIENA ANDGIOVANNI D’ANDREA ON USURY1

Lawrin Armstrong

In the Threepenny Opera, Brecht, in the character of Mackie Messer,asks, “what’s robbing a bank compared to founding a bank?”2 Hewas expressing an ethical critique of usury that he probably knewvia Marx’s Capital, but which had originated as early as the fourthcentury B.C., when Aristotle, in the Politics and the Ethics, con-demned profit on loans as an unnatural and asocial use of money,which is a measure of value and medium of exchange, not a sourceof value in itself.3 Medieval ethicists and jurists were in agreement

42 LAWRIN ARMSTRONG

applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent.Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural,” Aristotle,Politics 1.10.1258a-b, trans. Benjamin Jowett in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed.Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), 1141. Aristotle toucheson usury in the Ethics in a discussion of liberality, where he includes theusurer in the species of the miserly who “exceed in respect of taking bytaking anything and from any source, e.g. those who ply sordid trades, pimpsand all such people, and those who lend small sums and at high rates. Forall those take more than they ought and from the wrong sources,” Nicho-machean Ethics, 4.1.1121b, trans. W. D. Ross in Basic Works of Aristotle, 988.Marx cites the Politics passage in his discussion of merchant’s and usurer’scapital in Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Volume 1 (Berlin: Dietz,1974), 2.4.2, p. 179. For a review of the controversy over the ethical contentof Marx’s concept of justice, see Norman Geras, “The Controversy about Marxand Justice,” New Left Review 1/150 (March-April, 1985): 47-85; and NormanGeras, “Bringing Marx to Justice: An Addendum and Rejoinder,” New LeftReview 1/195 (September-October 1992): 37-69. On the influence of theAristotelian concept of justice on Marx, see most recently James Daly, “Marxand Justice,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 8 (2000): 351-70.Brecht began studying Marx in 1926 and was familiar with Capital, Vol. 1, bythe time he was working on the Threepenny Opera in 1928; Ronald Hayman,Brecht: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 120.

4 There is an extensive literature on the usury prohibition. The only com-prehensive survey is John T. Noonan, Jr., The Scholastic Analysis of Usury(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957). For brief overviews, seeJohn Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages (London andToronto: Macmillan, 1969), 62-76, with documents in translation, 155-225;and Lawrin Armstrong, “Usury,” in Joel Mokyr, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia ofEconomic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 5: 183-5. Thefundamental study of the canonical usury doctrine is T. P. McLaughlin, “TheTeachings of the Canonists on Usury (XII, XIII and XIV Centuries),”Mediaeval Studies 1 (1939): 81-147 and 2 (1940): 1-22. Important recentstudies of usury include Amleto Spicciani, Capitale e interesse tra mercatura epovertà nei teologi e canonisti dei secoli XIII-XV (Rome: Jouvence, 1990); OddLangholm, The Aristotelian Analysis of Usury (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget,1984);and Odd Langholm, Value, Money and Usury According to the Paris TheologicalTradition, 1200-1350, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters29 (Leiden: Brill, 1992). On the Protestant reformers, see most recently EricKerridge, Usury, Interest and the Reformation (Aldershot: Variorum, 2002). Fordiscussions of usury in the wider context of scholastic ideas about economicethics, see Odd Langholm, “The Medieval Schoolmen (1200-1400),” in Ancient

with Aristotle and Marx: to profit from a money loan was a viola-tion of the function of money and an offence against justice. Theobjective of this paper is to consider the relationship between medi-eval ethics and law with regard to the problem of usury, whichmedieval and early modern theorists—including, it should be noted,Protestant reformers such as Luther and Melancthon—regarded asany profit on a loan of money or fungible goods.4 I shall do so by

43LAW, ETHICS AND ECONOMY

and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice, ed. S. Todd Lowryand Barry Gordon (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 439-501; and Diana Wood, MedievalEconomic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

5 Ethical and moral questions as they related to revelation were a branchof theology. “Moral theology” as the name of this discipline is an earlymodern usage; see Johann Theiner, Die Entwicklung der Moraltheologie zureigenständigen Disziplin (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 1970); on the medievalperiod, see esp. pp. 37-55. The boundaries between law and theology werenot always entirely clear with respect to ethical problems; see, for example,Joseph Goering’s discussion of the post-Gratianic penitential literature in “TheInternal Forum and the Literature of Penance and Confession,” Traditio 59(2004): 175-227.

6 For a recent introduction to medieval canon law, see James A. Brundage,Medieval Canon Law (London and New York: Longman, 1995). My commentsin this paragraph are also inspired by the observations of Harold J. Berman,Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge,MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1983), 85-269; and ManlioBellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe, 1000-1800, trans. Lydia G.Cochrane, Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law 4 (Washington,DC: Catholic University of America, 1995).

7 A recent overview of the recovery and assimilation of Roman law in medi-

a review of two texts: the Question on Usury (Questio de usura) of theAugustinian friar and theologian Gerard of Siena († c. 1336), whichhistorians of economic thought now consider the most influentialformulation of the natural law argument against usury in late medi-eval Europe; and the report and critique of Gerard’s quaestio by theinfluential fourteenth-century canonist Giovanni d’Andrea (c. 1270-1348) in his Quaestiones mercuriales.

Before turning to the texts themselves, however, some prelimi-nary observations on the relationship between law and ethics—or,more precisely, between law and theology—in medieval Europe arein order.5 The development of canon law as a system of positivelaw distinct, on the one hand, from theology and, on the other,from secular legal systems was peculiar to the medieval west.6 Inthe early church, ecclesiastical norms were deduced from scriptureor articulated by councils of bishops; there was no autonomousdiscipline of canon law. In the Byzantine empire, church law wassubsumed to imperial law, reflecting the union of secular andecclesiastical authority in the emperor. In the west, however, theexpansive jurisdictional claims of the popes, the rise of universitiesand the recovery and systematic study of Justinian’s Roman lawcompilations created the conditions for the birth of systematiccanon law.7 With the publication of the first version of Gratian’s

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eval Europe can be found in Peter Stein, Roman Law in European History(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 38-103. Anders Winroth, TheMaking of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)is the most important recent study of the emergence of canon law intwelfth-century Bologna and its relationship both to the revived Roman lawand to theology.

8 On the successive recensions of the Decretum and dating, see Winroth, TheMaking, 122-45.

9 He was appointed cardinal bishop of Ostia in 1262 by Urban IV. For bio-graphical information, see Thomas Diplovatatius, Liber de claris iuris consultis,pars posterior, ed. Fritz Schulz, Hermann Kantorowicz and Giuseppe Rabotti,Studia Gratiana 10 (1968): 141-5; Johann Friedrich von Schulte, Die Geschichteder Quellen und Literatur des canonischen Rechts, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Enke, 1875-1880; repr. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1956), 2: 123-9;Charles Lefebvre, “Hostiensis,” in Raoul Naz, ed., Dictionnaire de Droit Cano-nique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1953), 5: cols. 1211-28; and Kenneth Pen-nington, “Henricus de Segusio (Hostiensis),” in Kenneth Pennington, Popes,Canonists and Texts, 1150-1550 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), XVI: 1-12. On therelationship between theology, Roman law and canon law in Hostiensis’thought, see Gabriel Le Bras, “Théologie et Droit romain dans l’oeuvred’Henri de Suse,” in Études historiques à la mémoire de Noël Didier, ed. Facultéde Droit et Sciences Économiques de Grénoble (Paris: Éditions Montchrestien,1960), 195-204. I am grateful to Dr. Susanne Lepsius for providing me witha copy of this article.

magisterial textbook, the Decretum, around 1140, canon law quicklydefined itself as a discipline and a body of norms distinct fromtheology. The latter found its authoritative statement in Peter Lom-bard’s almost contemporary handbook, the Sentences, which soonbecame the central text of the theology curriculum.8

Canon law exercised a profound influence on the character anddevelopment of western Christianity, but the fact that the subjectmatter of the canons was often identical to that of theology alsocreated certain tensions of which intellectuals were acutely con-scious. Theology had little to say, for example, on the proceduresfor papal elections or the rules concerning benefices, but on thebehavioral norms—for example, the norms governing marriage, pe-nance or usury—moral theologians claimed a competence equal orsuperior to that of canonists. One example will suffice to illustratethe tension between law and theology with regard to economicquestions.

Henry of Susa (c. 1200-1271), best known by his sobriquet “Hos-tiensis,” was the most influential and creative canonist of the thir-teenth century.9 In his monumental Summa on the Decretals ofGregory IX, published around 1253, Hostiensis privileged Roman


10 Le Bras, “Théologie et Droit romain,” 202-3; Charles Lefebvre, “Hostien-sis,” cols. 1219-20.

11 Summa aurea, X 5.19 de usuris, nn.5-7 (Venice, 1574; repr. Turin: Bottegad’Erasmo, 1963), cols. 1615-19.

12 “Hoc de iure humano. Nam propter mundi necessitatem non potuit im-perator ex toto cassare obligationem usurarum, sed tamen minuit,” Summa, X5.19 de usuris, n.7 (ed. cit., col. 1619). For a detailed discussion of juridicalopinion on this point, see McLaughlin, “Teachings,” 1: 84-95.

law concepts over ideas derived from theology in the analysis ofcanonical problems. He devoted extensive portions of most titles ofthe Summa to Roman law definitions and distinctions, noting (butgenerally minimizing) dissonances between Roman law on the onehand and canon law or theology on the other, and attempting toreconcile Roman law with ecclesiastical authority on points wherethe two were clearly at variance.10 Hostiensis’ discussion of usury,for instance, contains a veritable digest of the Roman law of usury:how it was contracted, for what reasons and at what rates of inte-rest.11 Acknowledging that such contracts were now disallowed byvirtue of the canonical prohibition, he nevertheless defended the(Christian) emperor Justinian’s approval of usury on the groundsof social necessity: “thus with respect to human law; for on accountof worldly need the emperor could not entirely annul the burdenof usury, although he diminished it.”12

Similarly, the Hostiensis routinely chided theologians for apply-ing rigid and abstract standards to economic problems. Prescriptionwas a mode of acquiring ownership through an extended period ofuncontested possession. Theology and law, however, differed overthe necessity of “good faith,” the prescriber’s honest belief, evenif mistaken, that he was not in violation of another’s right. “Butwhat,” Hostiensis asked,

if, after prescription, [the prescriber] becomes aware that he possessesthe property of another, say he learned for certain that the utensilshe prescribed belonged to Martin: should he return them to Martin?The theologians say that he should ... while the masters of the canonscommonly say the opposite, because according to both laws [canonand Roman] once prescription is complete he who prescribed issecure ... It seems to me that on this question the conscience of thetheologians is too angelic ... Therefore, if somebody who has legiti-mately prescribed thinks that he sins mortally by retaining the thingprescribed, I do not consider him a theologian so much as a fraud,

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13 12 “Sed quid si iam completa praescriptione conscientiam rei alienaeincipiat habere, puta audivit et pro certo quod haeres quas praescripsit erantMartini: numquid ipsas debet reddere Martino? Theologi dicunt quod sic ...Magistri canonum communiter contradicunt, quia completa praescriptionetutus est qui praescripsit secundum utrumque ius ... Mihi videtur quod in hacquaestione conscientia theologorum est nimis angelica ... igitur si quis creditpeccare mortaliter retinendo rem praescriptam legitime, ipsum non theologumiudico sed fraudulosum, cum id timeat quod nulla suspicione est dignum. ...Si tamen eius conscientia ratificari non potest, reddat rem and sequaturconscientiam, nam aliter ... periculum non evadet,” Summa, X 2.26 depraescriptionibus, rubricella de praescriptione rerum immobilium, n.3 (ed. cit., col.726). On Hostiensis’ privileging of conscience, see Le Bras, “Théologie etDroit romain,” 201; and Charles Lefebvre, “Aequitas canonica et Periculumanimae dans la doctrine de l’Hostiensis,” Ephemerides iuris canonici 13 (1952):319.

14 “Non scribo hoc in favorem usurariorum, quia nec eis astrictus sum; sednolo a rationabili recedere ut theologis faveam et in desperatiam inducamhomines, ac parem laqueum animarum ... Dicendum est igitur et tenendumquod precibus possit vel iussu iudicis sine pactione partium remissio fieri, etsic dicam talem usurarium absolutum,” Summa, X 5.19 de usuris, n.12 (ed. cit.,col. 1634).

for he fears what is above suspicion. ... Nevertheless, if he cannotcompose his conscience, he should obey it and return the thing, forotherwise he places himself at risk.13

Restitution of usury was another point on which theologians andcanonists differed. Moral theology insisted that usurers make com-plete restitution of the sums extorted from their debtors. By con-trast, Hostiensis (and most other canonists), urged discretion inexacting restitution, maintaining that if a debtor freely remittedpart of the amount due to him by way of restitution, the usurer wasthereby absolved. “I do not,” he insisted,

write this in favour of usurers, for I owe them nothing. But neitherdo I want to be so unfair as to comfort the theologians and drivepeople to desperation and lay snares for their souls ... Therefore itshould be said and maintained that, provided there was no [prior]agreement between the parties, a usurer may ask or a court orderthat part of the amount owed in restitution be forgiven, and I saythat a usurer so forgiven is thereby absolved.14

A similar tension may be observed in Giovanni d’Andrea’s adoptionand critique of Gerard of Siena’s natural law case against usury. Of


15 For the scant details, see Schulte, Die Geschichte, 2: 204-5; P. Glorieux,La littérature quodlibétique, La Bibliothèque Thomiste 21, 2 vols. (Paris: Vrin,1925-1935), 2:97; and Adolar Zumkeller, “Die Augustinerschule des Mittel-alters: Vertreter und Philosophisch-Theologische Lehre,” Analecta Augustiniana27 (1964): 208-9. For additional references, see Langholm, Medieval Schools,549.

16 Gerard’s status among fifteenth-century theologians of his order is attes-ted by Zumkeller, “Die Augustinerschule,” 209. For an assessment of his placein the history of economic thought, see Langholm, Aristotelian Analysis, esp.30-1 and 118-28; and Langholm, Medieval Schools, 549-60.

17 According to the cartulary of the University of Paris, Gerard presidedthere as a regent master in 1330 (Glorieux, La littérature, 2: 97). Accordingto Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, cod. 625, one of the two extant copies of theQuestio de usura, Gerard disputed the problem in Paris (fol. 209r). I amcurrently preparing an edition of the Questio de usura for the TorontoMedieval Latin Texts series based on the other surviving copy, Leipzig, Uni-versitätsbibliothek, MS 894. Quotations of the Questio are from my forthcom-ing edition with folio references to the Leipzig manuscript (hereafter referredto as “Leipzig”). For reasons of convenience, I provide parallel references tothe more readily accessible edition of Angelo Vancio, Tractatus de usuris et depraescriptionibus (Cesena, 1630), 165-93 (hereafter “Cesena”).

18 Questio de usura, proemium; Leipzig, fols. 65r-66r; Cesena, 165-8.19 “Talis namque actus ex natura rei contrariatur virtuti et ex natura rei ha-

Gerard himself we know almost nothing.15 He was, as his sobriquetsuggests, a Sienese, possibly patrician by birth, who joined theAugustinian friars, probably in the first decade of the fourteenthcentury. After studies in Italy, perhaps in the canon law faculty ofBologna, he went to Paris, where he was admitted bachelor of theSentences in 1325 and master of theology in 1329. His commentaryon the Sentences enjoyed great authority in the fifteenth century, butfor historians of economic thought it is his disputed question onusury that is of greatest interest.16 The Questio is a redaction of apublic disputation Gerard presided over as a master of theology,most likely in Paris in 1329 or 1330, though possibly somewherein Italy, where he appears to have taught in the early to mid-1330s.17

The basic question Gerard posed in his disputation was this: isusury illicit because it is forbidden—that is, simply because of posi-tive law, which is mutable, and the evidence of this is that usury ispermitted in Roman but not in canon law—or is it forbidden be-cause it is illicit by nature.18 As Gerard himself put it, is usury “bythe nature of the thing itself wicked and bound up with malice;”illicit, that is to say, according to some meta-legal standard.19

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bet a Deo auertere et deordinare ac per consequens ex natura rei viciosus etmalicia conuolutus,” Questio de usura, proemium; Leipzig, fol. 65r; Cesena,166.

20 “Assignare autem de hoc causam per quam euidencius demonstreturquod contractus usurarius habet ex natura rei viciositatem et maliciamconuolutam non puto omnino facile,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 67v;Cesena, 174.

21 Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fols. 67r-68v; Cesena, 173-6.22 Decretum Grat. D.88 c.11 palea Eiiciens condemned the usurer for selling

“a thing given by God” (“ipse namque rem datam a Deo vendit”), which mosttheorists interpreted as time. For theological opinion, see William of Auxerre(† 1229), Summa aurea, lib. 3, tractatus 48, cap. 3, q. 2, ed. Jean Ribaillier,Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, nos. 16-19, 4 vols. (Paris and Rome: Centrenational de la recherche scientifique and Collegium S. Bonaventurae,1980-1986), 2: 831; and Bonaventure († 1274), Collationes de decem praeceptis,collatio 6, cap. 19, in Opera omnia (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae,1891), 5: 528b. The argument was adopted by Innocent IV in his analysis ofcredit and discount sales; Commentaria, ad X 5.19.6, n.2 (Frankfurt am Main,1570; repr. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1968), fol. 517va. For a discussionof the theological texts, see Langholm, Aristotelian Analysis, 111-8.

23 Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68r; Cesena, 176. Gerard took thecritique from his fellow Augustinian Giles of Rome († 1316); Langhom,Aristotelian Analysis, 112. For the text, see Giles of Rome, Quolibeta, quodlibet5, q. 24 (Louvain, 1646, repr. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1966), 338a.

24 Canonical authority for the argument was provided by Decretum Grat.D.88 c.11 palea Eiiciens, which contrasts usury to rental: “He therefore wholets a field or a house is seen to relinquish his own use of it and to acceptmoney and, so to speak, to exchange one profit for another. ... Thirdly, afield or a house deteriorates through use. But money, when it is lent, isneither diminished nor does it deteriorate” (“Ideo qui locat agrum vel do-

In Gerard’s view, “it is not altogether easy to assign a reason”for the latter proposition20 and the most striking feature of theQuestio is its demolition or fundamental revision of all of the tradi-tional arguments advanced against usury.21 For example, it wasoften argued by lawyers and theologians that usury was illicit be-cause it involved the sale of the time that elapses from the grantingof a loan until its repayment. Time, however, like air and water, iscommon to all and therefore non-vendible.22 Gerard considered theargument frivolous (“ista racio ... omnino videtur friuola”) becausethe passage of time is a factor in many legitimately profitablecontracts, such as rental and lease agreements.23 Or again, it wasoften maintained that a charge was only permitted in loans ofthings that deteriorate through use, that is, rentable things, such ashouses or boats. Since coins do not deteriorate in use, it is illicit tocharge for a money loan.24 However, as Gerard astutely observed,


mum, suum usum dare uidetur, et pecuniam accipere, et quodammodo quasicommutare uidetur cum lucro lucrum. ... Tertio ager vel domus utendoueterascit. Pecunia autem fuerit mutuata, nec minuitur, nec ueterascit”). Seealso Bonaventure, Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum, lib. 3, distinctio 37,dubium 7, in Opera omnia (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1887), 3:836a: “Alia vero ratio est, quia pecunia, dum in usum vertitur, non consumiturnec deterioratur; non sic autem est de aliis rebus, quae secundum quod magiset diutius eis utimur, magis tendunt ad defectum.”

25 “Ista racio, si quis bene considerat, est digna derisione, quia videmusquod domus illa de cuius usu accipimus pensionem vel fructum sepemelioratur per habitacionem,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68r;Cesena, 176. For a discussion, see Langholm, Aristotelian Analysis, 125.

26 Inst. 3.14.pr.: “Mutui autem obligatio in his rebus consistit, quae ponderenumero mensurave constant, veluti vino oleo frumento pecunia numerata aereargento auro.” See also the parallel definition at Dig. 12.1.2.1. On therestriction of usury to fungibles, see Noonan, Scholastic Analysis, 38-51; andMcLaughlin, “Teachings,” 1: 98-102.

27 Inst. 3.14.pr. continues: “... quas res aut numerando aut metiendo autpendendo in hoc damus, ut accipientium fiant et quandoque nobis noneaedam res, sed aliae eiusdem naturae et qualitatis reddantur. Unde etiammutuum appellatum sit, quia ita a me tibi datur, ut ex meo tuum fiat.” Seealso Dig. 12.1.2.2.

28 W. W. Buckland, A Text-Book of Roman Law from Augustus to Justinian, 3rded., rev. Peter Stein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 464, n.3.

rental charges are not really compensation for damage, since occu-pation of a house, for example, often improves its condition.25

A more serious objection to usury, and the one usually adoptedby canonists, derived from the Roman law definition of a mutuum,that is, a loan of a fungible, a thing like grain, oil or wine, whoseuse involved its consumption or destruction.26 Specie—preciousmetal in a minted state—was considered a fungible because its usenecessitated its alienation—its “consumption”—in exchange forother things. According to Roman jurists, in a loan of a fungible,ownership passed to the debtor, who was not required to repay theidentical substance of the thing lent, but simply its equivalent interms of quantity and quality. Because the debtor became theowner of the thing lent, it was unjust to charge him for the use ofwhat had become his own property.27 Classical Roman law circum-vented this purely conceptual problem by means of an additionalcontract termed stipulatio, by which the debtor promised an addi-tional payment called usurae, a term which in Roman law had nonegative connotations.28 However, from the eighth century onwards,the church in the west repudiated such agreements on the authority

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29 Gilchrist, The Church and Economic Activity, 62-3. Lc 6.35 was cited as ananti-usury tag in the decretal Consuluit (X 5.19.10) of Urban III (1185-87). SeeLangholm’s observations, Aristotelian Analysis, 75.

30 “Hec autem racio, quamuis videatur valde pulchra et apparens, tamen vi-detur valde dubia quia licet maior proposicio sit manifesta, minor tamenvidetur falsa. Cum enim dicitur quod fenerator exigit lucrum de re non sua,potest dici immediate quod est falsum, quia pecunia quam mutuat, quamuistransseat in dominium debitoris quantum ad ydemptitatem substancie, quiadebitor non tenetur restituere eandem pecuniam secundum substanciam,remanet tamen dicta pecunia in dominio feneratoris quantum ad idemptitatemet equalitatem valoris. Et hoc ipsum videtur sufficere, quia ipse fenerator nonexigit lucrum de pecunia quam mutuat in quantum talis substancie est, secun-dum quem modum ad eum non pertinet nec potest eam repetere, sed exigitmagis de ea in quantum tanti valoris est, secundum quem modum ad eumpertinet, quia remanet in suo dominio, et semper potest eam licite expetere,”Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 67v; Cesena, 174-5. On this point, seeLangholm, Medieval Schools, 558.

31 Summa theologiae, 2a 2ae, q. 78, art. 1, in Opera omnia (Rome: S. C. dePropaganda Fide, 1897), 9: 155. For a detailed discussion, see Langholm,Aristotelian Analysis, 81-9; and Langholm, Medieval Schools, 236-44. Gerard out-lines the argument at Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fols. 67v-68r; Cesena,175-6.

of Lc 6.35, where Jesus commanded his followers to “grant a loanwithout expecting anything in return” (“mutuum date nihil indesperantes”).29 In Gerard’s view, this argument is “exceedingly ele-gant and clear” but fundamentally flawed because, although owner-ship of the substance indeed passes to the debtor, ownership of thelent thing continues to vest in the creditor “with respect to theidentity and equivalence of the value,” and it is this monetary valuefrom which the usurer extracts his profit, not the substance of thecoin or other fungible.30

The most persuasive theological argument against usury was avariation of the ownership analysis proposed by Thomas Aquinas(† 1274) and known to historians of economic thought as the “con-sumptibility argument.”31 It goes like this: the proper use of a fun-gible thing is its consumption; in such things it is impossible toseparate the thing and its use—as you can in the case of a rentablething such as a house or a boat—therefore to grant the use of thething is to grant its ownership. The usurer, however, wants to sellcoin and its use separately, and he therefore sells the same thingtwice or sells something that does not exist, which is clearly unjust.

In Gerard’s view, the analysis is “doubtful” (dubia), or at least inneed of correction, since it could be maintained that although the


32 “Ista eciam racio videtur dubia quia posset aliquis dicere quod feneratornon vendit usum rei quam mutuat sine ipsa re, immo simul vendit utrumque,quia alienat a se non solum usum rei sed eciam ipsam rem quantum adsubstanciam et ideo quantum ad hoc idem iudicium videtur de utroque, quiaeo modo quo transfert ipsam rem, transfert et ipsum usum et econverso,quapropter non separat unum a reliquo sicud supposuit dicta racio,” Questiode usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68r; Cesena, 176. Langholm discusses theargument in Aristotelian Analysis, 89-90.

33 For Aristotle, see above, n.3.34 “Sed nec ista racio videtur valere propter duo. Primo quia usura com-

mittitur non solum in artificialibus sed eciam in naturalibus, utpote in vino etoleo et similibus, et per consequens dicta racio non potest applicari tantumad illa. Secundo quia videmus quod domus est quoddam artificiale et tamenusque ad certum tempus potest quis per unam domum lucrari aliam domumequiualentem, et sic domus pareret domum,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig,fol. 68r; Cesena, 176.

35 The description is at Langholm, Medieval Schools, 557. Gerard’s argumentis contained in Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fols. 68r-70r; Cesena, 176-82.For a more complete discussion than that offered here, see Langholm,Aristotelian Analysis, 118-28; and Langholm, Medieval Schools, 555-60.

36 See above, n.26.

use and ownership of a fungible are indeed logically separable, ina loan they are necessarily identical, “since in the same way as [thecreditor] transfers the thing itself, he also transfers its use, and viceversa, and therefore he does not separate the one from the otheras the aforesaid reasoning supposes.”32 Nor, in Gerard’s opinion,does it help to cite Aristotle’s view that it is unnatural that an artifi-cial thing like a coin should give birth to another coin, since natu-ral things such as wine and oil can also be the subject of usuriousloans. Furthermore, artificial things such as houses legitimately“give birth” or produce profit in the form of rent.33 Thus it mightbe said that “a house gives birth to a house” when a landlord useshis profits to buy another house with a view to letting it out.34

Gerard’s correction of both Thomas and the canonists, character-ized by Langholm as a theory of the “self-valuation of fungibles,”is very elegant.35 He began with the Roman law definition of a fun-gible as something that can be “counted, measured or weighed.”36

Fungibles—artificial (for example, specie) as well as natural (forexample, wine or oil)—he argues, derive from their measure,weight or number a fixed and determinate value that remainsunchanged provided the measure, weight or number remains con-stant. If such things appear to increase or decrease in value, it isnot because of any change in their intrinsic value expressed in

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37 “Idcirco ab intrinsico sue nature potest certitudinaliter cognosci eorumvalor, nec augentur nec minuuntur in suo valore quamdiu non distrahunturin suo pondere. Et si videantur augeri vel minui, hoc non est propter aliquodaugmentum vel minucionem valoris qui sit in eis sed per augmentum etminucionem nostre indigencie siue eciam propter augmentum vel minucionemin alijs rebus in quas commutantur. Et sicud de rebus que consueueruntponderari, in suo modo sic dico de alijs rebus que consueuerunt mensurari,sicut vinum, granum, oleum et consimilia,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig,fols. 68r-v; Cesena, 177.

38 “Hoc autem ... non potest dici de rebus alijs naturalibus, quecumque sintille, nam alie res naturales non se habent in sua natura ad unum aliquoddeterminate, ex quo possit earum valor pensari et certitudinaliter cognosci;immo est impossibile certitudinaliter cognoscere aliarum valorem, quia earumvalor non potest pensari aliquo intrinseco ex necessitate sed ex diuersis causisextrinsecis et contingentibus, ut verbi gratia, valor istius vinee vel valor istiusagri quandoque pensatur ex loco, quandoque ex tempore, quandoque excondicionibus personarum, quandoque ex diuersis alijs circumstantijs quepossunt multipliciter variari. Et sicud dico in vinea vel in agro, ita et inquibuscumque alijs rebus naturalibus que non ponderantur vel mensurantur,”Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68v; Cesena, 177-8.

39 See Langholm, Medieval Schools, 558-9.

terms of number, weight or measure, but because of a fluctuationin the value of the things for which they may be exchanged.37

Thus, a bushel of wheat is always worth a bushel of wheat of thesame quality, but in terms of another substance, say, goats or coin,it may, for example for reasons of scarcity, be worth more in Feb-ruary than in September. Natural and artificial nonfungibles—forexample, vineyards, houses or horses—derive their value fromexternal and contingent variables, such as time, condition andplace.38 For this reason they are not comparable to one anotherand cannot be the subject of a loan (mutuum). Contingent variables,by contrast, do not affect the value of fungibles: in terms of num-ber, weight and measure, a fungible is never worth more thanitself; a bushel of wheat is always worth a bushel of wheat of thesame quality, not a bushel and a half; ten florins are always worthten florins, not twelve. By demanding more than the amount lent,the usurer therefore violates the intrinsic—the natural—value of afungible determined and fixed by its nature or art in terms ofnumber, measure or weight.

Gerard maintained that this analysis also provides a correctionto the canonistic argument from ownership.39 Because fungibleshave a naturally determinate value in terms of number, measureand weight, they are necessarily sterile:


40 “Quod autem contractus usurarius faciat rem non generantem fructumgenerare lucrum apparet quia presupponitur in precedenti processu quod resmutuabiles, in quibus usura committitur, habeant a natura vel ab arte sibiprestitutum determinatum valorem et per consequens non possunt in eocrescere et ex hoc ipso non possunt fructum generare, quia res que generatfructum semper excrescit in valore cum fructu, nam maioris valoris est quandoest sub fructu quam quando est sine fructu,” Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig,fol. 69r; Cesena, 179.

41 VI de reg. iur. 4: “Peccatum non dimittitur, nisi restituatur ablatum.” Forthe text of the quaestio, see Johannes Andreae, In titulum de regulis iuris novellacommentaria (Venice, 1581; repr. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1963), 62ra-66ra.The “commentary” is in fact a collection of questions Giovanni disputed onWednesday afternoons during term and therefore known as the Quaestionesmercuriales. Giovanni subsequently arranged them according to the chapters ofde regulis iuris. On the collection, see Cyprian Rosen, “Notes on an EarlierVersion of the Quaestiones Mercuriales,” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, n.s. 5(1975): 103-14; and O. Condorelli, “Dalle Quaestiones Mercuriales alla Novellain titulum de regulis iuris,” Revista internazionale di diritto comune 3 (1992):125-71.

42 For biographical information, see Diplovatatius, Liber de claris iurisconsultis, 229-39; Schulte, Die Geschichte, 2: 205-29; S. Stelling-Michaud, “Jeand’André,” in Naz, Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique, 6: cols. 89-92; StephanKuttner, “Johannes Andreae and his Novella on the Decretals of Gregory IX:

That a usurious contract causes a thing that does not generate fruitto generate a profit is clear because it is assumed in the foregoingargument that lendable things, in which usury is committed, haveassigned to them by nature or art a determinate value, and as aresult cannot increase in value and for the same reason cannot bearfruit, for a thing that bears fruit always increases in value along withthe fruit, for it is of greater value when it is in fruit than when it isnot.40

Therefore, although ownership of the value of the sum lent indeedvests in the creditor (only ownership of the substance passes to thedebtor), to demand an increment in the form of interest representsa violation of the intrinsically sterile nature of a fungible.

Gerard’s quaestio survives in only two manuscript copies, and thereason for this is that his argument was paraphrased by Giovannid’Andrea in a quaestio disputata of his own linked to a fragment ofthe title de regulis iuris in the Liber sextus that suggested the topicof usury: “Sin is not forgiven unless the thing stolen is restored.”41

Giovanni redacted the quaestio sometime between 1329-1330 and hisdeath in the first visitation of the Black Death. In contrast toGerard, we know a great deal about Giovanni.42 Born in Florentine

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An Introduction,” The Jurist 24 (1964): 393-408; repr. in Stephan Kuttner,Studies in the History of Medieval Canon Law (Aldershot: Variorum, 1990), xvi.There exists as yet no systematic study of the life and thought of thisimportant jurist.

43 “Iuris canonici fons et tuba”; quoted by Kuttner, “Johannes Andreae,”399, n.24.

44 Noonan, Scholastic Analysis, 67.45 Langholm, Aristotelian Analysis, 30-1; Langholm, Medieval Schools, 550,

556-7. The history of Gerard’s economic writings is additionally confused bythe fact that the manuscript tradition sometimes also credited him withauthorship of Pietro di Giovanni Olivi’s († 1298) treatises on usury andrestitution; see Dionisio Pacetti, “Un trattato sulle usure e le restituzioni diPietro Giovanni Olivi falsamente attribuito a Fr. Gerardo da Siena,” Archivumfranciscanum historicum 46 (1953): 448-57. These texts have been edited byGiacomo Todeschini, Un trattato di economia politica francescana: il “Deemptionibus et venditionibus, de usuris, de restitutionibus” di Pietro di Giovanni Olivi,Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, Studi storici, fasc. 125-6 (Rome:Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1980).

46 For example, Giovanni objected to Gerard’s use of the term “owner” (do-minus) to describe the creditor: he owns neither the substance nor the valueof the principal, but rather has an action for recovery of the sum lent: “Tudic quod non bene advertit hic disputans, quia si debitor haberet unumscrinium nummorum, non est dare quod creditor unus ex illis sit dominus;habet autem principalem actionem contra debitorem,” Novella, ad VI de reg.iur. 4, Peccatum, n.11 (ed. cit. fol. 63rb). Similarly, Gerard incorrectly charac-terizes commodatum, the gratuitous loan of a non-fungible thing, as a profitablecontract: see Questio de usura, art. 2; Leipzig, fol. 68v; Cesena, 175; andGiovanni’s comment, Novella, ad VI de reg. iur. 4, Peccatum, n.11 (ed. cit. fol.63rb).

Tuscany around 1270 and educated in Bologna, he was the mostcelebrated canonist of his day. A counsellor of popes, friend ofPetrarch and professor of canon law at Bologna, he left influentialcommentaries on the entire corpus of canon law and was posthu-mously dubbed “the fount and trumpet of canon law” by the civil-ian Baldus degli Ubaldi († 1400).43 Giovanni’s enormous prestigemeant that Gerard’s argument came to be associated with the morefamous canonist; indeed, as recently as 1957, John T. Noonandescribed it as the “Andrean argument” against usury.44 It was thedistinguished Norwegian economic historian Odd Langholm whocorrected the attribution and established the importance of Gerard’sanalysis for late medieval economic thought.45

Giovanni endorsed Gerard’s analysis, reproducing the Questio deusura almost verbatim, confining himself on the whole to insertingadditional juristic allegations in support of Gerard’s points and tocorrecting inaccurate formulations of legal concepts.46 Most subse-


47 “Sed quia hoc [that is, that usury is naturally vicious] utile et pulchrumvidere est, paulisper in eo euagemur,” Tractatus de usuris, pars 1, q.7, ed.Lawrin Armstrong, Usury and Public Debt in Early Renaissance Florence: LorenzoRidolfi on the ‘Monte Comune,’ Texts and Studies 144 (Toronto: Pontifical Insti-tute of Mediaeval Studies, 2003), 144. Giovanni Calderini refers his readersto Giovanni d’Andrea’s quaestio in a repetitio on X 5.19.19 Naviganti; see Vati-can City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 2652, fols. 283v-284r.

48 “Ego de plano concederem quod facilior est harum aestimatio et maximetempore quo contrahitur restringendo ad illud, sed quod antea habeantcertum et determinatum valorem durante pondere, numero vel mensura, nonalternandum in plus vel minus, non capio,” Novella, ad VI de reg. iur. 4,Peccatum, n.13 (ed. cit., fol. 63vb).

49 Langholm, Medieval Schools, 557.50 See the passage immediately preceding that just quoted, which repro-

duces Gerard’s observation about the price of fungibles in terms of otherthings (see above, n.37); Novella, ad VI de reg. iur. 4, Peccatum, n.13 (ed. cit.,fol. 63vb).

quent canonistic authorities on usury, such as Giovanni Calderini(† 1365) and Lorenzo Ridolfi († 1443), followed suit: indeed, thelatter described Gerard’s argument as both “useful and elegant.”47

Nevertheless, Giovanni—and later canonists echo him on thispoint—had an important reservation about the argument as itstood. While agreeing that the valuation of fungibles in terms ofnumber, weight and measure was a convenience, Giovanni declaredthat he did not understand why Gerard insisted that fungibles havea fixed and determinate value in such terms by nature:

I would readily concede that the valuation of fungibles is simpler,especially when concluding a contract, by restricting it to [a fixed anddeterminate measure], but I do not understand why fungibles shouldhave an inalterable fixed and determinate value beforehand providedthe weight, number or measure remains constant.48

Langholm suggests that Giovanni misunderstood or simply rejectedthe argument.49 But the text of Giovanni’s quaestio indicates that hedid not understand Gerard to be arguing that the value of fungi-bles cannot fluctuate in terms of other commodities; that is, he didnot misunderstand the argument.50 Nor, clearly, did he reject theargument in general. Giovanni seems to have objected to the pro-position that the categories of number, weight and measure derivefrom the nature of fungibles; and this appears to be the burden ofthe qualifying “antea” (“beforehand”) in his comment. As applied

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51 “Ius vero canonicum intendit dirigere in bonum commune secundumquod congruit humane societati, que non solum viuit ciuiliter sed eciam regu-lariter secundum fidem in Deum tendendo et vitam aliam expectando,” Questiode usura, art. 5; Leipzig, fols. 71v-72r; Cesena, 190.

52 The decree Ex gravi (Clem. 5.5.1) condemned the legitimation of usuryas quasi-heretical and forbade the public licencing of usurers. For a transla-tion, see John W. Boyer and Julius Kirshner, eds., University of Chicago

to fungibles, number, weight and measure are conventional con-structs that have significance only in a contractual context andmore specifically in the context of a loan. The value of a fungibleis fixed by the contract—not by nature—and once the agreementhas been concluded, the value cannot fluctuate with respect tonumber, measure and weight. With this caveat, the remainder ofGerard’s argument holds good.

What does this appropriation and correction of a theologian’sargument by a jurist tell us about the relationship between law andethics in the later Middle Ages? In a certain sense, Giovanni’s cri-tique went to the heart of Gerard’s question and transformed theterms of the debate. Gerard’s objective was to reformulate the Tho-mistic consumptibility argument in a form that rendered it unassail-able by resolving an inconsistency that derived in part fromThomas’ over-faithful adherence to Aristotle’s remarks about arti-ficial fungibles. He appealed to the supra-conventional and meta-legal standard of nature as the ground for distinguishing betweenfungibles and non-fungibles. Unfortunately, the only definition ofa fungible to which he had access was one that itself derived fromlaw and convention. It is precisely this point that Giovanni singledout, insisting on the conventional character of the definition. ForGiovanni, there is nothing natural about number, measure andweight: they are conventions agreed upon by human society. Inshort, they are the product of positive law, which is the realm ofcanon law, whose function, as Gerard himself asserts, is to directhuman society towards the common good “in accordance with faithin God and in expectation of the future life.”51

Gerard of Siena’s sweeping critique of usury was very much inthe spirit of the times, which witnessed an intensification of theusury prohibition. In 1317 John XXII promulgated a decree of theCouncil of Vienne (1311-1312) which increased the penalties fornotorious usurers and imposed excommunication on public autho-rities who tolerated their activities.52 It would be a mistake to con-


Readings in Western Civilization, vol. 4, Medieval Europe, ed. and trans. JuliusKirshner and Karl F. Morrison (Chicago and London: University of ChicagoPress, 1986), 317. Gerard does not cite the decree in his quaestio. On thepenalties for usury, see McLaughlin, “Teachings,” 2: 1-22.

53 For discussions, see McLaughlin, “Teachings,” 1: 144-7; Noonan, Scho-lastic Analysis, 115-28; and Spicciani, Capitale e interesse, 27-48.

54 “Quid si habens pecuniam volebat ad nundinas ire et merces emere, utalio deferret vel tempore servaret propter lucrum; ego indigens pecunia illamrecipio, offerens me illam restituere cum lucro sperato in termino et loco?Dicit hic Innocentius quod licet quidam contrarium teneant, ipse putat hunccontractum usurarium, nec scit illum excusare. Hostiensis ... dicit quod talimercatori obligatus sum ad interesse illius lucri, quod facturus erat verisimiliterex pecunia, dummodo nil fiat in fraudem usurarum et dictus mercator dictomodo non consueverit pecuniam tradere ad usuram. Verius videtur dictumInnocentii et quod dicitur de interesse, illud locum habet post moram debi-toris, et ex contrario pararetur aperta via ad foenus, staret enim usurariusparatus cum capello, ocreis et calcaribus ad modum Foroiuliensium, dicens sead nundinas ire velle, si sibi liceret taliter stipulari sub colore lucri sperantialiquid ultra sortem,” Novella, ad X 5.19.19, n.5 (ed. cit., fol. 77vb).

55 For a critique of some of the assumptions underlying the historiography,see Lawrin Armstrong, “Usury, Conscience and Public Debt: Angelo Corbi-nelli’s Testament of 1419,” in John A. Marino and Thomas Kuehn, eds., ARenaissance of Conflicts: Visions and Revisions of Law and Society in Italy and Spain(Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004), 173-240.

clude from Giovanni d’Andrea’s reservations about Gerard’s argu-ment that lawyers were somehow more accommodating of usurythan their theological colleagues. On the contrary, Giovannid’Andrea was among the most severe critics of the so-called “extrin-sic titles” to usury, most notably the title first proposed by Hostien-sis according to which a merchant might claim compensation forlegitimate opportunities to profit that he renounced by making aloan, namely, lucrum cessans (cessant gain), what modern economistscall “opportunity cost”.53 In Giovanni’s view lucrum cessans “furnishesa highway to usury” and should therefore be rejected.54 Late medi-eval and Renaissance canonists were not, as the literature some-times suggests, more “business-friendly” than theologians; indeed,most accepted Giovanni’s judgement on cessant gain and his en-dorsement of Gerard’s natural law argument against usury.55

The relationship between canon law and ethics in late medievalEurope is a subject that merits further study. Although the twodisciplines were clearly in accord about behavioral norms, the exist-ing scholarship on medieval economic ethics, particularly on theusury prohibition, and this (admittedly narrow) case study suggest

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that a fruitful area of research will prove to be the relationshipbetween—and relative weight assigned by law and theology to—nature and convention.

1 An earlier version of this paper was published under the title “Max Weberon Usury and Medieval Capitalism: From The History of Commercial Partnershipsto The Protestant Ethic,” in Max Weber Studies 4 (2004): 51-75; reproduced herewith permission of the journal. I would like to thank Nick Danigelis, LawrinArmstrong, John Munro, the anonymous reviewers for Max Weber Studies, andSam Whimster for their comments and suggestions.

2 Benjamin Nelson, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to UniversalOtherhood, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).

3 Nelson, The Idea, 235.4 Nelson, The Idea, xi.

MAX WEBER AND USURY: IMPLICATIONS FORHISTORICAL RESEARCH1

Lutz Kaelber

Introduction

Scholarly interest in usury varies widely across the disciplines. Whilemedieval historians and economists continue to debate what if anyeffect the Catholic church’s ban on taking interest on loans had oneconomic development, sociologists have abandoned the topic. OnlyBenjamin Nelson has afforded it a detailed analysis.2 Nelson recon-structs the history of religious attitudes toward usury in the Westernworld using the Weberian theme of a transformation from an ethicof “tribal brotherhood,” or charity among kin, to one of “universalotherhood,” reflective of the dominance of purposive rationality insocial relations. Relating his studies to Max Weber, he notes thatWeber had analyzed provisions against usury in a variety of settingsand contexts, including while being a student of commercial lawand history under the auspices of the acclaimed authority in thefield, Levin Goldschmidt.3 Yet Nelson provides no substantivediscussion of Weber’s more intricate viewpoints, perhaps due to thefact, as he writes in the prologue to the second edition, that hisbook had been fully formed before he came across Weber’s writ-ings.4 Since then few sociologists have acknowledged that Weber in-cluded references to the prohibition of contracting any incrementabove the principal of a loan in medieval Catholicism and in other

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5 See Wolfgang Schluchter, Paradoxes of Modernity, trans. N. Solomon (Stan-ford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 226-7, 343 n.247, who notes thatWeber considered the ban on usury a part of the traditionalist ethic of thepre-Reformation church that inhibited the emergence of modernity but doesnot explore the context of Weber’s argument and why Weber thought this tohave been the case, and Richard Swedberg, Max Weber and the Idea of EconomicSociology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 258 n.15, whoacknowledges that Weber “discusses usury quite a bit” without further analysis.

religions, and even fewer describe and analyze what these refer-ences entail and what they mean.5

This paper addresses the development of Weber’s views on usury.Fragmented and strewn, in bits and pieces, over a variety of hiswritings, these views nevertheless provide important insights. Usurywas not a peripheral topic in Weber’s writings. The topic emergedin Weber’s dissertation and gradually came to constitute a part ofWeber’s inquiries into the salvation economy of medieval Christian-ity. Moreover, Weber’s writings on the topic contain insights perti-nent to recent scholarship.

The content of Weber’s thought is discussed in three sections.The first section explores the emergence of Weber’s views in thecontext of his dissertation and first book, which contains his mostextensive discussion of the medieval prohibition of usury and itseffects on economic development. It also addresses similarities anddifferences between Weber’s views and those held by contemporaryscholars, many of whom saw the emergence of certain economicinstitutions such as commercial partnerships as a means of evadingthe Church’s ban—an argument Weber refuted.

The second section addresses usury in the context of Weber’sProtestant Ethic essay published in 1904-1905 and subsequent rebut-tals of his critics. Here, Weber drew on his new explorations of therelationship between religion and the economy as well as his earlierstudies on the German stock exchange to argue a point that wasconsistent with, but not identical to, his earlier approach. Drawingparallels between medieval guild members and modern stockbro-kers, who found innovative ways to cope with the moral regulationof economic affairs and ultimately render them ineffective, Weberquestioned the validity of Werner Sombart’s materialist interpreta-tion of the role of ethics in economic development. Had religionbeen merely the reflection of material conditions in the transitionfrom a feudal to a capitalist economy, Weber argued, religious

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6 Max Weber, Zur Geschichte der Handelsgesellschaften im Mittelalter (Stuttgart:Enke, 1889); Max Weber, The History of Commercial Partnerships in the MiddleAges, trans. L. Kaelber (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); see alsoL. Kaelber, “Max Weber’s Dissertation,” History of the Human Sciences 16(2003): 27-56.

authorities would not have expressed heightened concern regardingusury in times of economic expansion.

The third section addresses Weber’s views on usury as they de-rived from his comparative studies on the world religions andEconomy and Society. Weber compared different religions’ usuryprovisions and demonstrated that their stringency did not correlatewith economic development. Rejecting new claims by Sombart andothers that the medieval Catholic church’s ban on taking intereston loans was a boon rather than a bane for investing assets, Weberthematized the development of markets and the development ofusury prohibitions as countervailing rationalizations of the religioussphere and the sphere of the economy.

While a discussion of the merit of Weber’s argument is beyondthe purview of this paper, the conclusion endeavors some thoughtson how Weber’s views may inform current scholarly debates con-cerning the historical role of the religious prohibition of interest onloans in Western history.

The Role of Usury in Economic Development and the RelativeAutonomy of Law and the Economy: Weber’s Dissertation

Weber discussed usury as early as in his first book. Published in1889 and based on his dissertation, it contains a legal analysis ofmedieval partnerships.6 In a little-known and heretofore never dis-cussed section, Weber explores the topic to a greater extent thanin any other writing and establishes the framework for later ana-lyses.

In The History of Commercial Partnerships, Weber responds to theargument that medieval partnerships were founded to circumventcanon law’s prohibition of usury, which secular statutes adopted aswell. He notes:

Endemann argued that even loans that represented, from an eco-nomic point of view, a loan of capital in return for the payment of

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fixed interest were constructed in the form of a partnership. We knowof similar attempts to construct the purchase of perpetual rent as ahidden interest-bearing loan secured by a mortgage, but this view hasbeen abandoned. The analyses by Arnold and others have shown thatthe purchase of perpetual rent developed gradually out of renting realestate in towns, and that it fulfilled independent economic needs andnot at all acted as a stopgap for the missing interest-bearing loan.This holds true even when capital available for investment later em-ployed this institution—but not before it had come to fruition in-dependently—as a substitute for the non-existent interest-bearingmortgage loan ... While we have also seen that the commenda and thesocietas maris were indeed used as forms of investment, even for theproperty of wards, according to the statutes of Pisa, at that time thesepartnerships had already developed into their most advanced form inthe Middle Ages. Therefore, it is a vast exaggeration to assume thatcapital invested in such a way had chosen this form of investmentbecause there was no way for it to be invested in the form of aninterest-bearing loan. There is no evidence for that; in fact, there isevidence of the contrary ... In the case in which a maritime venture experienced a catastrophicloss, the repayment of a loan taken out for the purpose of fundingthe venture had to appear highly questionable. This explains ... whythe investment of capital took on the form of a share of the risk inexchange for a share of the profit, the latter of which nascent com-merce, in need of capital, supplied willingly ... This institution corres-ponded to views prevalent in Mediterranean trade, the oldest area oflarge trade, which could not perceive of the investment of capital forthe purpose of an expedition overseas in any other terms than as aparticipation in it—that is, as sharing its risk as well. Changes in theseviews reflect the fact that risk became more calculable. This, ratherthan a subtle attempt to circumvent the prohibition of usury, explainswhy part of the risk was assumed by capitalists. It also explains whyforms of partnerships that economically resembled a loan still appearto have legally been constructed as partnerships with a fixed dividend. When the doctrine of usury—if one can agree that such existed—appeared on the economic scene, the development of the forms ofpartnership, as Lastig has strongly argued against Endemann, hadlong been concluded. The role played by the canonical prohibitionwas therefore not a small one, in Italy as well as in other places.Almost all statutes addressed it ... But one cannot argue that thedevelopment of a new institution of law, or merely the further devel-opment of an existing institution, happened due to this prohibition.The prohibition led to the end of some institutions such as the dare


7 In this and other passages taken from English translations of Weber’swritings, I have made corrections or retranslated parts of them. Weber, ZurGeschichte, 111-4; Weber, The History, 137-9.

8 Weber, Zur Geschichte, 109-10; Weber, The History, 136-7. Its equivalent onland was the “dare ad proficuum de terra in bottega vel alio loco,” where aninvestor invested in a company operating out of a shop. See Weber, ZurGeschichte, 122; Weber, The History, 145.

ad proficuum maris; and otherwise, it also served a restrictive, notcreative, function. Even the proficuum maris, which corresponds mostpoorly to the institution of a partnership but seems best suitable as aparadigm of Endemann’s theory, appears to have been fully devel-oped before the doctrine of usury took hold, and it later fell victimto this doctrine once it had fully taken hold. Its demise was not dueto the way in which risk was distributed but happened because of thecertum lucrum. These facts show clearly that the prohibition of usurydid not give rise to the form of partnership.7

Weber makes four important arguments here, some of which areburied in obscure language and references. First, he does not ad-vocate that usury laws were without impact. Weber distinguishesbetween loans for consumption and loans for investment purposes.For the former the prohibition of interest was indeed a constrain-ing factor, whereas for the latter it led to the decline of the dare adproficuum maris, which was based on a capitalist’s willingness (liter-ally) “to give for making profit on maritime voyages.” That formof partnership developed in the later Middle Ages, when diminish-ing risks on commercial voyages to sea ports in the Mediterraneanallowed for the calculation of an average profit, a share in whichcould then be reasonably guaranteed.8 While this arrangement tookout the risk for the capitalist, who merely contributed his capitalwithout further involvement and relied on a fixed dividend or rateof return (certum lucrum), it also made the partnership vulnerableto the accusation of usury and led to its ultimate demise, as Webershows for the city of Pisa. The prohibition of usury was thereforenot entirely without teeth.

Weber’s second argument relates to the investment of capital inother, more common types of partnerships, both on land and atsea. The usury ban’s effect on those partnerships, he argues, wasvery limited. Investment loans were more important for economicdevelopment than consumption loans, and in the various forms ofpartnerships capital found ready investment opportunities. Since in

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9 Franz Xaver Funk, Zins und Wucher: Eine moraltheologische Abhandlung mitBerüchsichtigung des gegenwärtigen Standes der Kultur und der Staatswissenschaften(Tübingen: Laupp’sche Buchhandlung, 1868).

10 Weber’s History of Commercial Partnerships and his Grundriss zu den Vor-lesungen über Allgemeine (“Theoretische”) Nationalökonomie (Outline to the Lectureson General [“Theoretical”] National Economy) of 1898 mention Endemann onseveral occasions (Max Weber, Grundriss zu den Vorlesungen über Allgemeine(“Theoretische”) Nationalökonomie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1990), 12, 16, 17). In TheProtestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism of 1919-1920, Weber refers oncemore to Funk (whose name he misspells) and to Endemann’s studies that,according to him, “[are] today out of date in regard to detail yet still remainfundamental” (Max Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapi-talismus,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I (Tübingen: Mohr,1988), 57 n.; M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 3d ed.,trans. S. Kalberg (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 2001), 176 n.32).

most medieval partnerships a partner who provided capital in-curred the risk of losing it and sometimes involved himself incarrying on business, he could legitimately reap a profit. Such aprofit was seen as entirely different from taking interest on a loan,which, with certain exceptions, was prohibited. Hence, the prohibi-tion of usury simply did not apply to most of the commercialassociations Weber explored.

The third argument concerns the timing of the emergence ofstricter usury laws and the legal development of partnerships in thelater Middle Ages. In 1874 and 1883, the legal scholar WilhelmEndemann had published a massive two-volume study on the eco-nomic doctrines in Roman canon law. It was not the first study thataddressed usury, but compared to studies by Catholic theologiansand authors such as Franz Xaver Funk’s,9 it focused more on usurylaws’ legal construction, practical effects, and economic relevancethan on their ethical aspects. Endemann’s tome was considered themajor study of this sort at the time, but while Weber acknowledgesEndemann’s contributions (as well as Funk’s),10 he takes issue withEndemann’s contention that medieval partnerships developed main-ly as a means of circumventing increasingly stringent usury laws. Indoing so, Weber relies in part on the findings of a certain “Ar-nold,” whom he mentions in the quoted passage, which is a refe-rence to the scholar of Roman and German history Wilhelm Ar-nold. Arnold’s major study on the development of real property inGerman cities included census contracts (an annuity or perpetualrent), which did not emerge as a response to the prohibition of


11 W. Arnold, Zur Geschichte des Eigentums in den deutschen Städten (Basel:Georg, 1861), 92. For a supportive assessment, see H.-J. Gilomen, “Rente,Rentenkauf, Rentenmarkt,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich: LexMa, 1995),7: 736.

12 G. Lastig, “Beiträge zur Geschichte des Handelsrechts, I,” Zeitschrift fürdas Gesamte Handelsrecht 23 (1878): 138-78; G. Lastig, “Beiträge zur Geschich-te des Handelsrechts, II,” Zeitschrift für das Gesamte Handelsrecht 24 (1879):387-449.

13 P. Classen, “Kodifikation im 12. Jahrhundert: Die Constituta usus et legisvon Pisa,” in P. Classen, ed., Recht und Schrift im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen:Thorbecke, 1977), 311-7.

14 As Weber points out, the equivalent in modern German commercial lawis the “dormant partnership” (Stille Gesellschaft). This institution of European

usury.11 Yet Weber’s main argument derives to a much larger ex-tent from his own studies, and those of the scholar of law GustavLastig, on medieval partnerships. In a pioneering analysis of docu-ments in Italian archives, Lastig12 had launched an attack on Ende-mann’s thesis for not sufficiently distinguishing between differenttypes of partnerships and misrepresenting how capital was investedin them. Weber supports many of Lastig’s views but he also goesbeyond the latter’s studies by showing that changes in the legalarrangements of medieval commercial partnerships made themincreasingly less similar to an interest-bearing loan or other suchtypes of investments at the same time as the usury doctrine stiff-ened. Of the two main forms of commendas he studied, the unilat-eral and the bilateral commenda, Weber considers the first one to behistorically older. In that arrangement, a capitalist provided capitalto an enterprise in which a managing partner carried out thebusiness transactions. The managing partner did not partake in therisk and gradually developed into the capitalist’s agent, buying andselling goods in his own name on the account of the principal.Weber argues that the unilateral commenda is therefore the medievalprecursor to the modern form of commission agency. In the Consti-tutum usus, Pisa’s codified commercial customs dating back to asearly as c. 1146-1154,13 this form of partnership was known as daread portandum in compagniam. It lacks a separate fund, which is aconstitutive element of the bilateral partnership, for an investorcontributes capital but is not made liable to third parties by hispartners’ actions. The risk is thus limited to the investor’s contribu-tion, and his involvement in the partnership is not transparent tothird parties.14 In a bilateral partnership, on the other hand, a se-

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civil law does not have an exact equivalent in common law countries,including those who stand in the Anglo-American legal tradition, where undis-closed or “silent” partners have unlimited personal liability in the absence ofa limited partnership agreement. See Weber, Zur Geschichte, 108; Weber, TheHistory, 135.

15 Weber also traces the modern general partnership, which has joint andseveral liability, to partnerships in Florence, derivative of associations ofcraftsmen and domestic traders, see L. Kaelber, “Max Weber’s Dissertation inthe Context of His Early Life and Career,” in Weber, The History, 22-7.

dentary investor as well as a traveling partner each contributecapital and share the profits or losses. From a legal perspective thepartnership’s capital is separate from the investors’ personal assets,and partnership business is undertaken in a joint name, that of thefirm. In the societas maris referred to in the Constitutum usus, thesedentary partner’s legal liability is limited to his capital contribu-tion, whereas the traveling partner’s liability is unlimited; hence,Weber argues, the modern limited partnership had its root in thePisan societas maris.15 Time is important in this analysis, for the shiftaway from unilateral partnerships and toward bilateral ones as apreferred form of investment was well underway before elaborationsof canonical usury prohibitions began in the late twelfth century.This finding not only undercuts the argument that religious prohi-bitions affected these economic changes but also explains whyWeber holds that, when the doctrine of usury got its teeth, “thedevelopment of the forms of partnership ... had long been con-cluded.”

The fourth argument contained in the passage is implicit butnevertheless important. His viewpoint is based on the suppositionthat both law and the economy in the Middle Ages had sufficientsocietal autonomy to proceed along their own trajectories and thatdevelopments in either sphere could simply be adduced by refer-ence to another social sphere such as religion. While interdepen-dencies are always empirically observable, their existence does notallow for the conclusion that one sphere depends on another ormerely mirrors developments in the other. Thus, Weber sees adifferentiation of institutional spheres before modernity, and withregard to the concomitant increase in the spheres’ relative auto-nomy, he follows his academic teacher, the legendary scholar ofcommercial law Levin Goldschmidt, who stressed such autonomythroughout his writings. Goldschmidt also agreed substantively with


16 L. Goldschmidt, Universalgeschichte des Handelsrechts (Stuttgart: Enke,1891), 140-1.

17 Weber, Zur Geschichte, 151; Weber, The History, 170.18 It seems impossible to determine who influenced whom. Presumably

relying on Weber’s Italian case studies, Goldschmidt made his first extensivecomments on the topic in 1891. However, it is likely that he had long beforeformed an opinion, which he may have expressed to Weber during the latter’spreparation of his dissertation. The agreement between the two scholarsextended beyond usury. Despite Weber’s vociferous remarks toward the Polesin his Freiburg inaugural address (see, e.g., J. M. Barbalet, “Weber’s InauguralLecture and Its Place in His Sociology,” Journal of Classical Sociology 1 (2001):147-70), they had similar views on German politics and economic policy at thetime. Both were supportive of national liberalism and favored a limitedintervention of the state in the economy. See K. Borchardt, “Max Weber’sWritings on the Bourse: Puzzling Out a Forgotten Corpus,” Max Weber Studies2 (2002): 139-62; L. Weyhe, Levin Goldschmidt: Ein Gelehrtenleben in Deutschland(Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1996).

Weber’s position. Rejecting Endemann, Goldschmidt stated that theprohibition of usury was not effective in throttling economicdevelopment, for even canon law had provisions that permitted thetaking of interest, not to mention more lenient secular laws. Atmost usury laws introduced additional restrictions to the market forcredit, thus increasing rather than decreasing interest rates.16

Correspondingly, Weber17 notes in the concluding chapter that theprohibition of usury “was more unsettling to theoreticians than topractitioners.”18

Weber was thus first exposed to the issue of the prohibition ofusury and its effects on economic development in his studies of themedieval urban Italian economy, which he approached as a legalscholar. His arguments concerning the limited effect of religiousrestrictions on interest in Europe’s most advanced economy, basedon his own documentary analyses, and law’s and the economy’srelatively high degree of autonomy would affect his views when herevisited the topic as part of his Protestant Ethic studies fifteen yearslater.

Usury and Medieval Religion: The “Protestant Ethic” Essays andWeber’s Rebuttals of Rachfahl

After finishing his dissertation, Weber quickly moved on to othertopics. He would not address the issue of usury in detail again untilhis two-part essay “The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capital-

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19 M. Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik und der ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus,I: Das Problem,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 20 (1904): 32-3;M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and Other Writings,ed. and trans. P. Baehr and G. C. Wells (London: Penguin, 2002), 25.

ism” in 1904-1905 and replies to his critic Felix Rachfahl in 1910.In his Protestant Ethic essay, Weber’s approach broadens. He is nowconcerned with the practical aspects of religious ethics, specificallywith the ways in which religion inhibited or contributed to theemergence of a modern capitalist ethos represented in modernvocational culture, for which he adopts Werner Sombart’s term: the“spirit” of capitalism. Weber portrays the Middle Ages as a timebefore the modern notion of a calling (Beruf) broke the Church’s“mold of medieval economic regulation.” This mold he describesas follows:

The phrase “Deo placere non potest” was used in relation to theactivity of the merchant. But, when compared to widely held anti-chrematistic views, this represented a considerable accommodation ofCatholic doctrine to the interests of the financial powers of the Italiancities ... [G]ain as an activity pursued as an end in itself was basicallya “pudendum,” which was tolerated solely because it had become anestablished institution. A “moral” view like that of Benjamin Franklinwould have been simply unthinkable. This was also the position ofthose directly concerned. Their life’s work was, at best, somethingmorally neutral—tolerated, but on account of the constant danger ofclashing with the Church’s ban on usury, spiritually dubious. Thesources reveal that upon the death of wealthy people, considerablesums of money flowed into the coffers of the Church institutions as“conscience money,” some of it even going back to former debtors as“usura” wrongfully taken from them. Even skeptical persons not insympathy with the Church tended to play safe and pay these sums inorder to be reconciled with the Church just in case the worst came tothe worst. It was an insurance against the uncertainties concerning theafterlife and because, after all (at least this rather lax view was widelyheld), outward conformity to the laws of the Church was sufficient tosalvation. It is here that the amoral and in part immoral character oftheir actions becomes clear, as those concerned themselves saw it.19

Weber sees heterodox religion in the Middle Ages as accommodat-ing, rather than being hostile to, economic activities in general, and


20 Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik, I,” 33 n.1; Weber, The Protestant Ethic,trans. Baehr and Wells, 51-2 n.36.

mercantile activities in specific. Accommodation consisted of prac-tices that allow remorseful transgressors to return to the bosom ofthe Church, but no positive endorsement of methodically controlledacquisitive activity existed. Weber chooses the phrase “Homo merca-tor vix aut nunquam deo potest placere” (the merchant can hardlyor never please God) in Gratian’s collection of church laws (c. 1140)as indicative of limitations on enterprise. What is interesting in thepassages above, however, is that Weber refers to the prohibition ofusury and the related restitution of wrongful gain to illustrate hispoint. In the accompanying footnote, he notes:

We can learn exactly how they used to come to terms with the ban onthe taking of interest in, for example, Book I, chapter 65 of thestatute of the Arte di Calimala .... : “The consuls must ensure that theymake confession to those brethren [confessors] whom they judge mostlikely to pardon them, and that they do it in the manner most appro-priate to the gift, service or reward received, in terms of the interestexacted for the past year, according to custom.” In other words, theguild obtains indulgence for its members through official channelsand through submission to the Church. The instructions that followare also highly typical of the a-moral character of capital gains, aswell as, for example, the immediately preceding injunction (chap. 63)to record all interest and profits as “gifts.” Today’s stock exchangeblacklisting of those who refuse to honor forward contracts by invok-ing the margin defense (Differenzeinwand) in court can be comparedto the vilifying of those who went before an ecclesiastical court plead-ing exceptio usurariae pravitatis.20

Weber thus continues to draw on his dissertation to inform hisassessment of commercial (and religious) medieval practices. Fromhis analysis of the statutes of the Florentine Arte di Calimala, theprestigious guild of merchants of imported wool, he comes to thesame conclusion as he did about fifteen years earlier. Internationalmerchants, facing the issue of usury on an almost daily basis, didnot simply ignore religious concerns regarding their activities butfound ways to adapt to them and assuage lingering doubts. In partthis occurred through the aforementioned restitution, which couldoccur on a merchant’s deathbed, in part through the corporate

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21 M. Weber, Börsenwesen: Schriften und Reden, 1893-1898, ed. K. Borchardt.MWG I/5 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1999).

22 K. Borchardt, “Einleitung” and “Editorischer Bericht,” in Weber, Börsen-wesen, 28-31; Weber, Börsenwesen, 225, 507, 1040.

23 Weber, Börsenwesen, 220-1, 1044. Cf. the existing translations of thepassage. For Talcott Parsons, traders who invoked the margin defense were“brokers who hold back the difference between top price and actual sellingprice” (M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T.Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 204 n. 31); for StephenKalberg, these traders are those “who criticize orthodox procedures” and theexceptio usurariae pravitatis is a plea “for an exemption to the prohibition ofusury” (Weber, The Protestant Ethic, trans. S. Kalberg, 178 n.35); and for PeterBaehr and Gordon Wells, the blacklisted traders are those “who take profitsfrom differential rates” (Weber, The Protestant Ethic, trans. Baehr and Wells, 52,n.36). Economy and Society contains a better translation of a similar passage, seeM. Weber, Economy and Society, ed. and trans. G. Roth and C. Wittich (Ber-keley: University of California Press, 1978), 1189.

practice of creative economic procedures that circumvented the pro-hibition of interest.

At the end of the passage, Weber likens the defensive practicesof medieval guilds to those of modern stockbrokers. The MWGedition of Weber’s writings on the stock exchange in 1894-189621

has made possible a better understanding of the origin of thesewords and their meaning, which has escaped all existing Englishtranslations of Weber’s Protestant Ethic writings. German civil lawhad traditionally not allowed forward or arbitrage contracts, whichare contractual transactions based solely on the exploitation of thedifference between an initially agreed-upon price and the price setlater by the market or exchange. Since such contracts constitutedgambling or betting, they were not enforceable, and the Differenz-einwand, or “margin defense,” was the legal defense used againstclaims in court lest such speculative contracts be enforced. However,stock market traders dealing among themselves could not invokesuch a defense, and those who tried, in cases Weber encounteredduring his studies on the stock exchange, were indeed blacklistedand thus faced marginalization.22 As Weber puts it, the defense isanalogous to medieval guilds’ strategies to vilify those invokingexceptio usurariae pravitatis, a defense based on the claim that oneparty’s contractual obligation derived from the other party’s de-praved usury, rendering the contract unenforceable and thus theobligation non-binding.23


24 W. Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot,1902).

25 N. Stehr and R. Grundmann, “Introduction,” in W. Sombart, EconomicLife in the Modern Age, ed. N. Stehr and R. Grundmann (New Brunswick:Transaction, 2001), xiii-xv.

26 K. Marx, Capital, trans. B. Fowkes (New York: Vintage, 1977), 1: 915.27 Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, 1: 184-7. 28 Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik, I,” 9 n.1, and 45; Weber, The

Protestant Ethic, trans. Baehr and Wells, 30, 46 n.13.

In a different part of the essay, Weber takes issue with those whoargued that modern capitalism emerged because nascent capitalistentrepreneurs were finally able to shed the ballast of religious con-straints on secular activities. He mainly addresses Sombart’s thesisin Der Moderne Kapitalismus (1902).24 Having written a splendiddissertation on the rural proletariat’s impoverishment and exploita-tion in the Roman campagna (1888) under the guidance of GustavSchmoller, a leader of the younger Historical School of politicaleconomy, Sombart was attuned to a Marxist-materialist interpreta-tion of economic history early in his career.25 In Der Moderne Kapi-talismus, Sombart related to Karl Marx’s26 notion that feudal eco-nomic structures—rather than the existence of usury laws in it-self—prevented assets generated through usurious practices fromturning into industrial capital. Sombart argued that the medievaleconomy was craft-based and the ban on usury reflected its tradi-tionalist ethic.27 The corollary of this position is that lifting theprohibition of interest signified a boost for the new modern capi-talist spirit. Weber is not convinced by Sombart’s thesis. Simply put,because such restraints had not been a decisive factor in the MiddleAges, their relegation to marginal status in the early modern eracould not account for the emergence of capitalism. Moreover,Weber argues, not only did Luther remain a traditionalist on usuryand other economic matters, but also strands of ascetic Protestant-ism continued to be concerned about the morality of taking inte-rest. Therefore, an alleged desire on their part to engage freely inwhat previously would have been considered a usurious transactionis squarely at odds with the historical record.28

He affirms this view a few years later in his rebuttals to FelixRachfahl’s arguments, referring to Rachfahl’s “peripheral pointsabout church doctrine on ‘usury’ in the Middle Ages,” which for

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29 M. Weber, Die protestantische Ethik, II: Kritiken und Antikritiken, 5th ed., ed.J. Winkelmann (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1987), 167; M. Weber, The Protestant EthicDebate: Max Webers’ Replies to His Critics, 1907-1910, ed. D. J. Chalcraft and A.Harrington, trans. A. Harrington and M. Shields (Liverpool: LiverpoolUniversity Press, 2001), 73.

30 M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichenOrdnungen und Mächte: Nachlass, Teilband 2: Religiöse Gemeinschaften, ed. H. G.Kippenberg. MWG I/22-5 (Tübingen: Mohr, 2001), 377 n.11.

31 Weber, Die protestanische Ethik, II, 341 n.20; Weber, The Protestant EthicDebate, 129 n.20.

32 L. Kaelber, Schools of Asceticism: Ideology and Organization in MedievalReligious Communities (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,1998), 112.

33 F. W. Graf, “Friendship between Experts: Notes on Weber andTroeltsch,” in W. J. Mommsen and J. Osterhammel, eds., Max Weber and HisContemporaries (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 215-33.

34 E. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. O. Wyon(New York: Macmillan, [1912] 1956).

35 Troeltsch, Social Teaching, 55-58.36 Troeltsch, Social Teaching, 128, 319-20.

economic development “are not at all decisive.”29 He traces the ori-gins of the Church’s usury doctrine to a false reading of the GreekVulgate translation of the Decretals,30 mentions the Church’s deal-ings with usury along with confession as examples of the ways inwhich the Church was willing to accommodate but not approve ofmoral shortcomings, including those that resulted in ethically ques-tionable economic practices, and alludes to modern Catholicism’smuch more lenient dealings with those matters.31

This position not only reflects a shift in Weber’s work toward asociology of medieval Catholicism32 but also echoes the views ofErnst Troeltsch, with whom Weber formed a “friendship betweenexperts” that led to much cross-fertilization in their work.33 In arti-cles later included in The Economic Teachings of the Christian Chur-ches34 Troeltsch posited that the medieval Church affirmed its claimto “absolute universalism” through the establishment and enforce-ment of a unitary religious culture that bound all Christians to-gether by a fellowship of love,35 and it rejected usury as a violationof the communitarian ethic of brotherhood.36 Such a process ofuniversalizing ethical notions, Weber realized, necessitated thelowering of some standards (for the laity), including accommodatingeconomic practices to a certain extent while formally drawing sharpdistinctions between ethical and unethical activities. By 1910, with


37 M. Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 27/The Pro-testant Ethic, trans. Kalberg, 168 n.23.

38 F. Keller, Unternehmung und Mehrwert: Eine sozial-ethische Studie zurGeschäftsmoral (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1912).

39 W. Sombart, Der Bourgeois: Zur Geistesgeschichte des modernen Wirtschafts-menschen (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1913); Luxus und Kapitalismus (Leipzig:Duncker & Humblot, 1913); and The Quintessence of Capitalism: A Study of theHistory and Psychology of the Modern Business Man, trans. M. Epstein (New York:Dutton, 1915).

40 Keller, Unternehmung, 24-8.

Troeltsch’s input, usury had thereby become part of Weber’s reflec-tions on the role of religion for economic development.

Usury in Comparative and Systematic Perspective: Weber’sLater Writings

Several influences on Weber’s views are evident in the revisedProtestant Ethic, his writings on the economic ethics of the worldreligions, and the sections on religious communities and secularand religious rulership in Economy and Society. Weber elaborated onTroeltsch’s views but also took on recent arguments by Franz Kellerand Sombart.

In the revised Protestant Ethic, medieval Catholicism is affordeda more prominent role. Two new insertions concern the prohibitionof interest. In one Weber asserts the validity of his earlier remarksto Rachfahl, that for the emergence of modern capitalism’s voca-tional ethic, and, as he underlines, only in this context, the cano-nical prohibition of usury played no significant role.37 In the otherinsertion, which is one of the longest, Weber responds to what canonly be described as puzzling claims made by the Catholic theo-logian Franz Keller and by Sombart. In two separate publications,Keller38 and Sombart39 turned the existing paradigm concerningusury upside down. Keller claimed inter alia that the Church’s banon usury pertained only to emergency loans made in cases ofsudden privation. Such a tightly confined prohibition of the takingof interest helped rather than hindered capitalist development, he40

maintained, because it cut short entrepreneurs’ ability to make aprofit through illegitimate means and prevented the loss of capitalstock of temporarily impoverished craftsmen and others in need,who would soon again be able to contribute to the economy. Keller

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41 Sombart, Der Bourgeois; Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism.42 W. Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (Leipzig: Duncker &

Humblot, 1911); W. Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism, trans. M.Epstein (London: Unwin, 1913).

43 W. Sombart, Luxus und Kapitalismus (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1913);W. Sombart, Luxury and Capitalism, trans. W. R. Dittmar (Ann Arbor, MI:University of Michigan Press, 1967).

44 W. Sombart, Krieg und Kapitalismus (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1913).45 Sombart, Der Bourgeois.46 Sombart, Der Bourgeois, 314-22.47 Weber, “Die protestantische,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 27 n.2; 57 n.; Weber,

The Protestant Ethic, trans. Kalberg, 168 n.25; 176 n.32.

made this argument in the space of a few pages and with barely areference to historical documents. Nevertheless, Sombart expandedon it in Der Bourgeois,41 perhaps influenced by Keller’s favorabletreatment of Sombart’s previous work. Seemingly intent on findingthe capitalist spirit’s roots in anything but Weber’s Puritans, Som-bart advanced an ever-increasing hodgepodge of explanations. Heattributed an important role in the genesis of modern capitalism tothe Jews,42 trade in luxury goods,43 war,44 and, lastly, the fusion ofadventure capitalism (for which he credits in part the EuropeanJewry) with the modern bourgeois’ rational calculability.45 Sombart’sclaim was as simple as Keller’s: by forgoing loans, money had toseek more productive purposes and was thus invested in business,since profit, unlike interest, was not affected by religious prohibi-tions.46 Like Keller, Sombart furnished few references to literaturesupportive of this view.

In his response in the Protestant Ethic, Weber is as defensive ashe had been against Rachfahl. Calling Sombart’s publication “abook ‘with a thesis’ in the worst sense of this expression” and the“by far the weakest ... of his larger studies,”47 he affirms his earlierpositions:

The truth is that [1] the church began to reconsider the prohibitionof interest only at a rather late time; [2] at the time when this hap-pened the forms of purely business investment were not loans at afixed interest rate but the foenus nauticum, commenda, societas maris, andthe dare ad proficuum de mari ... yet other than by a few rigorouscanonists they were not held to fall under the ban; [3] when invest-ments at a fixed rate of interest and discounting became possible andcommon, they encountered discernable difficulties stemming from the


48 Weber, “Die protestantische” in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 57-8 n.; Weber, TheProtestant Ethic, trans. Kalberg, 176 n.32.

49 Cf. Weber’s other major critic, Lujo Brentano, who held that the Churchhad effectively given up on regulating interest rates in the late Middle Agesand accepted a ceiling on interest rates. Weber did not respond. See L. Bren-tano, Die Anfänge des modernen Kapitalismus (Munich: Akademie der Wissen-schaften, 1916), 21.

50 Weber, “Die protestantische” in Gesammelte Aufsätze, 56 n.1; Weber, TheProtestant Ethic, trans. Kalberg, 176 n.32.

prohibition of usury, which led merchant guilds to adopt drasticdefensive measures (blacklisting!); [4] the canonists’ treatment of usurywas purely formal-legalistic, and without any such tendency to “protectcapital” as Keller ascribed to them; [5] lastly, the Church’s attitudetoward capitalism, in so far as it can be ascertained at all, was deter-mined by, on the on hand, a traditional hostility, mostly diffuselyheld, toward the growing power of capital, which was impersonal andhence not readily amenable to ethical control ... ; on the other hand,the necessity for accommodation.48

Convoluted in the original German, this passage succinctly depictsWeber’s views on usury shortly before his death. They had notchanged significantly since his studies under Goldschmidt. The banon usury does not rank among the chief reasons capitalism, in its“modern” manifestation in form and spirit, did not develop in theMiddle Ages, nor was the Church’s rejection of interest in returnfor giving loans, while firm,49 responsible for the investment ofmoney in ethically less clouded forms of investments such as part-nerships. Rather, as Weber notes in an earlier passage in the samenote, “parallels to the prohibition of interest are to be found inalmost all religious ethics around the world.”50 These views touchon two larger issues Weber raised in two main projects in the lastdecade of his life: the importance of external religious guidelinesfor secular action, and the relationship between religion (as asocietal order) and the economy. Weber addressed the former inhis comparative studies on the world religions and the latter inEconomy and Society.

Weber’s statement regarding a prominent existence of usury rulesin religious ethics is an implicit reference to, and a result of, hiscomparative studies of the economic ethics of the world religions,where he transcends the Protestant Ethic’s much more circumscribedtheme of religious contributions to modern capitalism. In the con-

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51 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 435; Weber, Economyand Society, 625.

52 M. Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Hinduismus und Buddhis-mus: 1916-1920, ed. H. Schmidt-Glintzer, MWG I/20 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1996),118; M. Weber, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism,ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and D. Martindale (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1967),56; M. Weber, Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Abriss der universalen Sozial- und Wirtschafts-geschichte, ed. J. Winckelmann, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1958),235; M. Weber, General Economic History, trans. F. Knight (New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction, 1981), 268.

53 W. Schluchter, Rationalism, Religion, and Domination, trans. N. Solomon.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 85-116.

54 M. Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus und Tao-ismus: Schriften 1915-1920, ed. H. Schmidt-Glintzer, MWG I/19 (Tübingen:Mohr, 1989), 279, 354-5; M. Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism andTaoism, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth (New York: Free Press, 1964), 100, 159.

55 M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte(Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), 86, 90; M. Weber, Agrarian Sociology of AncientCivilizations, trans. R. I. Frank. London: Verso, 1998), 137, 142-3.

56 M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie III (Tübingen: Mohr,1988), 357-58; M. Weber, Ancient Judaism, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and D.Martindale (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952), 342-3.

57 For discussion, see Stehr and Grundmann, “Introduction,” xxxiii-xxxix.

text of those studies Weber notes that Islam scorned usury,51 as didIndian Brahminism,52 whereas Confucianism and Taoism, due totheir rationalism of “world adjustment,”53 did not at all or only toa very limited extent.54

Judaism is more difficult to characterize. Elaborating on remarksmade in his studies on agrarian history in 1908, where he brieflytouched on the issue of interest in Israel,55 Weber in his study onancient Judaism traces religious provisions that allowed lendingmoney at interest to strangers to the economic ethics of an op-pressed people. Relevant passages in the Torah were interpreted,for both political and religious reasons, to mean that the taking ofinterest was allowed only from gentiles. Although voices existedwhich rejected this in-group versus out-group morality, the mar-ginalization of Jews, for which Weber used the controversial conceptof a “pariah people,” ensured the continued existence of this mora-lity.56 However, Weber does not go nearly as far as the increasinglyanti-Semitic Sombart, who argued that Jews had a special propen-sity to trade and barter and by extracting profit from money lend-ing contributed to the emergence of the adventure spirit Sombartassociated with modern capitalism.57 In terms of prohibiting the


58 Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Hinduismus, 194; Weber, TheReligion of India, 112.

59 Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus, 457, 460;Weber, The Religion of China, 232, 235; Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed.Kippenberg, 348; Weber, Economy and Society, 562.

60 Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus, 115; M.Weber, From Max Weber, ed. and trans. H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1958), 291.

taking of interest, Weber makes clear, Judaism is not the mostpermissive religion, and it is not a crucial issue:

The core of the obstacle [to developing modern capitalism] did notlie in such particular difficulties [as bans on interest in money lend-ing], which every one of the great religious systems on its way hasplaced, or has seemed to place, in the way of the modern economy.The core of the obstruction was in the ‘spirit’ of the whole system.58

The taking of interest in return for a loan is thus only one ofmany prohibited or negatively stereotyped activities that couldinterpose obstacles to secular activities. Yet they were externallyimposed; hence, unless accompanied by internal changes that redi-rected people’s motives, ideas, and interests, they do not preventthe economic process from running its course. A system of externalreligious prohibitions cultivated from the outside but not from theinside: it could not thoroughly penetrate economic actions with aninner value.59 This helps explain why in spite of variations in theprohibition of taking interest—none or little in Confucianism andTaoism, from other Jews in Judaism, from anyone in late medievalChristianity—none of these religions “developed” modern capitalismand introduced economic rationalization. The prohibition was nota decisive factor; if it had been, then areas influenced by Confu-cianism and Taoism should have been the first to usher in themodern rationalized economy. The role of medieval Catholicism inthis process was traditional, for it did not provide psychologicalincentives for the pursuit of ethically tempered acquisitiveness. Atbest, it produced a “naïve affirmation of the world,”60 not asceticProtestantism’s world mastery.

Weber addresses this issue on a more general level in the contextof the relationship between the economy and other societal ordersin Economy and Society. Two chapters, both located in the older part,

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61 E. Hanke, “Max Webers ‘Herrschaftssoziologie’: Eine werkgeschichtlicheStudie,” in E. Hanke and W. J. Mommsen, eds., Max Webers Herrschafts-soziologie: Studien zur Entstehung und Wirkung (Tübingen: Mohr, 2001), 19-46.

62 Schluchter, Rationalism, 411-32; H. G. Kippenberg, “Einleitung,” inWeber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 1-83; but see W. J.Mommsen, “Max Weber’s ‘Grand Sociology’: The Origins and Composition ofWirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Soziologie,” History and Theory 39 (2000): 364-83.

63 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 376-83; Weber, Wirt-schaft und Gesellschaft. 5th, rev. ed., ed. J. Winckelmann (Tübingen: Mohr,1985), 710-12; Weber, Economy and Society, 583-87, 1188-91.

64 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 377-8; Weber, Economyand Society, 584.

65 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 377; Weber, Wirtschaftund Gesellschaft, ed. Winckelmann, 711; Weber, Economy and Society, 584, 1189.

concern usury. One thematizes the relationship between secular andreligious rulership, which is part of Weber’s sociology of domina-tion;61 the other, on religious communities, ties his writings on theeconomy in its relationship to other societal orders to his compara-tive writings in the sociology of religion.62 Though the chapters’foci differ, Weber’s references to usury are similar and some pas-sages virtually identical.63

Weber notes that while Christianity from early on rejected in-group versus out-group morality in its emphasis on what Troeltschhad called “absolute universalism,” it developed its strongest rejec-tion of the countervailing ethics, those of the “market,” in itsopposition to interest when confronting the acceleration of eco-nomic growth in the twelfth century. This reflects a “principalstruggle between an ethical and economic rationalization of the eco-nomy.”64 The Church attempted to come to grips with the amoralforces represented by the economy by means of a rationalization ofthe ethics that governed its hierocratic means, the dispensation ofgrace. This took the form of elaborate casuistries by Canon schol-ars. Next to the notion of a “just price” (justum pretium) in eco-nomic transactions, usury was one of the foils against which theycould construct a moral code of ethical behavior in the secularworld vis-à-vis the impersonalization and “a-morality” brought aboutby the market place. As he did originally in his dissertation, Weberstresses repeatedly that the systematization of religious ethics didnot reflect material conditions and the unfolding of usury prohibi-tions is inconsistent with a materialist conception of history.65 More-over, he alludes to the same means of evading or circumventing


66 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 382-3; Weber, Wirtschaftund Gesellschaft, ed. Winckelmann, 711; Weber, Economy and Society, 587, 1189-90.

67 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. Kippenberg, 381-3; Weber, Wirtschaftund Gesellschaft, ed. Winckelmann, 711; Weber, Economy and Society, 587, 1190.

68 Kaelber, Schools of Asceticism, 46-55.

the ban on taking interest as in the original Protestant Ethic; i.e., theblacklisting of guild members who go before ecclesiastical courts,the purchase of general indulgences, and merchants’ testamentarygifts of conscience money and charitable endowments as posthu-mous restitution of usury. The latter together with the elaborationof the system of penance and the establishment of ecclesiasticalpawn lending institutions in the montes pietatis signify provisions bywhich the Church acquiesced to ethical conundrums resulting fromeconomic action.66 In all, the summary judgment is the same as ithad been all along: the practical consequences of the Church’s banon usury, while “difficult to estimate,” was that of being a burdenon economic affairs, pushing it along the direction of a “moraldeclassement and obstacle to a rational business ethic.” Ultimately,it was “nowhere really successful in cultivating the development ofcapitalism ... and increasingly became a mere impediment of com-mercial life.”67

Conclusion: Weber, Medieval Catholicism, and Modern Debateson the Role of Usury

This analysis has shown that usury was not of marginal importancein Weber’s writings. The fact that Weber considered the religiousproscription of usurious practices at most a detriment and at leasta nuisance to pre-modern economic development certainly does notimply that a sociological exploration of usury provisions and theirimpact on actual practices is unwarranted—just as no one, by wayof analogy, would want to argue that the analysis of Confucianismor Islam is unimportant merely because these religions, at leastaccording to Weber, did not help bring forth modern capitalism.In fact, Weber considered the Church’s policies toward usury, nextto its doctrine of a just price, its practices of penance, and its sys-tem of a monastic supererogatory accumulation of merit,68 to be acore element of medieval Christianity’s salvation economy. Had

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69 G. Hübinger, Kulturprotestantismus und Politik: Zum Verhältnis von Libe-ralismus und Protestantismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Tübingen: Mohr,1994).

70 L. K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978).

71 H. Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, trans. S. Rowan(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).

72 A. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1985).

73 B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models ofInterpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1983).

74 Nelson, The Idea. An anonymous reviewer for Max Weber Studies took me

Weber been able to carry out the remaining studies on the eco-nomic ethics of the world religions, he would have addressed theinner workings of this salvation economy in his intended study onChristianity. Usury, one might reasonably argue, would have playedan important role in it. Given the time that has passed since We-ber’s death, however, do his views have any pertinence to recentscholarship?

Current scholarship on medieval religion is less inclined to pro-vide a broad characterization of a period spanning close to a mil-lennium than Weber, whose views were steeped in contemporarypresuppositions of Cultural Protestantism with its anti-Catholic andanti-Lutheran elements.69 Even though Weber may have intendedhis statements to constitute ideal-typical depictions, many of themappear too general, without sufficient contextualization, and badlyin need of revision in view of newer findings. For example, medi-evalists point to twelfth-century developments in the profit econ-omy,70 religious dissent,71 reason,72 and literacy73 as crucial transfor-mations toward more rationalized European societies even beforethe onset of the Italian Renaissance. Such studies shatter the im-pression of a relative continuity in medieval culture, and perhapseven backwardness, one might get from Weber’s admittedly frag-mented remarks. They do, however, broadly support Weber’s (andGoldschmidt’s) notion of a relatively high degree of autonomy ofthe economic sphere from religious interference, and relate advan-ces toward a modern type of market economy to developments inspheres other than religion.

While usury has not been a topic of interest for sociologists sinceNelson,74 it has received ample attention from medievalist econo-


to task for claiming Nelson all too readily as a sociologist with the argumentthat Nelson was a trained medievalist and only later turned to social science(Parsons, Freud, and Weber). It is true that Nelson received both his master’s(in 1933) and doctorate (in 1944) in medieval history. However, as a prodi-gious reader, Nelson undoubtedly explored materials beyond the more special-ized range of medieval/Renaissance studies as early as while preparing his dis-sertation, and with certainty extended his subsequent studies beyond thosethree scholars. The voluminous collection of Nelson’s papers housed atColumbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library awaits explorationto shed more light on this topic. I wish to thank Dr. Donald Nielsen, once adoctoral student of Nelson, for kindly supplying me with some of this infor-mation.

75 R. B. Ekelund, Jr., R. F. Hébert, and R. D. Tollison, “An EconomicModel of the Medieval Church: Usury as a Form of Rent Seeking,” Journal ofLaw, Economics, and Organization 5 (1989): 307-31; R. B. Ekelund, Jr., et al.,Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm (New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1996).

76 See E. L. Glaeser and J. Scheinkman, “Neither a Borrower Nor aLender Be: An Economic Analysis of Interest Restrictions and Usury Laws,”Journal of Law and Economics 41 (1998): 1-36; C. G. Reed and C. T. Bekar,“Religious Prohibitions Against Usury,” Explorations in Economic History 40

mists and historians. Their studies fall into three categories: (1)neo-classical economists’ attempts at addressing the impact onusury; (2) comparative studies that have begun to expand Weber’sinquiries into other world religions and address Christian usuryprovisions in the light of other religions’ tenets and practices; and(3) a multifaceted controversy about Weber’s core question of howmuch the prohibition on taking interest on a loan impeded eco-nomic development.

Economists have recently begun to address usury in the MiddleAges using neo-classical models. Robert Ekelund et al.75 proposedthe following argument: leaders of the medieval Catholic churchwere no different from entrepreneurs heading economic firms intheir attempts to become monopolistic suppliers of goods andservices by establishing public policies that give them a comparativeadvantage over competitors. Such “rent-seeking behavior” can alsobe found, the authors contend, in the Church’s usury policies,designated to keep interest rates low and allowing the Church toborrow money more cheaply than in a competitive market environ-ment, while at the same time restricting competition under condi-tions in which the Church was herself a creditor. Yet not only doesthis approach fit the historical development of the Church’s eco-nomic condition and its usury doctrines poorly,76 it is also inferior

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(2003): 347-68.77 Weber, Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus, 479-522;

Weber, From Max Weber, 323-59.78 Nelson, The Idea, xix-xxii.79 J. Shatzmiller, Shylock Reconsidered: Jews, Moneylending, and Medieval Society

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); S. Herman, Medieval Usury andthe Commercialization of Feudal Bonds (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1993).

80 N. A. Saleh, Unlawful Gain and Legitimate Profit in Islamic Law: Riba, Gha-rar, and Islamic Banking (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); R.Lohlker, Das islamische Recht im Wandel: Riba, Zins und Wucher in Vergangenheitund Gegenwart (Münster: Waxmann, 1999).

to Weber’s, for it relies on the assumption that the Church’s poli-cies were driven by the intent to bring about economic resultsrather than moral reform. It is more compelling, Weber showed,to assume that when a hierocratic institution is embedded in a poli-tical and economic structure in which it can influence but notdominate public policies, it will respond to a rationalization in poli-tics and the economy that intrudes into its own sphere (as in thetwelfth century) by a rationalization of its own, namely in its ethicaldoctrine toward those spheres. Rather than being a reflection ofchanging material conditions, as some neo-classical economists wantto have it—one might recall Sombart’s position outlined earlier inthis paper—usury policies may thus be in sharper conflict with eco-nomic practices. Such policies may become more, not less value-rational, as rationalizations in societal spheres develop according totheir own logic and quite possibly in different directions, which maylead to sharper conflicts between these spheres.77 Weber’s “politicaleconomy” model of usury policies, which affords religion the abilityto contribute autochthonous elements to such policies, thereforedeserves more recognition in these debates. The neo-classicalmodel, at least as currently applied to medieval ecclesiastical policy,appears to represent a step back from Weber’s studies and mightbenefit from drawing on some of Weber’s insights.

The comparative aspect of Weber’s writings on usury has beentaken up by an increasing number of studies that go beyond Chris-tianity. One of the first scholars to engage in this line of work wasNelson, who prefaced his exploration of Christian usury doctrineswith a study of usury provisions in Judaism.78 Since then, scholarshave studied Jewish vis-à-vis Christian lenders in the Middle Ages,79

and Islamic views toward usury in this and other periods.80 A trulycomparative analysis of religious prohibitions against usury that


81 For example, S. L. Buckley, Teachings on Usury in Judaism, Christianity, andIslam (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2000).

82 See especially T. P. McLaughlin, “The Teaching of the Canonists onUsury (XII, XIII and XIV Centuries),” Mediaeval Studies 1 (1939): 81-147; T.P. McLaughlin, “The Teaching of the Canonists on Usury (XII, XIII and XIVCenturies),” Mediaeval Studies 2 (1940): 1-22; J. T. Noonan, The Scholastic Ana-lysis of Usury (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957); J. W. Baldwin,Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and HisCircle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970); O. Langholm, The Aris-totelian Analysis of Usury (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1984); O. Langholm,Economics in the Medieval Schools: Wealth, Exchange, Value, Money, and UsuryAccording to the Paris Theological Tradition, 1200-1350 (Leiden: Brill, 1992).

83 These are discussed in the aforementioned literature. Regarding theChurch’s “accommodation” of business lending and public finance, see C.Menning, Charity and State in Late Renaissance Italy: The Monte di Pietà ofFlorence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993) for the credit lendingpractices of the montes pietatis, and L. Armstrong, “The Politics of Usury inTrecento Florence: The Questio de Monte of Francesco da Empoli,” MediaevalStudies 61 (1999): 1-44; L. Armstrong, Usury and Public Debt in EarlyRenaissance Florence: Lorenzo Ridolfi on the ‘Monte Comune’ (Toronto: PontificalInstitute of Mediaeval Studies, 2003) for the religious accommodation of inte-rest on communal public debt in Florence.

includes doctrines81 as well as their secular impact appears to bestill in its infancy, however.

Finally, historians have paid much attention to the emergence ofthe usury doctrine in the Middle Ages and early modern era, andto the ways economic practice reflected them or reacted to it. Theirfindings defy simple description. In regard to development ofdoctrine, there exists now a rich literature on how Canon lawyersand Church theologians defined and classified usurious practices.This literature shows their teachings constituted no monolithic setof teachings but a sometimes discordant set of voices on a commontheme.82 The variations in their views seem far too great to accordwith the impression of a strong consistency one might get fromreading Weber and his contemporaries. Yet Weber’s overall argu-ment, that the ecclesiastical teachings did not simply become more“capital friendly” but rather more stringent on usurious loans—asdistinguished from other, actually or possibly legitimate forms oftaking interest, including delayed repayment, cessant gain, emer-gent loss or damages, sharing of risk, annuities, and exchangedealing83—is not refuted. Nor is there evidence that disputes overusury simply ceased with the Reformation, as if such disputes weremerely a reflection of the advent of modern capitalism on the

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84 N. L. Jones, God and the Moneylenders: Usury and Law in Early ModernEngland (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989); E. Kerridge, Usury, Interest, and the Refor-mation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).

85 M. Valeri, “Religious Discipline and the Market: Puritans and the Issueof Usury,” William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997): 747-68.

86 For example, Rodney Stark, “SSSR Presidential Address, 2004: Puttingan End to Ancestor Worship,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43(2004): 465-74.

87 O. Langholm, The Merchant in the Confessional: Trade and Price in thePre-Reformation Penitential Handbooks (Leiden: Brill, 2003).

88 B. Nelson, “The Usurer and the Merchant Prince: Italian Businessmenand the Ecclesiastical Law of Restitution,” Journal of Economic History 7 (Supple-ment) (1947): 104-22; F. Edler de Roover, “Restitution in Renaissance Flo-rence,” in Studi in onore di Armando Sapori (Milan: Instituto Editoriale Cis-alpino, 1957), 775-89; F. L. Galassi, “Buying a Passport to Heaven: Usury,Restitution, and the Merchants of Medieval Genoa,” Religion 22 (1992):313-26; L. Armstrong, “Usury, Conscience, and Public Debt: Angelo Corbi-nelli’s Testament of 1419,” in J. A. Marino and T. Kuehn, eds., A Renaissanceof Conflicts: Visions and Revisions of Law and Society in Italy and Spain (Toronto:Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2004), 173-240.

89 J. Le Goff, “The Usurer and Purgatory,” in The Dawn of Modern Banking(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979): 25. LeGoff describes the birthof purgatory as a way of allowing usurers to avoid eternal damnation. See J.Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1984); J. Le Goff, Your Money or Your Life, trans. P. Ranum(New York: Zone, 1988).

super-structural plane.84 On the contrary, such disputes were playedout with particular intensity in ascetic Protestant groupings.85 More-over, Weber seems vindicated in rejecting simplistic assumptionsabout individuals or corporate entities as simply being rationalutility-maximizing agents in religious markets86 who operate on thebasis of strategic economic interests rather than longstandingnormative concerns and ethical principles.87

But the crux of the matter is actual practice. While there is evi-dence of merchants so bothered by soteriological implications oftheir usurious activities that they paid considerable restitution ontheir deathbed,88 which implies that Church doctrine had not de-terred them from engaging in these activities in the first place,historians have achieved no consensus on the extent to which usurydoctrine influenced business practices and was a detriment to eco-nomic development. The still dominant view, that the Church’scondemnation of usurious loans “did nothing to shackle the devel-opment of capitalism”89 and was “never a hindrance to the growth


90 R. Lopez, “The Dawn of Modern Banking,” in The Dawn of ModernBanking (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 22; see also H.-J.Gilomen, “Wucher und Wirtschaft im Mittelalter,” Historische Zeitschrift 250(1990): 265-301.

91 J. Kirshner, “Raymond de Roover on Scholastic Economic Thought,” inJ. Kirshner, ed., Business, Banking, and Economic Thought in Late Medieval andEarly Modern Europe: Selected Studies of Raymond de Roover (Chicago: ChicagoUniversity Press, 1974), 32-33; J. Munro, “The Medieval Origins of the Finan-cial Revolution: Usury, Rentes, and Negotiablity,” International History Review25 (2003): 505-62.

92 E. S. Hunt and J. M. Murray, A History of Business in Medieval Europe,1200-1550 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 70-4; D. Wood,Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),181-205.

93 For example, F. C. Lane and R. C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medi-eval and Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985),75-8; Gilomen, Wucher, 290-5.

of credit institutions,”90 has been tempered by the recognition, asso-ciated with the works of Raymond de Roover and others, that theprohibition had a certain steering function in guiding banking awayfrom loans and toward exchange transactions and annuities.91 Sincethe prohibition applied to all loans but usury concerns could becircumvented much more readily in investment credit transactions,or avoided altogether in investments in most forms of commercialpartnerships, such a function could indeed be readily observed inthose areas of commerce and finance.92 Moreover, the ecclesiasticalteachings were not equitably enforced. If anything, the petty pawn-brokers and small lenders of emergency loans for immediate con-sumptive needs were marginalized or forced out of the market ifnot legally protected by a charter or a license, which ironicallydrove interest rates up instead of down, while larger lenders andcompanies were less likely to suffer the opprobrium of usury whenengaging in credit-bearing transactions.93

The research on evasive practices engendered by the prohibitionof usury, together with the exploration of its unintended conse-quences, will likely continue to fuel debates among historians aboutreligion’s role in the emergence of modern capitalism. Manythemes in these debates still resonate with Weber’s exploration.While it is true that Weber relied on a much narrower base ofdocuments than economic historians have access to today, his ap-proach to studying usury provisions as an important example of theways in which religious ideas might shape and direct secular mate-

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94 Cf. K. L. Reyerson, “Der Aufstieg des Bürgertums und die religiöse Ver-gemeinschaftung im mittelalterlichen Europa,” in W. Schluchter, ed., MaxWebers Sicht des okzidentalen Christentums (Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), 410-36.

95 Gilomen, Wucher, 265.

rial interests can still be considered relevant to these debates.94

Usury, Weber thought, played a significant role in medieval reli-gion’s moral economy and was an integral part of his sociology ofreligion and writings on the relationship between religion and theeconomy. Therefore it was an important topic; as an issue, it occu-pied institutions and sometimes posed stark ethical choices for indi-viduals. Modern historians agree, and so did the fourteenth-centuryItalian Benvenuto de Rambaldis da Imola: “He who commits usurygoes to hell, he who doesn’t, faces penury.”95

x

TAXATION AND REVENUE

x

1 Joseph C. Miller, “Presidential Address: History and Africa/Africa and His-tory,” The American Historical Review 104 (1999): 25-32.

2 Luís Felipe Thomaz, “Le Portugal, et l’Afrique au XVe siècle: Les débutsde l’expansion,” Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português 26 (1989): 161-2. Thearticle was reprinted, in Portuguese, in L. F. Thomaz, De Ceuta a Timor(Lisbon: Difel, 1994), under the title “A evolução da política expansionistaportuguesa na primeira metade de quatrocentos” (pp. 43-147). The foremostrepresentative of the Braudelian school of economic historians in Portugal wasVitorino Magalhães Godinho, the leading figure in the study of economicaspects of the Portuguese overseas expansion.

THE KING’S BUSINESS IN AFRICA: DECISIONS AND STRATEGIES OF THE PORTUGUESE CROWN

Ivana Elbl

Introduction

In his recent AHA presidential address, Joseph C. Miller called forreturn to a humanist approach to history and to rigorous histo-ricism.1 There are few areas where this approach can be more usefulthan in assessing the nature and roots of the early overseas expan-sion. The entrepreneurial role of the Portuguese Crown in theoverseas expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is intri-cately woven into debates on the origins of modernity and the capi-talist economy. The purpose of these debates is to discover the histo-rical moments of change, breaks with the old and the emergenceof the new. As Luís Felipe Thomaz has recently pointed out, pasthistoriography has created a double trap for those analysing theearly Portuguese overseas expansion: the nineteenth-century tradi-tion, which hailed the overseas expansion for its contribution toscientific discovery and the unfolding of human horizons, and thetwentieth-century reaction to this heroizing approach, which stresseda societal and structuralist approach and sought answers in economicand social processes.2 Yet, in different ways, both trends saw theoverseas expansion and the role of the Portuguese state as a breakwith the past and a foretaste of a modern, capitalist future.

The role of the Portuguese Crown in the economy of the earlyoverseas expansion is thus deeply entangled in an ideological and

90 IVANA ELBL

3 For an excellent and extensive summary of the historiography of the earlyPortuguese expansion and its perceived links to the emergence of capitalismsee Luís Felipe Thomaz, “Expansão portuguesa e expansão europeia—Reflexões em torno da génese dos descobrimentos,” in L. F. Thomaz, DeCeuta a Timor (Lisbon: Difel, 1994), 1-41.

4 Manuel Nunes Dias, O capitalismo monárquico português (1415-1549) (Coim-bra: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, 1963-4), 2 vols. Seein particular the section “A definição do capitalismo monárquico” (vol. 2, 189-216). For the period he covered, the basic precepts of the economic part ofNunes Dias’ interpretation are still generally accepted by contemporaryleading scholars. The main criticisms of his theory focus on his neglect ofideological factors. See for example Sanjay Subrahmanyam and Luís FelipeThomaz, “Evolution of Empire: The Portuguese in the Indian Ocean duringthe Sixteenth Century,” in Political Economy of Empires, edited by James D.Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 301-2. Unlike theideological aspects, the socio-economic and administrative history of thefifteenth and early sixteenth-century expansion has been somewhat neglectedlately. The selection of articles in some of the recent collections, such asTracy, The Political Economy of Empires, Mark A. Burkholder, ed. Administratorsof Empire (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate) and David Armitage, ed., Theories of Empire(Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1998) illustrates this trend clearly by focussing onthe later sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.

5 For a seminal overview of the evolution of Portuguese state finances seeVitorino Magalhães Godinho, “Finanças públicas e estrutura do Estado,”inVitorino Magalhães Godinho, Ensaios II sobre história de Portugal (Lisbon: Livra-ria Sá da Costa, 1968), 25-63. The late medieval Portuguese finances followeda pattern similar to those of Castile, explored in great detail by Miguel AngelLadero Quesada, in particular his Fiscalidad y poder real en Castilla (1252-1389)

epistemological modelling that is essentially presentist. Rather thanfollowing the flow of history from a deeper to a more recent past,it looks back into the past from a contemporary viewpoint. Whilenot without usefulness, this approach invites anachronistic and mo-nist explanations, both of which have made a deep imprint on thehistoriography of the overseas enterprise of the Portuguese Crown.3

Many modern historians perceived the overseas enterprise of thePortuguese Crown as a substantial innovation in commercial capi-talism. Manuel Nunes Dias’ enduring concept of the “capitalismomonárquico português” (Portuguese state capitalism) constitutes onlyone reflection of the essential place the Portuguese overseas ventureshave been assigned in the various theories and historical models ofthe emergence of capitalism.4

It is easily overlooked, however, that the decisions and strategiesthat the Portuguese Crown had adopted in connection with its Afri-can enterprises were based on continuity with pre-existing practicesand administrative methods,5 rather than on innovation and change.

91THE KING’S BUSINESS IN AFRICA

(Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1993) and La hacienda real de Castilla en elsiglo XV (La Laguna: s.n., 1973), For a summary of his findings in English seeMiguel Angel Ladero Quesada, “Castile in the Middle Ages,” in RichardBonney, ed., The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200-1815 (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1999), 177-199.

6 For an excellent summary of these developments see the works of LuísFelipe Thomaz referred to above. For an extensive overview, see also A. H.de Oliveira Marques, Portugal na crise dos séculos XIV e XV (Lisbon: Presença,1987); João José Alves Dias, ed., Portugal do renascimento à crise dinástica(Lisbon: Presença, 1998); José Mattoso, ed., História de Portugal, Vol. 2, Amonárquia feudal (1096-1480) and Vol. 3, No alvoroço da modernidade (Lisbon:

The Crown’s response to overseas economic opportunities weregrounded in contemporary needs and attitudes, in other words inthe historical context which they were a part of. Like other latemedieval noble enterprises, the Crown overseas ventures cannot befully understood using the modern concepts of private or stateenterprise, but require an appreciation of the economics of thenoble household, with the royal household as its most complexform. The revenues of a noble household, including that of theking, were crucial but subordinate tools in fulfilling loftier goals,mostly social or political in nature. In other words, wealth was nota final objective, but a means through which the quest for powerand honour could be satisfied. There was no strict division betweeneconomic and non-economic projects. On the contrary, economicenterprises and ideologically motivated goals tended to be mutuallysupportive, at least in principle.

Late medieval states and other autonomous units, whether feudalor communal, were faced with growing expenditures, especially thoseassociated with war. The problem of growing costs was compoundedby a crisis in revenues, reflecting the triple scourge of epidemics,wars and famines, all of which contributed to a sharp demographicdecline that did not begin to reverse itself until the second half ofthe fifteenth century. This decline affected both royal and noblerevenues, whether they were generated by income from landholdings and rents, proceeds from regalian rights, or customs andtaxes sanctioned by tradition. The resulting dissatisfaction amongthe noble elites constituted an explosive political issue, which mostmonarchs of the period had to face. The Portuguese Crown founditself in the unenviable position of not only having to deal with itsown fiscal problems but also to alleviate the social and politicalcrises experienced by its most powerful subjects.6

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Estampa, 1993); and A. H. de Oliveira Marques, ed., A expansão quatrocentista(Lisbon: Estampa, 1998).

The early overseas expansion represented a windfall for theCrown. It offered a partial solution to a number of severe problemsconfronting the kingdom. The overseas ventures were a source ofsocially sanctioned opportunities, new lands, and new sources of in-come. They also enhanced the Crown’s power and the means toimplement its will by significantly enlarging its revenues throughenlarging the royal fazenda (direct holdings), and through creatingopportunities to implement new taxation, customs fees, and othersources of monetary income. However, neither economic rationalitynor revenue as such were the paramount factors in the Crown’sdecision-making: the ultimate objectives were prestige and politicalpower at home.

Royal Power and the African Enterprise

It is important to realize that the Portuguese Crown became adominant economic player in the early overseas expansion notnecessarily because of its share in the enterprise, but because of theparamount political and legislative power it wielded. The extensiverights the Crown claimed over the early overseas enterprise werederived from the medieval notion of the king's sovereignty over hisrealm. The king had the right to decide how the kingdom’sresources were to be used for the common good and to divide theavailable wealth among his followers. The revertibility of fiefs andother holdings back to the Crown was one of the key precepts offeudal law. In principle, all unassigned or newly acquired resourcesbelonged to the Crown, and the King had the right to use themas he saw fit. In the Iberian context, the formative experience andmemory of the reconquista provided a vivid reinforcement to this fun-damental idea. The Portuguese Crown based its policies concerningaccess to and trade with Africa and other non-Christian areas onthese time-honoured principles, both in theory and in practice.Thus, although the first overseas explorations in Africa were under-taken on the initiative of private persons, such as Infante D. Henri-que and Infante D. Pedro, the Portuguese Crown had the para-mount claim to any tangible results of such ventures because they


7 João Martins da Silva Marques, ed., Descobrimentos portugueses. Documentospara a sua história, vol. 1, 1147-1460 (Lisbon: Instituto para a Alta Cultura,1444), 505 (doc. 401).

8 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 1: 505-7 (doc. 401).9 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 1: 507 (doc. 401).10 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 1: 507-8 (doc. 401). For a sur-

viving printed copy of the public notice see AN/TT (Arquivos Nacionais—Tor-re do Tombo, Lisbon), Gaveta 10, maço 5, doc. 27. See also Ch. Boxer, ThePortuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825 (New York: Knopf, 1969), 22.

were carried out by sworn vassals of the king, in the name of theking and in the “service of God and the King.”

In the international arena, the Crown first justified its title tooverseas dominium invoking the rights of first discovery by its sub-jects. Subsequently, however, a more powerful justificatory argumentwas developed. On 8 January 1455, the hard-pressed PopeNicholas V yielded to the skilful diplomatic pressure of the Portu-guese delegation and issued the bull Romanus Pontifex, whichdeclared that the Portuguese Crown was to hold dominium over theaccess to Africa south of Cape Bojador, to the exclusion of all otherChristians, as a reward for its costly military effort against Islam.No power or person was to deprive the beneficiaries of the bull oftheir just reward. The revenues generated from the new terrritorieswere thus conceptualized as a redress for damages suffered and asa just reward for the Crown’s service to God.7 Whoever shoulddeprive the Crown of its well-deserved rewards, directly or indirectly,would show disrespect both for the Apostolic authority of the Popeand for the service rendered by Portugal to God.

The Bull carefully spelled out the ecclesiastical prohibition againstany military, commercial, and fishing expeditions not authorized bythe King of Portugal or D. Henrique.8 Interloping south of the CapeBojador, or even organizing or ordering interloping expeditions,were declared to be offences punishable by excommunication if theoffender was an individual or by interdict in the case of corporatebodies.9 An excerpt from the Bull stipulating these measures wasto be posted on the doors of principal churches and announced tothe public from the pulpit, and also sent to major potentates withinand outside of the Iberian peninsula.10

The Romanus Pontifex did not content itself with relying only onthe argument of a just reward but exploited the long-standing canonlaw principle that the Pope possessed the right to regulate contacts

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11 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 1: 505 and 507 (doc. 401).12 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 1: 507 ( doc. 401).13 J. M. Garcia, ed., As viagens dos descobrimentos (Lisbon: Editorial Presença,

1983), 46-7.

between Christians and non-Christians, contacts which couldpotentially result in spiritual pollution or corruption. The Bullexpressly permitted the king of Portugal, the Infante D. Henrique,and persons authorized by them, to associate with Muslims andpagans as long as trade in prohibited goods was not involved. Thejustification was that the Pope could trust the above mentionedparties that their primary motive was to advance the interests ofGod, whereas others might seek only fast profit or even supplyweapons or iron to the Infidels.11 The two key arguments of theRomanus Pontifex, just reward and authorization to associate withnon-Christians, provided the Crown with a rock-solid base fromwhich to regulate the African enterprise to its greatest advantage.

All subsequent royal legislation stressed the Crown’s sole rightto govern the modalities of contact with Africa, in order tomaximize its revenue advantages. Violators of the royal decrees facedsevere penalties. Secular punishments could be very heavy. Whilein the 1440s interloping in West Africa was punishable only byconfiscation of property, with the Romanus Pontifex it became acapital crime, sometimes punishable by burning at the stake. Thebull itself only threatened offenders with excommunication but madeit clear the church was willing to lift the spiritual penalty if theysettled with the Crown.12 Nevertheless, the full implications of Bullprovided the secular arm of the law with an avenue to invoke aspiritual offence ultimately punishable by burning at the stake. Inat least one known instance, this punishment was applied before thecodification of the scales of interloping punishments in 1474. Aninterloper, caught by Diogo Gomes off the Senegalese coast in 1460,was publicly tortured on the wheel and burned in Lisbon, togetherwith the gold he purchased in Africa and the swords he tried to sell,against papal prohibition.13

The 1474 decree became the first law regulating the West Africantrade to include a penal scale. Direct or indirect participation inthe West African trade, unauthorized raiding in West Africa, andpiracy against the legitimate traffic were all offenses punishable bydeath and loss of all property to the Crown. Ship captains guilty


14 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, vol. 3, 1461-1500 (Lisbon: Insti-tuto da Alta Cultura, 1971), 154 (doc. 115).

15 António Brásio, ed., Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série (Lisbon:Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1958), 2: 79-92 (doc. 28).

16 For a concise definition of these concepts see Richard Bonney, “Introduc-tion: The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200-1815,” in Richard Bon-ney, ed., The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200-1815 (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1999), 4-5.

of false declaration or concealment of goods over one mark of silverin value were also to suffer capital punishment. Smuggling or con-sent to smuggle and a host of other fraud charges called for variousfines and in many cases for banishment.14 By 1514, the punishmentshad become even stiffer. Capital punishment applied to a greaternumber of offenses. Unauthorized trading or raiding in Guinea andpiracy against the legitimate traffic were still punishable by deathand loss of property to the Crown. So was, however, smuggling ofgoods over the value of six marks of silver to Guinea. Anyonecaught trading illicitly in Guinea in goods worth more than onemark of silver in local value was to be put to death.15 The stiffeningof the penal scale reflected, ironically, both the practical difficultiesthe Crown experienced in enforcing its laws, and the legal strengthof its proprietary claims.

Revenue-Generating Options

The Crown had two basic strategic options to choose from inmanaging its business in Africa: direct or indirect participation,aimed at maximization of revenue benefits (fiscalism)16 and politicalobjectives. These options permitted numerous combinations, decidedby situational dynamics and policy oscillations (Table 1).

Well into the first half of the sixteenth century, the Crownbelieved that direct involvement would generate more revenue,although indirect exploitation of the overseas enterprise clearlyconstituted a less risky and labour-intensive mode of revenue gene-ration. It habitually reserved for itself trade with gold-exportingregions (Arguim and the Gold Coast). However, in the rest ofWestern Africa the Crown employed mostly indirect methods ofrevenue gathering.


20 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 129-30 (doc. 97); João deBarros, Ásia de João de Barros. Dos feitos que os Portugueses fizeram no descobri-mento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente. Primeira Decada (Lisbon: ImprensaNacional Casa da Moeda, 1988), 72.

21 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 86 (doc. 60).22 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 153-4 (doc. 115).23 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 220-2 (doc. 152).24 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 71-3 (doc. 26) and 79-

92 (doc. 28).25 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 71-3 (doc. 26) and 79-

92 (doc. 28).

favour of a more restricted policy, whether partial royal monopoliesor monopolistic arrangements with private parties. The standingprivileges of the Cape Verde Islanders notwithstanding, D. Afonso Vleased, in 1469, exclusive rights to the West African trade to FernãoGomes, a wealthy Lisbon merchant. The King reserved to himselfspecific commodities, in particular malagueta (grains of paradise),eventually compelling Gomes to negotiate a separate lease allowinghim to trade the spice.20 The new Crown policy was far from con-sistent. In 1470 the King reaffirmed the licence system,21 de factoviolating the Gomes contract.

The ambiguities were resolved only in 1474 when the CrownPrince D. João assumed direct control over the African enterprise.The decree of 31 August 1474 prohibited all unlicensed traffic southof the Cape Bojador and reserved the right to profit from the tradewith Atlantic Africa to the Crown or its designates. The decreeforcefully reasserted the claim that the right to regulate contacts withAfrica constituted a just reward for the royal services to God andChristianity and threatened transgressors with severe punishments.22

Its provisions were confirmed in 1481,23 and in principle reaffirmedin 1514.24

Although the assumption that a full monopoly was the mostrewarding alternative formed the basic platform of the majority ofthe royal pronouncements on the early overseas ventures, the Crownattempted fully to impose such an option only briefly, in 1518-1520.25 Until then, it relied largely on regional and commoditymonopolies, or on exclusive renewable contracts with private entre-preneurs. Hieronymus Münzer, a German humanist and diplomatwriting in the early 1490s, claimed that the Portuguese King hada monopoly on every major Atlantic import and export commodityand that private parties were left to trade in parrots, monkeys and

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26 Münzer, “Itinerarium,” in Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série,1: 244-5 (doc. 31).

27 Viagens de Luís de Cadamosto e de Pedro da Sintra (Lisbon: AcademiaPortuguesa da História, 1948), 17-8; AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv.9, fol. 96r; AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 58, doc. 155.

28 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 86 (doc. 60).29 AN/TT, Leis, maço 1, docs. 144 and 185.30 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 214-5 (doc. 147).31 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 71-3 (doc. 26).32 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 81 (doc. 28). These

provisions were later incorporated into the Ordenações Manuelinas33 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 90 (doc. 28).34 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 90 (doc. 28).35 Barros, Ásia. Primeira Decada, 72.

straw mats.26 The real picture was not so dismal. The Crown keptdirect control above all over the main source of African gold, theGold Coast and Arguim, a fortified trading station off the coast ofMauritania, which constituted an important link to the Saharan tradenetworks. All other areas could be rented out or licences could bepurchased for them. Even the Arguim trading station was leased outseveral times before 1521.27

Certain key commodities were indeed reserved for the Crown.The decree of 1470 claimed that trade in melegueta, other spices,civet cats, and rhinoceros horns was reserved to the Crown fromthe very beginning of the trade, and added brasil wood and pre-cious stones to the list.28 In 1480, the same restrictions were placedon hanbels (voluminous Moroccan outer clothing)29 and conchas, redshells from the Canaries, because of their importance in the GoldCoast trade.30 In March of 1514, the Crown summarily prohibitedtrade in all goods sold on the Gold Coast, and outlawed the exportof such commodities to the Cape Verde Islands.31 The penal codeissued in June of 1514 proclaimed that private traders could dealonly in merchandise and areas specified in the respective licenceor contract.32 However, only one commodity required a specialadditional licence: civet cats, a source of valuable musk for perfumeproduction.33 The severity of this decree was further blunted by theavailability of special licences and contractual exemptions, or simplythrough the lack of enforcement.34

The Crown also used its legislative power to insert itself as acompulsory middleman. Thus Fernão Gomes’ contract demandedthat he sell all his ivory to the Crown,35 as opposed to disposing


36 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 207 (doc. 200) and 428-9(doc. 289).

37 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 587-8 (doc. 361).38 The hardening of punishments for interloping and smuggling in the law

of 1474 demonstrates the Crown’s anxiety to master the situation. SilvaMarques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 153-4 (doc. 115).

39 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 139-50 (docs. 43, 44,45 and 47).

40 See Ivana Elbl, “The Volume of the Early Atlantic Slave Trade, 1450-1521,” Journal of African History 38 (1997): 52 and 69.

of it on the open market. The São Tomé charters of 1485 and 1493compelled the settlers to purchase all their manilhas (heavy brass orcopper bracelets), an essential European export to West Africa, fromthe Crown (whether in São Jorge da Mina or in Lisbon). They fur-ther ordered the settlers to sell all malagueta, tailed pepper, andslaves to the Crown agencies for a fixed price well below the marketvalue.36 These requirements significantly delayed the progress of SãoTomé settlement and, although they were significantly softened in1500, continued to have negative impact on the supply of slaves toSão Jorge da Mina.37

Measures such as these, in combination with the Crown’s repeatedchanges of policy, caused severe shocks both to the traffic itself andto its administration. In the early 1470s, for example, the partialretraction of the Cape Verdian trading privileges and the impositionof the Gomes contract resulted not only in a sharp formal protestfrom the povo (third estate) in the 1473 Cortes but in near chaos,smuggling, and piracy in Africa, because even those who would havenormally purchased a license resorted to interloping.38 In the late1510s, the Crown almost destroyed the rapidly expanding slavetrade with Upper Guinea by first requiring the Cape Verde Islandersto trade only in locally produced commodities and, a year later,forbidding them to buy slaves for export.39 The law of 1518 reservedthe Guinea trade for the Crown alone. As a result, the UpperGuinea slave trade declined from c. 2,000 to 80 slaves per annum,forcing the Crown to revoked the restrictions shortly after 1520.40

These measures, in particular those introduced in the early six-teenth century, were based exclusively on the desire to maximizeCrown profit by preventing competition from private participantsand by monopolizing what appeared to be, under a given set ofcircumstances, a well-established, lucrative market. Direct Crown

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41 António J. Dias Dinis, Monumenta Henricina (Coimbra: ComissãoExecutive das Comemorações do V Centenário da Morte do Infante D.Henrique, 1973), 14: 280 (doc. 117).

42 The name Casa de Guiné appears first in 1481, in a letter of quittancecovering the period 1476-1481 (AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. João II, liv. 1, fols.53r-53v). However, the name of the agency varied. The older name trautos deGuiné that was in use since 1455 survived into the sixteenth century. Since the1480s, the most commonly used name of the agency was Casa da Mina etrautos de Guiné (see for example Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3:333-4 (doc. 217)). In some instances, the term “nossos trautos de Guiné” or

control was as a rule imposed on those commodities or in suchregions and periods that happened to show remarkable growth orprofit ratios. The jealously maintained and enforced monopoly onthe Gold Coast trade is a prime example of this approach.

Problems of Direct Control

The direct participation strategy frequently backfired because theCrown would overextend its resources and lose ability to acteffectively, not to mention a loss of enforcement capability. Despiteits political power, the Crown experienced problems faced by alllarge-scale medieval entrepreneurs engaged in complex venturesover large distances. These included daunting logistics, imperfectinformation, slow turnover, hard-to-control transaction costs, andagency problems. In addition, the Crown had to address far toomany diverse concerns to give its overseas ventures the necessaryand timely attention, or to view profit in strictly economic terms.

The organizational structure of the royal West African enterpriseemerged only gradually out of the general mechanism or the royalfazenda. In the 1440s and early 1450s, the Crown relied on ship-borne expeditions administered through the Casa da Ceuta. Thedeath of Prince Henry in 1460 brought the dual control of the WestAfrican trade to an end, and the Crown came into possession of itsfirst shore-based West African outpost, Arguim. In the 1460s theWest African enterprise graduated to the status of a special sub-division of the royal estate, as fazenda de Guiné.41 The Lisbon office,established already in 1455, assumed a central, but not exclusiverole in administering the West African ventures, and becameeventually known as the Guinea House (Casa de Guiné) or, later, Casade Guiné e Mina.42 D. João and D. Manuel hoped the Guinea House


“nossos trautos e resgates de Guiné” were used, though obviously referring tothe same agency (see Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 2: 339 (doc.222) and 348-9 (docs. 231 and 232); AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. João II, liv.20, fols. 11r and 114r). The fluid and somewhat confusing nomenclature hasled historians to believe that the central agency was effectively established inLisbon only after 1481 (see for instance Nunes Dias, Capitalismo monárquicoportuguês, 2: 190-1).

43 See Damião Peres, ed., Regimento das Cazas das Indias e Mina (Coimbra:Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, 1947).

44 Peres, Regimento, 6-7, 25-26.

would be able to handle both the Crown’s direct participation inthe enterprise and the indirect revenues from it. This was not thecase: merchandise continued to be cleared through regional customsand tax-collecting agencies (alfândegas and almoxarifados), despiteorders to the contrary. The Guinea House was complemented bythree satellite metropolitan agencies, the Casa dos Escravos, theFeitoria das Ilhas, and the Arsenal (Armazém), and by agencies locatedoverseas, such as the North African factories, Arguim, and São Jorgeda Mina. After the opening of the sea route to India, Asian tradewas added to the official mandate of the factor of the GuineaHouse. The resulting workload was overwhelming. D. Manuel wasforced to reform the system in 1509 by dividing the agency intotwo separate Houses, the Guinea House and the India House. Thereform, however, was only partial. Both Houses still shared a singlefactor as chief executive responsible for all key decisions.43 As aresult, the central agency was beset with inefficiencies which led toserious bottlenecks and slowdowns in turnover.

The problem was rendered worse by the fact that the overseasagencies were responsible not to the factor of the Guinea House butdirectly to the King, whose authorization was required in even thesimplest matters. The Guinea House acted only as a logistic andclearance center. The factor was responsible not only for its smoothoperation and for enforcing royal instructions, but also for marketresearch. It was his duty to collect up-to-date information ondifferent trading regions in West Africa, and to make recommenda-tions whether they should be rented out or administered directlyby the Crown.44 At the beginning of each year, six months aheadof the next trading cycle, he prepared a list of supplies and mer-chandise needed for the African and, later, also Indian trade, sothat his superiors, the vedores, superintendents of the royal fazendacould approve the list and orders could be placed. In urgent

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45 Peres, Regimento, 6-7.46 See for example AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 3, doc. 119

and maço 4, doc. 42; AN/TT, Gaveta 15, maço 1, doc. 14. 47 AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 4, doc. 42.48 AN/TT, Gaveta 15, maço 1, doc. 14.49 Peres, Regimento, 8.

situations, he could request an authorization to make interimpurchases.45

The supply process was time-consuming and inevitably placed alag of as much as two years between African demand and itssatisfaction. This was one of key problems characterizing the royalenterprise: by the time the goods arrived at their destination inAfrica, the opportunities were often gone. Crown agencies wereunable to react flexibly to the African demand, neither in terms ofselection and quantity of the merchandise, nor in those of qualityand logistical support. The Crown was unable to provide adequatemerchandise or facilities even to the gold-producing Mina factory,the main focus of its entrepreneurial attention. The officials at SãoJorge da Mina perennially complained about the poor state of thewarehouses, the low quality of the merchandise, and the damagethat it usually sustained on its way from Portugal.46 The factoryfacilities, built together with the fortress in 1482, were unsatisfactoryfrom the very beginning, but in 1503 the factor of Mina still lobbiedthe King to order the construction of a larger factory suitable forthe proper storing and display of textiles. It was not a logisticalproblem, as the factor pointed out to the king. Material andtransport were both available; only a royal order was required.Meanwhile, cloths kept rotting unsold, and soon became unsaleable,to the king’s great loss.47 In 1510, the Guinea House found itselfunable to fill an order for painted hanbels and large basins despe-rately needed in Mina, despite the king’s repeated and specificorders.48 Shortages of manilhas, one of the key Portuguese exportsto the Gold Coast, occurred several times during the early 1500s,and hurt the trade so much that the King ordered the GuineaHouse to keep 100,000 manilhas in stock at all times,49 with doubtfulresults. In 1513 the factory was left completely deprived of suitablemerchandise, because the supply ship failed to arrive. Trade wasbrought to a standstill. The older textiles from previous shipments


50 AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 13, doc. 48.51 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 888, fols. 172r-177r.52 AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 2, doc. 67 and maço 5, doc. 42.53 AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 5, doc. 42.54 AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 5, doc. 42.55 In the summer, wheat rations decreased significantly both for the

garrison and slaves. AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 888, fos. 55-59. See alsoAN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 5, doc. 42.

56 AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 5, doc. 42.

had to be placed in the second-hand cloth factory and sold off ata discount, and about 700 hanbels were lost this way.50

The Arguim factory, which was only of secondary importance tothe Crown, was much worse off than Mina. Supply ships only arrivedthree or four times a year.51 Little effort was made to makeattractive and fresh merchandise available during the first half ofthe year, when most of the trading took place.52 Shortages of brassand mastic cost the Crown much gold in missed opportunities, anddamaged the factory’s reputation, thus further hurting the trade.53

To the amazement and indignation of the Berber merchants, in1509 the factor of Arguim found himself unable for two years toget from Portugal a special order delivery of merchandise paid forwith a large quantity of gold, despite complaints and appeals to theKing.54 The supply of victuals was an even more nagging problem.Each year, the summer brought a period of hunger to the Arguimfort.55 The factors faced chronic difficulties in securing transport toPortugal for the slaves they bought, or even enough casks to supplythem with water. In 1509, many slaves starved while awaiting em-barkation and, subsequently, en route to Portugal.56 The extent ofthe problems faced by Arguim officials is well reflected in the 1515exchange of letters between Estevão Vaz, the factor of the GuineaHouse, and the secretary of state who acted as the King’s represen-tative. Vaz informed the secretary that the small caravel servicingArguim arrived in Lisbon with slaves and that it brought an urgentrequest for merchandise and food supplies. Vaz urged the secretaryto send the vessel back immediately with merchandise, as anemergency measure, because a large ship able to carry grain wouldtake too long to get ready and would first have to be requisitioned,probably from the Arsenal. It proved impossible for months on end,however, to make even a small vessel with emergency supplies readyto sail. The merchandise it was to carry remained to be ordered

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57 AN/TT, Gaveta 20, maço 2, doc. 67.58 A. H. de Oliveira Marques, Hansa e Portugal na Idade Media (Lisbon,

Tipografia Albano Tomas dos Anjos, 1959), 79.59 All Crown agencies laboured in an environment of suspicion and distrust.

The elaborate security measures included ship and personal searches, as wellas complicated control of access to money chests, and an accounting systemwhich was almost entirely geared towards inventory control, ending with a fullaudit of each ranking employee at the end of his turn of duty. See Peres,Regimento, 6-7, 8-9, 11-15, 23-4, 26-9, 89-80, 95. For documentary evidencepertaining to concrete situations see, for example, AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico,parte I, maço 8, doc. 72 (unauthorized trading during unloading); AN/TT,Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 17, doc. 4 (complaints about the transferof goods between royal pilots and the officials of São Jorge da Mina; Brásio,Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 86-87 (doc. 28). See also See forexample Brásio, Monumenta Missionária Africana, 2a série, 2: 89 (doc. 28);AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte II, maço 50, doc. 22 (the record of the trialof a royal official, António Froes, filled with accusations and counteraccu-sations).

60 For examples of ships’ regimentos see A. Teixeira da Mota, “A viagem donavio ‘Santiago’ a Serra Leoa e Rio de S. Domingos in 1526 (Livro deArmação),” Boletim Cultural de Guiné Portuguesa 24 (1969): 562-7; Alan F. C.Ryder, “An Early Portuguese Trading Voyage to the Forcados River,” Journalof the Historical Society of Nigeria 1 (1959): 301-5; A. Teixeira da Mota and R.Mauny, “Livre de l’armement du navire São Miguel de l’île de São Thomé auBenin (1522),” Bulletin de l’IFAN, sér. B, 40 (1979): 68-71.

61 See Anselmo Braacamp Freire, “Cartas de quitação del Rei D. Manuel,”Archivo Histórico Portuguez 2: 354 (doc. 237). AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte

from Flanders and other places abroad,57 and even under the bestof conditions, a return trip to Flanders took a couple of months.58

It does not call for much imagination to picture how much timewas required to process an order lacking urgency.

The policy of micro-management and tight control over Crownemployees and agents59 made it difficult to respond to the localdemand and opportunities in a timely fashion. The conduct of tradewas regulated by exceedingly detailed sets of binding instructions(regimentos) and price lists (taixas).60 On-the-spot initiative not onlywent mostly unrewarded but was often punished, either directly orthrough administrative chicanery, as demonstrated in the misfortunesof Francisco de Almada, the royal factor in Arguim from 1508 to1511. Almeida sharply increased the supply of slaves to Arguim byfostering relations with mainland suppliers but ran into troublebecause of disbursing unauthorized grain rations to feed the humanmerchandise. It took him eight year to clear his standing with theCrown.61 Almada’s predecessor, Gonçalo de Fonseca, received a


I, maço 12, doc. 8.62 Freire, “Cartas,” 8: 400-1 (doc. 642).63 See the inventories from 1511 and 1514 (AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico,

parte II, maço 27, doc. 70 and maço 49, doc. 101).64 AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte I, maço 16, doc. 94.65 Peres, Regimento, 25-6.

clearance of his accounts only in 1522, fourteen years after his termhad ended, because he sold some of the merchandise confiscatedfrom a captured Genoese interloper, Miguel Pardo, together withthe Crown goods without first consulting Lisbon and obtaining aproper clearance.62 Fonseca was reproached and Pardo’s best goodswere left to rot in the warehouse until they were finally incorporatedinto the factory’s inventory several years later.63 Because they werenot on the Arguim price list (taixa), none of the Arguim officialswould take the risk of touching them without explicit orders. Thecommander of the ship that captured Pardo was theoreticallyentitled to a half of the cargo, but he died before the prize casewas cleared, and his heiress finally received only a half of theexpected sum. The rest was deducted, however ridiculous it maysound, as payment for the Crown’s mediation in selling themerchandise.64

The Crown was aware of its inability to compete with privateparticipants on the open market. As long as it believed, as it didduring the Joanine and Manueline period, that direct trade waseasier to administer and potentially more profitable than collectingrevenues from a multitude of participants, it routinely resorted tolegislation to preserve for itself access to trade in more profitablecommodities or trade with more promising regions. The officialsof the Guinea House were instructed not only to watch the royalmarket, but also to inspect the ledgers of private merchants newlyreturned from Africa in order to recommend which parts of theWest African trade should remain open, which should be placedunder an exclusive contract and for how much, and which shouldbe reserved for the Crown. Each year, the Crown would be pre-sented with an estimate of the revenues expected to come from aparticular sector of its overseas enterprise. The figures usuallyreflected the amount of taxes and customs that trade with those re-gions would yield in a particular year.65

The Crown, under the impression that if it took over directly apromising part of the trade it would be able to achieve four times

106 IVANA ELBL

66 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 139-50 (docs. 43, 44, 45,and 47.

67 For a typical contract see AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 33,fos. 46v-47.

68 The original 1474-1479 contract on the coast from Pedra de Galee toCape Bojador called for one sixth of all imports (AN/TT, Chancelaria de D.Afonso V, liv. 33, fols. 46v-47r). It was renegotiated in 1475 in favour ofyearly payments of 28,000 réis (AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 30,fol. 132r). For other payments in specie see below.

69 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 129 (doc. 97).

as much revenue, often dealt severe blows both to the trade withWest Africa and to its own revenues. The most obvious example wasthe attempted take-over of the flourishing slave trade on the UpperGuinea Coast in 1517-1522. The Crown, claiming that the CapeVerde settlers caused major damage to its proveito e serviço (profitand service) by competing vigorously, and to that section of thetrade in general because they offered the Africans better terms thanthe Crown expeditions, prohibited most of the trade between theCape Verde Islands and Upper Guinea.66 Revenues plummeted asa result, and the Crown was forced to reverse its policy before 1525,but this and similar instances tended to undermine private con-fidence in the safety of investing in West African ventures.

In the course of the sixteenth century, the Crown came to seeleasing and contracting out as more advantageous that direct parti-cipation, and eventually made all aspects of its African enterpriseavailable to interested parties with enough capital to provide largesums up-front, or to those in need of rewards for services rendered.Leasing and tax farming came to be definitely preferred over asystem of individual licences, often too dispersed to be managedeffectively. Theoretically, the leaseholders (trautadores) had anunlimited right to trade in the leased region, to take partners, andto issue licences to other traders in the name of the Crown. TheCrown promised not to send its ships to such areas, and not tolicence access for other private traders.67 The leaseholders paid theCrown either a fixed annual fee, or a share of imported Africangoods.68 The Crown, however, seldom refrained from involvementin the leased-out areas and used general regulations limiting trafficin certain goods to extract extra payments.69

D. Henrique initiated this type of policy when he rented out theArguim trade to a group of entrepreneurs for ten years around


70 Viagens de Luís de Cadamosto, 17.71 AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 9, fol. 96r.72 Barros, Ásia. Primeira Decada, 72.73 In this period, a prime slave freshly arrived from West African coast sold

for 8,000 réis. The calculation is 200,000 réis : 8,000 réis = 25.74 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 129 (doc. 97).75 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 112-3 (doc. 83).76 AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 33, fol. 141r.77 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 90-1 (doc. 65).78 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 129-30 (doc. 97).79 AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 33, fols. 46v-47r.80 AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. Afonso V, liv. 30, fol. 68r.81 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 477-8 (doc. 404).82 In 1502-1503 the yearly rent was 800,000 réis (Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 239-40

(doc. 220)).

1455. The leaseholders were responsible for maintaining thefortress.70 Arguim was still under lease in 1463, when the royalcollectors of revenue from Arguim, resident in Lagos, were strippedof their offices for mismanagement and replaced by a Lisbontreasurer.71 These actions indicated that the Crown intended topursue a similar approach in the near future. In 1469, the entireGuinea trade was leased to Fernão Gomes for five years, for anannual fee of 200,000 réis.72 The rent was relatively low consideringthat twenty-five slaves would have covered it.73 Yet in 1473 Gomesstill owed most of the rent,74 despite the fact that in 1472 the Crownexempted him from all taxes except a sisa on the sales of mala-gueta,75 waived all standing regulations in favour of his privileges,76

and had lent him a round ship to carry on the traffic in 1471.77

Undeterred, the Crown renewed the contract in 1473, although itimposed an additional fee of 100,000 réis on the malagueta trade,raising the total rent to 300,000 réis.78 The malagueta fee, however,did not apply retroactively to the previous years. Gomes’ generalcontract was terminated in 1474, but he still remained in controlof the Arguim trade, probably for five more years.79

Bartolomeu Marchione, a Florentine merchant resident in Lisbonand a naturalized Portuguese subject,80 held a lease on the NigerDelta (Rios dos Escravos) between1486 and 1495. The fee was set at1,100,000 réis annually.81 The size of the fee indicates thatMarchione was entitled to trade not only in the Niger Delta but alsoin the rest of West Africa. In the subsequent years the lease on theSlave Rivers were much less than Marchione paid,82 and most of the

108 IVANA ELBL

83 Vicenta Cortés, La esclavitud en Valencia durante el reinado de los ReyesCatólicos (1479-1516) (Valencia: Excmo. Ayuntamiento, 1964), 217-471. For thelink with Cesare di Barchi see year 1497.

84 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 477-8 (doc. 404).85 Nunes Dias, O capitalismo monárquico português, 1: 360-1,86 Freire, “Cartas,” 1: 360-2 (docs. 109 and 110).87 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 247).88 Peres, Regimento, 25-6, 30, 50.89 AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte II, maço 58, doc. 155. It was also

leased in 1525, for the staggering sum of 4,000,000 réis (AN/TT, NúcleoAntigo, no. 590, fol. 58r).

90 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 440-1 (doc. 297).91 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 105r.

slaves that he imported to Portugal and sold to his associate, Cesarede Barchi, in the 1490s, were Wolof. Only a very small fractioncame from the Niger Delta.83 Marchione could, however, have soldslaves from this part of West Africa in Mina. His original contractwas for six years, but it was renewed for 1492-1495. Marchionemade his payments to the almoxarife of the Slave House in Lisbon,and on the whole proved much more dependable than FernãoGomes. He paid regularly, and when his contract was renewed hemade an advance payment covering two-thirds of the total fee.84

Later on he invested heavily in voyages to India and in the spicetrade.85 In 1504-1505, his payments to the Crown rose to 64,158,968 réis. In 1507-1510 his activity expanded, but he proved unableto sell all the spices received from the Crown, and as late as 1514he still owed the Crown 36,640,355 réis, of which 16,514,297 repre-sented several malagueta shipments.86 Malagueta, one the mostexpensive spices in the late medieval period, was not selling verywell in the early sixteenth century. In 1512 Calliro Redolho leasedthe entire malagueta trade for two years for a more realistic annualsum of 1,050,400 réis.87

Leasing became routine in the 1500s and 1510s.88 Arguim wasfarmed out in 1515-l516, after almost forty years of direct Crownadministration.89 The Senegal River zone was rented out in 1511-1512 for 393,900 réis, payable in two instalments, in June 1511 andJanuary 1512.90 The amount due in 1511 was 195,000 réis.91 Cantorand the Gambia River were leased to Mestre Felipe, a Jew, for aperiod running from St. John’s Day (June 24) of 1510 to St. John’sDay of 1514, for 1,363,500 réis, of which he paid 450,000 in 1511.The payments were due after the arrival of the ships and after


92 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 440-1 (doc. 297); AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol.108r,

93 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 472-3 (doc. 392); AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol.112r; Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 297).

94 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 297).95 Freire, “Cartas,” 1: 243 (doc. 44).96 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 297).97 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 477-8 (doc. 404).98 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 239 (doc. 220).99 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 239 (doc. 220).100 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 392 (doc. 370).101 João Brandão, Grandeza e abastança de Lisboa em 1552, edited by José

da Felicidade Alves (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte, 1990), 59.102 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 472-3 ( doc. 392).

allowing for expenditures.92 Guinea Rivers, the area between Gambiaand Sierra Leone, were leased for three years, from 24 June 1509to 24 June 1512. Over this period, 195,000 réis were paid in 1509-1510; 911,666 réis in 1511; and 1,376,620 in 1512.93 The annuallease amounted to 917,747 réis, and over the subsequent two years,covered by a contract in favour of Joham de Lila and his partners,it rose to 1,212,000 réis.94 Sierra Leone was leased prior to 1502 for600,000 réis to Pero de Evora, and before that for 640,000 réis toanother leaseholder. António Fernandes, one of the past leasehold-ers, remained owing 84,600 réis.95 In 1510-1513 the lease droppedto about 540,000 réis annually.96 The Slave Rivers were leased in1486-1495 for 1,100,000 réis,97 and in 1502-1503 for 800,000 réisyearly.98 Rio Primeiro, east of the Lagos Lagoon, was rentedseparately for 140,000 réis per year.99

Tax farming was probably less risky for the Crown than leasing,and was based on extensive precedent. Throughout the late MiddleAges, the Portuguese Crown, in accordance with general Europeanpractice, allowed most of its tax and customs revenue to be farmedout, and this policy eventually came to cover those Lisbon agencieswhich dealt with revenue from West Africa. Of these, the SlaveHouse was particularly relevant because its head acted as receiverof most African regional and commodity rents. In 1509-1510 theSlave House was farmed out for 6,383,624 réis, or 3,191,812 réisyearly.100 Forty years later, in 1552 the annual rate was only slightlyhigher, standing at 3,400,000 réis.101 The Vintena House was farmedout in 1509-1510 for 3,884,275 réis, or 1,942,137 réis annually.102

110 IVANA ELBL

103 AN/TT, Corpo Cronológico, parte II, maço 8, doc. 104.104 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 100r.105 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 2: 41-5 (doc. 15).106 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 297).107 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fols. 90v, 97r.108 Freire, “Cartas,” 10: 4 (doc. 764).109 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 590, fol. 58r.110 Freire, “Cartas,” 3: 392 (doc. 370).111 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 440-1 (doc. 297).112 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 116r.113 Freire, “Cartas,” 2: 441 (doc. 297).

The West African Islands represented a very attractive target fortax farmers. The revenue of the Cape Verde Islands, namely San-tiago and Fogo, was farmed out to Duarte Rodriguez Pinto andPedro Francisco for three years in 1504. They undertook to pay2,100,000 réis during that period, one third being delivered inadvance as security.103 This amounted to an annual rent of 700,000réis, and the sum increased to 900,000 réis yearly in 1510, whenAntónio Rodrigues farmed the revenue of Santiago, Maio, and Fogofor three years.104 In accordance with the provisions of the contractthe amount, payable in slaves evaluated by the royal almoxarife, waslater on further raised to 1,033,333 réis yearly.105 António Rodriguesjoined in partnership with Nicolão Rodriguez, and by the end oftheir contract they had paid the Crown 3,130,999 réis.106 The re-venues were promptly farmed again, this time to Jorge Nunez, whoheld the contract until 1515.107 Graviel Rodriguez was the farmerin 1519-1521, when the Crown’s repression of private trade reachedits height.108 In 1525, the revenue increased again, and was farmedout for 1,200,000 réis.109

The revenue of São Tomé was farmed out in 1509 to DiogoFernandes Cabral, and in 1510 to Joham de Fomseca and AntónioCarneiro for the sum of 388,800 réis.110 Joham de Fomsecacontinued farming the São Tomé revenues in 1511-1513, for a bulkpayment of 535,500 réis. The revenues of Príncipe were farmed outin 1510-1514 to António Carneiro for 535,500 réis,111 of which hepaid 150,000 réis in 1511.112 The Ano Bom Island was a tradingbackwater, but it was still worth to Duarte Afonso and Duarte Bello,farming its vintena, some 70,130 réis during an unspecified periodending in 1513.113


114 John L. Vogt, “The Early São Thomé-Principe Slave Trade with Mina,1500-1540,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 6 (1973): 456-7.

115 Vogt, for example, praised the Crown’s West African enterprise as a“remarkable coordination effort” (John L.Vogt, The Portuguese Rule on the GoldCoast, 1469-1682 (Athens: University of Georgia Press), 72-73)).

In 1514 António Carneiro signed a four-year contract with theCrown, binding him to supply Mina with slaves from Benin inreturn for two thirds of the price of each slave sold in Mina, anda monopoly on the Niger Delta trade. This provision violated theprivileges of the São Tomeans, who ignored it when they could notbypass it legally. São Tomé had been a slave supplier to Mina sinceit was populated in the 1490s. D. Manuel’s administration tried toassure itself of a guaranteed supply in the early 1500s, and insteadof depending on the open market it signed a partnership agreementwith Fernão de Melo, captain of São Tomé, under which the Crownsupplied merchandise and Melo the necessary logistics in return fora share in the sales in Mina. Melo, however, did not have amonopoly on the supply. Carneiro’s monopoly contract was anexception in this respect, which was not repeated when a slavesupply contract was signed with Duarte Bello in 1519 and João deOdon in 1525.114

The frequent changes in Crown policy and strategy reflect thedifficulties presented by the logistical and administrative demandsof a complex long-distance enterprise. The gradual move away fromdirect control of many of the African ventures reflects the hardlessons of the “capitalismo monárquico” (almost certainly a mis-nomer). The shift in revenue-collecting strategy in favour of gua-ranteed income was a result of a continual reassessment of Crownoptions, and an example of ongoing adaptation of past lessons fromthe management of royal domains and other revenues to the con-ditions presented by far-flung overseas enterprises.

The Results

While modern historians tend to be much more complimentary,115

contemporaries often criticized the Crown’s business decisions as illthought-out or even irrational when it came to profit or incomemaximization. The third estate (o povo), in protest against the Gomescontract, argued in the 1473 Cortes that the Crown could deriveas much as 100,000 cruzados (39,000,000 réis) in revenues from the

112 IVANA ELBL

116 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 1: doc. 68.117 Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 2a série, 1: doc. 68.118 For a series of studies on medieval and sixteenth-century revenue

collection methods and taxation strategies see the conceptually fundamentalvolume edited by Richard Bonney, The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, inparticular Bonney’s “Introduction” (1-17); also see Philippe Contamine, JeanKerhervé, and Albert Rigaudière, eds., L’impôt au Moyen Âge. L’impôt public etle prélèvement seigneurial, fin XIIe-début XVIe siècle, 3 vols (Paris: Comité pourl’Histoire Économique et Financiére de la France, 2002); J.-Ph. Genet and M.Le Mené. eds., Genèse de l’état moderne. Prélèvement et redistribution (Paris:Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1987); For ageneral development of revenue administration in the West, since theAntiquity to modernity, see Carolyn Webber and Aaron Wildawsky, A Historyof Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World (New York: Simon andSchuster, 1986), particularly chapters 4 and 5.

African trade if it was kept open.116 Since the Crown dues, whichthis sum represented, constituted 28.5% of the overall projectedvalue of the trade, the Cortes believed the trade worth at least120,000,000 réis only three decades after its opening phase. Giventhe fact that the Gomes contract came to only 300,000 réis annually,the povo certainly seemed to have a point here, well beyond mereself-interest. The Crown tended to voice only one kind of responseto these and later protests by disgruntled subjects who pointed outthat Crown policies were damaging to the latter’s own interests—invoking the royal prerogative to decide what was to the proveito(benefit/good) of the kingdom at large, in other words invoking whatamounted to executive privilege.117

It is important to realize that the Crown’s idea of “profit” wasnot necessarily based on accounting principles. In contemporaryusage the word proveito (“profit”) meant both “benefit” and “profit”in a bookkeeping sense. Like other medieval political bodies, theCrown had to consider both non-economic goals and the costs ofrevenue generation. Thus transaction costs were one of the key con-siderations the Crown kept in mind in its continual reassessmentof overseas revenue sources. The licencing system and customs net-work represented a considerable burden for the royal bureaucracy,just as the collection of various taxes, tolls and dues did in the met-ropolitan area. In the fifteenth century, farming out tax collectionand contracting out regalian rights were time-sanctioned, pan-European methods of reducing overhead and securing a guaranteed,fixed income, even if it was lower that the potential overallrevenue.118 It therefore does not come as a surprise that the Crown,


119 Freire, “Cartas”, 3: 396-7 (doc. 380).120 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fols. 97r-121r, 190r. For the overall

pattern, see Ivana Elbl, “Overseas Expansion, Nobility, and Social Mobility inthe Age of Vasco de Gama,” Portuguese Studies Review 6 (1997-98): 53-80, inparticular Figure 1, 67.

like its European counterparts, showed a marked preference fordealing with a small number of large entrepreneurs, rather thanwith the public in general. This approach increased predictability,focussed the eventual application of sanctions and deterrents, sim-plified bargaining, and thus lowered the Crown’s transactions costs,albeit at the price of potentially lowering the income. The puzzlingelement in the early period of the Portuguese expansion is, in fact,precisely the one that has often been characterized as a progressivefeature, namely the Crown’s insistence on direct participation incommercial operations as the preferred option.

One possible explanation may lie in the fact that its administra-tive and accounting practices left the Crown in no position to deter-mine efficiently how much profit (proveito) it was in fact derivingfrom the West African enterprises, beyond a well-justified but uselessnotion that the revenue was considerable. The Crown’s accountingsystem was geared towards inventory and agent control, not towardscost-benefit analysis or revenue-expense reconciliation. In essence,the Crown treated the African income the same way it treated itsoverall revenues: as a giant petty-cash box, from which money andgoods were drawn as needed. The King drew on the Guinea Houserandomly and haphazardly to cover purchases for the royal house-hold or to transfer money to other administrative departments whichstood in need of a cash injection. Some of the merchandise arrivingfrom West Africa was not even put on the market, but distributedin the form of presents——a thoroughly medieval and Renaissanceform of largesse. In 1486-1493, for example, only one third of theslaves registered as received by the Slave House were actually sold,the rest being distributed as gifts and favours according to royal dis-positions in the matter.119 In 1511, the entire Crown share in theproceeds of the Atlantic slave trade went toward covering theenormous cost of building fortifications in Morocco. The revenuederived from regional leases and tax farms, similarly to some 80per cent of overall Crown revenues, was assigned to defray socialpayments to the nobility.120

114 IVANA ELBL

121 Silva Marques, Descobrimentos portugueses, 3: 153-4, doc. 115.122 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fols. 98r-121r.123 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 176.124 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fols. 177-177v.125 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fol. 177v.

The overseas expansion provided a valuable new source ofrewards for powerful subjects or royal favourites, and thus consti-tuted an important form of political and social capital. In this res-pect the Crown’s approach can be considered “economic” only ifthe concept is enlarged to include the application of formaleconomic thinking to social and ceremonial interaction——somethingthat, it must be stressed, was rather alien to the actors involved insuch processes at the time. Grants in the Atlantic Islands and inAfrica were one of the ways in which the Regency sought to pacifythe restless ambitions of Infante D. Henrique during D. Afonso V’sminority, yet such grants also became an expression of the Infante’spolitical power once the King had come of age. After Henrique’sdeath, D. Afonso used overseas resources to offer boons to equallyrestless subjects, such as his brother D. Fernando and the celebratedD. Duarte de Meneses. In 1474, the African enterprise came underthe direct administration of the Crown Prince, D. João, and its pro-fits were assigned toward the maintenance of his household,121

establishing thus a precedent for subsequent heirs presumptive, D.Afonso and D. Manuel. In the 1510s, if not before, the revenuesfrom various West African regions were merged into the pipelineof royal social payments to the nobility: assentamentos, tenças, andcasamentos, becoming as inextricable a part of the system as therevenue from metropolitan fiscal districts.122 In 1511, the full amountof the assentamento of D. Manuel’s consort Queen Maria, amountingto 2,150,000 réis, drew on revenues of the Casa da Mina.123 At thesame time, the African enterprise supported 45 per cent of the4,460,000 réis to which amounted the assentamento of Queen Lenor,the widow of King João II and sister of the reigning King D.Manuel.124 The revenues from trade in malagueta (grains of para-dise) covered the assentamento of the “Excellente Senhora,” D. Juana“La Beltraneja,” the daughter and heir of King Henrique IV, wholost her bid for the throne of Castile to Isabel the Catholic in 1474but because of her betrothal to King Afonso V continued to be thefinancial responsibility of Portugal.125


126 Jorge Faro, Receitas y despesas da Fazenda Real de 1384 a 1481 (subsídiosdocumentais) (Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Estatística, 1465), 82-5 and 225-9.

127 AN/TT, Chancelaria de D. João II, liv. 1, fols. 53r-53v.128 For some of the problems of Portuguese revenue estimates in sixteenth-

century Asia see Subrahmanyam and Thomaz, “Evolution of Empire,” 312,316.

129 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 532, fols. 1r-118v.130 AN/TT, Núcleo Antigo, no. 590, fols. 1r-98r, 111r.

The annual orçamentos (budget estimates) and the receipts of theGuinea House and its satellite agencies indicate that the WestAfrican enterprise contributed significantly to the royal income. Inthe 1473 orçamento, for example, the overall domestic revenue ofthe Crown was estimated at 52,168,500 réis and in the 1477 one at43,074,000 réis.126 In this context, the 300,000 réis of the Gomescontract look rather insignificant. However, within two years ofPrince D. João’s assumption of control over the African enterprise,the gross yearly revenues exceeded 13,000,000 réis.127 While nowherenear the 39,000,000 estimated by the 1473 Cortes, the potential ofthe trade was undeniable. Moreover, as Table 2 indicates, the grossrevenues of the Guinea House registered very rapid growth in thelate fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Yet it is important torealize that these figures represent gross receipts, not net income.None of the operating expenses, or the overhead, had been de-ducted by the Crown.128 Since these raw figures were used for cast-ing up the annual orçamentos, it is no surprise that the Crown waseasily seduced into believing that its Guinea treasure chest wasbottomless.

The orçamentos are more reliable when the estimates are basedon leases and tax farms, rather than Crown receipts, because thoserepresent actual net income. Two of these orçamentos are availablefor the early sixteenth century, pertaining to 1511 and 1525. Bothare incomplete but still comprehensive enough to be comparable.The 1511 orçamento indicates that African revenues accounted for17 per cent of the Crown’s expected income, the rest coming fromdomestic sources.129 In 1525, domestic revenues declined to 68 percent, but still formed the majority. Africa provided 16 per cent,India 14 per cent and the Azores 2 per cent (data for Madeira aremissing).130 These figures suggest that Africa played an importantrole in the generation of royal revenues, but its share consistently


131 Bonney, “Introduction,” 13.

lagged behind metropolitan sources. The emphasis placed on over-seas income, at the expense of domestic revenues, shows the im-portance of perception and impression: clearly, the overseas enter-prise was perceived as the dynamic element. It was the gross intake(see Table 2), rather than net income, that dazzled contemporariesand modern historians alike.

Conclusion

The West African enterprise, just like the overseas enterprise ingeneral, constituted a windfall addition to the existing (and limited)resources of the Portuguese Crown. From an administrative andstrategic point of view the Crown handled this sector in the samemanner as it did its metropolitan resources: as a means of attainingthe short-term goals of solidifying and expanding its power undervery difficult and turbulent conditions. The Crown’s strategies werethus satisficing—they did not necessarily aim at maximizing revenue,but rather at achieving an acceptable and sustainable cash flow andsecuring means to satisfy political and social strategies. However,these strategies were deeply rooted in past practices and politicalchoices (we might say that they were “path-dependent”) and can bebest understood in the context of “domain state” fiscal system, asformulated by Bonney and Ormrod.131 This system grew out ofmedieval seigneurial estate and revenue management, an area thatscholars have mostly neglected in their search for the roots ofcapitalist economy.

The limitations characterizing the Portuguese royal enterprise inAfrica, and the temporary barriers to private participation that theCrown erected in an effort to manage its short-term revenues hadserious impact on the volume and regional development of earlyEuropean trade with Africa. The relative volume of trade withvarious African regions is frequently seen as a reflection of theirsupply capacity and of effective demand for European merchandise.It is essential to realize, however, that the policies and strategies ofthe Portuguese Crown, as well as the inefficiencies of its variousagencies, distorted the ability of African trading partners to sell andbuy, both by limiting outsider access to African markets and by

118 IVANA ELBL

132 For comparison, see John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making ofthe Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),chap. 2 “The Development of Commerce between Europeans and Africans”(pp. 43-71); and George Brooks, Landlords and Strangers. Ecology, Society, andTrade in Western Africa, 1000-1630 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), chaps. 7-9.

133 For an elaboration of this argument see Elbl, “The Volume of the EarlyAtlantic Slave Trade,” 74-5.

making the Crown unable to conduct such trade efficiently.132 It isparticularly important to stress this in connection with the earlyAtlantic slave trade and the debate on the state of slave trade andslavery in the coastal regions of West Africa in the opening periodof the European overseas expansion.133

CIVIC DEBT, CIVIC TAXES, AND URBAN UNREST: A CATALAN KEY TO INTERPRETING THE LATE

FOURTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPEAN CRISIS

Jeffrey Fynn-Paul

This paper describes a phenomenon that has not received its dueshare of attention from historians writing on the European crisis ofthe later fourteenth century: the effect of unforeseen short- andlong-term population loss on urban polities which had contractedfixed debt levels on the assumption that a steady level of urbantaxes, usually consumption taxes, would be available to pay intereston that debt. The case study will be Catalonia, and especially theCatalan city of Manresa, but the principle deduced here can beapplied to cities throughout Europe. To the mix must be added theeffects of war, which during these decades was often protracted anddesperate, and which demanded every surplus penny from combat-ants’ treasuries, especially since the price for failure on the battlefieldwas often a loss of sovereignty. By the 1340s, when a long-term cycleof plagues was inaugurated by the Black Death, European war wasfunded almost entirely though deficit financing. Since warfare wasfrequent and widespread in late fourteenth-century Europe, it oftenhappened that cities would contract a debt burden at the utmostlimit of their citizens’ ability to pay, only to have a wave of plaguereduce the urban population by some significant amount during therepayment period. Since civic debt simply had to be paid in orderfor the financial machinery of the state not to fail, the taxes whichpaid this debt had to be sustained at a constant rate, resulting inan increased tax burden per capita. Since the taxes used to pay civicdebts were often consumption taxes on such goods as meat, wine,and wheat, the increased burden was felt most keenly by the poor.This is not to say that the middle and upper classes in many citieswere not severely harried, especially when it became clear that con-sumption taxes alone would not be enough to make the next roundof interest payments. Squeezed, therefore, in a quadruple vise of de-population, war, debt and taxation, urban householders throughoutEurope were frequently in an untenable situation during the decades

120 JEFFREY FYNN-PAUL

1 Philip Daileader, “The Vanishing Consulates of Catalonia,” Speculum 74(1999): 65-94; for Vic, see Paul Freedman, “An Unsuccessful Attempt at UrbanOrganization in Twelfth-Century Catalonia,” Speculum 54 (1979): 479-91; andalso Paul Freedman, “Another Look at the Uprising of the Townsmen of Vic(1181-1183),” Acta Medievalia 20-21 (2000): 177-86.

2 For the creation of the Manresan vegueria, see Jeffrey Fynn-Paul, “TheCatalan City of Manresa: A Political, Social, and Economic History,” PhD

between 1350 and 1400. The persistent urban unrest which cha-racterizes this period may often have arisen from precisely thiscombination of variables, as it did in Manresa during the 1360s and1370s. The conclusion of this paper applies the theory derived fromthe Manresan evidence to some famous cases of urban unrest inGenoa, Florence, and Venice between 1350 and 1400.

The Development of Regular Tax Systems in the CatalanCities, 1285-1330

In order to understand the effects of urban tax and debt systemson late fourteenth-century Catalan cities, it is necessary to describethe evolution and functions of these systems. Catalan urban insti-tutions, both political and financial, were slow to coalesce into whatmight be called a typical late-medieval form. Although there hadbeen experiments with systems of urban consellers in Catalonia duringthe late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, these were abandonedfor somewhat mysterious reasons. It was not until 1274 that Bar-celona received a definitive urban government of the type it wouldretain until the end of the ancien régime.1

As might be expected, the pace of innovation in the smaller Ca-talan cities tended to lag behind Barcelona, often by a period ofdecades. Manresa itself was a royal city by the late twelfth century,but as late as 1254 it was granted as a fief to Viscount Ramon FolcIV of Cardona for the duration of the viscount’s life. Ramon Folcsurvived until 1274, meaning that until that very late date Manresawas both a feudal possession and outside of the main stream ofCatalan urban development. In 1276, however, the new King PereII reorganized the Catalan administration system. Manresa andcertain other towns now became the capitals of their own veguerias,which were large territorial administrative units similar in extent andfunction to English counties.2

121CIVIC DEBT, CIVIC TAXES

Dissertation, University of Toronto (2006), 8-10.3 Pere Català i Roca, ed., Els castells catalans, 6 vols. (Barcelona: Rafael Dal-

mau, 1967-1990), 5: 658-60.4 Josep Fernandez Trabal found that wine growing was a principal invest-

ment of the Gironese patriciate in the years after 1300. See Fernandez, “Demercaders a terratinents,” L’Avenç 94 (1986): 42-7, esp. 42-3.

5 Marc Torras, ed., El Llibre Verd de Manresa (Barcelona: Fundació Noguera,1996), 88-9.

6 Torras, El Llibre, 70-1, 85-6.

In 1291 King Jaume II ascended the throne, and his farsightedpolicies, implemented over the course of a long and pacific reign(d. 1327), did much to turn Manresa from a feudal market town intoa thriving regional capital. In 1315, Jaume elevated Manresa fromthe status of villa (town), to that of civitas (city). More tangibly, inthe same year Jaume also gave the Manresans permission to forma conciliar government. A third element of Jaume’s political policywas to purchase the town’s bailiwick from a noble family, the deManresas, who had been exercising various forms of feudal domi-nance over the Manresan townspeople since the twelfth century.3

From 1315, few if any noblemen resided within Manresa’s city limits.Throughout the fourteenth century, no knights were elected to theoffice of consul. King Jaume had made Manresa into a bourgeoiscity.

Jaume’s political reforms were complemented by equally far-reaching fiscal innovations. In 1311, for example, the king grantedManresans a monopoly on intramural wine sales. This new monopolyrepresented a serious blow to the seigniors in the vicinity of Man-resa, who lost their principal market, while the landowning patriciansof the city were now in a position to charge a premium on theirown vintages. The privilege was especially important to the city’spatricians because wine growing was a principal capital investmentfor them at this time.4 Another royal privilege of 1311 granted Man-resans the right to collect taxes from everyone who owned propertywithin the territory of Manresa.5 Also in this year, Jaume added asecond fair to the city’s calendar, increasing its importance as aregional trade nexus.6

The principal aim of all this reform was, of course, to increaserevenue. As part of the royal patrimony, Manresa owed a certainamount of money to the crown each year. Exactly how much this


7 The few bailiff generals’ books in the ACA which mention Manresa priorto 1380 give accounts of feudal rents, but no indication of total annual pay-ments to the crown. Presumably, all of Manresa’s regular revenue from imposi-cions, less the costs of urban administration, went to the crown. Since theseimposicions also went to pay “extraordinary” taxes, and later, censal debts, inyears when these were owed, it appears as though the crown’s income fromextraordinary taxes was always earned at the expense of ordinary revenue.This in itself is an important distinction which is seldom discussed.

8 The earliest data are from Earl Hamilton’s Navarre series. His Aragon se-ries has only fragmentary data prior to 1381, and the Valencia series does notcommence until 1413 (Earl Hamilton, Money, Prices and Wages in Valencia,Aragon and Navarre, 1351-1500 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1936): AppendicesIII-V, 213-60).

9 David Herlihy, Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia (New Haven: Yale, 1967),123, shows that wheat prices ranged from an index figure of 125 in1251-1275, to 170 in 1301-1325. By 1326-1350, the index had fallen back to125.

10 Comparable systems had been fully developed in most Italian states bythe late thirteenth century. Charles M. de la Roncière, “Indirect Taxes or‘Gabelles’ at Florence in the Fourteenth Century: The Evolution of Tariffs andProblems of Collection,” in Nicolai Rubenstein, ed., Florentine Studies: Politicsand Society in Renaissance Florence (Evanston, IL: Faber and Faber, 1968).

entailed at any given time has proven a very elusive figure.7 It isknown that in 1254, the city had been worth about £450 per yearto Jaume II’s grandfather. By 1329, two years after Jaume’s death,Manresa was raising over two and a half times the 1254 figure. Itis impossible to say, however, whether real royal income from thecity increased during this period, since there are as yet no priceseries for Iberia before 1350.8 One can only point to other Europeantrends, such as Herlihy’s wheat prices, and suggest that Jaume IIhad perhaps doubled Manresa’s real contribution to the Aragonesetreasury.9

The main reason for this sudden increase in urban tax revenuewas another financial reform carried out under Jaume II, which wasthe creation of a system of indirect consumption taxes on suchcommodities as meat, grain, wine, spices, and simple manufacturedgoods. These were known in Catalonia as imposicions.10 Because thedevelopment of an imposicion system happened simultaneously inBarcelona and Manresa, it is probable that it was implemented byroyal fiat in other Catalan cities at the same time. The imposicionsystem can be seen as the culmination of Jaume II’s fiscal policy,even though he did not live to see its full implementation. The newsystem proved successful, insofar as it enabled the cautious Jaume


11 Broussolle, “Les impositions municipales de Barcelona de 1328 a 1462,”Estudios de Historia Moderna 5 (1955): 1-164, 14.

12 Broussolle, “Les impositions municipales,” 16.13 But now on Barcelona’s early rents see Pere Orti Gost, Renda i fiscalitat

en un ciutat medieval: Barcelona (segles XII-XIV) (Barcelona: Consejo superior deinvestigaciones scientíficas, 2000).

14 Manuel Sanchez, El naixement de la fiscalitat d’Estat a Catalunya (Vic:Estudis Universitaris, 1995), 91-2.

15 Marc Torras, Els privilegis del “Llibre Verd” de Manresa (Manresa: ParcisEdicions Selectes, 1998), 152.

to launch a successful conquest of Sardinia between 1322 and 1326,after a quarter century of planning.

The work of Jean Broussolle, who in 1955 published a detailedstudy of Barcelona’s imposicions, is the starting point for understand-ing the development of the imposicion system. Broussolle discernedthat through 1329 Barcelona’s tax system was not regularized. Infact, the control of municipal taxes had passed firmly into thecontrol of Barcelona’s consellers only in 1283. Between 1283 and1329, according to Broussolle, the tax system entered into an evolu-tionary phase, in which the sales of indirect taxes on staples weremade only irregularly.11 For example, taxes on meat, wine, grains,and ships were sold in 1328 in order to raise money for the mar-riage of Alfons IV. However, in 1329 no such taxes were sold.12 Inthe face of such irregularity, Broussolle believes that during this1283-1329 period most of the ordinary revenue paid by Barcelonato the crown “came from other sources” (“consistant en d’autresimpôts”), by which he presumably meant older feudal dues. Exactlywhat these dues entailed, and how much revenue they provided,remains to be discovered.13

The work of Manuel Sanchez has now subdivided and nuancedthe evolutionary period discerned by Broussolle. Sanchez notes thatprior to 1321, extraordinary royal levies were raised from theCatalan cities by means of direct impositions known as tallias. From1321, however, most Catalan cities began to raise sums for extra-ordinary taxes by selling imposicions. Late as it may seem, the truedevelopment of this type of urban tax system dates only from thisyear.14 The first known references to imposicions date from only a fewyears before: they are referenced in 1314 in Barcelona, 1316 inTortosa.15 By combining the narratives of Broussolle and Sanchez,the years between 1321 and 1329 can be seen as a further experi-


16 Because the meat tax was usually the single most valuable tax, it was tra-ditional to assign it to a separate purpose, and it was often recorded inspecial books that were distinct from the records for the remainder of thetaxes. Records of meat taxes are therefore often left out of the accounts foundin the Barcelona and Manresa council manuals.

mental period, in which the imposicions were heavily relied upon, butwere not yet accepted as annual and permanent.

From 1330, however, the imposicions became ensconced as acornerstone of Catalan urban finance. In that year, a new royal cam-paign was launched against Genoa, and Barcelona’s tax system wasreorganized into the form that it would retain until the outbreakof civil war in 1462. The difference between the number and valueof imposicions sold in 1328 and in 1330 is striking. Whereas in 1328,only four taxes were sold, in 1330 twenty-four were sold, and thenumber of taxes would remain close to this level thereafter. Barce-lona collected £6,332 in taxes in 1328, but in 1330 it collected£39,892, or over six times the amount collected two years previously.

When we consider the portrait of Barcelonese urban finances out-lined above, it is interesting to note that the revenue from Manresanimposicions shows a large increase between 1329, when the firstfigures become available, and 1339, when the next figures areavailable. The Manresan figures did not increase nearly as much asthe Barcelona figures over the same period, but there was an in-crease of nearly 100 percent when a missing meat tax is added tothe total, and of 50 percent when this is left out.16 In 1329, Manre-san revenue from imposicions stood close to £1,000, while from 1339onward it stood closer to £2,000. The probable explanation for thisincrease is that, in 1330 or shortly thereafter, Manresa’s taxes werereorganized along the same lines as Barcelona’s new system, andit is likely that this reorganization was imposed by the crown.Whether this represents a shift from low to moderate taxes, or frommoderate to heavy taxes, especially from the point of view of thecities’ poor householders, is an open question.

From Table 1 it can be seen that between 1339 and 1418, Manre-san revenue from regular impositions hovered around £2,000, exceptduring the Castilian war years of the 1360s and 70s, when it sur-passed £3,000. Since the Black Death cut the population of Manresaby perhaps 30 to 50 per cent in 1348, it is very curious that revenuefrom imposicions did not change substantially between 1339 and

censal


26 Sánchez Martínez and his students have done much needed work onCatalan fiscality. See Manuel Sánchez Martínez and Pere Orti Gost, eds., Corts,parlaments i fiscalitat a Catalunya: els capitols del donatiu, 1288-1384 (Barcelona:Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament de Justicia, 1997); Manuel SánchezMartínez, El naixement de la fiscalitat d’Estat a Catalunya: Segles XII-XIV (Girona,Universitat de Girona, 1995); Manuel Sánchez Martínez, Estudios sobre renta,fiscalidad, y finanzas en la Cataluña bajomedieval (Barcelona: Casa Milà iFontanals, 1993); and Manuel Sánchez Martínez, “Questie y subsidios enCataluña durante el primer tercio del siglo XIV: el subsidio para la cruzadagranadaina (1329-1334),” Cuadernos de historia econòmica de Cataluña 16 (1987),11-54.

royal levies had been a part of Catalan fiscality for centuries, a newwave of levies on the royal cities was begun in 1321-24, in prepara-tion for Jaume II’s campaign against Sardinia. This campaign would,in fact, initiate a long-standing conflict with Genoa, which reacheda crescendo in the early 1350s.

It has been suggested that Jaume’s reforms left the Aragonesefiscal system better prepared to deal with the crown’s newly aggres-sive foreign policy. In fact, the financial machine that was marshalledto finance the conquest of Sardinia has been christened “a new pagein the history of royal and municipal finance” by Manuel SánchezMartínez.26 The reorganization of regular taxes was one branch ofthe royal initiative, and a reorganization of the irregular tax systemwas another. The new series of extraordinary levies that beganduring the 1320s was to last with very few breaks until Cataloniabecame fiscally exhausted in the mid 1370s. Table 4 summarizes theknown payments of over 2,000s that were owed by Manresa to thecrown, or that were raised by the city as the result of extraordinarydemands made by the crown, between the years of 1325 and 1378.The list is not complete, since several subsidies levied after knownsessions of the Corts remain unaccounted for, but the known figuresprovide a sense of the high level and frequency of extraordinarytaxes that were being raised from the Catalan cities during themiddle decades of the fourteenth century.

It can be observed from Table 4 that extraordinary taxationduring this half century was so regular that it became, in effect, afurther means of ordinary taxation. The only check on the royal willregarding these taxes was that permission be granted by the Corts,and although much has been made of the Corts’ intransigence, therewere few, if any, sessions that did not eventually produce a substan-tial levy. Another point to be noted is that Manresa’s portions of

censalimposicions


Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe (Cambridge, MA:Harvard Univ. Press, 1943), 147-62.

34 It should be noted that Spanish censal = French rente and Flemish rent.The word rentier is derived from these terms. The rente developed as earlyas the mid-13th century in Northern France and Flanders, but, as has beennoted, did not appear in Catalonia-Aragon until nearly a century later. Thecensal-rente is a distinct instrument from that used in Northern Italy, whereforced loans or prestanze were used alongside voluntary debt systems. This isbecause in the case of censals the principal did not legally have to be repaidexcept at the will of the issuing authority. This made censals all the moreattractive to late medieval investors since they could be classified by canonlawyers as non-usurious. On these issues see John Munro, “The MedievalOrigins of the Financial Revolution,” and James Tracy, “On the Dual Originsof Long-Term Urban Debt in Medieval Europe,” in Marc Boone, et al., eds.,Urban Public Debts: Urban Government and the Market for Annuities in WesternEurope (14th-18th Centuries) (Oakville, CT: David Brown, 2004), 13-26.

35 Munro, “Medieval Origins,” 535.36 Sánchez Martínez, El naixement, 129-34, speaks of the use of censals as a

Catalan financial “system” from the 1360s. Christian Guilleré, Girona Medieval,l’etapa d’apogeu (1285-1360) (Girona: Ajuntament de Girona, 1991), 50-1, saysthat from 1350 “there was no year in which censals and violaris were not sold”(“A partir de 1350, no hi ha cap any sense emissions de censals i violaris”).It is likely that the smaller Catalan municipal entities began to sell their firstcensals at the same time as the larger ones, since all were equally indebted tothe crown by the acts of the Corts.

37 Munro, “Medieval Origins,” 535.38 For the appearance of the public debt in Manresa, see Torras, Els privi-

legis, 191-9.

A censal was a perpetual money annuity, received by an investorin return for his or her investment of a cash sum (usually substan-tial).34 Rates for both the censal and violari varied in response to theflux of the credit market. The censal was perpetual, meaning thatit could be transmitted to an heir at the death of the owner/recipi-ent. The Catalan censal could also be sold on the market, though,it seems, only with the intervention of the issuing authorities, whowere usually municipalities.35 Royal municipalities of all sizes, fromlarge towns to hamlets, issued their own censals; the Manresancouncil manuals suggest that this practice probably became wide-spread in the early 1360s.36 In Catalonia, the crown ensured thatcensals could always be redeemed by the issuing municipality, sinceit was to the king’s advantage for his cities to be less, rather thanmore, in debt.37 The first evidence for Manresan sales of violariscomes from the early 1340s.38 It should be noted that in this regard,the Catalans and the Italians consolidated their systems of loans on


39 Munro, “Medieval Origins,” 515.40 Note that the old system of raising tallias (one-time exactions) was still

used alongside the imposicion system, throughout the fourteenth century.41 For interest rates on Catalan violaris and censals, see Fynn-Paul, “The

Catalan City,” 149-50.

a similar time scale. The Venetians had developed a secondarymarket for their loan shares by 1320; the Genoese consolidated theirloan shares in 1340, and the Florentines reorganized their loansystem into the Monte Comune by 1345.39 That the plague occurredjust after these major institutional reforms certainly meant, in Cata-lonia at least, that inexperience with managing the new systemadded to the calamity caused by the plague.

Sánchez has noted the speed with which the crown switched fromfinancing its extraordinary levies through tallias and direct paymentsto financing these levies through the censal system. Sanchez suggests,however, that the imposicion system of consumption taxes was super-seded by the system of public debt. In fact, Sanchez’ views on thispoint should be emended or at least reworded, insofar as the imposi-cion system was not replaced by the censal system. Rather, as we haveseen, the imposicion system formed a regular revenue stream that wasnot tied to outmoded feudal dues. By 1320, this stream was beingused to pay extraordinary taxes.40 Later, after the imposicion systemhad been made regular and perpetual, the Catalan authoritiesrealized that imposicion revenue could be used to pay censal interest.Thus, the imposicion system was never replaced. Rather it supple-mented both the older loan method of paying extraordinary taxes,and it underpinned the newer censal system.

The main innovation represented by the censal system, then, wasthat instead of paying the Barcelona bankers more or less directly,the cities now pledged their regular revenue to a number of inter-mediate parties, who purchased censals from the city for ready cash.In effect, a layer of middlemen was added. These investors paidlump sums to the cities, and the cities forwarded these sums to thebankers. The cities’ regular revenue now went to pay interest on thecensals purchased by the investors, but the cities could also forwardfar larger lump sums to the Barcelona bankers. In effect, the switchto the debt system, which paid at 15 per cent in the 1340s, hadmultiplied the cities’ effective short-term revenue nearly sevenfold.41


42 For the former view, see Thomas Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon(Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 109; for the latter, see Steven A. Epstein, Genoaand the Genoese (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 220.

The danger of this system for the cities and for Catalonia at largewas that a far larger network of creditors was now co-opted into theroyal fisc. The pressure on city governments to pay their intereston time was now much higher than it had been during the briefera of imposicions and extraordinary taxes. The effects of unexpect-edly difficult wars and unforeseeable catastrophic plagues on thisnewly emergent system will be detailed in the next section.

Warfare, Plague, Debt, and Taxation in Manresa, 1347-1381

It has been noted that a new age of conflict was initiated by theCatalans with their seizure of Sardinia in 1322-1326. The principalCatalan conflict of the 1340s involved the successful annexation ofMallorca by the new king Pere III (1336-1387). But this was notterribly costly to the Catalan cities, and when the Black Death struckin 1348, it does not appear as though the Manresan treasury wasin dire straits. It is therefore difficult to say that outstanding debtsplayed an important role in civic finances during the immediateaftermath of the 1348 plague. In any event, by 1351 Pere III feltstrong enough to ally with the Venetians against the Genoese. Thefollowing year witnessed the famous showdown in the Bosporus, inwhich the Venetians, Catalans, and Greeks won a Pyrrhic victory overthe Genoese, or, alternately, in which the Genoese won a Pyrrhicvictory over the allies.42 The Catalans and Genoese fought anothermajor engagement in 1353, and this time, the Genoese were utterlyrouted off the coast of Sardinia, ending their effective resistance fora time. In 1354 a third campaign was required in order for theCatalans to restore some semblance of order on Sardinia. This expe-dition was led by King Pere III himself.

The financial effects of this Genoese-Sardinian war on Manresacan be ascertained from Table 4. From 1353 through 1356, unprece-dentedly large annual payments were made to the crown by Man-resa, and it is likely that these were paid by the sale of censals and/orviolaris. Since the war began in 1351-1352, it is likely that the citymade payments in those years as well, although due to lingering


43 Fynn-Paul, “The Catalan City,” 41-9.44 It should be noted that in the 1350s the “Crown of Aragon” consisted

of the semi-autonomous states of Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, and Majorca.I take the liberty of using “Aragonese” and “Catalans” and near synonyms,since about 90 per cent of the population of the Crown of Aragon, includingits royal house, was Catalan-speaking, and likewise the vast majority of theconfederation’s wealth was concentrated in Catalan speaking areas. The capitalof the confederation, which Pere III attempted to embellish in various ways,was Barcelona.

bureaucratic confusion caused by the Black Death, the town recordsfor those years are disorganized and scanty.

It can be seen from Table 4 that the high annual expenses ofthe Sardinian war led directly, without a break, into the hostilitiesof the Castilian war, which I have argued was an extension of theSardinian war and largely instigated by Pere III himself.43 But whatmight have been originally intended as a mere demonstration ofAragonese power soon turned into a defensive war for survival, asPedro I “The Cruel” of Castile (1350-1369) proved himself doggedlywilling and able to annex portions of Aragon to his own crown.Despite recent rebellion and civil war in Castile, Pedro quicklyshowed that Castile’s superior resources were more than a matchfor the Aragonese on land.44 As a result, the Catalans were forcedto fight a defensive war, which lasted for over a decade, until thefinal defeat of Pedro in 1369 by the Aragonese-supported pretenderto the throne, Enrique of Trastámara. Even then, hostilities did notcease, since Enrique proved himself unwilling to yield concessionsmade to Aragon during the war. Perhaps most dangerous of all wasthe fact that the French White Companies had gained a taste forIberian campaigning during the war, when they had been enlistedon the side of Aragon. Pere III soon realized that most of his citieswere woefully under-fortified, and presented tempting targets in theevent of a mutiny. The king therefore ordered a general fortificationof Catalonia in 1368. The cities were to pay for their own walls, andthe timing was, to say the least, unfortunate.

Table 4 shows the long and depressing list of extraordinary leviesthat were raised by the Manresans during these several decades ofcrisis. Note that most of the largest payments came during the1350s; from the early 1360s, after a decade of unrelenting subsidies,each successive levy extracted from the Manresan fisc was like wring-ing the proverbial blood from a stone. Since a detailed history of


45 MC 1362.8.1. Note: MC stands for the Manuales Concilii of the city ofManresa. They are unfoliated but entries are dated in chronological order andthey have therefore been referenced by date. The citations relevant to thisarticle are: Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Manresa AHCM/AM I-7 (1358.10.28-1364.3.6); AHCM/AM I-8 (1365.3.18-1373.5.18); AHCM/AM I-9 (1373.6.1-1375.3.22); and AHCM/AM I-10 (1375.3.25-1381.10.3).

46 “Ad opus emendi frumentum.” MC 1362.4.30.47 MC 1363.7.9.

this period would be beyond the purpose of the present work, it willsuffice to focus on two periods, 1362-1363, and 1375-1377, in whichthe vise of debt and plague squeezed Manresa with especial severity.

The year 1362 saw Pedro of Castile break a Vatican-arrangedtruce to attack the Aragonese frontier city of Calatayud. In response,Pere III had little choice but to enlist the French White Companies,a situation which caused real alarm in Manresa. Barricades were setup at weak points in the city walls, for no one trusted the companiesafter their infamous exploits in southern France.45 As this drama wasunfolding, a prolonged drought threatened to create the worst fa-mine in a generation. In April 1362 Manresa dedicated £60 (1,200s)toward the purchase of grain.46 This had not been done since thegreat famines of the 1330s. In July 1363, just before the harvest,the Manresan councillors reported a dearth of wine, indicating apoor vendimia in the previous year.47

Weakened by famine, the Catalan populace began to succumb toa fresh wave of plague in the summer of 1362. Together with mostof Europe, Catalonia would continue to experience serious outbreaksof plague in fifteen year cycles after 1348, and these cycles did notabate much until the end of the fifteenth century. The new plaguelasted through the fall of 1362 and into the winter, adding thethreat of sudden death by contagion to the miseries of the Castilianinvasion, the menace of the White Companies, oppressive taxes, andthe citizens’ desperate and laborious efforts to encircle themselveswith defensible fortifications.

In typical fashion, the Manresan consellers’ laconic record of the1362 plague outbreak says nothing about its duration or severity.Yet this record is one of the most significant council entries of thefourteenth century. It may be summarized as follows:

Because of the pestilence which recently ravaged the city, and becauseof the many payments which we must make to the king, this city


48 MC 1363.5.3.49 On the mortaldat dels infants, see Carme Batlle, “L’expansió baixmedieval

[segles XIII-XV],” in Pierre Vilar, ed., Història de Catalunya (Barcelona:Edicions 62, 1999), 3: 252.

50 A. R. Bridbury, “The Black Death,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 26(1973): 557-92.

stands in need of people who practise the mechanical arts; likewiseit is our duty to attempt to populate the city by whatever meanspossible. Therefore we proclaim that all those who are not natural tothe city and who wish to stay in it for more than ten days must writetheir name in the book of the city. These shall be free from all fogat-ges, questias reyals, and other occasional taxes; likewise they shall befree from all regular civic taxes (imposicions) for a period of ten years.48

The first thing to be gleaned from this entry is that the plague of1362-1363 hit the city with some severity. Catalan historiographyhas made much of a reference which calls this plague the mortaldatdels infants, but it is clear that the Manresans also experienced it asa mortaldat dels menestrals (labourers).49 The Manresan councillors’sentiment could not be a more fitting illustration of an analysismade by Anthony Bridbury regarding the effects of the first twowaves of plague on the populace of England. Bridbury argued thatin England the plague of 1348 did not cause a severe labour short-age; rather, it had served only to alleviate the severe overcrowdingexperienced by most of the country through the first half of thefourteenth century. It was not until the plague of 1362, Bridburyargues, that the country began to experience an acute shortage oflabour.50 As far as can be determined from the Manresan evidence,Bridbury’s assessment also holds true in Catalonia. After the plagueof 1362, the town councillors felt it necessary to foster policies thatwould increase the number of householders in the city. Depopulationwas now added to the list of enemies they faced. The year 1362 thusmarks a very important psychological turning point in the mentalityof Manresa’s citizens and government. The city had been crowded,and even overpopulated from the vantage point of the lower classes,during the first half of the fourteenth century. Between 1348 and1362, despite the ravages of the Black Death, the Manresan council-lors gave no indication that they felt the city’s population to beinadequate. From 1363, however, their attitude changed dramatically.Henceforth they considered their city to be underpopulated.


51 MC 1363.5.3. For the fogatge at Monzón, see Cortes de los Antiguos Reinosde Aragón y de Valencia y Principado de Cataluña (Madrid: Real Academia de laHistoria, 1896-1922), 2: 149-50. This is mentioned at the Corts of Barcelona,beginning 10 March 1364.

52 MC 1363.3.26.53 MC 1363.4.6.54 The morabatí was derived from an old Arabic coin, and as a unit of

account it was used in Catalonia throughout the middle ages for assessingjudicial fines. For the equivalency in sous (1 morabatí = 9s), see MC 1372.5.21.

But the councillors’ own words show that, to their minds, evenmore important than the labour shortage caused by the plague wasthe shortage of taxpayers it created. While the city’s debt burdencontinued to grow, the plague of 1362 had wiped out a significantportion of the taxpaying households. As the population continuedto shrink, the debt burden remained to be shared amongst fewersurvivors. Certainly this phenomenon was having an adverse effecton the Manresan economy. On the same day that the consellers inau-gurated their new immigration policy, they recorded that the trea-surer had examined his books and determined that the city’s regularimpositions were no longer sufficient to pay its censal annuities. Asa short-term expedient, all of the city’s imposicions were sold for theupcoming four months.

Meanwhile, a fogatge, or hearth tax, had been declared, presum-ably at the Corts of Monzón in February 1363, and the city was nowforced to sell 21,000s worth of new censals to make a payment onthe fogatge.51 As though this were not burden enough, one monthearlier the king had required the city to pay for the upkeep of acontingent of 25 clients, or mercenaries, who were probably mountedmen-at-arms.52 In fact, these may have been some of the veryFrenchmen against whom the Manresans were so desperately fortify-ing themselves. Eight Manresan men, two from each quarter, wereappointed to collect a new tallia for the maintenance of this com-pany. Not surprisingly, on 6 April the consellers reported that theeight men were having some difficulty in collecting the money.53 Inan effort to speed up the tax collection, the royal veguer and batlleimposed a deadline upon the tax collectors themselves, after whichtime they would be personally responsible for paying a penalty of500 gold morabatins.54 In this difficult situation, the eight membersof the committee, all of whom were well-to-do and well connectedto city government, claimed that they had not consented to this


55 MC 1363.4.6. 56 Torras, El Llibre, 269.57 MC 1363.7.15.

penalty and were therefore not bound to it.55 Unfortunately, theentry breaks off at this point and nothing more was written on thematter. It is very interesting to learn that the town patriciansclaimed to have the right to consent to fines imposed upon themby the bailiff and veguer: This was clearly a challenge to the author-ity of the royal officials, who were admittedly acting in an extraordi-nary manner, and it is unfortunate that the results of this challengecannot be known. The incident highlights important changes takingplace in the tone of civic life. Not only were the lower classesbecoming restive about sustaining such a high tax burden, but yearsof high taxation had created a situation in which it was becomingincreasingly unpleasant to be a conseller or jurat. Civic officials werenow inescapably sandwiched between the ire of their neighbours andthe impatience of the powerful agents of the crown. In this disputemay be seen one of the early foreshadowings of the state of affairsdescribed in the royal privilege of 1380, in which the councillorshad complained that the city’s best men were avoiding publicservice.56

Further signs of unrest were also evident in 1363. In the summerof that year, the city gave plenum posse to a new treasurer, Bernatde Area, who received authority to hear accounts from whomeverhe saw fit, in addition to the authority to collect what was due tothe city. Bernat was to receive the very high rate of 3 sous per livre,or 15 per cent, of the money that he extracted from the citizens.It is probable that some of this commission was destined to go tothe guards who were appointed to help Bernat in his efforts.57 Theuse of guards to enforce the payment of taxes was a novel step atManresa, but this tactic would continue to be employed through theearly 1370s. The city remained in a state of quasi-revolt through theentire period.

After “maxing out” their regular revenue in 1362-1363, theManresans could continue to raise additional funds, but only at thecost of introducing novel modes of taxation. But they had no choice,since at this moment Pedro of Castile threatened their very sover-eignty, and so they paid up. In Manresa, the 28,000s levy of 1365was raised by the expedient of a “weekly tax.” Every Sunday one


58 MC 1365.4.19.59 I have found payment records for the weekly tax between MC 1365.4.1

and MC 1367.8.30; for the “daily tax” see MC 1368.9.26.60 Renewed efforts on the Manresan walls (picking up from the panicked

efforts of 1362-1363) began in September 1368. The 1368 order to fortify ledto the imposition of another new tax, the “daily tax” about which little is saidin the records. MC 1368.9.26. For the fortification of Vic in 1368, see EduardJunyent, “La fortification de Vich en 1368,” Ausa 2 (1955-57): 347-56. Isuspect from the nearly identical architecture that the walls of Montblanc andparts of Barcelona’s walls were also built in the same year, indicating that theorder to fortify was probably widespread.

61 MC 1375.7.1762 Mary and J. N. Hillgarth, trans., Pere III. Chronicle (Toronto: Pontifical

Institute, 1980), 2: 590.

or more shillings were collected from each head of householdaccording to their income level.58 This weekly tax was collectedbetween 1365 and 1367.59 In 1368, when Pere III ordered Manresaand other cities of Catalonia to construct new fortifications, thisorder, too, was obeyed, albeit at the cost of six or seven more yearsof extraordinary expenses.60

In 1375, after nearly thirty years of unrelenting hardship, anotherfamine menaced the city. In addition to other levies, the city volun-tarily raised 51,000s over the next three years in order to completetheir irrigation works known as the cequia, which they viewed as theirprimary defence against famine. This was a Herculean effort: inAugust of 1375, the administrator Pere Nadal had rendered anaccount for his office of the “clavarius of the impositions assignedto pay censals,” which showed that the city had paid £3,311 on thedebt over the previous year. Only a month before, in July, Manresa’sjurats had admitted, in inelegant Latin, that they could find no oneto purchase more censals from them—mutuo invenietur non potest. Thecity’s credit had reached its limit. Tellingly, interest rates on censalswere at an all-time high, suggesting that the rest of the principalitywas in similar straits.61

This is borne out by the narrative sources as well. In a uniquepassage from the Chronicle of Pere III, the king specifically callsattention to his financial incapacity during the years 1375 and 1376.He notes that “Our house of Aragon had had great trouble andharm from King Don Enrique [of Castile], and especially hadbecome impoverished [because of him] ...”62


63 MC 1377.1.10. “... plures ipsius civitatis habitatores deseruit ipsam civi-tatem, transferendo eorum domicilia aliundem, propter quod ipsam civitatisinhabitatibilis effici posset et non esset qui solveret censualia et alia onera adque ipsam tenitur.”

64 Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 219-21. It should be noted that Epsteinfollows a long Italianist tradition of describing the 1350-1355 war as “Genoa’swar with Venice,” even though Catalonia played an equally important role inthe conflict. This is mentioned only because one of the purposes of this paperis to show how thoroughly the Catalans were integrated into the Mediterra-nean trade system by this time. They were, in effect, a third major Mediterra-nean naval power, which between 1200 and 1500 gradually increased its mari-time influence, largely at the expense of Genoa.

Nor did the crisis abate with the lessening of invasion fears after1376. Years of high censal payments combined with demographicdecline was taking its toll on Manresa’s vitality, and on its veryviability as a socio-political entity. On 10 January 1377 this trendwas analyzed by the councillors of Manresa in no uncertain terms:

Many inhabitants of this city have deserted it, moving their homeselsewhere, on account of which this city is becoming depopulated, andthere are not enough people to pay the censals and other burdens bywhich the city is bound.63

Applications: Genoa, Florence, and Venice

This analysis of the Catalan evidence is, fittingly, also applicable tothe experience of the Catalans’ archrival Genoa. In his account ofthe 1350-1355 Genoese-Catalan-Venetian war, Steven Epstein de-scribes a situation in which the Mediterranean powers paradoxicallybegan a new conflict just after their cities had been devastated bythe worst plague in memory. Utilizing vastly reduced navies, theVenetians, Catalans and Genoese fought on, with dire results forGenoa.64 Nor did the Genoese situation improve over the nextseveral decades. By 1380, the Genoese tax on salt had raised itsprice to twelve times what the state paid for it. By the 1390s,Epstein reports, consumption taxes were at revolutionary levels, andunprecedented levels of coercion were required in order to collectthem. In Genoa, as in Catalonia, consumption taxes were primarilyused to pay interest on the debt, and the Genoese debt had re-mained very high due to almost continuous warfare. As in Catalonia,


65 Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 234-6. Note again that in Genoa, Flo-rence, and Venice, debt shares were often assessed as involuntary “forcedloans,” whereas in Catalonia censal holders were almost always voluntary inves-tors. Secondary markets for forced loan shares did open up to some degreein all three Italian republics however.

66 Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 243.67 Herlihy, Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia, 76.68 Roberto Barducci, “Le riforme finanziarie nel tumulto dei Ciompi,” in

Il tumulto dei Ciompi: Un momento di storia fiorentina ed europea, Acts of theCongress of 1979 (Florence: Olschki, 1981), 100-1.

“creditors were so vital to the continuing functioning of the statetheir goodwill naturally took precedence over common peopleneeding bread, firewood, and salt.”65 Of course, Genoa also experi-enced recurring outbreaks of plague, such as that which occurredin 1385, and population levels did not recover between major visi-tations.66 Although Liguria is isolated from the rest of Italy, andTuscan comparisons must be taken with a grain of salt, Herlihyestimated that between 1340 and 1404, Pistoia lost between twothirds and three quarters of its population.67

With the Manresan example at hand, we are now in a positionto answer one further, and very important, question about the Ge-noese situation described above. Why did extravagant consumptiontaxes and state creditors become such an issue during these decades,and why were unprecedented levels of coercion required in thecollection of taxes? Much of the specific mechanism behind thesefactors, which we now recognize as a “classic” post-plague urbancrisis, must be the fact that the state had contracted a high debt bur-den, which was impossible to pay off in the short term, at the sametime that householders continued to perish in significant and un-foreseeable numbers. The remaining householders had no choicebut to pay off the debt which had been contracted in the name ofa significantly larger populace, years or even decades before.

The Manresan example can also be applied to the famous caseof the Florentine Ciompi revolt of 1378. As is well known, one offirst demands of the rebels was an abolition of the funded debt anda lowering of the gabelles that had paid its interest.68 The Ciompigovernment of July and August of that year did manage to lowerthe tax rate in the Florentine contado by one third, and abolish thehated salt tax, at least for a brief time. Likewise, it attempted to sus-pend all payments on the funded debt for a three month period.


69 Gene Brucker, “The Ciompi Revolution,” in Rubinstein, Florentine Studies,338-44.

70 On the issue of emigration to the capital, see Semuel K. Cohn, Jr.,Creating the Florentine State: Peasants and Rebellion, 1348-1434 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999), 84. Here Cohn quotes a document of1402 in which the Florentines admit that their estimo had to be reassessedbecause war and plague had reduced the population of the mountains inparticular.

71 Munro, “The Medieval Origins,” 515.

Another related reform was the creation of a program for imple-menting a direct tax, called an estimo. But in the end, the revolution-ary government found that it could not function without maintaininginterest payments on the debt, and Brucker lays much of the blamefor the regime’s failure on its vacillating debt policy, which alienatedboth the government’s lower and middle class supporters and thestate’s wealthy creditors.69 Part of why the Florentine situation be-came so dire by the 1370s might be ascribed to the mechanismsdescribed above. It is possible that through the 1370s, at least, theFlorentines themselves were less acutely aware of the continuingeffects of population decline on their debt system. This could haveoccurred both because the nature of a large city is such that it isdifficult to judge marginal population decreases, and because Flo-rence, like other metropoles, was a focus of emigration. This wouldhave provided an illusion of continual demographic replenishment,at least for a time.70 In medium-sized cities such as Manresa, how-ever, even slight losses in population would have been more obviousand more keenly felt by civic officials in need of funds.

The Venetian debt system, for its part, began to show serioussigns of trouble from 1363, when the government ceased to makeany pretence of redeeming forced loan shares.71 In 1378, at thesame moment that Florence became embroiled in its civil war,Venice became involved in a disastrous war with Genoa, known asthe War of Chioggia. It is very notable from the point of view ofthe present discussion that Venice managed to pay the interest onits state debts regularly between 1262 and 1380, and only at thismoment did it succumb to temporary insolvency. Between 1378 and1381, the Venetians were forced to lend 41 percent of their assessedpatrimonies to the state, more than ever before. Many defaulted andhad their lands sold at auction. The Venetian debt system, accordingto Mueller, never recovered from the blow it received during the

1 Printed in Sir Travis Twiss, ed., The Black Book of the Admiralty, RollsSeries no. 55 (London: Longman, 1873), 2: 1-207. The passages about thetown’s tolls that are discussed in this paper are found on pp. 184-207. A goodsummary of the circumstances in which the text came to be written is givenin Ninth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, part 1 (London: s.n.,1883), 239-43.

TOLL AND TRADE IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

James Masschaele

In the year 1272, Henry Black, the common clerk of the town ofIpswich, was indicted as a notorious thief. Upon learning of theindictment, Black fled from the town and was never heard fromagain. There is nothing particularly unusual about the indictmentof a public official in the period, nor about Black’s decision to fleerather than face justice, but the erstwhile common clerk’s behaviorupon learning of his indictment has few, if any, parallels. To spitehis fellow townsmen, Black somehow managed to gain possessionof the town’s customary and a number of its foundation chartersbefore his departure from the town. Like Black himself, theseguarantors of Ipswich’s privileges and freedoms were never to beseen again.

Initially, the leaders of the town sought to continue the routinesof local government as if though nothing had happened. Eventually,however, they came to view the absence of a formal documentarybasis for local government as a problem, and they decided toconvene the citizenry to draw up a new statement of the customsby which the town was governed. The document they produced,commonly referred to as the Ipswich Domesday Book, is a fascinat-ing account of the government and economy of a major English portin the later thirteenth century.1 It naturally has much to say aboutlocal government and commercial regulation, but what is mostsurprising about the document is its lengthy account of proceduresfor collecting tolls. In this account, Ipswich’s leaders made a sus-tained effort to specify the distinctive features of the commoditiesliable to pay toll and the circumstances of their circulation as tradegoods. They began with a description of the extensive array of tolls

147TOLL AND TRADE IN ENGLAND

2 Georges Despy, Les Tarifs de Tonlieux, Typologie des sources du moyenâge occidental, 19 (Turnhout: Éditions Brepols, 1976), 13-6.

collected on the town’s quay, and then followed up with a series ofshorter descriptions of the tolls collected in eight separate marketsspecializing in cloth, fish, wool, cheese, timber, bread, meat, andanimals. Between these various accounts of the items traded and therates of toll imposed in each market, the compilers of the documententered brief notes summarizing unusual features of the markets:the toll on hemp, for example, appertained to the cloth market, butthe toll on hemp seed was paid in the cheese market. Within eachaccount, the authors distinguished not only the different goods thatwere traded in that market but also their mode of transport and ahost of incidental details about how goods might be processed ormodified in the course of being sold.

Though exceptionally detailed, the account of toll collection inIpswich represents a common documentary genre of the high andlate Middle Ages. Well over 50 lists of tolls collected in Englishtowns and markets prior to 1350 can now be found in print andhundreds more exist in manuscript form. These documents are aheterogeneous bunch, ranging from expansive descriptions like theone found in the Ipswich Domesday Book to simple lists with a smallnumber of commodities and rates. Like the documents GeorgesDespy described in his survey of medieval toll documents in Franceand Germany, English lists often appear in ad hoc forms that defyeasy generalization.2 Perhaps because of their heterogeneity, eco-nomic historians have paid relatively little attention to them, andtheir study has been left largely in the hands of local historians andantiquarians. But their sheer number suggests that they are of morethan local interest and deserving of more careful scrutiny than theyhave hitherto received. They are, in fact, a treasure trove of informa-tion about the conduct of trade in medieval England and they raisean important but curiously neglected issue for medieval commerce,namely the relationship between tolls and the development of trade.

This article will examine four issues related to the use of tolls inmedieval England. The first section summarizes the main types oftoll levied in medieval England and sketches their chronologicaldevelopment. The second section provides some quantitative evi-dence for the revenues generated by tolls and relates the revenuefigures to the rates of toll specified in extant toll lists. The third

148 JAMES MASSCHAELE

3 Throughtoll was sometimes levied on roads or bridges that were notassociated with a specific town or market but it was far more commonly leviedin places that had commercial facilities in which sales tolls were collected.

4 Such disputes are discussed more fully in James Masschaele, Peasants,

section looks at the payers of toll and considers how different groupsof payers were affected by royal grants of exemption from toll. Thefourth and final section offers some thoughts on the overall impactof tolls in the period. An appendix enumerating the many lists oftolls that have appeared in print can be found at the end of thearticle.

Types of Toll

To make sense of the great variety in the form and structure of tollsand toll lists, it is helpful to divide them into two principal types,one associated with the collection of local or customary tolls and theother with special tolls collected for a fixed period of time to financepublic works projects. The two types had different histories as wellas significantly different roles to play in urban finance. Each typemerits consideration on its own before any general assessment ofthe relationship between tolls and trade can be offered.

The Ipswich account in the town’s Domesday Book is a goodexample of a document concerned with the collection of local orcustomary tolls. Such lists encompass several different kinds of toll,the two most important being toll collected on sales in a market-place or fair and toll imposed on the passage of goods through aparticular town or along a particular route. In theory these were twodistinctive forms of taxation, but in practice it is often difficult todetermine which type is documented in a particular list, and it seemslikely that municipal officials did not distinguish sharply betweenthe two. Tolls on passage were sometimes denoted by the MiddleEnglish thurghtoll but the Latin word teloneum (with common variantsteoloneum and theolonium) could be used to describe just about anytoll.3 In more descriptive accounts the circumstances of collectioncan sometimes be diagnosed from incidental details, but in generalextant lists give frustratingly little detail about when and where tollswere assessed. Information of this sort is more likely to be foundin court records dealing with disputes over exemptions from tollthan in lists of toll rates.4


Merchants, and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England (New York: St.Martin’s Press, 1997), 129-46.

5 Ganshof, “A propos du tonlieu à l’époque Carolingienne,” in La Cittànell’alto Medioevo, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto Medioevo,6 (Spoleto, [s.n.], 1959), 485-508.

6 F. E. Harmer, “Chipping and Market: A Lexicographical Investigation,”in Cyril Fox and Bruce Dickens, eds., The Early Cultures of North-West Europe(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 335-60; P. H. Sawyer, FromRoman Britain to Norman England, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1998), 225-6.

7 H. C. Darby, Domesday England (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,1977), passim; Adolphus Ballard, The Domesday Boroughs (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1904), 73-5.

8 N. S. B. Gras, The Early English Customs System (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-vard Univ. Press, 1918), 153-5; Middle English Dictionary, electronic version(http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/mec/), s.v. “Tol.”

9 A. Ballard, ed., British Borough Charters, 1042-1216 (Cambridge: Cam-bridge Univ. Press, 1913), cxxxviii-cxlv.

Local tolls existed well before public works tolls came into beingand they also predate by a considerable margin the earliest lists thathave survived. Examples of both transit tolls and sales tolls can befound in the Anglo-Saxon world and may go back to the late Romanperiod. For the continent, F. L. Ganshof has shown how Mero-vingian and then Carolingian kings sought to emulate late Romanpractices with respect to toll and toll exemptions.5 Similarly detailedstudy has not been carried out for Anglo-Saxon England, but thereis no question that tolls were levied in the period.6 Domesday Bookcontains numerous references to toll income and includes a rudi-mentary list of the tolls collected in Lewes, Sussex.7 An undatedeleventh-century list of the local tolls collected at Billingsgate in Lon-don points to the same conclusion, as do the formulaic referencesto “toll and team” in Anglo-Saxon charters, a formula that goes backto the tenth century, if not earlier.8

Over the course of the twelfth century, the documentary evidenceassociated with toll collection becomes much richer, particularly inthe form of charters granting exemptions from toll. By 1200, nearly30 towns had acquired a charter granting toll exemptions, and manymonasteries had done likewise.9 This body of evidence suggests thatlocal tolls had become widespread by the end of the twelfth century,and also suggests that their development was particularly extensivein the period after 1150, since the vast majority of the exemptioncharters (25 of 30) date to the second half of the twelfth century.Evidence related to the actual functioning of tolls in the period is,


10 Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 2nd ed. (Oxford:Blackwell, 1993).

11 Donald W. Sutherland, Quo Warranto Proceedings in the Reign of EdwardI, 1278-1294 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).

12 Maurice Beresford, New Towns of the Middle Ages. Town Plantation inEngland, Wales, and Gascony (New York: Lutterworth Press, 1967); Richard

unfortunately, relatively meager. Only two lists that can be securelydated to the twelfth century have surfaced to date, one describingtolls collected in Newcastle in the reign of Henry I and the otherdetailing tolls collected in Cardiff in the second half of the century.Both bear close resemblance to lists from later periods, but theyenumerate fewer items of trade and their descriptions of commodi-ties lack the precision and specificity of later examples. In general,the twelfth-century evidence suggests that tolls were going througha phase of significant growth, especially after 1150, but it alsosuggests that they had yet to reach their mature form.

The volume of documentary evidence related to tolls increasesdramatically in the thirteenth century. As is often the case, therelationship between the survival of sources and real economicchange is difficult to disentangle. The thirteenth century is in gene-ral much better documented than the twelfth century and theinsistence that longstanding practices and traditions be put in writingis one of its great hallmarks.10 In this regard, the increase in docu-mentation may be due mainly to the nature of our source materialrather than to any substantive change in the practice of toll collec-tion. Similarly, the thirteenth century was a period in which localrights and privileges came in for close scrutiny, particularly rightsand privileges that bore an association with royal authority.11 Themost common context in which lists of local tolls were recorded is,in fact, a royal inquest to establish how tolls were collected in aparticular place. Even statements of toll rates and procedures thatwere not directly developed in response to a formal investigationmay owe their existence to an awareness that the king looked morefavorably on franchise holders with evidence in writing than on thosewho relied on longstanding tradition.

But it is also likely that there were substantive changes in the roletolls played in urban finance and the economy as a whole. The“long” thirteenth century was a period characterized by thefoundation of a plethora of new markets and towns, each with theright to collect tolls on the transactions they facilitated.12 It was,


Britnell, The Commercialization of English Society, 2nd ed. (Manchester:Manchester Univ. Press, 1996); Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets.

13 Ballard, ed., British Borough Charters, 1042-1216; A. Ballard and J. Tait,eds., British Borough Charters, 1216-1307 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,1923).

14 For a recent assessment of the period’s growth, see John Langdon andJames Masschaele, “Commercial Activity and Population Growth in MedievalEngland,” Past & Present 190 (Feb., 2006): 35-81.

15 These grants have not been systematically studied in their own right, butgood accounts can be found in Hilary L. Turner, Town Defences in England andWales (London: J. Baker, 1971) and Constance Fraser, “The Pattern of Tradein the North-East of England, 1265-1350,” Northern History 4 (1969): 44-66.

16 T. D. Hardy, ed., Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati,Record Commission no. 15, 2 vols. (London, Record Commission, 1833-1844),

moreover, a period in which many of the larger towns acquiredgreater local control over their markets and tolls through theacquisition of royal charters granting self-government.13 Most ofthese towns appear to have collected tolls before they acquiredformal status as self-governing royal boroughs, but their agreementto pay an annual farm to the king in return for their rights meantthat toll revenues came to loom much larger in borough affairs; intheir dealings with the king many town leaders made a directassociation between their right to collect local tolls and their dutyto pay their annual farm. Perhaps most significantly of all, the“long” thirteenth century was a period of considerable economicgrowth, involving a dramatic increase in the money supply,significant technological innovation, and vastly increased commercialactivity at both regional and international levels.14 It was,consequently, a period in which toll collectors were well rewardedfor their work and thus particularly interested in enhancing theirrights.

The history of public works tolls also points to the thirteenthcentury as a period of significant growth. Public works tolls consti-tuted a special form of toll granted by the king to a town to allowit to raise money for a local construction project.15 The most com-mon type was murage, collected for the construction, improvement,or maintenance of city walls. Other common types included pavage,collected for the improvement of city streets, and pontage, collectedfor the improvement of bridges. The earliest grant of this form oftoll, to finance the construction of a town wall in Hereford, wasmade in 1216.16 The Hereford charter provides few specifics about


1: 267b. Early murage grants are discussed in Charles Young, The EnglishRoyal Boroughs and Royal Administration 1130-1307 (Durham, N. C.: Duke Univ.Press, 1961), 104.

17 The grant was renewed in 1219, but the renewal sheds little additionallight on the original grant. Patent Rolls of the Reign of King Henry III, AD1216-1225 (London: Mackie, 1901), 224.

18 Patent Rolls of the Reign of King Henry III, AD 1216-1225, 238-9.19 Alan Ralph Cooper, “Obligation and Jurisdiction: Roads and Bridges in

Medieval England (c. 700-1300),” Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard University (1998),274; Turner, Town Defences, 238-43.

how tolls were to be collected, referring only to a collection ofcustomary charges on loads of goods that were brought to thetown.17 It is difficult to determine from the wording of the grantwhether the king intended to give the citizens of Hereford the rightto impose a second set of tolls that mirrored the town’s local tollsor simply the right to retain revenue from the local tolls that hadformerly flowed into royal coffers. The first grant that specificallyinstituted new tolls occurred in 1220, when Shrewsbury andBridgnorth acquired the right to collect tolls to facilitate the con-struction of their walls.18 By the standards of later grants, the listof tolls established in this joint grant of 1220 is fairly rudimentary,giving rates for loads of unspecified merchandise conveyed by ship,cart, packhorse and backpack, along with rates for seven differenttypes of livestock.

What began as a matter of military necessity in the troubledperiod following the death of King John gradually developed intoa routine act of government. Over the course of the next centuryand a half, English kings made more than 1,000 grants of publicworks tolls; indeed, one could rightly conclude that much of theinfrastructure of English urban life in the Middle Ages, and for sometime beyond, owed its existence to the activities of the toll collectorsof the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.19 In the later fourteenthcentury public works tolls began to fall out of favor, as towns movedtowards direct taxation of local inhabitants as a preferable meansof generating revenue for public works. Investment at levels thatcharacterized the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries wassustained in relatively few towns in the fifteenth century, and itseems as though the overall economic contraction of the periodmeant that tolls were no longer a cost-effective means of generatingrevenue.


20 Great Britain House of Commons, First Report of the Royal Commission onMarket Rights and Tolls. Parliamentary Papers 1888, vol. 53. Reports fromCommissioners, Inspectors, and Others, vol. 30 (London: s.n., 1889).

21 Darby, Domesday England, 300, 369.22 Darby, Domesday England, 369-70; Carl Stephenson, Borough and Town, A

Study of Urban Origins (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America,1933), 109.

The period from 1150 to 1350 can fairly be described as theheyday of toll collection in medieval England. Tolls certainly existedwell before the expansion of the twelfth century and they continuedto play a significant role in urban budgets for many centuries after1350. Indeed, the system of local tolls fixed in place in the twelfthand thirteenth centuries persisted, with occasional additions of newtrade commodities, into the nineteenth century.20 But their internaldevelopment and their impact on trade were especially pronouncedin the two centuries before the Black Death, and consequently theirdevelopment in this period deserves particularly close scrutiny.

Rates and Annual Revenues

Both local tolls and public works tolls were capable of generatingsignificant revenues. Already at the time of Domesday Book there areindications that tolls were well worth collecting: the tolls of Doverwere said to be worth £22 in 1086, and even the small market townof Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire accounted for market tolls of£7, although it is possible in the latter case that the entire revenueof the market was included.21 Most of the Domesday entries referringto the value of markets and tolls, however, deal with relatively smallamounts of money.22 Markets in the small boroughs of Taunton andFrome in Somerset were valued at less than £3, and the boroughmarkets of Okehampton (Devon) and Tewkesbury (Gloucestershire)were valued at less than £1. Even the port of Pevensey, Sussex,which appears to have been thriving in 1086, accounted for tollrevenues of only £4. The dearth of information in Domesday Bookabout market and toll revenues in larger towns makes generalizationdifficult, but it seems likely that most towns would have enviedDover’s toll receipts in 1086.

By the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, when wenext have a substantial body of quantitative evidence, many towns


23 G. C. Baugh, ed., A History of Shropshire, vol. 4: Victoria History of theCounties of England (Oxford: Constable, 1989), 68.

24 M. W. Beresford, New Towns of the Middle Ages (New York: Praeger,1967), 66.

25 London, The National Archives, E101/506/22.26 London, The National Archives, SC6/913/23.27 Court Rolls of the Borough of Colchester, trans. Isaac Herbert Jeayes, 4 vols.

(Colchester: [s.n.], 1921), 1: 3.28 Gras, Early English Customs System, 165.29 London, The National Archives, SC6/1248/8; London, The National

Archives, E101/505/24; Historical Manuscripts Commission Twelfth Report, part 10(London: s.n., 1891), 420.

30 Nathaniel Bacon, The Annalls of Ipswich, ed. William H. Richardson(Ipswich: S.H. Cowell, 1884), 68.

were enjoying remarkably healthy incomes from their tolls. Evensome relatively modest towns brought in more than £20 per annumfrom their local tolls. Accounts for Oswestry, Shropshire, for exam-ple, record incomes from tolls and market fees of £20 in 1271 andmore than £27 in 1276.23 In an inquisition post mortem in 1307 forthe town of Chepstow, Monmouthshire, a jury stated that the tollsof the market and fair were worth £20.24 An account of the townof Scarborough in 1316-1317 records toll receipts of £28.25 Anaccount for Grantham, Lincolnshire in 1324-1325 states that the tollsand tronage of the market were farmed for £25, with the tolls andother perquisites of the fair bringing in roughly the same amount.26

Even higher revenues accrued to larger towns. Colchester, forexample, leased its tolls for £35 per annum in 1310.27 When askedto report on the revenue that could be raised by leasing the town’stolls, a jury in Berwick in 1303 responded that they could be let atfarm for £40 per annum.28 Still higher amounts are recorded inseveral bailiff’s accounts of the late thirteenth century: Northam-pton’s bailiffs accounted for about £44 in one year, while Glouces-ter’s bailiffs reported more than £50 and Lincoln’s more than £75in single years.29 Ipswich generated more than £69 by leasing outthe revenues from its markets in 1287-1288, a figure that helps toexplain why the local Domesday Book, written a few years later,gives such a lavish description of how the town collected its tolls.30

Municipal officials enjoyed similarly high revenues when theycollected public works tolls. An investigation into the conduct of tollcollectors in Bristol in 1340 found that £516 had been collected inthe preceding twenty years, yielding an average yearly intake of


31 Henry Bush, Bristol Town Duties (Bristol: J.M. Gouch, 1828), 90-3.32 Shrewsbury, Shropshire Record Office, 3365/310.33 J. C. Tingey, “The Grants of Murage to Norwich, Yarmouth, and Lynn,”

Original Papers Published Under the Direction of the Committee of the Norfolk andNorwich Archaeological Society, 18, part 2 (Norwich: s.n., 1913), 136.

34 R. R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter-Books Preserved Among the Archives ofthe Corporation of the City of London, 1275-1498, 11 vols. (London: J. E. Francis,1899-1912), Letter Book E: 273-4.

35 Calendar of the Fine Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1272-1307(London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1911), 132.

36 Turner, Town Defences, 48.37 Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge:

Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 27-48.38 Henry L. Cannon, ed., The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Twenty-Sixth Year

of the Reign of King Henry the Third (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1918), 191.39 Cannon, ed., The Great Roll, 252. Gloucester’s farm was £60 per annum.

approximately £26.31 Shrewsbury collected nearly £30 in murage inthe politically troubled year of 1264-1265.32 In Great Yarmouth,murage collectors brought in more than £66 in 1342-1343.33 Londondecided to lease its murage tolls in the early 1330s and earned£109, £126, and £113 from three annual leases.34 Somewhat surpris-ingly, Newcastle was able to generate revenues comparable to thosein London, raising £120 from its murage grant in 1280.35

Walls and bridges were voracious consumers of capital and HilaryTurner has argued that the sums collected from tolls were ofteninsufficient to fund the projects for which they were earmarked.36

While Turner’s argument certainly has merit, the sums collected arenonetheless impressive when viewed in their own right. It is worthremembering, for example, that an annual income of £20 was heldto be the threshold for knightly status in the period, and thatrelatively few lords enjoyed annual incomes greater than £100.37 Itis also worth remembering that revenues like those itemized abovecould account for a significant portion of a town’s annual farm tothe king. Ipswich, with an annual farm set at £40, actually took inmore from leasing its market revenues in 1287-1288 than it paidto the king for its privileges.38 Gloucester, too, nearly managed topay its entire farm from its toll receipts.39 Other towns were notquite as fortunate but could still expect to requite between a thirdand a half of their annual farm from the sums collected in toll. Thevery fact that kings and local officials viewed tolls as the best way


to pay for essential public facilities is a testament to their ability togenerate revenue.

The best perspective on the sums generated by toll collection is,however, gained by comparing annual receipts with the rates paidfor specific commodities. Most surviving toll lists can facilitate analy-sis along these lines, since, in addition to enumerating the commodi-ties on which toll was collected, they also stipulate the precise pay-ment that was due for a specific quantity of each good. The listsordinarily do not record the price of the enumerated goods, but wehave sufficient price data from other contemporary sources toestablish a relationship between the actual value of the listed goodsand the amount of toll each incurred. Using this method, it ispossible to calculate the percentage of the likely sales price that wasowed as toll, or, in other words, to establish the proportional rateof taxation on trade.

Before offering such calculations, though, it is necessary todescribe more carefully the nature of the source material. Carefullyitemized individual statements of goods and rates characterize listsderived from both major types of tolls and the range of commoditiesand the units of measurement show considerable overlap. But thereare a number of differences between the lists that are worth noting.Local tolls tend to place greater emphasis on the modes of carriageused to transport particular commodities: grain, for example, isoften taxed by the cartload or packhorse load in local toll schedules,whereas in public works tolls it is ordinarily taxed by the quarter.In this respect local lists probably reflect more accurately the realcircumstances of trade in the period. Similarly, local tolls are morelikely to include entries dealing with small quantities of goods; ratesapplied to goods carried on a man’s back are common in lists oflocal tolls but rare in lists of public works tolls. In this same vein,local toll lists, at least the longer and more detailed lists, are wontto give occasional incidental details about where and how tolls wereexacted, whereas lists of public works tolls convey little informationbeyond the commodities and rates. Overall, lists of public works tollsgive a more standardized and formulaic representation of Englishtrade, while local toll lists tend to be more idiosyncratic and reflec-tive of unique or unusual local circumstances.

In the case of public works tolls, the printed form of many ofthe lists gives a misleading impression about their level of specificity.The editors of the Patent Rolls, on which the grants were recorded,


40 They did, however, continue to include entries denoting the recipientsand general terms of these later grants. Their decision to omit the lists ofcommodities appears to have been based partly on their sheer volume.Including all of them would have significantly lengthened the published formof the calendars. It may also have been based on the knowledge that the listsoften repeated information provided in earlier lists. On the issue of repetitionin the lists, see Fraser, “Pattern of Trade in the North-East,” and Tingey,“Grants of murage.” This is a subject that would repay more carefulinvestigation.

included in their standard calendars virtually the entire text of thegrants made between 1220 and 1232, but then opted to save spacein later calendars by omitting the lists of commodities and ratesappended to grants made after 1232.40 Antiquarians and local recordsocieties have published some of the later lists but the vast majorityis accessible only by consulting the original manuscript sources. Thissituation is unfortunate, because the earlier lists are much shorterthan later lists and often much less precise. The lists of the earlythirteenth century often provide statements of rates based on cart-loads or boatloads of goods rather than precise quantities; those ofthe later thirteenth and fourteenth century are much more carefullyitemized, typically listing more than 100 separate goods, each witha separate toll rate based on a standard unit of trade, and occasion-ally with two or more standard units of trade. General rates for acartload or a boatload of goods still occur sometimes, but they werehemmed in by the extensive lists of specific commodities, and alsoby the inclusion of specific ad valorem rates assessed on the valueof merchandise that was not specifically mentioned in the list. Forthe purposes of the current analysis, the later lists are obviouslybetter suited for calculating the relationship between commodityprices and toll rates.

A summary of the basic information that can be extracted fromextant toll lists is provided in Tables 1 and 2. Table 1 gives anoverview of the rates on common trade goods documented in aselection of local toll lists, while Table 2 furnishes information aboutrates occurring in lists of public works tolls. The first column of eachtable records the type of good and the standard unit of measure-ment with which it appears in the lists. Subsequent columns recordthe toll demanded for the given standard unit of the good in anumber of towns. The towns in the tables were selected partlybecause they have relatively extensive lists of rates and partly because


they reflect a variety of urban types and chronological periods. Thegoods in the tables were selected to represent different levels ofcommercial activity and also to reflect some of the more prominentcommodities in circulation in the period. On these grounds, grainshould also have been included, but grain tolls often appear in thelists in units of measurement that are not easily comparable, makingdirect comparison difficult and potentially misleading. In both tables,goods that do not occur in a particular town’s list are indicated bythe notation “n.d.” meaning that there is no data for that good.Goods that occur in a list but with an unusual unit of measurementare denoted by the abbreviation “n.s.” (for non-standard).

Several features of the tables call for comment. First of all, it isimportant to note that the units of measurement in Table 1 do notalways correspond with the units in Table 2: herring is usually taxedby the last of 12,000 in local lists but by the thousand in publicworks lists; hides are typically listed by the dicker of ten in local listsbut by the single hide in public works lists; and woad is most oftentaxed by the ton in local lists but by the quarter in public workslists. In the case of herring and hides, it is relatively easy to convertthe rates from one unit of measurement to the other, but the rela-tionship between a ton and a quarter of woad is uncertain. Second,the rates specified in local tolls lists tend to be somewhat higherthan the rates in public works lists, a feature that is particularly pro-nounced in the rates applied to wool and wine. This may well havebeen an intentional policy on the part of royal administration tomake the public works tolls more palatable to the people who hadto pay them. Third, the lists show a surprising degree of uniformityin the assessment of rates: a common rate for wool, for example,was 4d. per sack; a common rate for the sale of a horse was 1d.; anda common rate for a ton of wine was 4d. Even when different rateswere charged they often bear a simple arithmetical relationship tothe standard rate (typically half as much or twice as much as thestandard rate). Such uniformity might be expected in the case ofthe public works tolls, which were centrally defined and organized,but it is more difficult to explain in the case of local tolls. It seemspossible that local rates might have been based on some earlier com-monality, perhaps a common rate associated with dues paid to theking in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

While there is much to learn by comparing the lists with eachother, the primary purpose of assembling the data in Tables 1 and


41 David Farmer, “Prices and Wages,” in H. H. Hallam, ed., The AgrarianHistory of England and Wales (Cambridge: Clarendon Press, 1988), 2 (1042--1350), 779-817; James Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices inEngland, 7 vols. in 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1866-1902).

42 Similar conclusions are presented in Hubert Hall, A History of the Customs-Revenue in England, 2 vols. (London: Stock, 1885), 1: 73, and Henry Cobb,ed., The Local Port Book of Southampton for 1439-40 (Southampton: TheUniversity, 1961), lxv.

2 is to facilitate a comparison between toll rates and the actual valueof the goods. This can best be done using the price data assembledby David Farmer and James Thorold Rogers.41 There are, of course,many caveats that need to be offered when making calculations ofthis nature. Prices tended to rise over the period as a whole, mean-ing that a standard, consistent toll rate constituted a higher propor-tion of the average sales price of a given commodity in the earlythirteenth century than in the early fourteenth century. Prices ofgoods also fluctuated significantly from one year to the next depend-ing on weather conditions and the presence or absence of impedi-ments to trade such as war. Finally, the geography of productionand trade could also exert an influence on the price structure, inways that cannot be accounted for with surviving data. Comparingtoll rates with average prices is indeed a useful way to assess theinfluence tolls might have had on trade, but surviving data wouldhave to be far more extensive to allow for exact calculations to bemade.

But a general sense of the parameters within which tolls werecollected is well worth having and can be calculated with somedegree of confidence. The primary conclusion yielded by such anexercise is that toll rates were exceptionally low, ordinarily constitut-ing less than one per cent of the average price of a commodity,sometimes much less.42 The average price of wool in Farmer’s indexperiod of 1330-1347, for example, was £4 12s. 7d. per sack. Accord-ing to Tables 1 and 2, a common rate for the toll on a sack of woolwas 4d. Thus, the toll represents less than four-tenths of one percent (0.36 per cent) of the average price of wool in the 1330s and1340s. The 1330s and 1340s constituted a period of unusually lowwool prices, and Farmer’s data shows that for much of the thirteenthand early fourteenth centuries a toll of 4d. would have comprisedwell below three-tenths of one per cent of the value of the wool.


43 The decennial average for wine in the 1330s calculated by Rogers(Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, 1: 641) was £4 12s. 9d.; the decennialaverage for 1,000 herrings in the same period was 9s. 3d. Rogers calculatedwine prices per dozen gallons. I converted his price into a price per tun of252 gallons. Wholesale prices per tun would, of course, have been lower,meaning that the proportion represented by toll would have been higher.

44 See the Appendix for the sources on which this paragraph is based.45 E.g. Dublin murage tolls in 1308; Gloucester pavage tolls in 1332;

Southampton local tolls in 1329.

Wool appears to have been treated relatively favorably by tollcollectors, but low figures can also be calculated for some of theother goods found in Tables 1 and 2: the common toll of 4d. perton of wine represented less than four-tenths of one per cent of theaverage selling price in the period; the toll of one farthing on 1,000herrings amounted to less than three-tenths of one per cent of theaverage price of herrings.43 The toll on horses was one of the moreonerous dues among the ones summarized in Tables 1 and 2.According to Farmer’s data, a toll of 1d. constituted just over eight-tenths of one per cent of the average price of a general farm horse(an affer) in the 1330s and 1340s and exactly one-half of one percent of the average price of a carthorse in the same period.

Confidence in these calculations can be increased by comparingthem with occasional entries in the lists that provide ad valorem ratesor other information about the values of commodities occurring inthe lists.44 The London murage grant of 1315, for example, stipu-lates a special toll of 1d. on horses worth 40s. or more, whereas thestandard toll on horses in the list is one half-penny. It also stipulatesthat a toll of 1d. could be charged on all merchandise worth £1 ormore not specifically mentioned in the list. Norwich’s murage grantsimilarly mentions special tolls on a few goods with stated values:a whole cloth worth £2 or more owed 1d.; a boat carrying ale, fire-wood, or turves worth £1 or more owed 1d.; anyone with a trusselof merchandise worth more than 10s. owed one half-penny. TheNorwich list also notes that any merchandise worth 5s. or more andnot named elsewhere in the list owed a farthing. Other lists suggestthat an ad valorem rate of a farthing for every 5s. worth of goodswas common; the attraction of using a rate based on the principleof a penny per pound of merchandise is obvious.45 Tolls set accord-ing to this rate amount to four-tenths of one per cent of the valueof the goods, a figure that is strikingly similar to the ones that can


be calculated by comparing standard toll rates with prevailingcommodity prices.

An important exception to the general rule of low toll ratesapplied to traders who operated on a small scale. Part of the reasontoll rates are so low in surviving lists is that the units of measure-ment were ordinarily quite large, meaning that the value of thegoods on which toll was levied was correspondingly high. A sack ofwool, for example, represented the clip of about 260 sheep. It wasthe common unit used in international trade conducted by wealthymerchants and is the most common unit to appear in surviving tolllists. But for the millions of peasant producers responsible for thebulk of England’s wool production, it represented commercial activityon a scale beyond their normal experience. At the local level, woolwas typically traded in units of pounds and stones, and toll repre-sented a higher share of the value of sales transactions. Extant tolllists have less information about the tolls imposed on this level oftrade than on the trade conducted by wealthier merchants. Typically,they specify rates for the more humble branches of trade based onhow goods were carried into the market rather than on precise unitsof measurement. But they do occasionally furnish more precisedetails about the treatment of local trade, enough to signal thelikelihood that peasants and small scale traders had to pay higherproportional rates than did the merchants engaged in longer-distance trade.

The extensive list in the Ipswich Domesday Book provides partic-ularly good evidence for differential toll rates applied to smallerscale trade. Merchants who shipped a sack of wool from the quaycould expect to pay 4d., but if they shipped a last of wool (equalto 12 sacks) they had to pay only 8d. In other words, they couldship twelve times the amount of wool and pay only twice the amountof toll. Those who sold wool in the wool market confronted a slidingscale depending on the mode of transport used: a cartload paid 2d.;a packhorse paid one half-penny and a person carrying a backpackof wool paid one farthing. These rates seem to be on a par with therate charged per sack, if one accepts that a human was capable ofcarrying at least 23 pounds in a pack, or that a horse could besaddled with twice that amount. But a fourth rate also applied inthe wool market: a farthing would be collected from anyone whosold wool worth 2.5d. This unusually precise rate probably repre-sented the value of a single fleece of low to middling quality, the


46 A single fleece probably weighed a bit less than 1.5 lbs., and accordingto David Farmer’s data, would have sold for about 4d. in the 1330s and1340s. On fleece weights see E. M. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman, England’sExport Trade 1275-1547 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 13.

47 Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets, 42-54.48 Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, 2: 451.

kind of good that a peasant with a cottage and a few acres of landmight occasionally bring for sale.46 As a simple ad valorem rate thetoll amounts to ten per cent of the value of the wool. But it seemsunlikely that many people would have been forced to pay such asteep rate. Since the farthing payment was the same for a singlefleece as for an entire backpack, the rate dropped precipitously witheach additional fleece sold. Thus, someone selling two fleeces wouldhave paid approximately five per cent of the value of the wool intoll and someone with five fleeces would have paid less than two percent. To reach the level at which the rate would have approximatedthat paid by merchants, an individual would have had to be ableto sell the wool from a flock of about 15 sheep. Many peasants hadflocks of this size and larger, but such peasants were generallyamong the better off members of a village.47

Regressive rates can also be found in the Ipswich tolls imposedon hides. The standard rate in Ipswich was 4d. for a dicker of tenhides, an unusually high rate by the standards of other towns. Butthe high rate per dicker melted away with increased volume, so thata merchant who shipped as many as 100 hides (a half-last) paid thesame amount as someone who dealt in a single dicker. Conversely,the rate per unit was much higher on small transactions: an individ-ual who sold a single hide had to pay one half-penny. Thus, some-one who sold eight hides had to pay as much in toll as someonewho carried 100 hides into the town. According to the data collectedby Thorold Rogers for the early fourteenth century, a single unpro-cessed ox hide typically fetched a price of approximately 2s., whileraw horse hides were worth about half as much.48 Prices varied signi-ficantly from one year to another and even between different setsof accounts in the same year, but the decennial averages calculatedby Rogers suggest that a half-penny toll would have amounted toa bit more than two per cent of the value of a single oxhide anda bit more than four per cent of the value of a single horsehide.


49 Gras, Early English Customs System, 26; K. M. E. Murray, ed., Register ofDaniel Rough, Common Clerk of Romney 1353-1380, Kent Records 16 (Ashford:Records Branch [of the Kent Archaeological Society], 1945), xix; MaryanneKowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), 200-1.

The Payers of Toll

Comparison between toll rates and commodity values reveals thatthe rates were extraordinarily low but also suggests that tolls mayhave affected different social groups in different ways. Any attemptto assess the relationship between tolls and trade clearly needs totake this social variability into account, and the best way to do sois to look at the practices of toll collection. Of particular importanceis the issue of who actually paid the rates specified in the lists. Werethe principal payers the wealthy merchants who traded goods suchas cloth and wine in wholesale quantities over long distances, orwere they mainly the humble peasants of a town’s rural hinterlandwho needed to sell a few pounds of wool in order to pay their rent?

It has often been suggested that peasants inhabiting the hinter-land of towns and prominent rural markets and other smaller scaletraders inhabiting the market site were particularly prone to payingtolls, and that their payments accounted for the lion’s share of theincome raised by toll collectors.49 This view is based mainly onindirect evidence derived from sources dealing with exemptions fromtoll, exemptions that were widespread in the period. Local merchantswho were freemen of a town or members of the town’s merchantgild, for example, ordinarily traded without tolls in their own town.Merchants from other towns were also sometimes exempted fromtolls, if their own town had a royal charter granting exemption.Larger monasteries were also common recipients of royal grants ofexemption. Peasants and other petty traders in the town were, onthe other hand, seldom endowed with such privileges. A few selectgroups of peasants were able to establish and enforce toll exemp-tions—principally tenants of royal demesne and, occasionally, thetenants of some ecclesiastical estates—but the vast majority of peas-ants and artisans had little choice but to pay the farthings andhalf-pennies demanded at the gates and in the marketplaces wherethey conducted their business.

While there is little doubt that peasants and artisans were majorcontributors of tolls, their role as toll payers needs a great deal of


qualification. For one thing, it is important to keep in mind thatthe term “peasant” is extraordinarily broad, ranging from smallcottagers who might have only a single fleece to sell in any givenyear to wealthy virgate-holding tenants who were likely to havedozens of fleeces to sell at one time. For wealthier peasants—theones most likely to be implicated in the commercial economy—theregressive scale found in some of the toll lists may not have causedmuch concern, certainly not as much as it would have for poorerpeasants and artisans. Anyone in a position to take a full cartloadof grain to market or to sell wool in units of stones rather thanpounds would have enjoyed a toll rate closer to the one enjoyed bymerchants than the one enjoyed by smallholders and artisans.

The extent to which merchants managed to escape tolls becauseof their chartered exemptions also needs careful scrutiny. There iscertainly a good deal of evidence to suggest that merchants wereadamant about asserting their right to exemption and vigilant aboutprotecting it, but there were limits to the exemptions. Indeed, any-one who reads the individual entries of a surviving toll list wouldbe hard pressed to form the impression that the trade of merchantswas not a major concern of the framers of such lists. Many goodsoccurring in the lists were clearly the commercial preserve of mer-chants rather than of peasants or artisans: dyestuffs, for example,or metals, or other imported goods. Equally revealing is the pres-ence of so many entries dealing with wholesale quantities of goods:herring assessed by the thousand and almost as commonly by thelast of 12,000; hides assessed by the dicker of ten and often by thelast of 200; wooden boards (frequently imported from Ireland orthe Baltic) assessed in units of 100 and only rarely in smalleramounts. Even farm commodities routinely occur in relatively largeunits. Rates for ten sheep, for example, are more common thanrates for single sheep, and other common units of measurement inthe lists include five flitches of pork, 2,000 onions, 100 rabbit skins,and a wey of cheese (336 lbs.). Such large units are particularlycharacteristic of lists of public works tolls, but local lists also devotea surprising amount of space to quantities that are clearly implicatedin trade at a wholesale level.

A desire to target foreign merchants explains at least some of thisemphasis on imported goods and wholesale quantities. Foreignersaccounted for a significant share of English trade throughout theMiddle Ages and were particularly prominent in the thirteenth and


50 M. Prestwich, “Italian Merchants in Late Thirteenth and EarlyFourteenth-Century England,” in The Dawn of Modern Banking (New Haven:Yale Univ. Press, 1979); T. H. Lloyd, Alien Merchants in England in the HighMiddle Ages (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982); Joseph P. Huffman, Family,Commerce, and Religion in London and Cologne: Anglo-German Emigrants, c.1000-c. 1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998).

51 Gras, Early English Customs System, 257-64.

early fourteenth centuries when most of the surviving toll lists werewritten.50 From the perspective of an English toll collector, they werealso ideally suited to pay toll: their status as toll payers was simpleand straightforward, they were less likely to have corporate supportto fend off demands for toll, and they had the ability to pay. It wasnot in anyone’s interest to abuse foreign traders by demandingexcessive payments for the right to trade, but vigorous enforcementof dues that were either customary or sanctioned by the king wascertainly well worth the effort, and probably accounts for a signifi-cant share of the figures for toll income given above.

In 1303, however, the toll paying status of foreign merchantsunderwent drastic revision with the issue of the Carta Mercatoria, anedict designed to protect the interests of foreign merchants in returnfor their agreement to contribute to a new national customs duty.51

One of the key provisions of the document stipulated that foreignerswere henceforth to be exempt from all levies of murage, pontage,and pavage throughout England. Exemption from the payment oflocal tolls was not included in the grant and appears not to havebeen claimed subsequently. This abrupt change in status with respectto public works tolls raises a perplexing problem, though. If foreignmerchants were the only significant merchant group paying thesetolls, one would expect to find a significant change in the natureof the toll lists drawn up after 1303, as well as a precipitous declinein the revenues yielded by public works tolls. Neither of thesepropositions finds much support in surviving documentation: theemphasis on mercantile exchange is every bit as prominent in laterlists as in the earlier ones, and murage receipts remained healthyin the early fourteenth century, although the number of survivingaccounts is too small to allow a categorical conclusion on this point.

Another possibility worth considering is that English merchantswere not quite as successful at evading tolls as the evidence regard-ing the enforcement of their privileges might suggest. Native mer-chants could be forced to pay toll in several different ways. First of


52 Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets, 111-16.53 Ballard, ed., British Borough Charters, 1: cxli, cxliii.54 Ballard, ed., British Borough Charters, 1: cxxxviii-cxlvii; 2: xc-cii. On the

degree of commercial development before 1216 see Langdon and Masschaele,“Commercial Activity and Population Growth,” 42-54.

55 George Woodbine, ed., Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, trans.Samuel Thorne (Cambridge, MA: Bellknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press,1968), 2: 166-73.

all, royal exemptions were conditional rather than universal and tollcollectors were able to ignore the exemption privileges of many ofthe merchants who passed through their town gates. They wereentitled to do so because of a legal doctrine that placed great weighton the date on which an exemption was first granted, a doctrinethat is sometimes referred to as “priority of seisin” or “priority ofcharter.”52 Grants of toll exempt status could not be applied retroac-tively, meaning that they were not valid in towns or markets thathad a preexisting right to collect tolls. Thus, the merchants ofIpswich, who acquired their exemption in 1200, could expect totrade free of toll in King’s Lynn, which acquired its formal right tocollect tolls when it became a borough in 1204, but not in Norwich,which could trace its collection rights back to its acquisition of itsborough farm in 1194.53 According to the data assembled by Adol-phus Ballard, dozens of towns acquired toll exemptions so late thattheir privileges would have been viable in very few of the majortowns and rural markets of the kingdom. By the end of King John’sreign in 1216, for example, virtually all of the major towns in thekingdom and several hundred rural markets had established theirright to collect toll, but the list of towns that lacked formal exemp-tion privileges at that time includes such places as Coventry,Huntingdon, Leicester, and Worcester, along with many othersmaller towns.54

Priority of seisin was, in fact, less straightforward than legal theorymight suggest. First of all, rights and privileges could lapse throughlack of use. If the first merchants to trade in a particular town didnot insist on their rights, then other merchants from that town couldnot do so, even if their exemption charter predated the other town’sright to collect.55 Second, exemptions from toll were almost alwaysconveyed by specific words in a formal charter, but the right tocollect tolls was not always specifically mentioned in a royal act.Many of the older and larger towns in the kingdom had prescriptive


56 Ballard and Tait, eds., British Borough Charters, 2: 257-8.57 Ballard, ed., British Borough Charters, 1: cxliii, cxliv. In the fourteenth

century, Southampton made a similar compromise with the merchants ofSalisbury, agreeing to forego its priority of seisin in order to reach agreementabout how the two towns would collect toll from each other’s merchants. P.Studer, ed., The Oak Book of Southampton, 2 vols., Publications of theSouthampton Record Society, nos. 10 and 11 (Southampton: SouthamptonRecord Society, 1910-11), 2: 1-17.

rights to collect tolls based on usage that went back to the Anglo-Saxon period. Some, but not all of these towns, also acquired thefarm of their boroughs in specific royal acts, and the date on whichthey acquired the farm typically became the date used to determinepriority of seisin vis-à-vis other towns who enjoyed charteredexemption rights. How priority of seisin would have been deter-mined in places that never acquired a formal charter granting thefarm of their borough—including some major commercial centerssuch as Bristol—is an open question. Ambiguities in the possessionof collection rights might also explain cases in which towns agreedto compromise in toll disputes in which the issue of priority of seisinappears to have been clear-cut. In 1239, for example, the town ofSouthampton agreed to stop collecting tolls from the merchants ofMarlborough, “notwithstanding that the charter of our [i.e. theking’s] men of Southampton is prior to that of our men ofMarlborough.”56 The relevant charters for both towns are still extant,and they show that Southampton did indeed have the legal rightto demand toll, since it acquired the farm of its borough in 1199and Marlborough acquired its right of exemption in 1205.57

A second important limitation on the universality of exemptionprivileges applied in the case of public works tolls. In theory, theprinciple of priority of seisin should have meant that relatively fewEnglish merchants contributed to public works tolls, since the grantsof such tolls typically postdated the acquisition of chartered exemp-tions: the vast majority of English towns had already secured exemp-tion rights by the time kings began to make murage grants. Butexemptions that originated as a means to deal with local tolls didnot necessarily extend to public works tolls. The limited characterof toll exemptions is well illustrated by King Henry III’s grant ofexemption from murage to the inhabitants of Shrewsbury and Kings’Lynn in the 1260s as a reward for their support during the Barons’


58 Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, AD1258-1266 (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1910), 455-6; Calendar of thePatent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, AD 1266-1272 (London: H.M.Stationery Office 1913), 214.

59 Ballard, ed., British Borough Charters, 1: 188; 2: 255.60 Calendar of Charter Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office (London: H.M.

Stationery Office 1908), 3 (1300-1326), 9, 100, 217. Many more examplescould be offered.

61 Calendar of the Charter Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office(London:H.M. Stationery Office 1916), 5 (1341-1417), 94-5. A similarly explicitconfirmation was made in the same year for the town of Hedon (Calendar ofthe Charter Rolls, 5 (1341-1417), 88).

62 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) Preserved in the Public RecordOffice (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1916), 1: 366.

Revolt.58 Both towns had acquired general toll exemptions muchearlier, Lynn in 1204 and Shrewsbury in 1227, but it is clear thatthe general exemptions had not extended to the most common formof public work toll.59 In the case of King’s Lynn, the newly acquiredexemption from murage was valid only for five years; even theexpansion of toll privileges was kept within strict limits. A similarprocess of enhancing and extending exemption privileges probablyalso helps to explain the subtle changes in language one commonlyfinds in royal confirmations of previously granted borough charters.60

Early urban charters usually specify that the town’s privileged mem-bers were henceforth to be free from teloneum, the generic Latinword for toll; later confirmations usually stipulate that the exemptioncovers murage, pavage, pontage (and sometimes other dues likestallage) as well as teloneum. A confirmation in 1348 of a charteroriginally granted to the town of Huntingdon in 1205, for example,states in the preamble that the burgesses “fear that they may be infuture impeached touching liberties and customs which they havehitherto used under ... general words” and then goes on to enumer-ate various tolls and dues which were not specifically included inthe 1205 charter.61

Uncertainty about the extent of exemption privileges conveyedin general grants is also manifest in an inquest into murage collec-tion in Newcastle in 1281. In the course of the inquest, a jury notedthat local merchants, who “should have paid murage on theirmerchandise ... in the same way as foreigners,” stopped doing sosix months after collection had begun in the town.62 The Newcastleinquest is particularly interesting, because the jurors mentioned in


63 It is interesting to note that both Lincoln and York were particularlyturbulent in the 1280s and 1290s and that much of the turbulence had to dowith what the king and the less privileged members of the town were wont todescribe as oppressive abuses of their privileged status within their respectivetowns.

64 E. Lipson, The Economic History of England, 5th ed. (London: Black, 1929),1: 257.

65 William Hudson, ed., Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich during the

passing that local merchants stopped contributing when they learnedthat merchants in Lincoln and York did not pay murage in theirhome towns.63 The Newcastle verdict suggests that the issue was stillup in the air in the 1280s, long after the inauguration of publicworks tolls. It also implies that even on a merchant’s home turf,where privileges were most securely held, exemptions from toll werenot necessarily ironclad.

The third and final limit to the exemption rights of English mer-chants worth considering is simply that merchants did not alwaysinsist on the letter of the law.64 Fighting for recognition of privilegeswas usually an arduous affair that risked reprisals and protractedcourt battles. Towns frequently undertook the task of litigating onbehalf of an individual who had been forced to pay toll in contra-vention of the town’s charter, and there is certainly no shortage ofexamples documenting their commitment to defending their char-tered rights. But these manifestations of corporate vigilance andassertiveness in defense of toll exemptions have some curious fea-tures. Litigation sometimes recurs between two towns even after aroyal court has issued a definitive ruling on their respective tollrights. Litigation also sometimes occurs long after commercialrelationships had begun; in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centu-ries towns were still engaging in disputes related to priority of seisinand still invoking late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century charterswhen doing so. One can legitimately wonder if the lingering lackof certainty manifested in these types of litigation might have beencaused by the willingness of individual merchants to pay a fewpennies for the right to trade rather than to enter into a lengthydispute by insisting on their formal privileges. A merchant of Nor-wich made just such a decision in 1286 and was fined for his behav-ior in his local court. The court entry notes that he paid toll inmarkets and fairs “of his own accord” and thus damaged the town’sliberties.65 The temptation simply to get on with one’s affairs must


XIIIth and XIVth Centuries, Selden Society, vol. 5 (London: B. Quaritch, 1892),29-30.

66 Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets, 68-9.

have been considerable, and giving in to the temptation mustlikewise have been common enough to obscure what in theoryshould have been clear and unassailable commercial privileges.

Thus, while peasants in hinterland villages and petty urbantraders who were neither full citizens nor gild members undoubtedlyfeatured prominently among the payers of toll, they were by nomeans the only groups affected by the taxation of trade. The onlystatement that can be made with complete confidence on the matteris that the merchants who dominated gilds and town governmentsof the period ordinarily did not pay local tolls in their own town.(Had they not been exempt, the revenues cited above would havebeen significantly higher than they actually were, since local mer-chants were the most active commercial presence in every town’smarket.) But when they traded in another town, or even when theytraded in their own town while public works tolls were being col-lected, the situation became murkier. In these situations exemptionswere often claimed and often even allowed; they were, however,neither universal nor infallible. Exemptions were an important ele-ment of the period’s commercial mix, but they were sufficientlycircumscribed that merchants, even English merchants, frequentlycontended with demands for toll payments in the conduct of theirbusiness. The payment of toll was, in short, an issue that toucheda relatively broad constituency.

The Impact of Tolls on Trade

The breadth of this constituency probably goes a good way towardexplaining the sensitivity to tolls that can be found in the period.Medieval people were well aware that the level of toll rates couldaffect trade volumes and general prosperity. The founders of newmarkets, for example, sometimes encouraged traders to use theirfacilities by lowering or eliminating the tolls they were entitled tocollect, applying an economic rationale that is strikingly similar tothe reduced sales taxes offered in “urban enterprise zones” in manyAmerican cities today.66 The effectiveness of such a strategy can be


67 William Farrer and J. Brownbill, eds., The Victoria History of the County ofLancaster, 8 vols. (London: Constable, 1906-1914), 8: 350.

68 John Strachey et al., ed., Rotuli Parliamentorum; ut et Petitiones et Placitain Parliamento, Record Commission, 6 vols. (London: s.n., 1783), 1: 197, 412.

seen in a dispute over market rights in Lancashire: the abbot ofFurness maintained that his market in Dalton was losing much ofits trade because the holder of the market in Ulverston did notrequire traders to pay toll there, and the court accepted his argu-ment and quashed the upstart market.67 In a similar vein, the townsof Cockermouth and Grimsby presented formal parliamentary peti-tions pleading for the king to shut down nearby commercial siteswhere trading occurred without the payment of toll, claiming thattheir towns were greatly impoverished by the loss of revenue.68 Onehas to allow for some hyperbole in these petitions, but the behaviorthey describe and the measures they take to deal with the problemsuggest great sensitivity to the practices of toll collection.

This sensitivity is harder to account for than might appear at firstglance. Indeed, it is somewhat puzzling to contemplate the frequencyof surviving toll disputes in light of the fact that toll rates were solow. Nobody likes to pay taxes and perhaps one need go no furtherthan a general anti-tax sentiment to explain the sensitivity to tollsencountered in the period. But the vehemence and perseverancewith which toll rights were contested suggests that something morethan bellyaching about taxes was going on. The exaction of tolls—even tolls set at very low rates—was a serious matter, one that raisedimportant economic issues for the parties involved. The import ofthese issues can best be studied by disentangling the differentinterests of collectors and payers.

The economic interests of the collectors of tolls are probably theeasiest to diagnose. They had a natural desire to maximize their in-come. This can be viewed as a byproduct of simple greed, althoughthe wealthy merchants who controlled town governments alsoclaimed to be acting in the interests of the community, since theproceeds from tolls were used to underwrite their town’s annual farmand to finance the building and repair of its walls, streets andbridges. Whatever the motivation, achieving maximum income fromtolls required careful policy decisions. Raising rates was seldom anoption because of the general unwillingness to accept modificationsto custom, meaning that the central policy decisions revolved around


questions of who should be made to pay the customary rates andwhat sorts of transactions could be treated as subject to paymentsof toll. Even in these areas, though, toll collectors had to limit thescope of their ambitions. By the middle of the thirteenth centuryat the latest, commercial venues were so numerous that buyers andsellers were often able to choose where to conduct their business.If traders deemed a town’s toll collectors too aggressive or too arbi-trary, they would vote with their feet and revenues would suffer asa result: medieval commerce was remarkably adept at relocating inresponse to relatively small marginal incentives. A loss of trademeant more than a loss of toll income; it could also mean a lossof rental income, a loss of spin-off business, and a dearth of provi-sions for the inhabitants of the town. Thus while maximizing currentrevenues was certainly a high priority, those vested with authorityover tolls also paid heed to broader concerns about the economichealth of their town. In these circumstances, the best toll policy wasone that was vigorous but not overly zealous. Finding the rightbalance could not have been an easy thing to do.

For local traders active in retail and small-scale trade, even rela-tively low rates of toll could have a significant impact on householdincome. The regressive rates found in many toll schedules suggestthat the toll payments of smaller traders constituted a higher pro-portion of their market income than was true of wealthier mer-chants. But the real issue for people who sold goods in smallamounts was probably the frequency with which they had to pay tollrather than the regressive character of the rate schedule. Those whopurchased foodstuffs and other basic necessities were ordinarilyexempt, but those who sold simple commodities often had to complywith demands for toll, depending on the item and the scale of thetransaction. Many towns sold licenses to butchers, bakers, and otherartisans in lieu of collecting tolls on every transaction—a policy mostfamiliar from the routine fining of brewers and tapsters—but suchlicenses were seldom available outside the food trades. Nor were theyordinarily available to the peasants, victualers and petty traders whoresided in the town’s hinterland. These extramural traders were,however, less dependent on a single market than were the artisansand retailers living inside the walls, and they may have seen theirgreater choice in marketing venue as preferable to the payment ofa standard licensing fee.

Wholesale merchants had the luxury of viewing tolls from theperspective of the profitability of their trading ventures rather than


69 Cobb, ed., Local Port Book of Southampton, xii.70 Donald Sutherland, ed., The Eyre of Northamptonshire, 3-4 Edward III, A.D.

1329-30, 2 vols., Selden Society vols. 97, 98 (London: Selden Society,1981-82), 1: 243-44; Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) (London:H. M. Stationery Office, 1916), 1: 315-16.

71 The number of public works tolls in effect in 1300 has been calculatedfrom entries in Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office,AD 1292-1301 (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1895), passim. 1Dublin, Dro-gheda, and Clonmel are not included.

their immediate effect on household income, but like smaller-scalelocal traders their primary concern was more the frequency withwhich tolls had to be paid than the absolute rate imposed in anysingle place. One might sympathize, for example, with the plightof a wool merchant, whose best sources of supply were in the westand north of England, but whose primary shipping depots were inthe east. When carting his goods across the country, he was likelyto pass through one or more towns vested with the right to collectmurage or pontage, and several others that might endeavor toimpose local tolls on the wool. Further tolls were also likely to bedue in the port from which the wool was shipped: Southampton,for example, collected toll on all goods that passed through thetown on the way to its port and even collected toll twice if the goodswere not only brought into the town but sold there as well.69 Mer-chants sometimes sought detours around towns as a way of reducingthe number of tolls they had to pay, but towns took countermeasuresby setting up collecting stations at crossroads situated many milesfrom the town.70 We do not have itemized business records toestablish just how often toll was paid by any particular trader, butit is possible to establish how often a merchant would have encoun-tered demands for toll at any given time. In the year 1300, forexample, no fewer than 22 English towns were authorized to collectpublic works tolls, while hundreds of other towns and rural marketshad the right to collect local tolls.71 Merchants with good exemptionprivileges were probably able to avoid most local tolls, but publicworks tolls were another matter; they were hard to shirk and suffi-ciently widespread to make a real difference in a merchant’s bottomline.

The great proliferation of tolls that characterized the twelfth andthirteenth centuries is, consequently, a particularly important issueto address when assessing how tolls affected the overall health of


72 John Munro, Wool, Cloth, and Gold. The Struggle for Bullion in Anglo-Burgundian Trade 1340-1478 (Brussels and Toronto: Éditions de l'Universitéde Bruxelles 1972).

73 Royal oversight is particularly well documented in the multiple muragegrants obtained by Dublin. J. T. Gilbert, ed., Historic and Municipal Documentsof Ireland A.D. 1171-1320, Rolls Series 53 (London: Longmans, Green, & Co.,1870).

74 Strachey, Rotuli Parliamentorum, 1: 423.

the commercial economy in the period. Since it was the Englishcrown that introduced and expanded the use of public works tolls,one could reasonably conclude that royal policy posed a considerablethreat to the viability of commerce in the period. Indeed, one mighteven see a continuum in royal interference in trade relations overthe course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, one that beganwith the introduction of public works tolls in the 1210s, continuedthrough the imposition of a national customs system underEdward I, and ultimately led in the fourteenth century to the systemof staple ports and bullionism so well described by John Munro.72

But in the case of tolls, at least, the relationship between royalpolicy and commercial development is more complex than such atrajectory might suggest. For though the Crown was largely responsi-ble for extending the use of tolls, it was also committed to keepingthem within reasonable limits. This commitment can be seen inseveral ways. Public works tolls were, for example, carefully moni-tored to make sure that the money they produced actually went tothe projects they were intended to fund. The policy of limiting theirduration to a specified number of years points in the same direction.It is worth noting in this regard that the terminal dates of survivingmurage accounts indicate that towns adhered closely to the termsdefined in their grants. Many towns received extensions of theirterms, but their request for an extension was often accompanied bya scrutiny of what had been done with the earlier grant and some-times even an assessment of the condition of the walls or streets ear-marked for improvement.73 At times, the crown would even considerhow a new set of tolls might affect the general level of tolls in aparticular town or area. In 1324, Edward II turned down an entreatyfrom the burgesses of Scarborough to add murage and pavage duesto those they were already collecting for the repair of the town’squay, noting that “it would be too great a burden to people to havemurage and pontage in the same place where there is quayage.”74


75 C. T. Flower, ed., Curia Regis Rolls of the Reign of Richard I and John(London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1922), 1: 449-50.

76 Statutes of the Realm (London: G. Eyre and A. Strahan, 1810; reprintLondon: Dawson of Pall Mall,1963), 1: 34 (Statute of Westminster I, c. 31).

77 W. Illingworth and J. Caley, eds., Placita de Quo Warranto, RecordCommission (London: G. Eyre and A. Strahan, 1818), 160-61.

78 Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets, 109-20, has many examplesbut is not exhaustive.

In a similar vein, the crown made an effort to ensure that tollrates remained at low levels. This is apparent in the care taken todefine rates when making grants of public works tolls and also inthe policy of setting those rates below the customary local ratescharged in towns and markets. It also found more generalexpression in a broad supervision of toll collection practicesthroughout the kingdom as a whole. As early as 1201, a lawsuit wasfiled in the king’s court to challenge what the plaintiffs describedas a change in toll rates collected in a local market.75 Similar casescan be found throughout the thirteenth century and were commonenough to lead King Edward I to include a clause dealing with tollrates in the First Statute of Westminster of 1275.76 In the statute,the king denounced those who collected “outrageous toll, contraryto the common custom of the realm,” and threatened to terminatethe rights of any market-holder who charged rates that were deemedto be too high. Numerous enquiries related to the statute can befound in the Hundred Rolls of 1274 and the quo warranto pleas ofthe later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In 1330, forexample, a lengthy quo warranto investigation of commercial practicesin Derby established that the town required people residing outsidethe county to pay rates that were twice as high as those paid byinhabitants of the county.77 The town’s privileges were suspendedas a result and reinstated only after the payment of a heavy fine anda promise to end the practice of collecting “excessive” rates.

Many similar examples of the crown’s willingness to regulatemethods of toll collection and to intervene on behalf of those whopaid toll could be offered.78 The salient point, however, is not simplythat Angevin kings sometimes acted to protect the interests of tollpayers; it is rather that their commitment to action fostered aneconomic environment in which people by and large respected therules of the game. Toll collectors sometimes acted in ways that werearbitrary and capricious, but on the whole their behavior was based


on an ingrained acceptance of custom and routine rather than awillful flouting of rules. Even when disputes arose over aggressivetoll collection, they usually involved calculated actions undertakento stretch rather than break conventional boundaries. In other words,the form of both public prosecution and private litigation suggeststhat people by and large accepted the existence of norms governingthe rates that could be charged and the circumstances under whichtoll could be demanded. In most economies, the regularity andpredictability of the costs born in trade matter at least as much asthe absolute level of those costs. In the circumstances of medievalcommerce, tolls had the potential to undermine people’s ability tomake rational cost calculations in the conduct of trade, since theywere so widespread and so important to the bodies that collectedthem. Ultimately they did not play that role, at least not in England.They were prevented from doing so by an effective assertion ofpublic authority. The crown was not capable of ensuring cost cer-tainty for traders under its jurisdiction, but it did manage to estab-lish relatively narrow limits within which uncertainty fluctuated. Andin the circumstances of the time, it must be added, that was nomean feat.


APPENDIX

A Handlist of Medieval English Toll Lists Prior to AD 1350 inPublished Sources

A. Lists of Customary Local Tolls

Lewes, 1086 Domesday-Book, seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi Regis An-gliae, ed. Abraham Farley, 2 vols. (London: s.n., 1783), 1:26a.

London, late N. S. B. Gras, The Early English Customs System (Cambridge,eleventh cent. Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1918), 153-5.

Newcastle, The Percy Chartulary, ed. M. T. Martin, Surtees Society 1171100-1135 (Durham: Published for the Society by Andrews and Co.,

1911), 333-4.

Cardiff, British Borough Charters, 1042-1216, ed. A. Ballard (Cam-1147-1183 bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1913), 177-78.

Yaxley, 1201 Curia Regis Rolls of the Reigns of Richard I and John, ed. C.T. Flower, 7 vols. (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1923-1935), 1: 449-50.

Torksey, 1228 Gras, Early English Customs System, 155-8.

Exeter, c. 1240 The Anglo-Norman Customal of Exeter, ed. J. W. Schopp andR. C. Easterling (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1925), 24.The list is incomplete.

Okehampton, British Borough Charters, ed. Ballard, 178.1194-1242

Southwark, Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) preserved in1266 the Public Record Office, 1226-1377, 3 vols. (London: H. M.

Stationery Office, 1916-1937), 1: 103.

London, 1266 Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis: Liber Albus, Liber Custu-marum, et Liber Horn, ed. H. T. Riley, Chronicles and Me-morials of Great Britain and Ireland during the MiddleAges no. 12, 3 vols. in 4 (London: Longman, Brown,Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859-62), 1: 229-36.


Dartmouth, Rotuli Hundredorum temporibus Henrici III et Edwardi I in Tur-1272 ri Londinensi et in Curia Receptae Scacarii Westmonasterii Asser-

vati, ed. W. Illingworth and J. Caley, Record Commission,2 vols. (London, 1812-1818), 1: 90.

Hornsea, 1272 Rotuli Hundredorum, 1: 106.

Winchester, The Ancient Usages of the City of Winchester, ed. J. S. Furleyc. 1275 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1927), 32-42.

Huntingdon, Placita de Quo Warranto, ed. W. Illingworth and J. Caley,1286 Record Commission (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1818),

302.

Fordwich, C. E. Woodruff, A History of the Town and Port of Fordwichante 1290 (Canterbury: Cross and Jackman, [1895]), 32-5. (Dated on

the basis of references to Jews).

King's Lynn, Dorothy Owen, The Making Of King's Lynn, Records of So-c. 1290 cial and Economic History, new series 9 (Oxford: Oxford

Univ. Press, 1984), 99-102.

Ipswich, 1291 Black Book of the Admiralty with an Appendix, ed. TravisTwiss, Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain andIreland during the Middle Ages no. 55, 4 vols. (London:Public Record Office, 1871-76), 2 (Appendix, Part 2):184-207.

Bristol, The Great Red Book of Bristol, ed. E. M. W. Veale, Bristolc. 1300 Record Society Publications, vols. 2, 4, 8, 16, 18 (Bristol:

Bristol Corporation, 1931-53), 4: 90-1. Rates applied onlyto trade with Southampton.

Norwich, The Records of the City of Norwich, ed. William Hudson andc. 1300 John Tingey, 2 vols. (Norwich: Jarrold and Sons, 1906-

1910), 2: 199-205.

Romney, Register of Daniel Rough, ed. K. M. E. Murray, Kent Recordsc. 1300(?) 16 (Ashford: Printed for the Records Branch [of the Kent

Archaeological Society], 1945), 28-35.

Sandwich, William Boys, Collection for an History of Sandwich (Canter-c. 1300 bury: By Author, 1792), 435-40.


Southampton, The Oak Book of Southampton, ed. P. Studer, 2 vols., Publi-c. 1300 cations of the Southampton Record Society nos. 10 and

11 (Southampton: Record Society, 1910-11), 2: 2-17.

Berwick, 1303 Gras, Early English Customs System, 164-7.

Ipswich, 1303 Gras, Early English Customs System, 159-63.

London, Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis, ed. Riley, 1: 223-9.1272-1307

Manchester, Mamecestre: Being Chapters From the Early Recorded History 1320 ... of Manchester, ed. John Harland, Chetham Society vols.

53, 56, and 58, 3 vols. (Manchester: s.n., 1861-1862), 2:282-3.

Chester, 1321 Rupert H. Morris, Chester in the Plantagenet and TudorReigns (Chester: The Author, n.d.), 554-58.

Southampton, Oak Book of Southampton, ed. Studer, 18-27. Rates applied1329 only to trade with Salisbury.

Derby, 1330 Placita de Quo Warranto, ed. Illingworth and Caley, 160-1.

Measham, 1330 Placita de Quo Warranto, ed. Illingworth and Caley, 146.

Bakewell, 1330 Placita de Quo Warranto, ed. Illingworth and Caley, 140.

Oundle, 1330 Placita de Quo Warranto, ed. Illingworth and Caley, 553.

Peterborough, Placita de Quo Warranto, ed. Illingworth and Caley, 552.1330

Ipswich, 1340 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) Preserved inthe Public Record Office (London: Public Record Office,1916), 2: 421.

B. Public Works Tolls

Note: The editors of the patent rolls included lists of tolls granted to financepublic works in the volumes covering the years 1216-1225 and 1225-1232.Subsequent volumes calendared the grants of tolls, but did not include thelists of commodities and rates appended to the grants. A number of these


later lists have, however, been published in other venues. Rather than recordeach early list separately, I have summarized the material available in theearly volumes of the printed calendar, and then furnished individual entriesfor later lists.

Great Britain, Public Record Office, Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III Pre-served in the Public Record Office, A.D. 1216-1225 (London: Public RecordOffice, 1901): Shrewsbury, 1220 (238-9); Waterford, 1224 (433); Shrewsbury,1224 (445); Stafford, 1224 (459); Northampton, 1224 (499); Scarborough,1225 (508-9); Lincoln, 1225 (518); Worcester, 1225 (555-6).

Great Britain, Public Record Office, Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III Pre-served in the Public Record Office, A.D. 1225-1232 (London: Public RecordOffice, 1903): York, 1226 (32); Bridgnorth, 1227 (116); “Feria” bridge, York-shire, 1227 (173-4); Drogheda Bridge, 1227 (182); Hereford, 1228 (228);Worcester, 1229 (253); Hereford, 1230 (343); Hithe, 1232 (477); Gloucester,1232 (479); Bristol, 1232 (483).

London Calendar of Letter Books Preserved among the Archives of themurage, 1279 Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall. Letter-Books

A-F, ed. Reginald Sharpe (London: E.J. Francis, 1899-1904), Letter Book A, 222-3.

Dublin Historic and Municipal Documents of Ireland, A.D. 1172-1320,murage, 1284 ed. J. T. Gilbert, Chronicles and Memorials of Great

Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages no. 53 (Lon-don: Longmans, Green & Co, 1870), 189-90.

Dublin Historic and Municipal Documents of Ireland, ed. Gilbert,murage, 1295 191-4.


Dublin Historic and Municipal Documents of Ireland, ed. Gilbert,pavage, 1302- 218-21.1303



London Calendar of Letter Books, ed. Sharpe, Letter Book E, 63-6.murage, 1315


Peterborough Peterborough Local Administration, ed. W. T. Mellows, North-pavage, 1315 ampton Record Society 9 (Northampton: s.n., 1939), 233-4.

Drogheda Historic and Municipal Documents of Ireland, ed. Gilbert,murage, 1318 413-17.

Newark England from 1000 to 1760, ed. H. E. S. Fisher and A. R.pavage, 1328 J. Jurica, Documents in English Economic History (Lon-

don: G. Bell, 1977), 237-8.

Bristol Henry Bush, Bristol Town Duties (Bristol: J. M.Gutch, 1828),quayage, 1331 88-9.

Peterborough Peterborough Local Administration, ed. Mellows, 233-4.pontage, 1334

Gloucester Calendar of the Records of the Corporation of Gloucester, ed. W.pavage, 1334 H. Stevenson (Gloucester: J. Bellows, 1893), 50-2.

Gloucester Calendar of the Records of the Corporation of Gloucester, ed.murage, 1345 Stevenson, 54-5.

C. Fair Tolls

St. Ives, 1252 Ellen Wedemeyer Moore, The Fairs of Medieval England. AnIntroductory Study, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,Studies and Texts 72 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute ofMediaeval Studies, 1985), 197.

Winchester, A Charter of Edward the Third Confirming and Enlarging the1349 Privileges of St. Giles Fair, Winchester, AD 1349 (Winchester:

s.n., 1886), 39-40. Summarized in Moore, Fairs of MedievalEngland, 197.

x

EXPENDITURE AND WAR

x

1 Robert D. Smith and Kelly DeVries, The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy,1363-1477 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005), in which some of thefollowing is discussed and elaborated on.

CALCULATING PROFITS AND LOSSES DURING THEHUNDRED YEARS WAR: WHAT REALLY FORCED PHILIP

THE GOOD FROM THE WAR?

Kelly DeVries

I first became concerned with war financing when I took Dr. JohnMunro’s seminar at the University of Toronto twenty years ago. Hislengthy bibliography and the seminar discussion opened my mindto ways of looking at medieval warfare which I have profited fromever since. This was followed by one of my first medieval historical“reality checks,” when in approaching John with a project concern-ing a data base of some 4,400 Burgundian gunpowder weaponsdating from 1410 to 1477, many listed with costs, and planning tomake a comparative study of these costs, the reality of Burgundianmonetarism was pointed out to me. The fluctuation of such currencyover this period, especially as it was not currency but currencies thatthese records report, made such a study nearly impossible, I wastold. From that conversation, too, I profited, and I am sure that itwill come as a relief to John that when, finally, my study of Burgun-dian gunpowder weapons, co-written by Robert D. Smith of theRoyal Armouries, was published in 2005, it also lacked any compara-tive cost analysis of the gunpowder weapons of the four Valois dukesof Burgundy.1

Nevertheless, I have still remained interested in the financing ofwarfare, and especially how such affected and effected military policy,strategy, and tactics. This should be a matter of immense impor-tance, yet I am ashamed to admit that military historians have notpaid enough attention to economic matters. In my Cumulative Biblio-graphy of Medieval Military History and Technology, which comes in at1045 pages, only three of those pages are devoted to war financingin general with an additional four pages devoted specifically to

188 KELLY DEVRIES

2 Kelly DeVries, A Cumulative Bibliography of Medieval Military History andTechnology (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 262-5, 398-402; an update, published in 2005,A Cumulative Bibliography of Medieval Military History and Technology Update 2004(Leiden: Brill, 2005), adds only six more references (46, 73, 204).

3 Although several new studies of this conflict appeared in 2002, with theseven hundred year anniversary of the battle of Courtrai (see CumulativeBibliography Update, 232-4), none of these discussed the financing of therebellion. In this author’s opinion, the most complete studies of the 1302-1305rebellion remain J. F. Verbruggen’s De slag der guldensporen: Bijdrage tot degeschiedenis van Vlaanderens vrijheidsoorlog, 1297-1305 (Antwerp: N. V. StandaardBoekhandel, 1952)—now translated as The Battle of the Golden Spurs: Courtrai,11 July 1302, ed. Kelly DeVries, trans. David Richard Ferguson (Woodbridge:The Boydell Press, 2002)—and Vlaanderen naar de Guldensporenslag (Bruges:Westvlaamse Gidsenkring, 1991).

4 Christopher Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War

financing in the Hundred Years War.2 Perhaps for the earlier MiddleAges this is excusable; there are no extant records that can be usedto study the financing of William the Conqueror’s conquest ofEngland. Indeed, I found that even trying to determine the financ-ing behind the Flemish rebellion of 1302-1305, the project I eventu-ally attempted for John’s course, was nearly impossible—Bruges paidfor the majority of it, with Ypres and Courtrai in for a chunk,anything more detailed was undetectable.3

But for the later Middle Ages, and especially the Hundred YearsWar, it seems that we should know more about the military finan-cing. It was fought for a long period of time, over the reign ofseveral kings and magnates; there were several lands involved; extantrecords are more numerous; and military actions, winners and losers,are more clearly identified, as are the causes of these victories anddefeats. Still, this has made little impact on the scholarship. Of theprominent general studies of the war in any language, none, saveChristopher Allmand’s The Hundred Years War, have the slightestdiscussion on the financing of the conflict, from either the Englishor French side, let alone from any of the other lands involved:Scotland, Burgundy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and the various LowCountries entities. Allmand’s book does consider the subject, in eightpages, although he discusses only “Taxation and Fiscal Institutions”and hides it in the middle of his section on “The Institutions ofWar.” Furthermore, most of his examples in this chapter come notfrom any king ruling during the war, but from the reign of Philipthe Fair, and not a single word is devoted to the financing of thefifteenth-century warfare.4 Sometimes, this neglect can become quite

189HUNDRED YEARS WAR

c. 1300-c. 1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 102-11. Syn-theses on the Hundred Years War that exclude any discussion on financinginclude Joseph Calmette and Eugène Déprez, Histoire du Moyen Age, vol. 7,part 1, La France et l’Angleterre en conflit (Paris: Presses Universitaires deFrance, 1937); Edouard Perroy, The Hundred Years War, trans. W. B. Wells(New York: Oxford University Press, 1951); Alfred H. Burne, The Crecy War:A Military History of the Hundred Years War from 1337 to the Peace of Bretigny,1360 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955); Alfred H. Burne, The AgincourtWar: A Military History of the Latter Part of the Hundred Years War from 1369 to1453 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1956); André Leguai, La guerre de centans (Paris: Editions Fernand Nathan, 1974); Philippe Contamine, La guerre decent ans, 3rd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1977); DesmondSeward, The Hundred Years War: The English in France, 1337-1453 (New York:Atheneum, 1978); Jean Favier, La guerre de cent ans (Paris: Fayard, 1980);Robin Neillands, The Hundred Years War (London: Routledge, 1990); and AnneCurry, The Hundred Years War, 2nd ed. (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan,2003).

5 Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 338-70, and Clifford J. Rogers, WarCruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327-1360 (Woodbridge:The Boydell Press, 2000), 199-216.

6 On the desire to return to combat by the end of 1341 see Michael Prest-wich, “English Armies in the Early Stages of the Hundred Years War: AScheme in 1341,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 56 (1983):102-13.

absurd. In the last thirteen years two major studies on the firstdecade of the war have been published, Jonathan Sumption’s TheHundred Years War: Trial by Battle, and Clifford Rogers’ War Crueland Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327-1360, with bothdetermining the cause of Edward III’s failure at the siege of Tournaias the unwillingness of his Parliament to pay for the sustained siege,despite the town being on the verge of defeat.5 Yet, neither detailswhat forms of financing there were, why such financing was solelyin the hands of Parliament, why Edward had not arranged his finan-cing more completely before he left England, why England waspaying for the siege alone when Flemish, Brabantese, Hainaulter,and German allied forces were also involved, probably in greaternumbers than the English, and, finally, why if his war financing wassuch a hardship in 1340, it was well in hand by 1341 when Edwardwas prepared to make yet another assault on the continent.6 (As onemight guess from my criticism, my own study of the failure of thesiege of Tournai has determined a different cause, the breakingapart of the southern Low Countries and German alliance, with the

190 KELLY DEVRIES

7 Kelly DeVries, “Contemporary Views of Edward III's Failure at the Siegeof Tournai, 1340,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 39 (1995): 70-105.

8 K. B. McFarlane, “War, the Economy and Social Change: England andthe Hundred Years War,” in England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays(London: Hambledon, 1981), 139-50, and M. M. Postan, “The Costs of theHundred Years War,” Past and Present 27 (1964): 34-53.

9 See, among others, Harry A. Miskimin, Money and Power in Fifteenth-Century France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984); and John Bell Hen-neman, Royal Taxation in Fourteenth Century France: The Development of WarFinancing, 1322-1356 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971) and RoyalTaxation in Fourteenth-Century France: The Captivity and Ransom of John II, 1356-1370 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1976).

10 Philippe Contamine, “La guerre de cent ans en France: une approcheéconomique,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 47 (1974): 125-49.See also Contamine’s Guerre, état et société à la fin du moyen âge: Études sur lesarmées des rois de France, 1337-1494 (Paris: Mouton, 1972).

defection of the Brabantese).7 I could go on. Suffice it to say, thatmost scholars who have written about the English side have beeninterested in the subject of Hundred Year War financing as a “bigpicture,” considering the war as a whole, the McFarlanes and Pos-tans, with few considering smaller instances of war financing andtheir effects on the fighting of the war.8 About France the oppositehas been the case: there more studies have appeared consideringsmaller examples of war financing and their limited effects, eitherchronological or geographical.9 Only Philippe Contamine has at-tempted to take a larger look at the “cost” of the Hundred YearsWar, and his “approaches,” as he calls them, so far have been moretheoretical than substantive.10

Interestingly, scholars discussing the Hundred Years War fromthe Burgundian or Low Countries’ perspective have done a far betterjob of investigating the profits and losses of the Hundred Years War.Although most of these studies have been focused on smaller situa-tions, there are so many of them that I was recently able to combineseveral together to present a larger perspective on how the economiccosts seem not to have mattered in determining the number ofrebellions of the Southern Low Countries’ towns during the four-teenth and fifteenth centuries. This brings me back to Dr. Munro.None of the studies mentioned above have suggested any deter-mination of military strategy or tactics, except for an article by JohnMunro, “An Economic Aspect of the Collapse of the Anglo-Burgundian Alliance, 1428-1442,” which appeared in the EnglishHistorical Review in 1970 and which was extended later in his book,


11 While this article focuses on the economic woes created by Philip’sfailures in these sieges, I discuss the military situation created in theforthcoming “The Effect on the Hundred Years War of Philip the Good’sFailures at Compiègne (1430) and Calais (1436).”

Wool, Cloth, and Gold: The Struggle for Bullion in Anglo-BurgundianTrade, 1340-1478, published two years later. Now, I will not attemptto summarize Munro’s article or book, I only wish to say that hesuggests that economics had something to do with the break-up ofthe Anglo-Burgundian alliance in 1435, the agreed upon “turningpoint” of the Hundred Years War.

I agree with John. But I want to take it a step further, and alsolook at the issue a bit deeper, meaning that Duke Philip the Goodof Burgundy does not simply abandon his English allies in 1435,a process which I see beginning with his failure at the siege ofCompiègne in 1430, that first creates a negative economic dividebetween Burgundy and England, but, after his failure at the siegeof Calais in 1436, which increases his war financing problems, healso abandons the French, to turn his military focus towards the LowCountries and the economic problems he has created for himselfthere by his Hundred Year War decisions in 1430-1436. It wasPhilip’s abandonment of the English that meant they would neverwin the war, but that it was his abandonment of the French thatmeant the war would not be over quickly; instead it would last until1453.11

First, to the two failed Burgundian sieges and their financingproblems. Almost anyone who knows even the most meager historyof the Hundred Years War will know that 1430 was not the best yearfor the English. The previous year a young peasant woman, ironi-cally born and raised in Burgundian territory, appeared saying thatshe had received a mission from God to free occupied France fromits English occupiers. To the Burgundians, Joan of Arc posed littleproblem. But to the English, she was a military disaster, the like ofwhich they had never seen before nor, one might add, after. Joanof Arc menaced them. Less than a week after she had arrived atOrléans, she had relieved the English siege of that town, an incredi-bly difficult task considering that they were in control of the fortifiedbridgehead across the Loire, the Tourelles. A month later, sheremoved the remaining English forces from their Loire strong-holds—at Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, and Beaugency—and had won

192 KELLY DEVRIES

12 On the military life and leadership of Joan of Arc see Kelly DeVries, Joanof Arc: A Military Leader (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999).

13 One extant letter is preserved in the Archives du Nord in Lille. It is edi-ted in Jules Quicherat, ed., Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanned’Arc dite la Pucelle, 5 vols. (Paris: Jules Renouard et Cie., 1841-1849), 5: 126-7, and Régine Pernoud and Marie-Véronique Clin, Joan of Arc: Her Story,trans. and rev. J. D. Adams (New York, 1998), 253-4. I have used thetranslation found in Pernoud and Clin, Joan of Arc, 67-8. See also DeVries,Joan of Arc, 139.

14 Richard Vaughan, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (London: Long-mans, 1970), 17.

15 This plan is in the Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 1278, fols. 12-14. Itis edited in part in Pierre Champion, Guillaume de Flavy: Captaine de Com-piègne: Contribution à l’histoire de Jeanne d’Arc et à l’étude de la vie militaire etprivée au XVe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1906), no. 30, and translatedin part in Vaughan, Philip the Good, 22-4.

the battle of Patay. Then, shortly after, she led an army to Reims,capturing towns along the way, where Charles the Dauphin wascrowned King Charles VII of France.12 All during this time, Joanand, after his coronation, Charles VII, made entreaties for peacetowards the Burgundians.13

What Joan of Arc and Charles VII did not offer Philip the Good,however, the English leader in France, John, duke of Bedford, did:money. By the end of 1429, Bedford was desperate for Burgundianassistance. The reverses suffered by the English at the hands of Joanof Arc in that year were more significant than any in the last fiftyyears. He needed to halt their progress before the English lost anymore territory. So, Bedford needed Philip and, when the Burgun-dian duke demanded payment in return for services, the Englishleader was forced to ensure that the Burgundians would get it. And,indeed, Philip the Good did: by the end of 1431 he had been paid£150,000, although he was still owed £100,000.14 Obviously, moneywas a more important incentive to the Burgundian duke than Joanof Arc’s or Charles VII’s prospect of peace or French unity.

With this settlement, the Anglo-Burgundian alliance was onceagain in force. A detailed and intricate military plan was agreed on,indicating how those lands currently held were to be apportionedand by whom governed, and what new military targets were to beundertaken.15 The Burgundian army then set out against its firstobjective, Compiègne. Compiègne, like several ungarrisoned Frenchtowns, had joined with Charles VII after he had been crowned. Yet,despite staying in the town for several days before Joan of Arc’s


16 DeVries, Joan of Arc, 153-4.17 DeVries, Joan of Arc, 166-70.18 This is discussed more completely in Smith and DeVries, The Artillery of

the Dukes of Burgundy.19 Jehan de Waurin, Récueil des croniques et anchiennes istories de la Grant Bre-

taigne, ed. W. and E. L. C. P. Hardy, 5 vols. (London: Her Majesty’sStationery Office; rpt. Wiesbaden: Kraus Reprint Ltd., 1864-91), 3: 362;Enguerran Monstrelet, Chronique, ed. L. Douet-d'Arcq, 6 vols. (Paris: Mme. J.Renouard, 1857-1862), 4: 418-9; Georges Chastellain, Œuvres, ed. Kervyn deLettenhove, 8 vols. (Brussels: F. Heussner, 1863-66), 2: 53; and AntonioMorosini, Chronique: Extraits relatifs à l’histoire de France, trans. and ed. L.Dorez (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1898-1902), 3: 319-23. See also DeVries,Joan of Arc, 169-70, and Claude Gaier, L’industrie et le commerce des armes dansles anciennes principautés belges du XIIIème à la fin du XVème siècle (Paris: Sociétéd’Edition “Les Belles Lettres”, 1973), 111.

20 Philippe Contamine, “La guerre de siège au temps de Jeanne d'Arc,”Dossiers d’archéologie 34 (May 1979): 16.

attack on Paris, Charles retreated to his Loire River holdings follow-ing her failure to take Paris, abandoning Compiègne and the othertowns in the region which had joined him.16

Philip the Good may have thought that as Compiègne had goneover so easily to Charles, it might just as easily leave him, especiallyas he had, it seems, so quickly abandoned the town. However,Compiègne was not going to abandon the French king. The peopleof the town received news in March 1430 that Philip was planningto lay siege to Compiègne and decided that they would not surren-der to him. They chose to remain French even though that meantthat they would have to resist attempts to capture their town. Thecitizens of Compiègne began to stockpile supplies and weapons. Suchbravery inspired Joan of Arc who felt that she had been held backfrom military engagements since the beginning of the year. Eventu-ally she joined the townspeople in the defense of their town, arrivingthere before the Burgundians.17

Philip had amassed a large army and an impressive artillerytrain.18 At this date, there was perhaps no power with a stronger ormore numerous gunpowder weaponry arsenal than the Burgundians,and almost all of it was directed at Compiègne. Contemporary chro-niclers report the existence of at least five large bombards, twoveuglaires, one large and one small, innumerable couloverines, andtwo “engins” among the besieging Burgundian army;19 other sourcesrecord the transportation of at least 17,000 lbs. of gunpowder withthe artillery train.20 Extant artillery comptes for the Burgundian forces

194 KELLY DEVRIES

21 Quoted in Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, 49 n.10.22 Joan of Arc gave the best account of this at her trial (in Quicherat, Procès

de condamnation, 1: 207-8). See also DeVries, Joan of Arc, 176.23 DeVries, Joan of Arc, 176-82.

have shown that these tallies are far too low. But this show ofmilitary technology did not intimidate either Joan of Arc orGuillaume de Flavy, the governor of Compiègne and leader of itsdefense effort. The fortifications of the town were very strong.Additionally, the defenders of Compiègne had their own gunpowderweaponry arsenal, and they had prepared their defenses to use itby destroying any superfluous fortifications which might hinder gun-fire. These guns would prove very effective, particularly, as reportedby an anonymous eyewitness, “the great number of small engines,called coulovrines, which were made of bronze and which fired leadballs.” He even boasted that these balls were able to penetrate thearmor of a man-at-arms.21 This was not going to be a quick siege,but the Burgundian leaders, especially Jean of Luxembourg, felt thatthey could still achieve a victory, even against such a fortified loca-tion and even against Joan of Arc.

The actual defeat of Joan was accomplished quite easily. Notaccustomed to stand behind walls in a defensive posture, on 23 May1430, with a small group of soldiers, she decided to ride out of thetown and strike into the Burgundian army. What she hoped toaccomplish with this misguided tactic, no one has adequately ex-plained, for it was unsuccessful and she was captured.22 Her captureproved to be worth 10,000 livres tournois to Jean of Luxembourg,whose men had captured her, the sum the English paid for herransom. A little more than a year after she had been captured, on30 May 1431, Joan of Arc was burned to death as a heretic in themarket-place of Rouen.23

However, the capture of Compiègne was quite another matter.In fact, it never did occur. Despite the large number of gunpowderweapons which Philip the Good had at the siege, and the constantbombardment against the town, its walls, gates, and inhabitants, thetown did not capitulate. All contemporary narrative sources recordthat the Burgundian guns were very powerful and very destructive.Enguerran Monstrelet describes a siege where the Burgundians builta large bastille or boulevard of earth, a bow-shot from the town, inwhich they set up their gunpowder weapons. These were aimed


24 Monstrelet, Chronique, 4: 390-91. See also Waurin, Récueil, 3: 361-3, 385-9; Chastellain, Œuvres, 2: 53, and Morosini, Chronique, 3: 319-23.

25 Le livre des trahisons de France envers la maison de Bourgogne, in Chroniquesrelatives à l'histoire de la Belgique sous la domination des ducs de Bourgogne (textsfrançais), ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels: M. Hayez, 1873), 176. See alsoWaurin, Récueil, 3: 388-9.

against Compiègne “which, because of the continuation of largestones which they fired, disrupted and breached the gates, bridge,mills, and boulevard of the town in many places.” The mills ceasedto mill; and one gunshot even killed Louis de Flavy, the brother ofthe governor, Guillaume. Mines also were attempted and failed.24

Still, Guillaume de Flavy continued to defend diligently the wallsand the boulevard. According to both Le livre des trahisons de Franceenvers la maison de Bourgogne and Jean de Waurin, the gunpowderweapons of the townspeople seemed to have been as effective asthose of the Burgundians, with “one cannon mounted on the wall”killing ten or twelve besiegers.25

Throughout the summer the siege of Compiègne went on. Thejoy of capturing Joan of Arc was soon forgotten, and the ploddingof the constant conflict must have worn on the soldiers. Surprisingly,little fatigue seems to have afflicted the besieged; who seem to havebeen well provided for, despite being encircled by hostile forces. Nocontemporary source even mentions hunger being a problem insidethe town, thus missing a narrative topos so prevalent in accounts ofother Hundred Year War sieges. On the other hand, the besiegerswere both fatigued and tormented by their inability to conquer thesite. Suddenly, and really without an adequate explanation in anyof the original sources, the Burgundians abandoned the siege. Infact they abandoned it so quickly that they left behind their numer-ous gunpowder artillery pieces which the inhabitants of Compiègnequickly captured and brought within the gates. What actually hap-pened is truly one of the biggest mysteries of the Hundred YearsWar. Monstrelet claims that it was a decision made by Jean ofLuxembourg, the Burgundian general at the siege, the count ofHontiton, and “many other notables in their company.” But, if thiswas the case, why did they leave with such speed that they aban-doned “a very large number of large bombards, cannons, veuglaires,serpentines, coulovrines, and other artillery which were left in thehands of the French, their adversaries?” Monstrelet ends his account:

196 KELLY DEVRIES

26 Monstrelet, Chronique, 4: 418-9.27 Le livre des trahisons de France envers la maison de Bourgogne, 176.28 Vaughan, Philip the Good, 24.29 Champion, Guillaume de Flavy, 42-58, 162-82.30 See, for example, Burne, The Agincourt War; Sir Charles W.C. Oman, A

History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, vol. 2 (London: Methuen, 1924; rpt.London: Greenhill Books, 1998); and Ferdinand Lot, L’art militaire et les arméesau moyen-âge en Europe et dans le proche orient (Paris: Payot, 1946).

31 Monstrelet, Chronique, 4: 419.

“This artillery was the duke of Burgundy’s!”26 Jean de Waurin isequally confused and offers the same surprise at the abandoning of“a large quantity of large bombards, cannons, veuglaires, serpentines,and other artillery which fell into the hands of the enemy.” Theauthor of Le livre des trahisons de France envers la maison de Bourgogneprofesses that it was the defensive gunfire which “convinced themto retreat.”27 Still, this can hardly be the sole or even the primaryreason for such a quick withdrawal.

Modern authors are equally befuddled at the Burgundian retreat.Richard Vaughan suggests only that the Burgundians “were forced”to leave;28 Pierre Champion praises the inhabitants of Compiègneand especially their governor and military leader, Guillaume deFlavy, whose reputation he was trying to rehabilitate from one who“gave up” Joan of Arc;29 surprisingly, many do not even record thesiege, except for its relationship to the soon-to-be martyred SaintJoan;30 and none mention the Burgundian financing problems thatresulted from the defeat.

Yet, the failure of the Burgundians to capture Compiègne, withits attendant loss of gunpowder artillery, was of enormous impor-tance both to the next phase of the Hundred Years War and,especially, to the relationship between the Burgundians and theEnglish, at whose behest the duke of Burgundy was undertaking thesiege. Although Monstrelet reports that Jean of Luxembourg wascondemned for his actions by Philip the Good,31 the duke himselffelt that blame for the military debacle should be laid firmly at thefeet of the English. In a letter written 4 November 1430 by Philipto Henry VI, he clearly makes this known:

Most redoubted lord, I recommend myself to you in all humility. Iimagine that you and your councillors remember that it was at yoururgent request that I took part in your French war. For my part, I


32 This was the sum agreed to by the duke of Bedford before the siege.33 This letter is edited in Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the

English in France during the Reign of Henry VI, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols. in 3(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office; reprint Wiesbaden: Kraus ReprintLtd., 1965), 2.1: 156-64. The partial translation I am using comes fromVaughan, Philip the Good, 24-5.

have so far accomplished everything that I agreed to and promisedin the indenture made between ... the cardinal of England [HenryBeaufort], acting in your name, and myself. It is a fact that, as aresult, all my lands both in Burgundy and Picardy have been and areat war and in danger of destruction ... Moreover, it was at your requestand command that I undertook the siege of Compiègne, though thiswas contrary to the advice of my council and my own opinion. Forit had seemed to us better for me to advance towards Creil and Laon,as appears in the recommendations drawn up on this and sent toCalais by our secretary Master Jehan Milet.

It is also true, most redoubted lord, that, according to the agreementdrawn up on your part with my people, you ought to have paid methe sum of 19,500 francs of royal money each month for the expensesof my troops before Compiègne, as well as the cost of the artillery;while my good cousin the earl of Huntingdon with his company oughtto have remained with me before the said town of Compiègne ...32 Itwas under the impression that this would be done on your part, andespecially that the said payment would be made without fail, as agreed,that I had my men stationed before Compiègne all the time.

But, most redoubted lord, these payments have not been kept up byyou, for they are in arrears to the tune of two months. The same goesfor the artillery, for which I myself paid out over 40,000 saluts...Likewise, my good cousin of Huntingdon has been unable, accordingto him, for want of payment, to keep his forces in the field any longer...

My redoubted lord, I cannot continue these [military operations]without adequate provision in future from you ... and without paymentof what is due to me, both on account of the two months above-mentioned, and for the artillery. Thus most redoubted lord, I ask andentreat you most humbly to see that the said sums are paid over atonce to my people at Calais who have been waiting there for thispurpose for some time ...33

198 KELLY DEVRIES

34 I think that Joyceline Gledhill Dickinson (The Congress of Arras, 1435: AStudy in Medieval Diplomacy [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955]) does an excellentjob of examining the Congress of Arras from the Anglo-French perspectives,with some correcting by the various essayists in Denis Clauzel, Charles Giry-Deloison, and Christophe Leduc, ed., Arras et la diplomatie européenne, XVe-XVIesiècles (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 1999). But neither she nor those in thelatter work analyze the Congress from Philip’s position. Nor, in my view, doesVaughan, Philip the Good, 98-107. I have attempted to do this briefly in myand Bob Smith’s The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy, and plan to return laterto it.

The Anglo-Burgundian relationship, perhaps never an entirely solidone during the reign of Philip the Good, was irreparably damagedat Compiègne for a lack of promised financing. By the way, al-though it appears that some of the promised funds were eventuallypaid, the costs of the artillery lost to the French, for which Philipasked to be recompensed, never was paid.

Let me jump to 1436 and the siege of Calais. There is of coursemuch history in between the failed siege at Compiègne and that atCalais, including, most importantly, the Congress of Arras, wherePhilip the Good led the Burgundians away from the alliance theyhad had since before the assassination of Philip’s father, John theFearless, in 1419. I do not have the time to go into this in depth,except to suggest that it was not so much a Burgundian treasonagainst the French, as Joyceline Gledhill Dickinson and others havesuggested, as it was an attempt by the duke to bring the two sidestogether and their obstinacy which caused his reversal of previouspolicy.34

In 1436, Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy proved beyond anydoubt that the Anglo-Burgundian alliance was at an end when hedirected his largest army and artillery train yet assembled to attackCalais. This important coastal town had since 1347 been securelyheld in the hands of the English. Its symbolism may even have out-weighed its strategic significance. Had Philip successfully besiegedCalais, following so closely on the heels of their diplomatic defeatat the Congress of Arras, the English would surely have changedtheir strategic plans for the future of the Hundred Years War.Instead, the siege of Calais was a resounding defeat for the Bur-gundians.

Philip began to formalize his plan in January 1436. Because oflogistical problems, whenever a leader needed to gather a largenumber of gunpowder artillery pieces, as the siege of Calais re-


35 This quote comes from a document written by an English spy (Archivesdépartementales du Nord, B10401, fol. 29) with a complete transcription inVaughan, Philip the Good, 75-80.

36 Monique Sommé, “L'armée Bourguignonne au siège de Calais de 1436,”in Guerre et société en France, en Angleterre et en Bourgogne XIVe-XVe siècle, ed.P. Contamine et al. (Lille: Centre d'histoire de la région du Nord et del'Europe du Nord-Ouest, Université Charles de Gaulle Lille III, 1991), 203.

quired, a longer planning time was necessary. In this case theBurgundians had no central artillery arsenal, and thus had to amasshis gunpowder weapons from smaller, local armories. Most of theguns used at the siege of Calais were supplied from the Low Coun-tries, especially from the counties of Flanders, Holland, Picardy, andArtois. There were also four hundred ships, not including additionalsmaller vessels, “stuffed with the most strong ordnance and all othermateriel of war that any man had ever heard of,” which sailed fromthe harbors of Sluys, Biervliet, and Rotterdam.35 One convoy fromHolland included a large veuglaire with eight removable chambers,two crapadeaux with six chambers, one hundred bronze coulovrines,and bombard gunstones weighing between 180 and 350 livres, notto mention a large number of lances and crossbows.36 Notarialdocuments at the Archives de la Côte-d'Or record the followingnumbers and types of Burgundian gunpowder weapons at the siegeof Calais:

3 Iron Gros Bombards and 3 other Gros Bombards from Holland2 Iron Bombards from Picardy3 Bronze Bombards from Burgundy2 Iron and 1 other Bombard from Abbeville2 Bronze Bombards, named Pruce and Bergiere, and 1 Iron Bombard

from the Saint-Bertin Monastery in Saint-Omer (indicated inother documents to have been brought there as a central site)

1 Bronze Bombard chamber for the Bourgoinge from the Saint-BertinMonastery

7 Gros Veuglaires taken from naval vessels4 Iron and 1 other Gros Veuglaires from Saint-Bertin Monastery2 Iron and 3 other Gros Veuglaires (no site mentioned)2 Gros Veuglaires from Gravelines1 Gros Veuglaire from Damp17 Iron and 13 other Veuglaires from Sluys23 Veuglaires from Bruges or Sluys11 Veuglaires from Holland

200 KELLY DEVRIES

37 See the documents preserved in Joseph Garnier, L’artillerie des ducs deBourgogne d’après les documents conservés aux archives de la Côte-d’Or (Paris:Honoré Champion, 1895), 151-63.

38 Sommé, “L'armée Bourguignonne,” 203.39 Monstrelet, Chronique, 5: 240. See also Oliver van Dixmude, Merkwaerdige

gebeurtenissen vooral in Vlaenderen en Brabant van 1377 tot 1443, ed. J. J.Lambin (Ypres: Lambin en Zoon, 1835), 150.

40 Waurin, Récueil, 4: 160. See also Le livre des trahisons de France envers lamaison de Bourgogne, 211, and Liber de virtutibus sui genitoris Philippi Burgundiae

14 Iron and 9 other Veuglaires (no site mentioned)6 Iron Veuglaires from naval vessels1 Veuglaire, named Anvers, and 2 other Veuglaires from Abbeville2 Iron Veuglaires from Avennes2 Veuglaires from Bruges23 Petit Veuglaires (no site mentioned)2 Petit Veuglaires from Abbeville4 Veuglaire Chambers from Sluys23 Cannons or Veuglaires from Sluys2 Petit Cannons from Abbeville12 Iron Crapaudeaux (site not mentioned)5 Iron Crapaudeaux from Gravelines3 Iron Crapaudeaux from Abbeville2 Petit Crapaudeaux (site not mentioned)48 (or 52) Gros Coulovrines200 Bronze Coulovrines40 Iron Coulovrines3 Other Coulovrines2 Bronze Coulovrines a escappe37

It is also recorded that Burgundian and Low Countries’ carpentersmade carts, wagons, and mantlets for the large- and medium-sizedgunpowder weapons; masons carved stone cannonballs; and cannon-eers purchased saltpeter and made gunpowder.38 The expense wasenormous.

The size and presence at Calais of this incredibly large gunpow-der artillery train is commented on by all of the chroniclers whodiscuss the siege. As a whole they are impressed with what the dukeof Burgundy was able to deliver to the walls of the English town.Enguerran de Monstrelet describes the “large number of ribaudscarrying canons and other large engins” to the siege.39 Jean deWaurin writes that the Philip the Good had “a large number ofbombards, cannons, ribaudequins, and large serpentines.”40 And Jean


ducis, in Chroniques relatives à l'histoire de la Belgique sous la domination des ducsde Bourgogne (texts latins), ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels: M. Hayez,1876), 62-3.

41 Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, roi de France, ed. Vallet de Viri-ville, 3 vols. (Paris: P. Jannet, 1858), 1: 242.

Chartier notes that one of the Burgundian bombards was so largethat it required 50 horses to pull it, another 36 horses, and others26 horses each, not including the large number of other varioussized guns which accompanied those larger weapons.41 This artilleryforce was so large, it seems, that to utilize their numerous gunpow-der weapons, the Burgundian army not only placed them at weakspots around the walls, but also constructed their own earth-and-wood artillery fortifications, boulevards and artillery towers aroundCalais and filled them with guns.

The result of all of these gunpowder weapons at the siege ofCalais, that began in earnest on 9 July 1436, was an intense bom-bardment of the town. Day and night cannonballs fell on the wallsand flew over them to land on the buildings inside. The mostcinematic portrayal of this comes from a Middle English poemwritten at the time of the siege. First, the anonymous author of thispoem describes the weapons which the duke had brought to Calais:

With gonnes grete and ordinance,That theyme myght helpe and avance,With many a proude pavis;Gailly paynted and stuffed wele,Ribawdes, armed with Iren and stele,Was neuer better devyse.

Then the cannoneers began to attack the town:

Gonners began to shew thair art,Into the tovn in many apart,Shot many a full grete ston.

But, fortunately, the townspeople were preserved from the terrorthat these weapons delivered, preserved by God, Mary, and, interest-ingly, the patron saint of cannoneers, Saint Barbara:

Thanked be god, and marie mylde,They hurt neither man, woman, ne childe.

202 KELLY DEVRIES

42 The version of this poem used is Ralph A. Klinefelter, ed., “‘The Siegeof Calais’: A New Text,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 67(1952): 888-95. The quotes which appear in the text above are found on pp.891-3. Three more poems can be found in Rossell Hope Robbins, ed.,Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York, 1959), 78-89; theyoriginated in The Brut, or the Chronicles of England, ed. F. W. D. Brie (London:K. Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1906-1908). However, Roger Nicholson,of the Department of English, University of Auckland, New Zealand, who hasworked on these poems, assures me that there are at least two more suchpoems as yet unedited, one in London, Lambeth Palace Library, ms. 6, anda second in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby ms. 102. All were written withina few months of the end of the siege.

43 The Brut, 2: 578. Monstrelet (Chronique, 5: 245) confirms this, adding thatwhile the cannonball did not kill the duke, it did kill a trumpeter and threeknights who were with him. See also Olivier van Dixmude, Merkwaerdige, 154-5.

44 Monstrelet, Chronique, 5: 243, 245. See also Waurin, Récueil, 4: 175; TheBrut, 2: 577-9; the Liber de virtutibus sui genitoris Philippi Burgundiae ducis, 63;and Vaughan, Philip the Good, 79. The fortifications of the nearby castle ofGuines also held out during the siege.

Houses thogh they did harme;“Seynt Barbara!” than was the crie,Whan stones in the tovn flye,They cowde noon other charme.42

Yet, these Burgundian gunpowder weapons, despite their power andnumbers, were not successful in breaching the walls or causing thetown’s capitulation. For fifteen days they fired on the town, butwithout success. This might be credited to the defensive gunpowderweapons which were inside the town which, at least according to theEnglish chronicle, The Brut, were very effective in the defense of thetown, with one Calaisien gunshot even piercing Philip the Good’stent.43 However, most contemporary chroniclers give no credit tothe town’s defensive weapons in relieving the siege. Indeed, theynote that neither the offensive nor defensive gunfire was effective.While the Burgundian forces were easily able to conquer smallernearby fortifications, such as Oye, Marck, and Balinghem, by placingtheir guns near the walls and battering them down, when it cameto the larger and better defended walls of Calais, they were incapa-ble of breaching them, even if, as Monstrelet claims, these gunpow-der weapons “strongly damaged” the walls of the town.44

On the other hand, how effective can a bombardment lasting onlyfifteen days be? The military history of the fifteenth century showed


45 I investigate this more in “‘The Walls Come Tumbling Down’: The Mythof Fortification Vulnerability to Early Gunpowder Weapons,” in The HundredYears War, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald Kagay (Leiden: Brill, 2005).

46 See DeVries, Joan of Arc, 152-4.47 Vaughan, Philip the Good, 79. On the problems of Edward III’s siege in

1346-1347 see Kelly DeVries, “Hunger, Flemish Participation and the Flightof Philip VI: Contemporary Accounts of the Siege of Calais, 1346-47,” Studiesin Medieval and Renaissance History n.s. 12 (1991): 129-81.

that, if the inhabitants desired to withstand a siege, strong fortifica-tions generally took a very long time to be defeated, even whenfaced with the constant bombardment of gunpowder weapons.Indeed, it seems that only when there was no desire to withstanda siege was there a quick capitulation, such as those gained byHenry V in Normandy and Joan of Arc along the coronation routeto Rheims. At all other times sieges either failed or dragged outuntil fatigue or privation on one side or the other brought aboutvictory or defeat.45 Yet, on some occasions, and ever more frequentlyduring the mid-fifteenth century, military leaders simply gave upwhen their combatants and artillery were unable to bring about avictory either from intimidation at the sight of the large numberof gunpowder weapons facing a site or the increased fear of destruc-tion after a few days of gunpowder weaponry bombardment. Suchcan only be the reason for Charles VII’s unwillingness to pursue theattack of Paris after only one day in 142946 and perhaps may alsobe the reason why Philip the Good raised his siege of Calais afterlittle more than two weeks in 1436.

Richard Vaughan raises other possibilities. He cites the failureof the Burgundian fleet, raised largely among Flemish and Dutchcoastal towns, to arrive at Calais at the same time as the army,appearing only after fatigue and discouragement had begun to inflicttheir toll on the besieging troops. Before they arrived, English shipshad sailed in and out of Calais, and there was no evidence ofdistress among the besieged inhabitants. Once the Burgundian fleetarrived, it did little to change the situation, proving as Edward IIIhad discovered in 1346-1347 when he conquered the town, that itwas extremely difficult for a blockade of any size to cut off allrelieving maritime traffic to the stricken inhabitants.47

In the meantime, rivalry between two of the larger factions ofFlemish troops, the Brugeois and Ghentenaars, had begun to affectthe morale of the Burgundian troops. Unwittingly, the Calaisiens

204 KELLY DEVRIES

48 Vaughan, Philip the Good, 79-80. See also Waurin, Récueil, 4: 186.49 The Brut, 2: 581, 583. See also Vaughan, Philip the Good, 80. Jean de

Waurin (Récueil, 4: 188-9) claims that the Flemings did take their bestgunpowder weapons with them.

50 The Brut, 2: 582-4, 600-1.51 The Brut, 2: 583-4.

played on this rivalry. On 26 July, the day after the Burgundianships’ arrival at Calais, they made a sortie from the Boulogne gate,surprising a unit of Brugeois troops, that at the time also includedPhilip the Good. This defeat was met by jeers and mockery fromthe Ghentenaars. On 28 July, another group of English inhabitantsof the town attacked a wooden artillery tower manned by Ghente-naar troops, again by surprise. It was now the Brugeois soldiers’ turnto respond with their own derision. The Ghentenaars had reachedtheir breaking point, and as fear and rumors of other attacks spreadthroughout their camp, they fled during the night. The next morn-ing, the Brugeois joined them. The rest of the Burgundian armysoon followed suit.48 The defeat was made even more serious by theabandonment of many of the Burgundian gunpowder weapons tohasten the retreat. The Brut indicates that the Brugeois tried to burysome of their guns in the sand in an effort to keep them fromfalling into English hands, but most seem simply to have been leftbehind.49

Whether the Flemings were to be blamed entirely for this militarydebacle is debatable. Certainly the English felt so, with poems suchas “The Englishman’s Mocking Song Against the Flemings” and “AnEnglish Ballad Against the Flemings” becoming so prevalent thatthey found their way into accounts of The Brut.50 In these there islittle doubt that the Flemings were to blame for the defeat:

Remembres now, ye Flemmynges, vpon youre owne shame;When ye laide seege to Caleis, ye wer right still to blame;For more of reputacioun, ben Englisshmen þen ye,And comen of more gentill blode, of olde antiquitie;For Flemmynges come of Flemmed men ye shal wel vndirstand,For fflemed men & banshid men enhabit first youre land.

(“The Englishman’s Mocking Song Against the Flemings”)51

Vndyr a veyle of fals decepcioun,Record of Flaundrys, whiche falsly dothe malygne.

206 KELLY DEVRIES

55 A translation of this letter is found in Vaughan, Philip the Good, 81-2. Theoriginal is edited in Marie-Rose Thielmans, ed., “Une lettre missive inéditede Philippe le Bon concernant le siège de Calais,” Bulletin de la commissionroyale d'histoire de Belgique 115 (1950): 285-96, although she mistakenly hasPhilip the Good sending the letter to his other brother-in-law, Arthur deRichemont.

us in one place, and the men of Bruges, Ypres, the Franc of Brugestheir followers and some of our nobles in another place ... .

Because the spot where we and our people of Ghent were lodged wasunsuitable for fighting a pitched battle when the enemy came, weasked them to withdraw with us and the noblemen in our companyto a certain place quite near their encampment ... which was said tobe the best, most suitable and most advantageous position to await theenemy in battle order, and they agreed to do this ...

Nevertheless, on Saturday 28 July late at night, these people of Ghent,considering neither our honour nor their own, regardless of thepromises which they had that very day renewed, and at a time whenwe were expecting the enemy to arrive on the following Monday orTuesday, came to tell us that they had decided to decamp that nightand to withdraw to a place near the town of Gravelines in Flanders,which is three leagues from Calais. There, they would await events,having put the river [Aa] at Gravelines between themselves and theenemy. And at once, without listening to our requests or waiting forour advice, they departed that night, together with the men from thecastellany of Ghent, and withdrew to the above-mentioned positionnear Gravelines. Moreover, not content with this, they persuaded themen of Bruges, Ypres, and the Franc of Bruges, who would willinglyhave stayed to carry out our wishes, to withdraw likewise. Since thecontingent of noblemen we had with us was too small to do battle withthe enemy ... we were forced to depart and withdraw to Gravelineswith the Flemings, abandoning what we had begun with the utmostchagrin.55

But Philip’s councillor, Hugh de Lannoy, puts a more realistic spinon problems at Calais. In a letter to the duke written 10 September1436, he blames the defeat at Calais on problems financing thesiege, while at the same time prophesying of future financial prob-lems brought about by the defeat, and placing those problems firmlyin the Low Countries:


56 The original of this text is found in Kervyn de Lettenhove, “Programmed’un gouvernement constitutionnel en Belgique au XVe siècle,” Bulletin del’Académie Royale de Belgique 2nd ser., 14 (1862): 218-50. I have used thetranslation found in Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier, The Promised Lands:The Low Countries Under Burgundian Rule, 1369-1530, ed. Edward Peters, trans.Elizabeth Fackelman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 84.

You must have appreciated, during the siege of Calais, what harmwas done by the lack of finance, and it is to be feared that the warhas only just begun. If you need to raise finance in Brabant,Holland, and other lands of yours, it can only be with the consentand good will of the people, especially when they see that you areat war [with England] and that the Flemings seem likely to revoltagainst you at any moment. If the truth be told, you have noterritory whose populace is not hard pressed financially; nor areyour domains, which are mortgaged, sold, or saddled with debts,able to help you.

Again, you have seen how agitated your Flemish subjects are;some of them, indeed, are in armed rebellion. Strange and bitterthings have been said about yourself, your government, and yourleading councillors; and it is very like that, having got as far astalking in this way, they will soon go further than mere talk.Moreover, if you pacify them by kindness and by accepting theirdemands, other towns, which have similar aspirations, will rebel inthe hopes of getting similar treatment. On the other hand, if youpunish and repress them, it is to be feared that they will makedisastrous alliances with your enemies. If by chance they startpillaging and robbing, it is possible that every wicked person willstart plundering the rich. Covetousness exists among the well-off;you can imagine how much worse it is among the populace. In thismatter, there is much anxiety.

I note that, according to reports, the English are planning tokeep a large number of ships at sea in order to effect a commercialblockade of your land of Flanders. This is a grave danger, for suchharm would result if that country were deprived for any length oftime of its cloth industry and commerce. And you appreciate howmuch it cost to send a fleet to sea to protect this commerce andresist the enemy. Moreover, if Holland and Zeeland continue theirtrade with the English, and they will probably want to do this, theFlemings, finding themselves without commerce, without their clothindustry, and involved in war on sea and land, will probably makean alliance with the English, your enemies, which could be verymuch to your prejudice and dishonor.56

208 KELLY DEVRIES

57 Vaughan, Philip the Good, 82-84.58 Examples of the cost of this defense appears in Kelly De Vries,

“Provisions for the Ostend Militia on the Defense, August 1436,” Journal ofMedieval Military History 3 (2005): 176-83.

59 See V. Fris, “Documents Gantois concernant la levée du siège de Calaisen 1436,” in Mélanges Paul Frédéricq (Brussels: H. Lamertin, 1904), 245-58.

60 The military history of this siege can be found in Smith and DeVries, TheArtillery of the Dukes of Burgundy. See also Jan Dumolyn, De Brugse opstand van

At the siege of Calais then, war financing can also be blamed forthe failure, with the Flemish town rivalries perhaps at fault.

The economic problems that directly followed the failed siegemust also be considered. For one thing, immediately after theBurgundian withdrawal, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, who hadsucceeded to the leadership of the English troops in France afterthe death of his brother, John of Bedford, the previous year, andwho had arrived to take command at Calais only to see the flightof the besiegers, led his own raid into western Flanders. Takingadvantage of the Burgundian confusion, Gloucester burned severalvillages south of Dunkirk and around Ypres. The English fleet alsoraided along the Flemish coast as far north as the Zwin estuary andthe island of Cadzand before both army and navy returned toCalais.57 This fulfilled in essence the last paragraph of Lannoy’sletter: the citizens of the southern Low Countries, and the Flemingsin particular on this occasion, found themselves in the ironic posi-tion of defending their countryside and towns from the very peopleon whom their livelihood chiefly depended.58 Philip the Good andthe Burgundian army would not be coming to their aid, as a num-ber of letters from the ducal court to the Ghentenaars and othersin Flanders insisting that the Flemings must defend themselvessuggest.59

One would expect to see a similarity throughout Flanders duringthese troubled times, and, once again, the irony of it all is that thesewere the people with whom Flanders had been allied for more thantwo centuries, far longer than they had been in Burgundian control.It would not be long before the first paragraph of Lannoy’s letterwould also be fulfilled: the larger towns of the southern Low Coun-tries would seek their own means to ensure their economic well-being. They would rebel. Already by the end of 1436, led by theirsoldiers returning from Calais, the inhabitants of Bruges began anopen rebellion against Philip the Good.60 It was the first of many


1436-1438 (Courtrai-Heule: U.G.A., 1997), Vaughan, Philip the Good, 86-92,and Blockmans and Prevenier, The Promised Lands, 98-99.

61 See Kelly DeVries, “The Failure of Philip the Good to Fulfill His CrusadePromise of 1454,” in The Medieval Crusade, ed. Susan Ridyard (Woodbridge:The Boydell Press, 2004), 157-70.

Low Countries’ rebellions Philip the Good would be forced to faceand put down.

Although he allowed some generals aligned with him to fight onthe side of the French, Philip the Good himself never returned tothe Hundred Years War, nor did he allow the Burgundian army tobe used en masse in any of Charles VII’s military conquest. Althoughhe frequently drifted into Crusading fantasies and other imaginativeand unfulfilled military adventures,61 from this time forward theduke’s focus was firmly placed on the southern Low Countries, geo-graphically, and his treasury, financially. Never again would he relyon someone else to pay for an engagement, as he had with theEnglish at Compiègne, or risk an enormous amount of expensiveweapons on a single military endeavor, such as at Calais.

1 Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study in Service (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1989).

2 D. António Caetano de Sousa, Provas da história genealogica da Casa Realportuguesa (Coimbra: Atlântida, 1947), 3: 217-224.

3 Sean Cunningham, “The Establishment of the Tudor Regime: Henry VII,Rebellion and the Financial Control of the Aristocracy 1485-1509,” Ph.D.Diss., Lancaster University (1995).

4 Caetano de Sousa, Provas da história genealogica, 3: 440-476.

THE COST OF MAJESTY: FINANCIAL REFORM AND THEDEVELOPMENT OF THE ROYAL COURT IN PORTUGAL

AND ENGLAND AT THE TURN OF THE SIXTEENTHCENTURY

Susannah C. Humble Ferreira

The changes brought to bear in the royal courts of England andPortugal, at the turn of the sixteenth century, are strikingly similar.The households of both Henry VII (1485-1509) and Manuel I (1495-1521) underwent a sizeable increase in both human and spatialterms. Despite the constant fluctuation in population, attributableto location of the household and immediate political circumstances,it is evident that during these reigns, more people came to live asdependents of the king than ever before. It is true that householdnumbers had been on the rise in preceding reigns, and RosemaryHorrox has made a convincing argument that Richard III of Eng-land (1483-1485) appointed many of his retainers to positions withinthe royal household.1 Similarly, records from the reign of thePortuguese king João II point to an escalation in the number ofresidents at court receiving stipends or moradias.2 But the researchof Sean Cunningham has shown that Henry VII doubled the numberof dependants known as knights of the body as part of a strategydesigned to increase his own political security.3 And the survivingrecords of Manuel I’s court indicate a similar trend occurring inPortugal.4 In order to accommodate these growing numbers, bothHenry VII and Manuel I undertook a number of important buildingprojects: the former king refurbishing and constructing large palacesalong the River Thames, while the latter erected and expanded his

211ROYAL COURT IN ENGLAND AND PORTUGAL

5 For a comparison of the money spent by Henry VII on palaces as com-pared to Edward IV, see H. M. Colvin, History of the King’s Works (London:Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1963-1982), 2: 1024 and 4: 223. Also SimonThurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1993), 19. Information on Manuel I’s expenditure on building workscan be found in Anselmo Braamcamp Freire, ed., “Cartas de quitação del ReiD. Manuel,” Archivo Histórico Portuguez 1-7 (1903-1909).

6 British Library (BL) Add. 20958.7 Geoffrey Elton, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 3: 40.

domiciles in and around the important towns of Santarém, Évoraand Lisbon.5

Such rapid expansion, in both England and Portugal, reveals achanging attitude toward the royal household and arguably marksa shift from a medieval household to a Renaissance-style court. Nolonger was presence at court restricted to essential personnel anda handful of grandes and no longer were household ordinancespunctuated by legislation limiting their numbers. In Portugal, newordinances in 1516 allowed lower ranking servants to maintain wivesand families.6 And by the turn of the sixteenth century, the size ofthe royal households in both kingdoms began to outstrip the pro-scriptions that had limited their sizes in earlier centuries. From themedieval royal household, obsessed with economy, emerged therenaissance court devoted to appearances of opulence and majesty.Such was the transformation that historian Sir Geoffrey Elton couldglibly claim: “the Tudor court as a centre of social and political lifesprings suddenly into existence with the accession of Henry VIII.”7

Of course, the royal courts did not, and could not, have materializedfrom thin air; transformation was attributable to major changes inthe financial administration of both the royal households and thekingdoms. Research reflects that by securing a steady and reliablecash-flow into the coffers of the royal household, Henry VII andManuel I were able to overcome substantial household debt andexpand their royal courts.

In revisiting the world of late medieval royal finance, a numberof historians have cautioned against straightforward readings ofexchequer and household accounts. Given the imperfect separationbetween personal and professional identity, the officers who handledthe king’s money were individually responsible for sums in theirpossession. Thus as historian David Grummitt has noted, the oft-cited accounts of the treasury of the chamber record only the sums

212 SUSANNAH HUMBLE FERREIRA

8 David Grummitt, “Henry VII, Chamber Finance and the New Monarchy:Some New Evidence,” Historical Research 179 (1999): 229-243.

9 For example, the wife and heirs of Estevão Pestana, mantieiro of the royalhousehold had to account for all the silver and goods that had been in hispossession. Arquivos Nacionais/Torre do Tombo (AN/TT), Chancelarias de D.Manuel, liv. 29, fol. 118.

10 W. C. Richardson, Tudor Chamber Administration (Baton Rouge: LouisianaState University Press, 1952).

11 S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972),126.

of money that passed through the hands of the Treasurer, JohnHeron and do not reflect a complete picture of the money con-trolled by the department as a whole.8 This principle of privateaccountability is evident in the Portuguese quittance letters, or cartasdas quitações that are made known to us through the royal chanceryrecords. These quittances show that a crown official had to accountfor all money in his possession—sometimes even from beyond thegrave—and officials and their families were held accountable forsums as if they had been held as a personal loan.9 Thus, in orderto understand the operation of household administrative depart-ments, it becomes necessary to consider the personal relationshipsof administrative officials, many of whom held more than one office.

Since the publication of W. C. Richardson’s Tudor Chamber Admin-istration in 1952, the attention given to the Treasury of the Chamber,as the kingdom’s primary financial department in the reign of HenryVII, has muddied our understanding of court finance.10 While theTreasury of the Chamber was undoubtedly the backbone of thefinancial machinery throughout much of the reign of Henry VII, itwas not the primary financial department at court: that place be-longed to the Treasury of the Household. A clue to the veritablerelationship between these two departments can be seen in relationto the career of Sir Thomas Lovell. From 1485 until 1492, Lovellserved as Treasurer of the Chamber, also occupying the office ofChancellor of the Exchequer. But after the death of Sir RichardCroft in 1502, Lovell was given the position of Treasurer of theHousehold in what was ostensibly a promotion.11 The new officewould have been more prestigious inasmuch as it gave Lovell animportant position within the itinerant court, thereby offering himgreater access to the king. But his new appointment also broughta closer social tie between the treasuries of the chamber and house-


12 A. R. Myers, The Household of Edward IV, The Black Book and the Ordinanceof 1478 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 144-7.

13 Public Record Office (PRO) E 101 413/5, 7, 8, 12; 414/2, 3, 5, 9, 13;415/1, 6, 9, 12, 13, 15; 416/1.

14 Myers, Household of Edward IV, 167.

hold insofar as the new Treasurer of the Chamber was John Heron,who had previously been serving as Lovell’s deputy. Presuming thatthe relationship of the two office-holders reflects the relationshipof the two departments, it would appear that the treasury of thechamber was working to facilitate the expenditure of the treasuryof the household.

The traditional role of the treasury of the household, or countinghouse as it was sometimes called, was to regulate the expenditureof the royal household. Although the head of this department wasnominally the Lord Steward, the official in charge of running allaspects of the household, the two main figures in its operation werethe Treasurer, who looked after all monetary assignments to thehousehold and the Controller who kept a counter roll of expenses.12

Because these officers were of high social rank, and were oftenphysically absent from the household, it was the official known asthe Cofferer who managed the daily expenses of the major house-hold departments. Extant Cofferer’s accounts reveal that while theresponsibilities of this official changed somewhat over the course ofthe reign, he continued to disburse money to the purveyors of themajor household departments for diet and supplies throughout thereign.13 According to the Black Book, the sergeants of the variousdepartments were also supposed to deposit their tallies with theCofferer, so that they might be redeemed by the various merchantsand suppliers in the localities.14 For this reason, the smooth runningof the royal household depended upon a regular supply of coin intothe hands of the Cofferer.

It was financial constraint that limited the size of the royalhousehold during the late middle ages. Large households placedconsiderable strain on surrounding areas and, while house-to-housepurveyance was a thing of the past, the king’s subjects were undoubt-edly affected when several hundred hungry mouths descendedsuddenly upon a village, demanding food and accommodation. Ifthe Cofferer did not have enough cash in hand to redeem tallies,then local merchants and innkeepers would not be repaid. Further


15 Bertram Wolffe, Henry VI (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001),282-3.

16 Myers, Household of Edward IV, 63-75.17 Myers, Household of Edward IV, 87.18 J. Strachey et al., eds., Rotuli Parliamentorum; ut et Petitiones et Placita in

Parliamento (London: s.n., 1767), 6: 299.19 Wolffe, Henry VI, 301.20 David Loades, The Tudor Court (London: Batsford, 1986), 74.

social unrest resulted if household servants, who received wages inlieu of diet, went unpaid and were forced to obtain food and lodg-ing by whatever means necessary—bad credit, violence or theft.15 Thepoor management of the treasury of the household during the reignof Henry VI (1422-1461), provoked a reaction from Parliament. Thetreasury’s inability to meet household running costs, which by 1449were estimated at £24,000 per annum, had encouraged the promul-gations of an ordinance that attempted to limit its size.16 Althoughfinancial recovery was seen during the reign of Edward IV, the BlackBook attempted to limit the membership of the royal household,cautioning that “the kyng wull haue his goodes dispended but notwasted.”17 In 1485, Parliament authorized an increase in the annualsubsidy paid to the royal household; seemingly its objective was notto underwrite the costs of expansion or enhancement, but ratherto alleviate the burden placed on the king’s subjects who had,according to the Commons, “been grievously charged with continualtaking of their goods and chattels for the expenses of his mosthonourable household whereof they have not been sufficientlycontented nay paid, to their great impoverishing.”18

It had long been the expectation that English kings should “liveof their own,” meaning that they should finance their householdswith the profits of the lands that they had controlled as individuals.By the reign of Henry VI, it was realized that this expectation wasunrealistic, and in 1454, as the crown faced civil war, the king wasgranted a meager allowance of £5,500 to help to defray householdexpenses.19 Upon his accession in 1461 Edward IV began to channelhis private revenues into the treasury of the chamber in order tomeet costs and tackle the debt of the royal household.20 But hisefforts were designed to get household finance on solid footingrather than to expand his household and Edward IV’s initial mea-sure was to reduce household size. Although there is evidence ofexpansion by the end of his reign, both the Black Book and Ordinance


21 Myers, Household of Edward IV, 12-3.22 Myers, Household of Edward IV, 230; Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6: 198-202.23 Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6: 299.24 A description of the lands comprising the Duchies of Cornwall and

Lancaster is provided by Colvin, History of the King’s Works, 1: 470-6.

of 1478 were preoccupied with economy.21 And in 1482, whenParliament agreed to raise the annual exchequer assignment to thetreasury of the household to £11,000, it still fell short of the house-hold running costs which the Black Book had estimated to be£14,000.22

By the accession of Henry VII to the throne in 1485 it is clearthat the crown was in financial trouble again. The expansion of thehousehold undertaken by Richard III was not accompanied byadministrative changes that would sustain a larger household overthe long term; if such changes had been on the horizon, then thisking did not remain on the throne long enough to put them intoplay. Henry VII had an added disadvantage—unlike his Yorkistpredecessors, he did not possess enough private property to helphim meet the running costs of the government. Thus in 1485,Parliament increased the subsidy from £11,000 to £14,000 andaugmented this sum by £2,100 to pay for supplies in the royalwardrobe.23 This increase of more than £5,000 appears to be a tacitacknowledgment of the differences between a king’s public andprivate wealth. As heir to the Duke of York, Edward IV had beenable to put his private revenues toward household expenditure andfreely channeled these receipts through the Treasury of the Cham-ber. Richard III was entitled to do the same with the lands hecontrolled as the Duke of Gloucester. However the bulk of thelanded revenues available to Henry VII had been acquired throughformal Acts of Attainder in Parliament, and was thus processedthrough the national treasury of the exchequer. Thus they couldonly be made available to the king through Parliamentary assign-ment. By 1485, the income that had traditionally financed the royalhousehold, including revenues from the vast duchies of Cornwall andthe Lancaster, was no longer controlled by the king as a privatelandholder, but formed part of the patrimony of the crown.24 Thematter might appear to be academic, but the implicit differencesbetween public and private wealth appeared to have had an effecton the way revenues were controlled. The household assignment

y Wes-


28 Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6: 433.29 PRO E 101/416/11. Given his inclusion as one of the members of the

household, this document appears to predate the death of Thomas West whodied in 1493. See Calendar of Patent Rolls (London: Her Majesty’s StationeryOffice, 1914-1916), 1: 421.

30 BL Add. 21480.31 PRO E 101/413/4, E101/413/5, E101/413/7, E101/413/12, E101/414/2,

E101/414/5, E101/414/9: E101/414/13, E101/415/6, E101/415/9, E101/415/12,E101/416/1.

1495.28 The substitution clause of 1489, ensured that despite the factthat the revenues from these lands were actually going through thechamber, the king could collect the equivalent amount of moneyfrom other sources of public revenue, such as customs revenues ortunnage and poundage. Thus, although the assignment from theexchequer might have appeared to have been reduced from 1489onward, in actuality Henry VII was collecting on some of this incometwice.

Accompanying such double dipping was a change in the way inwhich various expenses of the royal household were being paid for.A fragment of a document outlining household accounting procedurereveals that before 1493 the wages of most household servants:including sewers, ushers, waiters, messengers, grooms, pages andeven servants of the chamber were paid by the Cofferer, from theTreasury of the Household. At this time other honorary servantssuch as sergeants-at-arms, carvers and cupbearers were paid directlyfrom the exchequer. Only knights and esquires of the body receivedtheir wages from the Treasury of the Chamber.29 Yet according tothe extant accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, John Heron,by the end of the reign it is evident that nearly all servants receivedtheir wages from the Treasury of the Chamber.30 Toward the endof the reign, the various accounts belonging to the Treasury of theHousehold reveal that the bulk of expenditure went towards dietswhile the Treasury of the Chamber came to underwrite other costs,such as the building expenses and entertainment.

The sum of money that the treasury of the household receivedfrom the Exchequer does not appear to have increased over thecourse of the reign; the amount received per annum was consistentwith the £13,000 per annum stipulated by Parliament.31 Althoughthis fact seems to suggest that the expenses of the treasury of thehousehold did not increase, the Coffer’s accounts mask a number


34 Calendar of Close Rolls (London: Public Record Office, 1955), 1: 322.

Chamber to the Treasury of the Household. Couched in the ter-minology of an indenture, the terms of this financial arrangementare laid out in a Close Letter of 1499 stating that £1,000 was to begranted to the Cofferer each month and “provided that if there aretallies that cannot be met” he would receive “allowances for thesame.”34 Thus it appears that £1,000 per month was being used byCope to redeem tallies brought to him by local merchants and sup-pliers and that Cope was personally liable for any of this money notaccounted for. The fact that Cope continued to receive this assign-ment until at least 1505 suggests that the Chamber assignmentbecame an enduring arrangement. Thus, in effect the treasury ofthe household was receiving a total in excess of £25,000 per yearafter 1499: £13,000 in assignments from the exchequer and £12,000from the chamber to meet the cost of tallies.

The diversity of payments listed in the accounts of the treasuryof the chamber gives a false impression that the financial depart-ments in operation during the reign were crude in their administra-tion. However administrative changes undertaken during the reignof Henry VII offered treasury officials greater flexibility and reflecta marked effort to organize finances in such a way as to increasethe flow of cash into the hands of the Cofferer. The exchequer ofreceipt channeled public monies such as customs revenues and tun-nage and poundage, whereas the treasury of the chamber receivedprofits from crown lands. And as Grummitt has shown, surplus cashfrom both departments came to be stored in the crown coffers inthe Tower of London. The treasury of the household, once a depart-ment that handled the majority of crown expenses, was streamlinedinto the department that merely financed the diet and supplies ofthe expanding royal household. And it was the regular and reliablesupply of money into this department that not only allowed HenryVII to achieve solvency and quell the complaints of the Commons,but to expand the size of his household.

At the turn of the sixteenth century, Portugal presents itself asan interesting comparison to England. Although the kingdom didnot suffer the same damaging effects of a long-term dynastic struggleakin to the Wars of the Roses, a devastating war with Castile (1475-1479) wreaked havoc on royal finances. Moreover, Afonso V (1433-1481) had granted lands and annuities at an unprecedented rate


35 Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Ensaios II, Sobre história de Portugal (Lisbon:Sá da Costa, 1978), 55.

36 Armindo da Sousa, As Cortes medievais portuguesas, 1385-1490 (Lisbon:Imprensa Nacional, 1990), 363, 384.

37 João José Alves Dias, ed., Cortes portuguesas: Reinado de D. Manuel, Cortesde 1498 (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos, 2002), 179.

over the course of his long reign that further impoverished thecrown. Although his successor, João II (1481-1495) worked hard toplace the crown on surer financial footing, his success was limited.Lands confiscated from those nobles implicated in the conspiraciesof 1483 and 1484 were soon granted out again and after 1489 thecrown lost the valuable revenues from the Duchy of Viseu. Unlikethe English crown, the kings of Portugal were to enjoy additionalincome from the profits of the overseas expansion. But until theturn of the sixteenth century the ability of the crown to fund theroyal household from these revenues was limited. While the succes-sive conquests of the North African captaincies might have beenlucrative from the perspective of individual nobles, the defense ofsuch places as Ceuta and Tangier drained crown resources. Further-more, although the development of sugar plantations in the Atlanticislands contributed to metropolitan wealth and trade, immediateprofits belonged to the Duchy of Viseu and were exempt from crowntaxation. And although the construction of the important tradingfort of São Jorge da Mina, begun in 1482, was to play an importantrole in stimulating trade—the effects were not seen until the endof the reign.35 Until the turn of the sixteenth century, the crownremained plagued by financial shortfall that placed limitations onthe size of the royal household.

While the Portuguese crown was able to maintain the royal house-hold on a system of credit, its repeated failure to meet costs out-raged the Cortes. In the session of 1459, representatives demandedthat the king exercise moderation in household expenditure and in1472-1473 it was explicitly requested that Afonso V reduce the sizeof the royal household.36 Representative assemblies expressed awillingness to provide for the royal household, but only if the crownexercised restraint. Even as late as 1498, the Cortes entreated theking to keep a moderate household.37 The complaints of these repre-sentatives reflected the frustrations of a populace burdened by crowndebt and it is evident from the cartas das quitações that even as late


42 Exempt from this tax were gold, silver, baked bread, horses and arms.João Cordeiro Pereira, Para a história das Alfândegas em Portugal no início doséculo XVI (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1983), 22-6.

43 Once rated as a tenth of the balance of trade, rules and rates changedduring successive reigns in the fifteenth century. Amendments to the dizimaswere made during the reigns of D. João I and D. Afonso V to combat abuse.See “Dizimas,” in Joel Serrão, ed., Dicionário de história de Portugal (Lisbon:Iniciativas Editoriais, 1979), 2: 326.

nues was derived from the customary taxes of the sisa and the dizima.The sisa, which formed nearly three quarters of crown revenues inthe fifteenth century, was levied on any merchant activity or salesand was most often paid at trade fairs on wine, cereals, meat,colored cloth and imported textiles. Very few exemptions weregranted on the sisa, and nobility and even royalty were obliged topay this tax.42 The dizima, on the other hand, was levied on allimports by sea and on goods coming through dry ports. Given thevolume of trade coming through Portuguese ports in the fifteenthcentury, the yields from this tax should have been lucrative.43 Thestumbling block was that the system of collection and delivery to thecentral coffers of the Casa dos Contos was inefficient.

It is often assumed that social and economic change occurringin Portugal in the early sixteenth century was attributable to thewindfall of the Indian Ocean spice trade. While extraordinary richeswere indeed dumped in the lap of Manuel I (whose unabashed epi-thet was “the Fortunate”), his good luck has masked the concertedefforts put forth by his administration to instigate reform andincrease revenues from domestic sources. Like Henry VII, Manuel Iinherited a kingdom rife with political faction. Few records are leftthat can testify to the effect which the conflicts and confiscations hadon revenue collection at a local level, but it can be surmised thatwar in the 1470s and the purges of the nobility that took place inthe 1480s brought an added confusion to the networks of crownadministration operating in the localities. If the profits of the sisaand the dizima were the main sources of cash feeding the coffers ofthe household, then interruptions in their collection would have hada direct impact on its operation. The efforts of the Manueline admi-nistration to reform local practices of revenue collection in the earlyyears of the reign can therefore be seen as a conscious attempt bythe king to increase his ability to finance the royal household.


44 Damião de Góis, Crónica de D. Manuel (Coimbra: University da Coimbra,1949), 1: 24.

45 João José Alves Dias, ed. Portugal do Renascimento à Crise Dinástica,(Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1998), 714.

Compared to his predecessor João II, Manuel I was a muchwealthier king, even before his proverbial ships came in. As heir tothe Duchy of Viseu, Manuel I was able to draw upon lands and in-come worth more than twenty-eight million réis.44 While much ofthis land was granted away in the decades to come, these addedrevenues gave him an initial cash injection as well as the ability tobuy the support of various sections of the political elite at the timewhen he first took the throne. Similar to the practice of Henry VII,Manuel I authorized commissions to investigate the condition of theadministrative machinery. In 1496 the king sent a commission ledby his chancellor Dr. Rui Boto, to examine local charters in orderto assess obligations of taxation and to perform a local surveyestablishing the lands held in feudal tenure. These enquiries wouldhave provided information about the effectiveness of local adminis-trative officials as well as up to date information about the rents andtaxes owed by towns and independent landholders. Ostensibly theyprovided the background information that prompted the programof administrative reform enacted later in the reign.45

During the reign, a number of reforms were put into effect, manyof which had a perceptible impact on revenue collection. Notableamong these reforms were the Ordenações Manuelinas, first publishedin 1514 but reissued in 1521. They clearly articulated the duties,obligations and procedures to be followed by crown agents and offi-cials. In addition, the reign witnessed the standardization of weightsand measures and also the reissue of town charters. Both of theselatter reforms would have had direct repercussions on revenue collec-tion because they controlled prices and established concrete guide-lines enabling crown agents to better enforce the payment of thesisa.

Also, in 1516 the king and his ministers oversaw the reform ofthe financial administration of the entire kingdom, known as thefazenda. While the reforms undertaken over the course of the reignmight seem to demonstrate an altruistic interest in good governmentand civil harmony, they undoubtedly reflect, to a significant degree,the self-interest of the crown. It remains that the administrative re-


46 The increase in revenues from the individual almoxarifados can beexemplified by Guarda, where revenues went from £27 (47,500 rs.) in 1496,to £31 (54,700 rs.) in 1504, to £65 (113,000 rs.) in 1510, leveling out between1516 and 1521 at £245 (430,000 rs.). See “Finanças públicas e estrutura doestado,” in Serrão, Dicionário, 3: 32-3.

47 Virginia Rau, A Casa dos Contos (Coimbra: Faculdade de Letras, 1951),62-7.

forms put into effect had a perceived effect on domestic revenue,evidenced by the claims of Vitorino Magalhães Godinho that crownrevenues increased by fifty per cent between 1506 and 1518, risingfrom sixty-six million réis (£38,000) to nearly a hundred million réis(£54,000).46

It is important to recognize that the reforms of the fazenda werenot enacted merely to impose an academic sense of order upon thenetwork of financial administration. Virginia Rau has argued thatthe Portuguese crown increased the efficiency of revenue connectionby separating the departments of collection and audit. Thus underthe new system, officials called Contadores were entrusted with thetask of collecting rents and chasing down withheld payments, whilethe officials known as Almoxarifes, who had once performed theseduties, were responsible for conducting the audits. But, as Rau notesherself, the Almoxarifes continued to administer and collect the sisawhich, as mentioned, remained one of the main sources of crownrevenue.47 It appears that rather than legislating a strict divisionbetween officials of audit and collection, what the crown was attempt-ing to do was to speed up the process by which money made its wayto the central coffers. Taken at the point of sale, the sisa could beassessed, collected and processed much more quickly than annualrents; officials designated as Recebedores, or Receivers, of the sisacould channel the profits to the central administration on a moreregular basis.

Contadores, who were burdened with the more cumbersome taskof rent collection would be given more time to complete their duties.One of the provisions of the fazenda reforms was the regulation ofthe tax schedule so that both taxpayers and officials could thus anti-cipate the process of collection and get their accounts in order.Every two years, the Contadores would have been summoned toLisbon in order to render their accounts to the central authorities,headed by the Vedores da Fazenda. Thus, every other January,Contadores collected money owed to the crown and conveyed the


48 Rau, Casa dos Contos, 62-7. On 1 May: Contador Mor, Santarém, Leiria,Alenquer and Setúbal. On 1 June: Évora, Beja, Coimbra, Viseu and Guarda.On 1 July: contadores of the Algarve, Porto, Guimarães and Tôrre deMoncorvo.

49 Rau, Casa dos Contos, 27.

amounts to the Almoxarife. Balances were then to be settled by themiddle of February, and the Contadores would then assemble theirreports to present to the Vedores da Fazenda and their deputies inthe late spring and summer.48 By relieving the Almoxarife from theresponsibility of collecting rents and by remitting the revenues fromthis source separately, the crown greatly increased the efficiency ofthe system of revenue collection.

Apart from reorganizing the financial administration of the king-dom, changes to the system of household finance also increased theability of the crown to access money in order to pay for the royalhousehold. The changes undertaken at the level of the royal house-hold were aimed at making the financial administration moreflexible in order to channel the increased revenues directly into thehands of the Escrivão da Camara. Thus, in 1504, the king appointeda new official, known as the Provedor, to act as a liaison between thenational treasury known as the Casa dos Contos and the Escrivão daCamara. Since the household does not appear to have generated anysignificant source of revenue, and because the process of audit wasundertaken by the Vedores da Fazenda, it can be assumed that the pri-mary purpose of this official was to communicate the financial needsof the royal household to the Casa dos Contos and to ensure that thenecessary sums of money were brought into the coffers of the house-hold. A decade later, the formal structure of the financial adminis-tration was altered in order to reflect the fact that the royal house-hold was now drawing its income freely from the profits of thekingdom. Whereas beforehand the department that had regulatedthe expenses of the royal household had been termed the Contos doRei and was separate from the Casa dos Contos, the new departmentwas an amalgamation of the two and was called the Contos da Casae Reino.49

The impact of this reorganization on the financial footing of theroyal household becomes immediately apparent when one examinesthe way that the issue of lodging was handled. At the turn of thesixteenth century, accommodation for the king and his dependentswas managed by local counting houses called aposentadorias, which


50 AN/TT, Leitura Nova, Estremadura, liv. 2, fol. 128v.51 AN/TT, Chancelarias D. Manuel, liv. 12, fol. 57; liv. 42, fol. 12v.;

Chancelarias D. João III, liv. 17, fol. 23.52 AN/TT, Chancelarias D. Manuel, liv. 7, fol. 44v.

were supervised by a crown official known as the Aposentador Mor.This official was responsible for ascertaining the numbers of peopleat court who were entitled to lodging through the royal household,and then worked with the local aposentadorias to requisition theappropriate number of beds. Although the king’s subjects were re-quired by law to provide housing for the members of the court whenit was in residence in their village or town, the crown was obligedto remunerate both innkeepers and private citizens for the lodgingand food provided. The failure of previous kings to meet these pay-ments and the tendency of members of the court to abuse their pri-vileges had roused an endless number of complaints in the Cortes.

By 1513, however, the position of Aposentador Mor, which hadbeen filled at least until 1497, seems to have been rendered obsoleteand is not mentioned in the Ordenações Manuelinas.50 Instead, thedepartments of the aposentadorias of the three cities—Santarém, Lis-bon and Évora—where the court was most frequently in residence,came under the direct control of one of the Vedores da Fazenda. Atthe same time, crown revenue agents came partially under theauthority of the aposentadorias.51 What these changes implied is thatrevenues, such as those derived from the sisa, that were collectedin these areas, could be used to directly pay for the debts incurredby the aposentadorias. This shift undoubtedly allowed the aposentadoriasof Lisbon, Santarém and Évora to rapidly pay off the debts that theyhad been accruing since 1477.52

For the royal household, the road to financial recovery in theearlier part of the reign lay in its ability to access the increased reve-nues coming in from the almoxarifados. But it cannot be denied thatthe great injection of wealth brought into the hands of the Por-tuguese crown from the profits of the emergent spice trade was tohave a major impact on the development of the royal court. In1506, around the time when the gold trade had reached its peak,this income contributed a sizeable forty million réis or £23,000 tocrown revenues and profits from the spice trade were about thesame—forty-four million réis or £25,000. Twelve years later, the


53 “Finanças públicas,” 3: 33.54 Damião de Góis, Descrição da Cidade de Lisboa (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte,

1988), 61.

amount of revenue generated by the spice trade was close to onehundred million réis or £55,000.53

The vast quantities of cash, spices and other moveable goods thattumbled into the harbour warehouses in the port of Lisbon pre-sented a golden opportunity for the cash-strapped Portuguese royalhousehold. In 1501, the crown established the joint Casa da Índiae Guiné in order to manage the profits from both the spice tradeand gold trade. If the royal household had once suffered becauseof a dearth of cash or saleable goods, then the monetary surplusallowed household officials to redeem tallies and pay for necessaryprovisions from this department. It can be no coincidence that theCasa da Índia e Guiné came to be located in the Ribeira Palacecomplex. Begun in 1505, this opulent edifice on the main commer-cial square of the River Tagus replaced the castle of São Jorge asthe residence of the royal court when it was housed in Lisbon.54

The royal court thus began to siphon off the wealth generatedthrough overseas trade and diverted it in order to finance the royalhousehold. Despite the fact that increased revenues were coming infrom domestic sources, money from the Casa da Índia e Guiné wasmore readily usable. If one examines the changes in the money usedto pay the stipends or moradias of the kings dependents, the relation-ship between the court and the Casa da Índia e Guiné, (later the Casada Índia) becomes obvious. In 1498, more than forty per cent of themoney being taken to pay the living allowances of the fidalgos resi-dent at court came from the kingdom, either as receipts from thealmoxarifados or other revenues associated with regular taxation.About twenty per cent of the income derived from customs subsidieswhile another twenty per cent came from foreign trade, most ofwhich comprised profits from sugar from Madeira, which had beenpart of the patrimony of the Duchy of Viseu that Manuel I was ableto bring with him to the throne. Just over ten years later, more thanhalf of these revenues derived from overseas sources and the major-ity came from the pepper trade. Money from the almoxarifados andrents consisted of about only twenty per cent of the money receivedby the fazenda; the amount being received from customs was about


In general, Henry VII increased revenues by ensuring that hisreceivers were both loyal and efficient and by exercising his prero-gative in all cases where he stood to profit. But it was not enoughfor the king to merely generate income—he had to make sure thatthe monetary surplus was channeled directly into the central coffers.At least £13,000 was guaranteed to the king by way of exchequerassignment which was ostensibly to be comprised of customs revenuesand other public money coming from landed estates confiscatedthrough acts of attainder. Even when Henry VII began to divertrevenues from crown land, both public and private through theTreasury of the Chamber, he continued to collect the full sum ofthe assignment, substituting other revenues from the sources speci-fied by Parliament. Over the course of the reign, the financialdepartments of the kingdom were reorganized so that the Treasuryof the Household paid only for the diet and supplies of the house-hold—which required a steady influx of cash; and, after 1499, inaddition to the income received from the exchequer, the Coffererof the household received an additional £1,000 per month.

Developments in the financial administration of Portugal suggestthat Manuel I had a similar priority of providing adequate andregular funding for the royal household. The Manueline Reformsof 1516 allowed the Almoxarifes to streamline their process of revenuecollection and to rapidly funnel the profits of the sisa into the cent-ral coffers. The reform and standardization of urban charters or foroshelped to regulate prices and thus normalize taxation. The stan-dardization of weights and measures, achieved during the reign, alsohelped crown agents in this task. Even before the windfall of theIndia trade deluged the warehouses of Lisbon, the crown facilitatedthe financing of the royal household by making alterations in its per-sonnel. The creation of the office of Provedor in 1504 allowed moneyto be carried freely between the counting house and the royal house-hold and this link was formalized with the formation of the amal-gamated department of the Contos da Casa e Reino. The replacementof the Aposentador Mor by one of the Vedores da Fazenda as the officialin charge of organizing and paying for accommodation for the royalhousehold epitomised the crown’s objective of properly funding theroyal household and this move drastically reduced the red-tape in-volved in paying for lodgings. Finally, the construction of the RibeiraPalace, which jointly housed the king’s household and the Casa da


Índia allowed the court to directly draw upon the revenue and sale-able goods coming from India.

Reforms affecting the financial administration in both Englandand Portugal at the turn of the sixteenth century were precipitatedby the kings’ determination to expand the size of the royal house-hold. This development may have been stimulated by a wish to keepup with expanding courts elsewhere in Europe as well as to extendand strengthen their political connections within their kingdoms. Yetin the century that preceded the reigns of Henry VII and Manuel I,the monarchs of England and Portugal had faced great difficulty inpaying the diets and wages of a household restricted in numbers—previous kings had difficulties achieving solvency, let alone expan-sion. The ability of the kings to enlarge their households dependedon their ability to channel money into the hands of the Treasurersof their household and many of the major reforms undertaken inthese reigns were designed to do just this. The changes that ren-dered crown finance more efficient were not undertaken in a spiritof altruism; nor were legal reforms and the standardization ofweights and measures seen in both kingdoms for the benefit of thekings’ subjects alone and the self interest of the two monarchs isevident in the spoils raked in by their tax collectors.

1 K. B. McFarlane, “War, the Economy, and Social Change: England andthe Hundred Years’ War,” Past and Present 22 (1962), 3-13, with discussion on13-18; reprinted in K. B. McFarlane, England in the Fifteenth Century: CollectedEssays (London: Hambledon Press, 1981), 139-50. M. M. Postan, “The Costsof the Hundred Years’ War,” in Essays on Medieval Agriculture and General Prob-lems of the Medieval Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973),63-86, first published in Past and Present, no. 27 (1964), 34-53; and see also,M. M. Postan, “Some Social Consequences of the Hundred Years’ War,” inEssays on Medieval Agriculture, 49-62, first published in Economic History Review,1st ser., 12 (1942): 1-12. J. W. Sherborne, “The Hundred Years War: TheEnglish Navy: Shipping and Manpower,” Past and Present 37 (1967), 163-75.See also a review of the debate in Philippe Contamine, “Le coût de la Guerrede Cent Ans en Angleterre,” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 20 (1965):788-91.

2 A. R. Bridbury, “The Hundred Years’ War: Costs and Profits,” in Trade,Government, and Economy in Pre-Industrial England: Essays Presented to F. J.Fisher, ed. D. C. Coleman and A. H. John (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,1976), 80-95. For discussions of the impact of war taxation, see especiallyEdward Miller, “War, Taxation, and the English Economy in the Late Thir-teenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries,” in War and Economic Development:Essays in Memory of David Joslin, ed. J. M. Winter (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1975), 11-32; G. L. Harriss, King, Parliament, and PublicFinance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); J. R.Maddicott, The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown, 1294-1341 (Pastand Present Supplement no. 1, Oxford, 1975), J. W. Sherborne, “The Cost ofEnglish Warfare with France in the Later Fourteenth Century,” Bulletin of the

WARFARE, SHIPPING, AND CROWN PATRONAGE:THE IMPACT OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR ON THE

PORT TOWNS OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Maryanne Kowaleski

The debate on the economic costs and social consequences of theHundred Years War has been part of most economic history syllabisince the 1960s when M. M. Postan published a negative view andK. B. McFarlane a more positive assessment of the impact of thewar on the English economy.1 The debate has since developed manystrands, from A. R. Bridbury’s argument that there was nothing spe-cial about the Hundred Years War in a society in which war was aconstant factor, to conflicting analyses of the impact of rising wartaxation.2 Other scholars have focused on the costs and bene-

234 MARYANNE KOWALESKI

Institute of Historical Research 50 (1977): 135-50; J. R. Strayer, “The Costs andProfits of War: The Anglo-French Conflict of 1294-1303,” in The Medieval City,ed. H. A. Miskimin, D. Herlihy, A. L. Udovitch (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1977), 269-92; W. M. Ormrod, “The Crown and the English Economy,1290-1348,” in Before the Black Death: Studies in the ‘Crisis’ of the Early FourteenthCentury, ed. B. M. S. Campbell (Manchester and New York: Manchester Uni-versity Press, 1991), 149-83; W. M. Ormrod, “The Domestic Response to theHundred Years War,” in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred YearsWar, ed. Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer,1994), 83-101.

3 For example, K. B. McFarlane, “The Investment of Sir John Fastolf’s Pro-fits of War,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 7 (1957):91-116; and K. B. McFarlane, “A Business Partnership in War and Administra-tion 1421-1445,” English Historical Review 78 (1963): 290-316; A. J. Pollard,John Talbot and the War in France 1427-1453 (London: Humanities Press,1983); Simon Walker, “Profit and Loss in the Hundred Years War: The Sub-contracts of Sir John Strother, 1374,” Bulletin of the Institute of HistoricalResearch 58 (1985): 100-6.

4 J. H. Munro, “Industrial Transformations in the North-West EuropeanTextile Trades, c. 1290-c. 1340: Economic Progress or Economic Crisis?” inBefore the Black Death, 110-48. See also his “The ‘New Institutional Economics’and the Changing Fortunes of Fairs in Medieval and Early Modern Europe:The Textile Trades, Warfare, and Transaction Costs,” Vierteljahrschrift fürSozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 88 (2001): 1-47.

5 See, for example, Postan, “Costs of the Hundred Years War,” 64, 68; C.F. Richmond, “War at Sea,” in The Hundred Years War, ed. Kenneth Fowler(London: Macmillan, 1971), 96-121; Christopher Allmand, The Hundred YearsWar: England and France at War c. 1300-c. 1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1988), 88-9, 122-23; Sherborne, “English Navy, Shipping andManpower;” Michael Hughes, “The Fourteenth-Century French Raids onHampshire and the Isle of Wight,” in Arms, Armies and Fortifications, 121-43;N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain 660-1649(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 91-116; Maryanne Kowaleski, “Port Towns:England and Wales 1300-1540,” in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, ed.

fits—through ransom, plunder, and the award of offices—to the aris-tocratic elite which led the war effort.3 John Munro has made parti-cularly valuable contributions to the debate by pointing out how thedisruptive effects of warfare from the 1290s through 1340s contri-buted to an industrial transformation in the textile trades.4

This essay concentrates on an overlooked but crucial part of thedebate by exploring how the Anglo-French conflicts affected theshipping available in British port towns, particularly during the four-teenth century. Although historians have long noted the devastatingimpact on ports of naval impressments, coastal raids, privateering,and the disruption of maritime trade routes during the HundredYears War,5 no one has focused exclusively on port towns and few

235WARFARE, SHIPPING, AND CROWN PATRONAGE

D. M. Palliser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1: 469-70,473.

6 Maryanne Kowaleski, “Shipowners and Shipping in Medieval England,”unpublished paper given at the 38th International Congress on MedievalStudies, Kalamazoo, MI, 2003.

7 Sherborne, “English Navy, Shipping and Manpower;” see also his “TheBattle of La Rochelle and the War at Sea, 1372-5,” Bulletin of the Institute ofHistorical Research 47 (1969): 17-29. Other historians who have emphasized thenegative costs of the Hundred Years War to the maritime sector include: H.J. Hewitt, The Organization of War Under Edward III 1338-62 (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1966); and Timothy Runyan, “Ships and Mari-ners in Later Medieval England,” Journal of British Studies 16 (1977): 1-17.

have discussed shipping, although it represented the chief form ofcapital investment in port towns. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere,the value of ships probably outstripped all other forms of industrialinvestment in England during the middle ages.6 In focusing onshipping and port towns, I want to query the uniformly negativeview of the War’s impact on the maritime economy, a view whichhas been promulgated by historians such as J. W. Sherborne, whohas argued—as part of the Past and Present debate between McFar-lane and Postan—that coastal areas suffered from shouldering agreater proportion of the costs of war than inland regions.7 WhatI would like to suggest here, however, is that the picture is not asunrelievedly grim as naval and economic historians have claimed.The entrepreneurial merchants, shipowners, and mariners of Englishport towns sometimes found ways to profit from the War, particularlyin the western ports (those from Hampshire westwards, aroundDevon, Cornwall, and Wales, and up the coast to Cumbria). Theessential contributions of the port towns to the war effort, moreover,made the Crown increasingly open to their interests, more likely toaddress their petitions, and inclined to reward them with chartersand other privileges.

When the English kings needed ships to transport troops andsupplies, patrol the coast, or engage the enemy at sea, they hadthree options. One was to call on the Cinque Ports, a confederationof south-eastern port towns which owed 57 manned ships for twoweeks of service a year in return for a number of privileges and taxexemptions. But the Cinque Ports were rarely able to fulfill thisquota by the fourteenth century because of the silting of their portsand war-time interruptions of the maritime trade on which their


8 K. M. E. Murray, The Constitutional History of the Cinque Ports (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1935), 206-16; May McKisack, The FourteenthCentury 1307-1399 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 243; N. A. M. Rodger,“The Naval Service of the Cinque Ports,” English Historical Review 110 (1996):636-51.

9 Rodger, Safeguard, 118.10 When Henry V died, for example, the superb fleet of some 40 ships that

he had assembled was sold—on his order—to pay off his debts; see ColinRichmond, “The Keeping of the Seas during the Hundred Years War:1422-1440,” History 49 (1964): 285-7. For a similar sale to settle Edward III’sdebts, see Runyan, “Ships and Mariners,” 9.

11 Many of the accounts survive, showing their routes and work at eachport; see, for example, The National Archives, Public Record Office [hereafterPRO] E101/40/21, 41/33, 53/39. See also Rodger, Safeguard, 118-25.

12 For example: McKisack, Fourteenth Century, 244; Hewitt, Organization, 77;Timothy J. Runyan, “The Organization of Royal Fleets in Medieval England,”in Essays in Maritime History, ed. Timothy J. Runyan (Detroit: Wayne StateUniversity Press, 1987), 44-9.

economies relied.8 A second option was for kings to build or pur-chase ships of their own, although this alternative was rarely pursuedbecause of its enormous cost. In fact, the king’s ships neverrepresented more than 4 per cent of the fleets employed in thefourteenth-century naval campaigns.9 These vessels, moreover, wereconsidered the kings’ personal property and could be sold or givenaway at any time.10

The third and most commonly used option was to impressmercantile shipping into naval service. Many of these cargo shipswere cogs, which had to be specially outfitted with sterncastles andtopcastles for war-time service, or with hurdles and gangways if theywere to transport horses. To impress these merchant ships for navalduty, royal officials traveled from port town to port town to super-vise their arrest, an activity which became much more frequent andonerous for shipowners from the 1290s on.11 Ships could be im-pressed before their voyage was completed, forced to unload theirgoods before they reached their final destination, or diverted toanother port to pick up goods or troops for a period of weeks oreven months at a time.12 Impressed ships could also be captured ordestroyed and their crews held to ransom or killed. By the late1340s the constant impressment of merchant vessels was provokingbitter complaints from port towns, who pointed out the unreasonableburdens that shipowners were expected to bear since they receivedno compensation for their ships when on naval service and also lost


13 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous [hereafter CIM], vol. III (London:H.M.S.O., 1937), no. 14; Calendar of Close Rolls [hereafter CCR] 1349-54(London: H.M.S.O., 1906), 550-1; Rotuli Parliamentorum [hereafter Rot. Parl.],7 vols. (London, 1783-1832), 2: 320, 345, 346; 3: 66; for newly edited textsand translations, see W. M. Ormrod, ed., “Parliament of November 1373, Textand Translation,” (hereafter “Parliament of [ ... ]),” The Parliament Rolls ofMedieval England, ed. C. Given-Wilson et al. (CD-ROM, Leicester: ScholarlyEditions, 2005) [hereafter PROME], item 29; W.M. Ormrod, ed., “Parliamentof April 1376,” PROME, items 133, 136; G. H. Martin, ed., “Parliament ofApril 1379,” PROME, item 50.

14 For example: CCR 1343-46, 128-34; Calendar of Patent Rolls [hereafterCPR] 1348-50 (London: H.M.S.O., 1905), 72, 448; Rot. Parl., 2: 307; Ormrod,ed., “Parliament of February 1371,” PROME, item 32. See also Sherborne,“Navy, Shipping and Manpower,” 164-66; Hewitt, Organization, 77, 83.

15 Runyan, “Ships and Mariners;” Rodger, Safeguard, 118-25. See alsoHewitt, Organization, 89.

16 In 1294 the Crown ordered 30 towns to provide a total of 20 largegalleys or barges. We know that at least eight of these vessels were con-structed, at considerable expense to the port towns. The barge provided bySouthampton, for instance, cost the town £246, while London’s two barges costthe city over £580 in a five-month period. This experiment was enough of asuccess, however, that the cash-strapped Edward III increasingly resorted tothis practice, ordering six barges in 1354, at least 70 barges and balingers in1373, another 32 in 1377, and an additional 54 in 1401. See below, n.48; R.

out on the commercial freightage they could have earned.13 The dis-satisfaction port towns felt about these naval burdens was evidentin the slowness with which many met the king’s orders for ships,in outright disobedience by shipmasters who either ignored the shipcall or left naval service prematurely to take on a commercial cargo,and by the mounting chorus of petitions from port towns and theirresidents regarding what they viewed as excessive and unfair burdenson their purse.14

From the Crown’s point of view, the chief benefit of this relianceon mercantile shipping was its relatively low cost compared to whatit would have to spend to build and maintain a permanent navy.Although naval historians—many with the model of the modern navyforemost in their minds—have for years lamented the inefficiencyand slow response time of the medieval naval system, they alsoacknowledge the Crown’s creative financing in transferring the costsof shipping, crews, and victualling to port towns.15 The Crown waseven able to shift the costs of purpose-built barges and balingers(oared vessels especially suited to war at sea because of their maneu-verability) to port towns by instructing them to build ships for thenavy on five different occasions from 1294 to 1401.16 Town revenues


J. Whitwell, “The ‘Newcastle’ Galley, A.D.1294,” Archaeologia aeliana, 4th series,2 (1926): 142-96; R. C. Anderson, “English Galleys in 1295,” Mariners’ Mirror14 (1928), 220-41; J. T. Tinniswood, “English Galleys, 1272-1377,” Mariners’Mirror 35 (1949): 276-315; Ian Friel, “The Building of the Lyme Galley, 1294-1296,” Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 108(1986): 41-4; Rodger, Safeguard, 473-5.

17 Devon Record Office [hereafter D.R.O.], Exeter City Archives, Miscella-neous Roll 6, m. 17 [for the special rate] and mm. 17, 17a, 25-28 [for thebuilding and repair accounts of the barge in 1374-75 and 1376-77]. Theannual town accounts are in DRO, Exeter City Archives, Receiver’s Accounts.For barges that Exeter was ordered to build for the king, see also CPR1354-58, 221; Thomas Rymer, comp., Foedera, conventiones, litterae, et cujus-cumque generis acta publica inter reges Angliae ..., ed. Adam Clarke, John Caley,and Frederick Holbrooke (London, Record Commission, 1816-69) 3 vols. in6 [hereafter Foedera], 3/ii, 998-9; 4: 28; CCR 1399-1402, 238. For the financialdifficulties faced by other towns ordered to build similar barges, see above,n.16.

18 Kowaleski, “Port Towns,” 469, for this and the following.19 Margery K. James, Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade, ed. E. M. Veale

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 10, 39, 41-3, 107-16.

were nowhere near enough to pay for these new ships, so port townshad to raise the money from their own citizens. In Exeter, forinstance, the money came from a special rate assessed on the richerburgesses, along with a smaller sum granted by the king from atenth. Nonetheless, the barge that Exeter built in 1374-75 cost over£200 at a time when the town revenues were in the neighborhoodof only £100-£120 a year. And a few years later, in 1377, the townwas ordered to provide yet another barge, a cost it only grudginglymet.17

The War also cost the port towns in other ways. Enemy coastalraids became a particular danger during the Hundred Years War,targeting ports from Scarborough to Haverfordwest in Wales.18 Tocounteract these threats, port towns were forced to spend significantamounts to construct and maintain seaward defenses, such as chainsstrung along harbor entrances, artillery fortifications, and reinforcedstone walls and towers. War-time disruption of overseas trade routeswas also costly. The lucrative annual voyage to Bordeaux to fetchwine, for instance, used to bring back some 20,000 tuns of wine ayear to England in the first decade of the fourteenth century, butthat amount fell to about 10,000 tuns a year by the end of the four-teenth century and even less by the mid-fifteenth century, thoughGascony was still in English hands.19 Shipowners also had to absorbthe costs of armed convoy ships when they went to Gascony during


20 James, Studies in the Wine Trade, 125-33; Maryanne Kowaleski, “TheCommercialization of the Sea Fisheries in Medieval England and Wales,”International Journal of Maritime History, 15:2 (2003): 196-7.

21 Richmond, “Keeping of the Seas;” Stephen P. Pistono, “Flanders and theHundred Years War: The Quest for the Trêve Marchande,” Bulletin of theInstitute of Historical Research 49 (1976): 185-97; C. J. Ford, “Piracy or Policy:The Crisis in the Channel, 1400-1403,” Transactions of the Royal HistoricalSociety, 5th series, 29 (1979): 63-77.

22 Rosemary Horrox, The De La Poles of Hull (East Yorkshire Local HistorySociety Series, no. 38, 1983), 9-27; Bryan Waites, “The Medieval Ports andTrade of North-East Yorkshire,” Mariner’s Mirror 63 (1977): 138; C. M. Fraser,“The Life and Death of John of Denton,” Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, 37(1959): 303-25.

23 For this and the following, see M. Oppenheim, “Maritime History,” inThe Victoria History of the County of Kent, ed. W. Page (London: Constable,1926), 2: 247, 269; H. J. Hewitt, The Black Prince’s Expedition of 1355-1357(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958), 25-6, 36-8, 92-3, 148-9;Maryanne Kowaleski, “The Port Towns of Fourteenth-Century Devon,” in TheNew Maritime History of Devon, ed. M. Duffy et al. (London: Conway Press,1992), 1: 63; L. G. Carr Laughton, “Maritime History,” in The Victoria Historyof the County of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, ed. W. Page (London:Constable, 1912), 5: 360-8; Barbara Carpenter Turner, “Southampton as aNaval Centre, 1414- 1458,” in Collected Essays on Southampton, ed. J. B. Morganand P. Pederdy (Southampton: Southampton County Borough Council, 1961),

wartime, and, by the fifteenth century, the costs of ‘wafting’: protec-tive convoys for the Yarmouth fishing fleets.20 Piracy and privateer-ing also took their toll during the tumultuous war years, as when25 English ships returning from Brittany with cargoes of salt wereattacked and either captured or burnt by a Spanish fleet.21

The picture painted here reflects the traditional, accepted viewof the impact of warfare on late medieval shipping and the porttowns’ economies. I accept this picture too, but I do not believe ittells the whole story. The remainder of the essay, therefore, consid-ers how the kings’ wars could also promote economic developmentand political empowerment. Some of these opportunities have beenacknowledged by scholars. War profiteering, for example, obviouslyenriched some merchants and shipowners, particularly those innorthern ports such as Newcastle, Hull, and Scarborough whichserved as supply points during the Scottish wars.22 Other ports pros-pered when they served as embarkation ports for naval fleets, espe-cially when ships and their crews were forced to wait weeks untilfavorable winds or sufficient supplies arrived. The capture of Calaisincreased traffic through Sandwich, while Plymouth benefited fromthe more frequent expeditions to Brittany and Gascony.23 South-


39-47.24 Ian Friel, The Good Ship: Ships, Shipbuilding and Technology in England

1200-1520 (London: British Museum Press, 1995), 39-67; Susan Rose, ed., TheNavy of the Lancastrian Kings: Accounts and Inventories of William Soper, Keeperof the King’s Ships, 1422-1427 (Navy Records Society, v. 123, 1982).

25 CCR 1323-27, 566.26 Rot. Parl., 2: 107, 108; Ormrod, ed., “Parliament of January 1340,”

PROME, items 5, 11, 12; W. M. Ormrod, “Edward III: Parliament of January1340, Introduction,” PROME.

27 Report on the Dignity of a Peer of the Realm (London, 1826), 4: Appendix,Part II, 469-70, 526, 527, 539-40; Foedera, 2/ii, 1150; 1193; 3/i, 4, 105-6; 3/ii,880-1, 1002. See also Nicholas Harris Nicolas, A History of the Royal Navy, 2vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1847), 2: 74, 82-3, 95, 152; and Rodger,Safeguard, 124-5. Their ability to articulate maritime needs also prompted in1347 the first grant of tonnage and poundage, customs duties levied to help

ampton and Portsmouth became major naval bases, homes toextensive shipbuilding enterprises for the royal fleet. The shipbuild-ing that the king ordered so many ports to undertake also providedemployment and training for a body of skilled shipwrights, inaddition to channeling business to the merchants and shopkeeperswho furnished naval supplies and victuals.24

What has not been fully recognized, however, are some of theother ways that the Hundred Years War altered the profile of porttowns on the national stage. The kings’ growing reliance on shippingto carry out their territorial ambitions, for example, stimulated morerecognition and appreciation of the contributions that shipowners,shipmasters, and mariners could make to strategic planning. Indeed,the Crown increasingly went out of its way to consult these shippingexperts, going so far as to summon them to the so-called “Councilsof Shipping” and “Naval Parliaments” in the mid and late fourteenthcentury. In 1326 the king’s admirals were ordered to bring two menfrom each port who were well informed about shipping to Londonto advise the king and his Council.25 In 1339 shipmasters andmariners were issued writs to appear in Parliament, and theirpresence is reflected in agreements during the Parliament of 1340to provide shipping to combat the French threat, as well as passageof a tax to provide for the safety of the sea.26 And on eight otheroccasions in the middle decades of the fourteenth century—in 1336,1341, 1342, 1344, 1347, 1369, 1374 and 1376—as many as fortyto fifty ports were ordered to each send one to four experiencedmariners or men knowledgeable about shipping to advise the King’sCouncil at Westminster on nautical matters.27 These specific calls to


pay for the ships involved in the siege of Calais that year.28 Rot. Parl. 3: 86, 212; Chris Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament of January

1380,” PROME, item 47; Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament of October 1385,”PROME, item 28. Although 1380 was the first time that ton-tight was madea regular payment, it had been given to shipowners on an ad hoc basis fromat least the late thirteenth century. In 1301, for instance, shipownersnegotiated for a rate of 7s per ton; British Library, Add. Ms. 7966a, fols.102-3, 130-31; CCR 1296-1302, 482-83. See also Michael Prestwich, War,Politics and Finance under Edward I (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman andLittlefield, 1972), 145.

29 For example, ton-tight was back to 3s 4d per ton for every three monthsof service by the reign of Henry V; PRO, E101/48/15, Rot. Parl., 4: 79, 104;Given- Wilson, ed., “Parliament of March 1416,” PROME, item 31; Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament of October 1416,” PROME, item 27. The regularityof ton-tight payments is also evident in the practice, from the late fourteenthcentury on, of recording the tonnage of each ship impressed for service; inmany cases, the shipowner (who would have received the ton-tight payment)is also noted. By the 1480s, shipowners were receiving 1s a ton per month,a sum closer to commercial freightage; see Rodger, Safeguard, 125.

30 Bryce Lyon, “The Infrastructure and Purpose of an English MedievalFleet in the First Phase of the Hundred Years War (1338-1340),” Handelingender Maatschappij voor geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent, n.s., 51 (1997): 73n.19; Mary Lyon, Bryce Lyon, Henry S. Lucas, eds., The Wardrobe Book ofWilliam de Norwell: 12 July to 27 May 1340 (Brussels: Palais des Académies,1983), passim. In 1358, the rate for those joining the Gascon expedition was

include shipping experts in political deliberations at such a highlevel deserve more attention, not least because of the influence theymust have exerted in the flood of parliamentary petitions anddecisions concerning shipping and the navy during the fourteenthand fifteenth centuries.

The growing political clout of the shipping industry is evidentin the Crown’s more positive responses to shipowners’ grievancesfrom the mid-fourteenth century on. An allowance for wear and tearon the masts of ships pressed into naval service was made availablein 1378, and in 1380 shipowners were finally granted regularcompensation for the impressments of their ships.28 Called“ton-tight”, this compensation was paid at the rate of 3s 4d per tonfor each three-month period of service. The allowance fell to 2s perton when the grant was renewed in 1385, but it rose again insubsequent years and some form of monetary payment to shipownersbecame a regular feature of most naval impressments from this timeforward.29 By at least 1338, moreover, knights and men-at-armsgoing overseas for wartime service had to pay shipowners to trans-port their horses, at the rate of 6s 8d per horse.30 Further conces-


a noble (6s 8d) for two horses; Foedera, 3/i, 412.31 Hewitt, Organization, 89, note; Runyan, “Ships and Mariners,” 11-3; R.

G. Marsden, “Early Prize Jurisdiction and Prize Law in England,” EnglishHistorical Review 24 (1909): 675-97.

32 For this and the following, see Rot. Parl., 3: 120, 278, 296, 444; 5: 504;6: 437; Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament of November 1381,” PROME, item 107;Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament of November 1390,” PROME, item 11; idem,“Parliament of November 1391,” PROME, item 50; Given-Wilson, ed., “Par-liament of October 1399,” PROME, item 152; R. E. Horrox, ed., “Parliamentof April 1463,” PROME, item 18; Horrox, ed., “Parliament of January 1489,”PROME, item 39; A. Luders et al., eds., Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols. (London:Record Commission, 1810-28), II, 534-5.

33 The continual stream of petitions to outlaw deodand, which met withsome initial success, is particularly noteworthy; see Rot. Parl., 2: 345-6, 372-3;3: 444, 94, 120; 4: 12, 492; Ormrod, ed., “Parliament of April 1376,”PROME, item 133; Ormrod, ed., “Parliament of January 1377,” PROME, item73; Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament of November 1380,” PROME, item 33;Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament of November 1381,” PROME, item 107;Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament of October 1399,” PROME, item 153; Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament of May 1413,” PROME, item 35; Anne Curry, ed.,“Parliament of October 1435,” PROME, item, 26.

34 Rot. Parl., 5: 27, 29, 52-3, 55; Curry, ed., “Parliament of November1439,” PROME, items 44, 52; Curry, ed., “Parliament of January 1442,”PROME, items 18, 26.

sions included more substantial reimbursement for the war-time lossof impressed ships (although this did not always happen), andexplicit instructions reserving a portion of plunder taken at sea toshipowners.31 Starting in 1381 there was also a big push to restrictthe transport of English-owned imports and exports to English shipsbecause the increased business, the petitioners stated, would streng-then the merchant fleet on which the king relied for naval service.32

These petitions not only prompted statute legislation, but alsoincreased in scope as they continued into the reign of Henry VII.The shipowners’ lobby was also probably behind parliamentarylegislation forbidding confiscation of a ship when it carried un-customed merchandise, and exempting ships from being forfeitedas deodand when a mariner fell out and drowned.33 Other parlia-mentary petitions put forward by shipowners included release fromresponsibility for the misdeeds of their mariners (which could resultin the forfeiture of the ship) and continual complaints about themisuse of safe-conducts by foreign shippers; the latter petitionprompted the king to sanction a procedure to deal with capturedships.34 Lower down the social ladder, shipmasters also appear as


35 Rot. Parl. 2: 287, 319-20; Ormrod, ed., “Parliament of January 1365,”PROME, item 26; Ormrod, ed., “Parliament of November 1373,” PROME,items 28. 29.

36 This bonus was recorded in naval accounts from 1387 through at least1450; see, for example, PRO, E101/40/36, 41/33, 48/15, 53/12, 53/25, 54/4, m.2, 54/10. Mariners on trading vessels, in contrast, were paid by the voyage;see Travers Twiss, ed., Monumenta Juridica: The Black Book of the Admiralty(London: Rolls Series, no. 55, 1871), 1: 138-42; and Maryanne Kowaleski,“Working at Sea: Maritime Recruitment and Remuneration in Medieval Eng-land,” in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Ricchezza del mare. Richezza dal mare, secc.XIII-XVIII: atti della “trentasettima Settimana di studi”, 11-15 aprile 2005, Istitutointernazionale di storia economica F. Datini, Prato, serie 2, Atti delle Setti-mane di studi e altri convegni, 37 (Florence: Le Monnier, forthcoming).

37 For example, PRO, C47/22/9135; CCR 1377-81, 33, 51, 182; 1399-1402,238-40.

38 Hilary L. Turner, Town Defences in England and Wales: An Architectural andDocumentary Study AD 900-1500 (London: John Baker, 1970); D. Macphersonet al., Rotuli Scotiae in Turri Londinensi et in domo Capitulari Wesmonasteriensiasservati, 19 Edward I-Henry VIII, 2 vols. (London: Record Commission, 1814-1819), 1: 211; Rot. Parl., 1: 405; 2:, 172; Ormrod, ed., “Parliament of January1348, “ PROME, item 59; CPR 1413-16, 57.

39 For example, CPR 1288-96, 497-8; 1296-1302, 26; PRO, C47/2/63/2, 7.See also Rodger, Safeguard, 123.

40 Rot Parl., 3: 17, 42, 44; G. H. Martin, ed., “Parliament of October 1377,”PROME, item 52; Martin, ed., “Parliament of October 1378,” PROME, items38, 39, 52.

petitioners, successfully protesting the delay of wages when pressedinto naval service and the seizure of ships for minor customs infrac-tions, although the king would not promise to compensate them forall the ship’s equipment that might be damaged during navalservice.35 Common mariners also reaped benefits, including bonuses(called ‘regards’) of 6d per week which was added to their regularpay of 3d per day.36

Port towns also began to receive some relief from the burdensomecosts of ship impressments. The Crown, for example, began to groupseaports together administratively so that they shared the expenseof providing ships and men.37 The costs of strengthening seawarddefenses were defrayed by murage grants, while port towns wereregularly being released from contributing to ‘land service’ by theearly fourteenth century.38 To compensate for the cost of outfittingand victualling ships for naval service, port towns were also specifi-cally exempted from subsidies and other taxes.39 By the 1370s, townsthat had built barges for the navy were allowed confirmation of theirfranchises free of charge.40 In exchange for particularly meritorious


41 Calendar of Charter Rolls, 6 vols. (London: H.M.S.O., 1903-27), 1327-41,389; 1341-1417, 3-4, 338-9.

42 See for this and the following: CPR 1388-92, 338; CPR 1461-67, 307;Hugh R. Watkin, ed., Dartmouth (Devonshire Association Parochial Historiesof Devonshire, no. 5, 1935), 82, 155. The tin monopoly was annulled in 1391as inconvenient for merchants; Rot. Parl., 3: 295-6; Given-Wilson, ed.,“Parliament of November 1391,” PROME, item 48.

43 Statutes of the Realm, 2: 68; Rot. Parl., 3: 120, 275; Given-Wilson, ed.,“Parliament of November 1381,” item 107; Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament ofJanuary 1390, Appendix,” no. 18; Crispin Gill, Plymouth: A New History(Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1966), 83-4, 92-7.

44 PRO, E159/172, Hilary recorda, m. 5.45 For this and the following, see Rot. Parl., 3: 662-3; 5: 9, 18-22, 555-61;

Given-Wilson, ed., “Parliament of November 1411,” PROME, item 40; Curry,ed., “Parliament of November 1439,” PROME, items 20, 32; Horrox, ed.,“Parliament of April 1463,” PROME, item 48. See also C. E. Welch, PlymouthCity Charters 1439-1935: A Catalogue (Plymouth: Plymouth City Council, 1962),5-16, 37-9; CPR 1461-67, 309-10.

service, some seaports received entirely new privileges. Dartmouth,for example, was granted freedom from tolls throughout the realmin 1337, and a charter of liberties—including the right to elect amayor—in 1341 in consideration of “the great expense and loss theyhave suffered by reason of the war” and also for providing two largewar ships with a double crew for the king.41 In 1390, Dartmouth wasgiven a monopoly on the export of tin for three years because it“above other places in the realm has long been and still is strongin shipping, and therewith has wrought great havoc on the king’senemies.”42 In 1393, tiny Dartmouth was granted its own coronerand in 1463 the borough was allowed to absorb its suburb, South-town, to help citizens guard against enemy incursions. Dartmouth’sneighbor to the south, Plymouth, also benefited from its navalcontributions, being named in 1384 as one of the places wherepassports to depart the realm were available and in 1389 as one oftwo seaports sanctioned for the departure of pilgrims to Santiagode Compostella.43 Nor did Plymouth hesitate to remind the king ofits wartime services to him, as the town did in a successful petitionagainst a corrupt royal customs official in 1396.44 The culminationof Plymouth’s rewards came in 1439, when it received a chartergranting it self-government after a long struggle with the town’smanorial lord, Plympton Priory.45 Not so long afterwards, Plymouthwas also incorporated, the first town in Devon to do so.


46 For this and the following, see Gill, Plymouth, 65-7, 72-5; MaryanneKowaleski, “Introduction,” The Haveners’ Accounts of the Earldom and Duchy ofCornwall, 1287-1356 (Devon and Cornwall Record Society, n.s., vol. 44, 2001),5-11.

47 A. Temple Patterson, Portsmouth: A History (Bradford-on-Avon: MoonrakerPress, 1976), 26-30; Laughton, “Maritime History,” 364-73; Rose, ed., Navyof the Lancastrian King; Carpenter Turner, “Southampton as a Naval Centre,”39-47.

The advantages that accrued to Dartmouth and Plymouth in thefourteenth century were due mostly to their naval contributions, buttheir ability to meet these obligations arose in large part from deli-berate Crown patronage. Shortly before the Hundred Years Warbegan, the Crown had completed a process begun decades earlierto consolidate control over the two fine, deep harbors of DartmouthWater and Sutton Pool in Plymouth.46 In 1337, the Crown trans-ferred its rights over these two strategic harbors to the newly-createdDuchy of Cornwall, which also controlled Fowey Water, which liesat the mouth of the river leading up to the administrative capitalof the Duchy, Lostwithiel. Thus the Duchy of Cornwall, led by theBlack Prince and closely linked to the Crown, came to control threechoice harbors on the southwestern coast. Crown patronage, as wellas the location of these harbors on the best shipping lanes to Gasco-ny and Iberia, where English commercial and military interests wereexpanding at this time, clearly encouraged the use of these portsas embarkation points for troops and supplies, pilgrims, and winefleets. Other western ports also benefited from royal investment inthe navy during the fifteenth century, chief among them Portsmouth,where the Crown spent large sums on seawards fortification, drydocks, and repair facilities, and Southampton, where royal invest-ment in shipbuilding and storehouses is well-known.47

Crown patronage of these western ports was, I argue, a crucialtrigger that helped to stimulate their shipping and maritime econo-mies. One reflection of this stimulus was the progressively largershare of shipping these western ports were able to provide. Thisvitality in the region’s shipping sector was evident, first of all, in itscontributions to naval impressments, which rose from just under 40per cent of English ships at the beginning of the War to 54 per centby the end of the War (Table 1). Indeed, Dartmouth alone providedmore ships for the war effort than any other single port in England,a remarkable achievement when we consider that it ranked around


48 Foedera, 4: 28; CCR 1377-81, 32-3, 43-4, 46-7, 51-2, 55, 57, 114, 120,181-2; CCR 1399-1402, 238-40. See also Rodger, Safeguard, 474, and above,n.16. Note that probably fewer than eight of the 20 ordered in 1294 werebuilt, and probably none of those ordered in 1401 were ever constructed.

49 Dorothy Burwash, English Merchant Shipping 1460-1540 (Toronto: Uni-versity of Toronto Press, 1947), 145-64. There is some evidence, however, thatthe shipping and trade of the smaller ports of Norfolk and Suffolk faredbetter than the larger head ports of eastern England; see Geoffrey V.Scammel, “English Merchant Shipping at the End of the Middle Ages: SomeEast Coast Evidence,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 13 (1961): 327-41;N. J. Williams, The Maritime Trade of the East Anglian Ports 1550-1590 (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1988).

50 From the 1350s through 1380s, Exeter, Dartmouth, and Plymouth allfunded the building of new barges or the fortifying of old ships in responseto the government’s needs; see CPR 1350-54, 386; 1354-8, 221; 1377-81, 298;1385-89, 428; PRO E101/41/2; PRO E101/555/8; M. C. B. Dawes, ed., Registerof Edward the Black Prince (London: H.M.S.O., 1931), Part II, 150; Gill,Plymouth, 80; D.R.O., Exeter City Archives, Misc. Roll 6, mm. 17, 25-28 (workon the Exeter barge).

51 PRO E101/555/8; CPR 1350-4, 386; Barbara W. J. Carpenter-Turner,“The Building of the Gracedieu, Valentine and Falconer at Southampton,

88th in total wealth in 1334 and its population in 1377 was onlyabout 1200. The Crown’s recognition of the westwards expansionof shipping is also evident in the regional distribution of the ordersit placed for the construction of barges and balingers for naval ser-vice; in 1294, only 24 per cent of the 21 barges ordered were fromthe western port towns, but by 1401, fully half of the 54 orders weredirected towards these ports.48 There was a similar rise in the west-ern ports’ visibility on the valuable wine route to Bordeaux, wheretheir share of British shipping rose from around 45 to 73 per centbetween the early fourteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries. Ships fromthe western ports were also responsible for almost 70 per cent ofthe late medieval pilgrim transports to St James of Compostela. Andstudies by Dorothy Burwash indicate that by the fifteenth century,the western ports were capturing a larger share of overseas tradeand competed more successfully against foreign carriers than didvessels of the eastern ports.49

How were the western ports able to increase so substantially theirshare of the nation’s shipping? The Crown’s constant need for ships,particularly its orders for port towns to construct barges at their owncost for naval service, may well have stimulated shipbuilding in thesecounties.50 Devon’s reputation for shipbuilding was certainly wellknown.51 And the fact that more barges and balingers (oared sailing


1416-1420,” Mariner’s Mirror, 40 (1954), 65; Ian Friel, “Devon Shipping fromthe Middle Ages to c. 1600,” in A New Maritime History of Devon, 74. For twomasts and other gear shipped from Dartmouth to Greenwich in 1396, seePRO E122/40/21; for the names of West Country shipwrights who were finedfor refusing to go to Southampton to work on the king’s ship, Grace Dieu, seePRO, C47/2/49/14 (7 from Bristol, 11 Cornishmen, and 22 from Devon).There was also considerable shipbuilding in Southampton Water (above, n.44)and Bristol; see J. W. Sherborne, The Port of Bristol in the Middle Ages (BristolBranch of the Historical Association, Local History Pamphlets, 1965), 17.

52 Burwash, Merchant Shipping, 107-8, 112-5, 190-200; J. W. Sherborne,“English Barges and Balingers of the Late Fourteenth Century,” Mariner’sMirror, 63 (1977): 109-14.

53 Burwash, Merchant Shipping, 120-3, 125-6, 128-31. Crayers usually carriedthree masts and set a bonnet on both fore and mainsails. Spinaces were oaredand decked sailing vessels. Carvels were light, swift ships (with hulls presum-ably carvel-built), with three masts, a main, a “musyn” and a “fukke”, eachsupplied with a yard. The mizen probably carried a lateen sail.

54 On this point, see also Wendy R. Childs, “The Commercial Shipping ofSouth-Western England in the Late 15th Century,” Mariner’s Mirror, 83 (1997):272-92.

vessels whose speed and maneuverability made them particularlydesirable during wartime) were active in western ports, especiallyDartmouth, also suggests that West Country shipping was sparkedin part by Crown needs during the Hundred Years War.52 Indeed,it must be significant that three new types of boats—the crayer, asmall craft with comparatively elaborate sail; spinace, another oaredbut also decked sailing vessel; and carvels, speedy and highlymaneuverable vessels that may have been influenced by the Portu-guese caravel—were also found in significantly greater numbers inthe western than eastern ports in the late fifteenth century, suggest-ing a trend of innovation that may originally have been fostered ahundred years earlier.53

Funding for these ships came from a variety of sources,including first and foremost, commercial freightage. During theperiod of the Hundred Years War, the mercantile shipping capacityof the western ports, particularly those of Dartmouth and Plymouthwas clearly growing relative to capacity in eastern ports, as indicatedboth by the rise of the western ports’ share of the important carryingtrade of Bordeaux wine and by their significantly greater profile inthe transport of pilgrims to Compostela (Table 1).54 The passengertrade involved in pilgrim transport was capable of turning a tidyprofit since the whole voyage took only three to four weeks and


55 The only recorded charge is in 1473, for a London ship of 320 tonstaking 400 pilgrims for 225 marks (£150), indicating a charge of 7s 6d perpassenger; see CPR 1476-85, 78. The cost from Plymouth was probably slightlyless since the voyage was shorter. For this and the following, see also Childs,“Commercial Shipping.”

56 Kowaleski, “Port Towns of Fourteenth-Century Devon;” Kowaleski, “PortTowns,” 476-87; Maryanne Kowaleski, “The Expansion of the South-westernFisheries in Late Medieval England,” Economic History Review, 53 (2000):420-54.

57 E.g., Charles Kingsford, “West Country Piracy: The School of EnglishSeamen,” in Prejudice and Promise in Fifteenth-Century England (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1925), 78-106, 177-203; Stephen P. Pistono, “Henry IV andthe English Privateers,” English Historical Review 90 (1975): 322-30; StephenP. Pistono, “Henry IV and John Hawley, Privateer, 1399-1408,” Transactionsof the Devonshire Association 110 (1979): 145-63; Ford, “Piracy or Policy.” Thepoint of disagreement usually revolves around the degree of control thegovernment could exercise over lawlessness at sea. Kingsford and othersemphasize the Crown’s helplessness, while Ford and to some extent, Pistono,view periods of rampant “piracy” as government policy to weaken the French.

58 George Warner, ed., Libelle of Englyshe Polycye: A Poem on the Use of Sea-

shipowners could earn about £30 for taking 80 passengers.55 Thevigor of the carrying trade in the ports of Devon and Cornwall,which together accounted for almost one-half of all voyages to StJames of Compostela from 1390 to 1484 and almost one-half of allwine voyages to England from Bordeaux by the mid fifteenth centuryis especially notable (Table 1). Also significant as a spur to invest-ment in shipping was the rising prosperity of West Country agri-culture and the growth of overseas trade in the region (especiallythe profitable export of cloth and tin) over the course of the latemiddle ages—in contrast to the “depression” which hit so manyareas of northern, eastern, and southern England.56

Substantial funding may have also come from the spoils of warvia privateering and piracy. As C. J. Ford has argued, the Crownincreasingly pursued a deliberate policy of licensing shipowners andshipmasters in the early fifteenth century to defend English interestsby giving them free reign to attack enemy shipping, a “low cost”solution to the king’s dilemma on how to fund a viable navy. Devonand Cornish men took such a leading role in privateering57 that theLibelle of Englyshe Polycye, a 1436 tract arguing for the economic andpolitical advantages that England could accrue by exercising controlof the seas, specifically cited Dartmouth, Plymouth and Fowey menfor their effective harassment of foreign shipping in the EnglishChannel.58


power, 1436 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), 12. Their effectiveness can alsobe seen in the petitions of their victims; see Dorothy Gardiner, ed., A Calendarof Early Chancery Proceedings Relating to West Country Shipping 1388-1493 (Devonand Cornwall Record Society, n.s., vol. 21, 1976).

59 CCR 1343-6, 115; CCR 1360-4, 4, 22, 27, 120; CPR 1343-45, 100-1; CPR1358-61, 584-5; CIM, III, 150-1; Watkin, Dartmouth, 183, 271; D.R.O., ExeterPort Customs Accounts, 1349/50-1360/1; Dawes, ed., Register of the Black Prince,2: 84, 87, 106, 111-12, 121, 141.

60 For this and the following, see Dorothy A. Gardiner, “John Hawley ofDartmouth,” Transactions of the Devonshire Association 98 (1966): 173-205,Michael Jones, “Roches contre Hawley: la cour anglaise de chevalerie et uncas de piraterie à Brest, 1386-1402, “ Mémoires de la société d’histoire et del’archéologie de Bretagne, 64 (1987): 53-64 ; Pistono, “Hawley;” PRO, C47/6/4;and the relevant documents in Watkin, ed., Dartmouth.

An early example of the profitable merger of interests in navalservice, the carrying trade, privateering, and piracy was WilliamSmale, a Dartmouth merchant/shipowner active from the 1330s.Mayor in 1346, he was also personally involved in naval service, bothas a shipowner whose vessels were impressed for service, and in hiscapacity as lieutenant of Lord Guy de Brien, admiral of the West,on whose behalf he assembled fifteen Devon and Cornish ships(seven from Dartmouth) for the king in 1360. A truce intervened,however, and without the means to pay the crew or the costs of thesquadron, they were diverted into piracy and profited from the cap-ture of Flemish cargoes worth over £2000. Smale was also accusedof plundering a ship in Dartmouth harbor in 1343, and several yearslater two of his ships were part of a private squadron of 13 vesselsthat pirated a Spanish ship, threw its mariners into the sea andabsconded with the ship and its rich cargo of wine and othergoods.59

An even more notorious example is John Hawley of Dartmouth,who in 1379 was commissioned, with two fellow burgesses, to set outwith a fleet of seven vessels against the King’s enemies for a periodof one year.60 Although accused of irregularities on many occasions,Hawley prospered as the owner of no fewer than 15 ships, servingas mayor of Dartmouth fourteen times, holding various royalappointments in Devon, and acquiring immense amounts of realestate in the Southwest. Often thought to be the model for Chaucer’sShipman, Hawley’s activities made him tremendously wealthy; he hadno difficulty, for instance, in paying £500 cash up front to farm thecustoms of tonnage and poundage in the whole country.


61 Gardiner (West Country Shipping, xvi-xvii) cites evidence on this point; seealso J. C. Appleby, “Devon Privateering from Early Times to 1688,” in A NewMaritime History of Devon, 90-2.

62 For an account of the capture, see A. R. Myers, ed., English HistoricalDocuments, vol. IV, 1327-1485 (London: Eyre & Spotiswoode, 1969), 259.

63 Kingsford, “West Country Piracy;” A. L. Rowse, Tudor Cornwall: Portraitof a Society (London, 1941; reprint Redruth: Dyllansow Truran, 1990), 75-6;A. L. Rowse, “The Turbulent Career of Sir Henry Bodrugan,” in The LittleLand of Cornwall (Gloucester, 1986; reprint, Redruth: Dyllansow Truran, 1992),178-90; J. A. F. Thomson, “The Courtenay Family in the Yorkist Period,”Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 45 (1972): 233.

64 Burwash, Merchant Shipping, 120-3, 125-6, 128-31. Balingers and bargeswere associated with ports like Dartmouth from the fourteenth century on;carvels appear in the mid-fifteenth century. See also Rodger, Safeguard, 523,n.56 who cites a M. Litt. study of piracy 1450-1500 that found that 60% ofknown English pirates were barges or balingers.

65 John Keast, The Storey of Fowey (1950; reprint Redruth: Dyllansow Truran,1987), 24-33; and Kingsford, “West Country Piracy,” passim. Others profitedfrom the ransoms they collected, which led to a lively trade in prisoners inseveral West Country ports; see for example, D.R.O., Exeter Mayor’s CourtRolls, 1404/5, mm. 23d, 28d; CIM, vol. 7, 313; see also Kowaleski, “PortTowns,” 491.

By the fifteenth century, the significant profits to be gained fromprivateering and plunder encouraged the emergence of a moreorganized and businesslike approach to these activities.61 In 1449,a privateering squadron led by Robert Wennington of Dartmouthcaptured over 100 ships in the Hanseatic salt fleet.62 Prominentgentry from such West Country families as the Trevelyans, Arundells,Bodrugans, and even the Courtenays (whose head was the earl ofDevon) also collected the profits of piracy, as shipowners, investors,and receivers of pirated goods, and under color of their countyoffices.63 It is surely no coincidence, moreover, that the vessels mostoften associated with piracy— carvels in particular, but also bargesand balingers, because of their speed and maneuverability—wereconcentrated in the West Country ports.64 And it was the ports wherethe shipping trade had developed most precociously—Fowey, Dart-mouth, and Poole in particular—that were at the forefront of theprivateering and piracy that was so prevalent in the late medievalports of western England. From Fowey come Cornish privateer-pirates such Mark and John Mixtow, whose targets included a Geno-ese carrack off the coast of Portugal; John brought the ship and itsrich cargo back to Fowey, cavalierly putting its crew ashore in Portu-gal destitute.65 From Poole comes the notorious Henry Pay, whose


66 H. P. Smith, The History of the Borough and County of the Town of Poole, 2vols. (Poole: Looker, 1951), 1: 178-82; F. W. Matthews, “Henry Pay: The Storyof a Noted Poole Worthy,” Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History andArchaeological Society 61 (1939): 89-93; Kingsford, “West Country Piracy,” 82-3.

67 For the variety of occupational backgrounds practiced by the marinersaboard ships of John Hawley accused of piracy, see Kowaleski, “Working atSea.”

68 Sherborne, “Costs of English Warfare,” 149. See also Sherborne, “EnglishNavy: Shipping and Manpower.”

69 Lyon, “Infrastructure,” 66-7.70 D. A. Gardiner, "The History of Belligerent Rights on the High Seas in

the Fourteenth Century," Law Quarterly Review 48 (1932): 521-46; Marsden,“Early Prize Jurisdiction;” Richmond, “Keeping of the Seas,” 121; Rodger,Safeguard, 127.

raids on Flanders, Normandy, Brittany, and Castile drew the atten-tion of Spanish chroniclers.66 Although Smale, Hawley, the Mixtows,and Pay as ship captains benefited most from these illegal andsemi-legal activities at sea, their crews were also entitled to a shareof the profits, an incentive that must have drawn a wide variety ofport-town residents into this shady but profitable maritime world.67

Although it would be foolish to deny the very real damage thatshipping and port towns suffered during the Hundred Years War,I hope this essay illustrates that it is worth considering the ways thatthe War stimulated investment in shipbuilding, in town defenses andquayside facilities, and in the training and employment of a wholerange of maritime workers, from shipwrights and ropers to marinersand masters. We also need to consider the sheer amount of cash thatthe war effort siphoned to port towns; between 1368 and 1381, forinstance, naval costs accounted for over £246,050, or 23 per centof the total spending on war.68 Edward III’s campaign to the LowCountries in 1338 included wage payments of almost £5,000 to12,263 maritime workers (of whom 11,325 were mariners) in 370ships, most of which were in service for just under one month.69 Inother words, the central government was transferring more moneyto port towns than it was taking away in the form of taxes. Lessquantifiable is the impact of the increasingly favorable distributionof prize money, which reduced the royal share of captured cargoesand ships to virtually nothing by the fifteenth century, when ship-owners customarily received one-third, shipmasters one-sixth, andthe crews half of the spoils.70 Few accounts survive of the legitimatedistribution of these profits, but the proceedings of inquisitions into


71 For examples of illegal profits made by Devon pirates and privateers, seeGardiner, ed., Early Chancery Proceedings.

illegal privateering or piracy suggest very large profits indeed, whichgiven the notoriety of the West Country seamen for these activities,must be considered as a significant source of profit and investment.71

Nor must we forget the bigger picture here, because it was the navi-gational experience and entrepreneurial spirit formed by the naval,privateering, and piratical activities of late medieval English marinersthat provided the “school for seamen” and training for Britain’s latervoyages of exploration and colonization to the New World.

x

LAND AND LABOUR

x

1 Monique Zerner, “Le nouveau servage en Provence au XIe-XIIIe siècles:absence ou rareté?” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 112 (2000): 911-1007.

2 Monique Bourin, ed., La servitude dans les pays de la Méditerranée Occidentalechrétienne au XIIe siècle et au-delà: déclinante ou renouvelée? Mélanges de l’ÉcoleFrançaise de Rome 112 (2000); the introduction to this volume by MoniqueBourin and Paul Freedman is online at http://lamop.univ-paris1.fr/W3/IntroMEFRM2000.pdf; “‘Nouveaux servages’ de l’Europe médiane et septentrionale(XIIIe-XVIe siècles),” Conférence à Göttingen, 6-8 février 2003, reviewed byJulien Demade, Histoire & Sociétés Rurales 19 (2003): 354-9.

PEASANT SERVITUDE IN LATER MEDIEVAL PROVENCE:ARCHAISM OR INNOVATION?

John Drendel

Peasant servitude lasted only briefly as a generalized phenomenonin Provence. Monastic sources attest to it widely for perhaps acentury after 1050. It fossilized in most areas into symbolic duesafter 1200, a victim of economic change and the pressures uponlordship created by the reconstruction of centralized authority inProvence. In the later Middle Ages, as sources become more abun-dant, we encounter mentions of serfdom, in particular an onerousform of lordship, characterized by tenures burdened with heavycharges and restrictions upon inheritance, localized in a swath ofvillages astride the highlands of Provence. Monique Zerner suggeststhat this “bondage to land,” rather than being a declining artifactof an earlier age represented a revival of peasant servitude.1 Thisreassessment comes in the context of a renewed interest in serfdomamong French historians, who have recently discovered that serfdomsurvived in areas where they thought it to have been abolished inthe course of the thirteenth century.2 Did serfdom indeed reboundin Provence in the later Middle Ages, and if so, what was its rela-tionship to the economic problems of the period?

We should first clarify the vocabulary and language of serfdom.Marc Bloch defined servitude as a personal, hereditary, and shamefulattachment to a lord embodied in dues, foremost of which were pay-ment of a tallage and obligatory labor works or corvées, and restric-

258 JOHN DRENDEL

3 Marc Bloch, “Liberté et servitude personelle au Moyen Age, parti-culièrement en France; contribution à une étude des classes,” in Marc Bloch,Mélanges Historiques (Paris: Sevpen, 1963), 1: 286-91.

4 Georges Duby, “Note sur les corvées dans les Alpes du sud en 1338,” inPierre Petot, ed., Études d’histoire du droit privé offertes à Pierre Petot (Paris:Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1959), 141-46.

5 Monique Zerner, “L’Élaboration du grand cartulaire de Saint-Victor deMarseille,” in Olivier Guyotjeannin, Laurent Morelle, and Michel Parisse, eds.,Les Cartulaires, Actes de la Table Ronde Organisée par l’École Nationale des Charteset le G.D.R. 121 du C.N.R.S., Mémoires et Documents de l’École des Chartes (Paris:École des Chartes, 1993), 217-46; Robert-Henri Bautier and Janine Sornay,Les sources de l’histoire économique et sociale du Moyen Âge: Provence, ComtatVenaissin, Dauphiné, Savoie (Paris: CNRS, 1972-1974).

tions upon personal freedom.3 Among the latter, the most importantlimited the right to possess property and to marry; by virtue ofmainmorte, the lord inherited part or all of the real or movablegoods of his serfs, while formariage imposed barriers, usually in theform of onerous fines, against marriage among peasants of differentlords. In what follows, I use the terms servitude, serfdom and bond-age as synonyms referring to dependent status as Bloch defined it;the term “slave” refers to human chattels under Roman law, andof dependents designated as servi in the period prior to 1000; “free-holders” refers to peasants possessed of non-dependent allods,alleutiers in French; the term “real servitude” or “bondage to land”describes an onerous and degrading status in later medieval Pro-vence not unlike serfdom, but with an important difference. Thisform of dependence was created by the land a peasant held, ratherthan by inheritance of a personal tie; in theory a peasant whorenounced his holdings no longer endured the servitudes they im-posed.

Sources for the study of dependency in Provence are skewedtowards the end of the Middle Ages. Unlike the north of Europe,records of seigneurial administration are not numerous in any pe-riod.4 The period between 950 and 1120 is documented by the mo-nastic cartularies of the great Provençal abbeys, St. Victor of Mar-seille, Lérins, St. Pons, Montmajour and the episcopal cartulary ofApt. Most of these sources peter out before the middle of the twelfthcentury, leaving a hiatus of a century before the enquêtes of theAngevin counts, beginning in 1252, and notarial and communal re-cords from the countryside allow us to pick up the thread again inthe late thirteenth century.5 The lacunae of documentation between

259PEASANT SERVITUDE IN PROVENCE

6 Georges Duby, La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise(Paris, 1952; reprint Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en SciencesSociales, 1988), 173-262.

7 Jean-Pierre Poly, La Provence et la société féodale 879-1166. Contribution àl’étude des structures dites féodales dans le Midi, Collection “Études” (Paris:Bordas, 1976).

8 Patrick J. Geary, Aristocracy in Provence, The Rhône Basin at the Dawn of theCarolingian Age, The Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress, 1985), 88.

9 Poly, La Provence, 92.10 Paul-Albert Février, “Review of Les Sarrasins dans le Haut Moyen-Âge

1150 and 1250 leave us in the dark concerning the period duringwhich servitude withered, but the records which survived in theperiod following 1250 describe its remnants and perhaps its sequels.

George Duby’s influential thesis on the Mâconnais explained themanifestations of personal servitude as arising from the disappear-ance of the Roman notion of liberty and private land which theCarolingians sustained until the tenth century.6 The disappearanceof public jurisdiction allowed local lords to treat the bodies andlands of free peasants as no different from those of their slaves. Re-cent historians of the early feudal period in Provence more or lessfollow this model, despite the discrepancies between Provence andBurgundy.7 In the eighth century, the social landscape of Provenceresembled late antiquity more than the region between the Loireand the Rhine. Servi cultivated the Provençal demesnes which Abbo,rector of the Tarentais, bequeathed in his will of 739 to the Abbeyof the Novalesa, without assistance from the families of diverse statuswhich held individual properties, colonicae. These Provençal manorsat least did not have the bipartite structure of estates in NorthernFrancia.8 Less than a century later, in 812/13, the Bishop of Mar-seille’s enumeration of his lands and dependents mentions no freed-men or demesne slaves at all; a roughly equal number of colons andslaves worked on tenures.9 Though some slaves probably worked thelands of the colonicae dominicatus, legal distinctions among peasantwere fewer, reflecting a simplified social structure.

Beginning in the late tenth century, the economic and socialstatus of these dependents improved. Although Paul-Albert Févrierbelieved the impact of the sarrazinades to be wildly exaggerated, Pro-vence did experience considerable domestic warfare and sufferedincursions by Islamic raiders in the period 870-972 which may havecontributed to breaking the “nexus between peasants and land.”10

260 JOHN DRENDEL

Français (Histoire et Archéologies) (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1965),”Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes (1966): 301-3; Stephen Weinberger, “Latransformation de la société paysanne en Provence médiévale,” Annales:Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 45 (1990): 10.

11 Poly, La Provence, 108; Weinberger, “La transformation,”10-12. 12 Weinberger, “La transformation,” 12-13; Monique Zerner, “Sur la

croissance agricole en Provence,” in Centre Culturel Départemental del’Abbaye de Flaran, ed., La croissance agricole du Haut Moyen Âge: Chronologie,modalités, géographie. Flaran (Auch: Centre culturel départemental de l’Abbayede Flaran, 1990), 153-67.

13 Poly, La Provence, 9214 Poly, La Provence, 92, 134; Weinberger, “La transformation,” 10-12.

Mentions of mancipia disappear in the latter half of the tenth cen-tury; the distinction between free and unfree after 1040. The lan-guage of sources refers to peasants with less pejorative language;they are no longer objects, but rather actors in the social land-scape.11 Indeed, in this period a group of peasant freeholders brieflyemerged, profiting from the reclamation of wasteland, particularlythrough contracts of medium vestum which gave peasants the owner-ship of half the land they cleared after a period of five to sevenyears.12

An opposing social force, the ascendant warrior class of caballarii,beat down the free peasantry. The decline of comital power led tothe privatisation of Church lands in the late ninth century, followedby those of the count in the 1040s.13 The result was a new socialdivision between rusticus and caballarii, termed miles after 1050. ForStephen Weinberger, the changing vocabulary was not wholly unfa-vorable towards the peasants who found their social role valorized,but the end result was the disappearance of freeholding peasants,and the emergence of a broad servitude. From castles held for thecount, or built after 1040 on allodial lands, the miles exploitedjurisdictional powers of public authority: justice, hospitality (alberga),military service (cavalcata) and somewhat later the assistance (quista)owed by a vassal to his lord. These were the pretexts for the imposi-tion of arbitrary confiscations—malos usos and malas consuetudines—upon the peasantry, and notably the freeholding peasants. Some richpeasants may have escaped upwards into the ranks of the warrioraristocracy but most fell under its domination.14

The characteristics of this servitude are disputed. Monique Zerner,who has closely studied the cartulary of St. Victor for this period,finds within it scarce evidence of peasant servitude. About 40 twelfth-

262 JOHN DRENDEL

21 Poly, La Provence, 155-922 Poly, La Provence, 318-58.23 Jean-Paul Boyer and Alain Venturini, “Les consulats ruraux dans le

ressort de l’Évêché de Nice (circa 1150-1326),” Actes des Journées d’HistoireRégionale, Mouans Sartoux (1984): 361-96; Aubenas, “Le servage,” 510 n.2;Édouard Baratier, Enquêtes sur les droits et revenus de Charles Ie d’Anjou enProvence, 1252 et 1278, avec une étude sur le domaine comtal et les seigneuries deProvence au XIIIe siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1969), 74-5.

Louis initiated a general movement towards the abolition of serfdomin the thirteenth century, the decline of millenial serfdom resultedfrom the decay of seigneurial prerogatives. The allodialisation ofseigneurial power in a region with a strong tradition of Roman lawresulted in a collective possession of lordship shared among heirsequally in each generation. While such “coseigneuries” were generallymanaged through a single baile in the thirteenth century and later,the fragmentation of lordship weakened its holders in the face ofcompetition from resurgent comital power.21 The counts of Provencereconquered their ascendancy after the marriage between the countof Barcelona and the heiress of Forqualquier in 1094 brought toProvence a powerful and dynamic Catalan dynasty.22 RaimundBerenger III and his heirs attacked strong lordship by undercuttingits social domination. particularly in the highland regions wherelords opposed comital power most fiercely. Consular governments,inspired by Italian influence and the renaissance of Roman law,existed in villages of eastern Provence from at least 1064. In thefirst half of the thirteenth century, Raimund Berenger V used thistradition to weaken highland barons by creating consulates in thetowns and villages of highland Provence where they did not exist;in so doing, as we have seen, he abolished serfdom. The Angevincounts of Provence continued this policy in the second half of thethirteenth century by granting “safeguard” (salvatoria) to serfs wholeft their lord, a status which brought them under the lordship ofthe count. Those who did so abandoned the lands and goods theyheld from their personal lord, which suggests that the peasants’relationship to land was already more powerful than personal bon-dage.23

The fading of servitude parallels the disappearance of traditionalpeasant census tenure in favor of the Roman law contract of emphy-teusis. In the thirteenth century, whenever the sisters of La Cellehad the occasion to relet or renew a traditional censive holding, they


24 L’Hermitte-Leclercq, Le monachisme, 87-90; Baratier, Enquêtes, 75.25 Baratier edited the most important enquêtes from the thirteenth century,

but only a few of the many detailed enquêtes of the fourteenth and fifteenthcenturys are available in print, Robert-Henri Bautier and Janine Sornay, Lessources de l’histoire économique et sociale du Moyen Âge, 1: 35-53.

26 Baratier, Enquêtes, 143, n.2; 178. John Drendel, “The Institutions ofVillage Goverment in Later Medieval Provence and the Origins of the Councilof Trets,” Historical Reflections/Réflections Historiques 19 (1993): 249-66.

did so using the newer Roman law contract. This evolution was partof the global remodeling and concentration of habitat in Provence,which saw lords divide up seigneurial demesnes constituted duringthe eleventh century among free peasants and peasants soon to befree. In some instances lords freed their own serfs individually, butmore often they accorded franchises to entire villages, even to thepoint of emulating the counts, and permitting villagers to createpermanent institutions of self-governance. Many such acts survivefrom the thirteenth century. These accords were paid for by convert-ing onerous or shameful services into cash payments.24

The Capetian dynasty of counts which succeeded the Catalans in1246 launched a series of detailed enquêtes in the 1250s, modeledupon Saint Louis’ administration of Languedoc.25 These surveys, arevived Roman law notariat, and a general renaissance of writtenrecords, shed new light upon the status of peasants in the secondhalf of the thirteenth century. These records show, as we noted, thatthe count tended to dissolve servitude in villages where he was adirect lord. But the counts were not successful in wresting all ele-ments of public authority from the lay and ecclesiastical lords whowielded it. Lords like the viscounts of Marseille limited the count’sjurisdiction in the Val of Trets to the east of Aix; the abbot ofLerins held all rights of justice in Cannes and its neighboring coast;the archbishop of Arles held all rights of justice in Salon; the landsof the sisters of La Celle, south of Brignoles, were exempt from thecount’s jurisdiction as well, save for justice over homicide. Still, inthe inquest into comital rights conducted in 1252 and 1278,Edouard Baratier found that the count had recovered comital do-main over the lands of lay lords, even in the highland regions northof the Var, where baronial families like the Glandèves retained muchland and power.26

The servitude which emerges in the records of the later MiddleAges reflects the enduring power of seigneurial jurisdiction in some

264 JOHN DRENDEL

27 Strong communities and a strong count reduced lordship to very littlein the upper valley of the Vésubie after 1250, Jean-Paul Boyer, Hommes etcommunautés du haut pays niçois médiéval. La Vésubie (XIIIe-XVe siècles), prefaceby Noël Coulet (Nice: Centre d’Études Médiévales de Nice, 1990), 357-83.

28 Baratier, Enquêtes, 129-134; Zerner, “Nouveau servage,” 1004; Poly, LaProvence, 134. The lords of the village of Saint Christol on the plateau ofForqualquier continued to levy quistas in the thirteenth and fourteenthcenturies, quistas which in the case of the Abbey of Saint-André were limitedby arbitration in 1270 to five cases modeled upon those which circumscribedthe quistas of the count. This suggests how broad the quista was beforehand,Danuta Poppe, “Saint-Christol à l’époque médiévale,” Cahiers du Centre d’Étudesdes Sociétés Méditerranéennes 53 (1) (1966): 25-26; the same arbitrationconceded to the inhabitants the right to dispose of property by will. InReillanne, inhabitants paid a seigneurial quista as well, Danuta Poppe, Economieet société d’un bourg provençal au XIVe siècle: Reillanne en Haute Provence, trans.Danuta Poppe, Jan Stodolniak and Lidia Carminati-Nawrocka (Wroclaw:Académie Polonaise des Sciences, Institut d’Histoire de la Culture Matérielle,1980), 72; Poppe, “Saint-Christol,” 25-26.

29 Aubenas, “Le servage,” 78; Colette Samaran, “Note sur la dépendancepersonnelle en Haute-Provence au XIVe siècle,” Annales du Midi 69 (1957):229-36; Baratier, Enquêtes, 102.

(although by no means all) of the mountain valleys of highland Pro-vence.27 In 1252, in the upper valleys of the Durance, Verdon, andVar rivers, personal dependents of the count outnumbered freepeasants in numerous villages. The enquêteurs called these dependents“men of the market quest” (homines de quista ad mercedem). Zernerargues that these men were not serfs, noting that only in onelocality, Aups were they distinguished from “free.” According to Zer-ner “men of the quista” refers to the same comital obligation owedby all the counts subjects. Quista, however, is a term which originatedin the eleventh century as one of the malos usos; it continued in thethirteenth century to refer to both seigneurial and comital obliga-tions.28 There is considerable evidence that homines de quista admercedem refers to a specific obligation owed by men by virtue oftheir subordinate status; in 1341, homines de mercedem referred tomen in Castellane whose annual tallage was a mark of dependence.Other dependents bore servitude by virtue of their attachment toa specific type of tenure, the casamentum. One can find remnantsof mainmorte, corvées and seigneurial quistas scattered across highlandProvence from Forqualquier to the valleys north of Grasse.29

Baratier described the servitude of homines de quista and casamentias comparable with the status of serfs in notarial registers from the


30 Samaran, “Note sur la dépendance,” 229-36.31 Samaran, “Note sur la dépendance,” 230-32.32 Henri Falque-Vert, Les hommes et la montagne en Dauphiné au XIIIe siècle,

Collection “La Pierre et l’Écrit” (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble,1997); Nicolas Carrier, La vie montagnarde en Faucigny à la fin du Moyen Âge.Économie et société, fin XIIIe-début XVIe siècle, Collection Logiques Historiques(Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001); Fabrice Mouthon, “La famille et la terre:exploitations paysannes au sud du Léman à la fin du XIIIe siècle,” RevueHistorique 307 (2002): 891-937.

33 Samaran, “Note sur la dépendance,” 232.34 Aubenas, “Le servage,” 78. The document from Puget-Theniers will be

discussed below.

early fourteenth century studied by Colette Samaran.30 These actsreveal in much more detail than the comital records the subjectionin the region of Grasse of two classes of men: caslani and maleservi.Maleservi possessed a casamentum, a coherent unit comprised of arableland, dwellings and outbuildings, garden, vineyard and pasture heldnot in emphyteusis but by virtue of an act of homage. The maleservushad no other rights over the casamentum, other than to hold it andbequeath it to a direct heir. If there was more than one direct heir,the holding could not be divided but only held undivided; in theabsence of heirs, the lord recovered the casamentum through main-morte, though in fact it was often relet to close relatives or othermembers of the village.31 These obligations are very like those owedin this period by peasants in the Alps of Savoy and Dauphiné to thenorth.32 The maleservus owed a heavy dues, up to 4 sesters and 3quarters of grain after the harvest. Caslani in the village of Caussolshad no more freedom to buy and sell their land than maleservi, butelsewhere they appeared to possess land in emphyteusis. Caslani andcasamenti alike owed their lord tallage in six customary cases, theobligation to inhabit the village and use the lords oven and mill,the burden of comital taxation, and corvées. For casamenti, this formof servitude derived from the status of land and was not personal;the free peasant who acquired a casamentum acquired a personal tieto the lord, and in theory, could release himself from that samebondage by relinquishing his holding.33 It is comparable to the servi-tude of men known as maleservi in Castellane in 1341, whose goodswere subject to mainmorte unless their children held the land undi-vided. It is also similar to the bondage of peasants described in acomital inquest in the region of Puget-Theniers, where lords inher-ited the goods of many villagers.34 Although the language differs

266 JOHN DRENDEL

35 Zerner, “Nouveau servage,” 1005-7.36 Duby, “Note,” 144.37 The question of the impact of Roman law upon freedom merits a sepa-

rate discussion. Aubenas argued that the clarity of Roman law laminated adiversity of social statuses into a stark opposition between free and unfree,much as English common law polarized the status of villani in opposition tofree men, but Gouron disagrees, pointing out that civil law commentators hadlittle interest in the status of peasants in the twelfth century, and that thebroader impact of their interpretation of the law uniformly promoted theRoman law notion of liberty. The consensual essence of Roman law contractsrenders the legal system unusable in an unfree society. The rapid, precociousand widespread diffusion of Roman law and the notariat in the Provençalcountryside widely promoted emphiteusis tenure and credit, whose closerelationship I have explored elsewhere, Roger Aubenas, “Inconscience dejuristes ou pédantisme malfaisant? Un chapitre d’histoire juridico-sociale,XIe-XVe siècle,” Revue d’Histoire de Droit 56 (1978): 215-52, cited by AndréGouron, “Liberté, servage et glossateurs,” Recueil des mémoires et travaux publiépar la Société d’Histoire du droit et des institution des anciens pays de droit écrit(1980): 41-51, reprinted in La science du droit dans le Midi de la France auMoyen Âge (London: Variorum, 1980), XVI-XXVI; John Drendel, “Le crédit

from place to place, and the details as well, the prevalent form ofservitude in these highlands appears to have been real, and notpersonal. The rise of bondage to land underlies the paradox ofZerner’s final conclusion; personal serfdom had not only disappearedfrom Provence, it never really had existed, but lords in the moun-tains used rights over land to capture economic resources frompeasants beginning in the late twelfth century, as their jurisdictionalrights decayed.35

The distinction is neat, but it overlooks the clear, albeit scanty,evidence of personal servitude based upon jurisdictional rights priorto 1150, and its fossilized remnants later. The apparent rise of bon-dage to land may be a simple reflection of more abundant sourcesafter 1250. Moreover, as George Duby pointed out long ago, adependent peasantry in Provence made no sense to lords movingtowards salaried agricultural labor in the monetized economy of theearly fourteenth century.36 Finally, the idea that lords would userights over property to limit the freedom of peasants and extractgreater rent goes against the grain of an agrarian legal system domi-nated by Roman Law, and in particular by emphyteutic tenure.Emphyteusis was a flexible contract adaptable to very different rela-tions of power between peasants and lords, but it conferred funda-mental rights of possession incompatible with seigneurial restrictionson inheritance and alienation.37


dans les archives notariales en Basse-Provence au début du XIVe siècle,” inFrançois Menant and Odile Redon, eds., Notaires et crédit dans l’occidentméditerranéen médiéval, Collection de l’École Française de Rome (Rome: ÉcoleFrançaise de Rome, 2004); Marie Louise Carlin, La pénétration du droit romaindans les Actes de la Pratique Provençale (11e-13e siècle), Bibliothèque d’histoire dudroit et droit romain (Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence,1967); Paul-Louis Malaussena, La vie en Provence orientale aux XIVe et XVesiècles, introd. by Roger Aubenas (Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et deJurisprudence, 1969).

38 Archives Départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, B354. Édouard Baratierdiscovered this source, and his student Ilona Jonas studied it in a fine articlewhich I have relied upon, along with the original document, to write thefollowing passages, Édouard Baratier, La démographie provençale du XIIIe auXVIe siècle, avec chiffres de comparaison pour le XVIIIe siècle, Démographie etSociétés (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1961), 80, 223-4; Ilona Jonas, “Note sur unrecours de feux dans la baillie de Puget-Théniers en 1343,” Provence Historique27 (1977): 59-80.

39 Baratier, La démographie, 80.

The economic illogic of bondage to land for both lords andpeasants in the fourteenth century emerges most clearly in a sourcefrom the later Middle Ages which has not been examined from thisperspective, an enquête which the auditors of Provence’s centralaccounting office ordered into declining tax revenues in the moun-tain baillie of Puget-Theniers in the spring of 1343.38 The Chamberof Accounts in Aix ordered local officers to investigate the missingfoci or basic taxpaying unit in 25 villages and 4 small towns. In eachcommunity the officers empaneled jurors who identified the hearths,named the missing tax payers, described the time and cause of theirdeparture, and their present residence, if known. The investigationdocuments a dramatic population loss of one-third of the region’spopulation in the space of a dozen years, a drop affecting nearlyevery village. This source has been interpreted as evidence of a Mal-thusian crisis in Provence; however, Edouard Baratier declined toinvoke overpopulation, speaking rather of “serious economic difficul-ties” which neither he nor his student Ilona Jonas explored. Thecollapse in population is unequalled in any other region of Provence,with the exception of a few villages, also in highland Provence, affec-ted by the introduction of outside flocks onto common pastures.39

The inhabitants of some villages decried poor weather and sterili-tas as the fundamental causes of the region’s malaise, and indeedsources do mention regional climatic crises and food shortages in

268 JOHN DRENDEL

40 Louis Stouff, Ravitaillement et alimentation en Provence aux XIVe et XVesiècles (Paris: Mouton, 1970), 284; Marie-Joseph Laurénaudie, “Les famines enLanguedoc au XIVe et XVe siècles,” Annales du Midi 64 (1952): 23-35.

41 John Drendel, “Jews, Villagers and the Count in Haute Provence:Marginality and Mediation,” Provence Historique 49 (1999): 217-31.

42 Jonas, “Note sur un recours,” 72-4, 80.

Southern France in 1329-1330, 1331-1332, and 1339-1340.40 Otherjurors fingered debt, which harvest failures may well have provoked.Yet no region of Provence outside of Puget-Theniers appears to havesuffered social and economic dislocation on this scale as a result offood shortages, climatic incidents, or debt; my own study of aneighboring region suggests that highlands village sustained arelative degree of prosperity through the first four decades of thefourteenth century, a prosperity brought down not by crop failureor overpopulation by rather by a crushing burden of war taxation.41

What is specific to Puget-Theniers, apart from the catastrophic lossof population, was the high population of dependent peasants: 24per cent of 226 peasants hearths deserted by death escheated to thelord, while only 9.6 per cent were in the hands of heirs, a figurereflecting not the lack of legitimate offspring but rather their emi-gration. The nature of the tie between lord and peasant is expressedby the term “man of” (suus homo erat) or the remark that the goodsescheated to the lord pro servicio. On a few occasions the term homode casamento is expressly mentioned, but in any case, the differencebetween the percentage of homes and properties sold (12 per cent)and recovered by creditors (16 per cent) as opposed to thoseclaimed by the lord is convincing evidence of the servile incapacityof a substantial proportion the households to sell their goods,bequeath them to heirs or use them as collateral for loans.42

The enquête of 1343 is unclear concerning the specific nature ofservitude in Puget-Theniers, but eloquent in its description of itseconomic impact. Whereas elsewhere in Provence, the transition fromfeudal tenure to emphyteusis gave peasants rights which acceleratedthe liquidity of land, creating a land market, and above all, a marketfor credit, in these highland villages, lack of freedom singularlyrestricted the ability of peasants to mobilize capital. Credit existed—the jurors specified many peasants who had lost their goods tocreditors—but without the collateral of land, peasants borrowingwould have restricted what few precious movables they could pledge.Indeed it is difficult to understand how the lords themselves might

1 D. C. North and R. Thomas, The Rise of the Western World (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1973); R. Sugden, “Spontaneous Order,” Journalof Economic Perspectives 3 (4) (1989): 85-97; R. Sugden, “Convention, Creativityand Conflict,” in Y. Varoufakis and D. Young, eds., Conflict in Economics(Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), 68-90; R. Sugden, “RationalChoice: A Survey of Contributions from Economics and Philosophy,” EconomicJournal 101 (4) (1991): 751-85.

2 P. David, “Clio and the Economics of QWERTY,” American EconomicReview Papers and Proceedings 75 (2) (1985): 332-7.

3 D. C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

BARGAINING POWER AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE:SEVEN CENTURIES OF ITALIAN SHARECROPPING

CONTRACTS, 821 TO 1517 A.D.

Francesco L. Galassi

I

A fundamental division lies at the heart of what has been called theNew Institutional Economics (NIE). To stylize a complex debate, onthe one hand the “functionalist” view, put forth for example byNorth and Thomas or Sugden,1 argues that the multiplicity ofstable equilibria leads to the establishment of competing self-reinforcing conventions. Institutional choice and change occur asthe most successful conventions, usually defined as the least costlyones, emerge. On the other side, which for want of a better termcould be called the “QWERTY view” after David’s influentialarticle,2 multiple stable equilibria lead to arbitrary or stochasticselection through “sensitive dependence” on small events (pathdependence). Increasing returns, network economies, or sheeruncertainty over the precise outcomes of alternative arrangementsthen generate rents or quasi rents for a subset of actors, who willfind it advantageous to invest resources in protecting and enforcingexisting institutions. No guarantee of efficiency or even reversibilityexists.3

As always when worldviews differ, proponents of either approachcan point to a mismatch between the opposing model and everydayobservation. Change undeniably takes place, and it would take a

271ITALIAN SHARECROPPING CONTRACTS

4 J. Knight, Institutions and Social Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1992).

5 M. S. Archer, Culture and Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1996).

6 A. A. Alchian, “Uncertainty, Evolution and Economic Theory,” Journal ofPolitical Economy 58 (1950): 211-22.

7 E. Sober, The Nature of Selection (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984).8 For review see G. M. Hodgson, Economics and Evolution (Cambridge: Polity

Press, 1993).9 J. J. Vromen, Economic Evolution (London: Routledge, 1995).10 M. T. Hannan and J. Freeman, Organizing Ecology (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1989).

particularly obdurate mind to deny that historically the broad thrustof institutional change has been towards increasing efficiency andreducing transaction costs, albeit with checks and reversals, at timeson a macro scale. At the same time, however, the world is not aPanglossian equilibrium where all is at its best. To detached inspec-tion, the functionalist approach has more than a whiff of teleologyor at the very least bears a strong resemblance to the smoothnessof an Arrow-Debreu setting, as Knight pointed out.4

The root of this division probably lies in the conceptual difficultyof modeling change in social relations.5 To be more specific, thedisagreement does not ultimately hinge on the sources of socialchange, in that both approaches can deal with randomness orintentionality, determinism and free will, or any mixture of these.The difficulty lies rather in the process of transmission: how doesa mutation, however it may have arisen, become a new norm? Howdoes it “reproduce”?

The biological analogy is both troublesome and insightful.Troublesome because it brings back Alchian’s concept of “fitness,”6

so that it becomes necessary yet again to separate success fromoptimality. But the insight into the tension running through thewhole body of NIE-inspired literature may well be worth the smallprice of underscoring that distinction.7 If seen from the perspectiveof the numerous attempts to apply evolutionary thinking to econ-omics,8 the difficulty may be reduced to what Vromen9 has arguedis the real puzzle in that exercise: arriving at a satisfactory speci-fication of the transmission mechanism. In fact, of the threeconstituent elements of evolution—mutation, selection, and trans-mission—this last aspect remains the most troublesome for socialscience.10 If transmission is unclear selection cannot be understood

272 FRANCESCO L. GALASSI

11 L. J. Alston, T. Eggertsson, and D. C. North, Empirical Studies inInstitutional Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

12 R. R. Nelson and S. G. Winter, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change(Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1982).

13 R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976); S.Blackmore, The Meme Machine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

either, in that the units on which selective pressures act have to beidentified before the process of selecting can be mapped. NIE doesnot have a general answer to this puzzle, so that unsurprisingly theevolutionary analysis of institutions has been focusing on casestudies.11

One important proposal in this direction was put forth byNelson and Winter.12 The unit of selection is, in their framework,the individual “routine” used in any given economic process,whether consciously put in place or slowly arrived at by randomwalk or learning by doing. Since routines can be learned, thismakes economic evolution Lamarckian (transmission of acquiredtraits) rather than Darwinian (only genotypes are capable of replica-tion, and change occurs through their differential survival rates).However, if these routines are to be considered the economic equi-valent of genes how they replicate is not clear. A gene can beisolated as a unit of information within a biological organism, whilea “routine” is not similarly identifiable. The suggestion that thereare “units of culture” (memes),13 though fascinating is difficult to testand use analytically.

The problem can therefore be put in these terms: reconcilingthe functionalist vs. path-dependence debate involves specifying anagreed (set of) evolutionary mechanism(s). That in turn depends ondefining what is being selected. If a basic (set of) unit(s) can beagreed upon, then we could watch economic evolution in actionand study the selection process. As a first approximation, then, itshould be possible to identify an institution and isolate within it aset of rules whose incidence in the population changes over time,recognizing that to reach meaningful conclusions the time horizonmight have to be longer than most studies of institutional changeallow. We could then correlate these changes with potential trans-mission links. To achieve this, we need a well-defined populationwith a clearly identifiable set of characteristics, in an environmentwhose broad features are reasonably well known. The populationneeds to be, first, successful, that is reproduce over long periods of


14 P. R. Grant, “Variation in the Size and Shape of Darwin’s Finches,”Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society 25 (1985): 1-39; J. Weiner, The Beakof the Finch. Evolution in Real Time (London: Vintage Books, 1995).

15 P. S. Leicht, “Livellario nomine. Osservazioni ad alcune carte amiatine delsec. IX,” Studi Senesi 1 (1906): 275-301; I. Imberciadori, Mezzadria classicatoscana (Florence: Vallecchi, 1951), 78.

16 C. M. Mazzini, La Toscana Agricola. Atti della Giunta per la Inchiesta Agrariae sulle condizioni della classe agricola (Rome: Forzani, 1881), 3, Part 1: 463-466.

time, and second, changing yet reasonably stable (does not undergosuch profound modifications that descendants cease altogether toresemble ancestors). We need, in fact, something akin to Darwin’sGalápagos finches.14 On a much more modest level, in this paperI propose to look at just one such population.

II

In early June 821 A.D., in a village called Baiano, some fifty kilo-metres south-east of Siena (central Italy), a farmer named Leupran-dus leased from the Abbey of San Salvatore a farm “with a house[...] vines, woods, streams and pasture, tilled and untilled land” forwhich he agreed to pay the Abbey “omnia medietate,” half of all[products]. The agreement, the earliest known sharecroppingagreement in Italy and one of the earliest surviving farm contractsanywhere, was simplicity itself: in a few lines, beside the land andthe house, the Abbey agreed to supply oxen and half the seedwhile Leuprandus promised to live on the farm.15 Leuprandus wasilliterate, yet he probably would have had no trouble recognisingas fundamentally the same agreement as his own a contract in usein Tuscany over 1,000 years later.16 Then too, rent consisted of halfof all output and the tenant agreed to live on the farm. Variableinputs were supplied in somewhat different proportions, but whathad really changed by the late nineteenth century was the sheernumber of stipulations that had been added to that basic agree-ment over time: the later contract consisted of 4 closely printedpages and 26 distinct clauses.

Mezzadria (sharecropping) pre-dated Leuprandus and lasted wellinto the post-1945 years. At its zenith, in the nineteenth century,in central Italy it accounted for over half (in some areas over 2/3)of all farm employment, and was used in every part of country and


17 T. J. Byres, “Historical Perspectives on Sharecropping,” in T. J. Byres,ed., Sharecropping and Sharecroppers (London: Frank Cass., 1983), 1-18.

18 Istituto Centrale di Statistica (ISTAT), Sommario di statistiche storiche1926-1985 (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1986), 189.

19 For the present purposes, it does not matter whether that share is ½,though in practice it almost always is.

20 Byres, “Historical Perspectives.”21 P. J. Jones, “Medieval Agrarian Society in its Prime: Italy,” in M. M.

throughout the Mediterranean basin.17 As recently as June 1961,exactly 1,140 years after Leuprandus put his cross on that contract,twelve per cent of all farmland in Italy (some 3.2 million hectares)was sharecropped.18

As economic events go, eleven centuries can be considered long-term success. But success of what? What is the link between Leu-prandus and the Italian farm census of 1961? Because it is theevolution of a contract that forms the focus of this inquiry, let usbe very clear. I will look at changes brought over time to land ren-tal contracts having the following characteristics: first, rent is paidas a share of the product19 and second, the land is already “im-proved” and constitutes a farm with a house for the tenant to livein. This excludes emphyteosis or ad meliorandum agreements withshare rents.

In the remainder of the paper, I will first briefly discuss theadoption and spreading of share contracts in Italy in the lateMiddle Ages, then will identify three clauses which appear quiteearly on in the centuries. From June 821 until January 1517 I canthen track the geographic spread and frequency of these clausesthrough a sample of 832 sharecropping contracts, following themthrough periods of demographic expansion, stagnation and decline.In effect I will treat the early contracts as an initial benchmarkagainst which mutation can be measured. What the inquiry willshow is that the spread of mutation to the original “benchmarkpackage” (that is, the transmission) is linked to the channels ofcommunication. The framework within which these changes can beunderstood is an agency problem.

III

Though already used in antiquity,20 share contracts becameincreasingly common in Italy from the thirteenth century onwards.21


Postan and H. J. Habakkuk, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), I: 340-430; P. J. Jones,“From Manor to Mezzadria,” in N. Rubinstein, ed., Florentine Studies(Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 193-241.

22 F. L. Galassi, “Tuscans and Their Farms: The Economics of ShareTenancy in Fifteenth Century Florence,” Rivista di Storia Economica 9 (1992):77-94; F. L. Galassi, “Moral Hazard and Assets Specifically in the Renaissance:The Economics of Sharecropping in 1427 Florence,” Advances in AgriculturalEconomic History 1 (2000): 177-206; S. Pudney, F. L. Galassi, and F. Mealli, “ADiscrete Random-Effects Panel Data Model of Farm Tenures in FifteenthCentury Florence,” Economica 65 (1998): 535-56; D. A. Ackerberg and M.Botticini, “The Choice of Agrarian Contracts in Early Renaissance Tuscany:Risk Sharing, Moral Hazard, or Capital Market Imperfections?” Explorationsin Economic History 37 (2000): 241-57.

Recent quantitative studies show that their diffusion can be relatedto imperfect capital markets and incentive compatibility issues.22

The intensification of farming that resulted from rising populationpressure in the late Middle Ages altered relative factor prices andencouraged the creation of exclusive property rights in land. Astechniques became more labor intensive the scope for opportunismby laborers increased, as did the cost of careless or dishonest acti-vity. Supervision was difficult for landlords, who increasingly wereurban dwellers engaged in trade or manufacturing, and one way toreduce the problem was to introduce strong self-monitoring in-centives. After the demographic crisis of the fourteenth century,changing terms of trade altered the crop mix in favor of costlyproducts with high sensitivity to proper care and handling, such asvines, olive and fruit trees. Share contracts responded easily to thisnew situation by allowing landlords to concentrate costly resourceson supervising invested capital while in effect leaving tenants to runthe farm on a daily basis.

The sharing rule went some way towards solving the monitoringproblem, but at a cost. Multiple performance margins and strongexogenous influences meant that room for discretion had to bebuilt into the contract, which in turn gave renewed scope foropportunism. Since not all opportunistic choices would have beenknown at the time when the early contracts were designed, it ispossible to imagine landlords and tenants being engaged over theyears in a repeated positive-sum game with learning. The object ofthe game was to appropriate as much of the joint product aspossible while limiting one’s own contribution to the competitiveminimum. Thus tenants sought to reduce their inputs into the pro-


23 Note that neither incentive exists in contracts where one party acts as fullresidual claimant.

24 Imberciadori, Mezzadria, 90.25 L. B. Alberti, Della famiglia (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Italiano, [1468]

1906), 210, my emphasis.26 A. Luporini and B. Parigi, “Multitask Sharecropping Contracts: The

Italian Mezzadria,” Economica 63 (1996): 445-58.

duction process, mostly labor, both because labor creates disutilityand because of Marshallian disincentives caused by the sharing rule.At the same time, they would seek to draw the largest possiblebenefit from the capital invested in the farm. Landlords, of course,had the incentive to skimp on capital investment and force tenantsto work as much as possible.23 Tenants were constrained by theprobability of detection, and possible sanctions, including dismissal,while landlords were constrained by monitoring costs and the te-nants’ shadow reservation wage. Each time the game was played,there was a probability that some player would find a new marginover which to capture some portion of the income streams. If thegambit produced a reward, other players would adopt it, and even-tually measures to regulate or prohibit it would wind their way intothe contract.

Tenants and landlords were very well aware that they wereengaged in this game. That is the explanation for the obligationthe Abbey of San Salvatore imposed on Leuprandus to reside onthe farm (limit his opportunities to undersupply labor) in the 821contract. Over 400 years later, the game was still going on. On 11August 1255 a court in Lucca sentenced a sharecropper namedGrispi to pay his landlord three pounds in damages for “notploughing and sowing at the appropriate time as he had under-taken to do.”24 Two centuries later, L. B. Alberti, one of the archi-tects of the Italian Renaissance as well as a rich landowner, wrotethat “I would have my farm in a place ... where I could often go,and take my exercise walking around it, and the labourers, seeing meoften, would cheat rarely ... and be more diligent at their work.”25 Ingeneral, Luporini and Parigi have shown that limitations imposedon tenants’ activities are statically efficient in a multi-tasking frame-work.26

The point is that the margins where either party could engagein opportunistic behavior were likely not at first fully known toeither landlords or tenants. Ways of pruning vines, for instance, so


27 G. Cherubini, L’Italia rurale nel Basso Medioevo (Rome: Laterza, 1984),134-8; C. Bec, “Le paysan dans la nouvelle Toscane,” in Civiltà ed economiaagricola in Toscana nei secc. XIII-XV: problemi della vita delle campagne nel tardomedioevo (Pistoia: Centro italiano di studi di storia e d’arte, 1981), 29-52.

as to maximize short-term output at the cost of the longevity of theplant, something that benefitted the tenant, probably had to beworked out over time. The “thieving sharecropper” was a stock cha-racter of Renaissance plays and stories, where tenants are oftenshown teaching one another how to hide grain already mown butnot yet threshed, how to extract wine from a sealed barrel withoutleaving marks, or how to work away from the farm without thelandlord finding out.27 In addition, careless handling of tools orlivestock could affect the capital value of the landlord’s investment,but it was difficult to predict ex ante what form damage caused byneglect (a manifestation of opportunism) might take. Like otheractivities, cheating and monitoring, and especially knowing what tomonitor, have a learning curve.

If that is correct, then it is reasonable to argue that the earlycontracts were signed by people who had not yet traveled far onthat curve. In other words, in the earlier period of the contract’slife there may still have been a great deal of uncertainty about howto make the agreement work to one’s advantage. Repeated inter-action revealed this over time, and the contract changed as a result.Another way of saying this is that characteristics acquired over timespread through the population. This is the general hypothesis ofthe paper.

Testing it is the next step. A reasonable approach to designinga test is to use the earliest contracts as a benchmark, and to trackdeviations from their set of clauses over time. But showing thatchange takes place is not evidence of evolution in the sense usedin Section I. What needs to be shown is that there is a line oftransmission of these changes, or putting it differently, that changesin the set of clauses are directional and cumulative. There must be,in other words, learning. The next section discusses the design ofthe test.

IV

Contracts, even simple ones, are multifaceted mutual commit-ments operating on several margins simultaneously. The definition


I am employing, viz., share-rent paid for an “improved” farm andtenant’s residence obligation, forms the core of mezzadria, the con-stant linking Leuprandus to the second half of the twentieth cen-tury. Any element detailing an obligation incurred by either partyin addition to that basic core I will call a “clause.” This sectionidentifies a group of clauses to be tracked as they spread throughthe population, then discusses the sample used and presents sum-mary statistics of the contracts under consideration. An econometrictest is carried out in section V.

Two basic issues need to be addressed to study mezzadria in anevolutionary framework. First, the clauses whose presence is trackedmust be clearly identifiable. This means that they have to bereasonably simple clauses, so that there can be no question of oneappearing in a modified form that may alter its effect on the con-tracting parties. At the same time, they cannot be those commoncatch-all clauses (e.g., “the tenant promises to work well”) of littlepractical value. I will call clauses satisfying these criteria “non-reducible rules.” Secondly, the clauses must not be picked only be-cause they are common in later contracts. That would vitiate theanalysis. Rather the choice must be based on a priori considerations:if I am right that sharecropping was a way of introducing incentivecompatibility, then the clauses that spread should be those that fur-ther constrain opportunistic behaviour. To show that an evolution-ary approach can yield insight into institutional changes, the chosenclauses must then be shown to have spread chronologically and/orgeographically from their inception point. Because I cannot observecommunication flows between actors, I have to rely on geographicor chronological proximity to argue that a solution found in onelocation spread (that is, increased its frequency in the population).To anticipate one possible objection, the sample contracts areobviously unlikely to include the very first instance of clause cmaking its appearance, and even if they do I have no way ofknowing this. However, all that matters is that c should at somepoint start to spread in the population, wherever and whenever itfirst appeared. No priors exist as to when or where c began. It isthe process of spreading that I am trying to follow.

The non-reducible rules I propose to track are three and arealso, in a sense, the obvious ones to follow given the agencyframework I am using. Besides committing labor on one side, andon the other land and fixed capital, tenants and landlords had to


28 Cherubini, L’Italia, 134-8.

agree on who would supply at least three other significant inputs:seed, tools, and livestock. If the landlord supplied them, tenantshad no incentive to care for them. Tales of seed given for sowingbut never put in the ground (as in Grispi’s case), of cattle workedtoo hard or not properly fed, of tools broken, stolen, or left in thefields, are common complaints for medieval and Renaissance land-lords in Tuscany.28 On the other hand, if tenants supplied comple-mentary inputs, they had the incentive to use as much of the farmoutput as possible to feed their own livestock, and to sow what theywished.

No magic formula could protect everybody. Landlords may havepreferred to shift the burden of supplying complementary inputson their tenants, but even aside from the latter’s ability to incur thecost this was a mixed blessing at best. Animals fattened on thefarm’s output would be sold by the tenant to his sole benefit, or beleased out to work other farms. Sharing inputs was resorted to, buteven so the agency problem remained acute for the landlord: onecan imagine a tenant reporting that “your cow has died.”

With the advantage of hindsight, one reasonably stable solutionwas to force tenants to internalize as many of the costs of supplyingcomplementary inputs as possible, while using scarce monitoring re-sources to ensure that they did not divert income streams from thefarm to maintain their own capital beyond a certain point. The lastpart of this sentence is deliberately vague: finding the righttolerance for such “diversions” was not easy. At what point is thetenant siphoning rent? How expensive is it to stop him? Perhapsabove all, how can you really tell how much is being siphoned? Inspite of such metering problems, however, the advantage of passingthese costs on to tenants was that the range of necessary monitor-ing activities shrank.

If this reasoning is at least broadly correct, then I expect to findthat sharecropping contracts over time increasingly came to includeclauses that shifted onto the tenant the responsibility for the provi-sion of complementary inputs, once other factors are taken intoaccount. To be more specific, the supply of working capital wassubject to bargaining between tenants and landlords. The outcomeof the bargaining was affected by several unobservable variables, butultimately must have been decided by the land/labor ratio. If


29 Imberciadori, Mezzadria; G. Pinto and P. Pirillo, Il contratto di mezzadrianella Toscana medievale. Il contado di Siena, sex. XIII-1348 (Florence: Olschki,1987); O. Muzzi and M. D. Nenci, Il contratto di mezzadria nella Toscanamedievale. Il contado di Firenze, secolo XIII (Florence: Olschki, 1988); G. Piccinni,Il contratto di mezzadria nella Toscana medievale. Il contado di Siena, 1349-1518(Florence: Olschki, 1992).

30 Pinto and Pirillo, Il contratto, for sampling criteria.31 Piccinni, Il contratto, 325-80; Mazzini, La Toscana, 463-6.

tenants could not easily find another farm, landlords must havebeen able to force them to internalize more costs than tenantswould have liked. If tenants were scarce, landlords would have tosupply a greater proportion of complementary inputs and therebyshoulder the risk of incurring capital losses. Demographic trendswill matter to the test of the evolution of mezzadria.

The discussion so far has mostly set the stage and presented ingeneral terms what testing is to be carried out. The time has cometo focus more closely on the sample. The 832 contracts of thesample, written between 821 and 1517 A.D., have been collectedfrom the notarial chartularies of the State Archives of Florence,Siena, Lucca, Pisa and Arezzo, and published over the past fiftyyears.29 Given their great age (42 per cent of sample contractspredate 1300), the sample is almost surprisingly large, yet itobviously represents only a minute fraction of all sharecroppingcontracts signed over these seven centuries. The contracts relate inall cases to first-time agreements (renewal or termination wereoral), and have been selected trying to maximize temporal conti-nuity and geographic coverage.30 The number of contracts extantin the archives drops off dramatically during the sixteenth century,something that may indicate that the agreement had achieved asort of canonical status, so well known that there was little need toreproduce it. This is indirectly confirmed by the strong similaritybetween the contracts dating from the late 1400s/early 1500s andthe standard forms that came to be used in the nineteenth cen-tury.31 If so, the contracts of the “early” centuries constitute thecase of an institution in full evolutionary adaptation.

The wording of the contracts is reasonably standardized, and be-comes more so over time, just as the language tends to shift fromLatin to Italian. The notary begins his text with religious formulaefollowed by date and location, then identifies himself and thecontracting parties and describes the purpose and duration of the


contract. There follows a description of the farm and its location,with details of the house or other buildings such as stables, grana-ries and wine and oil making equipment. There follow the clausesagreed upon by the parties. Almost invariably, the tenant’s resi-dence obligation is the first mentioned, followed by the details forthe provision of seed, livestock and tools of direct interest to thisanalysis. Other clauses include where the rent had to be paid (onthe farm or at the landlord’s residence), lists of capital maintenancework to be carried out each year, any additional payments owed forkeeping fowls or other animals not directly covered by the contract,the prohibition (usually) from seeking work off the farm, and a listof loans, if any, received by the tenant to start work. Fines are setagainst either party failing to live up to their commitments and attimes arbitration procedures are outlined. An inventory of stocksalready on the farm is then added, and the contracts end with thelist of witnesses and the signatures (or marks) of all present.

This is in fact a wealth of information. For all contracts we knowwhere landlords lived and where they signed the agreement withtheir new tenants. We do not always know exactly where the actualfarm was, though we know which political jurisdiction it cameunder. We know something about the crop mix of the farm andthe presence of animals and buildings/improvement works. Moreimportantly, we have over 800 observations of a well-defined insti-tution scattered across the arc of some 700 years in a restrictedgeographic area where we have reasonably good information aboutother important historical events, such as demographic trends. Evenconsidering that not all contract specifically list the three clauses Iam trying to track (only about 500 do, depending on which clause),this is still a remarkable sample.

Above all, I have a clear question I can ask these data: do thenon-reducible rules aimed at limiting discretion in an agency con-text spread chronologically and geographically in such a way as tosuggest a learning process? Do these contracts evolve? Or are thechanges non-directional?

Table 1 reports some summary statistics relating to these clauses.Some comments are in order. First, the periodization. Since veryfew contracts (hardly a dozen) survive from before 1199, the firstcolumn inevitably covers an abnormally long time period. Theother peculiarity may appear to be the division at 1347. The late1340s marked a dramatic crisis all over Europe as the Black Death


Sociales, 1978).

These bare demographic facts fit easily with the trends in theclauses highlighted in the table. In the centuries of demographicexpansion, when that is the land/labor ratio was steadily falling, thebargaining between landlords and tenants was being resolvedagainst the latter. Their contribution was rising, whether in theprovision of livestock or of seed. There is a hint in these data thatat the peak of the demographic boom (early fourteenth century)tenants may have grown increasingly unable to meet the kind ofcapital commitment required of them: the proportion of tenantssupplying all livestock (the most expensive working capital) in thefirst half of the 1300s is halved relative to the proportion in theprevious century. The Malthusian limit was fast approaching.

The mid-fourteenth century constitutes a structural break. There-after, landlords increasingly had to commit complementary inputsto their farms and renounce gains accumulated since 1200. By thefifteenth century livestock is almost always wholly supplied by land-lords (fewer than one in forty or fifty supplied all livestock between1200 and 1347), and seed is almost always shared (tenants suppliedall seed in 50 per cent of contracts from 1200-1347).

Evidence of changing relative bargaining power, which is all thetable shows, does not per se constitute evidence of “evolution” in thesense discussed above. An evolutionary adaptation involves transmis-sion, in this case by learning. How can this learning process bemodeled? My argument is that, before the sixteenth century whenthe contract became so well established that it was seldom writtendown, landlords and tenants were engaged in an ongoing searchfor the appropriate solution to the agency problems they faced.They knew what they wished to achieve in entering into the agree-ment, but probably did not actually have a fully formed mentalpicture of how to go about their goals. The complexity of the tasksthat had to be carried out, their contingent nature and the un-certainty inherent in any agreement where time consistency was asignificant element and exogenous influences were strong, meantthat the parties could hardly devote time and resources to workingout in the necessary detail what clauses to impose on one another.Fortunately this was not necessary because they could hire aspecialist, the notary, who had experience of contracting practices,had already designed clauses aimed at obtaining the results they


33 S. R. Epstein, “Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship and Technological Changein Pre-industrial Europe,” Journal of Economic History 58 (1998): 684-713.

34 For examples see G. Catoni, “Il collegio notarile di Siena,” in Il notariatonella civiltà toscana (Rome: Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato, 1985), 337-65.

sought, and could sell them a reasonably standardized commodityeasily adjustable to suit their particular circumstances. The notarysold information, in effect, or to put it differently sold a reductionin uncertainty. In addition, he provided a reference point on cur-rent accepted practice, something of considerable value to bothtenant and landlord who were thereby spared the trouble of analyz-ing to the end of their computational abilities each clause of theagreement. The notary’s commodity was, that is, also the reassur-ance to the contracting parties that in using the agreement hedesigned they could expect that on average they would be no worseoff than their reference group.

For his part, the notary worked on past practice and currentconcerns. He can be modeled as storing a set of non-reduciblerules for contracts of this sort, a kind of template in which thedetails of any given pair of landlords and tenants could be entered,with the necessary modifications. Notaries were organized in guilds,like other trades, and it seems logical to see such organizations asinformation-sharing machines.33 The basic template learned duringthe notary’s studies and apprenticeship would be continuouslychecked against current practice in conversation and professionalcontacts with other guild members.34 The template would then beadjusted as practice changed, as new solutions to old problems weredevised, or as existing approaches were discarded. The selectivepressures were at work in the mind of the notary, where individualnon-reducible rules stored as part of the template were checked,assessed, and possibly modified. The process was self reinforcing inthe sense that a modification to the template which found favorwith the contracting parties would be used again and thereforewould have a greater-than-average probability of being discussedwithin the corporation and consequently of spreading to othernotaries and other contracts.

If that is at least a reasonable approximation of the process, itfollows that modifications to the template were more likely tospread rapidly in the immediate geographic proximity of theirinception, only later “colonizing” more distant populations. The


advantage of putting the issue in these terms (chronological andgeographic proximity) is that I can derive some reasonably strongpredictions and can then use the sample contracts to test them.That is the task of the next section.

V

This section specifies and tests a multinomial logit model to detectdirectionality, and therefore learning, in the changes undergone bysample contracts. First, I will specify the form the model takes, andthen discuss the variables used.

Let l, s, t indicate livestock, seed, and tools, and L, S, Trepresent whether each of the complementary input is supplied bythe landlords, shared, or by the tenant. I will then use superscriptletters { l, s, t} to indicate under what arrangement complementaryinputs are supplied, so that for example Ls indicates the seed issupplied by the landlord, while Sl indicates that the livestock isshared. Let P(cij=k) be the probability of clause cj being recordedin contract i. Then, for the supply of inputs by the landlord, L, Ican write:

exp(ßixi)P cij = Lk xi = for k = {l,s,t} 1+exp(ßixi)

where ß and x represent respectively vectors of coefficients andexplanatory variables. Likewise, for shared inputs, S,

1P cij = Sk xi =

1+exp(ßixi)

and for tenant supplied inputs

P cij = Tk xi = 0

The technique is sufficiently well known to require little discussionbeyond pointing out that the ßs estimate the impact on P(cij)relative to the normalized probability of observing k supplied bythe tenant, which is set to zero. The framework is simple but useful


in the present context. I can now turn to discussing the actualvariables.

I said earlier that for evolutionary pressures to have been atwork on the contract there has to be evidence of directionalmodifications. The discussion in IV above allows me to put someflesh on these bones. Specifically, ceteris paribus, the probability ofencountering clause c in contract i should rise with time elapsedsince c is first encountered in the sample, and fall with the distancefrom the location where the first instance of c is recorded in thesample. However, the extremely long time period covered by thesample makes it necessary to qualify these priors. It is unrealisticto suggest that notaries referred back several centuries when modi-fying the template, so it is opportune to relate P(ci=1) to the timeelapsed since c was last encountered in the sample. As for distance,I am using both the kilometers from the location where c is lastrecorded, and from where it is first recorded in the sample. Ifevolutionary pressures were at work as discussed above, I wouldexpect that the more recent was the use of c, the higher wasP(ci=1), and that the farther away were its last and first use, thelower is P(ci=1). There should be, in other words, waves ofdiffusion. Note that, as there appears to be no reason to believediffusion should be linear, both time (in years) and distance (in km)have been used in linear and quadratic form.

The distance variable poses some conceptual problems. Its roleis to capture the geographic spread of a given clause, and to do soaccurately to the conditions of the time. It follows that what mattersis the distance that the carriers of the template modifications, thenotaries, had to travel between one place and the next. This dis-tance is fixed in some ways (Siena and Florence are no fartherapart today than they were in 1300), but the time taken travelingit is not. Ignoring improvements in transportation technology,which should not significantly affect this sample, travel conditionschange. It may also be questioned whether today’s roads aresufficiently close to the roads of the time to allow a modern kilo-meter count to approximate historical conditions. Both objectionsare valid, and no real solution to them exists, except to note thatthe results reported below suggest that the distance variables seemto mirror reasonably well the cost of spreading information.

Since the sample is not evenly spread over the 700 years itcovers, having very few observations before 1200, and since demo-


graphic trends obviously had a significant impact on the clausesused in these contracts (Table 1), each regression will include fourchronological dummy variables, one for the period before 1200when population was growing but few contracts remain, one for theperiod of demographic expansion when numerous contracts havesurvived (up to 1347), one for the years of crisis (1348-1400), andone for the slow recovery of the fifteenth century. Finally, anotherdummy will attempt to capture the effects of political jurisdiction:Does it matter whether a contract was signed in Florentine terri-tory, or in Sienese territory?

Out of the three sets of clauses in Table 1, only the regressionsusing the supply of tools as the dependent variable failed alldiagnostic tests, and are therefore not reported. This was due tothe very small number of contracts where tools are specifically men-tioned (in all, about two dozen for the 1200-1350 period and nonebefore or after) which leaves virtually no degrees of freedom. Table2 reports the estimates (t statistics in round brackets, (), significancelevels in square brackets []).

On balance the results are almost surprisingly robust for asample such as this. The only two variables that consistently fail toreach significance are, first, the time squared elapsed since anygiven clause was last recorded and, second, the political jurisdictiondummy. The former actually worsens the performance of the esti-mates, and was therefore omitted altogether from Table 2. As forthe latter, whether or not a contract was signed in the territory ofFlorence appears to have had no effect on the probability of parti-cular clauses being included. This is in a way not surprising: inspite of centuries of conflict between Siena and Florence, the twocity-states shared a language and a common cultural and legalheritage (Roman law). Information evidently flowed easily acrosstheir contested boundaries.

Overall, the distance variables perform markedly better than thetime elapsed variables (excluding, that is, the period dummies).The linear time variable is significant in only two of four cases, andeven then only once at 5 per cent (in the other case, it has the“wrong” sign, suggesting that as more time passed since the last useof the clause, the lower was the probability of finding it again). Onthe other hand, the distance variables all have the “correct” sign(negative) and often are significant at remarkably high levels (1 and2 per cent). On balance, the variables measuring distance from the


last recorded use of the clause (linear or squared) perform betterthan the distance from the location of first use. This is powerfulevidence in favor of evolutionary spreading. The mutation intro-duced in the population was passed on to geographically proximatecarriers, in a process that must resemble what I discussed in PartIV above. Interestingly, if all distance variables are omitted fromthe estimate, and the logit is recalculated with all the time variablesand the political jurisdiction dummy, the latter is weakly significant(10 per cent) and negative in all cases. This is not surprising: sincethe earliest contracts are from Siena, once distance is taken out ofthe estimates, contracts signed in Florentine territory are less likelyto include particular clauses. But it is the distance, not the politicaljurisdiction, that is driving the parameters.

What do the estimates suggest about the nature of this diffusion?The evidence is ambiguous. In some cases, notably the probabilitythat landlords would supply livestock vs. that tenants would, itappears that the diffusion follows a quadratic rather than linearform. In other cases (the probability that seed would be shared vs.that tenants would supply it) the coefficients suggest linearity. Insome ways, this latter is intuitively convincing: if modifications tothe original template traveled with notaries, provided that travelingtimes and costs were linear in the distance traveled, linearity indiffusion is to be expected. In this sense, the estimated coefficientsfor quadratic variables may indicate that beyond a certain point,traveling costs rose so that diffusion was slowed down above acertain distance. In any event, quadratic distance variables, even ifstrongly significant at times, are rather “weak.” Their marginaleffects tend to be in the order of fractions of percentage points.

The time dummies, which try to capture changing demographictrends, tell an interesting story. The worsening of the tenants’ bar-gaining power during the centuries of demographic growth is quitevisible in the negative coefficients relating the probability that com-plementary inputs would be supplied by landlords or shared to theperiod 1200 to 1347. Equally evident on balance is the reversal ofthe trend after the Black Death: the probability that the supply ofseed and livestock would be shared or taken on entirely by thelandlord rises after 1347. If the distance variables were insignifi-cant, this kind of result would suggest that mutations had arisen inseveral distinct locations independently. But it is the significance of


35 Knight, Institutions.

the distance parameter estimates that underscores that learning wasin fact taking place.

The story probably goes something like this. The mezzadriacontract fulfilled the function of giving labor self-monitoring incent-ives in conditions where it was costly to solve agency problemsthrough direct supervision. The downside of the sharing rule wasthat both parties had an incentive to economize on their comple-mentary inputs (= supply inputs only up to the point where theirmarginal product equaled their opportunity cost times the recipro-cal of the rental share). If the technical coefficients of productionwere not fixed, bargaining between the contracting parties woulddetermine their respective contributions. There was, and this mustbe stressed, no unique optimizing solution, no well-defined pointof tangency among Edgeworthian contract curves, which requirethat actors be interchangeable and rules continuous.35 There wasrather an area of possible outcomes, and over this area Tuscanlandlords and tenants bargained to and fro for centuries. A land-lord who had to supply tenants with seed in the early fifteenthcentury may have been, in some abstract sense, worse off than hisancestor who had obtained it from his tenants 150 years earlier,but was still better off than not having tenants at all. But above allwhat the logit strongly suggests is that there was in fact an evolu-tionary process at work here. The contingent events of a given timeperiod affected the outcomes of the bargaining processes, but sodid access to information about how best to make use of changingcircumstances.

There is, in other words, reason to believe that the changingrelative contributions embodied in these clauses were not arrived atindependently at different places and different times. Rather, theyspread: distance (and, less clearly, time) matters to relative proba-bilities estimated by the logit. In periods of stress, that is in periodswhen one party was willing to give up some ground to gain accessto an income stream, the carriers of the template, the notaries,must have communicated with one another (even across politicalboundaries) to find solutions, i.e., to identify successful mutationsthat would spread in the population. They communicated with themost proximate colleagues, who in turn spoke to others fartheraway, who in turn repeated the process. Any given solution spread


because it reduced uncertainty for increasing number of peoplewho found existing arrangements unsatisfactory. A notary whocould satisfy many clients by introducing a “good” adaptation inthe template would have additional clients beating a path to hisdoor, and would be copied by other notaries, thereby ensuring thatthe successful clause would spread further. It matters little topresent purposes that one or the other party lost or gained some-thing as a result of each mutation. In fact, focusing on the clausesthemselves makes the game in which landlords and tenants wereengaged appear as zero-sum. In reality, however, this was a positivesum game, in that what players were ultimately bargaining for wasthe final output of land, labor and capital. All that was happeningwas that the price one or the other player had to pay to haveaccess to this output rose or fell depending on contingent events.And the process by which contingent events affected individuals wasan evolutionary one: solutions worked out in one place spread.Diffusion means learning: under certain stimuli, more actors wereinterested in learning of new solutions.

VI

In the end, the exact process of diffusion of contractual clauses inlate medieval Tuscan agriculture may in itself be of interest toagrarian historians. But the issue here is whether the historicalprocess is theoretically enlightening for researchers interested ininstitutional choice and change in general, and it is on that crite-rion alone that the contribution of this article rests. In that sensethe opportunity to follow change over 700 years is useful in that itmay help define a research agenda for the analysis of institutionalchange, an agenda that would seem to consist of three main items.The first is that modeling institutional change requires the identi-fication of the exact unit of selection. The approach taken here isthat this is to be found in the simplest “non-reducible” rules,aggregates of which form institutions. The second is to identify themeans by which these non-reducible rules are stored and transmit-ted. In the current instance this has been identified in the “tem-plate” of the notaries, and it would seem likely that in generalmembers of the legal profession are likely to perform this functionfor a large number of institutions. Whether they do or not is an


empirical question which need not detain us here beyond stressingthat transmission is not independent of the transmitter. Finally, andas a consequence of the second point, understanding institutionalchoice and change involves understanding the incentives of thetransmitters. In this case, this aspect has been neglected in that thenotaries had no obvious interest in siding with one or the otherparty when drawing up the contract, unless they were themselveslandlords. If so, however this does not seem to have affected theshift in contractual clauses against the interests of landowners afterthe demographic crisis of the fourteenth century. But those whostore the information are not necessarily transmission neutral, andthe distributional effects of passing the information on have to bemodeled in any credible attempt to understand institutional choiceand change as a general process.

x

MARKET INTEGRATION

x

1 J. Quintin D’Autun, Insulae Melitae descriptio (Lyons 1536), ed. with trans.in H. R. Vella, The Earliest Description of Malta (Lyons 1536) (Malta: DeBonoEnterprises, 1980), 35.

2 For instance, R. H. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000-1500, 2nd. ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996); J. Masschaele,Peasants, Merchants and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150-1350(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). For an exposition of the commercialistapproach, J. Hatcher and M. Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages. The History andTheory of England’s Economic Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2001), 121-73.

A TEST CASE FOR REGIONAL MARKET INTEGRATION? THE GRAIN TRADE BETWEEN MALTA AND SICILY IN

THE LATE MIDDLE AGES

Mark A. Aloisio

“Malta is very fortunate for this one reason, namely that Sicily,very fertile in all kinds of grain, lies nearby and is for the

inhabitants as good as a granary, where otherwise they woulddie of hunger.”1

I

The economy of medieval Europe is increasingly studied in thecontext of a “commercialist” or Smithian framework.2 This approachemphasizes the role of trade in promoting a greater division of laborin town and countryside, the expansion of commercial activity, andthe progressive integration and greater sophistication of regionalmarket networks. Towns perform a crucial role in these models,whereby urban demand for foodstuffs stimulates specialization andhigher levels of productivity in agriculture, as well as more efficientdistribution of resources. Yet while few would dispute the increasedcommercialization and sophistication of the late medieval economygenerally, the extent and effect of these changes at a regional orlocal level is less clear. Legal, institutional or social barriers repre-sented transaction costs that could significantly limit the flow oftrade or access to markets. In the fifteenth century, the kingdomof Sicily—of which the Maltese Islands formed part—was a politically

298 MARK A. ALOISIO

3 M. De Boüard, “Problèmes de subsistance dans un état médiéval: le mar-ché et les prix des céréales au royaume angevin de Sicile (1266-1282),”Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale 10 (1938): 483-501; M. Aymard, “Ilcommercio dei grani nella Sicilia del ‘500,” Archivio storico per la Sicilia orientale72 (1975): 7-40; D. Abulafia, “Sul commercio del grano siciliano nel tardoDuecento,” in La società mediterranea all’epoca del Vespro: XI Congresso dellaCorona d’Aragona, Palermo-Trapani-Erice, 25-30 Aprile 1982, vol. 2 (Palermo:Accademia di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, 1983), 5-22, repr. in D. Abulafia, Italy,Sicily and the Mediterranean 1100-1400 (London: Variorum, 1987), essay VII;O. Cancila, Baroni e popolo nella Sicilia del grano (Palermo: Palumbo, 1983); H.Bresc, Un monde méditerranéen: économie et societé en Sicile, 1300-1450, 2 vols.(Rome-Palermo: Bibliothéques des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome,1986); S. R. Epstein, An Island for Itself: Economic Development and Social Changein Late Medieval Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). On theMediterranean grain trade in the Middle Ages, P. Wolff, “Un grand commercemédiéval: les céréales dans le bassin de la Méditerranée occidentale:Remarques et suggestions,” VI Congreso de la Corona de Aragon, Cerdeña(Madrid: n.p., 1959), 147-74; M. Tangheroni, Aspetti dei commercio dei cerealinei Paesi della Corona d’Aragona, I. La Sardegna (Pisa-Cagliari: Pacini, 1981).

4 D. Abulafia, The Two Italies: Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdomof Sicily and the Northern Communes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1977); D. Abulafia, “Lo stato e la vita economica,” in P. Toubert and A.Paravicini, ed., Federico II e il mondo mediterraneo (Palermo: Sellerio, 1994),165-187; M. Del Treppo, I mercanti catalani e l’espansione della Corona d’Aragonanel secolo XV (Naples: L’Arte Tipografica Napoli, 1972).

unified state with a relatively commercialized economy. It hasrecently been argued that during the late Middle Ages Sicily’sinternal markets became progressively more integrated. In the courseof this paper I wish to discuss the extent of this economic integra-tion by highlighting some obstacles that disrupted the trade in grainbetween Sicily and Malta during much of the fifteenth century.

II

The important role of Sicily in the grain trade of the medievalMediterranean is well known.3 At one time or another, Sicilian wheatwas exported to cities in northern Italy (particularly Florence andGenoa), France and Spain and occasionally even to north Africa.4

Sicily’s Norman, Angevin and Aragonese rulers took an active inte-rest in the commercial exploitation of this vital commodity, fullyaware of the substantial revenues that its export brought into theircoffers. Since the reign of Frederick II, the grain trade was chan-neled through specially designated ports known as caricatori, mostof them located in the western half of the island where much of the

299GRAIN TRADE BETWEEN MALTA AND SICILY

5 Abulafia, “Lo stato,” 165-87.6 Cancila, Baroni, 44.7 Bresc, Un monde, 127-8.8 Cancila, Baroni, 16; C. Trasselli, “Sull’esportazione dei cereali dalla Sicilia

negli anni 1402-1407,” Annali della Facoltà di Economia e Commercio dell’Uni-versità di Palermo 11 (1957): 217-52, repr. in C. Trasselli, Mediterraneo e Siciliaall’inizio dell’epoca moderna. (Ricerche quattrocentesche) (Cosenza: PellegriniEditore, 1977), 331-70.

9 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 274.10 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 275; Cancila, Baroni, 20 reaches similar

conclusions.11 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 133; S. R. Epstein, “Town and Country:

Economy and Institutions in Late Medieval Italy,” Economic History Review 46(3) (1993): 453-77.

grain was grown.5 Sicily produced at least three types of wheat bythe sixteenth century but the hard variety (grano duro) was especiallyprized for its capacity to resist rot while remaining in storage forseveral years.6 The island’s reputation as a major grain producer wasindeed well-founded. In the late thirteenth century annual exportlevels averaged 20,000 to 30,000 salme and perhaps around 40,000salme in the following century (1 salma = 2.75 hl).7 Some 122,000salme were shipped out of Sicilian ports in 1407-1409 but this mayhave been an exceptional year.8 An average of 50,000 salme wasprobably typical throughout the 1460s with a maximum of90,000-100,000 salme in the 1490s.9 Nonetheless, in spite of theseimpressive figures, estimates put grain exports at less than ten percent of domestic output, occasionally reaching a maximum share offifteen per cent.10 It seems therefore that most of the grain producedin Sicily was consumed locally. A system of land and (more impor-tantly) sea transport linked the caricatori of Sciacca, Agrigento andLicata to the two main cities of Palermo, Messina and to smallercenters such as Trapani, Syracuse and Catania. Unlike northern Italy,however, where urban centers frequently obtained jurisdictionalauthority over the surrounding their contado and its resources, Sici-lian cities, with the partial exception of Messina, had little directcontrol over their hinterland. Stephan Epstein believes that, giventheir inability to rely on institutional privileges for economic andhuman resources, Sicily’s towns and cities were forced to obtain theseresources on a competitive basis.11 However, this state of affairs, asEpstein himself concedes, did not apply in the case of a strategicand relatively scarce commodity such as grain.

300 MARK A. ALOISIO

12 V. D’Alessandro, Politica e società nella Sicilia aragonese (Palermo: U.Manfredi, 1963); P. Corrao, Governare un Regno. Potere, società e istituzioni inSicilia fra Trecento e Quattrocento (Naples: Liguori Editore, 1991).

13 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 96.14 D. C. North and R. P. Thomas, The Rise of the Western World. A New

Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 97-100.15 C. Salvo, Giurati, Feudatari Mercanti. L’élite urbana a Messina tra Medio Evo

e Età Moderna (Rome: Bibliopolis, 1995), 107-8.16 A. Petino, Aspetti e momenti di politica granaria a Catania e in Sicilia nel

Quattrocento (Catania: Università di Catania, 1952), 30.

In 1392 Martin I of Aragon invaded Sicily in order to restoreroyal authority and put an end to years of wars and internal politicalinstability.12 The Aragonese monarchy also took steps to reviveSicily’s economy and promote inter-regional trade by establishingnew fairs, standardizing weights and measurements, and reducingtolls on internal trade.13 Among the latter measures was a decreepassed in 1398 which stated that no tratte or trade permits were tobe paid on grain exchanged intra regno and hence destined for in-ternal consumption. Indications are, however, that Sicily’s domesticgrain market remained quite fragmented throughout much of thefifteenth century. In this case at least, the monarchy appears to havebeen unable or reluctant to consistently enforce institutional reformsfavoring more open markets. This is hardly surprising given that,in order to do so, the state often needed to act against powerful andentrenched local or sectional interests including monopoly rights offeudal lords and protectionist measures by individual cities.14 Infifteenth-century Messina, the grain trade was effectively controlledby local municipal officials who not only decided the price at whichgrain was to be sold in the city but frequently also owned the veryestates from where that grain was bought.15 My own research basedon the notarial archives of Sciacca, one of the principal outlets forthe export of grain in Sicily, suggests that the interests of the localauthorities were often in conflict with those who had grain for salebecause the latter found it more profitable to sell their stocks toCatalan, Genoese and other foreign merchants. The grain reservesof many cities were frequently low and any interruption in thesupply chain could provoke considerable hardships for the inhabit-ants. For instance, Catania’s annual grain requirements in thefifteenth century were in the region of 12,000-15,000 salme whileproduction averaged some 18,000 salme.16


17 V. D’Alessandro, “Paesaggio agrario, regime della terra e società rurale(secoli XI-XV),” in V. D’Alessandro, Terra, nobili e borghesi nella Sicilia medievale(Palermo: Sellerio, 1994), 58-60; orig. publ. in R. Romano, ed., Storia dellaSicilia, 10 vols. (Naples: Società editrice Storia di Napoli e della Sicilia, 1980),3: 411-47.

18 Del Treppo, I mercanti, 357-9 and Chap. 3.19 Bresc, Un monde, 744-7.

Moreover, the desire on the part of the state to act in the inter-ests of the urban masses and to implement long-term economicreforms often conflicted with more immediate political and fiscalconcerns. An example from Agrigento serves to emphasize thispoint.17 In 1404, after the town’s giurati (municipal officials) hadacted to prevent grain exports out of their port, Martin I declaredto those officials the monarchy’s intention to act in the interests ofthe island’s cities first and the merchants second. That assurancenotwithstanding, in 1433 the crown had given permission to twofeudal lords to establish their own caricatori in the region therebybypassing that of Agrigento. By then Martin had been succeededby Alfonso V who intervened directly in the Italian grain markets,selling grain during periods of scarcity and high demand, apparentlywith great zeal.18 In the 1430s, while engaged in military campaignsagainst Naples, Alfonso passed a series of measures promoting grainexports at the expense of domestic consumption requirements. TheAragonese king was at that moment desperately in need of fundsand provisions, both of which could be obtained by manipulatingsales of grain. Thus, in the course of the fifteenth century, as grainexports increased, Sicily’s towns, faced with a growing populationand rising grain prices, were increasingly forced into a harsh strug-gle to gain control over food supplies for their citizens.19 Some ofthe larger cities managed to either assure themselves of preferentialaccess to grain stocks through special arrangements or by closingports or even by interdicting grain destined for export. Smallercommunities, such as the Maltese Islands, often faced even greaterdifficulties.

III

The Maltese islands, consisting of Malta, Gozo and Comino, havea combined area of only about 316 square kilometers. The surfaceis rocky in most places, the soil is shallow and water generally scarce

302 MARK A. ALOISIO

20 A. T. Luttrell, “Approaches to Medieval Malta,” in A. T. Luttrell, ed.,Medieval Malta. Studies on Malta before the Knights (London: The British Schoolat Rome, 1975), 1-70, repr. in A. T. Luttrell, The Making of Christian Malta(Aldershot: Variorum, 2002), remains the best introduction to the island’smedieval history. For more recent overviews, C. Dalli, Iz-Zmien Nofsani Malti(Malta: Pubblikazzjonijiet Indipendenza, 2002); B. Blouet, The Story of Malta,rev. ed. (Malta: Progress Press, 2004).

21 H. Bresc, “The ‘Secrezia’ and the Royal Patrimony in Malta: 1240-1450,”in Luttrell, Medieval Malta, 132. Maltese cotton is mentioned in Genoa in1164: Abulafia, The Two Italies, 218. In the fifteenth century it was extensivelyutilized in Barcelona and also in Genoa and Montpellier. Del Treppo providesseveral examples of Catalan merchants purchasing cotton in Malta.

22 G. Wettinger, “Agriculture in Malta in the Late Middle Ages,” in M.Buhagiar, ed., Proceedings of History Week 1981 (Malta: The Malta HistoricalSociety, 1982), 13.

so that even today agriculture is heavily dependent on winter precip-itation. The archipelago was incorporated into the Norman kingdomof Sicily in the late eleventh century and after 1282 became a peri-pheral outpost of the Crown of Aragon.20 In spite of the harshphysical environment, Malta (the largest of the three islands) man-aged to support a sizeable population throughout the late middleages, probably hovering around 10,000 by the early fifteenth century.The only sizeable concentrations of people on Malta were the townof Mdina with its suburb of Rabat in the center and the royal castleat Birgu, which guarded the island’s main harbor located in thesouth-east. Most other inhabitants were dispersed in rural settlementswhere they cultivated their own fields or worked on the largerprivate fiefs or royal estates. Agriculture was the mainstay of theeconomy and the land was worked by a free peasantry, with wheat,cumin and cotton being the principal crops. Cotton, both raw andin spun form, was widely exported and provided a valuable sourceof income through which Malta was able to pay for the growingnecessity to purchase wheat from nearby Sicily.21

Given their geographical proximity, and the fact that they bothformed part of the same political order, it was natural for theMaltese to look to Sicily, a mere 60 km away, to supply local needs.Sicilian wheat was of superior quality compared to that grown inMalta and was therefore always in demand. Nonetheless, the needfor Malta to import grain was probably not acute prior to the fif-teenth century.22 A number of instances are known in the fourteenthcentury when Malta actually exported grain to Sicily but even thenthese were probably unusual occurrences. A more accurate picture


23 The main sources utilized here are the records of the Maltese municipaladministration, in G. Wettinger, ed., Acta Iuratorum et Consilii Civitatis et InsulaeMaltae (Palermo: Associazione di Studi Malta-Sicilia/Centro di Studi Filologicie Linguistici Siciliani, 1993).

24 S. Giambruno and L. Genuardi, eds., Capitoli inediti delle città demanialidi Sicilia approvati sino al 1458, 1, Alcamo-Malta (Palermo: Boccone del povero,1918), 409: “ki omni dui oy tri anni pati penuria di victuaglu per ki a quistachitati et insola fa misteri trahiri di Sichilia gran quantitati di frumenti.”

25 Wettinger, “Agriculture in Malta,” 14.26 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 286, § 772.27 S. Fiorini, “Li Buki di Rabatu: The Population of Rabat c. 1480,” in T.

Cortis, T. Freller, L. Bugeja, ed., Melitensium Amor. Festschrift in honour of DunGwann Azzopardi (Malta: Gutenberg Press, 2002), 73-96.

28 G. Wettinger, “The Militia List of 1419-20: A New Starting Point for theStudy of Malta’s Population,” Melita Historica 5 (2) (1969): 80-106; S. Fiorini,“Malta in 1530,” in V. Mallia-Milanes, ed., Hospitaller Malta 1530-1798. Studieson Early Modern Malta and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (Malta: Mireva,1993), 121-6. Comparable demographic growth patterns have been observedfor Sicily in the later fifteenth century: M. Aymard, “Une croissance sélective:la population sicilienne aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles,” Mélanges de la Casa de

of Malta’s grain requirements is possible for the fifteenth centuryfor which more documentary material has survived.23 In 1435 theMaltese claimed that grain shortages occurred every two to threeyears and were reducing the island to “great poverty.”24 The Maltesehistorian Godfrey Wettinger argues that in this period it becameincreasingly necessary to supplement local production with regularimports, probably on the order of 1000-2000 salme each year.25 Incritical moments the estimated need for grain could be higher still.In 1468, which admittedly may have been an unusually harsh year,the municipal council ordered the purchase of 4,000 salme, whilein 1480, faced with the threat of a Turkish invasion, the authoritiesdebated whether they should purchase 2,000, 3,000, or 5,000 salme.26

Given that one salma was equivalent to the yearly consumption for1-1.5 individuals, these figures represent significant amounts thatmust have imposed a considerable financial burden on the island’slimited resources. A population list from 1480 for the communityof Rabat, possibly drawn up in response to the above-mentionedinvasion scare, indicated that its population of 317 households neces-sitated an additional 896 salme of grain.27 Certainly the need to im-port grain pressed ever more urgently upon the Maltese authoritiesbetween the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, as the islandexperienced a demographic upsurge that doubled the populationto almost 20,000 by 153028 (at the time of the arrival of the knights

304 MARK A. ALOISIO

Velasquez (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1968), 4: 303-27.29 Wettinger, “Agriculture in Malta,” 14.30 P. Corrao, “Assemblee municipali nella Sicilia tardomedievale: note sul

caso maltese,” in P. Xuereb, ed., Karissime Gotifride. Historical Essays Presentedto Professor Godfrey Wettinger on his Seventieth Birthday (Malta: Malta UniversityPress, 1999), 37-46; Fiorini, “Malta in 1530,” 111-98. Roughly 16 per cent ofdebates and deliberations within the town council between 1450 and 1499concerned matters relating to grain.

31 C. Dalli, “Capitoli: The Voice of an Elite,” in S. Fiorini, ed., Proceedingsof History Week 1992 (Malta: The Malta Historical Society, 1994), 1-18. Forsimilar patterns of behavior within the universitas of Messina, Salvo, Giurati,95-120.

32 Bresc, Un monde, 727.

of St John). By then, Malta and Gozo were importing about 9,000salme of wheat annually.29

As in other towns and cities in Sicily, the task of ensuring thatthe population were adequately supplied with wheat was the respon-sibility of the local municipal council or universitas.30 The universitasof Malta was based at Mdina but its jurisdiction in fact extendedbeyond the limits of that town to include all the villages on theisland, where a large section of the population lived. In additionto the procurement of grain, the universitas oversaw the defense ofthe island, the farming out of indirect taxes (gabelle) on importedand exported goods, and the enforcement of price controls onfoodstuffs. The principal officials of the universitas were the captain,who was appointed by the royal authorities, and the jurati, who werechosen locally and served for one year. Studies on the Malteseuniversitas and other universitates in Sicily have demonstrated thatthey tended to be dominated by a small group of families, who oftenviewed public office as an opportunity to promote sectional orprivate interests.31 From 1402 to 1457, the universitas of Malta waseffectively controlled by 68 families, of whom only 42 had memberswho became jurati. Moreover, that office was in fact monopolizedby fourteen families whose members received 101 of 145 municipalappointments.32

The precise extent to which personal interests impinged on thepublic responsibility of the universitas to provision its citizens withgrain is difficult to assess. The language used in the debates thattook place during council meetings was often vague and the neces-sary prosopographical research that can identify relations among dif-ferent families or groups has not yet been done. However, the pro-


33 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 556, § 561, § 562. As in Sicily, the moneyof account used in Malta and Gozo was the uncia, tarì, grani and denari (1uncia = 30 tarì, 1 tarì = 20 grani, 1 grano = 6 denari). The Maltese uncia wasequivalent to around one-seventh of that of Sicily in the late fifteenth century.

34 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 219 (1462): council granted FredericusCalabachi, a fellow jurat, “liberam et generalem potestatem administracionemet procuram pro emendo frumentum per universitatem et illud mictendo cumnavigiis et si invenerit aliquem qui offeret fornire insolam frumento pro totoanno eciam ad granos duos ultra quod veniret ad expensas universitates quodhabeat licenciam concordandi hoc prestito per eum juramento sollempni dummodo quod alii ferentes possent vendere ...”

posals put forward by some council members frequently appear tohave specifically favored certain individuals at the expense of others.For instance, in March 1474 a number of merchants protested adecision by the universitas that prohibited the sale of grain for eightdays with the exception of one merchant who a few days earlier hadbeen allowed to sell a quantity of wheat at the high price of 21 tarìper salma.33 In other instances, some jurati attempted to manipulatethe selling price of imported grain to favor another merchant whowas entrusted with its procurement (and who served periodically asa jurato). If these examples represent a more widespread pattern ofbehavior among Maltese municipal authorities at the time they wouldhave certainly represented a further disruption to the flow of tradein grain between the two islands.

When it became necessary to import wheat to Malta, communalofficials often appointed a representative charged with its procure-ment. They also needed to decide how much grain to buy and atwhat price, and the price at which it would be sold in Malta.34 TheMaltese universitas, like other Sicilian towns, had consuls in variousparts of Sicily where its merchants traded, including Licata and Syra-cuse, and these officials most likely functioned as intermediariesbetween sellers and buyers. Most grain destined for Malta wasapparently shipped from Terranova, Licata and Syracuse, all onSicily’s southern coast. At other times, the Maltese authorities wereapproached directly by individuals or firms willing to bring grainto the island. In that case, the jurati discussed the offer and, if foundacceptable, gave permission for the deal to take place. Contemporaryrecords indicate the involvement of Maltese and Sicilians in thistrade but Catalan merchants were especially prominent. This activityconfirms a pattern, already delineated by Mario Del Treppo, where-by Catalans supplied cloth and agricultural products to Malta in

306 MARK A. ALOISIO

35 Del Treppo, I mercanti, 166-7, 172, 174-5. The exchange of Catalan clothand foodstuffs for Maltese grain by a Catalan merchant company in the 1450sand 1460s is difficult to explain: Del Treppo, I mercanti, 176.

36 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 141.37 Giambruno and Genuardi, Capitoli, 376.38 Epstein, An Island for Itself, 141-50.39 G. Wettinger, “The Pawning of Malta to Monroy,” Melita Historica 7 (3)

(1978): 265-83.40 Giambruno and Genuardi, Capitoli, 390.

exchange for Maltese raw and spun cotton.35 As a territory thatformed part of the kingdom of Sicily, commercial relations betweenMalta and Sicily should have been categorized as internal trade, andhence exempted from payment of licences, known as tratte, that werelevied on exports of grain fuori regno. In practice things workedrather differently.

In fact, one of the most pressing concerns for the Maltese univer-sitas in the early fifteenth century was to obtain from the royalofficials a permanent exemption from payment of the tratte andother taxes on trade. This aim appeared to have been realized in1398, when shortly after the restoration of Aragonese power in Sicily,Martin I exempted from export duties all commerce intra regnoinvolving grain and foodstuffs traded by sea. That privilege washitherto enjoyed only by the city of Messina but was now extendedthroughout the demesne which included most universitates, amongthem that of Malta.36 In 1416 however, the Maltese petitioned Ferdi-nand I to reconfirm that privilege, alleging that they were beingtaxed at one-half tratta for each salma.37 It has been argued thatMartin’s decree contributed to the formation of an integrated grainmarket in Sicily by opening the way for reduced incidences ofshortages and more stable prices.38 As the example of Malta demon-strates, however, royal privileges could lose much of their effect ifthey fell into disuse (as the Maltese claimed) or were not recon-firmed or firmly enforced. It is not known whether Ferdinandacceded to the Maltese request, but any trade privileges grantedwould have been lost from 1421 to 1428, when Malta and Gozo werepawned to the Aragonese nobleman Gonsalvo Monroy and so werenot part of the demesne.39 Alfonso granted another exemption frompayment of export licenses on grain and other victuals in 1432,following the reincorporation of the islands into the demesne, yetother requests to reconfirm this privilege recur in 1435 and 1450.40


41 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 517.42 Giambruno and Genuardi, Capitoli, 366-7, 371.43 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 927; J. Del Amo García, S. Fiorini, and G.

Wettinger, ed., Documents of the Maltese Universitas. No. 1. Cathedral Museum,Mdina. Archivum Cathedralis Melitae, Miscellanea 33, 1405-1524. DocumentarySources of Maltese History (Malta: Malta University Press, 2001), § 84.

44 Del Amo García, Fiorini, and Wettinger, Documents, § 96, § 101.45 Del Amo García, Fiorini, and Wettinger, Documents, § 45.46 Del Amo García, Fiorini, and Wettinger, Documents, § 101.47 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 73 (1456); §215 (1462); §279 (1468). 48 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 125 (1461); § 216 (1462). On the cherca,

Bresc, Un monde, 745. Some people made their own private arrangements topurchase grain in Sicily. Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 314 (1468): “si faza lacherca di quilli ki hannu portatu frumentu et si l’annu portatu per usu so sipigla parti per vindiri a lu populu.”

Even when trading privileges were in force, the Maltese continuedto experience difficulties procuring grain, either because of theintransigence or corruption of port officials who refused to honortoll exemptions or because towns in Sicily were unwilling to allowsales of grain for fear that they themselves might experience short-ages.41 Small towns or isolated communities may have been especiallyvulnerable because they could not easily make their voice heard,which perhaps explains why the capitoli (petitions) of the universitasof the island of Lipari contained complaints similar to those by theMaltese.42 In 1483, in spite of an order from the viceroy, the author-ities in Licata refused to sell wheat to Malta, and in 1507 Maltesewho wished to buy grain from Terranova were allegedly being forcedto pay bribes to customs officials or risk imprisonment.43 Similarprotests were made in 1513 and 1515 against other port authori-ties.44 Times of scarcity only compounded the usual difficulties. In1483 the port official of Licata asked the Maltese authorities not tobuy all their grain from his city but to extend their search to otherports, particularly during the summer months when the weather wasfavorable to longer voyages.45 In fact by 1515, Malta appears to havebeen buying grain from several caricatori including Agrigento,Sciacca, Mazara, Licata, and Heraclea.46 In difficult circumstancesthe universitas sometimes adopted harsh measures such as requiringthose who held stocks of grain to sell it immediately,47 to conductsearches to reveal hoarded supplies,48 or to institute forced loansupon all or some members of the community with which the universi-

308 MARK A. ALOISIO

49 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 25 (undated); §197 (1462); §218 (1462)(forced loan of 1000 florins on “persuni facultusi”).

50 Wettinger, Acta Iuratorum, § 547; § 548; § 549.51 Hatcher and Bailey, Modelling the Middle Ages, 168.

tas could purchase grain (inpronti).49 If the situation was deemed tobe especially critical, the universitas authorized the seizure of shipscarrying grain to other destinations and confiscated their cargo.50

IV

In conclusion, I would like to remark on two implications which canbe derived from this study. First, it is admittedly notoriously difficult,but nonetheless important, to assess the effect of commercializationon a local level. I suggest that the extent to which urban demandin the late Middle Ages was responsible for opening commoditymarkets and lowering the costs of trade was in part limited byconflicts of interests within and among individual towns. Even in arelatively commercialized society like late medieval Sicily, towns andurban elites were often more concerned with protecting their particu-lar fiscal and commercial privileges than in reducing the cost ofregional trade. As John Hatcher and Mark Bailey have recentlynoted:

legal controls over trade in the Middle Ages were not intended tosecure cheap and ready participation for as many as possible. Rathertheir object was to extend and protect the control of commercialactivity ... for the profit of a few beneficiaries, and this inevitablyrestricted the scale of any reduction in the transaction costs of market-ing for most producers.51

Second, I believe that the evidence presented above confirms theview that economic intervention by the medieval state generally camein spurts and its effect was, at best, unevenly distributed. When state-granted economic privileges were reasonably respected or enforced,they may have indeed contributed to a reduction of institutionalconstraints on trade and promoted regional specialization andgreater market integration. However, the Maltese evidence showsthat there were also several instances where, in practice, this did notoccur. Malta’s alienation from the demesne between 1421 and1428—by no means a unique event among demesnal cities in the


kingdom of Sicily—stands as a reminder that, for the state, the bene-fits of short term gains might outweigh long-term expectations.

1 Elizabeth Chapin, Les villes de foires de Champagne des origins au début duXIVe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1937), 96, 109, 115, 118.

2 See particularly Hans Van Werveke, De omvang van de Ieperse lakenproductiein de veertiende eeuw, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voorWetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren,no. 9 (Antwerp: Standaard, 1947).

3 John Munro has argued persuasively that the eclipse of the Champagnefairs was due to a decline in the production of light woollens that had beenthe most important element in their prosperity. He links the change also tothe rise in transaction costs with the onset of wars in the 1290s. John H.Munro, “The ‘New Institutional Economics’ and the Changing Fortunes ofFairs in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: the Textile Trades, Warfare, andTransaction Costs,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 88(2001): 1-47, at 14-9.

4 Guillaume Des Marez and E. De Sagher, eds., Comptes de la ville d’Ypresde 1267 à 1329, 2 vols. (Brussels: Commission Royale d’Histoire, 1909-1913).

COMMERCIAL CREDIT AND CENTRAL PLACE FUNCTION IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY YPRES

David Nicholas

Of the five great cities of Flanders (Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Lille,Douai) in the late thirteenth century Ypres was the last to developurban characteristics, the most precocious in record-keeping, themost industrial, and the most involved in trade at the interregionalfairs. Its cloth was the most highly taxed of any Flemish textiles atthe fairs of Provins, and the city maintained its own houses formerchant lodging at Provins and Lagny.1

The decline of the textile industry of Ypres in the fourteenthand fifteenth centuries is well known.2 The extent to which thedecline of the Champagne fairs was involved in the general decayof Ypres’ prosperity, either as cause or effect, must remain an openquestion.3 Indeed, most questions concerning Ypres must remainopen, because the archives of the city, once the richest of Flanders,were destroyed in 1914. Before the war the city archivist, GuillaumeDes Marez, published the city accounts from 1267 to 13294 andtook extensive notes on the more than seven thousand chirographs,including 5,505 debt recognitions, that were contracted before theéchevins of the city from 1 October 1249 to 18 June 1291, when the

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1 See among other works by John H. A. Munro, “The ‘New InstitutionalEconomics’ and the Changing Fortunes of Fairs in Medieval and EarlyModern Europe: The Textile Trades, Warfare, and Transaction Costs,” Viertel-jahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 88 (1) (2001): 20-8. His emphasisis on the fall in transaction costs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries andthe rise of fairs in the Low Countries. See also John H. A. Munro, “English‘Backwardness’ and Financial Innovations in Commerce with the LowCountries, 14th to 16th Centuries,” in Peter Stabel, Bruno Blondé, and AnkeGreve, eds., International Trade in the Low Countries (14th-16th Centuries)Merchants, Organisation, Infrastructure (Leuven: Garant, 2000), 105-67.

THRESHOLDS FOR MARKET INTEGRATION IN THELOW COUNTRIES AND ENGLAND IN THE FIFTEENTH

CENTURY

Richard W. Unger

England, Flanders, Brabant, and Holland in the fourteenth and fif-teenth centuries, while showing signs of economic growth and aremarkable ability to adjust to changing demographic, environmen-tal and political circumstances, did not indicate a reliance on longdistance trade or even intra-European trade that would be typicalof the following two centuries. More stable political conditionsallowing a revival in overland trade to Germany and Italy alongwith expansion of shipping were the foundation for subsequentgrowth in industrial production and in commerce.1 But for muchof the two centuries before 1500 it appears that the participationof the towns around the southern North Sea in exchange, inextending the scope of their trade, and in integrating their marketswith those of other towns changed little and perhaps even declined.Southeastern England, which largely meant London, and Flanderswere the most urbanized parts of northern Europe. With the excep-tion of Paris, virtually all sizeable fifteenth-century cities north ofItaly could be found in the region. Towns were net consumers ofpeople: Death rates were higher than birth rates. Even more dra-matically they were net consumers of food. Urban dwellers keptanimals and had gardens. Some food production within town wallswas to be a common feature of European cities into the nineteenthcentury. But for the principal source of nutrition of pre-modern

350 RICHARD W. UNGER

2 Marie-Jeanne Tits-Dieuaide, La formation des prix céréaliers en Brabant et enFlandre au XVe siècle (Brussels: Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 1975),270-5.

people in northern Europe, bread, people in cities had to importthe raw material. Cities were sumps for food grains, sucking wheatand rye, barley and oats, from the countryside. Towns were a forcefor promoting and generating trade and exchange. The size oftowns around the southern North Sea and their need for foodgrains would suggest a need for trade, a force for creating condi-tions conducive to an economy based on shipping and commerce.

It appears that, surprisingly, that was not the case in the fif-teenth century. Despite the high degree of urbanization, trade infood grains was limited. The towns of southeastern England andthe Low Countries did not rely extensively on grain shipped tothem from afar and, in fact, not even grain shipped from relativelynearby. The principal urban markets in northern Europe in thelater Middle Ages showed low degrees of market integration withthose at any considerable distance away. The towns could functionand prosper on the basis of nearby supplies. Few towns reached orsurpassed a threshold which forced them to seek food grains fromdistant points. That seeming anomaly is, however, consistent withtheoretical expectations and with the constraints placed on them bythe availability of land and by the prevailing technologies of agri-culture.

Within the Low Countries, and especially the southern LowCountries, in the fifteenth century there was a high and increasingdegree of market integration. The process gained momentum inthat most densely populated region of northern Europe in thefollowing century giving something of an impression of the inevita-bility of the process, especially in what was a clearly defined andrelatively small region. Scholars examining the grain markets of theregion through a variety of statistical tests—that is Marie-JeanneTits-Dieuaide2—and the growth of the largest city in sixteenth cen-tury Europe—that is Herman Van der Wee—among others, foundevidence for the emergence in the fifteenth century of an inte-grated market or markets in Flanders and Brabant. According toVan der Wee urban markets in Brabant were moving toward integ-ration already well before 1500, a process he said which became

351MARKET INTEGRATION

3 Herman Van der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the EuropeanEconomy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), 1: 23-4, 31.

4 See Appendix 1.5 For a summary of the discussion about Low Countries market integration

and further statistical confirmation of a level of regional market integrationsee Richard W. Unger, “Feeding Low Countries Towns: The Grain Trade inthe Fifteenth Century,” Revue Belge de Philolgie et d'Histoire 77 (2) (1999): 329-58; Richard W. Unger, “Maritime Transport and the Integration of LowCountries Grain Markets in the Late Middle Ages,” in Piet Van Cruyningenand Erik Thoen, eds., Town and Countryside from the late Middle Ages to the 19thCenturies: Supply and Demand of Food (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, forthcom-ing).

6 Stephan R. Epstein, “Regional Fairs, Institutional Innovation, and Econo-mic Growth in Late Medieval Europe,” Economic History Review 47 (3) (1994):459-482.

more pronounced over time.3 Both he and Tits-Dieuaide wereconvinced that a closely related and connected regional market for,at the very least, the southern Low Countries had emerged by1500. Data from towns in the Netherlands outside of Flanders andBrabant suggest that the process of integration was advanced bythen but less so in places like Douai and Utrecht than in Antwerp,Brussels, and Louvain. A standard test for market integration iswhether prices tended to converge and to move together.4 Thoughprice movements in the various markets were not always of thesame magnitude at exactly the same time, the charting of pricesleaves a strong impression of the convergence of prices of theprincipal food grains, wheat and rye. This suggests slow movementtoward integration and within limits.5 In the sixteenth century thesame regions became even more integrated among themselves butonly then with markets elsewhere in northern Europe. For thefourteenth and fifteenth centuries it appears that integration waslocal and at most regional.

Despite the long term outcome, despite the eventual integrationof markets throughout northwestern Europe, the final economicresult was not inevitable. The grander pattern, called globalizationby later writers, may be common in the twentieth and twenty-firstcenturies but by no means was that the only possible outcome inthe fifteenth. Then more common it appears was the developmentof integration in relatively small regions which were themselves inturn connected commercially through new periodic regional fairsthat emerged in the period.6 Levels of transactions costs, warfare,and government regulations worked to prevent exchange. Cumula-


tive improvements in agricultural production, including diversifica-tion and intensification, worked to make small parts of the regionself-sufficient. At the same time swings in production thanks tochanging natural conditions and improvements in transportationhad the opposite effect. On balance and in the long term it is truethat the forces for integration prevailed. At many points in thefifteenth century and for many parts of the region, however, thelevel of integration with other urban markets was scant. Many ofthe towns of the region only infrequently searched outside of thelands nearby for sources of food grains. Measures of market inte-gration indicate the limited degree of reliance on distant marketsand the limited scope of integration in the region. Data on poten-tial food grain production indicate why towns could and did get byin many if not most years on what local farmers grew in the fieldsaround the towns.

If prices moved up and down together, to be expected of twomarkets that are integrated, then price series from the two marketsfor the same good should be highly correlated. Where levels ofcorrelation were high that indicates that when a food grain was inshort supply consumers turned to sources of the good in othermarkets. In the fifteenth century in England and the Low Countriescorrelations of prices of different food grains in the same marketwere even higher than correlations of prices between markets. Thatindicates that when a good grain was in short supply consumersturned to other grains in the same market. To test the degree towhich consumers moved not to distant sources for the same foodgrain but shifted to different grains in their own market prevailingprices were compared inside single markets. Comparisons weremade using the currency prevailing in that market, thus avoidingproblems created by the changing values of currencies. Correctionswere made for differences in and changes in the units of measure,that is either by weight or volume depending on the practice of theindividual market.

There was a hierarchy of food grains in late medieval markets.Consumers preferred wheat almost invariably. Wheat prices werehigher per unit volume always. Because of the higher price wheatwas better able to cover transport costs and so was more likely tobe exchanged across markets. The demand for wheat was moresusceptible to changes in the income of consumers. The wealthybought wheaten bread and the not so wealthy bought it when they


7 “Oats. A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scot-land supports the people.” (Samuel Johnson, A dictionary of the Englishlanguage: in which the words are deduced from their originals, and illustrated in theirdifferent significations by examples from the best writers: to which are prefixed a historyof the language and an English grammar (London: W. Strahan for J. and P.Knapton etc., 1755), II).

8 See Richard W. Unger, A History of Brewing in Holland 900-1900. Economy,Technology and the State (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 116-20.

could afford it. A fall in the price of wheat drew more consumersinto the market for the good. If wheat was, relatively, a luxurygood then oats was at the other end of the spectrum. It was notjust the lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson who thought oats wereintended for horses.7 In the Middle Ages the grain was used asanimal feed but was also used for bread, porridge and, in the LowCountries especially, it was used extensively in brewing.8 So peopledid eat oats but it came at the bottom of the list among choices.It was an inferior good in that presumably a fall in price wouldhave led to no increase in consumption as people used the incomereleased by the lower cost of oats to buy something else, such aswheat or more likely rye, the next grain up the ladder of prefer-ence from oats. Rye was like oats and for both consumption wasprice inelastic, that is if prices changed consumption levels changedlittle. Those grains were so necessary to the diet of the poor thatpeople simply had to buy them even when prices are up sharply.Barley was not in the same class as wheat which was alone at thetop of the grain hierarchy but barley was probably ahead of ryebecause of its use in quality beer. That seems to have been espe-cially true in England in the later Middle Ages.

If farmers and merchants and shippers preferred to trade wheatover other grains then wheat prices should have been more highlycorrelated with prices in other markets. The market for wheatshould have been larger, more integrated and integrated earlierthan those for inferior grains like rye or oats. The expectation isthat the price of a traded grain would have had a high correlationwith prices in other markets and much less of a correlation withprices of other grains in the same market. If no grains were tradedthen prices would have been determined solely by local conditions.If neither wheat nor oats nor barley nor rye was exchanged undersuch conditions of autarky the price movement of all grains wouldhave been much the same, the only variation being small and


9 The rye and oats prices from Antwerp are compared to wheat prices fromnearby Lier.

caused by differences in the characteristics of demand for thedifferent food grains. To put it another way if grains were tradedthere should have been high correlation among the prices for thesame grains in different markets and if grains were not traded thenthere should be high correlations for different grains in each localmarket.

Using price series starting in the late fourteenth century andrunning down to 1600, that is well into the era of greater marketintegration in the sixteenth century, if there is one thing that leapsout from an examination of the correlation of grain prices withinmarkets it is the consistently high—indeed staggeringly high—levelsof correlation. For sites with surviving lengthy price series for thefour principal food grains, that is Antwerp, Leiden, and southernEngland the coefficients of correlation are almost always above0.800 (Table 1).9 What is more the relationship between oats andwheat, where the lowest level of correlation would be expectedgiven the position of the two grains at either end of the hierarchyof food grains, is among the highest and not the lowest. The some-what lower levels of correlation of barley and oats prices with ryeprices in Leiden could easily be a result of the relatively smallersample size. It is almost as if any two grains were complementarygoods, like left and right shoes, but of course food grains were notcomplements. For Utrecht there is only surviving data for threegrains, barley, oats and wheat, but correlation of prices was stillhigh, much higher than the norm for prices for the same grainamong different markets (Table 2). The relationship between oatsand wheat shows the lowest level of correlation but the differencebetween it and other levels is small. For some markets there areonly two surviving price series (Table 3). The results still prove tobe similar no matter the grains, no matter the sample size and nomatter the location. Going futher afield, Gdansk, the great exportcentre for Polish grain and in the sixteenth century and beyond amajor supplier of food grains to the Low Countries, showed littledifference between the performance of rye and wheat prices. TheParis case, also beyond the region around the southern North Sea,offers few observations. As well some extremely high wheat pricesin the closing years of the Hundred Years War strongly affect re-


one market are compared to levels in other markets, such as Ant-werp (Lier) and Leiden (0.471) or south England with Antwerp(Lier) (0.600). With the same grain price correlations between mar-kets are still low compared to the price correlations between grainsin a single market. Oats prices in Antwerp and Leiden were weaklycorrelated (0.427) as were wheat prices between Bruges and Brus-sels (0.451). For a comparison of barley and rye prices the resultsare similar (Table 6). Correlations within Leiden and Antwerpbetween the two grains were high while comparisons between mar-kets show lower levels of correlation, for example between Antwerpand Louvain (0.460) and Utrecht and Leiden (0.498). For the samegrain the correlations between markets are also low. Between Brus-sels and Amsterdam the correlation of rye prices is actually negative(-.004), admittedly for minute samples. Even with markets close toeach other the correlations of the figures for barley and rye arestrikingly low, another indication that markets were moderately in-dependent and did not rely on common sources of supply.

Price movements for different grains in the late Middle Agesand the sixteenth century were highly correlated within markets.The data would seem to indicate much more exchange of foodgrains within markets than among markets. The levels of correla-tion within markets are staggering, especially when compared withlevels of correlation among markets. Despite some deviations thestatement would seem to be true of all grains in all places and atall times and not just in the Low Countries and southeast Englandbut in northwestern Europe in general. Even the sample size doesnot seem to affect the result. There is the possibility that to somedegree the common internal price movements were generated bygovernment price fixing or at least price regulation. Though townsin the Low Countries and especially in the northern Low Countrieswere less dirigiste than their German counterparts in the sixteenthcentury the legislation which first appeared in the fifteenth centurymay have had some bite which would help explain internally consis-tent prices (Table 7). The correlations in prices for the four princi-pal food grains in Strasbourg are simply too high to be explainedby autarky. The hand of the civic government can be seen in thecomplete consistency of price movement over the years up to 1600.If that is the case then government legislation worked againstmarket integration, kept the mechanism of prices from working todraw supplies from areas of surplus. The towns may already have


12 J. H. von Thünen, Der isolierte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirtschaft undNationalökonomie, 2nd ed. (Rostock: G. B. Leopold, 1842-1850); August Lösch,

of farmers in feeding towns had limits, however, and so the effec-tiveness set restrictions, even if somewhat flexible, on the size ofthose settlements.

In dealing with questions of sources of food big cities have beenthe most popular sites for investigation and not just because thematerial is easier to muster. For medieval England the study of themaximum size of towns has meant the study of London. The capi-tal did reach an impressive 80,000 souls by around 1300 but citiesof that size and larger in northern Europe were more a product ofthe sixteenth century when political centres like Paris, London, andAmsterdam went through dramatic expansion.

Ultimately it was food and fuel supplies that both theoreticallyand practically constrained the population of towns. To measurethe restrictions created by the need to feed urban populationsperhaps the simplest way is to return to the world of that earlynineteenth-century Pomeranian rye farmer, Johan von Thünen, andto his followers, the German geographer Walter Christaller and theprofessor who refused a post under National Socialism, AugustLösch, to return to that school of German scholars who dealt inwhat they called the economics of location. They began purelytheoretically and then made attempts to adjust their theories toconform more closely to the reality they knew. To make life simplethey began by assuming a world that is a flat undifferentiatedplain—and in this case two spellings of plane are correct which isthe kind of thing that brings relief to students and anxiety to thewriters of spell checkers for computer programs. There are addi-tional limiting assumptions, such as that no firm makes abnormalprofits and that society maximizes the degree to which firms ag-glomerate, or in other words minimizes the number of sites of anyeconomic activity. Both transport and production costs, are uni-form, demand is infinitely elastic at a given price, and there is asingle market centre. With those assumptions then productionwould logically be distributed evenly and equally across the plainso then central places, sites which provide services to the popula-tion, would appear at equal intervals. It turns out that the distribu-tion of those centres of population will be theoretically arrangedregularly in a pattern of equilateral hexagons.12


The Economics of Location, trans. Wolfgang F. Stolper (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1954), 109-20.

13 Alan G. Wilson, Complex Spatial Systems: The Modelling Foundations of Urbanand Regional Analysis (Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education, 2000), 51-4, 81-2,123-5, 135-8.

Von Thünen wanted to know the maximum rent a landlordcould get from farmland. That would depend he realized on theprofits that farmers could generate. So if farmers were trying tomaximize their incomes that led him to the question of why farm-ers picked the specific crops they chose to raise at different loca-tions. Consumers paid for the cost of producing a crop and alsofor transport costs so at a certain distance away from a consump-tion centre it was no longer economic to grow one crop but be-came profitable to grow another. The critical factors for the choiceof a crop were then production costs per unit of land and transportcosts. Von Thünen envisaged, theoretically, a series of circlesaround a point of consumption and within each zone described bythose circles farmers producing one crop or type of crop. Chris-taller, starting with the same set of assumptions, examined thegeometry asking what would be the optimum shape of the zones ofproduction. There is no doubt that the circle was the most efficientchoice but a series of circles around each centre of consumptionwould not fill up the entire plain. The collection of polygons thatwould fulfill that necessary function of blanketing the plain are thetriangle, square and hexagon. Since the hexagon is the closest tothe circle in shape, intuitively and also mathematically it is the bestchoice to describe regions of production for maximizing efficiencyof supply. The hexagon turns out to be four-fifths as efficient as acircle for the purpose. In a sense Christaller was trying to makemore general the specific case that von Thünen had described.

Lösch went further in trying to loosen the rather strict assump-tions of the essential theory. Von Thünen himself tried to relax theobviously inaccurate assumption that the world is a flat undifferenti-ated plain. He did consider what happened if for example a riverran through the plain, thus creating a range of lower transportcosts.13 In general just as waterways lower transport costs hillsincrease them. The plain is finite in extent and at some pointreaches what is a much more undifferentiated surface, that is thesea. By accepting variations in geography and so a lack of unifor-mity in production but, more important, in transport costs the neat


14 On differences in agricultural output depending on differences inweather patterns see Christian Pfister, “Climate and Economy in EighteenthCentury Switzerland,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 10 (1978): 719-23.

15 Wilson, Complex Spatial Systems, 81-4, 93.16 Wilson, Complex Spatial Systems, 146.

pattern of hexagons becomes skewed. By accepting that geographycould be different the theorists also accepted that production costscould vary because of soil type and weather conditions.14 Thesmaller the area under consideration, however, the more likely thepattern of supply would conform to the theoretically anticipatedpattern of regular hexagons.

In the second half of the twentieth century, armed with moresophisticated mathematics and computers to do iterative calculationsat high speed, theorists have added a dynamism to the static mod-els of Lösch and his predecessors. The resulting spatial interactionmodelling can with some ease consider the reciprocal relationshipsof multiple centres of consumption, the flows between them, andallow for variations in geography. The resulting models are morecomplex with von Thünen’s world of rings reduced to a specialhighly restricted case. They are highly flexible, and able to accom-modate a wide variety of variables and so better able to deal withknown circumstances. The geometrical patterns around multiplecentres are varied and show a great potential variety in land use(Figure 1). Yet in dealing with a single centre and even incorporat-ing an interaction-location paradigm, though the geometrical formtakes on more of an elliptical shape the further away from thecentre (Figure 2), still the shape, at least in the first zone closest tothe centre, is similar to the regular hexagon which satisfied Chris-taller.15

According to Wilson,

... Christaller’s system is too rigid to have any chance of representingreality ... However, it should be emphasised that the theory is anoutstanding creation, offering great insights—rather in the mannerof many economic concepts and theories which are accepted on sucha basis without ever having a chance of representing reality in anydetailed respect.16

While the criticism of location theory as it emerged in the first halfof the twentieth century is certainly well established and acknowl-


Figure 1

Von Thünen Rings with an Interaction Model(Alan G. Wilson, Complex Spatial Systems: The Modelling Foundations of Urbanand Regional Analysis (Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Ltd., 2000), 83)


Figure 2A Von Thünen System with Multiple Market Centres

(Alan G. Wilson, Complex Spatial Systems: The Modelling Foundations of Urbanand Regional Analysis (Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Ltd., 2000), 83)


17 Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages Social Changein England c. 1200-1520 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 111-3; James A. Galloway, “London’s Grain Supply: Changes in Production,Distribution and Consumption during the Fourteenth Century,” Franco-BritishStudies 20 (1995): 27; James A. Galloway and Margaret Murphy, “Feeding theCity: Medieval London and its Agrarian Hinterland,” The London Journal 16(1) (1991): 11.

edged as sound, and while the addition of dynamical locationalanalysis shows how exceptional were the cases described by earliertheorists, the expectations which had their origins in the work ofvon Thünen can still serve as both a guide to patterns of produc-tion and land use, and also as a basis for an understanding of thehistorical relationship between the agrarian countryside and thesites farmers supplied with food.

Each person who lives in the central place requires the labourof people producing food within the hexagon around the consump-tion centre, that is around the central place. The surplus createdby the farmer will determine the land area required to supporteach resident of the central place. That in turn means that theamount of land it took to feed a town depended on how muchland it took to feed a person. For the late Middle Ages, usingfigures generated by Christopher Dyer from the end of the thir-teenth century, with gross yields of around 1,000 litres per hectarefor many food grains and after deductions for seed, feed for ani-mals, food for the farmer’s family, and for tithes, the net figure formarketable grain was between 160 and 220 litres per hectare.Another estimate for the early fourteenth century by James Gallo-way and Margaret Murphy puts the average marketable surplus at360 litres per hectare for wheat. There was wide variation of coursebut something like 300 litres net per hectare for wheat and oatsand 400 litres net for barley seem reasonable for late medievalEngland.17 If per caput annual consumption of food grains wasabout 600 litres, an estimate which is not unreasonable and reflectsneither a poor nor a prosperous standard of living, then it tookaround two hectares of farmland, more or less, to support a towndweller. That assumes that the entire rural population was involvedsolely in production of food for market. That was of course nottrue and became less true in the late fourteenth and fifteenthcentury with expansion in rural industry. If for every farmer in thecountryside there was one dependent person who consumed rather


18 James A. Galloway, Derek Keene, and Margaret Murphy, “Fuelling theCity Production and Distribution of Firewood and Fuel in London’s Region,1290-1400,” Economic History Review 49 (3) (1996): 447-72, at 448.

19 On the management of English forests in general and over the long termsee Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside (London: Dent, 1986).

20 Paolo Malanima, “The Energy Basis for Early Modern Growth, 1650-1820,” in Maarten Prak, ed., Early Modern Capitalism Economic and Social changein Europe, 1400-1800 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 53, 61.

than produced food then the land area needed to feed one urbandweller was around four hectares, and that estimate probably is ahigh one.

As to fuel, though in some parts of England coal was known andused in the late Middle Ages, for the overwhelming majority of thepopulation heat came from firewood. Around 1300 coal cost fourtimes as much in London as it did in Durham so even though coalhad higher calorific value—more than double that of wood—otherthan for industrial uses, firewood was the logical source of homeheat.18 Von Thünen expected that forested areas near cities wouldbe retained and managed to produce heating supplies and thatcertainly did happen in southeast England, in regions near Lon-don. Attempts to estimate the land area needed to supply peoplein towns with fuel are even more plagued by problems than theattempts to estimate the land area needed to supply food grains.Firewood consumption varied with the climate. Firewood productionvaried with the character of the land and the level of organizationand management in exploiting the land.19 One authority offers afigure for Sweden and Finland of eight kilograms of firewood perperson per day as the consumption norm, including industrial uses,but in northern France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Englandthe estimate is about four kilograms per day. Four kilograms perday translates into about 1.5 tonnes annually and assuming a levelof the average productivity of forests of between 0.75 and 1.5tonnes per annum it would have taken from 0.5 to 1.0 hectares ofmanaged woodland to produce that much firewood and so meetthe needs of the average inhabitant of a town.20 Presumably thedemand for firewood per caput was on the rise in late medievalEngland because of the spread of the use of the chimney. Produc-tion figures reported by Galloway, Keene, and Murphy from thewoodlands supplying late medieval London suggest output of 2.25tonnes per hectare, an estimate that is generous. They also esti-


21 Rolf Peter Sieferle, The Subterranean Forest Energy Systems and the IndustrialRevolution, trans. Michael Osmann (Cambridge: The White Horse Press, 2001).Original German edition published as Der unterirdische Wald (Munich: C. H.Beck, 1982), 55, 66, 91-2. Galloway, Keene, and Murphy, “Fuelling,” 455-6.

mated per caput wood consumption for the fourteenth century at0.8 tonnes. At that pace and at the high rate of production theyuse it took an area of at least 0.35 hectares to supply each Lon-doner, but that figure errs to the low side. At that level it tookabout 28,000 hectares in 1300 to meet the needs of the populationof 80,000 and only 18,000 hectares in 1400 when the populationwas considerably reduced. The estimate of 0.35 hectares per Lon-doner seems low in general but especially because a contemporaryin 1700 put the land area required to supply each town dwellerwith firewood at 0.5 hectares, and that in an era when coal alreadywas making a considerable contribution to the thermal energyneeds of the capital.21 So despite the extensive and directed workof Galloway, Keene, and Murphy an estimate of 0.5 hectares as aper caput land requirement for firewood supplies is preferred.People in the countryside would have required firewood as well.The ratios employed for net grain production can and should beapplied to estimating rates of firewood output by country dwellersfor themselves and city dwellers. Assuming 16 rural people for eachurbanite, that is two farm families of four each producing grain forthe town dweller and two farm families producing grain for de-pendents in the countryside, then to supply them would have takeneight hectares of woodland at 0.5 hectares as the land requirementjust to supply the 16. It would have taken an additional 0.5 hect-ares then to meet the needs of a single town dweller. An estimateof something on the order of eight hectares needed to supplyenough wood for people in the countryside as well as a singleperson in town is probably not wide of the mark.

Many factors make the figures suspect and the task of lendingprecision to the estimates for land requirements to sustain towns-people is far from complete. The results may be wide of the mark,and presumably over time more research will sharpen accuracy, stillthe errors in estimation do serve to some degree to counteract eachother. The goal is to produce a general rather than highly specificsense of land use and land requirements to supply town dwellersand so gain some sense of the threshold area required to sustain


22 Galloway, Keene, and Murphy, “Fuelling,” 457.23 The formula for the area of a regular hexagon is A = 3/2 × W2 where

W is the smallest width of the hexagon, the length of a straight line from oneside to the side directly opposite. If A = 12,000 or 120,000,000 square metressince 1 hectare = 10,000 square meters then 240,000,000/ 3 = W2 or W =

138,564,064 or W = 11,771 metres or just under 12 kilometres as the widthof the regular hexagon. The shortest distance from the centre to any one ofthe sides would thus have been less than 6 kilometres. The area, A, is alsoequal to 3 3/2 L2, where L is the length of a side of the regular hexagon.If A= 120,000,000 square metres then L = 46,189,376 so L= 6,796 metresor almost 6.8 kilometres.

a late medieval town. No matter the efforts at estimation it appearsthat England’s largest urban centre in the late Middle Ages, Lon-don, had its fuel needs easily met by producers in the region, andthere was still a surplus for export.22 That along with other indica-tions of regular and consistent access to adequate heating fuel inthe Low Countries and England suggests that most of the timemost towns did not have trouble with their energy requirements.

If it took four hectares of land in total to produce the foodneeded for a town dweller and eight hectares in total to producethe firewood, for a notional town of 1,000 people—assuming thatnone of the people in the town did anything to produce any foodor fuel for themselves—the total rural area required was 12,000hectares. If a distribution of production of food grains and fire-wood for the town of 1,000 conformed to a pattern of regularhexagons—a limiting assumption though as indicated theoreticallya reasonable first approximation—then the distance from one sideof the hexagon to the other would have been about 12 kilometres.The shortest distance to any of the six sides of the notional hexa-gon from the centre would have been under six kilometres.23 It wasa distance a farmer could walk in an hour with little difficulty. Fora town of 10,000 the distance along the any of the six sides of theregular hexagon would have been about 21.5 kilometres. For a citythe size of Ghent or Bruges, that is around 40,000, the length ofthe walk to the outer extremity of the idealized supply zone wouldhave been just short of 43 kilometres, an easy trip in a day onfoot. For London at its maximum late medieval population around1300 of 80,000, and the largest town in the region outside of Paris,the theoretical distance was just short of 61 kilometres. Because ofthe geometry that distance was not eighty times the distance for a


24 Galloway and Murphy, “Feeding,” 11.25 Unger, “Feeding Low Coutries Towns,” 329-58 at 330-2.

town of 1,000 but only something more than five times the distance.A careful examination of sources of food for London, the second

largest and possibly at some times the largest city in the region,indicates that virtually all the food needed, and so excluding fuel,came from 100,000 hectares, an area in total about twice the sizeof the small county of Middlesex. It may be that because of thenature of surviving documents research has missed some sourcesLondoners used for food, for example nearby on the Continent,but whether that is true or not the fact remains that food for thelargest city in England came almost entirely from the southeast ofEngland.24 In around 1500, farmers in the coastal Low Countriescould supply something on the order of twice as much grain as wasneeded to feed the existing urban population.25 Even if the esti-mates to arrive at that conclusion are somewhat suspect and evenif the final result is off by as much as 100% still the weight of theevidence strongly supports the impression that for most of thefourteenth and fifteenth centuries most grain to feed towns camefrom close by and so did not have to brought from far afield, thatis except in unusual years. Such calculations depend on all the landwithin the notional polygon being productive and able to supplyeither food or fuel. But even assuming that only half the land wasproductive for a town of 10,000 that would have increased thelength of the side of the hexagon only to a bit more than 30kilometres or a distance of a little more than 26 kilometres fromthe centre to the outer edge of the hexagon, again something thatcould have easily been covered in half a day by a farmer on footand with some time to spare.

There are many problems with the estimates. There are manyexceptions which can and should be raised to the calculations.There are certainly errors. But there is no way to diminish theimpression that the land area required to supply a late medievalEnglish town was small by almost any measure. The hexagon didnot have to be large—in terms of distance that could be travelledeven with the limited equipment and methods available—to meetthe needs of the town in either the idealized world of the Germanlocation theorists or in the practical world of late medieval towns-folk. That being the case the maximum population of the town was


26 Galloway, Keene, and Murphy, “Fuelling,” 457-8; Eli Heckscher, Mer-cantilism, ed. by E. F. Söderlund, trans. Mendel Shapiro (London: GeorgeAllen and Unwin, 1955 [revised ed.]), for example 2: 80-9

determined by the limits on the size of the hexagon and the opti-mal population was suggested by the size of the hexagon. Thepopulation threshold, the size of the town which would force reli-ance on distant supplies of food and fuel was very high because somuch of what was needed by urban folk could be raised within ashort distance from the town.

The area needed to supply a town depended on transport costs.It was not just the presence of food and fuel that mattered but theability to deliver it to the town at a price which made it worthwhilefor countryfolk to produce the goods and to transport them to acentral place. Falling transport costs would have made it eveneasier to supply towns. Estimates of the land needed to producefood and fuel for towns are filled with problems but those pale incomparison to the difficulties with estimates of transport costs. Odddata appear with singular observations never offering more than aglimpse at what it cost to move goods. For example, carryingfirewood overland to London in the fourteenth century doubledprices over a distance of some sixteen kilometres but it still paid tobring firewood from as far away as twenty kilometres and evenfurther if shipment was by water.26 To move grain from the Balticto the Low Countries in the fifteenth century was said to doublethe price so moving wheat over the few kilometres from producersto urban consumers, even if overland, probably did not present aneconomic barrier to town size. If the costs of transport went downit certainly made it easier to reach further afield for sources offood and fuel but since the area required to supply towns was assmall as it was circumstances rarely required exploiting any gainsthat might be reaped from falling shipping costs.

Two factors seem to have been at work in the late Middle Ageswhich directly affected the ability of the countryside to get suppliesto towns at prices that could sustain the settlements. First, it ap-pears, and appears is the right word, that over short distance bywater transport costs went down in the period. If falling transportcosts can make a valuable contribution to integrating markets andif in the fourteenth and fifteenth century the most obvious develop-ment in commerce was the emergence of regional grain markets


27 Unger, “Maritime Transport.”28 John Langdon, “Inland Water Transport in Medieval England,” Journal

of Historical Geography 19 (1) (1993): 1-11; James Masschaele, Peasants,Merchants and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150-1350 (New York:St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

29 Eli Heckscher, Mercantilism (London: Allen & Unwin, [1935]).

then perhaps it was not design improvements in the largest longdistance traders that had the greatest impact on the organizationof markets and town size but rather changes in smaller ships,vessels used in coastal and river transport.27 River boats are rarelya topic worthy of the time of historians or archeologists. There islittle that is grand about them and little reason to examine themwhen found or to preserve records of them. Yet rivers, even somerather small and insignificant ones, had a central role in inlandtransport in the late Middle Ages. Getting grain or wood to urbanmarkets very often depended on proximity to a creek or rivuletwhich ultimately gave access to a major stream. The developmentof new and more efficient types of coastal and small sailing shipslowered costs. The presence of many river boats and the wide-spread use of river transport, documented by Jim Masschaele andJohn Langdon,28 only worked to make moving goods easier and soexpand the potential area to supply towns.

Second, actions of governments had an effect on the area thatmight supply urban needs. The failure to maintain order, theestablished practice of public authorities fighting wars or not stop-ping people from fighting each other, certainly hurt urbanization.The amount of violence in late medieval northern Europe waslimited, sporadic and so the long term effects on optimal town sizewere less than the new practice of public authorities: regulatingcommerce. Fears of forestalling and regrating, that is of seekingmonopolistic advantages, had generated legislation in English townsalready in the thirteenth century. The extent of controls over foodsupply and the marketing of food in towns expanded in the fif-teenth century and became the model for monarchical governmentsin the sixteenth century.29 Those kings and queens in northernEurope followed patterns of legislation and regulation pioneered byurban governments in Italy. There town populations used politicalpower to gain economic advantage, or at the very least to assuretheir necessary supplies. Italian towns, especially in Tuscany but toa lesser extent in Lombardy, set up rules and systems of taxation


30 Stephan R. Epstein, “Town and Country: Economy and Institutions inLate Medieval Italy,” Economic History Review 46 (3) (1993): 456-69.

31 Richard Britnell, “The Towns of England and Northern Italy in the EarlyFourteenth Century,” Economic History Review 44 (1) (1991): 24-30.

32 Britnell, “The Towns,” 22. The four were Norwich, York, Winchester, andBristol.

which worked against subject towns and rural areas. Their actionsled to relatively large urban centres and inefficiencies that slowedrecovery from the mid fourteenth century economic and demo-graphic shock of the Black Death.30 In kingdoms with powerfulmonarchies, even in the absence of powerful monarchs, such urbanlegislation was virtually impossible. Richard Britnell has shown thatin England nothing like the Italian pattern of legislative controlexisted and, as a result, nothing like the size of Italian towns wasachieved, despite the fact that population densities overall weremuch the same.31 In the absence of powerful civic governments ableto influence market forces and enjoying stable or falling transporta-tion costs English towns in the late Middle Ages had greater flexi-bility in seeking their sources of food and fuel. In the Low Coun-tries towns found themselves less able than their Italian counter-parts to control the flow of goods from the countryside thanks tothe power of counts and dukes and to the consolidation of theauthority of the Dukes of Burgundy through much of the fifteenthcentury.

There is probably no exact answer to the question of what theoptimal size was for a town in late medieval northern Europe.Certainly no final answer is produced by the calculations. At leastthere is every indication that the answer to the question is probablysomething like “not very big” and certainly well short of the maxi-mum. In England around 1300 most towns were of medium andsmaller size, that is they had populations in the 2,000 to 10,000range. Only four towns had populations between 10,000 and 80,000and only one was over 80,000.32 The single giant, London, was ananomaly in England. It had the kind of political power and pullthat typified powerful Italian towns. It had access through a rivernetwork and through coastal trading to a highly productive agricul-tural region. It also had relatively easy access to foodstuffs andother goods from not-far-distant productive regions overseas. Thereis good reason to believe that improvements in transport technol-ogy did allow for the optimal size of towns to grow in the late


Middle Ages. That did mean that even though local suppliers couldmeet needs there might well have been distant suppliers who hadthe ability to supplant them because the competitors some distanceaway enjoyed lower production costs. The regular pattern of hexa-gons was more likely to be disrupted by flows of goods with adifferent and varied pattern of supply emerging (See the examplein figure 2). Even if grain and firewood came from further awaythat did not mean that lands nearby could not meet urban needs.The region that supplied the town might have an elongated shapewith tentacles reaching some distance away but the total area re-mained more or less the same size, soil productivity and intensityof effort being the factors that led to some variation. By the sametoken, if most markets got the overwhelming majority of their foodalmost all of the time from farmers within a very few kilometres ofthe towns then it does not appear that it was trade and marketintegration which yielded or pressed for specialization in agricul-tural production. That would have to wait for larger populations,larger towns and greater concentration of economic activity, all ofwhich became more prevalent in the region in the sixteenth cen-tury.

Towns could and did thrive in most years under most conditionswithout having to search far afield for essential supplies. Price datadeployed to examine market integration conforms to the expecta-tions of location theory and data for production and consumptionof essential goods in the late Middle Ages. Towns relied on suppli-ers nearby. The threshold, the point at which towns had to looksome distance away for supplies, was high. The price data com-bined with the theoretical framework laid down by von Thünen andhis disciples and data on grain production per hectare confirmsthat intuitive expectation. There was a threshold of size for settle-ments that set limits to how large the village or town or city couldgrow before it needed to look beyond the local area for essentialsupplies to sustain the population. What is perhaps not intuitive ishow high that threshold was and how infrequently, even in thedensely populated Low Countries and southeastern England, thatthreshold was breached. Over time the ability to draw on distantsupplies might well have and probably did become easier. Theconstraints on urban growth were most likely reduced but for thefourteenth and fifteenth centuries it does not appear that townschose to or needed to look to distant sources for basic goods, that


is with a few exceptions. It seems that transportation costs did notact as a constraint on town size, either the optimal or the maxi-mum size. It is another case it appears where people in the lateMiddle Ages did not, contrary to the opinion of the last generationof economic historians, test the technical and economic limits ofthe world in which they lived.


33 Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (London: Macmillan and Com-pany, Limited, 1928), 270-3.

34 Robert Allen and Richard W. Unger, “Allen-Unger Database, EuropeanCommodity Prices 1260-1914,” http://www.history.ubc.ca/unger/htm_files/new_grain.htm, reports many series of grain price data for the period 1250-1914.

35 For example, Monique Mestayer, “Prix du blé et de l’avoine de 1329 à1793,” Revue du Nord 45 (178) (1963): 163-4.

APPENDIX I

Measuring Market Integration:On the Theory of the Single Price, Sources, Correlations and

Variations

If markets are integrated the same price should prevail in them, any differ-ence being attributed to the cost of transporting the good between the twomarkets. The theory of the single price is the basis for measuring marketintegration. By implication integrated markets should see increases anddecreases in prices to the same degree. As prices rise in one traders shouldmove goods from others in order to reap profits, thus lowering prices inthe original market to a level consistent with that in all the others. Thedrive for gain among merchants is the force for price equalization and sofor the distribution of benefits and burdens from changes in supply to allpeople within the scope of the integrated markets. The extent of trade willdepend on those traders being informed about prices in the differentmarkets, the cost of transporting goods between and among markets, andthe supply of goods available locally to each market.

Gauging the integration of European markets from the thirteenththrough the sixteenth and even into the eighteenth century depends on thetheory of the single price. If two markets are integrated the same priceshould prevail in both with any difference attributable to differences intransport costs.33 As markets became more integrated the prices in differentplaces tend more and more to move up and down together. The theory issimple enough and what is more a mass of published price data exists bothfrom antiquarians and from the International Commission of Price Historywhose efforts began in the 1930s.34

In order to make comparisons among cities and to make comparisonsover time all prices are standardized to the amount of silver needed to buya litre of grain. There are serious problems with any such conversions. Theadvantages, however, in the end outweigh the difficulties. For measures forgrain volume towns were generally very strict about regulating the unit oftransactions. The goal was to decrease fraud and so increase confidence inthe market among both buyers and sellers. The units remained the sameover long periods of time.35 In some instances the measure was not of


36 Herman Van der Wee, The Growth, 115-122.37 Wilhelm Abel, Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorinduustriellen Deutsch-

land (Göttingen: Vendenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1972), 38-9, 47; Wilhelm Abel,Agricultural Fluctuations in Europe from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Centuries,trans. Olive Ordish (London: Methuen and Company, Limited, 1980), 107-9;Walter Achilles, “Getreidepreise und Getreide- handelsbeziehungen euro-päischer Räume im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,” PhD Dissertation, University ofGöttingen (1957), 5-10, 33-4, 83-7, 114.

38 Richard W. Unger, “Maritime Transport and the Integration of LowCountries Grain Markets in the Late Middle Ages,” in Piet Van Cruyningenand Erik Thoen, eds., Town and Countryside from the late Middle Ages to the 19thCenturies: Supply and Demand of Food (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, forthcom-ing).

volume but of weight which makes conversion necessary. That is doneassuming a specific gravity of late medieval grains of 0.8. The silver contentof coins changed much more frequently than measures of weight or volume.Official changes at the mint typically do not reflect accurately the amountof silver in all the coins that exchanged in the market place. Old issuescirculated frequently as did a variety of coins from other jurisdictions, newand old. There are other problems associated with the use of silver equiva-lents36 but the error introduced is more than tolerable in order to get thepossibility of making comparisons. When dealing with the prices of grainsin just one market tests for correlation often involve only the use of theprevailing currency, thus avoiding monetary problems, and correction ismade only for differences in and changes in the units of measure

To test for integration comparisons are made to see if price changesmoved together, that is were the movements correlated, in two or moremarkets. Such tests can be made for long periods or the time period canbe broken down to compare different segments of time. That was an ap-proach taken by Wilhelm Abel, looking at price averages, and by his stu-dent, Walter Achilles, examining correlations.37 They did find differencesover time and a long term trend toward integration. The gaps betweenprices in different markets should, in theory, have moved inexorably closerand closer together, the difference reduced by improving transport costsand the movement of goods among markets. Results, however, have notuniformly suggested that inexorable advance.38 Of course it could be thatthe serious data problems which plague the study of prices may be thecause for the mixed results, but inconsistent market integration remains amore plausible explanation. It may be that the internationalization ofmarkets is what theory predicts and what historians presume existed but infact the pattern of market development was more complex.


APPENDIX 2

Sources for Price Data

Amsterdam, Leiden and Utrecht:N. W. Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland, 2 vols.(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1946-1964).

Antwerp and Lier:Herman Van der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the EuropeanEconomy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963).

Brussels and Louvain:Marie-Jeanne Tits-Dieuaide, La Formation des Prix Céréaliers en Brabant eten Flandre au XVe siècle (Brussels: Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles,1975).

Bruges:Charles Verlinden and E. Scholliers, et al., Dokumenten voor de Geschiedenisvan Prijzen en Lonen in Vlaanderen en Brabant, 4 vols. (Bruges: DeTempel, 1959-1973), 2: 33-59.

Douai:Monique Mestayer, “Prix du blé et de l'avoine de 1329 à 1793,” Revuedu Nord 45, (178) (1963): 168-170.

Southern England:James E. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in EnglandFrom the Year after the Oxford Parliament (1259) to the Commencement of theContinental War (1793), Compiled Entirely from Original and ContemporaneousRecords (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882).

Strasbourg:A. C. Hanauer, Études économiques sur l'Alsace ancienne et moderne, 2 vols.(Paris: A. Durand & Pedone-Lauriel, 1876-1878).

x

LONG-DISTANCE TRADE AND MARKETS

x

387EGYPTIAN SPECIE MARKETS

3 Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting, 3: Chap. 1, §2, 935.4 Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting, 3: Chap. 1, §1, 927-34.5 Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting, 3: Chap. 1, §3b, 950-70.6 Shihaéb al-Díén Abué ’l-Abbaé s A .hmad b. Ya .hyaé b. Fa .dl Allaéh al-‘Adawíé

al-‘Umaríé, Maé salik al-ab .saér fíé mamaé lik al-am .saér, trans. and annot. MauriceGaudefroy-Demombynes, 2 vols. (Paris: Bibliothèque des Géographes Arabes,1927), 2, Bk. 10: 54; Shams al-Díén Abué ‘Abd Allaéh Mu .hammad al-Lawaé tíé al-.Tanjíé a.k.a Ibn Ba .t .ttué .ta, Ri .hla or Tu .hfat al-nu .z .zaér fíé gharaé ’ib al-am .saér wa ‘ajaé ’ibal-asfaér, ed. and trans. C. Defrémery and B. R. Sanguinetti, 4 vols. (Paris:Imprimerie Nationale, 1853-1858; reprinted Frankfurt am Main: Institute forthe History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Uni-versity, 1994), 4: 376-82; Zakaéríéyaé ibn Mu .hammad al-Qazwíéníé, ‘Ajaé ’ib al-makhlué qaé t wa gharaé ’ib al-mawjué daé t, in Yusuf Kamal, ed., Monumenta cartographicaAfricae et Aegypti, 5 vols. in 16 books (Cairo-Leiden, 1926-1951), 1046.

I

The long-term stability in gold prices, which characterised Europeanspecie markets during the mid-fourteenth century (1325-1375), restedupon the existence of a delicately balanced bi-metallic equilibriumwithin and between a series of autonomous specie markets. Eachmaintained the level and composition of its precious metal stockfrom independent, indigenous supply sources of silver and gold.

The first of these, north of the Alps, possessed plentiful suppliesof gold emanating from Hungarian mines.3 When this was ex-changed against silver initially produced in England (Bere Ferrers,Devon) and Bohemia (Kutná Hora) during the years 1290-1345 andsubsequently in Saxony (Freiberg-in-Meissen),4 a stable metallic ratioof 1:10-11.4 was established.5 Further south, two similar autonomousmarkets existed on the basis of an efficient inter-continental ex-change network, facilitating the exchange of African gold for silverfrom Europe and Asia Minor. Driving directly northward from theNiger Bend across the deserts of the central Sahara, caravans carriedgold each year to the refining and minting centres of al-Maghribal-Aq .saé , providing the base for an abundant local circulation of“heavy” single and double dinars. Further east, caravans travellingvia either Wargla or Ghadames brought similar supplies to Egypt,for minting into those miscellaneous gold pieces that found currencyin the lands of the Circassian Sultanate, the regions of the MuslimEast, the Hijaz and the Yemen (Map 1).6 Two distinct zones—in theMahgrib and Egypt—thus emerged, each with cheap and plentifulsupplies of gold, which were juxtapositioned against equivalent areas

Ca

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gra

ph

y:

Ia

n B

lan

ch

ard

8


7 Ibn Ba .t .ttué .ta, Tu .hfat al-nu .z .zaér, trans. H. A. R. Gibb, Travels in Asia andAfrica (London: Hakluyt Society, Second Series, CXVII, 1929), 61-2 436-7. C.Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey. A General Survey of the Material and Spiritual Cultureand History, c. 1071-1330 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1968), 160-1.

8 Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting, 3: Chap. 7, §3a-1, 1275-89.

of abundant silver, thereby encouraging an active interchange of thetwo metals. In the west the profitability of this exchange was suchthat for half a century trade in goods was subordinated to trade inspecie.

From 1325-1375 gold doblas (double dinars) regularly passednorth bring forth a countervailing supply of European silversouthward. In response to these flows a distinctive market structureevolved in the western—Tyrrhenian—basin of the Mediterranean,characterised by a long-term stability in gold prices and an “anti-cyclonic” distribution of the two metals between the continentallittorals. Although relatively scarcer as one moved northward, goldwas abundant to customers within a unitary market in which theAfrican product reigned supreme. Nor was the situation significantlydifferent within the eastern zone. Gold arriving in Egypt from al-Bilaéd al-Suédaén was distributed after minting in a similar market struc-ture receiving small amounts of European silver and larger quantitiesfrom the mines of the Isaurian Taurus.7 Within the area spannedby European commercial networks there were thus three distinct andautonomous specie markets. Each of these had a similarly balancedstock of precious metals conforming to a common bi-metallicstandard (1:9.4-10.9), and thus, whilst retaining their autonomouscharacter, the markets were united into a homogeneous and unitarysystem. Unlike in the period 1135-1175, however, in 1336-1375African gold no longer enjoyed a complete hegemony in the supplyof this metal to specie markets within the area spanned by Europeancommercial activity. Yet the existence of an efficient inter-continentaltrade network, facilitating the exchange of African gold for Europeanor Middle Eastern silver supplies, still ensured bi-metallic exchangestability within and between at least two of the three autonomousspecie markets.

The unitary “European” system existed, moreover, on terms ofbi-metallic parity with another one of similar character, which en-compassed the lands bordering the Indian Ocean (Map 2).8 This“Asiatic” specie distribution system was also divided into a series ofautonomous elements which, existing in conditions of bi-metallic


9 M. Malowist, “Problems of the Growth of the National Economy ofCentral-Eastern Europe in the Late Middle Ages,” Journal of European EconomicHistory 3 (1974): 345.

equilibrium, were conjoined within a unitary system. Here Chinesegold held pride of place, being distributed by Muslim and Chinesemerchants through a commercial system that extended from thesource of supply to Ormuz on the Persian Gulf and drew a counter-vailing flow of silver through three distinct points of access. In thewest it was Iranian silver, from the Elburz (Reshteh-ye Alborz)mountains (Rayy and Daémghaén), traded through Ormuz, which laidthe foundations of a bi-metallic system. Further to the east silver,drawn from the once mighty workings of the Pamir and HinduKush, passing through Cambay and Chittagong, played a similar rolein the markets of the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. Autonomousyet united by a common bi-metallic standard these markets thusformed a single system, which co-existed with its “European” coun-terpart, bringing conditions of specie price stability and bi-metallicuniformity to a “world” trading network, divided by religion andpolitics, but united in its monetary mechanisms.

II

From about 1375, however, the first signs of disintegration beganto appear in this monolithic edifice. Gold prices began to rise onEuropean markets but not universally (Figures 1-3). Some regionsremained able to acquire adequate supplies whilst others sufferedacute shortages as the once universal market split into atomisticelements.

The primary cause of these changes, as far as northern “Euro-pean” specie markets were concerned, was rooted in the vicissitudesof indigenous gold production. Until the introduction of Afro-Asiatictechniques of separating gold from auriferous quartz by mercuryamalgamation in the 1440s, this was largely confined to small-scaleplacer workings of European gold bearing gravel. Such placers,during the balmy days of overpopulation and low wages in the earlyfourteenth century, were thronged with workmen who sustained anannual output of about four tonnes of the yellow metal.9 From aboutthe 1380s, however, a combination of labour shortages and resource

392 IAN BLANCHARD

10 W. von Stromer, “Nürnberger Unternehmer im Karpatenraum. Ein ober-deutsches Buntmetall-Oligopol 1396-1412,” Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Mate-rialnej 16 (4) (1968): 641-62; as well as von Stromer, Oberdeutsche Hochfinanz,1350-1450 (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1970), 119-25, 143-8, 448-95; and vonStromer, “Das Zusammenspiel oberdeutscher und Florentiner Geldleute beider Finanzierung von König Ruprechts Italienfeldzug, 1401/2,” in HermannKellenbenz, ed., Öffentliche Finanzen und privates Kapital im späten Mittelalter undin der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Bericht über die 3. Arbeitstagung derGesellschaft für Sozial- u. Wirtschaftsgeschichte in Mannheim (Forschungen z.Sozial- u. Wirtschaftsgeschichte 16) (Stuttgart, 1971), 50-86.

depletion caused production to fall to below three tonnes a year,causing producers to cast around for new sources of gold. In theevent they lighted upon the exploitation of copper and lead orescontaining auriferous silver.

Deposits of the former were found in Hungary to the north ofBanská Bystrica (Neusohl) but, because of their low metallic content,their exploitation was dependent on a new technology—the Saiger-prozess—and a favourable conjuncture of primary metal (copper andsilver) prices. Slovak gold production, accordingly, became tied tothe fortunes of the silver industry and was most pronounced in theboom conditions—in 1391-1399, 1412-1418 and 1435-1439— affect-ing that sector. Thus during the 1390s the deposits of argentiferouscopper of the Kingdom of Hungary and the Polish lead fieldsattracted the attention of two Nürnberg corporations—theKammerer-Seiler and Flextorfer-Zenner—and the Genoese house ofGallici, and until the end of the decade the pickings were rich.Falling copper and silver prices from 1399-1412, however, poseddifficulties from which the first German house emerged victorious,thanks to its collaboration with the Venetian and Florentine agentsof the Medici.10 From 1412 therefore, secure in the purchase ofPolish lead and with control over Hungarian copper supplies, theItalians and Nürnbergers now profited from the boom years 1412-1418. The Spleiss-Saigerhütten and Hammerwerke established at Neu-sohl produced some 2,000-2,500 zentners of refined copper and some8,000-10,000 zentners of unrefined “black” copper, which wasexported to Venice together with an indeterminate amount (perhaps2,500 zentners) sent to Nürnberg. Nor was their contribution tospecie markets unimportant. The 900-1,000 tonnes of copper yieldedsome fifteen tonnes of silver and 140 kg of gold. Hungarianproduction from auriferous silver thus played a not insignificant role


11 “Und anfänglich bey König Mattyás auch Vladislai Zeiten ist keineSpleyss-Saygerhütten noch Hammer in Neusohl gewesen, sondern man hatden schwarzen Kupfer alsso aus den Land geführet und andersowo gespleis-sen, geseigert und geschmit,” quoted from the “Memorial of the Fugger’sFactor at Neusohl,” printed in Peter Ratkoš, Dokumenty k baníckemu povstaniuna Slovensku, 1525-1526 (Bratislava: Vydavatemstvo Slovenskej Akadémie Vied,1957), 457. On the production of copper see Jozef Vlachovicš , Slovenská med’v 16. a 17. storocší (Bratislava: Vydavatemstvo Slovenskej Akadémie Vied, 1964),23.

in European gold supply during the crisis years of the early fifteenthcentury. As silver prices rose ever upwards, moreover, its contribu-tion became ever greater, attaining at the beginning of the nextboom in the early 1430s an annual output of about 400 kg.11 Yetwhilst it made a contribution to the long-term stabilisation ofEuropean gold stocks it was an erratic one due to the primary roleof silver and copper prices in determining production levels in plantusing the new technology.

Such was not the case, however, with the other major source ofEuropean auriferous silver—the argenta indorata found in the leadores of Novo Brdo, Serbia. Here the much higher gold content ofthe silver, amounting to as much as a sixth, made it, at prevailingrelative prices, the primary object of exploitation. Production thusmoved counter-cyclically to that of Slovakia. Established during thecrisis of 1280-1320 the workings were neglected until the gold boomof 1418-1435 when production rose to 6.1 tonnes of silver and108 kg of gold. With the fall in gold prices after 1435, however,production fell from even this diminutive level, amounting to nomore than sixty per cent of its former size in the early 1450s.

Table 1

European Gold Production, 1325-1450 (metric tonnes)

Date Placer-lode gold Auriferous silver Gold quartz Totala

(Hungary) (Slovakia & Serbia) (Rhineland)

1325-1375 4.0 — — 4.001375-1400 2.9 0.04 — 2.941400-1425 3.5 0.04 — 3.541425-1450 3.7 0.36 2.0 6.06

Note: (a) Augmented until the late fourteenth century by African gold im-ports of about 2.0-2.5 tonnes annually.

Date Total (a)

394 IAN BLANCHARD

12 Blanchard, Mining, Metallurgy and Minting, 3: Chap. 3, §2b, table 3.3,1030.

13 Which destroyed the trade entrepôts of Gao in 1454 and Sijilmassa in1432. The town of Sijilmassa, whose inhabitants had been “very rich and hadgreat traffic with the lands of the negroes” in the fourteenth century, wastotally razed in the 1430s. Commercial and minting activity, however, wasdeflected to castles—Tenegent, Tabuhasin and Mamun—within its territory,all of which were frequented by Jewish and Arab merchants, who continuedto grow rich “using great traffic into the lands of the negroes”. These castles,within the territory of the erstwhile town, continued for centuries thereafterto be referred to by both contemporaries and subsequent historians, who drewon their writings, as “Sijilmassa.” Al- .Hasan b. Mu .hammad al-Wazzaén al-Zayyaé .tíéa.k.a Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa, trans. John Pory(1600), ed. R. Brown, 3 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, XCII-XCIV, 1896), 3:782-6. This practice has been adopted by the writer of this essay.

Together, therefore, the Slovak and Serbian producers exploitingcopper and lead ores containing auriferous silver made a small butgrowing contribution to European gold supply. During the criticalyears 1375-1425, however, their contribution was slight and asHungarian placer production declined, so gold prices rose.12 Yet thedecline in indigenous supplies was sufficient only to explain someone third of the price increase during the years 1375-1425. Otherfactors were at work, which were of far greater significance.

III

Of primary importance amongst these non-indigenous influences wasa fundamental restructuring in the patterns of trans-Saharan trade.As early as the 1390s basic structural changes may already bediscerned in the transport network used by merchants. Caravansincreasingly avoided the direct routes across the arid dune zones,where nomadic attacks13 and increasing difficulties in securing ade-quate water supplies rendered the transients’ life precarious. Theyturned instead to the aqueous gravel at the foot of the Ahaggar andthe Adrar des Iforas (Map 2). A major restructuring of the trans-Saharan trade routes was underway. During the next half- century(1385-1435) this resulted in the emergence of a completely newcommercial network within which merchants avoided the dangersof desert transport and sought the greater security of the circum-locuitous way of the Sahel and the central highlands.

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The effect of these changes on the supply of gold to NorthAfrican and Middle Eastern specie markets was dramatic. Within theMahgrib supplies continued unabated and the price of gold (Figure4) continued, after a brief dislocation from 1370-1394, to fall to 1435Yet this stability was achieved only by a basic restructuring of inter-Mahgribi supply networks. The once active Maríénid mints strung outalong the western routes of the mid-fourteenth century, after a briefperiod of debasement from 1373-1394 during which coins becamemore barbaric in design, ceased minting entirely during the openingdecade of the fifteenth century. In their place a new network of

.Haf .sid mints arose, strung out along the new routes which emergedduring the years 1395-1435. If route reorientation thus ensuredintra-regional price stability within the Mahgrib, such was not thecase further east in Egypt. Here gold had regularly arrived in themid-fourteenth century. It passed from either East African sources,via Qu .seir or Suakin, or from the Niger Bend by the trans-SaharanGhadames route, or when this was disrupted, as during the years1348-1366, via the Mahgrib and the coastal route to Alexandria.Again this had resulted in a steady fall in the price of the yellowmetal.

With the change in route alignment during the years 1375-1435,however, this was completely changed. Cut off from trans-Saharansupplies, and particularly during the years 1385-1390 and 1399-1412with little compensation provided by transhipments from theMaghrib, Egyptian markets experienced acute shortages. Gold pricesrose (Figure 5) and conditions prevailing in inter-continental ex-changes were totally altered. Gold became relatively scarce inrelation to both the unit of account and silver. Henceforth, from1374, rising gold prices attracted gold eastward by enhancing thebi-metallic ratio (Figure 6) relative to those prevailing in Europe.Yet these movements in 1385-1390, 1399-1412 and 1418-1435created a marked instability in the market. Each rise in gold prices,reflecting stock wastage without compensatory supply increase,resulted in an enhanced bi-metallic ratio, making it attractive toexport gold from Europe, the Mahgrib and Asia Minor to Alexan-dria. Given a lack of indigenous sources of silver, however, each goldboom led to a cessation of silver imports and as stocks diminished,through natural wastage and a reversal of the specie flow, pricesrose, lowering the bi-metallic ratio until gold imports ceased andthe pattern was reversed. Silver flowed east and as gold stocks di-

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398 IAN BLANCHARD


14 F. Lütge, Strukturverwandlungen im ostdeutschen und osteuropäischenFernhandel des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts (München: Verlag der BayerischenAkademie der Wissenschaften—C. H. Beck, 1964), 14-27.

15 Appendix, Numismatic Notes, Section 1.

minished its price increased ... From 1375, therefore, cycle followedcycle and in the absence of compensatory supply inputs, stockwastage took its toll of the metal shuttling back and forth across theMediterranean, resulting in a gradual enhancement in specie pricelevels.

As both metals steadily increased in price, each upward move-ment, first in gold and then silver, drew the precious metal east andthe depleting stocks raised prices on European markets. The yearsafter 1375 thus saw the emergence of an extended market network,which alternatively channelled gold—in 1385-1390, 1399-1412 and1418-1432—and silver—in 1374-1384, 1391-1399, 1413-1417 and1431-1439—east to Alexandria. Each of the major ports of thenorthern Mediterranean formed a focus within which the impact ofthis specie trade was proportional to the size of its Levantine com-merce. Each gold boom enhanced market prices, each silver boomresulted in an abatement of gold price, the general upward trendbeing most pronounced in the northern extensions of the supplynetwork. Here disproportionate decreases in stocks, exacerbated bythe emergence of a direct gold trade from Central Europe to theMiddle East across the steppes of Tartary, led to an abnormallyrapid rise in prices.14

As precious metals shuttled back and forth across the Mediterra-nean in conditions of gradual stock depletion, however, a muchmore fundamental change was taking place, which totally altered re-lations between the two trading blocks, a change centred on theyears 1392-1412. As already noted, 1392/3 marked the beginningof a phase of rising gold prices on the Egyptian markets. Yet thisrise brought forth no compensatory export of gold to Alexandriaand European specie markets remained largely unaffected. Thereason lay in the emergence of an acute crisis in the Egyptian mo-netary system.15 Until that date the standard of the whole systemwas the silver dirham. To the dirham was related gold, the valueof which fluctuated with market conditions and in 1392 exchangedat 20 silver dirhams per dinar or mithqaé l, and copper, exchanged

400 IAN BLANCHARD

16 W. Popper, Egypt and Syria under the Circassian Sultans, 1382-1468 AD.Systematic Notes to Ibn Taghríé Birdíé’s Chronicles of Egypt, University of CaliforniaPublications in Semitic Philology 15-16, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of Cali-fornia Press, 1955-1957), 43-4, 68; and J. L. Bacharach, “Circassian MonetaryPolicy: Silver,” Numismatic Chronicle, 7th ser., 11 (1971): 267-8.

17 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 52, 67. The forcing of the exchange to thislatter rate, physical punishment being threatened to those who disobeyed,caused great hardship.

18 A. M. Watson, “Back to Gold—and Silver,” Economic History Review, 2ndser., 20 (1) (1967): 23-4 (Table 1).

19 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 68; Taqíé al-Díén A .hmad b. ‘Alíé al-Qaédir b.Mu .hammad al-Maqríézíé, al-Mawaé ‘i .z wa ’l-i‘tibaé r bi dhikr al-khi .ta .t wa’l-aé thaé r knownas Khi .ta .t al-Maqríézíéya, 2: 396.6,15; 397.4, as quoted by Popper, Egypt and Syria,68.

20 Al-Maqríézíé, Kitaé b al-nuqué d al-qadíémah al-islaémíéya, ed. Anastase-Marie deSt.-Élie (Cairo, 1936), quoted from the edition Traité des monnoies musulmanes,trad. A. L. Silvestre de Sacy (Paris: Imprimerie du Magasin Encyclopédique—Fuchs,1797), 47.

21 Al-Maqríézíé, Shudhué r al-‘uqué d fíé dhikr al-nuqué d, ed. P. Anastase-Marie(Cairo, 1939), 62, as quoted in J. L. Bacharach, “Circassian Monetary Policy,”268; and Olav Gerhard Tychsen (Tuka), Takieddin Al-Makrizii historia monetaearabicae, ex codice Escorialensi cum variis duorum codicum Leidensium lectionibus etexcerptis anecdotis nunc primum edita, versa et illustrata (Rostock, 1797), 131.

by tale at 24 coins of 4.25 grams per silver dirham.16 In such cir-cumstances the rise in gold prices to 26 1/2 dirhams in 1394 and30 in 1399, shifted the bi-metallic ratio from 9.3-12.3 to 14.1.17 WithGenoese and Venetian ratios of 10 and 11.4 respectively, therefore,Venetian exporters were offered potential profits of 7.8 and in 139922.8 per cent, which should have resulted in a reverse flow.18 In theevent, however, it was not to be. At the low prevailing price of cop-per (0.25+ ri.tl per dirham) it was initially more profitable to takethat metal to the mint and receive silver (12.5 per cent).19 The resultwas obvious. As Maqríézíé later described the situation prevailingduring the years 1392-1395: “The Franks carried away the silver dir-hams because of the increase in Egypt of the use of copper whichthey themselves had imported there.”20

In these circumstances the canonical standard collapsed. From1392 to mid-1395 silver was exported and its price rose rapidly toa level incompatible with the official exchange.21 Accordingly, high-grade dirhams disappeared into hoards or were sold in the bazaarslike other precious wares. Dirhams were found being worn as orna-ments. Others were used in the manufacture of silver luxury articles


22 Al-Maqríézíé/Sacy, Traité des monnoies, 40.23 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 61.24 A .hmad b. ‘Alíé al-Qalqashandíé, Sub .h al-a‘shaé fíé sinaé ‘at al-inshaé , ed. M. A.

Ibrahíém, 14 vols. (Cairo, 1913-1920; reprinted Cairo: al-Mu‘assasa al-Mi .sríéya,1964), 3: 467.3.

25 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 56.26 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 45-7.27 Abué al-Ma .haésin Yué suf Ibn Taghríé-Birdíé, al-Nujuém al- .zaéhira fíé mulué k Mi .sr

wa ’l-Qaéhira, ed. and trans. William Popper, History of Egypt, 1382-1469, Parts1-7, University of California Publications in Semitic Philology 5-7, 12, 14, 17-19, 22 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1915-1960), translation History2: 2 (Arabic text Nujuém, 6: 3).

such as saddles or vases.22 The effect was to demonetize the classicaldirham. In its place debased coins came to dominate the circulatingmedia, which passed by the derogatory nomenclature dirham fulué s(copper dirham)—whose silver content reflected market prices.23 Withmetal stocks doubly depleted by export (1392-1395) and hoarding,prices rocketed upward. In 1397/8 coins of only one third silver con-tent comprised the major element of the circulating media (i.e. halfthe standard of the canonical dirham) exchanging at a de facto rateof fifteen to one (or a bi-metallic ratio of 7:1).24 In such circum-stances the import of copper ceased. That of silver resumed, allow-ing the restoration of the silver coinage at the price level of 1392,some 30 coins of two-thirds canonical standard being declared equi-valent to 20 canonical dirhams and being exchanged against onedinar, thereby establishing a bi-metallic ratio of 9.3:1.25 Yet thisstabilisation of silver was only achieved at the expense of the goldcoinage. Copper imports from 1392-1395 had prevented the allevia-tion of the crisis whilst exports of gold 1395-1399 had aggravatedthe situation. The coinage accordingly deteriorated, heavily worncoins displacing high-grade dinars in circulation, compensated onlyin 1398 by the first appearance of European gold from Genoa—florins which circulated at a discount in relation to the dinar incirculation (Appendix, Numismatic Notes, Section 2).26 By 1399 anew equilibrium had been achieved between the two metals,exchanging at a bi-metallic ratio of 11.2:1, and between the Egyptianand Venetian currencies, but only at the cost of a 20 per cent deple-tion of gold stocks.

At this point, however, the administration of Yashbak al-Shaé ‘baéníéwith its financial ghuru Ibrahíém ibn Ghuraéb, which had come topower under the new Sultan Faraj27 determined to defend gold and

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28 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 52.29 Watson, “Back to Gold,” 27 (Table 2).30 Ibn Taghríé-Birdíé/Popper, Nujuém/History of Egypt, translation History 2: 51

(Arabic text Nujuém, 6: 69.11); Popper, Egypt and Syria, 53.31 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 47.32 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 52.33 Ibn Taghríé-Birdíé/Popper, Nujuém/History of Egypt, translation History 4: 30

(Arabic text Nujuém, 6: 596.5).

reform the monetary system, which had been reduced to chaos. Astandard of 30 canonical dirhams to one canonical dinar wasaffirmed,28 establishing a bi-metallic ratio of 14:1, which was morethan sufficient to attract European gold and the actual coins incirculation were related to this standard.29 The debased gold andimported coins were set at intrinsic value: the dinar at 24-2530 andthe ducat at 26 silver dirhams,31 the “copper dirhams” again at int-rinsic value, 1.5 coins exchanging for one silver dirham.32 The effectwas dramatic. Gold flooded in. Looking back in 1425 on this periodIbn Taghríé-Birdíé recorded,33

The use of the dinar ifrantíé (ducat) became general in our commercein the 800s (i.e. 1398-1409) in the principal towns of the world suchas Cairo, Fostat, the regions of Syria, the principal lands of theGreeks, the regions of the Muslim East, the Hidjaz, the Yeman, to thepoint of becoming the current money and the most sought after incommercial transactions.

Without following in detail the vicissitudes of the reform, it mustsuffice to say that as long as the firm hands of Ibn Ghuraéb and hisprotégé al-Bíéríé were at the helm gold was successfully defended andthe canonical standard reaffirmed.

The stability of gold, however, was only achieved through thedebilitation of silver. For the population the remedy was moredisastrous than the disease. With the raising of the bi-metallic ratiosilver not only ceased to flow in but, indeed, in exchange for theinflow of ducats it was exported. As a result of this export and theprocess of natural wastage, prices rose, reflected in a diminution ofthe intrinsic value of the dirham fulué s. By 1403/4 the fractional cur-rency of white metal was reduced to chaos. Coins of only one fifththe canonical standard were circulating in Cairo, whilst at Alexan-dria, where the impact of the gold inflow was acutely felt, the nor-


34 Ibn Taghríé-Birdíé/Popper, Nujuém/History of Egypt, translation History 2: 78(Arabic text Nujuém, 6: 106.5); 2: 84 (6: 115.15), 2: 89 (6: 121.20); Ibn .Hajaral-‘Asqalaéníé, Inbaé’ al-ghumr bi anbaé ’ al-‘umr, 3 vols. (Cairo: Majlis al-A‘laé li’l-Shu‘uén al-Islaémíéyah, 1969-1972), 2: 45, as quoted in J. L. Bacharach, “Cir-cassian Monetary Policy,” 271.

35 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 69.36 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 69.37 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 69.38 Ibn Taghríé-Birdíé/Popper, Nujuém/History of Egypt, translation History 2: 81-2

(Arabic text Nujuém, 6: 111).39 Ibn Taghríé-Birdíé/Popper, Nujuém/History of Egypt, translation History 2: 84,

89 (Arabic text Nujuém, 6: 115.5, 121.20).40 Ibn Taghríé-Birdíé/Popper, Nujuém/History of Egypt, translation History 2: 95

mal coins in circulation contained only half that amount of silver(Appendix, Numismatic Notes, Section 3).34 Nor was the otherpopular base of the monetary system—copper—immune. The floodof coins entering circulation of the years 1392-1395 came to an endwith the de facto rise in silver prices already noted. From 1395, withthe cessation of imports, a new age began of “high” copper, becauselittle arrived and merchants exported coin from the country”.35 Pri-ces rose from 4 dirhams per ri.tl in 1392 to 41/4 in 1397, 41/2 in1403, 6 in 1404 and 12 in 1412.36 In response to these changes andthe rising price of silver, the actual copper coinage, which continuedto pass by tale, was continually lightened as small and worn coinsdisplaced the heavier issues of an earlier age. By 1403/4 themithqaé l-weight (i.e. 4.25 grams) coins had disappeared, replaced byquarter-dirham weight (i.e. 0.74 grams) pieces, which exchanged at24 to the actual dirham fulué s in circulation.37

The popular coinage was in chaos, causing great resentmentamongst the population. Whether this contributed to the fall ofYashbak is uncertain, but the opposition party was clearly aware ofthe tensions in society and the period August 1404 to June 1405saw a return to the populist policies, which had characterised thesultanate of Faraj’s father.38 In the first month of the new adminis-tration the coinage was called down to 100 dirham fulué s accepted attheir intrinsic value per dinar, representing at Cairo a bi-metallicratio of 9.3:1, involving the merchant community in great losses andthreatening the integrity of gold.39

This populism, however, soon came to an end. In September1405 Yashbak and Ibn Ghuraéb once more came to power and theprimacy of gold was restored.40 Within the year the old standard was

404 IAN BLANCHARD

(Arabic text Nujuém, 6: 131.1).41 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 54.42 At its introduction the naé .siríé dinar circulated at a discount of 10 dirhams

in relation to the ducat (ifrantíé), Popper, Egypt and Syria, 49.43 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 63-4; Ibn Taghríé-Birdíé/Popper, Nujuém/History of

Egypt, translation History 2: 121, 125 (Arabic text Nujuém, 6: 167.20, 173.8).44 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 49, 57.45 Popper, Egypt and Syria, 74.46 Al-Maqríézíé/Sacy, Traité des monnoies, 59.

re-established and the debilitation of silver continued apace as therewas a gradual spread of the Alexandrine coins containing one-tenthsilver (Appendix, Numismatic Notes, Section 3).41 Thereafter, monthafter month, they gained ground. In recognition of the decline inthe intrinsic value of the dirham fulué s in circulation against the ducatand newly introduced naé .siríé dinar,42 there was a shift in theexchange rate from 150 in October 1405 to 250 in March 1406,when Ibn Ghuraéb died.43

From the death of Ibn Ghuraéb and the fall of Yashbak, however,there was an increasing reluctance to acknowledge these changes bythe new populist administration. As the ten-percent coins thus con-tinued to spread, the de facto exchange rose to 264 in 1410 and300 in 1412.44 The official rate, however, was frozen at 25045 andthe standard maintained, as Maqríézíé explained “by the alteration ofthe naé .siríé and ifrantíé by those who struck them, the Sultan on theone part and the Venetians on the other.”46 Counterfeit and debasedgold thus appeared in 1408, the coins being lightened from theirstandard of 3.55 grams to 2.94 grams. The system was once morereduced to chaos, reflecting the deplorable state of precious metalstocks, which steadily dwindled from 1392 (Appendix, NumismaticNotes, Section 4). Reform following the death of Faraj once moreestablished the primacy of silver, lowering the bi-metallic exchangewithin a restructured system to 11.9: 1. This change, however, wasovershadowed in the new environment of the 1410s by problemsarising from Egyptian monetary stock depletion.

The years 1392-1412 witnessed, as a result of the diminution ofEgyptian monetary stock, a complete alteration in the purchasingpower of specie in terms of commodities within the two trading area,fundamentally altering the nature of trade (Appendix, Section V).European goods became increasingly un-competitive in relation toLevantine rivals as their relative price increased by 40-70 per cent


47 E. Ashtor, Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1983), 313 (Table XXIX).

48 Ashtor, Levant Trade, 313 (Table XXIX).

in the years after 1412. Trade in specie displaced trade in goodseastwards, fluctuations in bi-metallic ratios merely placing a premiumon one metal and then the other in the specie outflow. Moreover,the trade could be highly profitable for, in free market conditions,oriental wares were correspondingly cheaper. Accordingly, the pat-tern of exchange of specie against specie, which had characterisedthe years 1374-1412, now from 1412 was displaced by an exchangeof specie against goods.

How far European merchants benefited from this situation,however, depended on the reaction of indigenous traders to the newmarket environment. Where the Europeans operated in a competitiveenvironment, as in the market for consumables and raw materials,one finds them buying up the country with alien gold and silver.On the other hand, where they faced an organised group, like theKaérimíé merchants (tujjaér al-kaérim) in the spice trade, who with theencouragement of the Sultan were capable of a positive response,their position was weaker. Faced with a decline in specie returns fortheir goods, the Kaérimíé merchants simply restricted supplies ofspices. Their first venture in 1412 was overly hasty, their priceincrease from 60 to 220 dinars per sporta grotesquely overshot themark and they were left with spices on their hands.47 Within twoyears, however, they had learnt to manage the monopoly effectively,maintaining domestic prices at about twenty per cent above the levelof the 1390s.48 These changes both within the international situationand the Egyptian economy were to have profound effects on theEuropean specie export trade and on those who participated in it.

Structurally there was a major displacement in the foci of therapidly growing trade. For Venice, heavily tied to the spice trade,the ability of the Kaérimíé merchants to maintain the specie price ofspices ensured that they gained no advantage from the newsituation. Indeed as relative prices in Europe were enhanced byalmost two-thirds the trade declined. They reacted by diversifyinginto unrestricted markets for commodities like cotton and potash(Table 3).

Yet this could do little more than maintain a stable outflow ofspecie from the city, equivalent to 1.5 tonnes of gold annually.


Tied to the spice trade, the volume of specie exports did not grow,and with a bi-metallic ratio hovering constantly just above that ofEgypt to 1433 gold played little role in what outflow there was.

In contrast Genoa, which had lagged behind Venice in the boomof 1385-1390 and had been totally ousted from the final stages ofthe following boom by not having, during the years 1405-1412, amarketable product in the florin, now came to the fore. Its mer-chants, always more committed to the bulk commodity trade, tookfull advantage of the new market situation. Tapping a constantlywidening market in Egypt their commodity export trade from theregrew rapidly, engendering a corresponding import trade in speciefrom Europe. Moreover, with a bi-metallic ratio that constantly re-mained below that of Egypt, each gold boom registered significantlyin the market place. Genoa had become the motor of Europe. Tap-ping specie supplies from the European heartland as well as Spainand the Mahgrib, it channelled specie east in return for a bur-geoning volume of bulk commodities. The Genoese market wastransformed: the slow rise, which had characterised gold prices inthe period when metals had shuttled back and forth in conditionsof gradual stock depletion, gave way to a rapid increase as the metaloutflow grew without any compensatory reciprocal flow.

A burgeoning gold export trade, increasing from about a thirdof a tonne net annually during the last quarter of the fourteenthcentury to 1.89 tonnes from 1400-1425 and perhaps as much as 4.5tonnes annually from 1425-1432, as a result of Egyptian monetarydisorders, denuded European gold stocks. Eclipsing the effects ofthe mining crisis of 1375-1400, the specie outflow became the princi-pal cause of the gold crisis during the years 1400-1432. Only withthe fall in gold prices, concomitant upon the establishment in the1440s of mercury-amalgamation gold production in the Rhineland,and the increase in silver prices as a result of the mining crisis, didthe specie outflow come to end. Bi-metallic equilibration betweenthe two trading blocs allowed a resumption of commodity trades.

410 IAN BLANCHARD

V. Value of Gold, cont'd

Gold Silver Bi-metallic Ratio

Canonical Naé .siríé Ducat Half-Mu’ayyadíé Dinar Dinar Dirham

M O M O E V

March 1418 280 250- 260 220- 230 230

Sept 1418 210 30 7 6.69

Jan 1421 230 210

Jan 1422 240 220 22 10 8.00

Notes: (a) Related in this year and until 1416 to the dinar-mithqaé l.(b) Related after mid-1416 to ducat-florin.

Sources: E. Ashtor, “Études sur le système monétaire des Mamlouks circassiens,”Israel Oriental Studies 6 (1976): 268-70 (Table 2); Popper, Egypt and Syria, 74-5.

Gold Silver

1 Offered to John Munro, mentor and a lasting source of inspiration, uponhis retirement. My ongoing research on the Datini firm owes much to theimpetus of his graduate seminars and his numerous works. The topic aims tohonor John Munro’s place on the Scientific Committee of the Istituto Inter-nazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini” in Prato.

2 Honein (Ar. Hunayn; commonly gazetteered as Honaïne; JOG NI30-03;lat. 35.16 N, lon. 1.65 W): port formerly located northeast of modern Ne-mours, in Honein Bay (Marsa Honaïne, between Cape Noé and Marsa Agla),at the mouth of Oued Honaïne. Gha .s .saé .s .sa, known to the Europeans asAlcudia (Khassaça, Iguesasen, also al-Qudia al-bai .daé ’ = the White Hill) is notto be confused with Alcudia in Majorca. The port was located in Gha .s .saé .s .saBay (still known to World War II Mediterranean coastal pilots as Cala deCazaza, mod. Marsa de Sidi Lahsen, west shore of Cabo de Tres Forcas [Capde Trois Fourches], east of the prominent vertical cliffs of Punta Negri. Seee.g. North Africa, 1:250,000, Edition 1-AMS, JOG NI30-02 (U.S. Army Corpsof Engineers, 1954 -). The port is shown more or less correctly in many latemedieval portulan charts (very well visible in BM MS Egerton 2803, Plate Xof the Atlas of Portolan Charts, ed. E. L. Stevenson (New York, 1911)); also inthe Fra Mauro map (c. 1450), in R. Almagià, ed., Monumenta CartographicaVaticana, 1, Planisferi, carte nautiche e affini dal secolo XIV al XVIII (Vatican:Città del Vaticano, 1944 –), Plates XIII-XV, as Larcildia; and in many others,all the way back to the Carignano planisphere (c. 1320), Archivio di Stato diFirenze (ASF), Portolani (as Alcudia).

FROM VENICE TO THE TUAT: TRANS-SAHARANCOPPER TRADE AND FRANCESCO DI MARCO

DATINI OF PRATO1

Martin Malcolm Elbl

From 1394 to 1410, the well-known Tuscan merchant firm of Fran-cesco di Marco Datini of Prato both watched and participated in thetraffic of Venetian-supplied copper through the Balearic Islands tothe Maghribi ports of Honein and Gha .s .saé .s .sa.2 From Honein, inparticular, the metal then moved south to the oasis of Tuat, en routeto the Western Sudan. Pending further discoveries in the Datiniarchive, Tuat seems to have been the southernmost point in theSahara with which Datini agents in Majorca were explicitly albeitindirectly familiar. Their indirect knowledge was mediated throughcontact with Majorcan Jewish merchants involved in the caravan

412 MARTIN MALCOLM ELBL

3 R. H. Rainero, “La prima iniziativa commerciale italiana nel Sahara:Antonio Malfante nel Tuat nel 1447,” Universo (Florence), 64 (5) (1984):556-69. For Malfante’s letter from the Tuat, addressed to Giovanni Marione,see G. R. Crone, The Voyages of Cadamosto (London, 1937), 86.

4 Ian Blanchard, “The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, c. 1320-1520: A Studyof Environmental Change and Commercial Adaptation,” paper presented atthe conference Slavery, Freedom and Unfreedom in the Middle Ages, University ofNottingham, 23 April 2005; Ian Blanchard, “The Medieval World of Islam:An Economic and Environmental Analysis,” paper presented at the Interna-tional Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2001; Ian Blanchard, “Egyptian Specie Marketsand the International Gold Crisis of the Fifteenth Century,” in the presentpublication, 383-410. The arguments are also reflected in the third volume ofBlanchard’s Mining, Metallurgy and Minting in the Middle Ages, Vol. 3,Continuing Afro-European Supremacy (African Gold Production and the Second andThird European Silver Production Long Cycles) (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2005), Part 3,

trade, several of whom resided in or originated from Honein. Farfrom a mere oddity, however, this extension of the firm’s conceptualmap possessed direct relevance, given the exposure of the Datinibranch in Majorca to copper trade vicissitudes traceable as far asthe Tuat.

At first a mere observer, the Majorca branch took its first seriousplunge in the copper trade in 1398. The involvement graduallyescalated to a complex set of transactions, undertaken in 1407-1408partly on behalf of the mother firm and its contacts and partly inconjunction with a diversified group of Balearic merchants, Christian,Jewish, and converso. The venture’s disastrous outcome, even thoughaccidental, upset the Majorcan copper market for many months andrepercussions were felt from Valencia to Venice. Undeterred, theMajorca branch nonetheless maintained interest in exports of copperto Honein as late as August through September 1410, a periodstraddling Francesco Datini’s last illness, his death on 16 August,and the firm’s legal dissolution. The substantive Datini evidence pre-dates by some fifty years the notorious but far less richly con-textualized voyage to the Tuat by the Genoese Antonio Malfante in1447, still commonly cited as “the first Italian commercial venturein the Sahara.”3

Given the dates (c. 1390-1410), the geography (a Venice-Majorca-Honein-Tuat artery), and the commodity (copper), it is practicallyindispensable to set this trade flow in the context of Prof. IanBlanchard’s recent cyclical intercontinental models of medieval tradein metals and other commodities, some aspects of which remain asyet unpublished but circulate in digital manuscript.4 The Majorcan

413COPPER TRADE AND FRANCESCO DATINI

“Base Metal Production and Trade: Lead, Tin and Copper.”5 Blanchard, “Slave Trade,” 12; “Medieval World of Islam,” 32-33; “Egyp-

tian Specie Markets,” 338.

copper trade is indeed of some relevance to supporting, adjustingor correcting (as the case might be) those portions of the modelsthat cover the Western Mediterranean and the West-Central Saharadesert around 1400.

Blanchard has generally posited 1375 as the starting point oftroubles in the distinctive Western Mediterranean market structurethat since c. 1325 had arguably witnessed an adequate flow of goldin the form of double dinars (doblas) from the Maghrib to Europe,eliciting a countervailing southbound supply of European silver.Around the same time the trans-Saharan caravans ceased to enjoya roughly simultaneous benign climatic cycle. As Blanchard hasargued, the latter’s lower temperatures and higher precipitationpromoted prosperity among nomad populations, relative safety andstability along the desert margins, and the use of trails crossing theWest-Central Sahara through fairly difficult dune and sand sea (erg)regions, particularly between the Tafilalt (Sijilmassa), the Tuat, andWalata. From the 1390s, however, increasing aridity and the relatedupheavals among desert dwellers contributed to a major shift intrade routes. The latter swung to take advantage, among other, of“aqueous gravel at the foot of the Ahaggar and the Adrar des Ifo-ras”5 (in this case the strip of Tanezruft routes from Tuat to theeastern Niger Bend). The trail realignment was largely completedby 1435, and endured throughout the arid phase stretching fromabout 1420 to 1470.

The 1375-1435 shift was accompanied by a “basic restructuringof inter-Maghrebian [precious metal] supply networks” reflectingchanges in the flow of gold and thus presumably also other articlesof trans-Saharan trade. Marínid mints in Morocco ceased operatingin the first decade of the fifteenth century, while the .Haf .sid mintsof Ifriqíya in the east rose to prominence. European maritime tradein the Western Mediterranean followed suit, shifting away from thewestern Maghrib to focus more on Ifriqíya, from where .Haf .siddouble dinars passed north “in exchange for European silver”.Related mechanisms lying outside the scope of this paper contri-buted to a relative isolation of Egypt from African sources of gold,acute shortages of gold on the Egyptian market, and the emergence


6 Blanchard, “Egyptian Specie Markets,” 338-43.7 Blanchard, “Slave Trade,” Maps 1 (“Trans-Saharan Trade, 1310-1370")

and 2 (“Trans-Saharan Trade, 1445-1454").8 Blanchard, “Egyptian Specie Market,” unpublished draft, at http://www.

esh.ed.ac.uk/Courses_IB/Mid_Ages/alexandria.pdf, 10-11.

of alternating money-pump flows channelling respectively gold andsilver from Europe and Asia Minor to Egypt. The correspondingvagaries of the Egyptian monetary system—silver, gold, andcopper—were partly reflected in the pattern of Egyptian copperimports.6

Certain difficulties, however, beset Blanchard’s macro-models withrespect to Western Mediterranean and Maghribi commerce and,specifically, the West-Central Saharan caravan traffic. Firstly, theMaghrib is all too often treated as an unproblematic trade mem-brane between Europe on the one hand and the Sahara and sub-Saharan Africa on the other hand. The distinctiveness of the Ma-ghribi regional economies and the intricacy of their role in WesternMediterranean commerce thus recede unduly into the background.Secondly, even as a mere lieu de passage the Maghrib becomes asomewhat schematic doughnut in this rendering. Morocco and Ifri-qíya namely hold the limelight, while Tlemcen, in the middle, almostvanishes were it not for mentions of the port of Honein. This isreflected in some of Blanchard’s trail maps, which seem to reduceWest-Central Saharan trade dynamics to a see-saw between “Sijil-massa” in the west and Wargla in the east. The result is a great “X”shape whose legs cross at the Tuat both in “old” trail system of1310-1370 and in the “new” system of 1445-1454.7

Wargla and “Sijilmassa” anchor the northern tips of the “X”throughout, abstracting from the destruction of the walled city ofSijilmassa and from attendant changes in the role of the surroundingoasis of Tafilalt in the 1390s. Trade flows from Honein and Tlemcenare depicted as passing through Fez, or rejoin the Fez branch inthe Atlas Mountains and invariably appear to follow the Tafilaltroute. The more direct Oued Guir-Oued Saoura trails are notfeatured. Correspondingly, Catalan, Genoese and Provençal maritimetrade is described as emulating in a somewhat mechanistic fashionthe arid era rise of the easterly trails leading through the Tuat andother channels to Ifriqíya.8 The middle band represented by the axisBalearics-Honein-Tuat is underplayed, as is the Tlemcenian/Algerian


9 J. Heers, “Il commercio nel Mediterraneo alla fine del sec. XIV e neiprimi anni del XV,” Archivio Storico Italiano 113 (2) (1955): 177.

10 The promotional summary for Georges Jehel’s L’Italie et le Maghreb:conflits et échanges du VIIe au XVe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,2001) (signed Georges Jehel, June 2002, at http://www.clio.fr), further compli-cated matters by including copper among late medieval Maghribi exports toItaly (“... qui constituent, avec certains minerais comme le cuivre, l’essentieldes exportations du Maghreb vers l’Italie pour approvisionner une productionartisanale et industrielle diversifiée en plein essor au XIVe siècle”). The bookitself, however, is rather more muted in this matter (Jehel, L’Italie et le Magh-reb, 162).

11 Ch.-E. Dufourcq, L'Espagne catalane et le Maghrib aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles.De la bataille de Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) à l'avènement du sultan mérinide Abou-l-Hasan (1331) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1966); Pierre Macaire,Majorque et le commerce international (1400-1450 environ) (Lille: Atelier de repro-ductions de thèses (Univ. of Lille III), 1986); David Abulafia, A Mediterranean

coast whose mundane but certainly not unimportant hides, kermes(dyer’s grain), wax or wool, and grain were the money-makingstaples of Balearic and partly also Valencian light shipping. Verymuch part of this “middle band” economy, the vibrant Italian/Majorcan trade in copper and other goods carried through the Tuatto the Western Sudan in the 1390s and early 1400s thus fills avirtual void in Blanchard’s phase of west-east route shift (1375-1435).

As early as 1955 Jacques Heers hinted at the relative importanceof the Balearic copper trade, suggesting that the sizeable quantitiesof copper on board the Venetian galleys westbound to Flanders in1401 were perhaps partly routed to the Maghrib, by way of Majorca.He did not elaborate, however, or show that this metal indeedmoved across the desert.9 Since then, the route Venice-BalearicIslands-Maghrib seems to have faded out of sight as a factor in thetrans-Saharan trade.10 The works of Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcqor Pierre Macaire did not go beyond restating the commonplace,and David Abulafia’s history of the Catalan kingdom of Majorcapassed the Balearic copper trade under silence. María Dolores LópezPérez’s seminal study of exchanges between the Maghrib and theCrown of Aragon in the fourteenth century, heavily drawing onMajorcan data, ignored copper among Balearic re-exports. Finally,the first Catalan monograph to use the Datini material moreextensively, Dolors Pifarré Torres’ analysis of trade between Barce-lona and Flanders, briefly alluded to Catalan imports of Flemishcopper, but without tracing any Maghrib trade links or touching onthe Venetian strand of the copper traffic.11


Emporium. The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1994); María Dolores López Pérez, La Corona de Aragón y el Magreb enel siglo XIV (1331-1410) (Barcelona: CSIC, Institución Milá y Fontanals, 1995),570-573; Dolors Pifarré Torres, El comerç internacional de Barcelona i el Mar delNord (Bruges) a finals del segle XIV (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia deMontserrat, 2002).

12 Abulafia, Mediterranean Emporium, 220-1.13 One of the substances used to dye fabrics in shades of deep red, purple,

or scarlet. See e.g. John H. A. Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet and theEconomics of Sartorial Splendour,” in Negley B. Harte and Kenneth G.Ponting, Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson, Pasold Studies in Textile History No. 2 (London: The PasoldResearch Fund and Heinemann Educational Books, 1983), 13-70; reprintedin John Munro, Textiles, Towns, and Trade: Essays in the Economic History ofLate-Medieval England and the Low Countries, Variorum Collected Studies seriesCS 442 (Aldershot, Hampshire; and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate PublishingLtd., 1994). Also J. H. A. Munro, s.v. “Scarlet,” Dictionary of the Middle Ages,13 vols., edited by Joseph R. Strayer et al., Vol. 11: Scandinavian Languages toTextiles, Islamic, 36-7 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons/MacMillan, 1982-88[1988]).

The current gap in the literature is not, however, a consequenceof scanty data—enough is available to frame at least preliminaryanswers. It rather reflects a bottleneck in exploiting such massivesources as the Datini archive effectively, in order to find pass-keysunlocking other archival leads and to build up a critical mass ofcross-referenced evidence spanning the Western Mediterranean.David Abulafia’s Mediterranena Emporium unintendedly but pertinentlyexemplified the issue. Having argued that “the Datini evidence,superabundant as it is, cannot be used with confidence to map outMallorca’s trading links”—a sensible if over-cautious position—Abulafia also suggested that the archive was of limited use for thestudy of the Maghrib trade. Francesco Datini namely “showed ratherlittle interest in North Africa,” as evidenced by a negligible exchangeof letters between “north African localities and Datini agents in theBalearics.” The firm, while expressing “strong interest” in Africanwares offered in Majorca, supposedly focussed mainly on wax and“to some degree” leather.12 Unfortunately, this amounts to a severemisestimation of the Datini records.

From Maghribi wax, wool, and kermes (dyer’s grain)13 to “feather”alum, the West African spice malaguetta, Moroccan gum sandarac,ostrich feathers, and a wide array of Maghribi skins, pelts, rawhideand leather of varying grades and regional provenances, the Datinifirm’s Compagnia di Catalogna was in fact extensively involved in


14 Relevant elements can be traced back to the classic works of FederigoMelis, including his fundamental Aspetti della vita economica medievale: studinell’archivio Datini di Prato (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1962), but new detailedstudies (companion pieces to the present paper, based on both correspodenceand ledgers) of the Datini wax, kermes, malaguetta, and hide and skin tradethrough Majorca are only now on the verge of being published.

15 Giampiero Nigro, Mercanti in Maiorca. Il carteggio datiniano dall’isola (1387-1396), 3 vols. (Florence: Le Monnier, 2003). The third volume containing aninterpretive essay and the index was still “in press” as of November 2005.

North African commerce. The same Compagnia supplied Balearicexporters with an array of European goods either retailed in theMaghrib or carried in part across the Sahara, from cloth to pettymetalware, eyeglasses, mirrors, beads and paternosters, paper,Eastern spices and lac, chemicals and medicinal substances—andcopper. It is true that all the Datini transactions with North Africawere indirect, conducted through Majorcan or Valencian inter-mediaries. Yet the firm’s lack of direct contact with Maghribi clients,regrettable as it might be for historians, did not reflect faint interest,but the circumstances in which the local branch was set up, and theBalearic merchants’ protectionist tactics. The Datini archive shouldcertainly not be underrated as a resource for the study of NorthAfrican maritime commerce and, at least obliquely, of discreteMaghribi economic sectors.14

The recent publication (2003) of Giampiero Nigro’s two volumesof Datini and related letters from Majorca may begin to changeperceptions in this matter.15 The coverage, however, stops in 1396,the year when the Compagnia di Catalogna finally emerged as abusiness entity from the awkward formative stage that saw the firstimplantation of a branch in Majorca. For the bulk of the latter’smost active and profitable years, 1396-1410, and for the intimatelyrelated evidence from sister branches in Valencia and Barcelona, itremains necessary to work with the original documents. Moreover,Nigro focussed on the correspondence—quite wisely, from the pointof view of timely publication. The bulky unpublished branch ledgersand associated account books, however, are as crucial for interpretingthe letters as the latter are for setting the bland transaction recordsin context. Finally, both strands of the Datini material requirecareful matching with local sources—Balearic, Valencian or both—totease out their full significance. In particular, the extent of theDatini firm’s exposure to North African markets can prove difficult


16 ASP, D. (Archivio di Stato di Prato, Archivi di Famiglie e di Persone:Archivio Datini) 998 (number of Datini filza), Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co. (thenotation Datini Co. identifies here the so-called lettere di compagnia or “open”letters from one Datini branch to another, as opposed to letters exchangedamong individuals within the firm, or strictly private and confidential corres-pondence; the repetitious full business styles of originating and recipientbranches will thus not be given), 23 Jul. 1406, fol. 1v.

17 Torres, Barcelona, 148. Torres mistitled the Diamante and Altobiancodegli Alberti partnership in Bruges as “els Diamante”. The correct attributionis evident from the letters to which she refers.

18 ASP, D. 892, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 31 Jul. 1409, fol. 1v. Furtherp. 437 below.

to assess without a close knowledge of the Balearic/Valencian mer-chant scene, especially in the current absence of good indices to theDatini papers.

Before discussing the Datini role in the Balearic copper trade andthe rather dramatic circumstances of the largest and so ill-starredcopper deal orchestrated by the firm’s Majorca branch, a quicksketch of Majorca’s copper market is in order. There is no evidencethus far that the Balearics functioned as a crossroads of Venetianand Flemish supply strands. Virtually all the copper arriving inMajorca in the Datini years was shipped from Venice, frequently withdirect involvement by Venetian firms or agents. Copper from theLow Countries did reach the key transshipment nexus in theMaghribi port of Honein, although not through Majorca, but accord-ing to contemporary testimony North African buyers distinctly pre-ferred Venetian copper.16 Moreover, as Torres has shown, Tuscanmerchants in particular tended to balk at shipping copper from theLow Countries to the Mediterranean because they could not acquireit in Bruges on easy payment terms or through barter for othergoods. In the north, copper was all too often cash business. Itremains difficult to determine whether the Flemish copper sold inHonein tended to be virgin or part scrap—the firm of Diamanteand Altobianco degli Alberti certainly signalled the availability ofboth at Bruges.17

Venice supplied copper to the Western Mediterranean in threeforms: loaf ingots (pani), plates (tavole, tole, lastre di rame), and rods(verghe). The first two predominated in the Majorcan market. Scat-tered prices for verghe are found in the Datini material but copperwas rarely if ever delivered to Majorca in this form even though theSaharan caravans might have preferred rods, as we shall see.18 No


19 Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, ed. Allan Evans(Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936), 381-2.

20 Pegolotti, Pratica, 381. For discussion of possible provenance, see pp.446-7 below.

provision seems to have been made for turning plates into rods inMajorca in the Datini years, although in the case of tin Pegolotticlearly stated that in his time (1320-1347) rods for re-export weremade from ingots of Cornwall tin both in Majorca and in Venice,with the hallmarked Venetian ones fetching the higher price.19 Thedocuments clearly show that the copper shipped to the Maghrib atthe turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries came largely inplates.

The less frequent ingots quoted in Majorca as dell’angnolo (i.e. withthe “Lamb” hallmark) occasionally topped the price range. They fellinto the category of rame di Papa or the rame della bolla di San Marcodi Vinegia (whose general description is found in Pegolotti’s Praticadella Mercatura trade manual). This was refined red copper in bread-sized loaves. Somewhat cheaper were the unmarked small loaves ofred rame dell’ene.20 Given the colour (molto vermiglio e rosso) and theprice, it is likely that both types corresponded at the very least toRosettenkupfer (using standard German smelting terminology) if notHammergarkupfer (for the hallmarked ingots). These were the last twosteps of copper refining, sometimes conflated in the literature, butin fact distinct. The primary refining of raw copper (Schwarzkupfer)in an open oven (Garherd) to reduce impurities, volatilize arsenic,antimony and zinc, and tie other companion metals in slag, yieldedGarkupfer (refined copper) in the form of Rosettenkupfer, but despiteits nice red hue the product, while marketable, was still not quitepure and remained poorly malleable. The final Hammergarmacheninvolved one more smelting with charcoal, and only then were theingots stamped with a producer’s hallmark.

Whether hallmarked (di bolla) or not, the rame in tavole refinedand made up into plates in Venice was put on the market in partas malleable Hammergarkupfer. The product was yellowish, vergingon brass in colour, although Pegolotti stressed the difference,acknowledged and appreciated by merchants, between this copperand brass properly speaking (“yellow copper”, ottone). The plateswere rated good and “sweet” only if they “held up to the hammer”and bent without cracking or breaking. In Pegolotti’s time standard


21 Pegolotti, Pratica, 381.22 ASP, D. 1016, Libro grande bianco segn. C (Majorca), fol. 115r (27,968.5

Majorcan pounds = 2,251 copper plates). The probable thickness has beencalculated using the specific weight of 8.6 kg/dm3 as a reasonable compromisein lieu of the unknown specific weight of the medieval copper sold inMajorca. The specific weight of pure modern copper is 8.93 kg/dm3 at 15 C,falling to 8.9 and 8.8 for laminated and cast copper respectively. Casting brassand rolled and drawn brass vary between 8.4 and 8.73 kg/dm3 and the specificweight of beryllium copper can be as low as 8.1 kg/dm3.

Venetian-made plates were sized 1 by 0.5 braccia (0.68 m by0.34 m).21 The Datini ledgers suggest an average plate weight of c.12.43 Majorcan pounds or 5.04 kg, and thus a thickness of c.0.25 cm— if indeed the other two dimensions remained roughly thesame since Pegolotti’s time.22 Whether the plates traded throughMajorca were mostly “sweet” is not entirely clear from the Datiniand Majorcan records. Brittle “sour” plates were undeniably on themarket, and Pegolotti had explicitly urged testing batches for“sweetness”. It is tempting to interpret the “sour” plate as coppersubjected to imperfect Hammergarmachen or none at all, and mixedin to “pad” bundled lots.

The port of Honein, as already implied, was a key entrepôt hubof the Majorcan/Venetian copper trade, while Gha .s .saé .s .sa (Alcudia)served as a secondary outlet geared towards Moroccan markets,above all Fez. The Datini letters leave no doubt that Honein wasat this juncture a prominent head of trail serving the large annualcaravans bound for the northern Saharan oases—and from thereacross the desert (even though the correspondence does not saymuch regarding the latter). The oasis region of Tuat, repeatedlymentioned in the letters, was a vital staging point south of theGrand Erg Occidental (Great Western Sand Sea) and the Guraraoasis group. It provided a gateway to the so-called Tanezruft routeand ultimately to the Niger Bend. Wedged between the TademaïtPlateau and the Tidikelt in the east and the northern outliers of thelong dunes of Erg Chech in the west, the Tuat was a major sourceof food and water at the northern edge of the desolate reg (graveldesert) dominating the Tanezruft Basin. Describing the Tuat in thelater fourteenth century, Ibn Khaldún spoke of some 200 qu .sué r (for-tified settlements), the most notable among them the bustlingcaravan station of Tamentit (Tamantít). Besides Tamentit, Ibn Khal-dún highlighted the micro-regions of Buda (in the north) and Reg-


23 Walíé al-Díén ‘Abd al-Ra .hmaén Abué Zayd ibn Khaldué n, Kitaéb ta’ríékh al-duwalal-islaémíéya bi-’l-Maghrib min Kitaéb al-’ibar. Histoire des Berbères et des dynastiesmusulmanes de l'Afrique septentrionale, trans. MacGuckin De Slane, new ed. P.Casanova (Paris: Geuthner, 1925-1956) 1: 191, 196; 3: 298. The standard co-ordinates for Tamentit (often not shown on general maps), are lat. 27.75 N,lon. 0.28 W. For recent studies see Y. Guillermou, “Survie et ordre social auSahara. Les oasis du Touat-Gourara-Tidikelt en Algérie,” Cahiers de l’ORSTOM,Série Sciences Humaines 29 (1) (1993): 121-38. Despite its title, B. Gabriel’s“Zur vorzeitlichen Besiedlung Südalgeriens (Tanesrouft, Tidekelt, Touat,Gourara),” Erde 115 (1-2) (1984): 93-109 surveys some of the local medievalstructures, as does J.-C. Échallier, Villages désertés et structures agraires anciennesdu Touat-Gourara (Sahara algérien) (Paris: A.M.G., 1972). Note that the OuedMessaoud “vanished” in roughly the same place still in the nineteenth century(the dunes cut across it just south of Timadanine and Taourirt, the southern-most qu .sué r of Reggane. See e.g. Camille Sabatier, Touat, Sahara et Soudan.Etude géographique, politique, économique et militaire (Paris: Société d’éditionsscientifiques, 1891), 261).

24 The standard definition of the Tuat refers to the stretch from Adrar andReggane, or, according to a broader topographic schema, from latitude 265' N to latitude 27 5' N.

25 The “long day” is based on nineteenth-century estimates of the speed ofa merchant caravan comprising only riders (c. 38-40 km/day). A caravanpartially on foot would see this fall to some 32 km. Sabatier, Touat, 234-5.

gane (the southern outpost where the Oued Messaoud (Ghir-Saoura)“vanished among the sands”).23 Buda, the former head of trail forcaravans travelling to Mauritania’s Walaé ta, had reputedly yielded itsrank to Tamentit by Ibn Khalduén’s time.

Confusingly enough, Ibn Khalduén also referred to Buda as the“westernmost” of Tuat’s micro-regions and to Tamentit as the“easternmost” one, but this is true only in a rather tenuous sense—the Tuat in fact stretches along a steep NNW to SSE line (Maps 1and 2). The region is a string of discrete oasis nodes straddling theGreenwich meridian (0 longitude) down the east side of the OuedMessaoud (Oued Tuat) valley, an extension of the Oued Saoura.24

The qu .sué r of the larger Tuat were clustered in micro-regional groupsstructuring the oasis region geographically and politically from northto south, not east to west: Buda, Timmi/Adrar, and then Tuat as such(Fenughil [Fenourhil], Tamest, Zaglou (Tuat al-henna), Inzegmir,and Reggane). There was not much real difference between acaravan station at Buda (north-west of mod. Adrar) and at Tamentit(south of Timmi, north of Fenughil), some 50 km or a long day’smarch away.25 Buda was simply the first cross-roads of trails fromthe Dar’a and the Tafilalt in the north-west (through the Kahal de


26 Buda was exposed to nomad raids from the north-west in the sense ofbeing located at the vulnerable northern tip of the Tuat. Tamentit enjoyed atleast a notional “defense in depth” advantage. None the less, given that araiding party mounted on mehari camels could cover up to 100 km/day whenpushing the mounts, Tamentit’s greater “safety” from Dar’a or Sus raiders wasdubious.

27 Also known as Dulcet (Eduard Pérez i Pons, Fonts per a l’estudi de la comu-nitat jueva de Mallorca, Catalonia Hebraica VI (Barcelona: PPU, 2005), 124(doc. 495, Mar. 1330)).

28 Ch. de la Roncière, La découverte de l'Afrique au moyen âge: cartographes etexplorateurs, 2 vols. (Cairo: La Société Royale de Géographie d’Égypte, 1925-1925), 1: Frontispice, Plates VIII, X, XI, XIII, XV. In the “Catalan Planis-phere” of the Estense, Buda is considerably displaced, as compared to thealmost correct position in Dulcert and a fair approximation in Villadestes.

Tabelbala), and from Figuig in the north. Most routes from the east,north, and west intersected, however, at Timmi and Tamentit. Thelatter was a little more defensible, but in no way precluded strikingout along south-westerly trails. Only upon reaching Reggane, another100 km to the south, would a caravan essentially have to committo the Tanezruft route.26

The Tuat was by no means unknown to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italians and Catalans. Buda and a castrum de Tagenduhet(possibly Tamentit) appear in the Majorcan portolan of AngelinoDulcert27 (1339), Buda in the Catalan Atlas of 1375 and in the “Cata-lan Planisphere” of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples (fifteenth cen-tury), and both Tamentit and Buda (ciutat de Buda) in the plani-sphere of Mecià de Villadestes (c. 1413), in the “Catalan Planisphere”of Modena’s Biblioteca Estense (fifteenth century), and in the atlaschart of the Genoese Battista Beccario (1426). Tuat and Buda grandefigure in a fifteenth-century Italian planisphere from the VaticanGalleries.28 The importance of the oasis region appears to have beenfairly well understood by those working for the Datini firm: fromthe very first mention in the Datini letters the tone is matter-of-fact,without any hint of need for explanation. One can thus only assumethat Tuat was equally familiar to Venetians involved more often andmore routinely in the copper traffic. Venetians resident in the Ba-learics (e.g. Bernardo Bon) or leading copper suppliers such as theContarini may have known at least as much as the Datini men.

Jewish merchants—Majorcan as well as Maghribi—played a signi-ficant role in the copper trade linking the Balearics, Honein, andTuat. By 1394, Majorcan Jews and post-1391 conversos were forcefully


29 The responsa (takkanot) of Issac b. Sheshet concerning Tuati affairs(incidentally confirming the importance of the Honein-Tuat link) are far toosketchy, as are those of R. Solomon b. Semah Duran (for instance concerningcopper transported from Oran to the Tuat), conveniently referenced in H. Z.(J. W.) Hirschberg, “The Problem of the Judaized Berbers,” Journal of AfricanHistory 4 (3) (1963): 323-4 (note, however, that the article contains errors andshould be used with caution). Malfante reported that in 1447 Tuat trade wasin the hands of local Jews, but that does not say much about the situationaround 1400. Subsequently, the Jewish community of Tamentit was decimated(probably in 1492, and again in 1503), during episodes of repression fomen-ted by the scholar Mu .hammad b. ‘Abd al-Karíém b. Mu .hammad al-Maghíélíé,who had first settled in the Tuat in 1477-1478 (see ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ‘Abd-AllahBatran, “A Contribution to the Biography of Shaikh Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Karim Ibn Muhammad (‘Umar) al-Maghili al-Tilimsani,” Journal of AfricanHistory 14 (3) (1973): 381-94).

reasserting themselves in the Maghrib trade, despite the hardshipand disruption inflicted on the Majorcan Jewish community by theviolent socio-political crisis of 1391 and the attendant assault on thealjama in Ciutat de Mallorca (mod. Palma). Honein Jews, some ofthem from Majorcan lineages or from families with close ties toMajorca before 1391, were instrumental in warehousing the metaland arranging its transport to Tuat, even though they do not seemto have always travelled south with the caravans. The exact divisionof labour between Honein and Tuat Jews remains nonethelessunclear. Tamentit has long been associated in both oral traditionand in historiography with a vibrant Jewish presence, particularlybetween 1300 and 1492. The isolated fourteenth-century tombstoneswith Hebrew inscriptions found at Buda (in Ghormali) and atTamentit between 1903 and the 1950s moreover suggest a certainopulence, as well as the presence of reputable rabbis and halakhacommentators. The structures of the trade on which this prosperityrested are poorly known, however, and the Datini material adds onlytantalizing glimpses.29

Jewish and converso participation in the copper trade should byno means obscure, however, the substantial and aggressive involve-ment by Majorca’s “old Christian” merchants of diverse financialstature, from Bernat Tudela and Joan Toreyó to the notary andMaghrib trader Julià Fontcuberta and powerful players such thePachs brothers and Antoni Quint. It is true that they focussed largelyon one segment of the metal traffic—within the triangle Majorca-Honein-Gha .s .saã .s .sa—which they deemed they could control at leastin part. Yet this was by no means exceptional. The Datini firm, to


30 ARM (Arxiu del Regne de Mallorca), RP (Patrimoni Reial/Real Patri-monio) 1998, fols. 2v-3r, 6v-7r (the identification of the Majorcan registers’“Polo de Venecia” with Polo di Giovanni remains tentative). The customsregister in question carries a misleading attribution to 1386-1390; the contentscover in fact the year 1390, while a detached folded sheet inserted at the backprovides a summary financial statement by the clavari for the year 1387.

some extent on sufferance from the Majorcans, was doing the same,and in so far as it functioned as a supplier of copper it relied inturn on Venetian contacts and most often on Venetian ships. TheBalearic and Maghribi Jews who competed in the maritime trianglewith the Majorcan “old Christians” and Italians projected theirinfluence further south, to the Maghribi-northern Saharan segment—but once again within limits. The Datini letters and other sourcessuggest that prominent operators such as Ayon Susen rarely if atall travelled south of Honein, gladly leaving the next stage to betterinformed and more entrenched locals, Muslims and Jews, and ulti-mately to the Tuatis.

The first coherent glimpse of the Majorcan turn-of-the-centurycopper trade dates to 1390, while the economically depressed 1380srepresent a void, for now. In 1390, deliveries of copper to Majorcawere chanelled mainly through the Venetian merchants BernardoBon and Polo di Giovanni, with the most important shipmentreaching the Balearics on board the cog of Giaconello de’ Falchi.30

Information for 1391-1393 is meagre, owing to the paucity of Bale-aric trade records and to lack of research on Majorcan notarial regis-ters predating the well-known fifteenth-century records of the notaryAntoni Contestí. The Datini letters—those received from businesscontacts and arms-length agents prior to the arrival of Datini staffin the Balearics—fail to fill the gap. The reason is threefold. Firstly,it is quite clear that outsiders had a certain mental image of theDatini firm’s “profile” and typical requirements and adjusted theirreporting accordingly. Secondly, the letters amply show that eventhe best contacts were politely coy about “trade secrets” in terms ofspecific local knowledge. Finally, the flow of information was shapedby the contacts’ own business operations. The Datini firm was simplyperceived as not being very much into raw metals, correspondentssuch as Nofri di Bonaccorso or Antonio di Filippo Lorini and Co.were not prone to dabble in copper, and Nofri was overtly paranoidabout his fragile position of intermediary and local expert.


31 Nigro, Mercanti, 2: 994 (doc. 439, 25-28 April 1304, Majorca-Valencia,Antonio di Flippo Lorini Co. To Datini Co.).

32 ARM, RP 2002, fols. 6r-6v (the folio numbers for this register are theoriginal manuscript numbers, not the subsequently stamped archival pagenumbers). The 31 bales of copper (aram) sheet on the Capitana, for which dutywas paid by Messer Giacomino Arnuzzi were consigned by the Contarinimerchant house and declared to be worth 440 l.M. (Majorcan pounds ofaccount); the 52 bales on the Lombarda were worth 840 l.M.; the 20 costals onthe Moceniga were worth 100 l.M. The Tudela/Michele shipment on the lattergalley amounted to 17 costals worth 115 l.M. The Giustiniana carried 8 costalsof copper (coure) worth 115 l.M.

33 E.g. Nigro, Mercanti, 930 (doc. 406, Ambrogio Lorenzi to Datini Co., 7(12) Oct. 1394), 607 (doc. 255, Ambrogio Lorenzi to Datini Co., 30 Oct.1394), 642 (doc. 265, Ambrogio Lorenzi to Datini Co., 22 (29) Dec. 1395).

The year 1394 saw the island market resupplied in copper forthe most part by the outbound galleys of the regular VenetianFlanders line, which docked at Ciutat de Mallorca on Good Friday(17 April) and unloaded virtually nothing but a large quantity ofcopper, as reported by Antonio Lorini.31 An identical schedule wasfollowed in 1395, when copper and brass shipped from Venice partlyon behalf of Alvise Contarini and partly consigned to the MajorcanBernat Tudela and the Venetian Benedetto di Michele was deliveredby the Flanders galleys Capitana, Lombarda, Moceniga and Giustinianaon 16 April.32 The Datini firm began to pay moderate attention tothe transit of copper through the islands in 1394, following its firstawkward attempt to find a foothold in Majorca. Ambrogio Lorenzide’ Rocchi, the young Datini factor who arrived in the Balearicsfrom Valencia on 16 March 1394, was routinely quoting local copperprices in his business corespondence within the next half-year.33 Itwas not until two years after the Datini Compagnia di Catalognabranch structure had finally been set up in 1396, however, that thefirm developed a sustained and growing interest in the Majorcan-Maghribi copper traffic.

Cristofano di Bartolo Carocci, who had assumed management ofthe Majorca branch in March 1396, at first handled brass andcopper only on behalf of others, such as Alberto degli Alberti ofBruges, and the Venetians Messer Antonio Contarini and Paolucciodi Maestro Paolo. In January 1399, however, he strongly urged themother company to order from Venice, through Zanobi di TadeoGaddi, up to 15 or 20 migliai grossi of copper plate (7.1 to 9.5metric tons) for resale to Majorcan Maghrib traders (“per la


34 ASP, D. 667, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 27 Jan. 1399, fol. 1v. Therecommendation, ultimately intended for the firm’s main contact in Venice,was framed in Venetian units of measure and the corresponding conversionis used here (1 migliaio grosso = 477 kg). The same applies to the centinaigrossi mentioned next (1 centinaio grosso = 47.7 kg). See Frederic C. Lane andReinhold C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice,Vol. 1, Coins and Moneys of Account (Baltimore, 1985), 360 and Ronald EdwardZupko, Italian Weights and Measures from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century(Philadelphia, 1981), 134 (for the underlying Venetian pound).

35 ASP, D. 996, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 24 May 1399, fols. 1r, 2r; ASP,D. 996, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 5 Jun. 1399, fol. 1r; ASP, D. 667,Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 4 Sep. 1399, fol. 3r; ASP, D. 667, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 22 Oct. 1399, fol. 2r.

Barberia”).34 His insistence on delivery by the first available ship orfailing that by the Flanders galleys (obviously those of the springmuda) fell, however, on deaf ears. Bernardo Bon and the Contarinihad saturated the Majorcan market with loaf ingot copper by May,and were trying to move much of it out to Valencia, speculating ona rise in prices in case of war between Portugal and Castile ratherthan on sustained sales in the Maghrib. Plate copper, more suitedfor the latter market, was nonetheless in short supply and deliveriesfrom Venice, delayed by a quarrel between Venice and the Crownof Aragon over navigation laws, were not expected until later inSeptember. In October 1399 Cristofano still vainly advocated thatthe firm invest in some 200 to 300 centinai grossi of copper plate (9.5to 14.3 metric tons).35

Stoldo di Lorenzo and Francesco Datini (the principals of themother company in Prato/Florence) stubbornly held off into thespring of 1400. In the meantime, the renewed outbreak of thePortuguese-Castilian conflict was imminently expected to raise theprice of loaf ingot copper, preferred in the Iberian Peninsula.Copper plate for the Maghrib was also in strong demand, however,and the 16 bales unloaded in May from the Verzona were snappedup at above market price. The trading season’s main profits wentto Datini competitors, particularly Bastiano di Bartolo. It was notuntil the following year (1401) that Cristofano finally managed tohave 20 bales of plate shipped out to Majorca. He waited anxiouslyfor the galleys, but did not receive his copper until much later, inmid-June. He thus partly missed a window of opportunity for gettingcargo on board the ship scheduled to connect with the caravans inHonein, and nearly half the batch consequently remained in his


36 ASP, D. 996, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 31 Jan. 1400, fol. 1v; ASP, D.667, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 6 Apr. 1400, fol. 1r; ASP, D. 667, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 26 May 1400, fol. 1v (recommending a shipment of20,000 pounds of copper plate); ASP, D. 996, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 28Aug. 1400, fol. 2r; ASP, D. 997, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 13 Jun. 1401,fol. 1v; ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 16 Jun. 1401, fols. 1r-1v;ASP, D. 997, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 12 Sep. 1401, fol. 1v; ASP, D. 997,Majorca-Valencia, Cristofano di Bartolo to Luca del Sera, 6 Oct. 1401, fol. 1r.

37 ASP, D. 997, Majorca-Valencia, Cristofano di Bartolo to Luca del Sera, 28Oct. 1401, fols. 1r-2v (fol. 2v contains the lengthy outline of the Jucef Xipioproject, and a digression on how to save on customs by shipping goods to theMaghrib in Xipio’s name and to Majorca under the Datini merchant mark);ASP, D. 997, Majorca-Valencia, Cristofano di Bartolo to Luca del Sera, 15 Nov.1401, fol. 1v; ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 12 Jan. 1402, fol. 1r;ASP, D. 997, Majorca-Valencia, Cristofano di Bartolo to Luca del Sera, 11 Feb.1402, fol. 1r; ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 17 Apr. 1402, fols. 1r-1v; ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 17 Apr. 1402, fol. 2v (“.... i

stockroom. September brought further complications both for himand for competitors. The Jewish traders who had initially beenwilling to buy up all that was left, plate and loaf ingots as well, hadbeen advised from Honein to hold off. Ultimately the Balearicmarket went into hibernation until next March, and the Valenciabranch was only partially successful in finding takers for copper aslate as October.36

The advancing autumn spawned its usual share of pipe dreams,and Cristofano suggested an over-ambitious scheme for shippingcloth, copper, and other merchandise to the Maghrib with the helpof the Valencian Muslim merchant Jucef Xipio. The pressure tocome up with some strategy increased when, in the middle of theslack season, Tuccio di Gennaio consigned with Cristofano another30 quintals of copper re-routed from Valencia and brought in byway of Ibiza. Unfortunately, the expected departure of the nave ofJaume Tudela for Gha .s .saã .s .sa in January 1402 brought Cristofano nocomfort, for to his suprised irritation he found himself locked outthrough tacit collusion among Majorcan merchants. To dispose ofhis remaining 36 bales of metal he then put his hopes in the Jewishmerchants trading to Honein, and geared up for the next tradingbout only in July, almost too late. By then copper plate for thecaravans was a hot item, demand in Honein was stronger than everbefore, and the Saharan trade buying pressure had spilled over evento such items as glass prayer beads, “blue and large as a middlingnut, such as are customarily brought by the Venetian galleys.”37


paternostri di vetro azurini, grossi chome una nuciola mezana, chome solglonoportare le ghalee de’ Viniziani ...”).

38 ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 23 Jul. 1402, fol. 1r. Given thereference frame of the Datini letters and ledgers, the quintal is here reckonedas 100 Majorcan pounds of 0.406 kg. Pegolotti does set the size of theMajorcan quintal (cantaro dells terra) at 104 Majorcan pounds, and specifiesthat copper is sold by the “Barbary quintal” (cantaro barberesco) of 121Majorcan pounds. The Datini ledgers, however, systematically reckon copperby a quintal of 100 pounds (see e.g. ASP, D. 1015, Libro grande bianco segn. B(Majorca), fol. 71r), and the firm’s internal usage is obviously the one tofollow when converting relevant figures.

39 ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 7 Jul. 1403, fol. 2r; ASP, D.668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 12 Jul. 1403, fol. 1v; ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 23 Jul. 1403, fol. 1r.

40 ASP, D. 997, Majorca-Valencia, Cristofano di Bartolo to Luca del Sera, 6Nov. 1403, fol. 1r.

Cristofano now dared to think bigger, in the range of 500 quintals(20.3 metric tons) of copper at one go.38

In the summer of 1403 Cristofano was hard at work negotiatingthe potential sale of a sizeable shipment of copper sent out by theContarini on board the Chopa. The talks were not going quite well,given that his usual Jewish contacts (“gli amici”), Haim Susen andBalaix Feraig, besides being short of cash, were already overcom-mitted on account of taking off his hands metal belonging to theDandolo firm of Venice. Haim and Balaix held off even after havingbeen rescued by an inflow of gold coin from the Maghrib, and drovea hard bargain when they finally agreed to buy 120 quintals.Cristofano was desperately trying to get Aion Haim and othersinterested.39 That autumn’s bright point, as he stressed, was the factat least the leftovers of Contarini copper and the Dandolo tinremained unscathed and were successfully excavated from the ruinsof the Datini house in Majorca, which collapsed in mid-October1403. A massive flash flood of the Riera stream that wound downthe centre of the late medieval Ciutat de Mallorca devastated thedowntown business district, and the stacked metal ingots were oneof the few things not carried away or destroyed by the muddywaters.40

By December the market remained soft and then virtually col-lapsed, making Cristofano rue having received another 16 quintalsof Contarini metal through Piero Mattei in Ibiza. His expectationsthat it would take a year to see an improvement turned out,however, to be unjustified. Between January and August 1404 he and


41 ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, 9 Jan. 1403, fol. 2v; ASP, D. 1014, Librogrande bianco segn. A (Majorca), fols. 154v-155r.

42 ASP, D. 997, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 9 Apr. 1405, fol. 3r; ASP, D.997, Majorca-Valencia, Cristofano di Bartolo to Luca del Sera, 14 Jun. 1405.Ayon Susen was a relative of Haim Susen, living on and off in Tenes(Algeria), Majorca, and then Honein.

his chief factor Niccolò di Giovanni Mazzuoli successfully sold over6,000 pounds of copper plate (2.44 metric tons) on behalf of MesserAntonio Contarini to a select group of dealers comprising HaimSusen, Solomon Sorell, and Samuel (probably Samuel Fazuati) onthe Jewish side, and Joan Toreyó and the money-changer PereBarrera among the Christians.41 The volatile nature of the coppertrade nonetheless re-asserted itself by April 1405, six months afterNiccolò replaced Cristofano as manager. Although there was nocopper to be had in Majorca, the island’s Maghrib traders remainedcautious, willing to buy only on merchant credit with payment dueonly after return from Honein. Even such mavericks as Ayon Susenwere short of cash, and there was little sign of the boom about tostart during the winter of 1405-1406.42

The subsequent magic-wand change, however, had Niccolò soonin a panic. He had sold third-party copper forward and by March1406 penalties for non-delivery threatened. Branch letters to Barce-lona, Valencia, and Florence were peppered with reminders, accom-panied by exclamations of pious hope that the metal would arrivewith the Flanders-bound galleys. Measures were also taken to secureoffshore lighters for unloading in case the galleys failed to tie upat the main quay because of current tensions over potential newduties. Finally, June 1406 found Niccolò busy weighing copper withhis large balance (romana) for his Jewish customers and for JoanToreyó. Over 22,000 pounds of copper plate (8.93 metric tons)belonging to the Florentine firm of Bernabò degli Agli went toAbraham Arquet, Magalluf ben Allon, and Ayon Susen, as well asto Joan Toreyó. Ayon took another 1,414 pounds belonging toFrancesco Datini and 227 pounds were consigned to Jaume Bonetin Valencia, through Pere Bassa. The nave of Rafael Ferrer broughtmore plate and loaf ingots from Venice, and the Valencia branchstaked an interest in part of the shipment even though Niccolòfavoured selling it in Majorca if the metal was weighed, packed, andready to go before the expected departure of the last ship toHonein, set at around 29 July. Ultimately, 780 pounds of Bernabò


43 ASP, D. 891, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 23 Mar. 1406, fol. 1r; ASP,D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 26 Mar. 1406, fol. 1r; ASP, D. 998,Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 4 May 1406, fol. 1r; ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 21 Jun. 1406, fols. 1r-1v; ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia,Datini Co., 10 Jul. 1406; ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 19 Jul.1406, fol. 1v; ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 23 Jul. 1406, fol. 1r;ASP, D. 1015, Libro grande bianco segn. B (Majorca), fols. 70v-71r, 78v-79r.

44 ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 31 Aug. 1406, fols. 2v, 3v;ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., fol. 1v; ASP, D. 981, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 27 Oct. 1406, fol. 1r.

degli Agli’s loaf ingots from the Ferrer shipment were sold toAbraham Arquet and to the converso Maghrib traders Pere Pardo andFrancesc Bellviure.43

By the end of August, however, Niccolò began to feel uneasy.Joan Toreyó, Abraham Arquet, Magaluff ben Allon and Ayon Susenhad virtually cornered the copper trade to Honein and the Datinifirm, as well as Bastiano di Bartolo, had several thousand florins atstake with them. Pere Bassa, who was attempting to carve out hisown privileged niche, moreover pressed the Majorcan branch fora binding arrangement to deliver copper on demand, any time, anddrove a hard bargain. His terms were for retied bundles, wrappedin fresh canvas, and delivered FOB to the hold of the outboundvessel. The bustle died down by mid-September and payments werenow beginning to flow back from the Maghrib, but not necessarilyin cash—one of the return commodities tended to be the scarletdyestuff kermes. Selling the kermes, however, required time and putthe onus on the payee, not the debtor. This created a timing prob-lem for Niccolò—the Datini firm was once again in the throes ofserious reorganization and it appeared, until the spring of 1407, thatthe Majorca branch would after all be liquidated and Niccolò trans-ferred to Valencia.44

Regardless of diverse economic troubles, however, including weakdemand for cloth in the Maghrib, the copper market stubbornlypicked up once again. The Majorca branch having been granted a“stay of execution” by the mother company, Niccolò tried to makeup for profits lost during the months of uncertainty and bettedheavily on copper, with Francesco Datini’s blessing. By mid-June hereported having disposed of around 500 quintals belonging toFrancesco and to Ser Antonio di Lapaccio, while another 200quintals were earmarked for loading on board a galley armed bythe prominent Majorcan merchant Nicholau de Pachs. Some 150


45 Tosinghi and Antoni de Quint were also shipping out between themanother R 2,000 worth of copper, 2/7 of which represented Tosinghi’sinvestment and the rest that of de Quint. This is reported in letters outliningsubsequent developments: ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 29 Sep.1407, fol. 1r; ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 25 Mar. 1408, fol. 1r.For allusions to the other issues, see e.g. ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Niccolòdi Giovanni Mazzuoli to Francesco Datini, 15 Nov. 1406, fol. 1v.

46 The whole Datini/Lapaccio batch weighing 27,968 1/2 lb was posted assold for 2,622 l.M. 1s. 2d., or 2,471 l. 10s. 2d. net of expenses (ASP, D. 1016,Libro grande bianco segn. C (Majorca), fols. 114v-115r. Further see ASP, D.998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 16 Jun. 1407, fol. 1r. The related losses arediscussed for instance in ASP, D. 892, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 16 (18)Dec. 1408, fol. 1v; ASP, D. 892, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 31 Jul. 1409.

47 ASP, D. 1016, Libro grande bianco segn. C (Majorca), fol. 38v. Tosinghi’scopper was worth 2,006 l.M. 16s. 1d., or 1,794 l.M. 15s. 9d. net of expenses(ASP, D. 1016, Libro grande bianco segn. C (Majorca) fols. 116v-117r).

48 ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 29 Sep. 1407, fol. 1r; ASP, D.668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co., 25 Mar. 1408, fol. 1r; ASP, D. 998, Majorca-

quintals were expected to sell shortly, before the scheduled departureof the Pachs galley for Honein (toward the end of June). The 200quintals set aside were part of an untypical interlocking set of com-mon ventures between Italian merchants and Majorca’s “old Chris-tians” headed by the Pachs and by Antoni de Quint, aimed atunseating Jews and conversos from their current position of leadershipin the copper trade.45

To hedge bets, however, 279 quintals belonging mostly toFrancesco Datini, with Antonio di Lapaccio contributing a minorshare, were also spread among various Jewish, converso, and othertraders, on credit terms stretching into December.46 On behalf ofanother countryman, Giovanni Tosinghi, Niccolò sold just over 213quintals of the 550 that Tosinghi had consigned with the branch oncommission.47 The metal ultimately put up by various participants,including 500 quintals ventured by Nicholau de Pachs, amountedto roughly 200,000 Majorcan pounds or 82 metric tons of copper,not counting copper traded outside of the Datini circle and thusmuch more poorly documented. By the end of September, theVenetian nave of Ser Marco de’ Benedetti had unloaded another 141bales of copper plate and the local market showed signs of glut.Niccolò begged the Valencia branch to explore all possibilities ofselling copper there, on condition of making buyers agree not toresell in Majorca, for that would further spoil the already saturatedmarket.48


Valencia, Datini Co., 29 Sep. 1407.49 ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co. to Francesco Datini, 25 Mar.

1408, fol. 1r. The Majorcan reial (reale in the Datini ledgers) was worth onaverage 15 s. Barcelonese, and thus equivalent to the Florentine florin. SeeMelis, Aspetti, 249 and Peter Spufford, Handbook of Medieval Exchange (London:Royal Historical Society, 1986), 141.

50 ASP, D. 892, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 10 Apr 1408; ASP, D. 892,Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 16 (18) Dec. 1408, fol. 1v.

51 ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co. to Francesco Datini, 25 Mar.1408 (“... lo mandavano [the copper] a Tuet, e una chonpagnia d’Ar(a)bi l’ànotutto rubato ...”).

Then, in January and February 1408, alarming news reached theBalearics that a raiding party had attacked and robbed the Tuatcaravan. Initial estimates of potential loss tallied up to 2,622 l.M.for Francesco Datini and Antonio di Lapaccio, and some 600 R.(reials) for Giovanni Tosinghi, with the posibility that Tosinghi’s jointloss with Antoni de Quint might run as high as 2,000 R.49 Sub-sequent revised assessments dating to December 1408 showed thatabout half the copper was irretrievably lost. The full extent of thedisaster is impossible to specify—Niccolò’s comments indeed suggestthat the caravan also carried, for instance, copper and other goodssent from Valencia, and at least one Genoese merchant active inMajorca, Battista Campanaro, may have supplied more metal to theaffected Jewish and converso dealers.50 Various merchants from Tlem-cen, Fez, and other trade centers surely suffered losses as well, giventhat an annual caravan to the Western Sudan could easily marshal8,000 to 12,000 camels and represented the confluence of diversestrands of commerce.

What was the robbery’s Maghribi context? Firstly, the considerabledelay with which the news broke and the lack of available detailleave some doubt about the location: either somewhere betweenHonein and Tuat, or in the vicinity of the oasis region. Secondly,in saying that culprits were “una chonpagnia d’Arabi” Niccolò mighthave been unable to appreciate the difference between “Arab” andTuareg.51 If, however, “Arabs” were indeed involved, then two alter-natives are perhaps worth considering. On the one hand, theattackers may have been either traditional rivals of the dominantMa‘qil nomad group that benefited from the passage of the caravansby virtue of controlling the space between Honein, the lowerMoulouya River, and Tuat, or a disaffected splinter of the dominantgroup. On the other hand, the fact that reports of subsequent nego-


52 R. Brunschvig, La Berbérie orientale sous les .Haf .sides. Des origines à la findu XVe siècle (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1940), 214-5; E. Fagnan, trans.,Chronique des Almohades et des Hafsides attribuée à Zerkechi (Constantine: AdolpheBraham, 1895), 200-201.

53 Ibn Khaldué n, Berbères, 1: 101, 103-4, 120-2.

tiations for return of the cargo trickled in from varied points, as fareast as Collo and Annaba, raises the possibility that the caravan washeld to ransom by Arab partisans of the force sent from Moroccoby the Marínid sultan Abú Sa‘íd ’Uthmán III to support the emirAbú ‘Abd Alláh Mu .hammad b. Abí Ya .hyá in his attempt to seizepower in Ifriqíya in 1407-1408.52

As for the first alternative, it is well known that Gurara and theTuat formed part of the winter nomadization grounds of the Ma‘qilArabs of the Dhué ’Ubayd Allaéh group. The ’Ubayd Allaéh controlledby the later fourteenth century northern (summer) grounds reachingfrom the region of Tlemcen to Taurirt, to Oujda and the estuaryof the Moulouya, and from there southward to sources of the Za.While in their summer encampments in the tell, they collected tollsfrom traffic, for instance, between Honein and Tlemcen. The easternsegment of the ’Ubayd Allaéh, the Kharaé j, tended to recognize in thelater fourteenth century the authority of Tlemcen, whereas thewestern Haddaé j gravitated under Maríénid influence. Their neigh-bours and standing rivals were the Banué ’Amr b. Zoghba, whoclaimed as summer grounds the approaches to Oran, the Tessala,and the areas south of Tlemcen.53 The Honein-Tuat caravan maywell have fallen victim to a breakdown of peace at the intersectionof the cross-cutting allegiances and closely adjacent nomadizationcorridors, none too stable during the fulsomely praised but conspi-cuously fragile reign of Abué ‘Abd Allaéh Mu .hammad I, sultan ofTlemcen.

It is however equally plausible, and perhaps more so, given thespecific timing, that the culprit was indeed the eastbound expeditionof Abué ‘Abd Allaéh Mu .hammad b. Abíé Ya .hyaé . A former governor ofAnnaba and a rebel cousin of ‘Abd al-‘Azíéz Abué Faé ris the .Haf .sidsultan of Tunis, Abué ‘Abd Allaéh had taken refuge at the court ofFez. It is a moot point whether or not the .Hakíém were the Arabfraction who reportedly came to request Marínid help and whobrought the emir back east with them, together with his Maríénidsupport force. Certainly they and their shaykh A .hmad b. Abíé Sanuénawere in the forefront of the rebellion against Abué Faé ris and were


54 The exact dating of the rebellion’s last stages remain uncertain (1407-1409). Brunschvig, Berbérie, 214-5; Fagnan, Hafsides, 200-1; E. Fagnan, trans.,Extraits inédits relatifs au Maghreb (Algiers, 1924), 297.

55 ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 13 May 1408, fol. 1r.56 ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 15 Jun. 1408, fol. 1r; ASP, D.

998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 4 Sep. 1408, fol. 1r.57 ASP, D. 892, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 20 Jun. 1408, fol. 1v; ASP,

D. 892, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 12 Sep. 1408, fol. 1r.

responsible for his initial defeat in late summer to early fall 1407between al-Hamma and Nefzaoua.54 The Honein caravan may havein fact delayed its departure in a bid to avoid the Abué ‘Abd Allaéh’seastbound forces, only to run into them all the same, or into theirflanking Arab outriders. It would have been quite natural for partof the captured copper to be then carried east, with the advancingarmy, while negotiators sought a ransom that would have nicelyrounded out Abué ‘Abd Allaéh’s war chest. This would acount rathertidily for news of the robbery spreading as late as January 1408, aswell as for the fact that word of the stiff ransom of 10 double dinarsa camel load arrived by way of Collo and Annaba around mid-May1408.55

By 15 June 1408, as the rebellion was collapsing under Abué Faé ris’counterattack, there was still hope that the metal would be ransomedby Jewish negotiators. The Majorcan copper market had nonethelessstalled, and the Datini branch feared that its Valencian counterpartwould find itself in the same position, given that “all of it [thecopper] goes by the same route” (i.e. through Honein).56 AbrahamArquet had lost all the copper purchased from the Datini firm andwas temporarily penniless, and Niccolò begged the Florence mothercompany to arrange the sale of a batch of Arquet’s kermes in lieuof cash payment. Magaluff ben Allon anxiously waited for a ship toreturn from Oran, Honein and Mostaganem so that he could paythe Datini firm for the copper that originally formed part of thebatch put up for sale on Francesco Datini’s own account. Niccolò’spocket, incidentally, was just as empty and he proposed to draw billsof exchange on Barcelona to raise much needed cash.57 Finally, inDecember the worst possible news arrived from the Maghrib—although some of the metal had indeed been recovered, over a halfwas lost for good.

Some 315 quintals (12.8 metric tons) of the Datini/Lapacciocopper had fortunately remained in Honein under the safeguard


58 ASP, D. 892, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 16 (18) Dec 1408, fol. 1v.59 ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 28 Jan. 1409, fol. 1r.60 ASP, D. 892, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 16 Aug. 1410, fol. 3r. See

also ASP, D. 875, Florence-Barcelona, Luca del Sera to Datini Co., 23 Aug.1410; ASP, D. 892, Majorca-Barcelona, Datini Co., 23 Sep. 1410, fol. 2r; ASP,D. 1110, Florence-Barcelona, Ser Lapo Mazzei to Datini Co., 24 Aug. 1410, inMelis, Aspetti, 76. For well-known general accounts of Francesco Datini’s death,burial, and bequests, see Melis, Aspetti, 75-7, and Iris Origo, The Merchant of

of Ayon Susen. So did some of Giovanni Tosinghi’s lot (whether alsostored with Susen or not remains unclear). Another 60 quintals wererescued, but the ransom was more “than it was worth,” as Niccolòput it. The Jewish merchant who made the arrangements took thecopper to the Tuat in person, but was not expected to do betterthan break even. The Majorca branch was moreover billed 78 R. forits share of customs and expenses. Another 1,256 doblas’ worth ofcopper was entrusted to a Honein Jew who forwarded the entire lotto the Tuat together with other remnants of merchandise, but thiscargo was in its turn stolen, probably in November 1408. Theunfortunate merchant was finally allowed to discount the lostshipment at 700 doblas (as opposed to over 1,300 original worth),pawning a house in Honein to raise 400 doblas and promising topay the remaining 300 in nine months’ time.58 In Majorca the Jewishcopper dealers closed ranks and made themselves inconspicuous, soldonly for cash, and insisted on generous merchant credit whenbuying.59

In April-May 1409 caravan suppliers began to make deals again,but the market remained soft. Niccolò hoped that “those of thecaravan (chanfila, i.e. Ar. qaé fila)” might ultimately buy some of themetal left with Ayon Susen, but in vain. There was no demand forcopper plate. Buyers might eventually be found, as Niccolò wasinformed, if the plates were made up into rods, but the expensesounded like throwing good money after bad. By 1410, however,things seemed back to normal. The late summer brought news thatTosinghi’s leftover copper was finally about to find a buyer, andNiccolò wrote in an upbeat tone to the Barcelona sister branch thathe was on the verge of bartering another 150 quintals for merchan-dise. He also sought to bring over to Majorca 100 quintals of copperobtained by the Valencia branch at an advantageous price. His keyletter from this period is dated 16 August 1410, the very day Fran-cesco Datini died.60


Prato (Harmondsworth, G.B.: Peregrine Books, 1963; reprinted 1979), 341-6.61 Zanobi died on 21 July 1400. The estate’s commissaria (with Antonio di

Ser Bartolomeo and Lorenzo di Francesco di Vanni as executors andDomenico di Tommaso di Francesco della Vacca overseeing the Venetianoffice) carried on business on behalf of his minor male heirs (taken toFlorence by their mother). For parallels between the business styles ofcommissaria and eredi di ... (“heirs of”), see Melis, Aspetti, 31 n.3.

62 Pegolotti, Pratica, 382.

To set the Majorca-Honein-Tuat metal trade into a broadercontext, it will be useful to review here the main European sourcesof copper at the turn of the century. A clear answer regarding theDatini copper provenance, however, must await the outcome ofattempts to backtrace through Venice individual west-bound metalshipments. Given the nature of the firm’s correspondence withZanobi di Taddeo Gaddi and then with the executors of his com-mercial estate,61 unravelling the archival leads does not hold muchpromise of a quick and unequivocal identification of specific minesor even intermediate markets associated with individual batches ofcopper demonstrably shipped to the Balearics. The present dis-cussion remains therefore confined to outlining plausible alternativesand screening out unlikely ones in the light of current research.

The Datini records offer a few interesting although not unpro-blematic hints. Firstly, as already mentioned, Venetian copper wasclearly favoured by Honein dealers supplying the southbound trans-Saharan caravans. The difficulty is that while copper of varied pro-venances passed through both markets, Flemish and Venetian, someof the sources were identical. This was particularly true for the so-called Polish copper, which came from the mines of Slovakia andHungary. Barring differences imparted by final refining and plateproduction (impossible to ascertain from the data thus far associatedwith the Majorca route), the intrinsic characteristics of such shared-source metal should not in principle have diverged so widely as toaffect buyer behaviour in a systematic fashion. As in the case ofearlier fourteenth-century Levant tin-buyers’ reputed preference forVenetian-made rods,62 the pattern may thus reflect nothing morethan the assurance of quality implied in the Venetian product’s hall-mark, without saying much about preferences for copper from anygiven primary source.

Secondly, and somewhat more usefully, the prevalence of ramein tavole in the shipments makes it likely that the metal resembled


63 Pegolotti, Pratica, 381.64 For the question of metallic zinc, see P. T. Craddock, Early Metal Mining

and Production (London: Edinburgh University Press, 1995). There have beenhints, however, of an unusually advanced production of zinc and of small zincliturgical items in Bohemia in the thirteenth century. See Karel Nováæek,“Nerostné suroviny stpedovbkých Fech jako archeologický problém (bilance aperspektivy výzkumu se zambpením na výrobu a zpracování kovù),” Archeolo-gické rozhledy 53 (2001): 279-309, and K. Charvátová, J. Valentová, and P.Charvát, “Sídlištb 13. století mezi Malínem a Novými Dvory, o. Kutná Hora,”Památky archeologické 76 (1985): 101-67.

the yellow-hue rame afinato e messo in tavole a Vinegia described byPegolotti more than half a century earlier.63 The hue points to anatural copper-zinc alloy containing too little zinc to be rated bycontemporaries as brass. This is not at all strange, for prior to c.1740 pure metallic zinc was for the most part neither known noravailable, and varieties of brass or bronze were commonly lumpedtogether as “copper”.64 Thirdly, the risk of coming across shipmentsof “sour” plate may suggest relatively arsenic-rich batches. Arsenic,as is well known, imparts greater strength to copper at hightemperatures (while also raising the annealing point from 190 C toaround 550 C), but elevated arsenic (above 0.5 per cent) embrittlesthe metal.

Relatively zinc-rich “copper” partly flawed through inclusion ofappreciable traces of arsenic certainly readily evokes the copper-arsenic-antimony fahlores exploited in various parts of Europeintermittenly ever since the Early Bronze Age. The literature relatingto fahlores and their prehistoric and historic exploitation is sub-stantial and growing and there is no need to review it here, but itmight nonetheless be good to recall the ores’ basic typology. Fahlore(“pale ore” or gray copper ore, Agricola’s argentum rude album(1547)) represents one of the two key groups of gray coppersulphosalts, namely the tetrahedrite group. The second is theenargite group, much less relevant here. Fahlores range in compo-sition between the tetrahedrite and tennantite types (darker steel-gray tetrahedrite (Cu,Fe)3SbS3,25 or (Cu,Fe)3AsS3,25 and lighter gray-black metallic-lustre tennantite (Cu,Ag,Fe,Zn)12As4S13). Copper maybe substituted in the ores, in widely varying proportions, by a rangeof metals, from Fe to Ag, Bi, Co, Hg, Ni, Pb, Zn, Ge, and Sn. Zinc,silver, arsenic and antimony, in particular, as well as bismuth, tendto carry over into any unrefined metal smelted from fahlore.


65 B. Höppner et al., “Prehistoric Copper Production in the Inn Valley(Austria), and the Earliest Copper in Central Europe,” Archaeometry 47 (2)(2005): 297, 306. For 2003 lead isotope data from the Erzgebirge and nearbyareas, see E. Niederschlag et al., “Determination of Lead Isotope Ratios byMultiple Collector ICP–MS: A Case Study of Early Bronze Age Artefacts andtheir Possible Relation with Ore Deposits of the Erzgebirge,” Archaeometry 45(2003): 61–100.

66 R. A. Ixer, “The Role of Ore Geology and Ores in the ArchaeologicalProvenancing of Metals,” in S. M. M. Young et al., Metals in Antiquity. BARInternational Series 792 (1999): 43-52; R. A. Ixer, “Copper-arsenic Ores andBronze Age Mining and Metallurgy with Special Reference to the BritishIsles,” online study retrieved from http://www.goodprovenance.com.

67 Blanchard’s valuable Mining, Metallurgy and Minting, 3, Afro-European

From the point of view of metal source attribution, unfortunately,the difficulty with fahlores is threefold. Firstly, fahlores are verycommon among almost all hydrothermal sulphide ores (e.g. meso-and epithermal deposits), in sedimentary exhalative deposits, inpolymetallic veins and skarns, in veins associated with S-typegranites, and often also in copper porphyry deposits, while occurringas accessory minerals in volcanogenic sulphides. Recent research hasalso shown that despite their reputation for poor smelting (relatedto modern, not pre-modern processes) fahlores were smelted inEurope far earlier than previously thought. Secondly, the chemicalcomposition of fahlore metal is not very indicative of provenance,as it depends on the actual smelting sequence, at least with respectto arsenic and antimony content. Lead isotope ratios are a betterguide, but as late as 2005 these were lacking for some areas ofinterest, particularly Slovakia.65 Thirdly, as R. A. Ixer pointed outin a Bronze Age context, too much work yielding geochemical andisotope data has tended to focus on notable specimens (the “magpieschool of provenancing”), not on mundane orebodies smelted in thepast.66 For medieval fahlore research, the greatest bottleneck lies ina certain lack of informed comprehension between archive andlaboratory.

The following brief survey of European copper sources isnecessarily quite sweeping, given the relative prominence in all thelikely extraction areas of both fahlore bodies and related secondarymineral assemblages within the upper oxidised zones (gossans). Tothe best of my knowledge, however, no such compact overview isreadily available, or at least none bridging the recent historical andgeological literature.67 Whatever its limitations, the exercise may


Supremacy, Part 3, “Base Metal Production,” unfortunately does not fill the gapas fully as might have been hoped for.

68 Recapitulating the orebodies in a joint historical and geological/mine-ralogical context may be also of some use for future metallographic andisotope work on African copper artefacts, apparently stalled as far as historicalprovenancing is concerned. See the “1994 Annual Report” of the SmithsonianCenter for Materials Research and Education, Lead Isotope Program (athttp://www.si.edu/scmre).

69 See e.g. Göran Dahlbäck, “Eisen und Kupfer, Butter und Lachs. Schwe-dische Produkte im hansischen Handel,” in Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, ed., Ver-gleichende Ansätze in der hansischen Geschichtsforschung, Hansische Studien 13(Trier: Porta Alba Verlag, 2002), 163-74. For site analyses, soil chemistry, andbrief historical overviews of Falun mining, see Elin Carlsson et al., “HistoricalAtmospheric Deposition in a Swedish Mining Area Traced by S Isotope Ratiosin Soils,” Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 110 (1999): 103-18, and Jemt AnnaEriksson and Ulf Qvarfort, “Age Determination of the Falun Copper Mine by14C-datings and Palynology,” Geologiska Föreningen i Stockholm Förhandlingar 118(1996): 43-7.

70 Hosenberg is not not far from Idar-Oberstein. The later fifteenth-centuryworks are discussed in Rosemarie Homann et al., “Territoriale und bergbau-

prove worthwhile, especially should it eventually help to spotlightotherwise inoccuous snippets of information in archival tracksconcatenating from the Datini material, snippets that might permitthe circle to be closed around the Venetian/Balearic trans-Saharancopper trade.68

Some of the relatively buyer-deprecated copper reaching Honeinby way of Flanders in the Datini years clearly moved throughHanseatic channels (especially following the return of the HanseKontor to Bruges from Dordrecht in 1392, which ended the 1388-1392 Hanseatic boycott [Handelssperre] of Flanders). Two main supplystreams merged here: Swedish and Slovak/Hungarian. The Swedishmetal came, partly by way of Visby (on the island of Gotland), fromCentral Sweden’s massive copper sulphide deposits at Falun (StoraKopparberget) between Lakes Runn, Varpan and St. Vällan.69 TheSlovak/Hungarian metal came from areas and localities discussedfurther on, mainly via Kraków, the Wisla River valley (Thorn [Pol.Torux]), Lübeck and Danzig (Gdaxsk). The third source, if alreadyworked around 1400, as tenuous indications of early smelting activityin nearby Allenbach may suggest, could have been the Hosenbergmines in the Hosenbachtal near Fischbach an der Nahe in theHunsrück. Kupferkies and fahlore copper was easily shipped fromhere to the Low Countries through Cologne, Aachen, and Maas-tricht, at least after 1460.70


liche Grenzziehungen auf dem Hosenberg bei Fischbach/Nahe 1473-1712,”Zeitschrift für Berg- und Hüttenwesen 9 (2003), Beiheft 4. For regional context,see e.g. H. Pohl, “Die Montanunternehmer im Rheinland vom 13.-18.Jahrhundert,” in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Miniere e metallurgia. Secoli XIII-XVIII. Diciottesima Settimana di Studi, Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica“F. Datini” di Prato, 11-15 aprile 1986. Atti in CD-Rom (Prato: Istituto Inter-nazionale di Storia Economica, 1999).

71 A concise overview of the relevant geology is available in H. Kulke, “DerHarz (Norddeutschland): Geologisch-Lagerstättenkundlicher Überblick, Histo-rische Baumaterialien (Natursteine, Gipsmörtel, Schlackensteine, Blei),”Mitteilungen der Österreischen Mineralogischen Gesellschaft 142 (1997): 43-84. K.Mohr, Geologie und Minerallagerstätten des Harzes, 2d ed. (Stuttgart: E.Schweizerbart, 1993), remains an essential reference work. The standardhistorical works include e.g. Gerhard Laub, “Zur Technologie der Kupfer-gewinnung aus Rammelsberger Erzen im Mittelalter,” Harz-Zeitschrift 32 (1980):15-76; Franz Irsigler, “Über Harzmetalle, ihre Verarbeitung und Verbreitungim Mittelalter. Ein Überblick,” in C. Meckseper, ed., Stadt im Wandel. Kunstund Kultur des Bürgertums in Norddeutschland 1150-1650 (Stuttgart-BadCannstatt: Edition Cantz, 1985), 3: 315-21; and C.-H. Hauptmeyer, “Bergbauund Hüttenwesen im Harz während des Mittelalters,” in K. H. Kaufbold, ed.,Bergbau und Hüttenwesen im und am Harz (Hannover: Hahn, 1992), 11-20.

72 The established view of the mining crisis is outlined for instance in H.Steuer, “Bergbau auf Silber und Kupfer im Mittelalter,” in H. Steuer and U.Zimmermann, eds., Alter Bergbau in Deutschland. Sonderheft of Archäologie in

Some copper, however, may also have been brought to Flandersfrom the Harz Mountains, the Erzgebirge (Saxon and Bohemian OreRanges) or from the Saxon Erzgebirgsvorland. In the Harz (amodest 90 by 30 km northernmost outcropping of the Variscanorogen), Rammelsberg near Goslar had long been supplying north-western Europe with copper from massive syn-sedimentary poly-metallic sulfide ore formations in the local Wissenbacher slates.71

Harz mining nonetheless suffered crippling setbacks in the mid-fourteenth century. Both in Goslar and in the Oberharz ore extrac-tion came to a virtual standstill after 1360, partly owing to theexhaustion of the deep veins, as well as of smaller mineral bodiesin the upper oxidation layer that did not require work to a depthgreater than c. 20 m and therefore not much up-front investment.This was coupled with deforestation, rising labour costs aggravatedby plague mortality, shaft flooding partly compounded by climatechange, and investment bottlenecks reflecting old legal and insti-tutional patterns. Yet it is less than clear, at present, how prolongedthe mining complications really were. In particular, the extent andimpact of the deforestation “energy crisis” would seem to have variednotably from region to region.72


Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1993; Sonderausgabe, Hamburg: Nikol Verlagsgesell-schaft, 2000), 75-91. See also Christoph Bartels, Das Erzbergwerk Rammelsberg.Die Betriebsgeschichte 1924-1988 mit einem Abriß der älteren Bergbaugeschichte(Goslar: Preussag AG Metall, 1988), 15. For further aspects of the mid-fourteenth-century problems in the Oberharz, see Götz Alper, “MittelalterlicheBlei-/Silberverhüttung beim Johanneser Kurhaus, Clausthal-Zellerfeld (Harz),”Nachrichten aus Niedersachsens Urgeschichte 67 (1998): 87-134, and Götz Alperet al., “Johanneser Kurhaus.” Ein mittelalterlicher Blei-/Silbergewinnungsplatz beiClausthal-Zellerfeld im Oberharz (Rahden [Westfalen]: Verlag Marie Leidorf,2004). Revisionist approaches appear in Christoph Bartels, “Der HistorischeBergbau und das Hüttenwesen im niedersächsischen Harz,” unpublished lec-ture, Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, 7 April 2005. For deforestationeffects and charcoal supply, see e.g. M.-L. Hillebrecht, Die Relikte der Holzkohle-wirtschaft als Indikatoren für Waldnutzung und Waldentwicklung. Untersuchungenan Beispielen aus Südniedersachsen (Göttingen: Goltze Druck, 1982).

73 For Rammelsberg’s two main orebodies, with clear diagrams, see D.Large and E. Walcher, “The Rammelsberg Massive Sulphide Cu-Zn-Pb-Ba-Deposit, Germany: An Example of Sediment-hosted, Massive Sulphide Mine-ralisation,” Mineralium Deposita 34 (1999): 522-38.

74 Alper, “Johanneser Kurhaus,” 94-7.75 The deposits were studied by Burkhard Frenzel und Dr. Heike Kempter

(Universität Hohenheim). The c. 1400 C.E. spike is much more modest thanthe one characterizing the periods 1150-1250 C.E. and c. 1500 C.E.. Formethodology and caveats see Kempter’s Work Group webpage at http://www.rzuser. uni-heidelberg.de/~i12/emooremetall-index.htm, “Peat Bog Archives ofAtmospheric Deposition—Ombrotrophic Peat Bogs as Archives.”

The evidence of flooding is more consistent, and there is littledoubt that the Rathstiefster Stollen at Rammelsberg, for instance, couldnot handle peak waterflows by 1360. Moreover, known copper-richreserves (mainly chalcopyrite, CuFeS2) in the 300 m deep Old Ore-body seem to have been severely overexploited.73 In the Oberharzthe Alte Mann silver/lead fields of the Clausthal-Zellerfeld area (for-mer Celle), flourishing in the thirteenth century, were now aban-doned. Those peripheral Oberharz smelting settlements that workedup Rammelsberg copper ore also declined, through a knock-oneffect.74 Yet recent studies of metal traces from atmospheric deposi-tion in the peats of the Sonnenberger Moor (Oberharz) suggest anintriguing cyclical spike of moderate importance in copper/silverprocessing, with a peak around 1400 (at peat layer depth c. -900to -1,000 mm).75 A revival of activity at the turn of the century,promoted by the town of Goslar and the Welf overlords, thusappears likely.

Small fahlore workings (albeit extracting mainly silver) were alsoactive in the Mittel- and Unterharz, in the vicinity of Harzgerode


76 For an overview see Dieter Beeger, Das Sächsische Erzgebirge: Geologie,Bergbau und Kultur (Vienna: Naturhistorisches Museum, 1988), and the Ostharzchapter in Gerd Seidel, ed., Geologie von Thüringen, 2nd updated ed. (Stuttgart:Schweitzerbart, 2003); further also J. Rentzsch et al., “Die laterale Verbreitungder Erzmineral-assoziationen im deutschen Kupferschiefer,” Zeitschrift dergeologischen Wissenschaften 25 (1997): 1-6. For general estimates of total copperextraction at Mansfeld from c. 1200 to 1990, see G. Knitzschke, “Metall- undProduktionsbilanz für die Kupferschieferlagerstätte im südlichen Harzvorland,”in G. Jankowski, ed., Zur Geschichte des Mansfelder Kupferschiefer-Bergbaus(Clausthal-Zellerfeld: Gesellschaft Deutscher Metallhütten- und Bergleute,1995), 270-84.

77 W. Schwabenicky, “Hochmittelalterliche Bergstädte im sächsischen Erz-gebirge und Erzgebirgsvorland,” in Siedlungsforschung: Archäologie—Geschichte—Geographie 10 (1992): 195, 206-7; W. Schwabenicky, “Der mittelalterlicheSilber- Blei- und Kupferbergbau im mittleren und westlichen Erzgebirge sowieErzgebirgsvorland unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Grabungsergebnissevom Treppenhauer bei Sachsenburg,” Doctoral Dissertation (Berlin, 1992), 20,22-3, 95; H. Douffet,, “Erzgebirgische Bergstädte,” in Dieter Dolgner, ed.,Stadtbaukunst im Mittelalter, (Berlin: Verlag für Bauwesen, 1990), 182-4.

(Hagenrode) and Neudorf, although the meagre evidence is incon-clusive regarding conditions around 1400. To the east and south-eastof the Harz, copper had been mined since the thirteenth centuryfrom the stillwater sediments containing the black bituminous poly-metallic marl slates (shales) (Kupferschiefer) of the Mansfeld basin andthe Sangerhausen Revier. Hydrothermal processes whose exact geo-logy is still debated had left behind mainly bornite (Buntkupferkies),chalcopyrite, Kupferglanz (Cu2S), and tennantite fahlore, encasedbetween the Zechstein conglomerate base and the overtopping Zech-steinkalk. The main early focal area lay in the north-western cornerof the Mansfeld field, at the Kupferberg near Hettstedt.76

Erzgebirge copper may also have found its way into ingot batchesreaching Flanders and from there the Western Mediterranean.Copper was here a companion product of silver and lead extractionfrom post-Variscan hydrothermal vein-type ores occurring for ins-tance in the Freiberg gray gneiss and yielding among other coppersulphides and arsenides in association with chalcopyrite. The mid-fourteenth century troubles afflicting the mining sector clearly didnot spare the Saxon Erzgebirge (Saxon Ore Range). Just like in theOberharz, smaller mining operations proved relatively more vul-nerable. The single archaeologically best documented settlement thusfar, Bleiberg on the Treppenhauer (above the Zschopau Valley nearSachsenberg, NE of Chemnitz), was permanently abandoned at thisjuncture.77 How long production remained in decline in the Erz-


80 Salvatore Piatti, Palù-Palae: frammenti di storia (Palù del Fersina: Comunedi Palù del Fersina, 1996), and Anthony R. Rowley, Fersental (Val Fersina beiTrient/Oberitalien): Untersuchung einer Sprachinselmundart (Tübingen: Niemeyer,1986).

81 Raffaello Vergani, “Technology and Organization of Labour in theVenetian Copper Industry (16th-18th Centuries),” Journal of European EconomicHistory 14 (1) (1985): 173-86.

82 The relevant localities are Mühlbach am Hochkönig, Hüttau-Larzenbach(yielding Kupferkies and antimony-rich fahlore by the fourteenth century),Brenntalwald (securely documented only from 1425), and Kupferplatte(documented from 1447).

It is unfortunately difficult to establish, at this point, which coppertypes—“Polish” (i.e. Slovak), Swedish, Harzer, Erzgebirger, oreventually Hunsrücker—were most heavily traded in Bruges at anygiven juncture and in what proportion. Even tentative answers wouldhelp shed more light on the late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century trans-Saharan caravan trade’s predilection for “Venetian” asopposed to “Flemish” copper, but the issue must be left open fornow. The problem is further compounded by the fact that linkagesbetween less known mines and the commercial “catchment areas”of specific trade centers such as Bruges or Venice remain vague.This is true for instance for Bavaria’s Kupferberg in Oberfranken,near Kulmbach. Mining was probably in progress here by the 1320s,and in 1340 the works already suffered from severe flooding. Theoutlook possibly improved as early as 1364, but it is difficult to saywhether copper from the relatively high-yield local ore travelledrather south or north-west, if indeed it possessed greater than re-gional importance.

The detailed structure of the Venetian copper trade “catchmentarea” around 1400 remains correspondingly blurred. The closest re-gional sources lay in the upper Veneto, among the Belluno dolomiterocks, and in the Valle del Fersina (Trento, Ger. Fersental), wherefamilies of immigrant miners from the Tirol and Carinthia hadsettled already in the thirteenth century.80 The first securely docu-mented copper mining operations in the Valle Imperina near Agor-do (Parco Nazionale Dolomiti Bellunesi), however, date at best tothe early 1400s, and given current evidence they are not very likelyto have contributed much of the metal refined in Venice forshipping to the Western Mediterranean between 1390 and 1410.81

The orebodies of Austria’s Salzach Valley also do not seem a likelyprovenance.82 Copper, mainly from Kupferkies and fahlore, may have


83 Gerald Fuchs, “Montanarchäologische Untersuchungen in der Walchenbei Öblarn,” Report—ARGIS Archäologie Service (http://www.argis.at). See alsoKarl A. Redlich, “Die Walchen bei Öblarn. Ein Kiesbergbau im Ennsthal,”Berg- und Hüttenmännisches Jahrbuch 51 (1903): 1-62; Hans Jörg Köstler,“Neuzeitliches Montanwesen im Bezirk Liezen,” in Bergbau und Hüttenwesen imBezirk Liezen (Steiermark). Kleine Schriften der Abteilung Schloß Trautenfels amSteiermärkischen Landesmuseum Joanneum (Trautenfels: Verein Schloß Trautenfels,1993), 24, 69-75, 78; J. Wichner, “Kloster Admont und seine Beziehungenzum Bergbau und zum Hüttenbetrieb,” Berg- und Hüttenmännisches Jahrbuch 39(1891): 111, 129-30, 135-6, 142-3, 146, 149, 153-4. For the mineralogy seeHeinz J. Unger, “Der Schwefel- und Kupferkiesbergbau in der Walchen beiÖblarn im Ennstal,” Archiv für Lagerstättenforschung in den Ostalpen 7 (1968):2-52.

84 Pegolotti, Pratica, 381.85 Höppner, “Copper Production,” 301.

come to Venice, however, from the Austrian Walchen and the OberEnns Valley of north-western Styria (between Öblarn and Schlad-ming). Inferential data suggest local mining activity from c. 1230,although clear evidence relates only to 1432-1434.83 It is un-fortunately a moot poin whether the term rame dell’ene in the Fresco-baldi redaction of Pegolotti’s Pratica della mercatura refers to the EnnsValley or not. If it does, the Enns would have constituted the secondhighest quality source of Venetian red copper, at least up to c.1350.84

The next most prominent nearby provenance likewise raisesdating issues. The dolomite and limestone fahlore mineralizationsof the Schwaz-Brixlegg area and adjacent orebodies (e.g. Falkenstein,Klein- and Großkogel) in the Unterinntal (some 40 km north-eastof Innsbruck) appear to fit the mixed characteristics of the Venetiancopper in tavole quite well. The local ores do contain significant con-centrations of zinc. The smelting of secondary copper minerals inthe host rock would have given a copper rich in arsenic and anti-mony, while metal with relatively low arsenic, antimony and sulphur(“sweet” copper) could have come from a mixture of fahlores andsecondary copper minerals containing nickel.85 Such variation wouldnot be suprising during early mining stages, before shafts andgalleries were driven deeper. But although fahlores were workedextensively here during the Bronze Age, tradition cites only 1409for the rediscovery of outcroppings, a year later than the commonlyaccepted date of the Schladminger Brief that became the basis ofTyrol’s mining law. According to the Schwazer Bergchronik, the Fal-kenstein veins were opened in 1420, attracting the first large wave


86 For background see Robert Krauß, “Kupfer und Silber—ein verlorenerReichtum,” in Schwazer Silber—vergeudeter Reichtum? 1. Internationales Bergbau-symposium Schwaz 2002 (Schwaz: Berenkamp, 2003), 139-42; Lothar Suhling,“Rattenberger und Schwazer Schmelzen auf Silber und Kupfer vor und um1500. Zu den Verhüttungsverfahren nach Quellen des späten 15. und frühen16. Jahrhunderts,” in Schwazer Silber, 209-24. Concerning the Brief, see KarlStadlober, “Der Schladminger Bergbrief,” Res Montanarum 30 (2003): 5-10.The Schladminger Bergbrief of Lienhart der Egkzlhaim, Richter zu Slennig, ofcourse poses challenges of its own, given that the 1764 edited text is dated“nach Christi Geburde dreyzehenhundert Jahr, und in dem achtenden Jahran Montag nach St. Margärethe Tag,” i.e. 1308 and not 1408 as commonlyaccepted.

of miners from Bohemia, Saxony, and elsewhere, and the still viableold works in the Alte Zeche orebody were rediscovered in Schwaz onlyin 1426.86

On the face of it, Inn Valley copper thus enters into play too lateto fit the Datini timeframe. On the other hand, much older (pre-historic) mines are known to have existed at the top of the Schwazdeposits (Schwabboden and Eiblschrofen), but unfortunately manyof the locations have been obliterated or made inaccessible in thegiant rockslide of 1999. Secondly, the recorded Schwaz chronologyfits all too closely a pattern of single-date eponymous “rediscovery”almost simultaneous with legislative ordering. Such patterns typicallyserve to formalize in human memory more drawn-out processes, inthis case perhaps distorted by the fact that the eyecatching elementwas silver, not the much more mundane copper. Inn Valley coppermay well have traded in Venice at the end of the fourteenth century,just a few years before the farm maid Gertrud Kandlerin drove outto pasture the legendary bull who by accident rooted up some silverore.

The 1409 “find” is quite likely to have been preceded by a goodfew decades of prospecting and small-scale smelting in which copperwould have been the most obvious product suited to cover the costsof searching for silver. Should this scenario prove correct, then someof the copper refined by the makers of Venetian tavole di rame inthe 1390s and early 1400s could indeed have been extracted fromeither the Schwaz dolomite primary ores (arsenical argentiferous te-trahedrite with a generic formula (Cu,Ag)10Zn2(As,Sb)4S13, from theBrixlegg area Triassic limestone tennantite (with a generic formula(Cu,Ag,Fe,Zn)12As4S13), or from other nearby rock formations contain-


87 Günther Frh. v. Probszt, Die niederungarischen Bergstädte. Ihre Entwicklungund wirtschaftliche Bedeutung bis zum Übergang an das Haus Habsburg (1546)(Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1966), 260-1, and Z. Pál Pach, “Die Verkehrsroutedes Levantehandels nach Siebenbürgen und Ungarn zur Zeit der KönigeLudwig von Anjou und Sigismund von Luxemburg,” in Werner Mägdefrau,ed., Europäische Stadtgeschichte in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Weimar: Böhlaus,1979), 60-91. For the old toponymy around Senj, see e.g. the IIId MilitaryMapping Survey of Austria-Hungary, 1:200,000 (sheet 33-45, “Zengg”). Thelate fourteenth century Venetian link has been recently highlighted in depthby Martin SŠ tefánik, “Pramene o banskobystrickej medi v Benátkach z druhejpolovice 14. storocš ia,” in Štúdie z dejín baníctva a banského podnikania. Zborníkk zšivotnému jubileu Mariána Skladaného (Studien zur Bergbau- und Bergunter-nehmengeschichte. Festschrift für Marián Skladaný zum 60. Geburtstag), Acta histo-rica posoniensia I, ed. Miroslav Danisš (Bratislava: Katedra vsšeobecných dejinFF UC, 2001), 48–63. See also Martin SŠ tefánik, “Kupfer aus dem ungarischenKönigreich im Spiegel der venezianischen Senatsprotokollen im 14. Jahr-hundert,” in R. Tasser and E. Westermann, eds., Der Tiroler Bergbau und dieDepression der europäischen Montanwirtschaft im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert. Akten derinternationalen bergbaugeschichtlichen Tagung Steinhaus. Veröffentlichungen desSüdtiroler Landesarchivs 16 (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2004), 210–26, andMartin SŠ tefánik, “Pramene k stredovekým dejinám Uhorska a Slovenska vbenátskom archíve,” Slovenská archivistika 39 (2004): 40-58. For the Venetian-Hungarian historical and commercial context from 1409-1412 onward, justastride and beyond the present study’s time limits, see W. von Stromer, “DieKontinentalsperre Kaiser Sigismunds gegen Venedig 1412-1413, 1418-1433und die Verlagerung der Transkontinentalen Transportwege,” in A. V. Marx,ed., Trasporti e sviluppo economico, secoli XIII-XVIII, Istituto Internazionale diStoria Economica “F. Datini” di Prato, no. 5 (Florence, 1986), 61-84, andMartin Štefánik, Obchodná vojna krála ZŠigmunda proti Benátkam (HandelskriegKönig Sigismunds gegen Venedig) (Bratislava: Historický Ústav SAV, 2004), whichusefully expands the relevant sections of the well-known Elemér Mályusz,Kaiser Sigismund in Ungarn, 1387-1437 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990).

ing fahlore. Further research into possible pre-1409 copper miningin the Inn Valley is necessary.

This leaves as an acknowledged and much less problematic sourceof Venetian exports the “Hungarian” Slovak copper, which alsoflowed into Hanseatic trade channels through Poland, as alreadynoted. The metal normally reached Venice along three alternativeroutes: (a) the so-called Pettauer Weg (through Ptuj on the DravaRiver) across the Karst to Trieste; (b) the Semmeringstraße, withVienna as transit hub; and (c) the road from Buda to Croatia’sZagreb and then to the port of Senj (It. Segna) (opposite the islandof Krk, in the Velebitski Kanal (Canale della Morlacca, also knownas della Montagna, on the landward side of the Kvarnericá Embay-ment), and from there by ship to the Venetian lagoon.87 The three


88 E.g. ASP, D. 549, Venice-Pisa, Zanobi di Taddeo Gaddi to Datini Co., 8Aug. 1393, fol. 1r.

89 S. Jankovicá , “The Carpatho-Balkanides and Adjacent Area: A Sector ofthe Tethyan Eurasian Metallogenic Belt,” Mineralium Deposita 32 (1997): 426-33, and in particular 430.

90 Originally the towns were only six: Banská Belá joined them in 1453,and the usual blanket mentions of “seven mining towns” are thus inaccurate.Useful regional overviews are found in Miroslav Kamenický, “Baníctvo vstredoslovenskej banskej oblasti,” Historický cšasopis 45 (1997): 173-4; see alsoStefan Kazimir, “Zur Versorgung mittelslowakischer Bergstädte mit Nahrungs-mitteln und anderen Verbrauchsgütern vom 14. bis 18. Jahrhundert.Reflexionen über dauerhafte Elemente in der langen Frist,” in EkkehardWestermann, ed., Bergbaureviere als Verbrauchszentren im vorindustriellen Europa.Fallstudien zu Beschaffung und Verbrauch von Lebensmitteln sowie Roh- undHilfsstoffen (13.-18. Jahrhundert) (Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschafts-geschichte, Beihefte, 130) (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1997), 295-305. A handytool for place name concordances are the 1900-1914 topographic maps of theIIId Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary, 1:200,000 (sheets 37-49“Neusohl”; 38-49 “Leutschau”; 39-49 “Kassa (Kaschu)”).

routes carried both raw copper (probably Schwarzkupfer) and refinedmetal (“afinato in Ungheria”).88

The Slovak orebodies were located in two discrete zones in theWestern Carpathian (Západné Karpaty) geological sub-province ofthe extensive Carpatho-Balkan metallogenic area.89 The first one,Central Slovakia, supplied copper mainly from two regions: (a) theVeporské Vrchy, forming part of the Veporské Pásmo geological belt(locality of Mubietová [Lybetha, Ger. Libethen]), and (b) the Staro-horské Vrchy, an extension of the DŠ umbierské Tatry portion of theLower Tatra (Nízké Tatry) mountain chain (town of Banská Bystrica[Ger. Neusohl, Hung. Besztercebánya]). Both of these extraction andsmelting centres ranked in the early fifteenth century among the keymembers of the so-called niederungarischen Bergstädte (the miningtowns of Lower Hungary: Kremnica, Banská Štiavnica, Banská Bys-trica, Nová Banš a, Pukanec, Mubietová and, a little later on, BanskáBelá).90

Mubietová is located geologically in the north-eastern sector ofthe Central Slovakia Neogene Volcanic Field, between Banská Bystri-ca and the cone and fluvial apron of the Pomana andesite strato-volcano and to the north-east of the giant Štiavnica stratovolcanoof almost 50 km in diameter, with a 20 km caldera (16.4 to 10.5million years ago). The c. 6 km broad Mubietová mineral zone linesthe north-western edge of the Veporské Vrchy, between Podbrezová


91 J. Lexa, J. SŠ tohl and V. Konecšný, “The Banská SŠ tiavnica Ore District:Relationship Between Metallogenetic Processes and the Geological Evolutionof a Stratovolcano,” Mineralium Deposita 34 (1999): 639-54.

92 Martina Kalabová, “Venné majetky uhorských královien v stredoslovenskejbanskej oblasti do roku 1478,” Historický cšasopis 52 (2004): 3-30, sets Mubietováand Banská Bystrica into a broader historical and administrative context,mainly after 1405. See also V. Bolerázsky, “Príspevok k vzniku a najstaršímdejinám slobodného královského banského mesta Mubietová,” Historický zborníkkraja 4 (1968): 363–8.

93 Too much economic significance should not be attributed to the second-ary mineral libethenite (Cu2[(OH)PO4]) from the local oxidation zone, firstdescribed in 1823 on the basis of samples from the abandoned works atMubietová, even though it alone was mentioned in the context of pre-modernlocal mining by Probszt, Die niederungarischen Bergstädte, 252.

94 J. Mazúrek, “Tazšobný prírodno-technický systém v banskej oblasti SŠpaniaDolina—Staré Hory,” in Stredné Slovensko—Prírodné vedy [Stredoslovenské muze-um, Banská Bystrica] 8 (1989): 23-68. For useful local observations see JosefMarko, “Altgebirg—Bergbau- und Wallfahrtsort,” Karpaten Jahrbuch 53 (2002)[2001]: 156-9.

95 The geology of the SŠ tiavnica, Javorie, Pomana and Vtácšnik volcanic

and Mubietová (partly in the CŠ iereazš mountain chain).91 The firstwritten records of local mining activity date to c. 1340. Recognizedas a community c. 1350 and endowed with the SŠtiavnica Bergrecht(Schemnitzer recht) in 1379, Mubietová produced fine copper (rankedso at least in the seventeenth century) rivalling that of neighbouringBanská Bystrica.92 Trivial amounts of the fourteenth-century metalmay have come from upper oxidation zones with inclusions ofcuprite (Cu2O) and low impurity copper, but the primary ores con-sisted of base-metal sulphides (mainly chalcopyrite), with associatedtetrahedrite, tennantite, arsenopyrite, and siderite.93 The three keycopper deposits, within 1 to 6.5 km of the settlement, were locatedat Podlipa, Svätodusšná, and Kolba. Copper mining began to wanegradually in the seventeenth century, and all work ceased in 1863.

In Banská Bystrica, the core zone of medieval copper and silverextraction lay north of the town, in the SŠpania Dolina, under thePánský Diel peak (in the Vallis dominorum, Ger. Herrengrund valley),and in the the Staré Hory hills (Ger. Altgebirg, localities of Richtá-rová and Piesky [Ger. Sandberg]).94 Intrusion-related and epithermalvein precious metal/base metal mineralizations associated with calc-alkaline rocks are usually identified as the economically viable metalsource here, with richer copper content in greater depth on basemetal veins. The degree of medieval exploitation of porphyry/skarncopper deposits remains unclear.95 The polymetallic works at Poniky


mineral-bearing zones is covered in Lexa et al., “Banská SŠ tiavnica OreDistrict,” 641 (Fig. 4). Regarding skarn deposits see ibid., 648-9.

96 For contextual area geology see e.g. M. Slavkay and M. Chovan, “AReview of Metallic ore Mineralization of the Nízké Tatry Mts.,” in P. Grecula,ed., Variscan Metallogeny in the Alpine Orogenic Belt, Mineralia Slovacamonograph (Bratislava: Geocomplex, 1996), 239-50.

97 As general background see e.g. Rainer Slotta, “Das Slowakische Erz-gebirge und seine Denkmäler,” in R. Slotta et al., eds., ‘Bei diesem Schein kehrtSegen ein’. Gold, Silber und Kupfer aus dem Slowakischen Erzgebirge, Ver-öffentlichungen aus dem Deutschen Bergbau-Museum Bochum 69 (Bochum,1997), 71-96.

(Drienok, Predbane) (c. 12 km ESE of Banská Bystrica) were moreimportant as a source of silver, lead and zinc than of copper,generally present in uneconomic concentrations. The local copperores include mainly chalcopyrite and occasional small veins of ten-nantite, in dolomite and in Triassic limestone. Exploitation largelystopped c. 1609. It is uncertain whether the chalcopyrite, tennantiteand tetrahedrite ores east of Drienok, in the area of PonickáLehôtka and Farbisšte (in the direction of Mubietová) were at allexploited in the middle ages. Hitherto documented mining andprospecting activity seems to date only from the later eighteenthcentury.96

The Central Slovak mining zone was economically cross-connectedby the 1380s with the second discrete source zone, Eastern Slovakia,through verleger activities and the ownership of mining-shares inBanská Bystrica by eastern merchants from the Spisš (Ger. Zips) area.Located in the Spisšsko-Gemerské Rudohorie and conjoined forma-tions (Slánske Hory—Hungarian Tokaj Mountains), the most signi-ficant Eastern Slovak extraction centres coalesced in the league ofUpper Hungarian mining towns (oberungarischen Bergstädte), whichincluded Gelnica, Smolník, Rudabánya, Jasov, Telkibánya, Rozšnš ava,and Spisšská Nová Ves.97 The oldest and most prestigious mining hubwas Gelnica (Hnilec, Hung. Gölniczbánya), often simply referred toas “The Mine” (Bánya, Bana). A local shift from an earlier emphasison precious metal extraction to the exploitation of copper and ironcan be dated to the 1360s, and by the end of the fourteenth centurySpisš (Zipser) copper had carved out a competitive niche in northernEuropean markets.

Smolník (Hung. Szmolnokbánya, Ger. Schmöllnitz), located to thesouth-west of Gelnica, in the area of the Volovské Vrchy (Volovec,Ger. Ochsenberg), lay closest to the most significant copper deposits.


98 Eugen Kladivík, “Zur Geschichte des Edel- und Buntmetallbergbaus imslowakischen Erzgebirge,” Der Anschnitt 50 (1998), 13-19; Ivan Hercko, “DieGold-, Silber- und Kupfererzlagerstätten im Slowakischen Erzgebirge,” in Slottaet al., Bei diesem Schein, 19-27; Mubomír Juck, “Výsady banských miest naSlovensku v stredoveku,” in Marsina, Banské mestá, 95, 98-9; Ivan Chalupecký,“Postavenie banského majstra vo východoslovenských banských mestách v 15.-16. storocš í,” in Marsina, Banské mestá, 141; Michal Popovicš , “K 655. výrocš iubaníctva v Rudnšanoch,” in Marsina, Banské mestá, 210.

99 Marián Skladaný, “Prvé turzovsko-fuggerovské zmluvy o spolocšnommediarskom podniku,” Historický cšasopis 43 (2) (1995): 215-29.

100 Vladimír Segeš, “Stredoveké mestá na Slovensku. Tepny spolocšenskéhopokroku,” História. Revue o dejinách spolocšnosti 1 (4) (2001): 6-9.

101 W. von Stromer, “Nürnberger Unternehmer im Karpatenraum. Ein ober-deutsches Buntmetall-Oligopol 1396-1412,” Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Material-nej 16 (4) (1968): 641-62; idem., “Das Zusammenspiel oberdeutscher undFlorentiner Geldleute bei der Finanzierung von König Ruprechts Italien-

The copper came from massive beds of chalcopyrite and pyrite inmetamorphic dark schists layered with alkaline volcanic rock, withsome admixture of arsenopyrite, tetrahedrite, sphalerite (ZnS) andgalena. Smellenczer kopper and its regional complements from Gelnicaand elsewhere loomed large among the Slovak and Hungarian metalexports and enjoyed a solid reputation. Smolník received urbanrights in 1327, higher criminal justice rights in 1339, and by 1338was already expanding its communal authority to the outlyingcommunities of SŠvedlár (Ger. Schwedler) to the north and Mnísšeknad Hnilcom (Hung. Meczenzéf) to the east. The source of the so-called Stillbacher kopper, Tichá Voda (Ger. Stillbach, WNW of Smol-ník), was administratively annexed by Smolník in 1344. Until the1360s, and thus before the Datini period, another nearby source ofcopper was exploited at Rudnš any (on the Mešdešný Potok stream, Ger.Kufurbach or Kupperbach).98

To conclude, it is necessary to put the Venetian/Majorcan coppertrade into a broader quantitative perspective. Aggregate figures forSlovak copper output prior to the period of the early Fugger-Thurzopartnership (1494-1525) are scarce.99 According to some estimates,Smolník produced c. 182 tons of copper per annum during the firstthird of the fifteenth century.100 Other tentative figures are availablefor the operations of Nürnberg merchants, mainly based in BanskáBystrica. The local orebodies yielded c. 2,000-2,500 zentners ofrefined copper and c. 8,000-10,000 zentners of Schwarzkupfer in theearly fifteenth century, shipped mostly to Venice, plus perhapsaround 2,500 zentners of copper sold directly to Nürnberg.101 This


feldzug, 1401/2,” in Hermann Kellenbenz, ed., Öffentliche Finanzen und privatesKapital im späten Mittelalter und in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Berichtüber die 3. Arbeitstagung der Gesellschaft für Sozial- u. Wirtschaftsgeschichtein Mannheim (Forschungen z. Sozial- u. Wirtschaftsgeschichte 16) (Stuttgart,1971), 50-86. For the activities of the Kammerer-Seiler and Flextorfer-Zennercompanies, see also Blanchard, “Egyptian Specie Markets,” 392, in thisvolume.

102 John Munro, “The Monetary Origins of the ‘Price Revolution’: SouthGerman Silver Mining, Merchant-Banking, and Venetian Commerce, 1470-1540,” Department of Economics and Institute for Policy Analysis, Universityof Toronto, Working Paper No. 8 (UT-ECIPA-MUNRO-99-02) (rev. 21 March2003), 44 (Table 4).

amounts respectively to 100-125, 400-500 and another 125 metrictons (taking a standard zentner of 110.23 pounds avoirdupois, equi-valent to 0.05 metric tons)—overall some 625 to 750 tons over whatseems to have been a six-year extraction run. Assuming the capacityof Banská Bystrica, Mubietová, Gelnica, and Smolník together withits dependencies to be a conservative 120 tons per annum each (nomore than a guess based on the current data ranges), the yearlyoutput may have reached c. 480 tons around 1400.

As a working average, the 400 to 500 ton mark is not at all un-reasonable. The readily accessible quinquennial aggregates for Cen-tral European copper production compiled by John Munro suggestthat a century later, when the Thurzo-Fugger partnership was onthe upswing, output hovered in the range of 396 tons per annumin 1491-1495, 541 tons in 1496-1500, and 608 tons in 1501-1505.At their peak, the early sixteenth-century aggregate figures resolveto c. 1093 tons per annum (1511-1515). The corresponding annualexports to Antwerp and Venice were 194 and 60 tons. At the initialdocumented low point (1496-1500), these exports stood at 14.5 tons(Antwerp) and 89 tons (Venice).102 The Munro aggregates, ostensiblyof an order of magnitude matching quite well the tentative latefourteenth- to early fiftenth-century outputs given above, might infact be on the low side as far as Slovakia is concerned, for they seemto cover a broader range of sources than just the core Slovak ore-body areas. But, be this as it may, a comparison with the docu-mented volumes of Datini era Venetian copper exports to theWestern Mediterranean is useful.

The Venice-Majorca-Tuat circuit, as we have seen, was able toabsorb between 20 to 80 tons of copper in one trading seasonthrough the Datini network alone, and it was normal to see sales


103 ASP, D. 998, Majorca-Valencia, Datini Co., 23 Jul. 1406, fol. 1r.104 The quantities of copper imported to Egypt in the fifteenth century,

partly to feed the mints’ production of copper coinage, have been generallyrated as very large or “astounding.” See Lane and Mueller, Money andBanking, 1: 560; Boaz Shoshan, “From Silver to Copper: Monetary Change inFifteenth Century Egypt,” Studia Islamica 56 (1982): 97-116. Boaz Shoshan,“Money Supply and Grain Prices in Fifteenth-Century Egypt,” The EconomicHistory Review, NS, 36 (1) (1983): 61-2 operated, however, with a starklysimplified and no longer applicable outline of the Central European “miningcrisis” (1350-1450), ignoring the Slovak mines. For aspects of the Venetian-Byzantine-Egyptian copper trade in the late 1430s, see e.g. Cécile Morrisson,“Coin Usage and Exchange Rates in Badoer’s Libro dei Conti,” Dumbarton OaksPapers 55 (2001): 217-45.

of 2.5 to 9 metric ton batches per single Venetian supplier. Theemerging pattern also seems to suggest that at least half the amountshipped to Honein was indeed carried south, in a good year, usingan annual trans-Saharan caravan to the Tuat and the Niger Bend.This is the realm of actual transactions. When it comes to con-temporary estimates, Niccolò di Giovanni Mazzuoli argued in 1406that as far as prospects for Datini sales were concerned the Honein-Gha .s .saé .s .sa market should be deemed worth about 1,000 quintals ofcopper yearly, or about 40 metric tons.103 A realistic although some-what conservative guess, Niccolò’s estimate lies in a “sweet spot”between the documented low and high figures from the Datini lettersand ledgers.

To reach an overall impression of the potential annual demandfor copper re-exported from Venice in 1400-1410, one would haveto take the c. 40 ton capacity of the Honein-Gha .s .saé .s .sa gateway asa starting point, and add the hitherto unknown aggregate demandof the Iberian market (Spain and Portugal), the rest of Italy, andthe Levant (mainly Egypt).104 In the realm of pure conjecture, hadeach of these been able to absorb a mere 20-30 tons (surely anunderestimate), Venice would have had to supply 100-130 tons ofcopper annually to satisfy these Mediterranean outlets. This wouldhave been just 30 to 60 tons shy of a full one third of the conjec-tural output of the Slovak copper mines around the year 1400.Slovak copper, however, also travelled in sizeable quantities toNürnberg, Poland, and the Low Countries. The conclusion thatseems to impose itself, therefore, is that in years such as 1409, whenthe Datini correspondence documents a drastic temporary disruption


105 ASP, D. 930, Venice-Barcelona, Lamberti to Datini Co., 3 Aug. 1409,quoted in Lane and Mueller, Money and Banking, 1: 562.

in the flow of Slovak/Hungarian copper to Venice,105 other sourceswould have had to fill the gap. Which alternates played this role atany given point remains an open question—and so does the issueof whether we might have to move back to the late fourteenthcentury the beginning of effective and sustained copper extractionat Schwaz, Brixlegg, Fersina and Imperina, or other orebodylocations typically associated only with fifteenth-century advances inmining technology.


APPENDIX

The following is a transcription of what may be considered the quintessential“Tuat” letter from the Datini archive in Prato. For consistency, the trans-cription norms are those adopted for the Majorcan carteggio in GiampieroNigro’s Mercanti in Maiorca, but expanded abbreviations are marked herein italics and lacunae in square brackets.

ASP, D. 668, Majorca-Florence, Datini Co. to Francesco Datini,25 Mar. 1408

Al nome di Dio, a dì 25 d’marzo 1408

Scrittovi a dì passati il bisongno. Dipoi n’abiamo 2 vostre, che ll’una chon-tiene quello che l’altra. Faremo risposta al bisongno.

Quanto dite del vostro rame abiamo inteso. Mai non potemo sapere a puntoquanto si pesò in Vinega il vostro, né quanto quel’ d’Antonio d’Lapacc[i]o,che se l’avesimo saputo l’aremo partito: ora c’era detto d’chostà a unomodo, e da Barzalona c’era detto innaltro, e ora utimamente quandoavemo il vostro conto ce’l disono innaltro modo, or noi l’abbiamo achoncochome c’avete detto, che dite dovete avere lb. 2108 s. 4 e Lapacc[i]o lb.363 s. 6. Caschuno abbiamo fatto creditore chome dite.

Quando que’ d’Valenza ci chonterano le spese arano fatte per voi e perLapacc[i]o partiremo a caschuno la sua erata e ve n’aviseremo.

Abiamo avisato Lucha chome abiamo rimetuto per voi in più partite a Barzalonaa nostri reali 500, che ve n’a[b]ia[n] avisato. Tutti sono a vostro conto.

E ora novellamente n’abiamo rimesso reali 250 a s. 14 d. 8 1/2 per reale,anche ne gl’abiamo avisati. Da lloro l’arete saputo. Chome verremorischotendo, di fatto rimetteremo.

Non vi maravigl[i]ate perché si risquuoti [sic] chosí a stento, che questi chechonperarono il chovero lo mandavano a Tuet e una chonpagn[i]ad’Ar[a]bi l’àn[n]o tutto rubato e stavasi sopra rischato, che pens[i]amo allag[i]ornata d’ogi sia rischattato. Ongni dì ci s’atende una nave da Une,che sapremo chome sarà rischattato. Dio ne li tragha cho’ meno dano sipuò, e simile il Tosingho, che per reali 600 n’è stato rubato del suo chonquello d’Antonio d’Quinto, che per reali 2000 vi sono tra l’Tosingho el’Quinto, che l’Tosingho v’è per 2/7 e Anto[nio] d’Quinto per 5/7. Siateavisati.

Delle 14 balle ch’abbiamo qui di vostro niente si truova da fare per anchora.Chome vedremo da darli fine lo faremo. Noi n’abiamo fidato 1 chostalea uno giudeo che ll’à mandato in certo luogho in Barberia per provare:se gl’verà ben fatto prenderà d’altro. Lb. 9 1/2 gl’abiamo contato ilchintale. Siate avisati.

Voi dite vero che da reali 76 e s. 0 [s. sum blank in text] restate avere delchonto da noi a voi. Noi restamo avere d’Andrea Riera per 2 vostre


sanghuinee gli vendemo più tempo fa reali 61 s. 0 [s. sum blank in text],e d’altra banda dovavamo avere per lo chonto tinto reali 18 e s. 0 [s. sumblank in text], siché sarebe intorno alla somma del chonto. Ne siamopressoché paghati delle sanghuinee: siamo per torre vino biancho dal dettoe rivenderlo, che miglore vale dal mal paghatore prenderne quello chel’uomo può che perdere tutto; ma l’amicho c’è l’huole tropo sopramettere.Nondimeno noi faremo il migl[i]ore che potremo per paura d’non perderetutto, che indug[i]o pigl[i]a vizio.

Della morte d’Giovanni Tosinghi ci pesa asai: non si può più che Dio voglia.Dio abi miserichordia della sua anima. Altra volta tocherà a noi, e chosíci trametiamo.

Dio il sa la faticha abiamo durato nello sparviere vi mandavamo, che sel’avessi auto salvo n’aresti auto gran piacere. Mai vidi il più ardente, eora n’abbiamo donato uno a Pagholo Biliotti e dettoli si richordi d’voi,alle quagle fateglele richordante [sic] ch’è un bel dono.

Per questa non vegiamo che più dirvi al presente. Christo vi ghuardi.

Francescho e Christofano in Maiolicha

1 The Borromei Bank Research Project came into existence on 1 July 2001,following a successful application to the Economic and Social Research Councilmade by Professor James L. Bolton (Award R000239125). Dr Francesco GuidiBruscoli joined on 1 January 2002. The main outcome of the project will be thepublication of a study of the activity of the Borromei companies in the North ofEurope in the first half of the fifteenth century, accompanied by a CD-ROMcontaining a database with all the information contained in the two ledgers keptby Borromei companies in London (1436-1439) and Bruges (1438). This is possiblebecause in November 2000 permission was granted to the Project by PrincipessaBona Borromeo-Arese for the exclusive use of the ledgers and other allied materialfor research and publication. In order to create the database, specific software(Historic Accounts I®) was developed by Roundhouse Software of Winchester. Thispiece of software can be used for any ledger or account book kept in double entryand in money of account, medieval, modern or contemporary. It will be marketed,under licence, by Queen Mary and Roundhouse Software. Another piece of software(Historic Accounts Enquiry®) was constructed, also by Roundhouse Software, for thenavigation of the database and will be inbuilt in the CD-ROM. This paper is theresult of research and analysis undertaken jointly by Dr Francesco Guidi Bruscoliand Prof. James L. Bolton. However, paragraphs 1, 3 and 4 were written by GuidiBruscoli and paragraph 2 by Bolton.

2 Unfortunately no comprehensive study of the family exists for the period withwhich we are concerned. If not otherwise stated, information on members of thefamily for this period (with different degrees of detail and of reliability) has beendrawn from Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto della EnciclopediaItaliana, 1960), 13: by name (in particular essays by Giorgio Chittolini and FlorenceEdler de Roover at pp. 45-46, 48-49, 53-55, 63-64, 72-75); Piero Canetta, Lafamiglia Borromeo (Milano: Tamburini, 1937); Pompeo Litta, “Borromei di S. Mini-

THE BORROMEI BANK RESEARCH PROJECT1

Francesco Guidi BruscoliJames L. Bolton

The Borromei family

The Borromei were Tuscan by origin, from the town of SanMiniato al Tedesco, located between Florence and Pisa. After afailed rebellion against Florentine rule in 1370, when Filippo diLazzaro Borromei was hanged as one of the ringleaders, they fledthe town and settled in other parts of Italy. By the late fourteenthand early fifteenth centuries, there were three main branches of thefamily, one in Milan, a second in Venice and a third in Florence.There were also major banking companies in all three placesheaded by a member or members of the family.2

461BORROMEI BANK RESEARCH PROJECT

ato,” in Famiglie celebri italiane (Milan: Typ. del dottore G. Ferrario, 1819-1874), 4:by name. For manuscript sources, see: Archivio Borromeo, Isola Bella (ABIB), inparticular Box file 661 and Box file 1051; and Archivio di Stato, Florence (ASF),Manoscritti 593, Carte Pucci, sc. III, folders 14, 25; ASF, Ceramelli Papiani 915;ASF, Catasto, 81, fols. 508r-513r; ASF, Catasto 405, fols. 78-84. For the Borromeicompanies until the beginning of the fifteenth century, see Federigo Melis, La bancapisana e le origini della banca moderna, ed. Marco Spallanzani (Florence: Le Monnier,1987), in particular 224-32; for the 1420s, 1430s and 1440s see Girolamo Biscaro,“Il banco Filippo Borromei e compagni di Londra (1436-1439),” Archivio StoricoLombardo, ser. 4, 19, anno 40 (1913): 37-126, 283-386; Tommaso Zerbi, Le originidella partita doppia (Milano: Marzorati, 1952), 311-68, 413-46; Patrizia Mainoni,Mercanti lombardi tra Barcellona e Valenza nel basso medioevo (Bologna: Cappelli, 1982),90-110; Philip Jacks and William Caferro, The Spinelli of Florence. Fortunes of aRenaissance Merchant Family (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,2001), 39-51. In the family archive at Isola Bella there are eight surviving ledgersfor Borromei companies across Europe: Mastri n. 4 and 5 for Giovanni Borromei& Co. of Milan (1427, 1428); n. 7 for Filippo Borromei & Co. of London(1436-1439), which will be here referred to as BLo; n. 8 for Filippo Borromei &Co. of Bruges (1438), which will be referred to as BBr; n. 9, 10, 11 and 12 forFilippo Borromei & Co. of Milan (1445, 1446, 1451-52, 1453-55). This is a briefaccount of the family’s history because the main focus of this paper lies elsewhere.A more detailed study of the family and its banking companies will appear in theforthcoming volume.

3 The transcription of one of the ledgers kept by Vitaliano Borromei as ducalTreasurer has been published: Pier Giacomo Pisoni, ed., Liber tabuli VitalianiBonromei: mastro contabile del tesoriere ducale Vitaliano Borromeo (1426-1430) (Intra,Verbania: Alberti, 1995).

Milan. Before 1393, Borromeo and Giovanni, sons of Filippo diLazzaro, had established a very profitable business in Milan thatwas to last until at least 1450. They owed much of their initialsuccess to service to the Visconti dukes. Giovanni was for some timeTreasurer General of the city and his nephew and adopted son andheir Vitaliano was also ducal Treasurer at various times between1418 and 1430.3 He and his uncle made loans to the Visconti inanticipation of taxation and in return obtained widespreadprivileges, fiefs and estates, most notably around Lake Maggiore,to the north-west of the city.

Florence. Another branch of the family, the descendants of Barto-lomeo di Francesco, settled in Pisa soon after the expulsion fromSan Miniato and by 1395 Ludovico, Francesco and Piero diBartolomeo had their own company there. The partnership wasdissolved when Francesco moved to Genoa in 1404, and around1409 Ludovico and Piero were allowed to return to Florence. Thisimportant Florentine branch of the family has largely been ignoredby genealogists and historians and it is hard to place it correctly inthe family’s genealogical tree. In 1420 Piero Borromei was Treasurer

464 GUIDI BRUSCOLI AND BOLTON

4 Peter Partner, The Papal State under Martin V: The Administration and Governmentof the Temporal Power in the Early Fifteenth Century (London: The British School atRome, 1958), 67 (n. 4), 70 (n. 2), 177 (n. 4).

5 Scattered information drawn from Venetian Archives can be found in ReinholdC. Mueller, The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200-1500(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 272-3, 560-1.

of Bologna, following a loan of 15,000 florins to Pope Martin V,and in the same year he was dealing with iron mines in Elba.4 TheFlorentine Catasto of 1427 shows Giuliano di Piero with assets ofabout 21,000 florins and Tommaso di Matteo [?] with less than2,400. Corporate activities in Florence continued in the names ofPiero di Bartolomeo and Gabriello di Lodovico, then of Gabriello,followed by Gabriello and Benedetto di Lodovico and eventually,after 1425, of Antonio (? di Lodovico). During these years theremay have been yet another Borromei company there, in associationwith Antonio Corbinelli. Piero di Bartolomeo also became a partnerin Galeazzo di Borromeo Borromei & Co. of London, which hadrecently been established by the Venetian branch of the family.

Venice. By 1395 Alessandro di Filippo Borromei had alreadycreated a company in Venice together with Domenico d’Andrea, aVenetian citizen of Sienese origin. By 1422 the partnership hadchanged and become Alessandro Borromei and Lazzaro di Giovanni& Co., the latter being originally from Volterra in Tuscany. Duringthe 1420s, it was this branch which showed most signs of vitality.Around 1420 Galeazzo, nephew of Alessandro di Filippo, createdtwo companies in the north of Europe, in Bruges and London,both in partnership with Antonio di Francesco. Unfortunatelyhardly anything is known about them, nor about Alessandro’sactivity in Venice.5 However, they must have been very successful,because in the Florentine Catasto of 1427 Alessandro was thefourth richest man in the city, being assessed at 57,000 florins,50,725 of them in luoghi of the Monte Comune (shares of the publicdebt) and the rest in houses, shops and pieces of land. At his deathin 1431, his three nephews, Galeazzo, Antonio and Giovanni,inherited all this wealth, along with shares in the Venetian, Brugesand London companies. In the mid-1430s the Venetian branch ofthe family also established its own company in Florence, under thename of Galeazzo and Giovanni di Borromeo, and this was to lastuntil the late 1470s. After Galeazzo’s death in 1438, both compa-nies in northern Europe were re-formed in the name of his nephew


6 Zerbi, Le origini, 339.7 The London ledger was studied almost a century ago by Biscaro. His was a

pioneering study which, despite its use as reference source by some leading scholars(de Roover, Mueller), has proved to be not always accurate and complete. Our workon the Borromei ledgers is still in progress: the Bruges ledger has been fullyanalyzed, whereas we are still in the process of inputting material for the Londonledger. There are no surviving ledgers for Barcelona: a short account of thiscompany is given below.

Alessandro, with Antonio di Francesco still as a partner. Galeazzohad also established a company at the Papal Court in partnershipwith Tommaso Spinelli who in 1435 was in Basel, where the GreatCouncil of the Church had just opened. On Galeazzo’s death thecompany passed to his nephew, Borromeo di Antonio. Profits of7,937 cameral florins were made between 1437 and 1441, but com-pared to those to those enjoyed by the Medici they were relativelysmall.

On the death of Alessandro di Filippo in 1431, two newpartnerships were created in Venice, both with Lazzaro di Giovanni,one in the name of Alessandro’s nephew, Antonio di Borromeo, theother with Antonio’s son, Borromeo. Gabriello Borromei was stillworking in Florence in 1438, whereas other members of this branchof the family were active elsewhere, notably Gabriello’s cousinsGiuliano and Alessandro di Piero who in 1433 were employees ofTommaso Spinelli in Venice.

However, in the 1430s the most significant developments werein Milan. Vitaliano Borromei and his Milanese partners had under-taken their foreign operations before then through the companiesof the Venetian branch of the family; but around 1434, theydecided to expand. Vitaliano was no longer Treasurer of theDuchy, an activity which had undoubtedly brought him wealth andprestige but which also made it difficult to use his resources forother ventures. A single cash loan to the Visconti had cost himalmost £20,000 imperial of Milan, for example.6 So the Milanesebranch decided to open its own companies in the north of Europein Bruges and London and then, just a year or two later, inBarcelona. The Borromei Bank Research Project focuses on theactivities of the two companies in London and Bruges, from 1436to 1439 and does so because of the survival in the Borromeo-Aresefamily archive of two ledgers, one for Bruges for the year 1438 andthe other for London for the years 1436 to 1439.7


8 For the contract, written on July 1434, see ABIB, Box file 1051 (b) and Boxfile 661 (a). A substantial contribution to the capital of the company was also givenby the heirs of Giovanni Del Barza of Milan. On 1 January 1438 they had a creditfrom the previous year of £915.19.7 flemish. On 31 December they were creditedwith the interest on that sum (the dischrezione). They were holding what is knownas a deposito a discrezione, but this time the total sum was not carried forward to thelibro azzurro 1439, but to the libro segreto which, unfortunately, has not survived.

9 “I quali denari abiamo chonsignati al detto Giovanni Micheli che in Londra lidebi trafighare a nome di Filippo Boromei e compagni. E di tutto il guadagno sifarà di netto de la detta compagnia in chapo de l’anno, il detto Giovanni ne de’fare creditore la compagnia di Brugia e Paulo da Castagnolo ghovernatore di dettacompagnia di Bruggia de’ ridure tutti li avanzi di Brugia insieme con queli diLondra e quie partire il guadagno secondo sono d’achordo per la charta à dominoVitaliano Boromei del detto Giovanni e del detto Paulo da Castagnolo” (ABIB, BBrfol. 153.1, BLo fol. 47.7). For Bindotti’s arrival in London, BLo fol. 17.1dare(payment for the rent of the house for one year until 29 September 1436); for his

Filippo Borromei & Co. of Bruges and London

The first company was established at Bruges, under the name ofVitaliano’s teenage son, Filippo, hence its name, Filippo Borromei& Co. It was opened for business on 1 January 1435 and, accord-ing to the contract establishing it, was to last for five years. Theinitial capital was £3,000 flemish which was entirely provided bycount Vitaliano Borromei. But the profits were to be dividedbetween Vitaliano (75 per cent), Paolo di Antonio da Castagnolo ofFlorence and Giovanni di Michele Micheli of Lucca (12.5 per centeach), and it was they who had to go to Bruges.8 Towards the endof 1435 Giovanni Bindotti moved from Milan to London, andbegan organizing the imminent opening of a branch there. Duringthe first months of his stay he seems to have kept all the accountsin a small ledger, his quadernetto, until 8 March 1436 whenGiovanni Micheli moved to London from Bruges and took over themanagement of the company. It was clearly a branch of thecompany at Bruges and again in the name of Filippo Borromei:both ledgers record the transfer of £1,600 flemish (or 16,000flemish écus), equivalent to £1,431.17.1 sterling at an exchange rateof sterlings 21 5/12 per écu, from Bruges to London. As the moneycame from Bruges, the initial capital of £3,000 flemish must havebeen used to establish both banks, and cannot be taken as thecapital for Bruges only. From the ledgers it is also clear that at theend of each year all the profits from the London branch had to betransferred to Bruges, where they were then credited to the Profitand Loss account of the main bank.9 Around 1436-1437 a third


quadernetto, BLo fol. 5.1.10 See Mainoni, Mercanti, 90-3 on the first years of activity of the Borromei in

Barcelona. An isolated reference to a Borromei company in Barcelona at the endof the XIV century is given in Jacks and Caferro, The Spinelli, 47, but no source isprovided.

11 Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici bank, 1397-1494 (NewYork: W. W. Norton, 1966), 62-3, 321.

12 de Roover, The Rise and Decline, 317.

bank called Filippo Borromei & Co. was founded at Barcelona, butas there no surviving ledgers it is not known whether it hadcomplete autonomy from the Bruges-London banks or from themain company at Milan.10 The same strategy of founding a maincompany in Bruges with a branch in London was also adopted byother Italian families: for example the Bardi, the Salviati and theMedici. Before opening their bank in London in 1446, with acapital of £2,500 sterling, the Medici had been operating throughan office in London financed and staffed by the Bruges branch.11

In what follows we will try to demonstrate why this was probablya common strategy, in the wider context of a discussion of theevidence from the Borromei ledgers on the balance of tradebetween northern and southern Europe. In Chapter VI “Bankingand the Money Market” of his book on the Medici Bank, deRoover focuses on the difficulties in making settlements betweenthe north and the south of Europe, because the balance of tradewas consistently unfavorable to Flanders. Then, in Chapter XIII,“Bruges and London,” he quite rightly says that “in the fifteenthcentury London was [...] only a satellite that moved in the orbit ofBruges,” as far as banking was concerned, but that the LowCountries depended on England to settle their unfavorable balanceof trade with all the Italian city states, because English

wool was the only commodity which the Italian were eager to buy andwhich could be used to restore the balance. [...] The economies of theLow Countries and England were thus linked by a common interestin the wool trade and were interrelated in still other respects, becauseBruges needed credits in England in order to buy wool with whichto pay Italian claims. The task of adjusting international balances fellupon the Italian banking houses, and it is no wonder that there wereactive relations between the bourse in Bruges and Lombard Street inLondon.12


13 For exports of English wool by sea from Middleburg and Arnemuiden see:ABIB, BBr fols. 353.3, 356.2, 358.3, 378.1, 378.3, 381.2, 382.1. For purchases ofwool in England and export via Southampton see: ABIB, BLo fols. 68.1 (1436),101.1 (1437). For purchases at the Staples and subsequent sales in Antwerp andMalines see: BBr fols. 238.1, 248.1, 377.2, 379.1, 383.2, 386.1. For the export toFlorence and to Milan see: ABIB, Mastri n. 9-10, passim.

14 18 Henry VI c. 4.

De Roover concentrated his attention on the wool trade, inwhich the Borromei also participated. Between 1436 and 1439 theybought 379 sacks of English wool for export for themselves and inpartnership with a third party or parties, at a cost of £4,514.6.3sterling, from a variety of suppliers in Burford (Oxfordshire) andfrom a Mr. Thomas of the March of Wales. Probably as a favor, theBorromei bought him an expensive bed and feather mattress inBruges and had it shipped over to the Marches. They alsopurchased wool from London and Southampton merchants. Muchof it was consigned directly to Southampton, to be loaded on thegalleys by the Borromei agent there, Cristofano Cattano, but somewas sent to Middleburg for forwarding by sea to Italy. TheBorromei Bruges also bought wool directly from the Staple atCalais, but lesser grades from Lindsey (Lincs.), Nottingham, andelsewhere in the Midlands and Eastern England, not for exportoverland to Italy but for sale to local clothiers in Flanders andBrabant. The two branches of the trade were kept separate,however, with the fine wool going to Italy, to be sold on tolanaiuoli of Milan and Florence, as is clear from the ledger of theBorromei bank in Milan for 1445-1446. As usual, the wool wasbought on credit, one third down and the other two thirds atspecified dates, so that total payment could be spread over two orthree years.13 By the time the wool reached the galleys or otherships and customs duties, inland transport costs and other expenseshad been paid, then the total cost of the wool had risen to£6,377.5.8 sterling, from the initial £4,514.6.3 sterling. It is veryunlikely that the Borromei could have covered these costs from thesale of their imports, as the Hosting Statute of 1439-40 required.14

Between 1436 and 1439 they sold fustian and cotton to theLondoners for about £2,000 sterling and silk cloth, velvets, satins,damask, and baldechins to the value of £1,859.12.1 sterling. Thesewere their two main imports: the remainder followed the usualpattern of trade to London, some raw materials (madder), spices,


15 Edmund B. Fryde, “Anglo-Italian Commerce in the Fifteenth Century: SomeEvidence about Profits and the Balance of Trade,” Revue belge de philologie etd’histoire 50 (1972): 350-3.

16 Biscaro, “Il banco Filippo Borromei,” 92-5. Most of this was not the traditionalEnglish broadcloth, fulled, dyed and finished, and in bolts 24 yards long by 1-1 1/2yards wide between the lists (the classic definition of a broadcloth), but lighter, halfwidth, cheaper streits, narrow cloths from Essex and Suffolk and from the westcountry which were probably intended for a mass market in Italy and theMediterranean world. It is clear both from the London ledger and from the royalcustoms accounts that many of the Italian exporters were doing the same, buyingcheaper, lighter cloths which were then equated to the unit of a broadcloth, withtwo pieces of streits equaling one broadcloth, for the purposes of collecting theroyal customs duties.

needles from Milan, other cheap cloth from Holland and somemercery ware, but they did not amount to that much.

Moreover, to the value of the wool exports has to be added thatof cloth exports which, as E. B. Fryde has already argued, deRoover almost entirely ignored in his analysis of the balance ofpayments.15 Between 1436 and 1439 the Borromei bought forexport English cloth worth £1,415.6.10 sterling, which withexpenses came to £1,847.15.9 sterling.16 Purchases of wool andcloth combined far outweighed the money received from the saleof imports in London, and that is true of the Italian trade withEngland generally for much of the fifteenth century, up to perhapsthe 1460s. What the surviving royal customs accounts for 1422-1461show is that it was the Florentine and Milanese merchants whowere interested primarily in wool although, as has been seen, theyalso bought cloth, to about a third or more of the value of wool.

A complete record exists for the loading of the Venetian galleysin London in the autumn of 1438. In all, Italian merchantsexported some 8,462 broadcloths or their equivalents in cheapercloths, worth some £14,809 sterling by customs valuations, with theVenetians themselves being the main exporters with no less than7,479 cloths. By contrast, in the same year, Michaelmas to Michael-mas (29 September 1438 to 29 September 1439), all Italian importsthrough London were valued at about £10,075 sterling, for customs’purposes. These import and export figures are taken from thePetty Custom accounts and so do not include those for woolexports. In 1438-1439 the Italians exported a total of 342 sacksfrom London, worth perhaps in all another £5,000 sterling, basedon Borromei ledger valuations. These are the figures for Londononly. The Italians exported a further 4,307 cloths and 631 sacks of


17 James L. Bolton, “Alien Merchants in England in the Reign of Henry VI,1422-61,” unpublished Oxford B.Litt. thesis (1971), 140-1; Appendix 1, Tables 3,8; National Archives, London, E 122/73/10, 11, 12, E 122/141/23; Eleanora M.Carus Wilson and Olive Coleman, England’s Export Trade 1275-1547 (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1963), 60, 95.

18 On the trade of Bruges and Antwerp in the 1430s see our article “When DidAntwerp Replace Bruges as the Commercial and Financial Centre of North-WesternEurope? The Evidence of the Borromei Ledger for 1438,” forthcoming in TheEconomic History Review.

19 ABIB, BBr fols. 305.1dare, 331.1avere.

wool worth together about £20,000 through Southampton in1438-1439 against imports valued at £14,540 sterling.17 Arriving ata figure for the Italian balance of trade in this year is difficult,involving as it does valuations from different sources, along withsome estimates, but it was possibly about £15,000 sterling inEngland’s favor. The Borromei ledgers and the royal customsaccounts are at one here, and they show that the much-malignedItalians were a source of considerable profit to the English crownand to English wool suppliers and cloth producers.

How were these debits in London to be met? One way wasthrough the transfer of papal revenues from England to Rome, atask traditionally carried out by Italian merchant-bankers. TheBorromei ledgers show no operations of this type. Nor could theybe covered by profits from the sale of imports in Bruges. Theledger for 1438 shows that their trade in that city was minimal.Most of the imported silk cloth went on to London, as did muchof the madder and fustians bought mainly at Middleburg andAntwerp.18 Bruges may have been the international money marketfor the north, but London and its outports Southampton andSandwich were the centers for both imports and exports. DeRoover argued that the only way the apparently permanentimbalance in trade could be settled was by the eventual shipmentof bullion from north to south. But was this really the case? TheBorromei ledgers contain no records of the transfer of coin to Italyfrom Flanders or from England, where the export of bullion in anyform was strictly forbidden. Écus were sent from Geneva to Milan,presumably to settle balances between these centers, but that wasall.19 There is no reason to suppose that the Borromei would havedisguised such transfers. They recorded all other payments andexpenses in meticulous detail, especially transport costs, and theonly secrecy was in reporting profits to the libro segreto.


20 Money is taken to mean here book money, ledger credits and debits or papermoney. Coin and bullion were used indiscriminately by contemporaries but the firstrefers to gold and silver coins, the second to ingots of precious metal.

21 No detailed account of the origins and workings of the bill of exchange isgiven here, because it is a subject on which much has been written. Goodintroductions will be found in Raymond de Roover’s Business, Banking, and EconomicThought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Julius Kirshner (Chicago andLondon: Chicago University Press, 1974) and the bibliography quoted there; andin Giulio Mandich’s “Per una ricostruzione delle operazioni mercantili e bancariedella compagnia dei Covoni,” in Armando Sapori, ed., Libro giallo della compagniadei Covoni (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1970), CLXXVIII-CXCIII.

22 On the Rialto market and its patterns see Mueller, The Venetian Money Market,in particular 303-37.

Bruges, London and the Mediterranean World

Bullion transfers were not at all necessary. What the Bruges andLondon ledgers also show is that this imbalance was met by movingmoney as distinct from coin or bullion across Europe by means ofletters of advice (lettere d’avixo) or bills of exchange.20 Thanks to theuse of technology, we are now able to make some quantitativeevaluations.

The letter of advice was a financial instrument whereby amerchant-banker asked his foreign correspondent to make someonecreditor and someone else debtor at a certain date and at a specificexchange rate. The writers were often one of the parties involved,but that was not always the case. It was a way of transferring creditsand debits across Europe without actually transferring bullion andthere are, in the Bruges ledger for 1438, 204 letters of advice, fora total value of £22,754.15.8 flemish. A more widely used andbetter known financial instrument, however, was the bill ofexchange.21 The Bruges ledger records 1,233 bills of exchange in1438 where either the Borromei acted in one of the four mainroles, deliverer, taker, payor or payee, or where a third party actedfor them, to a combined value of £95,563 flemish and at anaverage of £77.10.0 flemish per bill. The dominating role of Veniceis perhaps not surprising, and fits well with the recent accountgiven by Mueller in his book on The Venetian Money Market.22 Billsto and from Venice, 387 in all, were 31.39 per cent of the total bynumber but 41.57 per cent by value, at £39,732 flemish. Theaverage value of a bill sent to or from Venice was therefore almost£103 flemish. London came next in the ranking of bills sent andreceived, 239 to a total value of £16,634 flemish, respectively 19.38


23 Mueller, The Venetian Money Market, 306.

per cent of the total number of bills and 17.4 per cent of theirvalue, with the average bill worth almost £70 flemish. Barcelonawas only just behind in number with 238 bills, 19.30 per cent ofthe total, but their value, at £18,261 flemish and 19.11 per cent ofthe whole, was higher and the average bill worth almost £77flemish. By contrast, only a few of the transactions involved Geneva,which is slightly surprising, given the importance of the four fairswhich every year were held in the Swiss town.

One of the functions of the bill of exchange was that ofextending credit locally. This could be done in a variety of slightlydifferent ways, but usually involved a re-exchange operation, withor without actual bills being written and sent. A bill, for example,would be sent from Bruges to Venice and then, when it maturedor became payable, another would be sent back from Venice toBruges. The same parties were involved in both bills and in prac-tice this was a loan extended by the deliverer in Bruges to thetaker in Bruges, for a four-month period, since the usance betweenBruges and Venice is two months each way.

The profitability of delivering or drawing bills of exchangeobviously depended on the exchange rate. Merchants-bankers wereaware of the daily fluctuations in exchange rates, and tried to makethe most of the information they received from their correspon-dents. The wider the difference between the two exchange ratesVenice-Bruges and Bruges-Venice, the more profitable it was tolend money and accept repayment by way of re-exchange, and themore costly it was to borrow.

Mueller has shown that the first half of July saw exchange ratespeak in Venice, when

merchants were scrambling for credit with which to pay their obliga-tions as well as for the merchandise and bullion they wished to loadonto the departing galleys [to the Levant] as exchange commodities[...] another maturity date that was commonly fixed was the Christmasfair, which it was hoped would coincide with the return of thegalleys.23

What really mattered, however, was not knowing the exchange ratesbetween Bruges and Venice on the day but predicting what they


25 ABIB, BBr fols. 217.1dare-avere, 285.1dare.

In the great majority of cases the Borromei were remitting to ordrawing on various banking centers across western Europe in orderto make their profits on the movement of funds. They couldconduct these operations from Bruges itself, or by way of arbitrage,that is, by ordering one of their correspondents to draw or remitbills of exchange from another place. So, for example, on 15December the Borromei Bruges credited the account of Cecco diTommaso and brothers of Venice upon receipt of a bill ofexchange for 500 ducats at gr. 49 1/4 per ducat (= £102.12.1flemish). On 24 December, they wrote to London, to their branchthere, instructing them to credit the account of Cecco di Tommasofor 1,023 flemish écus at st. 21 1/3 per écu (= £102.6.1 flemish).For this “service” they received three écus or six flemish shillingsin commission. On 9 January 1438 Ventura & Co. of Barcelonadrew 400 venetian ducats for the Borromei Bruges on ArrighinoPanigarola of Venice. In the same month, and in February, he wasdrawing other bills on London for the Borromei Bruges. In otherwords, it was quite common for a correspondent to draw or remitbills for the Borromei Bruges between banking centers outsideFlanders, between Venice and Barcelona, for example, or Genevaand Venice, at the same time as the Borromei Bruges was deliver-ing money to him from Bruges.25

A more detailed examination of their exchange operations withVenice shows that during 1438 the Borromei Bruges were takers ofbills of exchange drawn on Venice to a value of almost £13,500flemish, whereas they were deliverers for less than £6,300 flemish,as shown in Graph 3.

A comparison with Graph 1 shows that the Borromei in Brugeswere well aware of the costs of borrowing in August and Septemberand took up most of their loans in June, July and October. In all,they borrowed about £6,130 flemish by way of exchange withVenice in June-October 1438, but only delivered, or lent, about£1,430 flemish in the same period.

The value of exchange between Bruges and Barcelona was£15,945 flemish and the Borromei bank acted as payors, in Bruges,for as much as £7,367 flemish or 46.2 per cent of this sum. In ge-neral, Italian merchant-bankers in Barcelona were creditors inBruges and debtors in Venice, whereas the substantial Catalan co-


27 John H. A. Munro, “Bullionism and the Bill of Exchange in England,1272-1663: A Study in Monetary Management and Popular Prejudice,” in FrediChiappelli, ed., The Dawn of Modern Banking (New Haven: Yale University Press,1979), 194-196.

The advantages of dealing directly with a sister company basedin another major commercial city are obvious. Information couldbe exchanged easily, merchandise could be consigned to them forsale locally, and money transferred by simple book entries. But therelationship between the Borromei banks in Bruges and Londonwas exceptionally close. They functioned almost as one unit, withthe main purpose of exchange operations through Bruges being torealize the funds the London branch needed to buy English wooland cloth for export. As Munro and others have shown, in thetrade between the Low Countries and England, both the Staplers(those exporting wool to Calais) and the Merchant Adventurers(who exported woollen cloth to the Low Countries) needed to remitmoney back to England, once their products were sold. The Mer-cers, who bought luxury cloths and other goods in the Low Count-ries and exported them to England, needed funds there in orderto buy their imports. Bills of exchange met all these needs. Munroshows how the Staplers and Merchant Adventurers were lending tothe Mercers (who were takers of bills), in the Low Countries, withthe Mercers then repaying the loan in England, from the proceedsof their sales. For their part, Staplers and Merchant Adventurerscould have their money transferred directly back to England by billor letter of advice, or the Staplers could finance their own trade inEngland, by being takers of bills of exchange sold to the Mercers.The Mercers would then have their money back in the Low Coun-tries, where they needed it to make their purchases.27

The distinction between Mercers, Staplers and Merchant Adven-turers is perhaps drawn too sharply here. One man could often beall three, but the Borromei ledgers show clearly how the arrange-ment worked in practice. London merchants, often acting throughtheir factors or attorneys in the Low Countries, were takers andpayors of bills of exchange where the Borromei banks of Brugesand London were respectively deliverers and payees. This occurs in60 of the 96 bills delivered by the Borromei Bruges to theBorromei London but in none of the 47 bills delivered by theBorromei London to the Borromei Bruges. The Borromei Brugesdid not draw on the Borromei London bills payable to London


28 ABIB, BLo fols. 17, 89, 146, 177, 185, 257, 299, 305, 406.

whole year, apart from two short spell between 30 August and 22September and 6 and 28 November, and to the extent of morethan £1,800 flemish on both 25 January and 8 May. But to messerAntonio and Lazzaro di Giovanni they were in debit for the entireyear. By drawing on Venice so extensively the Borromei in Brugeswere in fact drawing on the whole Italian money market, for theRepublic was at its center.

Epilogue

The work of de Roover has to be a starting point for any analysisof Italian banking activities in northern Europe. His sources weredifferent from ours, as he mainly based his research upon lettersand made only limited reference to account books. This was anadvantage in one sense, because it is much easier to determine thereasoning behind decisions and longer-term strategies from com-mercial correspondence than from a company’s libro mastro. On theother hand, ledgers provide the details of the practical operationswhich are simply not obtainable from other sources and, thanks tocomputer technology, we are now able to make quantitative evalua-tions from them and analyze thoroughly the sources available to us.In terms of payments, Bruges was highly indebted to both Barce-lona and above all to Venice, but only because it was transferringlarge credits to London to pay for exports of wool and cloth. Theledgers also demonstrate that, for the Borromei, Bruges andLondon must be treated as a single company in the years 1436-1439 and not as separate entities. But there are many questionsthat still need answers. The first must be, was the enterprise innorth-western Europe profitable? What follow are the figures takenfrom the Borromei’s own records of profits and losses, takingLondon first.28

1436 profit £st 24.17.8 = c. £fl 281437 profit £st 318.13.7 = c. £fl 364 (£fl 392.12.6 for

1436-37)1438 profit £st 210. 0.0 = c. £fl 2401439 profit £st 386.12.1 = c. £fl 442


29 ABIB, BBr fols. 39, 162.1avere, 162.2avere, 254.

The main sources of profit were exchange operations and trade,but the Borromei of London also enjoyed a steady income frombrokerage and commission on trade undertaken on behalf ofothers. In striking contrast, the Bruges company enjoyed two yearsof good profits, but then incurred heavy losses.29

1435 profit £fl 298.4.21436 profit c. £fl 6061437 loss c. £fl 7141438 loss £fl 799.12.1

However, it is more meaningful to consider the profits and lossesof the two banks together, since it has been argued that they werepart a single unit. This shows the following:

1435 profit c. £fl 298.4.2 1436 profit c. £fl 6341437 loss c. £fl 3501438 loss c. £fl 560

Despite making healthy profits in London, the Borromei were notdoing well in northern Europe overall. The reason for this is clear:the heavy losses suffered by Bruges on exchange dealings whichmore than doubled between 1437 and 1438 from £322.7.2 flemishto £685.2.2 flemish, as shown below in Table 1. Given that most ofthe exchange was with Venice, it is not surprising that most of thelosses were incurred in that area. They were also worse than theyfirst appear. Exchange with Venice amounted to 41.6 per cent ofthe total but the losses incurred in those operations amounted to61.5 per cent by value. Operations with London also show losseswhere the percentage of the total value is greater than thepercentage of bills, whereas for Barcelona the reverse is true. Nolosses were recorded on exchange operations with other places.

It is possible that external factors were partially responsible forthese losses. From 1429 onwards Philip the Good, duke of Bur-gundy, faced severe monetary and political problems in hisnorthern territories as well as with their main trading partner, Eng-land. The imposition of the bullion ordinances at the Calais Staple


30 Wim P. Blockmans, “The Formation of a Political Union,” in J. C. H. Blomand Emiel Lamberts, eds., A History of the Low Countries (New York and London:Berghahn, 1999), 95; David Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London and New York:Lamberts, 1992), 359-61; John H. A. Munro, Wool, Cloth, and Gold. The Struggle forBullion in the Anglo-Burgundian Trade, 1340-1478 (Toronto: University of TorontoPress, 1972), Chapter IV, passim. ABIB, BBr fols. 48.1avere, 49.4dare, 54.5avere,82.5avere, 249.5dare.

31 de Roover, The Rise and Decline, 59-60, 320, 322 (Table 67). Presumably, asLondon was in these years only a “suboffice” (as de Roover defines it) of Bruges,these are the aggregated figures for the profits enjoyed jointly in Bruges andLondon. For Portinari’s account with the Borromei in Bruges, ABIB, BBr fols. 32.2,82.5, 133.3, 133.4.

common currency throughout his northern territories and Philiphad to agree to maintain monetary stability for the next 20 years.The value of the coinage was severely deflated, with new gold andsilver coins 6.1 and 7.0 per cent stronger than those of 1428. Toattract money to his mints the duke imposed strict bans on theexport of bullion from his lands and cut his seignorage to a mini-mum. Eventually, and probably by 1437, the re-coinage proved asuccess but there are signs in the Borromei ledger of continuinguncertainties, with references to “old,” “bad” and “good” money.30

Yet, if the Borromei’s profits were severely affected by these cir-cumstances, then so should those of other companies, and theywere not. Bernardo Portinari was sent to Bruges by the Medici in1436 to settle outstanding debits and “to inquire about local cus-toms with respect to trade as well as to bills of exchange, and tofind out the strength and the credit standing of the principalforeign merchants residing in Bruges, especially the exchangedealers.” He must have made a favorable report, because he re-turned to Bruges to act as an agent for the Medici and then be-came an active partner in the bank they founded there in 1439. Itwas soon making good profits: £670.1.5 flemish in 1439-1440,£498.16.4 flemish in 1441, £302.0.0 flemish in 1442 and £538.7.6flemish in 1443.31 Political upheaval, famines and monetary revalua-tion did not mean heavy losses for the Medici and other reasonsmust be sought to explain the Borromei’s failures, if failures theywere.

Bad management may explain the losses in 1437 and it is quitepossible that in 1438 a desperate and unsuccessful attempt wasbeing made to recoup them by gambling on the exchange market.The evidence from the ledger, however, suggests that there wassound commercial reasoning behind the heavy losses on exchange


32 This is Fryde’s argument, albeit from limited evidence, in his “Anglo-ItalianCommerce,” 353-355.

sustained in that year. The Borromei were willing to borrow heavilyfrom their correspondents to finance trade through London, whereprofits in 1439 were 84 per cent up on the previous year. As noneof the other Bruges ledgers has survived, it is not possible to deter-mine whether the bank there returned to profit, but it seemsunlikely.

The argument already advanced that the Borromei of Milantook a wide, European view of the banking and trading operationscan also be taken a little further, if somewhat speculatively. Thethree companies outside Italy, in Bruges, London and Barcelona,all belonged to Count Vitaliano of Milan. He had provided theirinitial capital and it was he who took the major share of such pro-fits as there were. Further investigation of both the London ledgerand those for their main bank may be able to determine whetheror not the Borromei of Milan did coordinate their operations sothat any losses in the north were more than covered by profitsfrom the sale of English imports in the south.32 In this context, itmust also be remembered that losses on foreign exchange inBruges in 1438 meant profits for London and Barcelona.

There is also a further and probably unanswerable question,what exactly was the relationship between the Borromei of Milanand the Borromei of Venice? In exchange to Venice in 1438, 75per cent of the losses were incurred on dealings with one companyonly, messer Antonio Borromei and Lazzaro di Giovanni. During the1420s the Borromei of Milan had used the two banks founded inBruges and London by the Borromei of Venice as their correspon-dents. Both these banks continued their operations after CountVitaliano established his own banks in the north and AlessandroBorromei and Antonio di Francesco & Co. of Bruges and Antwerpwere one of the best clients of Filippo Borromei & Co. of Bruges,and usually referred to in the ledger as “i Borromei.” Were messerAntonio and Lazzaro di Giovanni in competition with or were theyprepared to lend heavily to their Milanese cousins not only becausethey made a profit on the business but also because they were thefifth element in a successful “family” enterprise that ran from Milanthrough Venice to Barcelona, Bruges and London? This may bewishful thinking, but the heavy losses in Bruges can perhaps be


33 ABIB, BBr fols. 254.1, 270.1.34 Biscaro, “Il banco Filippo Borromei,” 313.35 Views of Hosts, National Archives, London, E 101/128/30, 31. Archivio

dell’Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence, 488, fols. 80, 116, 195 (Bruges); fols. 150,215, 221, 223, 236, 314, 374 (London); fols. 168, 171, 172, 185, 221, 246, 247,

better explained in terms of a co-ordinated and ultimately profit-able banking and trading enterprise between five major Europeancenters rather than in the simpler context of Bruges, London andMilan.

Whatever the explanation, the managers of the bank at Brugesknew that 1438 was a difficult year. The substantial losses in theProfit and Loss account, £881.19.3 flemish in all, were not carriedforward to the libro azzurro for 1439, as was the custom, but to thelibro bianco for 1440, together with the profits from London for theyears 1436 to 1438 which amounted to £632.12.6.33 Why this wasdone is a mystery and is likely to remain so, as both the libroazzurro and the libro bianco have been destroyed. The contract forthe Bruges bank was due to end on 31 December 1439 and themanager, Paolo da Castagnolo, may have been planning a finalyear’s trading without the added burden of huge debits from 1437and 1438. That is one explanation but another less charitable viewis that he was trying to hide the truth from Count Vitaliano in thehope that 1439 would be a better year, with profits at last wipingout losses. In any case, the Bruges bank ceased trading at sometime in 1440 and the London bank closed with it. Biscaro arguedthat it was the losses on exchange to Venice that caused the clo-sure, but maybe it was simply not renewed after the end of the firstcontract; a completely new contract with different partners was thendrawn up at Bruges, London and Barcelona.34 The staff of the Lon-don branch, Giovanni and Niccolò Micheli, Felice da Fagnano andAlessandro da Palastrello appear in the English Views of Hoststrading in the city in the early 1440s and the ledger of AntonioDella Casa & Co. at the Papal court contains accounts for FilippoBorromei & Co. of Bruges, London and Barcelona in 1441 and1442. This suggests that they may have still been working for theBorromei, on an informal basis. Biscaro states that at the beginningof 1441 Felice da Fagnano, Count Vitaliano’s brother-in- law wasthe representative of the company in London, with Vitaliano’sillegitimate son Giovanni alias Prevosto Borromei as the representa-tive of the company in Bruges.35 Vitaliano may himself have been


252 (Barcelona). Biscaro, “Il banco Filippo Borromei,” 312-3. Why Giovanni wasknown as “il prevosto,” the parish priest, is not known.

36 Mainoni, Mercanti, 94.37 As we have seen, the same strategy seems to have been adopted by the Medici

who in 1439 opened the Bruges company and a “suboffice” in London, but in 1446thought it worthwhile to have two separate companies (see above, note 11).

38 ABIB, Box file 1051 (c) for the contract, and Box file 661 (unnumbered) forthe dissolution.

39 ABIB, Box file 1051(a, e) for the contract, and Box file 661(a) for thedissolution.

in financial difficulties in Italy in these years, since he had to selllarge parts of his estates in 1444.36

However, he still thought it worthwhile to re-found andre-structure the banks in Bruges, London and Barcelona. By con-tracts dated 12 March 1443 Vitaliano established two new andseparate companies, one in Bruges and the other in London, to beopen for business on the 1 January 1444.37 The company atBruges, Prevosto e Alessandro Borromei & Co., had a capital of£19,200 milanese. This contract was again for five years (1444-1448), but was probably renewed, in the name of Prevosto only, asthe company lasted until 1457. Count Vitaliano again provided thecapital and was entitled to 66.6 per cent of the profits, whilst theremaining third was to be divided between Prevosto and Alessandrodi Piero Borromei, who were sent to Bruges where Alessandro hadalready worked for the previous company.38

The London company had a very similar capital: £19,076.16.4milanese. Apart from the initial contracts there is very little sur-viving information for either of the companies, but they do seemto have worked separately, possibly to avoid the situation that hadoccurred in 1440 when the closure of Bruges led to the simulta-neous closure of London. The bank was known as Felice daFagnano & Co. Felice, whose sister had married Vitaliano and whohad been previously involved in the management of the Brugescompany, was the manager. Profits had to be divided betweenVitaliano, who was to have two thirds, and Felice and Alessandroda Palastrello of Piacenza one third between them. Palastrello hadalso worked for the previous company in London. All that can sofar be said about new company is that in 1448 Vitaliano was think-ing of closing it due to bad management but that it was not dis-solved until 14 March 1452.39


40 ABIB, Box file 1051 (a-d). For the Borromei companies of Barcelona see alsoMainoni, Mercanti, in particular 90-110.

41 Apparently in these years he started managing the ducal treasury, but wentbankrupt in 1447 (Mainoni, Mercanti, 93).

There was a similar restructuring at Barcelona and on 1 January1445 a new company was established there with a capital of 6,000milanese florins provided by Vitaliano, who was to have two thirdsof the profits, with Arrighino di Ambrogio Pozzobonello taking theother third. They each had a representative in Barcelona, respec-tively Taddeo di Ardizio Vismara and Francesco di ArrighinoPozzobonello. Initially the company was an accomandita in the nameof the two factors but well before the end of the contract, on 20June 1446, the agreement was reshaped. Vitaliano’s son, Filippo,was now to play a much more important role in the managementof the bank. There had been disputes and litigation between theoriginal partners, and Vitaliano had become increasingly distrustfulof Vismara.40

The person who seems to have taken the blame for the in-adequate performance of the Bruges bank between 1435 and 1440was its manager, Paolo da Castagnolo. Other members of staff sur-vived and were promoted but by 1445-1446 he was no longer ashareholder in the main company at Milan nor was he employedby the Borromei in any other capacity.41 Winding up the affairs ofFilippo Borromei & Co. of Bruges and of London was presumablya complex business and the ledgers would have been scrutinizedwith great care. That, as Biscaro noted, is probably why they havesurvived and why we are able to discuss them here, 500 years later.

x

REGIONAL AND LOCAL MARKETS

x

1 I am very grateful to acknowledge the generous support of the Universityof Wisconsin-Milwaukee for granting me a sabbatical in 2003-4, and of theAmerican Philosophical Society for a Sabbatical Fellowship in that year, whichenabled me to undertake much of the research and writing for this paper.

2 Alexander Nequam’s (or Neckam’s) De nominibus utensilium has, however,been examined by John Munro for its description of weaving on a horizontalloom. See Munro, “Textiles,” in Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographi-cal Guide, ed. Frank A. Mantello and George Rigg (Washington, D.C.: CatholicUniversity of America Press, 1996), 474-84.

3 Aside from three years of teaching at the newly-founded University ofToulouse (1229-31) and a brief period in England, perhaps teaching the child-ren of noble families (probably between 1232 and 1241), Garland seems tohave lived in Paris until his death sometime after 1258, perhaps after 1272.On John of Garland’s life and works, see Louis John Paetow, ed., Morale scola-rium of John of Garland (Johannes de Garlandia), in Memoirs of the University of

SHOPS AND SHOPPING IN THE EARLY THIRTEENTHCENTURY: THREE TEXTS1

Martha Carlin

Markets, shops and shopping have always been hallmarks of urbanlife. Historians who have attempted to investigate the urban contextof medieval commerce have traditionally relied for sources on thearchival records, such as trading regulations, tax lists, and financialand legal records, produced by towns, institutions, and wealthyhouseholds. However, records of this kind are often scarce for theearly thirteenth century. One type of source that has not receivedmuch attention by historians of urban commerce in the thirteenthcentury are didactic texts, such as the language manuals used forteaching Latin, and the dictaminal texts that provided models oflegal forms and standard letters.2 In this paper I will focus on threesuch texts, all of which were published in the nineteenth century,but none of which has drawn the attention of historians of urbantrade.

All three texts were written in the early thirteenth century byEnglish authors. The first is a Latin manual written by John ofGarland. He was born about 1195, studied at Oxford around 1210-1213, and then went to Paris, where he became a teacher of gram-mar.3 About 1218 he wrote a Latin manual for the use of his stu-

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California, vol. 4, no. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, and London:Cambridge University Press, 1927), 77-153, especially 82-96 and 127-31; andTraugott Lawler, “Garland, John of (b. c. 1195, d. in or after 1258),” OxfordDictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), available on-line at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10385 [seen 30 Jan. 2005].

4 For a list of more than twenty manuscripts, see Morale scolarium, ed.Paetow, 129. Garland’s revision of the Dictionarius around 1230 is noted byLawler, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.n. “Garland, John of.”

5 For a discussion of the editions of the Dictionarius by Hercule Géraud(1837), Baron [Joseph] Kervyn de Lettenhove (1850), Thomas Wright (1857),and August Scheler (1865), see Tony Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin inThirteenth Century England, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1991), 1: 191-2 and n.1. For Hunt’s own edition of the Dictionarius and itsvernacular glosses, see Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin, 1: 191-203 (text),and 2: 125-56 (glosses). The sole translation of the Dictionarius is Barbara BlattRubin, trans., The “Dictionarius” of John of Garlande and the Author’s Commentary(Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1981). Rubin’s translation, whichappeared a decade before Tony Hunt’s edition of the text and its vernacularglosses, was based on the edition published by Thomas Wright in A Volume ofVocabularies Illustrating the Condition and Manners of our Forefathers, Vol. 1 of ALibrary of National Antiquities (Liverpool: Joseph Mayer, 1857).

6 G[eorg] Waitz, “Handschriften in englischen Bibliotheken,” Neues Archivder Gesellschaft für altere Deutsche Geschichtskunde 4 (1879): 339-43.

7 For a discussion of this manuscript and its date, see the introduction to

dents and called it Dictionarius. Garland’s work was the first to usethat word, but it was not a dictionary in the modern sense. Rather,it was a rambling discourse on daily life, into which Garland cram-med as much Latin vocabulary as possible. Garland revised hisDictionarius around 1230, and it survives in numerous manuscripts.4

There is a recent scholarly edition of it, but until now the onlytranslation of this very valuable work has been a useful but im-perfect one that was privately printed and is not generally accessi-ble.5

The second text is a brief, untitled, and anonymous dictaminaltreatise (a treatise on the art of writing letters), which forms partof a manuscript in the British Library, Additional MS 8167, fols.88r-90v. It was transcribed and printed in 1879 by Georg Waitz, aGerman scholar, who dated it to the fourteenth century.6 In fact,however, the entire volume was written in the first half of the thir-teenth century, and was acquired by a monk of Westminster Abbeyaround 1250. Our treatise forms part of a section of this volume(Article 5, fols. 88r-133r) that contains a large, untitled, and ano-nymous dictaminal and legal collection that seems to have beencompiled at Oxford between 1220 and 1240.7 According to H. G.

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Appendix II, below.8 H. G. Richardson, “An Oxford Teacher of the Fifteenth Century,” Bulletin

of the John Rylands Library 23 (1939): 447-50.9 T. H. Turner, “Original Documents,” Archaeological Journal 4 (1847):

142-4.10 David Crouch and I are preparing an edition and translation of a large

selection of the documents in BL, Additional MS 8167, fols. 88r-133r.

Richardson, our text is the earliest known English dictaminaltreatise.8 There are some striking similarities between it and Gar-land’s Dictionarius, and I wonder if Garland or, perhaps, someoneconnected with him at Oxford was its author.

My third text is a set of notes on letter-writing, illustrated by asmall collection of model letters. The English antiquary ThomasHudson Turner published a short and sadly incomplete descriptionof this text in 1847, and included transcripts of three of the formletters that it contained, and a brief reference to a fourth.9 Turnerbegan his description of the text by noting airily that it came “froma manuscript which has recently fallen under my notice.” He pro-vided no other identification of the manuscript whatsoever, otherthan to state that it dated from the reign of Henry III. Fortunately,I have been able to identify Turner’s mystery manuscript, and itturns out to be the same volume of dictaminal and legal materialsthat contains our second text (British Library, Additional MS 8167).The letters are on folios 97r-98v, and thus also belong to thatsection of the manuscript that appears to have been compiled atOxford between 1220 and 1240. Folios 97-98 contain notes on howto write and respond to orders and requests, illustrated by tenmodel letters between five fictitious earls and various merchantsand others. Six of the letters, including the four described by Tur-ner, consist of exchanges between an earl and his vintner, draper,and skinner concerning the order of goods. The remaining fourletters consist of a refusal from one unidentified man to another,and orders from an earl to his officer (probably his householdsteward), to a member of his affinity, and to his knights.10

The authors of the three texts used discussions of urban occu-pations, shops, and shopping to instruct students in Latin vocabu-lary and the art of writing business letters. Together, these textsprovide a rich array of information on trades, crafts, shops andshopping in Paris and England in the early thirteenth century. Ihave provided a translation of Garland’s text, and transcriptions

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11 It is a rambling narrative in some 84 brief paragraphs, which arearranged topically and are designed to teach the Latin vocabulary for thingsseen and used in everyday life. The following discussion is based onparagraphs 9-46, 50-54, 66-70, and 72 of the text edited by Tony Hunt inTeaching and Learning Latin, 1: 191-203.

12 For the ordinances of the various craft and trade guilds of Paris c. 1268,see Étienne Boileau, Les Métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris. XIIIe siècle.Le livre des métiers d’Étienne Boileau, ed. René de Lespinasse and FrançoisBonnardot, Histoire générale de Paris (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1879).

and translations of the two dictaminal texts, in Appendices I-IIIbelow.

My first text, John of Garland’s Dictionarius, takes us on awalking tour of Paris.11 Garland lived on the Left Bank, in the closde Garlande (near the present rue Galande), from which he took hisname, and much of his text consists of descriptions of the variousartisans, retail traders, and goods for sale that were to be seen inhis own neighborhood in the newly-developing Latin Quarter, andelsewhere in the city.12 Garland’s text is, however, organized bytrade and not by topographical logic, since his aim is to providehis students with topical vocabulary rather than a practical guide-book to Paris. He begins by looking at some of the leather andmetal trades. “Today,” he says, “one of my neighbors carried a poleof shoes for sale: laced shoes with pointed toes, buckled shoes,boots and leggings, and the boots worn by women and monks.”Girdlers sell leather belts with iron or copper studs and girdles ofwoven silk ornamented with silver bars. Saddlers sell both plain andpainted saddles, as well as saddle pads, pillions, canvas, currycombs, and stirrups. Shield-makers sell shields covered with cloth,leather, and brass, with painted decorations. John’s neighborWilliam sells all sorts of small domestic commodities: needles andneedle-cases, soap, mirrors, razors, whetstones, and fire-irons.Buckle-makers sell buckles, straps, bits, files, and bridles, while lori-mers sell silvered and gilded spurs, and bridles and breast-strapsfor horses. A peddler hawks knives, sheaths, and styluses. Fur-bishers sell polished swords, sword-belts, and scabbards. Merchantsdwelling on the upscale Grand-Pont (which connected the Île-de-la-Cité with the Right Bank) sell halters, breech-girdles, straps, andpurses made of deerskin, sheepskin, and pigskin. Glovers sell un-lined and fur-lined gloves, and leather mittens; hatters make bothhats and caps of various materials.


13 In Farmer Boy (rev. edn, New York, etc.: Harper and Row, 1953),Chap.23: 292-5), Laura Ingalls Wilder described the same manner of makingshoes in New York state in the 1860s: The cobbler, using his right hand,“pulled a length of linen thread across the wad of black cobbler’s wax in hisleft palm, and he rolled the thread under his right palm, down the front ofhis leather apron. Then he pulled it and rolled it again... till the thread wasshiny-black and stiff with wax. Then he laid a stiff hog-bristle against eachend of it, and he waxed and he rolled ... till the bristles were waxed fast tothe thread.” The cobbler then clamped the upper pieces of one boot togetherin a vise and punched a hole through the edges with his awl. “He ran the twobristles through the hole, one from each side, and ... pulled the thread tight.He bored another hole, ran the two bristles through it, and pulled till thewaxed thread sank into the leather. That was one stitch.”

14 See Middle English Dictionary (MED), s.v. “Pilch(e);” Elspeth M. Veale, TheEnglish Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages, 2nd edn, London Record Society, 38(2003), 219, s.v. “Furrure,” 221, s.vv. “Pane” and “Pellicium.” A penula was a“panel” or “pane” of furs sewn together to make a lining, and a furrura orfurratura was the same. According to Elspeth Veale, in England in the latethirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a penula was often larger than a fur-rura, but in the texts discussed in this paper that distinction does not appear.

15 Cf. Les Crieries de Paris (mid thirteenth-century) by Guillaume de laVilleneuve, which reproduces many of the cries of the street-cries of Paris,including those of the repairers of mantles and pilches (“Il autres crie a grantfriçon:/Qui a mantel ne peliçon,/Si le m'aport a rafetier”). Paris, Bibliothèquenationale, MS fonds français, no. 837, fol. 246; printed in Alfred Franklin,Dictionnaire des arts, métiers, et professions exercés dans Paris depuis le treizième siècle(Paris, 1906; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), 748-51.

16 According to Étienne Boileau, the criers of wine in Paris c. 1268 couldgo into any tavern that sold wine by retail and demand to be the tavern’s

The bowyers, who dwell at the Porte St-Lazare, make bows andcrossbows of maple, viburnum, and yew, and arrows and bolts ofash. Brooch-makers sell brooches, pendants, and little bells madeof base metals; in churches, the bronze bells of the bell-founderstoll the hours. Lowly cobblers repair old shoes, while cordwainersmake new ones of tawed leather. They sew the leather into foot-wear using an awl, linen thread, and pig bristles.13 Skinners sellnew pilches (pellicia, pelisses: fur cloaks or coats, with the fur out-wards) and fur linings (penulas, furraturas),14 while other men goabout the streets of Paris crying that they will repair them.15

Next Garland looks at low-level traders in food and drink, whoclearly cater to the student market for which he himself is writing.Cup-menders cry that they will repair cups with bronze and silverwire. They mend mazers and cups made of maple, plane, birch,and aspen. Wine-criers cry wine at various prices and offer samplesto taste.16 Street-sellers with baskets of light pastries, wafers, and

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crier for that day or the following day, for a fee of 4d. The crier wasresponsible for seeing the wine drawn and for ensuring that the measuresused were correct. He was to cry the wine and its price in the streets twicedaily (once daily during Lent, on Sundays and Fridays, and on certainholidays), carrying a pot of the wine and a cup to allow potential customersto taste a sample. Boileau, Métiers, 21-4. A wine-crier is represented in thebottom panel of the early thirteenth-century window of St. Lubinus atChartres. See Jane Welch Williams, Bread, Wine, and Money: The Windows of theTrades at Chartres Cathedral (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,1993), Chap. 4, color plate 2, black-and-white plates 86, 96.

17 Cf. Garland’s Commentarius, in Hunt, ed., Teaching and Learning Latin, 1:221, where Garland notes that sausages, black puddings, haggis, and largepasties were food for sturdy rustics.

18 There are a number of scenes of money-changers in the early thirteenth-century windows of Chartres Cathedral. See Williams, Bread, Wine, and Money,Chap. 5, color plate 3, and black-and-white plates 117, 120, 127-31.

rissoles (fried, spiced balls of fruit or minced meat or marrow) crytheir wares at night. Regrators, who buy goods for re-sale, sendtheir servants out into the streets to sell cherries, plums, apples,pears, lettuce, cress, and chervil at premium prices. In their win-dows they display convenience foods: fine white rolls, quiches,butter cakes, soft and hard cheeses, and also candles, which havelarge sulphured wicks to make them burn better. The bakers bakebread made of various grains and, frequently, of bran. Pastelers(pie-bakers) make a killing selling to clerks pasties filled with pork,chicken, or eel, and tarts and flans—often dirty—stuffed with softcheeses and eggs. Fast-food cooks roast poultry on hazelwood spits,but they often sell meat that is raw and badly seasoned to the scho-lars’ servants. The butchers, who hate the scholars, sell them coarsecuts of beef, mutton, and pork, sometimes measled, and lethal an-douilles, sausages, black puddings, and tripes.17

The scene now shifts back to the much grander Grand-Pont,where the money-changers count out Parisian money, sterlings, be-zants, and other coins on their boards,18 and the goldsmiths sit be-fore their furnaces and tables making hanaps (goblets), brooches,and other ornaments. Hanapers decorate vessels with gold and sil-ver fittings, and put feet and rims on hanaps. Greedy drapers sella range of false woolen cloths, and also defraud their customers bymeasuring the cloths incorrectly. Some men usurp the office ofwomen by selling linen goods of all kinds: table linens, towels,sheets, shirts, underclothing, wimples, and kerchiefs. Spicers stockspices, wax, wax candles for churches, and medicinal preparations.


19 See p. 515 and n54 below. The nature of the loom here is unclear.Although the horizontal loom had appeared in Europe in the eleventhcentury, it is possible that the warp-weighted loom continued in use into thethirteenth century, perhaps especially for domestic weaving by women. AndrewWoodger has argued that the warp-weighted loom also survived in commercialuse as the burel (broadcloth) loom until the end of the thirteenth century,when it was decisively superseded by the horizontal broadcloth loom, whichhad been invented in Flanders in the mid thirteenth century. AndrewWoodger, “The Eclipse of the Burel Weaver: Some Technological Develop-ments in the Thirteenth Century,” Textile History 12 (1981): 59-76. CompareGarland’s description of the women weavers, who are not described either asseated or as using treadles, with the description provided in the late twelfthcentury by Alexander Nequam (or Neckam) in De nominibus utensilium. In thelatter, a seated male weaver works at a horizontal loom with treadles forraising the alternate warp threads; Nequam likens him to a rider with his feetin stirrups. Nequam’s text is edited in Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin, 1:177-89 (the passage on weaving is on pp. 184-5), and the description ofweaving is translated and discussed by Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr., in DailyLiving in the Twelfth Century, Based on the Observations of Alexander Neckam inLondon and Paris (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1952),146-50. On the possible continued use of the vertical loom, see also PenelopeWalton, “Textiles,” in English Medieval Industries, ed. John Blair and NigelRamsay (London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1991), 318-54,especially pp. 327-9. On weaving technologies and terminology, see John H.Munro, “Textile Technology in the Middle Ages,” in The Dictionary of theMiddle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer et al., vol. 11 (New York: Charles Scribner’sSons, 1988), reprinted in Munro, Textiles, Town, and Trade: Essays in the Econo-

The carpenters, who make various things out of wood, includecoopers, who make wooden barrels and other vessels, and wheel-wrights, who make wheels for carts and wagons.

Garland ends his tour with a look at mostly textile crafts.Fullers, naked and panting, full shaggy woolen cloths in troughs ofwhite clay and hot water, then dry them in the sun and pluck upthe nap with teasels. Dyers dye woolen cloths with woad and mad-der, which leave their nails dyed black, blue, and red. Pretty girlsturn up their noses at them unless they pay. Tanners work hardtanning horsehides and oxhides in hollowed logs. They scrape thehides with a knife and turn them frequently in their tanbark solu-tion to disperse the raw stench. Smiths forge horseshoes and toolsfor garden and farm. Cooks scrub pots and pans and dishes in hotwater before their ovens and hearths. Women weavers (possiblyworking at old-fashioned, warp-weighted, vertical looms), draw theirbobbins or shuttles through the warp-threads, pulling the weft-thread from the spool and spindle. They then beat up the weft,turn the spool on the windlass, and resume weaving.19 Female silk-

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mic History of Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries (Aldershot, Hamp-shire: Variorum, 1994), Chap. 1; and Munro, “Textiles,” in Medieval Latin, ed.Mantello and Rigg, 474-84. On the gender shift in commercial weaving fromfemale to male weavers (perhaps related to the introduction of the horizontalloom), see John Munro, “Medieval Woollens: Textiles, Textile Technology andIndustrial Organisation, c. 800-1500,” in The Cambridge History of WesternTextiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1:191-7, 217-18, 221-2.

20 The German Rhenish and Moselle wines, much enjoyed by King Johnand by Henry III, are not mentioned here; perhaps they were too expensivefor tavern use. The sweet wines of the eastern Mediterranean were not impor-ted to England in quantity until the fourteenth century. A. D. Francis, TheWine Trade (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972; New York: Harper andRow, 1973), 7-9, 15. Garland’s Commentarius (ed. Hunt, in Teaching and Learn-ing Latin, 1: 221) notes national preferences in drink: France prefers whitewine; Burgundy, red wine; Germany, mead; and England, ale. At Paris, headds, spiced wines are expensive; cider, perry, and wine flavored with mul-berry juice are sold there at Christmas.

21 Selds emerged at the end of the twelfth century in cities where propertyvalues in prime commercial streets were so high that many retail traders couldnot afford their own shop. Instead, they rented space in a seld and sold theirgoods from stalls or benches there. The selds were typically located behind

weavers stretch out gold threads on pegs or pins and beat up theweft. From their woven silks they make the girdles and head-bandsof wealthy women and the stoles of priests. Female wool-combers,in old pilches and filthy veils, sit combing their wool by the fire,near the privy and the bum-wipers. The women who wind silkthread into skeins are promiscuous sluts who sometimes clip thestudents’ purses. After this raunchy warning, Garland concludes histour of Paris by describing the poultry and game birds that aresold in the new street before the square of Notre-Dame, and thevarious kinds of fish sold by the fishermen.

Our second text (British Library, Additional MS 8167, fols. 88r-90v) begins by discussing forms of address in writing a letter, thenshifts to a discussion of how to write letters to creditors. “Somecreditors,” the author remarks, “are urban, and some are rural.”He then lists some nineteen urban occupations and proceeds todescribe them in turn. The vintner, he begins, should have wine ofAnjou, Gascony, the Île-de-France, and Auvergne, rosé wine, spicedwines, grape juice, perry, vinegar, cider, and mead. He shouldserve wine to his customers in gold cups, mazers, and lidded cups.20

Drapers sell their wares both at fairs and in selds (covered baza-ars).21 A draper should stock a variety of cloths, both cheap and


the street frontages in upscale commercial streets, and enabled traders toenjoy a prime location at an affordable rent. See Derek Keene, “Shops andShopping in Medieval London,” in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology inLondon, ed. Lindy Grant (British Archaeological Association Conference Trans-actions for the Year 1984, 1990), 38-43; D. M. Palliser, T. R. Slater, and E.Patricia Dennison, “The Topography of Towns 600-1300,” in The CambridgeUrban History of Britain, Volume 1, 600-1540, ed. David M. Palliser (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 184-5; and Derek Keene, “Londonfrom the Post-Roman Period to 1300,” in The Cambridge Urban History ofBritain, 1: 201. For some early references to London selds, see W. O. Hassall,ed., Cartulary of St. Mary Clerkenwell, Camden Society, 3rd ser., 71 (1949), nos.224-5, 256, 273, 327; M. Gibbs, ed., Early Charters of the Cathedral Church ofSt. Paul, London, Camden Society, 3rd ser., 58 (1939), nos. 282, 302-5, 336;Emma Mason et al., eds, Westminster Abbey Charters, 1066-c. 1214, LondonRecord Society, 25 (1988), no. 381. For a discussion of selds in other Englishtowns, see D. Clark, “The Shop Within?: An Analysis of the ArchitecturalEvidence for Medieval Shops,” Architectural History 43 (2000), 83-4, n. 6.

22 Scarlets, burnets, and russets were well-known types of woolen cloth inthe thirteenth century. A list in Anglo-Norman of more than a hundredEnglish towns and their attributes identifies Lincoln with scarlet, Stamford withhaberget, Blyth with blanket, Beverley with burnet, and Colchester with russet.Bodleian Library, MS Douce 98, fols. 195-6; printed by C. Bonnier in “Listof English Towns in the Fourteenth Century,” English Historical Review 16 (63)(1901): 501-3, and translated in Harry Rothwell, ed., English HistoricalDocuments, Vol. 3, 1189-1327 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1975), “SomeThirteenth-Century English Places and Their Associations,” 881-4. TheBodleian catalogue of Douce manuscripts dates Douce 98 to c. 1320-30;Rothwell, however, follows Eleanora Carus-Wilson in dating this text to themid thirteenth century. Scarlet was the very finest and most costly woolen,available in a range of colors. See Munro, “Medieval Woollens: Textiles,Textile Technology and Industrial Organisation, c. 800-1500,” 212-5. Burnetevidently was a very fine-quality woolen cloth. In 1231 Henry III’s tailor wassent to the fair of Bury St. Edmunds to buy ready-made clothing that includeda “complete robe of black burnetta furred with squirrel.” In 1244 four“burnettos bene tinctos” and four black burnetas were listed among the expensivecloths and furs ordered for the king and queen to wear, respectively, atWhitsun and Christmas. Kay Staniland, “Clothing Provision and the GreatWardrobe in the Mid-Thirteenth Century,” Textile History 22 (1991), 243, 248.Russets were among the cheaper woolens. See E. M. Carus-Wilson, “TheEnglish Cloth Industry in the Late Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries,”Economic History Review 14 (1944), 32-50 (see especially pp. 33-4); reprintedin Eleanora M. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers: Collected Studies(London: Methuen, 1954), 211-38.

23 Imperial was an imported silk. According to the Oxford English Dictionary

expensive, including English broadcloths, heavy cloths for makinghoods, and finer, lighter cloths for making robes for the better-dressed. His range of goods should also include scarlets, burnets,russets,22 imperials,23 and habergets, burels24 made in London or

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(OED), s.v. “Imperial,” B. 3, citing Daniel Rock’s Textile Fabrics (1876): “At theend of the twelfth century there was brought to England from Greece, a sortof precious silk, named Imperial.” It evidently was so called because it was ori-ginally made in Constantinople. A silk called imperial was listed in an inven-tory of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in 1245. Lucca was producing a heavycloth of gold called imperial by 1376, and Florence was still producing it in1458, although lampas silks, including imperial, evidently had declined in po-pularity by then. In England, during the period 1325-1462 the Great Ward-robe purchased imperials only between the years 1379-1381 and 1422-1425.Lisa Monnas, “Silk Cloths Purchased for the Great Wardrobe of the Kings ofEngland, 1325-1462,” in Ancient and Medieval Textiles: Studies in Honour ofDonald King, ed. Lisa Monnas and Hero Granger-Taylor, Publications of thePasold Research Fund (Leeds: W. S. Maney & Son, 1990), 285, 290, 297-9.In 1483, four pieces of “imperiall with Lukes golde” were bought for the corona-tion of Richard III. The Coronation of Richard III: The Extant Documents, ed.Anne F. Sutton and P. W. Hammond (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, and New York:St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 112, 420. See also Dictionary of Medieval Latin fromBritish Sources, s.v. “Imperialis” (5).

24 Eleanora Carus-Wilson tentatively identified haberget as a woolen clothwith a distinctive diamond-patterned twill weave, woven on a warp-weightedloom, and resembling the texture of a chain-mail hauberk. Haberget waspopular between the mid twelfth and mid thirteenth centuries, and evidentlyranged in quality from very fine to very coarse because it was worn by bothrich and poor. Eleanora Carus-Wilson, “Haberget: A Medieval TextileConundrum,” Medieval Archaeology 13 (1969): 148-66 and Plates XV-XXV.Burel was a cheap woolen cloth, often purchased by the king for almsgivingor for servants’ clothing. See Carus-Wilson, “English Cloth Industry in theLate Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries,” 33-4; Staniland, “ClothingProvision and the Great Wardrobe in the Mid-Thirteenth Century,” 243.Andrew Woodger identified burel as a broadcloth woven on a warp-weightedloom (“The Eclipse of the Burel-Weaver,” 59-76).

25 I have been unable to identify cordium and cordicium. Cordium came inwhite and black, unshorn and shorn (grossum vel minuetum), while cordicium wasstriped. The mid thirteenth-century list of English towns and their attributes(Bodleian Library, MS Douce 98, fols. 195-6) mentions “Corde de Warwik” (line55) and “Corde de Bredeport” (line 90) as the signature products of Warwickand Bridport. See Bonnier, “List of English Towns,” 501-3, and Rothwell, ed.,English Historical Documents, Vol. 3, 1189-1327, 881-4. However, the MEDdefines “corde” simply as “a rope, line, cord, or string,” and I have beenunable to find any reference to cloths with a corded or ribbed weave. Therewas a cloth called “card,” but it seems to have been a type of muslin. SeeDictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “Carda;” OED, s.v. “Carde;”MED, s.v. “Carde” n.(3).

Beauvais, cordium and cordicium,25 and grisetum (evidently a graywoolen cloth) from Totnes and Cornwall.

Next come sellers of foodstuffs. Our author lists more than twodozen types of fresh sea fish and freshwater fish that fishermen andfishmongers should sell. Butchers sell carcases and joints, both


26 Knitted liturgical gloves were used in Europe from the sixth or seventhcentury. See Irena Turnau, “The Diffusion of Knitting in Medieval Europe,”in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E. M.Carus-Wilson, ed. N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting, Pasold Studies in TextileHistory, 2 (London: Heinemann Educational Books, for The Pasold ResearchFund, 1983), 368-89, especially 375-82.

salted and fresh, of beef, pork, goat, and mutton, and also offal,lard, tallow, cowhides and sheepskins. Poulterers sell all kinds ofwild birds as well as domestic ones. Bakers offer a variety of fineand coarse breads. Their equipment includes not only an oven,sieve, bolting cloth, and molding-board, but also a dough-brake,which was a mechanical device for kneading large quantities ofdough. Pastelers sell pasties, well-spiced and filled with meat, fish,poultry, or game, while flan-makers sell flans made of eggs, bread,and cheese, and waferers sell wafers and little cakes cooked in ironsor ovens.

Lastly, our author looks at the metal and leather crafts. A gold-smith’s stock should include altar plate, crowns, crosses, candelabra,tableware, and jewelry. Cutlers make various kinds of knives, razors,scissors, and shears. Girdlers sell belts of silk, linen, or leather;some of the girdles are plain, and some are decorated with roundor square studs. Glovers offer a variety of lined and unlined gloves,including heavy work gloves; thin gloves for those who do no ma-nual work; large, lined gloves for falconers; and seamless knittedgloves.26 Cordwainers work in tawed leather made of goatskin orsheepskin, from which they make a wide range of fine footwear.Both the hosier and the cobbler, however, work in cowhides. Cob-blers make both leggings and shoes, but hosiers make leggings onlyand not shoes. Saddlers sell both saddles and shields in variousstyles. Skinners sell leather garments and fur linings and trimmingsmade of a wide range of skins and furs, from those of cats, dogs,and sheep, to those of dormice, squirrels, and sables. This treatisethen ends abruptly with a description of the wares of the lorimers.They sell horse tack and spurs, in a variety of styles.

Our third text consists of instructions for writing and respondingto orders and requests, illustrated by ten model letters. Six of theletters represent exchanges between a fictitious earl and his vintner,draper, and skinner. In the first of these (Letter 2), the earl writesto his vintner to order two tuns of Gascon wine and three of wineof Anjou, at a price of 20s per tun, for a total of £5. He wishes to

502 MARTHA CARLIN

buy these wines on credit, reminding the vintner of his excellentcredit history and promising to pay in full on Palm Sunday. Heends, somewhat haughtily, by hoping that the vintner will behavein such a manner as to deserve his gratitude. The author then sug-gests a gracious reply for the vintner to send, with variant endings(Letters 3-4), depending on whether or not the customer has agood credit record. In the former case, the vintner recites the earl’srequest, and the fact that he has always paid his bills, and con-cludes: “I agree to your present request and shall accommodateyou with the five tuns that you have sought, trusting you that onthe day named, as is your custom, you will pay your debt to me infull.” However, if the customer’s account is in arrears, the trades-man is advised to end his letter instead by saying, “I shall accom-modate you with the five tuns of wine that you requested, beseech-ing you anxiously that you will pay me in full your old debt, whichis in arrears, equally with this new debt, on the said day.”

Next, the earl writes to his woolen-draper in London (Letter 5)to order sixty ells of scarlet cloth, again on credit. He acknowl-edges this time that his merits are somewhat equivocal, but hopesthat the draper will accommodate him and give him the cloth, atthe best possible price, until the Sunday after Easter, when he willpay in full. The earl hopes that he may have the cloth on theseterms without a pledge, but if a pledge is required, he has sent tengold rings and ten silver cups. He concludes, as in his previousletter, by trusting that the draper will act in such a way as todeserve his friendship.

The earl then writes a rather obsequious letter to his skinner(Letter 6), to whom he owes money, saying that he needs furs forEaster but does not have the money to pay for them. He imploresthe skinner to accommodate him with twenty linings of gris and thesame of vair (costly squirrel skins) and of fine-quality lambskins, oncredit. If the skinner does not have these in stock, the earl askshim to obtain them elsewhere, promising to pay him on the ap-pointed day. The earl addresses this letter to “his beloved skinnerH.,” and sends “greetings and the fullest of love.” The skinnerresponds with a very polite letter (Letter 8), addressed to his“beloved friend,” saying that, unfortunately, he cannot accommo-date the earl. The skinner explains that his own stock has beendestroyed in a fire, and no one will lend him the money to makenew purchases since he no longer has any collateral. He concludes


27 These letters, as well as Letters 1, 7, 10, and 11, will be discussedat length by Martha Carlin and David Crouch in their forthcomingvolume on this manuscript.

by begging “that you do not take it amiss that I have not sent youwhat you requested, since you know the cause of the impediment.”

The final business letter in this collection is another letter ofrefusal (Letter 9), this time written by an unidentified man toanother man of similar status. The petitioner has evidently askedfor some kind of favor or financial assistance, after having previ-ously refused a similar request by the writer of the present letter.The writer’s tone this time is quite cutting, and he angrily remindsthe petitioner that one ill turn deserves another: “you disdained tocome to my aid. And so, henceforward, if you want to have afriend, you will have to be found [to be] a friend. Farewell.”27

The archival records of urban commerce traditionally consultedby economic historians provide crucial quantitative information onsuch topics as the production and distribution of goods; wages andprices; debt and credit; transaction costs; and the demography andtopography of urban trade. The three texts discussed here touch onsome of these topics, but their greatest value is in the considerableinformation that they provide on many complementary subjects.These include valuable descriptions of manufacturing techniquesand working conditions; of the raw materials, tools, and otherequipment used in the various crafts; of the shops, stalls, andstreet-furniture used by vendors; of credit practices, and commercialhazards. In a period for which commercial inventories are virtuallynon-existent, our first two texts provide detailed descriptions of therange of goods made, mended, and sold by urban artisans andretail traders, and make it clear that by the early 1200s many werealready highly specialized. In the leather trades, for example, cord-wainers made shoes of tawed leather, not tanned hide, hosiersmade leather leggings but not shoes, and lorimers made bridles butnot belts. In the food and drink trades, vintners sold wine but notale, bakers baked bread but not wafers; and a variety of fast foodswere offered by a similar variety of specialist cooks. In Paris, thegoldsmiths, brooch-makers, hanapers, and cup-menders all occupiedseparate economic niches within the metal trades.

Urban trades and crafts were a new topic for writers and artistsin the thirteenth century, and the range of occupations in our texts


30 See Martha Carlin, “Fast Food and Urban Living Standards in MedievalEngland,” in Food and Eating in Medieval Europe, ed. Martha Carlin and JoelT. Rosenthal (London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1998), 27-51.

we get a somewhat more jaundiced view, written by and for thosewho lived on a student’s meager stipend or a scholar’s inadequatepay. While they might linger lovingly over the gold and silver plateof the goldsmiths, the elegant woolens of the drapers or the finefurs of the skinners, they also speak knowingly of down-marketvendors and second-hand goods; of retailers who cheat theircustomers with false measures or adulterated products; and of theexorbitant cost and dubious quality of unhealthy but irresistibleconvenience foods. (The hot pies and flans described here wereamong the principal fast-foods of medieval towns. Such foods wereavoided by the wealthy but were a staple of poor urban households,which often lacked the means to make a hot meal. The presenceof fast-food cooks in towns is thus a gauge of urban poverty, notplenty.)30 Our third text also reminds us that even aristocratic shop-pers needed to ask for credit, and it lays out standard proceduresfor buying and selling by correspondence, in Latin, and even forwriting an angry rejection letter. Together, these three texts, andothers like them, can clearly add much to our understanding ofshops and shopping in the thirteenth century.

508 MARTHA CARLIN

APPENDICES

A Note on the Translations in Appendices I-III

In translating these texts I have drawn heavily on the texts and glosses inTony Hunt’s Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-Century England, 3vols. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991). For John of Garland’s DictionariusI have also consulted the only previous translation: Barbara Blatt Rubin’sThe Dictionarius of John de Garlande and the Author’s Commentary (Lawrence,Kansas: Coronado Press, 1981), which she based on Thomas Wright’sedition in A Volume of Vocabularies ... from the Tenth Century to the Fifteenth,in Joseph Mayer (ed.), A Library of National Antiquities, vol. 1 ([Liverpool]:privately printed, 1857), 121-38.) I have also checked the editions of theDictionarius in Hercule Géraud, ed., Paris sous Philippe-le -Bel, Collection dedocuments inédits sur l’histoire de France (Paris: Imprimerie de Crapelet, 1837),Appendice II, “Dictionnaire de Jean de Garlande,” 580-612; Thomas Wright(described above); and August Scheler, Lexicographie latine du XIIe et du XIIIesiècle. Trois traités de Jean de Garlande, Alexandre Neckam et Adam du Petit Pont,publiés avec les gloses françaises (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1867), 1-83. Inaddition to dictionaries of Classical Latin I have also used the Dictionary ofMedieval Latin from British Sources, ed. R. E. Latham et al. (London: OxfordUniversity Press, for the British Academy, 1975-, in progress); R. E.Latham’s Revised Medieval Latin Word-List from British and Irish Sources (Lon-don: Oxford University Press, for the British Academy, 1965, reprint 1973),the online versions of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the MiddleEnglish Dictionary (MED), and various other medieval word-lists (cited in thenotes). I owe deep thanks to Richard Monti and Susan Reynolds for generalassistance with the Latin, to Richard Hoffman for kindly supplying me withinformation on fish terminology, and to David Crouch for assistance withthe vocabulary of heraldry and aristocratic correspondence. Any errors thatremain are mine alone. A number of the readings given below are verytentative; I would be grateful to receive any corrections or suggestions foramending them.

APPENDIX I

Translation of the Description of Shops and Shopping in Paris in John of Garland’s Dictionarius

The following translation is based on paragraphs 9-46, 50-4, 66-70, and 72of the text edited by Tony Hunt in Teaching and Learning Latin, 1: 191-203.To facilitate comparison with Hunt’s edition I have included his paragraphnumbers below.


31 Hunt’s index of glosses includes barre as a gloss for clavis, barrés as agloss for membratas, and barré as a gloss for stipata (Hunt, Teaching andLearning Latin, 3: 37, 101, 156, 202). A fifteenth-century copy of Garland’sDictionarius with English interlinear glosses (British Library, MS Harley 1002,fol. 176v) translates membratas here as ystodyd, and stipata as ybarryd (ornamen-ted with metal strips). See Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v.“Membrare” (2), and MED, s.v. “Barre” (6). For a fourteenth-century silkgirdle ornamented with metal bars and excavated in London, see Geoff Eganand Frances Pritchard, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 3: Dress Acces-sories, c. 1150-c. 1450 (London: HMSO, 1991), 48, fig. 30.

32 Cf. MED, s.v. “Piln.”33 Piricudia vel fusillos: fusillos could also mean spindles, but here it seems

to be used as a synonym for pyricudia (fire-irons). See Latham, Revised MedievalLatin Word-List, s.v. “Pyr,” and MED, s.v. “Fir” 4(c).

34 The poitrels (or peytrels) here were breast-straps for horses, since therewere as yet no breastplates. Cf. MED, s.v. “Poitrel.” They were often hungwith jingling bells or pendants, which presumably is why Garland calls them“resonant.” See the description of the lorimers in Appendix II, below; cf.Holmes, Daily Living in the Twelfth Century, 20-1.

1-8. [After a preliminary discussion of parts of the body, Garland abruptly shifts toa description of the goods for sale in Paris.]

9. Today one of our neighbors carried a pole of shoes for sale: lacedshoes with pointed toes and buckled shoes, boots (tibialia), andleggings (cruralia), and the boots (crepitas) worn by women and monks.

10. Girdlers have before them white, black, and red [leather] belts, well-studded (bene membratas) with iron and copper, and girdles of wovensilk, well-barred (bene stipata) with silver.31

11. Saddlers sell saddles, both bare and painted, and also saddle pads (pa-nellos), pillions (pulvillos),32 canvas (carentivillas), and pack-saddles (tru-sulas), and stirrups (strepas).

12. Shield-makers benefit the citizens of all France (or, in some MSS,England); they sell to knights shields covered with cloth, leather, andbrass, painted with lions and with fleurs de lis (leonibus et foliis liliorumdepicta).

13. Buckle-makers are enriched by their buckles, straps, and bits; by theirfiles, and their bridles (loralia).

14. William, our neighbor, has in the market before him the followinggoods for sale: needles and needle-cases, soap, mirrors, razors, whet-stones, and fire-irons.33

15. Lorimers are highly esteemed by noble knights for their silvered andgilded spurs, their resonant poitrels (pectoralia resonancia),34 and theirwell-made bridles.

510 MARTHA CARLIN

35 In Classical Latin, monilia in this context would normally have meantnecklaces or collars, but Hunt’s glosses translate it as fermals, nuches, anglicebroche.

36 For formipedia (lasts) and equitibialia (lasts for boots), see MED, s.v.“Lest(e);” cf. Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “Formipedia.”

37 The meaning of spatulas is unclear; either “shoehorns” or “foot-measures”would perhaps best fit the context, but both Garland’s glosses and moderndictionaries of Latin or Middle English translate spatula simply as “slice” (aspatula; a flat-bladed utensil used for stirring, mixing, or applying compoundsor cleaning wounds). The MED also gives a secondary meaning as a surgicaltool for cutting or lancing.

16. Today I saw a peddler who had before him table knives and smallknives (cultellos ad mensam, mensaculas et artavos), sheaths great andsmall, styluses, and grafting knives.

17. Furbishers of swords pile up pence by selling well-polished swords thathave gleaming pommels and hilts and new scabbards.

18. Merchants dwelling on the Grand-Pont sell halters, breech-girdles(drawstring belts for men’s drawers), straps, and purses made ofdeerskin, sheepskin, and pigskin.

19. Glovers bilk the scholars of Paris by selling them unlined gloves,gloves lined with lambskin, rabbit fur, and fox fur, and mittens madeof leather.

20. Hatters make hats of felt and peacock feathers, and caps of cotton(pillea de bombace), and little caps of wool and fur (pilleola de lana etpilis).

21. At the Porte St-Lazare dwell the bowyers, who make crossbows andbows of maple, viburnum, and yew, and bolts and arrows of ash.

22. The brooch-makers have before them large and small brooches (firma-cula) made of lead and tin, iron and copper. They also have beautifulpendants (monilia)35 and little ringing bells.

23. There are subtle artificers who make bells of sonorous bronze bywhich, in churches, the hours of the day are announced by themovement of the clappers and of the pulled ropes.

24. There are lowly cobblers who stitch together old shoes, renewing thepatches, the welts, the soles, and the uppers.

25. Cordwainers are those who make footwear of tawed leather. Theybenefit the city of Paris by saving lasts for shoes and boots36 andspatulas (shoehorns or foot-measures?).37 They cut the leather, whichhas been dyed black, with a cobbler’s knife, and sew the footwear withan awl and linen thread and a pig bristle.


38 Cisinum meant both vair and gris, which were the choicest squirrel skins.They came from the coldest parts of Northern and Central Europe, especiallyfrom Scandinavia and Russia, but also from Poland and Bulgaria. Vair was thewhole skin of the red squirrel in wintertime, when it had a gray back andwhite belly, and gris was the gray winter back alone. On the terminology ofthe medieval fur trade, see Veale, English Fur Trade, 218-29. Glosses for urlasoccur in one MS. of the Dictionarius as hourles (cf. modern French ourler, “tohem,” and ourlet, “hem”), and in another as rewers, probably in the modernsense of “revers” (the turned-back edge of a garment, such as a lapel,displaying the reversed edge). Hunt, ed., Teaching and Learning Latin, 2:130,153; cf. Veale, English Fur Trade, 221, s.v. “Revers.”

39 Garland’s play on words here is meant to remind his students not toconfuse furs with furtiveness. The text used by Wright and Rubin gives thisfinal clause as partim furando, while Hunt’s version reads et eorum partemfurando.

40 Vinum attaminatum. See Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v.“Attaminare;” and MED, s.vv. “Attamen” 2; “Brochen” 3(a); cf. modern Frenchentamer. For reading it instead as “filtered,” see Latham, Revised MedievalWord-List, s.v. “Attamino” (2): to bolt (flour); cf. “Tamisium” (sieve).

41 Artocreas, which commonly means meat pies or pasties, here is glossedwith variants of rossole or russole. See MED, s.v. “Risheu,” fried balls of mincedfruit, sugar, and spices, or of minced meat or marrow mixed with egg andspices. Cf. Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, eds., Curye On Inglysch:English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (Including The Forme ofCury), Early English Text Society, SS. 8 (1985), 212, s.v. “Ruscheues.”

26. Skinners grow rich by their pilches (pellicia) and skins sewn togetherto make fur linings (penulas, furraturas), some made of lambskin, someof catskin, some of the skins of hares, some of fox skins. Skinners selldelightful pelts of coneys and [?eastern] squirrels (cyrogrillorum), andof [?western] squirrels (esperiolorum), which are smaller than [?eastern]squirrels, according to Isidore [of Seville], and of otters and weasels.But they sell more dearly vair and gris (cisinum), and trimmings (urlas)of sable and dormouse (laerone).38

27. There are some criers of pilches to mend who go about the streets ofParis, and they repair the fur linings (furraturas) of surcotes andmantles, partly by stealing (furando).39

28. Menders of cups cry that they will repair cups with bronze and silverwire. They mend mazers and cups of plane and birch, maple andaspen.

29. Wine-criers cry, with gaping throat, wine that was broached40 in thetaverns, at fourpence, sixpence, eightpence, and twelvepence, carryingwine poured from a gallon jug into a hanap for sampling.

30. Street-sellers of light pastries (nebularum) and wafers cry out their lightpastries and wafers and rissoles (artocreas: fried balls of spiced fruit,minced meat, or marrow)41 at night, selling them from baskets covered

512 MARTHA CARLIN

42 Placente is glossed as symeneus. A simnel was a fine white bread or roll,evidently boiled like a bagel before being baked. Flamic[i]e, which the Dic-tionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources defines as flawns or custard tarts,is glossed here as flamiches. In modern French cookery, a flamiche is a quicheor tart, with a single or double crust. Ignacie is glossed as fouaches, anglice þerifekakez. Fouaces were cakes made of butter and eggs, according to Alfred Frank-lin, Dictionnaire des arts, métiers, et professions exercés dans Paris depuis le treizièmesiècle (Paris, 1906; reprint New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), 396. The MiddleEnglish adjective therf or tharf meant unleavened. See MED, s.v. “Therf.”

43 Archas etiam radunt aliquando cum costa pastali. For dough-scraper (literally,dough-rib), see MED, s.v. “Rib(be)” n.(3).

with a white towel, and the baskets are often hung at the windows ofclerks as gaming forfeits.

31. Regrators send out their male and female servants into the streets todeceive the clerks, to whom they sell—very dearly—cherries, white andblack plums, unripe apples and pears, and lettuce, cress, and chervil.

32. Simnels, quiches, and butter cakes42 lie in the windows of theregrators, along with soft and hard cheeses, and sulphured candles,which have large wicks to make them burn better.

33. The bakers of Paris knead dough and form loaves, which they bakein an oven that has been wiped clean with a cloth. They sell breadmade of wheat, rye, barley, oats, maslin (a mixture of wheat and rye),and, frequently, of bran. The bakers have male and female servantswho sift the coarse flour with a fine sieve and mix the yeast into thedough to make the bread rise in the trough. Sometimes they alsoscrape out the bins with a dough-scraper.43

34. Pastelers make a huge profit by selling to clerks pasties of pork,chicken, and eels, seasoned with pepper, and putting out for sale tartsand flans stuffed with soft cheeses and eggs, healthful, but often dirty.

35. Cooks (i.e., fast-food cooks, who sell take-away food) turn and roastgeese, pigeons, and capons on hazelwood spits, but often they sell rawmeat, badly seasoned with sauces and garlic, to the foolish servants ofthe scholars. The butchers in their shambles hate them (i.e., thescholars), selling them coarse flesh of beef, mutton, and pork,sometimes measled, brandishing their cleavers and great knives at thescholars. But these slaughterers are slain (mactantur) by the angryscholars because of the filthy andouilles, sausages, black puddings, andtripes that they assemble (conveniunt) for the poor rabble.

36. The money-changers count out money of Paris, sterlings, bezants, andother gleaming coins on their boards on the Grand-Pont, hoping tomake a big profit while evading the crime of usury.


44 Here, instead of Hunt’s “Licet denarios monetant, sed non sunt denarii” (cap.37), I follow Géraud (p. 594, cap. XXXVI), Wright (p. 128), and Scheler (p.27, cap. 37) in reading “sui” in place of “sed.”

45 anchas, glossed as fosses and fosces.46 “Pannarii, nimia cupiditate ducti, fallaces vendunt pannos albos et nigros,

camelinos, et blodios et burneticos, virides, scarleticos, radiatos et stan-ford[i]os.” Hunt (Teaching and Learning Latin, 3: 25) includes glosses for cameli-nos as camelin and camelot (camlet). Camelin was a woolen fabric mixed withsilk or other fibers. See MED, s.v. “Camelin.” According to the Dictionary ofMedieval Latin from British Sources it could also be cloth made of (or imitatng)camel’s hair. Camlet evidently was a similar cloth; in the late fifteenth centuryit was a “fine fabric, often of mixed silk and wool.” Sutton and Hammond,Coronation of Richard III, 419. The glosses in Hunt’s edition (3: 22, 145) trans-late burneticos simply as burnet and scarleticos as escarlez or scarlet. However, thehigh value of burnets and scarlets, coupled with Garland’s emphasis on thedrapers’ dishonesty, suggests that these “burnet-ish” and “scarlet-ish” clothswere ersatz. On striped cloths, see Walton, “Textiles,” 341; and Munro, “Medi-eval Woollens: Textiles, Textile Technology and Industrial Organisation,” 183.On stamforts or stanforts (coarse, light cloths with a strong, ungreased worstedwarp and a greased woolen weft), see Munro, “Medieval Woollens: TheWestern European Woollen Industries and Their Struggles for InternationalMarkets, c. 1000-1500,” in Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. Jenkins,229-30.

37. The moneyers who mint money appear to be rich and yet are not.Although they coin pennies, the pennies are not theirs,44 but are sentto the Exchange to be exchanged by the money-changers (a cambi-toribus vel a campsoribus) hoping to make a profit.

38. The goldsmiths sit before their furnaces and tables on the Grand-Pont,and make hanaps of gold and silver, brooches, pendants (monilia),pins, and buttons, and they select jasper, sapphire, and emeraldgemstones for rings.

39. The skill (industria) of the goldsmiths pounds gold and silver leaf onan iron anvil with delicate little hammers, and encloses precious gemswithin the cavities45 of the rings that are worn by barons andgentlewomen.

40. The artificers who are called hanapers decorate vessels with gold andsilver fittings and put feet on hanaps and crown them with rims tomake them stronger, more durable, more precious, more salable.

41. Drapers, driven by greed, sell false white and black woolen cloths,camelins and blues and imitation burnets, greens, imitation scarlets,striped cloths, and stamforts (or stanforts).46 They defraud buyers bymeasuring the cloths badly with a short ell and a false thumb (or inch:police fallaci).


50 Sandix is glossed variously as both woad and madder, and this confusionseems to have been common. See Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin, 3: 142-3;Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “Sandix;” and MED, s.vv.“Mader(e),” “Sandix,” “Warance,” “Weld(e),” and “Wod(e).” In Classical Latin,sandix meant vermilion or a color like it.

51 See MED, s.v. “Plater.”52 Glossed as gates; cf. Garland’s Commentarius, where scapha or gate is

described as a wooden bowl in which feet are washed (in Hunt, Teaching andLearning Latin, 1: Texts, 219); and MED, s.vv. “Bolle” n.(2); “Gate” n.(3).

53 Fornaces: in a culinary context, a fornax can be an oven, a stove (forbarbecue-style countertop cooking), or a built-in cauldron for boiling. Cf.MED, s.v. “Furnais(e).”

54 This phrase is puzzling. A troclea was a winch or windlass: see Hunt,Teaching and Learning Latin, 3: Indexes, 170; and the online Anglo-Norman

51. Dyers of woolen cloths dye cloths with woad and red madder (cumgaudone, rubea maiore et sandice),50 on account of which they have dyednails, of which some are black, some blue, some red, and so they arespurned by pretty women, unless they are accepted for the sake ofcash.

52. Tanners work hard tanning horsehides and oxhides in hollow tree-trunks, and they scrape the hides with a knife called a scraper. Theyturn the hides frequently in their tanbark solution so that the rawstench of the hides will dissipate.

53. On an anvil, with hammers and tongs and the puffing of bellows,smiths make coulters and plowshares, horseshoes, the iron edge for aspade or shovel, or mattocks or hoes, not forgetting scythes for themeadow grasses and sickles for grains.

54. In hot water, cooks cleanse cauldrons (cacabos) and jugs (urceos), pans(patellas) and frying-pans (sartagines), basins (pelves), ewers (ydrias), pots(ollas), mortars (mortaria), dishes (scutellas), platters (rotundalia),51

saucers (acetabula), spoons (coclearia), bowls (scaphas),52 gridirons (crati-culas), graters (micatoria), [and] meat-hooks (creagra), while they standbefore their ovens and fireplaces and furnaces.53

55-65. [Garland next discusses home furnishings and clothing, giving examples fromhis own dwelling; the proper books and vestments of a priest; church vessels; theduties of a stableboy; and the tools used by women, with a lewd final comment aboutthe latter. He then continues.]

66. Women weavers (textrices) lead their bobbin-sticks or shuttles (ducuntpectines: “combs”) through the warp-threads with the weft-thread (perstamina cum trama), which is drawn from a spool and spindle (quetrahitur a spola et pano). The woman weaver then beats up the weft-thread with her slay or weaver’s sword (Ipsa vero textrix percutit tramamcum lama), turns the spool on the windlass (involvit spolam in troclea),54


59 Gamaros: the glosses here read espinoches, espinocles, and esperling (one MS.also gives “gamerus gallice vocatur tenche”). None glosses gamaros as lobsters(cf. Classical Latin cammarus), and some kind of fish would indeed make bettersense here than lobsters, since the gamaros are listed with other fish caughtwith hooks and nets. The MED identifies sperling(e) as a “fish of the familyClupeidae, esp. the sprat (Clupea sprattus); ... also, the pilchard (Sardiniapilchardus); also, any small fish of the genus Merlangus, such as the whiting(Merlangus merlangus), or of the family Salmonidae, such as the grayling(Thymallus thymallus), or perh. the European smelt (Osmerus eperlanus).”

60 In the editions of Hunt and Scheler (p. 35, cap. 72), the last clausereads: “quia canes marini ab equore devehuntur.” Here I am following theeditions of Géraud (p. 608, cap. LXX) and Wright (p. 135), which begin thisclause with “et” instead of “quia.” The Oxford Latin Dictionary defines canismarinus as shark or dogfish (a small inshore shark), and the Dictionary ofMedieval Latin from British Sources as seal or possibly dogfish, but RichardHoffman has suggested (pers. comm.) that here it may instead mean porpoise,which was the meaning used by Albertus Magnus in De animalibus and, in thesixteenth century, by Conrad von Gessner in Historia animalium.

fish: gamaros)59 with hooks and nets, and porpoises (?or sharks: canesmarini) are taken from the sea.60

73-84. [Garland concludes with discussions of domestic and wild beasts, gardenplants, trees, house-construction, ships, instruments of martyrdom, musicians andtheir instruments, prostitutes and dancing-girls tormented by serpents (as punishmentfor their sins), Paradise, and the Last Judgment.]

APPENDIX II

Transcription and translation of British Library, Additional. MS 8167, fols.88r-90v. This transcription is based on that printed by G[eorg] Waitz in"Handschriften in englischen Bibliotheken," Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft füraltere Deutsche Geschichtskunde 4 (1879): 339-43. I have re-checked the manu-script and made a number of corrections to Waitz’s transcript. I havesilently modernized the punctuation, use of “u” and “v,” and capitalization,but have used italics to show expanded abbreviations.

Waitz mistakenly identified this treatise as having been written in afourteenth-century hand. In fact, the entire volume, which contains acollection of dictaminal and legal materials, evidently was written in the firsthalf of the thirteenth century. A note on fol. 2r (a front fly-leaf) recordsthat it was acquired for Westminster Abbey by William de Hasele. Hasele,who died as sub-prior of Westminster before May 1283, had probablyobtained the volume before 1250, since additional notes on fol. 2r recorda dispute during the abbacy of Richard de Crokele (or Crokesle) in 1250,and national events of 1258, together with Crokele’s death at Winchesterin 1258 on the feast of St. Kenelm the Martyr (17 July). Article 5 in the

518 MARTHA CARLIN

61 For the dating of the treatise and of Additional MS 8167, and the latter’sacquisition by Hasele and presentation to Westminster Abbey, see Richardson,“An Oxford Teacher,” 447-50; and H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, “EarlyCoronation Records,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 13 (1936):135. According to the British Library’s online catalogue, a mortgage on fol.95r (line 5), dated 30 years after Henry III’s coronation, “is either a scribalerror or indicates that most of art. 5 was written after 1246.” Richardsonbelieved that this date was “a later modification” (“An Oxford Teacher,” 448,n.2). However, in the manuscript the year is given as 30 years from the birth(a carnacione) of Henry III (1 October 1207), not his coronation (a coronatione,28 October 1216).

Richardson noted two later versions of both this treatise and of our thirdtext in two Cambridge manuscripts: Gonville and Caius College, MS 205, pp.2 55-64 (1270s), and Corpus Christi College, MS 297, fols. 135v-138r(beginning of the fourteenth century?). Richardson, “An Oxford Teacher,”447, 449-50. I have checked both manuscripts. Neither seems to derivedirectly from Additional MS 8167, and the Corpus Christi College manuscript(hereafter CCC 297) does not appear to derive directly from the manuscriptin Gonville and Caius College (hereafter G & C 205/111).

volume (fols. 88r-133r), a miscellaneous dictaminal and legal collection, wasprobably compiled at Oxford between 1220 and 1240, and this treatise isthe earliest known English dictaminal treatise.61 For further discussion ofthis volume and its contents, see H. G. Richardson, “An Oxford Teacherof the Fifteenth Century,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 23 (2) (1939):3-24.

Transcription

[fol. 88r] Personarum quedam sunt ecclesiastice, quedam seculares, et tamharum quam illarum quedam sunt sumperiores [sic], quedam inferiores,quedam infime. Superiores sunt vero dominus papa, archiepiscopi, episcopi,abbates, priores. Inferiores sunt vero archidiaconi, decani, officiales, parsone,vicarii. Infime sunt presbiteri parochiani, summonitores, et simplices clerici.Superiores seculares, imperatores, reges, comites, duces, barones; inferioressunt justiciarii, vicecomites, constabularii, forestarii, viredarii, miles,burgenses, libere tenentes. Infime sunt bedelli, rustici, sutores et omnesofficiarii, sive ministri sive ministrelli, tam urbani quam rurales. Si superiorpersona scribat inferiori, superior debet preponi per nominativum casum,inferior postponi per dativum casum. Si inferior persona scribat superiori,superior debet preponi per dativum casum, inferior postponi per nominativumcasum. Si autem par scribat pari, ut miles militi, burgensis burgensi, uterlibetpotest preponi alii, set causa benivolencie captande, in literis petitoriis soletille cui scribitur preponi per dativum casum. In omni peticione facta superiorivel pari debet petitus pluraliter designari.

De literis vero creditoriis [corrected in MS from creditores] primo dicereproponemus, quod creditorum quedam [recte quidam] sunt urbani, quedam


62 The later of the two Cambridge manuscripts (CCC 297, p. 317) gives “te-rebellum” here.

63 Both later manuscripts (G & C 205/111, p. 261, and CCC 297, p. 319)

[recte quidam] rurales. Urbani vero vinetarius, pannarius sive drapparius,piscator, carnifex, auceps, pistor, pastillarius, flaonarius, aurifaber, zonarius,cerotecarius, cellarius, alutarius, cordevanarius, corvesarius, husuarius siveocrearius, loremarius, pelliparius et consimiles. Et de unoquoque istorum suoloco dicemus.

Vinetarius vinum habeat andegavense, gasconense, francense, averenense,vinum raspatum, zeduarizatum, saxifragiatum, pigmentum, claretum, mustum,piretum, acetum, siseram, medum sive ydromellum. Item vinitarius vendatvinum per modios, per dolea [corrected in MS from doleos] sive tonellos, perpipas, per sextaria, per dimidium sextarium, per lagenas sive galones, perpotellos sive floxeos [sic], per quartas, per pintas, scilicet dimidias quartas.Iterum vinitarius habeat in cellare suo utres, cados, infusoria sive intonellaria,clepsedres sive dusellos, costrellos, alvealos [added in different hand in margin:pulanos], tabulum [?recte terebellum: gimlet or auger]62 sive penetralium sivepersorium. Item habeat [fol. 88v] ciphos aureos sive de murra vel de macera,cuppos cum cooperculis cuppatos.

Pannarius in celda sua vel ad nundinas habeat telas varias et multimodasde vili precio sive de vili foro, et habeat telas de foro cari [sic; added indifferent hand in margin: vel magni]. Item habeat telas angligenas latashabentes latitudinem duarum ulnarum, vel minus vel pauloplus [sic], etiam cumlisuris, telas densiores vel spissiores ad capatium faciendum, vel magis tenuessive minus spisses [recte spissas] et melius vestientes [sic] ad robas faciendas.Item habeat scarletam nigram, albam vel virede coloratam; burnetam nigramvel sanguineam; burnetam coloratam violetam, rugetam, persum, bluetam,wagetam, plucatam; russetum nigrum vel album. Item [habeat] russetum deLaycestre vel de Oxonia. Item habeat grossum russetum vel minuetum,burellum London’ vel burellum de Beaveis, imperiale russetum, imperialebluetum, haubergentum album de Stanford’, haubergentum russetum, hau-bergentum tinctum in viride, vel in burnetam, vel in bluetum, vel in nigrum,vel in rubeum. Item habeat album cordium, [added above line: nigrum,]grossum vel minuetum, cordicium radiatum. Item habeat grisetum de Totenais,de Cornubia.

Piscator, qui hamo vel reti vel lancea, sive piscarius, qui vendit pisces,habeat pisces marinos vel aque dulcis, vel limosos sive platias, et balenas sivetecefocas [corrected in MS from tecesfocas; recte cetefocas], sturgiones, cungros,pectines sive plaiceos, lupos aquaticos sive luceos, murenas sive lampredas,murenulas sive lampredulas, mecaros sive makerellos, salmones, conchilia[glossed above the word as wolk], sperlingos, bremnas [recte bremias], radeas,rocheos, merlingos, tencas, hadoccos, anguillas, gugiones, celluras [?rectesiluros] sive minusas, lochias, caridones [recte capitones],63 verrones.

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give “capitones” here.64 CCC 297, p. 318, reads “pernas sive petasunculos” here.65 This sentence is clearly defective. Clearer versions can be found in the

two Cambridge manuscripts. G & C 205/111, p 259, reads: “Item habeat secu-res quibus boves excerebrat, et clunacula quibus carnes porcinas dividat.”CCC 297, p. 318, reads: “Item habeat macerarius secures quibus boves ex-cerebret et porcos et carnes dividat.”

66 CCC 297, p. 318, reads “olores” (swans) here.67 This last sentence seems corrupt. A much fuller version is given in the

earlier of the two Cambridge manuscripts, G & C 205/111, p. 259: “Item volu-cres vel volatilia capit visco, tendiculis, laqueis, panteris, vel rethi pendente, velcastrimarginario rethe, vel rethe stante vel jacente. Item habeat recia [sic] undecapiat in rama nisos sive spervarios, ancipitres. Et tumberellos ut passeres etalias aves minutas domiciliaria et severundalia capi possit [recte possunt].” CCC297, p. 318, has a version of this passage that combines elements from bothof the other texts and introduces new ones: “Item volucres capit visco, veltendiculis, laqueis, panteris, vel reti pendente, vel stante, vel castrimagiarum;et omnes volucres silvestres et campestres, ut nisos sive spervarios, vel trappis utperdices, vel etiam reti quo anglice dicitur lof, vel cum tumberello ut passereset alias aves minutas ut domiciliaria, sive severundaria.”

Macerarius habeat salsas carnes et recentes, bovinas, caprinas, porcinas,agninas, edulinas, vitulinas, porcellinas; item habeat bacones, perrias [rectepernas], sive petafulsus [recte petasiculos or petasunculos].64 Item habeat car-cosia boum, ovium, arietum, sive multonum. Item habeat bacones ustos, scatu-rizatos. Item habeat porchetum pudratum vel in succedio positum. Item habeatlardum, saimum, unctum porcinum, [added in different hand in margin: et se-pum] ovinum. Item habeat vicera porcorum vel boum vel ovium, et tripas boumvel ovium. Item habeat corea bovina et pelles ovinas. Item habeat securesquibus [boves] excribere [recte excerebret], et carnes porcorum dividant [rectedividat], et clunacula, attavos [recte artavos], unde porcos, oves et bovesevicerant [recte evicerat] et excoreant [recte excoreat].65

[fol. 89r] Auceps sive aucuparius habeat aves silvestres et agrestes etdomesticas, marinos vel ripeos. Item habeat ardeas sive airones, cigonios,perdices [corrected in MS from perdicas], geturnices [recte coturnices], castri-margios, wodecok, pluviarios, grues sive cignes [recte cignos] sive cleres [recteolores],66 malardos, mergites, pavones, anderes [recte anseres or anceres],aucas domesticas et alias, scilicet aucas albas, bisas, auculas, capones, gallos,gallinas, pullos, columbas, turtura, malvicia. Item capit volucres in visco veltendiculis vel laqueis vel reti stante vel pendente, ut omnes volucres et cam-pestres ut nisi [sic] et alias minutas [sic] capi possint, ut domiciliarios sivescingudarios [sic].67

Pistor habeat panem azimum et panem furvum et panem triticeum, ordea-ceum, sigilinum, avenatum. Item habeat placencia, libia, liba, infungia, panemalbum, panem furmenteum [?recte fermenteum], panem bultatum, tribratum[recte cribratum], saclatum sive temesatum, et libia piperata, cokettos. Item


68 Both of the Cambridge manuscripts (G & C 205/111, p. 260, and CCC297, p. 319) supply “habeat panem” here.

69 Cf. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “Tri/folium, -/fura.”70 G & C 205/111, p. 261, has “incudem” (glossed as “anveld”) here.71 Where Additional MS 8167 reads “corte ad gramina metallorum colligen-

dum et expurgendum,” the two Cambridge manuscripts (G & C 205/111, p.261, and CCC 297, p. 319) read, respectively, “corium gremale ad granacolligenda,” and “corium gremiale ad gramina metallorum colligenda et exter-genda.” For the translation “leather apron,” see the Dictionary of Medieval Latinfrom British Sources, s.v. “gremialis,” 3. Compare this description of thegoldsmith with that of Alexander Nequam in De nominibus utensilium (in Hunt,Teaching and Learning Latin, 1: 189; translated in Holmes, Daily Living in theTwelfth Century, 142). In Nequam’s text, the goldsmith is advised to have ahare’s foot with which he can polish gold or silver and also collect the smallparticles of metals, lest they be lost in his leather apron.

habeat pistrinum, furnum, sive clibanum, confractorem. Item habeat polen-tridium, rotabulum, item ceotelatam [?recte cribelatam] farinam, floremfrumenti. Item [habeat panem]68 coctum in clibano vel in fornace vel insaritagine vel in cratela.

Pastillarius habeat pastillos de carnibus, de piscibus, bene piperatos. Itemhabeat de farina [recte ferina] sive venacionis vel carne domestica vel de ferisvel de volucribus sive de volatilibus. De feris vero cerve vel de cerva, caprea,vel dama, leporis lardo, avibus marinis vel silvestribus [corrected in MS fromsilvestrisbus] vel domesticis, que superius enumerantur. Iterum flaonariushabeat opacos, artocopos, flaones de ovis, pane et caseo compositas.

Wafrarius habeat wafras vel lagana in ferris vel in furnis decoctas.Aurifaber habeat opus tam ductile quam fusile. Operatur enim in metallis

et in lapidibus. Metallum vero ductile vel fusile est, sed lapis scruptilis [rectescriptilis] tantum. Operatur siquando in auro, in argento, cupro, [added indifferent hand in margin: vel trifurat]69 stagno, auritallo [recte auricalco]. Itemhabeat opus concavum vel solidum, planum vel planatum, inpressum vel in-sculptum. Item faciet calices, platenas, [added in different hand above line: ollas]iustas, coronas, pelves, ampollas, fioles, filateria, cruces aureas vel argenteas,[fol. 89v] vel de ligno brateis sive laminis auri vel argento cooperato;candelabrum, coclearea. Item habeat ciphos de macera cum pede aureo velargenteo, et superius aureo vel argenteo circumdatos. Item habeat cupas cumcooperculis et ciphos planos. Item habeat crateres vel crateras cum trifuris velplanos vel sculptos, scutellas, parapsides, salsaria et salleria. Item faciatanulos, firmacula, monilia, catenas, membra zonarum. Item habeat folliculos,forcipes, inclinum [?recte incudem, an anvil],70 malleos, et totum ad metallumpurgandum, et mola [recte molam] ad aciem ferro conferendam, pedem etiamleporis et corte [?recte corium gremiale, leather apron] ad gramina [?rectegrana] metallorum colligendum [recte colligenda] et expurgendum [recteextergenda].71 Habeat etiam vasa varia et minuta, aurifragium, filum argen-teum, tabellam oblitam ad flosculos protrahendos.

522 MARTHA CARLIN

72 Both Cambridge manuscripts (G & C 205/111, p. 262, and CCC 297, p.320) have “habeat” here.

73 This phrase is murky. Of the two later versions of this text (G & C205/111, p. 263, and CCC 297, p. 320), the former gives it as “cum articulisdimissis et latis,” while the latter has “cum arculis dimissis et latis.” “Arculis”(saddle-bows) fits the sense of this passage better than “articulis.” However,while “divisis” (separate?) seems awkward, “dimissis” seems worse than awk-ward here.

74 There is no ablative noun “flagella,” and both of the Cambridge manu-scripts (G & C 205/111, p. 263, and CCC 297, p. 321) read “glagello” here.For its translation as fleur de lis, see the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from BritishSources, s.v. “gladiolous,” 3.

Cutellarius faciat varios cultellos, clunacula venatorum, artavos scriptorumvel dolatorum. Habeat mensacula, sive cultellos ad zonam pendentes, cul-tellos etiam planos. Item faciat novaculas sive rasoria, forfices, cesuras, etcetera.

Zonarius habeat zonas de cerico, lino, vel de coreo, scilicet nigro, rubeovel albo, plusculas de ferro, cupro. Item habeat planas zonas vel barratas sivemembratas, membris rotundis vel quadratis.

Cerotecarius habeat cerotecas grossas, messoribus et fossoribus aptas,minutas ad opus non laborancium, opere scilicet manuali, servili, ad cardanoset spinas trahendos vel colligendos. Item habeat cerotecas duplices etsingulas, pilosas vel planas. Habeat cerotecas magnas et duplices ad opusfalconarii. Item, [habeat]72 cerotecas laneas, et inconsutiles desuper, et totumcontextas.

Allutarius habeat allutam veram de pellibus caprinis, de pellibus ovinis.Habeat estivalia, crepidas sive botas, largas, [fol. 90r] tentone munitas adopus hominum, vel stricas [recte strictas] ad opus feminarum. Item habeatsotulares pecatos [?recte picatos], vel sotulares cum medullis corrigiislaqueatos. Item habeat sotulares cum colariis ligulis ad opus militum.

Husurarius [sic] et sutor in coreis bovinis operantur. Sutor quidem ocreassive husas faciat et sotulares pariter varios et multimodos [corrected in MS frommultimodas] ut allutarius, sed husarios [recte husarius] tantum faciet ocreaset non sotulares.

Sellarius cellas habeat diversas et varias, ad opus monachi cum articulis[?recte arculis]73 divisis et latis non coloratis, insculptas ad opus militum,domine, armig[er]i [in MS, armigi], et parsone et presbiteri, ad equum, adpalefridum, ad sumentorium. Item habeat singulas et cellas verniculatas [rectevermiculatas], albas, vel auro vel cinoplo coloratas [corrected in MS from cola-ratas], flosculis, leoniculis vel alicuius hystoria depictis [recte depictas] velprotractas. Item, habeat scuta colorata vel non colorata, alba, nigra, flosculisde flagella [recte glagello]74 vel aliis leoniculis depicta, rubeo vel cinoplo,viridi, vel auro, azuri. Item habeat scuta listata flosculis, avibus, bestiunculis,quaturnata, moncellata, lambata rosis.


Pelliparius habeat pellicia, penulas, fururas ex pellibus agninis vel foleis[?recte follibus] ex griso, experiolis, sorellis; ex cuniculis, laironibus, edulline[sic]; ex pellibus ovinis, hispidis et pilosis; ex grossis vel minutis sive crispis;ex catis sive ex pellibus catenis, grossas [recte grossis] vel super rasas [recterasis]. Item habeat penulas albas, nigras, et habeat urlas de sablino matrice,ex fibro, ex wlpecula [sic for vulpecula] vel roserella, vel ex lutro, et cetera.

Lorimarius habeat lorenas, scilicet frena, cingula, cum duplici coreo. Item,sint lorene in freno, in pectorali et strepis sive scancilibus, quedam de minutisclavis, quedam de clavis latis, rotundis, cum scutis, scutellulis pendentibusferreis vel cupreis deauratis, quedam cum campanellis vel anulis. Itemintelligendum est de strepis et de pectoralibus. Strepas habeat latas sub pedead opus militum, cum virga gracili ad opus monachi, et rotundas, strepasquadratas, strictas et latas secundum varietatem equorum et equietaturum.Item habeat calcaria ad opus militum de- [fol. 90v] aurata, vel calcaria cumvirga gracili et rotunda vel quadrata.

Translation

Of persons some are ecclesiastics and some are seculars, and of both theformer and the latter some are superior, others inferior, some the lowest.The superiors are the lord pope, the archbishops, bishops, abbots, andpriors. The inferiors are the archdeacons, deacons, officials, parsons, andvicars. The lowest are parish priests, summoners, and simple clerks. Thesuperior seculars are emperors, kings, counts, dukes, and barons; theinferiors are justiciars, sheriffs, constables, foresters, verderers, knights,burgesses, and freeholders. The lowest are beadles, serfs, cobblers and allworkmen (officiarii), either officers or servants (tam ministri sive ministrelli),urban or rural. If a superior person write to an inferior, the superiorshould be put first in the nominative case, the inferior put after in thedative case. If an inferior person write to a superior, the superior shouldbe put first in the dative case, the inferior put after in the nominative case.If, however, an equal write to an equal, as a knight to a knight or a burgessto a burgess, either may be put before the other, but in order to obtaingood will (causa benivolencie captande), in a letter of petition, he to whom itis written is generally put first in the dative case. In every petition made toa superior or an equal, the one being petitioned (petitus) should bedesignated in the plural [e.g., as vos instead of tu].

I propose to speak first of letters to creditors, because some creditors areurban, and some are rural. Urban [are] the vintner, draper (pannarius sivedrapparius), fisherman (piscator) or fishmonger (piscarius), butcher, poulterer(auceps), baker, pasteler (pie-baker), flan-maker, goldsmith, girdler, glover,saddler, cordwainer (alutarius, cordevanarius, corvesarius), hosier (husuarius siveocrearius), lorimer, skinner, and similar folk. And of each of these in hisplace I shall speak.

524 MARTHA CARLIN

75 See MED, s.v. “Raspise” (1440-75). Latham, however, defines vinumraspatum as “wine freshened after it has gone stale” (Revised Medieval LatinWord-List, s.v. “Raspatum,” c. 1210).

76 See MED, s.v. “Wachet.”77 See MED, s.v. “Plunket.”78 This text describes both russet cloth and cordium as “grossum vel

minuetum,” and cat skins that are “grossas vel super rasas.” This suggests acontrast between cloth or skins that are shaggy or unshorn and those that areshorn. A similar contrast is drawn between sheepskins with long-haired fleece(“grossis”) and those with short or curly hair (“minutis sive crispis”), andbetween gloves that are “grossas” (heavy or rough) and “minutas” (fine orthin).

The vintner should have wine of Anjou, Gascony, the Île-de-France, andAuvergne; sweet or rosé wine (vinum raspatum);75 wine flavored with zedoaryand with saxifrage; piment and claré (red and white spiced wines); grapejuice (mustum); perry; vinegar; cider; and mead (medum sive ydromellum). Andlet the vintner sell wine by measures (modios), by barrels or tuns, by pipes,by sesters, by the half-sester, by gallons, by pottles or flasks (half-gallons),by quarts or pints, that is, half-quarts. Again, let the vintner have in hiscellar bottles (utres), casks, funnels (infusoria sive intonellaria), spigots or taps(clepsedres sive dusellos), costrels, troughs (alvealos), slides for lowering casks(pulanos), and an auger or gimlet or wimble ([terebellum] sive penetralium sivepersorium). Also let him have cups of gold, or of maple or mazer (de murravel de macera), and cups with lids.

Let a draper have, in his seld or at fairs, cloths of various sorts, bothcheap (de vili precio sive de vili foro) and expensive. Let him have Englishbroadcloths, having a width of two ells, more or less, including theselvedges; heavier or thicker cloths for making a hood (capatium), or finer,lighter, dressier (?or better-quality: melius vestientes) cloths for making robes(suits of clothing). Let him have scarlet [that is] black, white, or dyed withgreen; black or sanguine burnet; burnet dyed violet, red, perse (dark blue),bluet (a shade of blue), wachet (wagetam: light blue),76 [or] plunket (pluca-tam: a light or grayish blue);77 black or white russet, and russet of Leicesteror of Oxford. Let him have unshorn or shorn russet (grossum russetum velminuetum),78 London burel or burel of Beauvais, russet imperial, blueimperial, white haberget of Stamford, russet haberget, [and] haberget dyedin green, brown, blue, black, or red. Let him have white, [black,] unshornor shorn (grossum vel minuetum) cordium, and striped (radiatum) cordicium.And let him have gray cloth (grisetum) of Totnes [and] of Cornwall.

Let a fisherman, who [fishes] with a hook, a net or a lance, or a fish-monger, who sells fish, have sea fish and freshwater fish, mudfish (limosos)or flatfish (platias), and whales (balenas sive cetefocas), sturgeons, congers,plaice, pike, lampreys, lamperns, mackerels, salmons, cockles (?or whelks),sprats, breams, rays (radeas), roach, whiting (merlingos), tench, haddock, eels,


79 See MED, s.v. “Menuse.”80 The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources defines “capito” as a

“kind of fish,” and cites glossings as bullhead, “caboche,” and gurnard. Ale-xander Nequam (or Neckam) included the capito among a list of fish in Denominibus utensilium; one manuscript of 1250-1300 glosses this as “caboche”while two manuscripts of the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries gloss it, respec-tively, as “caboche vel gurnard” and as “caboge.” Hunt, Teaching and LearningLatin, 2: 66. See OED, s.vv. “bullhead” and “caboche,” for fifteenth- centuryreferences to capito as a “bulhede,” and to “caboche” as a fish (bullhead ormiller’s thumb). The OED defines miller’s thumb as “[a]ny of various fresh-water sculpins of the genus Cottus, esp. the European bullhead, C. gobio; (also)a marine sculpin (rare);” and identifies gurnards as marine fish of the genusTrigla or family Triglidae, which have a large, spiny head.

81 These last two terms may instead represent a flitch and a half-flitch ofbacon: a fifteenth-century Latin-English word-list printed by Thomas Wright(Volume of Vocabularies 1: 242) includes “Hec perra, a flyk,” and “Hec petasiculus,half a flyk.”

82 See Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “Excaturizatio.”The hog carcases have been scorched or scalded to loosen the hair so that itcan be scraped off.

83 For saimum cf. MED, s.v. “Seim(e).”

gudgeons (gugiones, celluras [?recte siluros] sive minusas),79 loach, capitones(bullhead, miller’s thumb, or gurnard),80 and minnows (verrones).

Let the butcher have salt meat and fresh, of cattle, goats, pigs, lambs,kids (edulinas), calves, or piglets; also let him have bacons, hams (readingpernas in place of perrias), or fore-quarters of pork (reading petasunculosinstead of petafulsus).81 Item, let him have carcases of oxen, sheep, goats, ormuttons. Item, let him have scorched and scalded bacons (bacones ustos,scaturizatos).82 Item, let him have salted or pickled pork. Item, let him havelard (lardum, saimum, unctum porcinum) and sheep’s tallow.83 Item, let himhave the entrails of pigs, oxen or sheep, and the tripes of oxen or sheep.Item, let him have cowhides and sheepskins. Item, let him have axes withwhich to brain [oxen] and divide up the flesh of pigs, and knives (clunacula,a[r]tavos) with which to gut and skin pigs, sheep, and oxen.

Let the poulterer have birds of the forests and fields and domestic birds,seabirds and riverbirds. Item, let him have herons (ardeas sive airones), storks(cigonios), partriches (perdices), quail (coturnices), woodcocks (castrimargios,wodecok), plovers (pluviarios), cranes (grues) or swans (cignos sive [olores]),mallards, aquatic birds (mergites), peacocks, domestic geese (anseres [foranderes], aucas domesticas) and others, namely, white geese, gray geese,goslings, capons, cocks, hens, chickens, pigeons, doves, and thrushes(malvicia). Item, he takes birds in lime or with snares (in visco vel tendiculisvel laqueis) or with a standing or hanging net, so that all birds [?of theforests] and fields, such as hawks, can be taken, [?and he also takes] other

526 MARTHA CARLIN

84 This last sentence appears to be corrupt. Compare it with the fuller ver-sions in the two Cambridge manuscripts, quoted in n.67 above. A vernaculargloss to Alexander Nequam’s De nominibus utensilium (in Hunt, Teaching andLearning Latin, 2: 84) translates domiciliarum as severunder; cf. Latham, RevisedMedieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “severunda” (eaves or cornice), and Old Frenchsevronde (eaves with downspouts).

85 Azimus was leaven; see Hunt’s glosses in Teaching and Learning Latin, 3:17, 289; cf. Classical Latin acrozymus (“slightly leavened”).

86 Placenta were simnels (fine white rolls, twice-baked or perhaps boiled firstand then baked, like modern bagels) and libum or liba was wastel bread (thefinest white bread). See Hunt’s glosses for liba, -um; placenta(s), -e(s), -um(Teaching and Learning Latin, 3: 92, 126, 341, 363); and MED, s.vv. “Simenel”and “Wastel,”the latter quoting John Mirfield’s Sinonoma Bartholomei (ante-1400): “Placenta est panis factus de pasca [?read: pasta] azima, i. wastel.” ALatin word-list with interlineal English glosses in British Library, MSLansdowne 560, fol. 47r-v (late fourteenth-early fifteenth century) also glosseslibum as wastel. Infungia was unleavened bread, here apparently also madefrom fine white flour. See Holmes, Daily Living in the Twelfth Century, 284,n.48, and Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “Infungia,” whereit is defined as cocket bread (described by Adam of Petit-Pont in De utensilibusas a sourdough bread, made without leaven).

87 Cf. MED, s.vv. “Ferment” and “Sour-dough.”88 See n.86, above; cf. MED, s.v. “Coket” (n.2): bread made of fine flour,

second only to wastel bread.89 CCC 297, p. 319, elaborates on this term: “confractoreum, sive braccam,

sive pincam, scilicet brake.” A dough-brake was a mechanical device used bybakers for kneading dough. See OED, s.v. “brake” (n.3), which quotes thePromptorium Parvulorum (c. 1440): “Bray or brakene, baxteris instrument, pin-sa.” Latham’s Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “pinsa,” took this insteadto mean a kneading trough or board.

small birds, such as those that live in eaves or shingles (ut domiciliarios sivescingudarios).84

Let the baker have leavened bread (panem azimum)85 and black bread(panem furvum); and wheaten, barley, rye and oat bread. Item, let him havefine white bread (placencia, libia, liba, infungia, panem album),86 sourdoughbread (panem fermenteum),87 bolted or sieved [?flour] (panem [?recte florem]bultatum, cribratum, saclatum, sive temesatum), fine spice-bread (libia piperata)and cocket-bread.88 Item, let him have a bakehouse, oven (furnum siveclibanum), and dough-brake (confractorem).89 Item, let him have a boltingcloth or sieve (polentridium) [and] a molding board (rotabulum); item, sieved(c[rib]elatam) meal, wheat flour. Item, [let him have bread] cooked in anoven (in clibano vel in fornace) or in a pan (saritagine) or on a griddle (incratela).

Let the pasteler have pasties of meats and fish, well spiced. Item, lethim have [pasties] of game (de ferina sive venacionibus) or of domestic meat,of game-birds or domestic birds (vel de feris vel de volucribus sive de volati-


90 Cf. the glosses in Hunt (3: 88) that translate lagana or laganum as cake,crampecake, pannecake, turtel, etc. The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from BritishSources defines “laganum” as “unleavened cake cooked in oil, pancake, fritter.”

91 Scutella (French esquele) meant dish or bowl, while parapsides were “doub-lers” (dishes or plates) or platters. See the glosses for parapsides, parapsis andscutella(s) in Hunt, 2: 118, 146-7; see also Dictionary of Medieval Latin fromBritish Sources, s.v. “Paropsis,” and MED, s.vv. “Dish,” “Doubler,” “Plater,”“Scutel.” Cf. the word-lists in English Glosses from British Library Additional Manu-script 37075, ed. Ross and Brooks, fol. 322b (“scutella, plater/ periapsis, dubler”);British Library, MS Lansdowne 560, fol. 47r (“parapcid’ dobler”); and BritishLibrary, MS Royal 17 A. III, fol. 31v (“haec scutella a plater/haec parapsis idem”).

92 On clunacula (daggers), see Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin, 2: 44 andn.62.

libus); of game, that is, of the hind (cerve, vel de cerva: female red deer), roe(caprea: female roe deer) or doe (dama: female fallow deer); of the fat fleshof the hare (leporis lardo); of sea birds, forest birds or domestic birds, whichare enumerated above. On the other hand, let the flan-maker have flans(opacos, artocopos, flaones) made of eggs, bread and cheese.

Let the waferer have wafers or little cakes (wafras vel lagana) cooked inirons or ovens.90

Let the goldsmith have stock (opus) both ductile (hammered) and fusile(molten or cast), for he works in metals and in stones. Metal is ductile orfusile, but stone is only carvable or engravable (scriptilis). At times he worksin gold, silver, [or] copper, [or ornaments: vel trifurat] in tin [or] brass.Item, let him have hollow and solid work, smooth (planum vel planatum) orengraved (inpressum vel insculptum). Item, let him have chalices (calices),plate, [pots (ollas)], flagons (iustas), crowns, basins, cruets for consecrated oil(ampollas, fioles), reliquaries (filatria), crosses of gold or silver, or of wood co-vered with thin sheets or plates of gold or silver; a candelabrum; [and]spoons. Item, let him have cups of mazer with a foot of gold or silver, andbound above with gold or silver. Item, let him have cups with covers andplain cups. Item, let him have bowls (crateres vel crateras) with decorations(trifuris), either smooth or engraved; dishes and platters (scutellas,parapsides);91 saucers and salt-cellars. Item, let him make rings, brooches,pendants (?or necklaces, monilia), chains, and girdle-studs (membra zonarum).Item, let him have little bellows (folliculos), tongs, an anvil (reading incudemin place of inclinum), hammers and everything for cleansing metal, and agrindstone (or whetstone: molam) for putting a sharp edge onto iron, anda hare’s foot and a leather apron (reading corium gremiale for corte) forcollecting and wiping up (extergenda, instead of expurgendum) grains (grana,instead of gramina) of metals. Let him also have various small vessels, goldfringe (aurifragium, orphrey), silver wire, [and] a painted tray for displayingthe choicest items (tabellam oblitam ad flosculos protrahendos).

Let the cutler make various knives, huntsmen’s daggers,92 the knives ofscribes (i.e., penknives) or of those who chip or chop [food or wood?] (dola-

528 MARTHA CARLIN

93 Chipping knives were used to chip or pare burnt crusts from loaves;chopping and paring knives would also have been useful in various types offood preparation. Cf. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “Dol/-atura;”MED, s.v. “Chippen” v.(1).

94 In the fourteenth century, at least, “piked” shoes were those with long,pointed toes or “peaks.” However, picare could also mean “to prick” (cf. mo-dern French piquer and piqûre), suggesting shoes with pricked or openworkornamentation. See MED, s.v. “Pike” 5(a); Latham, Revised Medieval Latin WordList, s.v. “Pica” (4). For a survey of medieval shoes and footed hose, shoe-making, and cobbling in London, see Francis Grew and Margrethe de Neer-gaard, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 2: Shoes and Pattens (London:The Stationery Office, 1988, especially 2-3, 9-21, 44-59, 79-81, 113-6, 119-22.Pages 16-20 include drawings and photographs of early-mid thirteenth-centuryshoes and boots with side-lacing, drawstring-lacing, and openwork, and withrounded and pointed toes.

torum).93 Let him have table knives, or knives for hanging at the girdle, andplain knives. Item, let him make razors, scissors (forfices), shears, etc.

Let the girdler have girdles of silk, linen, or leather, namely, black, red,or white, with iron or copper studs (membris). Item, let him have smooth orbarred or studded girdles, with round or square studs (planas zonas vel bar-ratas sive membratas, membris rotundis vel quadratis).

Let the glover have heavy or rough (grossas) gloves, suitable for har-vesters and dykers; fine or thin ones (minutas) for the use of those who donot labor at manual, servile work, pulling or gathering teasels or thistles(cardanos, instead of cardones) and thorns. Item, let him have lined and un-lined gloves, shaggy (pilosas) or smooth (planas). Let him have large, linedgloves for the use of the falconer. Item, [let him have] woolen gloves, andseamless, moreover, and entirely knitted (et inconsutiles desuper et totum con-textas).

Let the cordwainer have true tawed leather of goatskins [and] sheep-skins. Let him have boots (estivalia, crepidas, sive botas), roomy [and] paddedwith felt (largas, tentone munitas) for the use of men, or tight (stric[t]as) forthe use of women. Item, let him have pointed (?or pricked) shoes (sotularesp[i]catos) or shoes laced up the middle with thongs (sotulares cum medulliscorrigiis laqueatos). Item, let him have shoes with strapped (?or drawstring)collars (colariis ligulis) for the use of knights.94

The hosier (or leggings-maker, husurarius) and cobbler (sutor) work incowhides. Let the cobbler make leggings (ocreas sive husas) and shoes equallyvaried and of as many fashions as the cordwainer, but the hosier shall onlymake leggings and not shoes.

Let the saddler have diverse and various saddles: for the use of themonk, with the separate and broad saddle-bows (cum articulis [recte arculis]divisis et latis) uncolored; tooled (insculptas) for the use of knights, of thelady, the squire, the parson and the priest; for horse, palfrey, [and]sumpter. Item, let him have girths (singulas) and saddles, red (vermiculatas),


95 On the terminology of heraldry in this period, see Gerard J. Brault, EarlyBlazon: Heraldic Terminology in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries with SpecialReference to Arthurian Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). I am gratefulto David Crouch for this reference.

96 According to Veale (English Fur Trade, 219, s.vv. “Escureus” and “Gris,”223-4, 228), medieval furriers distinguished between gris, which was the fine-quality gray winter back of red squirrels from the coldest parts of Northernand Central Europe, and variants of the Latin word sciurus (squirrel), which“were applied to squirrel skins from parts of Southern and Central Europe,usually of little value to the skinner.” Cf. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.vv. “Experiolus,” “Griseum,” “Scurellus.”

97 The coney (rabbit) skins may have been imported, since rabbits were notintroduced into the English mainland until the early thirteenth century (ante-1235), around the time of the composition of this treatise. Cf. Veale, EnglishFur Trade, 209-14.

98 Cf. Veale, English Fur Trade, 220, s.v. “Leron”; Dictionary of Medieval Latinfrom British Sources, s.v. “Laëro.”

99 Cf. Classical Latin haedulus, a little kid.

white, or colored with gold or red (sinoplo), painted or drawn with littleflowers, lioncels (leoniculis: little lions, not lion cubs), or with a device ofsome kind (vel alicuius hystoria). Item, let him have shields, painted orunpainted, white [or] black, painted with little fleurs de lis (flosculis deglagello) or more lioncels in red (rubeo vel cinoplo), green, gold, [or] azure.Item, let him have shields bordered (listata) with little flowers, birds, [or]tiny beasts; quartered (quaturnata); strewn (moncellata: literally, “heaped”) [or]decorated (lambata) with roses.95

Let the skinner have pilches [and] fur linings (pellicia, penulas, fururas)of lambskins, of the bellies (?foleis; recte follibus) from the gray [winter coatof] squirrels (de griso, experiolis, sorellis),96 of coneys,97 of dormice or martens(laironibus),98 of kid (edulline),99 of sheepskins, rough and hairy, from long-haired or short-haired or curly-haired [sheep], of catskins (ex catis sive expellibus catenis), shaggy or shorn (grossas vel super rasas). Item, let him havefur linings, white [and] black, and let him have revers of sable-belly (urlasde sablino matrice), of beaver (ex fibro), of the little fox or weasel (roserella),or of otter (lutro), etc.

Let the lorimer have items made of straps (lorenas), namely bridles, andgirths with a leather lining. Item, let there be straps for the bridle, thepoitrel (pectorali) and the stirrups (strepis sive scancilibus), some with narrowbands, some with broad bands, with round dangling shields (scutis, scutellulis)of gilded iron or copper; some with little bells or rings. Item, one shouldknow about stirrups and poitrels. Let him have stirrups that are broadunder the foot for the use of knights; with a slim stirrup-iron (?virga gracili)for the use of the monk; and round stirrups, square stirrups, narrow andbroad ones, according to the variety of horses and riders. Item, let him

530 MARTHA CARLIN

have gilded spurs for the use of knights, or spurs with a slender shank(virga), both round and square.

APPENDIX III

Notes on how to write and reply to a letter of request, together with tensample letters, from British Library, Additional MS 8167, fols. 97r-98v(discussed in the introduction to Appendix II, above). The punctuation,capitalization, and use of “u” and “v” have been modernized; expandedabbreviations are shown in italics.

fol. 97r (mid-page)

(1) An earl of Gloucester orders wine and ale

Precepciones et proibiciones sic debent fieri. Primo debet preponisalutacio, secundo [expunged by underscore: narracio] precepcio velproibicio, tercio narracio, quarto conclusio, hoc modo.

A. Comes glovernie C. fideli suo salutem. Precipio tibi ut visis literisistis omni occasione et dilacione postpositis mihi mitti facias perlatorem presencium duos cados vini albi et duas floscas vini castaneiet unum doleum servisie defecate. Sciturus quod ego et commitissamea fleubotomati sumus apud .N. Tantum ergo facias ne nos iniram commoveas propter tuam negligenciam. Vale.

(1) Translation

Orders and refusals ought to be done thus. First should come the greeting;secondly, the order or refusal; thirdly, the explanation; fourthly, theconclusion, in this manner.

A., Earl of Gloucester, to his faithful C. [perhaps A.’s householdsteward], greetings. I order you that, when you have seen these let-ters, having put aside every argument (occasione) and delay, youhave sent to me by the bearer of these presents two barrels ofwhite wine and two flasks of chestnut wine and one tun of filteredale. You shall know that I and my countess are having our bloodlet at N. Therefore may you act in such a way that you do notmove us to anger by your negligence. Farewell.


(2) An earl orders his vintner, to whom he is in debt, to send

him some wine

Comes mandat creditori suo ut mittat sibi vinum.

A. comes Glovernie dilecto sibi A. vinetario de C. salutem et dilec-cionem. Quum quicquid vobis de vino credito [corrected in MS fromcreditorio] multociens debuimus, ad diem vestrum semper plenarie

fol. 97v persolvemus, et nichil est in re- [fol. 97v] ragio, audacius in hocstanti negocio confugimus attencius rogantes quatinus v. dolea vini,scilicet duo gasconiensis et tria andegavense [recte andegavensis],quodlibet ad precium .xx. solidorum usque ad Pasca floridum nobisacomodetis. Scituri quod denarios vestros ad diem nominatum omnioccasione [in MS, “aiccasione”] et dilacione remota persolvemus. Tan-tum ergo facientes [?recte faciatis] ut vobis ad gratiarum teneamuracciones. Valete.

(2) Translation

An earl orders his creditor to send him some wine

A., earl of Gloucester, to his beloved A., vintner of C., greetingsand love. Whereas we have often owed you something for wine oncredit, we have always paid in full on your day, and nothing is inarrears, the more boldly in this present business we have turnedto you, anxiously asking that you accommodate us with five tunsof wine, namely, two of Gascon and three of Angevin, at a priceof 20s apiece, until Palm Sunday. You will know that we shall payyour money on the day named without any argument or delay;therefore, may you act only in such a manner that we shall bebound to you in gratitude. Farewell.

(3) Response to the preceding letter

Responsio ad literas predictas.

Dileccio domino suo et amico W. Comiti de S., suus A. vinetarius sa-lutem. Litera [recte literas] vestras nuper accepi petitorias quatinus .v.dolea vini gasconensi [recte gasconiensis] et tria andegavense [recteandegavensis], quodlibet ad precium .xx. solidorum, usque ad pascafloridum vobis acomodarem. Quum quicquid mihi debuistis optimepersoluistis precibus vestris ad presens adquiesco et .v. dolea vero

532 MARTHA CARLIN

petistis vobis acomodo, de vobis confidens quod ad diem nominatumiuxta consuetudinem vestram mihi debitum meum persolvetis [cor-rected in MS from persolvistis].

(3) Translation

Response to the abovesaid letter

To his beloved lord and friend, W., Earl of S., A. his vintner sendsgreetings. I have lately received your letters asking that I accom-modate you with five tuns of Gascon wine and three of Angevin,at a price of 20s. each, until Pasca Floridum (Palm Sunday). Sincewhatever you have owed me you have paid in the best manner, Iagree to your present request and shall accommodate you with thefive tuns that you have sought, confident of you that on the daynamed, according to your custom, you will pay your debt to me infull.

(4) How the vintner should respond if the earl

does not repay his debts

Si non soluit bene quod debuit tunc dicat sic

Tantum de libertate vestra confidens presumens preces vestras ad ef-fectum mancipare, vobis .v. dolea vini petita acomodo, rogans at-tencius quatinus de antiquo debito quod super est in reragio paritercum hoc novo debito ad dictum diem mihi persolvatis. Valete.

(4) Translation

If he has not paid well what he has owed, then let him say thus

Trusting only in your generosity, being so bold as to put yourwishes in effect, I shall accommodate you with the five tuns ofwine you requested, beseeching you anxiously that you pay me infull your old debt, which is in arrears, equally with this new debt,on the said day. Farewell.

(5) An earl sends an order to his draper, to whom he is in debt

Comes mandat pannario creditori suo

B. comes glovernie dilecto sibi A. pannario London’ salutem et dilec-cionis affectum. Quamvis merita nostra non exigant (vel non pre-


cesserint) tamen de libertate vestra confidimus (ad vos in hoc instantinegocio confugimus), rogans attencius quatinus .xx. ulnas de scar-leta rubea et totidem de perso et totidem de minueto ad rationabileforum vel precium prout sustinere poteritis usque ad clausum pasca,absque pignore si vobis placuerit, mihi acomodetis (vel, super .x.anulos aureos et .x. ciphos argenteos quos vobis transmittimus).Sciatis enim pro vero quod ad diem prefixum, omni occasione remota,vobis bene persolvemus. Tantum ergo faciatis ut vobis tanquam fami-liari et creditori nostro grates et honores cum denariis vestris refera-mus. Valete.

(5) Translation

An earl sends an order to his draper, to whom he is in debt

B., Earl of Gloucester, to his beloved A., draper of London,greetings and love. Although our merits are not compelling (or,have not been outstanding), nevertheless we have relied on your ge-nerosity ([or,] we have turned to you in this present business), askinganxiously that you accommodate me with 20 ells of red scarlet,and the same of perse (dark blue) [scarlet], and the same of shorn(minueto) [scarlet], at the most reasonable cost or price that youcan manage, until the Sunday after Easter, without a pledge, if youplease (or, upon the ten gold rings and ten silver cups that wesend you). For you know it for a fact that we shall pay you well onthe appointed day, without any delay. Therefore, may you act onlyin such a manner that we shall return our thanks and respect toyou, as our friend as much as our creditor, along with yourmoney. Farewell.

(6) An earl sends an order to his skinner, to whom he is in debt

Comes mandat creditori suo pellipario

fol. 98r Comes dilecto sibi H. pellipario salutem. et amoris integritatem. Pe-nulis et fururis ad hoc instans pasca quamplurimum indigeo sed de-narios ad illas comparandas non habeo. Quare vos imploro quatinus.xx. penulas de griso et totidem ex variis, de agnelino minuto etcrispo, de propria selda vestra mihi acomodetis vel aliunde, ad cre-denciam. Habere faciatis de propriis, [?vel,] ratum habentes de alie-nis manibus capientes et denarios vestros ad diem prenominatumomni occasione remota de manibus meis vel R. senescalli mei reci-pietis. Valete.

534 MARTHA CARLIN

(6) Translation

An earl sends an order to his skinner, to whom he is in debt

The Earl to his beloved skinner H., greetings and the fullest oflove. I am sorely lacking in fur linings at this present Easter, butI do not have the money to pay for them. Wherefore I imploreyou that you accommodate me with 20 linings of gris, and thesame of vair [and] of lambskin with fine and curly [fleece], fromyour own seld or from elsewhere, on credit (ad credenciam). Let youarrange to have [them] from your own stock (de propriis), [?or],having this authorization (?habentes ratum), taking [them] from thehands of others, and you will receive your money on the aforesaidday, without any dispute, from my own hands or those of R., mysteward. Farewell.

(7) The manner in which one should write a positive or negative

response to a request

In literis responsalibus ad peticionem notandam quod aud [sic] comodataud [sic] expresse negat aud [sic] se excusat. In literis autem talibus visitres partes ad minus sunt. Primo debet salutare respondens; secundoostendere quid petitum sit; tercio qualiter velit parere vel qualiter debeatnegare vel excusare; quarto si placet poterit concludere. Item qui wlt[sic, for vult] parere [corrected in MS from paretre] petitis, potestostendere per vero vel per aud [sic] suam impotenciam excusare. Indeper quare vel per quapropter potest procedere ad excusacionem.

(7) Translation

In letters of response to a request, note that either one agrees orexpressly denies or excuses oneself. Moreover, in such letters thereare at least three parts. Firstly, the respondent should send greet-ings; secondly, he should describe what is sought; thirdly, heshould [say] in what way he wishes to agree, or for what reason hemust refuse or excuse [himself]; fourthly, if he pleases, he can con-clude. Item, he who wishes to agree to requests can show [this] by“vero,” or excuse his inability [to agree] by “aud” [sic]. Then, by“quare” or “quapropter” he can proceed to his excuse.


(8) Letter of refusal from a skinner ruined by fire

Dilecto amico et cetera. Literas vestras nuper accepi in quibus mepetistis ut ego vobis penulas et fururas perquirerem, quod libenterfecissem, sed ignis nuper superveniens [corrected in MS. from super-veniens nuper] totam pecuniam meam redegit in cinerem. Undevobis mittere non potui quod non habui nec creditores inveni quialiquid mihi crederent post incendium. Dubitaverunt enim perderetotum quod mihi acomodarent. Precor igitur ne moleste feratis quodpetita vobis non misi cum sciatis causam inpedimenti [sic]. Valete.

(8) Translation

To my beloved friend, etc. I have lately received your letter inwhich you requested that I purchase for you fur linings (penulas etfururas), which I would freely have done, had not a fire recentlyoccurring reduced my wealth to ashes. Wherefore I could not sendyou that which I did not have, nor have I found creditors whowould lend me anything after the fire, for they feared to loseeverything that they lent me. I pray, therefore, that you do nottake it amiss that I have not sent what you requested, since youknow the cause of the impediment. Farewell.

(9) Another letter of the same type

Adhuc de huiusmodi literis dicemus

A. B. salutem. Obsequium aliud exigit, et subtraccio exigit subtrac-cionem. Pecii nuper ut mihi succureres de tignis et trabibus quorumcopia penes te est. Tu autem surdas aures peticioni mee prebuistiet ideo non mireris [corrected in MS from mirereis] si preces tuaspresentes audire recusem. Nolo enim ([?vel] velle debeo) tibi demeo succurere, quoniam [?quando] de rebus vestris unum peciidedignatus fuisti mihi subvenire. Et ideo ut de cetero amicum ha-beas, amicum [recte amicus] inveniaris. Valete.

(9) Translation

Again we speak of letters of the same type

A. to B., greetings. One consent demands another, and a refusaldemands a refusal. Lately I asked you to help me out with somelumber and beams, of which you have plenty at your place. But

536 MARTHA CARLIN

you turned deaf ears to my petition, and therefore you will notwonder if I refuse to hear your own present prayers. For I do notwish ([or,] ought I to wish) to aid you from my [stock] (de meo),since, [?when] I sought one thing of yours, you disdained to cometo my aid. And so, henceforward, if you want to have a friend, youwill have to be found [to be] a friend. Farewell.

(10) An earl sends an order to his client (member of his affinity)

Comes clienti suo precipit sic

D. comes cestrie dilecto et fideli suo A. salutem. De fidelitate tuafol. 98v quamplurimum confisi, tibi mandantes (precipimus), preces preceptis

adiungentes, ut pro amore nostro et fide quam nobis debes .C. soli-dos facias nos habere ad unum equum emendum. Sciturus quod pa-lefridus noster mortuus est et non habemus equum cui possimus con-fidere. Quare tantum facias ne negocium nostrum admittatur pro de-fectu equitature. Vale [?or Valete].

(10) Translation

An earl sends an order to his client, thus

D., Earl of Chester, to his beloved and faithful A., greetings. Ihave put my highest trust in your loyalty, ordering you ([or,] wehave commanded), adding prayers to commands, that, for the sakeof our love and the faith that you owe us, you provide us with 100shillings to buy a horse. You shall know that our palfrey is dead,and we do not have a horse in which we can trust. Wherefore mayyou act in such a way that our business be not hindered for lackof a horse. Farewell.

(11) An earl orders his knights to equip with horses and arms

Comes militibus ut muniantur equis et armis

R. Comes Cestrie omnibus militibus suis salutem. De dileccionevestra quamplurimum confisi, vobis mandantes (precipimus; atten-tissime petimus) quatinus pro amore nostro parati sitis cum equis etarmis in die tali coram nobis ubicumque fuerimus. Sciturus [rectescituri] quod dominus Rex nos sicut alios fecit summoniri et cum eotransfretaremus cum totis viribus nostris sicut amorem suum desi-


deramus. Quare tantum faciatis ut domino regi placere poterimus etfideliter servire in necessitatibus [corrected in MS. from necessitabti-bus]. Valete.

(11) Translation

An earl orders his knights to equip with horses and arms

R., Earl of Chester, to all his knights, greetings. I have put myhighest trust in your love, ordering you ([or,] we have ordered, wehave most anxiously besought) that, for the sake of our love, you beprepared with horses and arms on such a day before us whereverwe shall be. You shall know that the lord king has caused us, likeothers, to be summoned to take ship with him with all our men,as we desired his love. Wherefore may you act in such a way thatwe shall be able to please the king and faithfully serve him in hisnecessities. Farewell.

MOVABLE/IMMOVABLE, WHAT’S IN A NAME?—THECASE OF LATE MEDIEVAL GHENT

Martha Howell

The terms “movable” and “immovable” wealth, categories be-queathed to Europeans by Roman law, arrived in the North of thecontinent during the high Middle Ages where they convenientlyserved to distinguish assets that were, quite literally, “immovable”from those that were not. The words had more than descriptive va-lue, however, for they were quickly conflated with terms that hadlong been used in the region to separate patrimonial from personalproperty. The categories did not, however, precisely overlap, andthe confusion that resulted produced a messy legal record.Throughout the late Middle Ages, authorities frequently were calledupon to resolve disputes about the movable or immovable status ofparticular goods or about their patrimonial status, questions whicharose most often during commercial dealings, in marriage, and atdeath—all situations in which property was being transferred.Nowhere was the record messier than in cities, for in these com-mercial centers property was regularly in circulation.

The Flemish city of Ghent, one of northern Europe’s most im-portant commercial and industrial centers of the late Middle Ages,has preserved a rich collection of documents tracing this story. Itstwists and turns reveal a great deal about how uncomfortably andincompletely the terms of market exchange took form in Europe,even among people like Gentenaren who lived almost entirely bytrade. It also helps expose what is too often suppressed in ourhistories of the western market economy: the hard political, socialand cultural work that went into its making and the unpredictabilityof its final shape.

Movables and Immovables in Northern European Society and Law

Although the terms “movables” and “immovables” (in Latin, mobiliaand immobilia) were imports, northern Europeans of the Middle

539MOVABLE/IMMOVABLE

1 The category of immovables was, in law, capacious, but land was thefundament. Jean Brissaud, A History of French Private Law, trans. of 2nd Fr. ed.(Boston: Little & Brown, 1912), provides a summary of the types of propertyincluded in the category in the Middle Ages: the land and everything whichis an integral part of the soil, buildings, crops growing on branches or roots;the movables which adhere to the immovables in the quality of accessories orappendages of the latter (but only on principle, if there was a physicalconnection); rights over the land which are like the ownership because of theirduration (servitude, quit-rent, and rents) and rights which, according to thefeudal conception, were connected with the land itself (right of administeringjustice or tolls, for example); rights like established rents and salable officeswhich had movables as their object but which were immovable or feudal intheir origin (270-2). On the immovability of land, also see Philippe Godding,Le droit privé dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux du 12e au 18e siècle, 2d ed. (Brussels:Académie Royale de Belgique, 1987), 142.

Ages had no difficulty defining an immovable. For them, any goodgiven that label was land itself or it was so bound to land as to beinseparable from it. Land is, of course, quite literally immovable,for unlike a dress, chest, or plow, land cannot be transported,hidden, or misplaced. It does not depreciate in the normal senseof the term.1 Land’s importance in the medieval economy height-ened its assumed immobility. The medieval economy was an agra-rian economy; even in the very latest years of the Middle Agessome 85 per cent of what we would called Gross National Productwas composed of agricultural goods. Land’s perpetual productivitysealed its status as the premier—virtually the sole—immovable, forthat quality made it the fundament of the social order. Thanks toland’s relatively stable value through time, rights to land definedboth the aristocracy who controlled it and the peasants who workedit, providing each a social identity and assuring class continuityfrom generation to generation.

In contrast, movables were an analytically distinct category ofproperty. Clothing, jewels, foodstuffs, furniture, coin, and equip-ment were, after all, literally movable. Even grain or animals, whichwere closely tied to the land, were also separable from it, and assuch they were readily labeled “movable.” In addition, movables didnot hold value as land did, for they were subject to depreciation,destruction, theft, or just plain loss, as land never was.

Easily understood in ordinary discourse, the distinction between“movable” and “immovable” wealth was also easily incorporated intonorthern property law. Throughout much of northern Europe, eachof the many versions of customary law made a distinction between

540 MARTHA HOWELL

2 For a fuller discussion, see Godding, Le droit privé, esp. 142; and DirkHierbaut, Over lenen en families: een studie over the vroegste geschiedenis van hetzakelijk leenrecht in het graafschap Vlaanderen (ca. 1000-1350) (Brussels: Palais derAcademiën, 2000). As Hierbaut explains, the distinction between “movable”and “immovable” does not, in fact, perfectly accord with customary law’sdistinction between cateyl and erve: “an erve is a good that is both permanentlyexisting and productive ... [but] an important difference between Roman andcustomary law is...that the distinction movable-immovable in Roman law hasrelevance only with respect to tangible (corporeal or material [“lichamelijke”])property. For customary law it makes no difference whether a good is tangible(“lichamelijk”) or not. So long as a good has permanent existence and isproductive, it is erve and thus usually immovable. The terms movable andimmovable in the acts of practices of the thirteenth century thus have nosense in Roman law. They are only substitutes for the concepts of cateyl anderve” (22-3).

Anne-Marie Patault, Introduction historique au droit des biens (Paris: PressesUniversitaires de France, 1989) also has a useful discussion of the way theseterms were transferred from Roman law to customary in the French-speakingregions: “Au haut Moyen Âge, les mots proprietas, dominium sont toujoursutilisés par des scribes qui reproduisent méchaniquement un vocabulaire ro-main desséché; nombreux sont les texts qui mentionnent ‘la propriété’ maisdés le XIIIe siècle les juristes romanisants ... généralisont les termes romains,proprietas, dominium, pour désigner une technique polymorphe d’appropriationqui n’a aucun point commun avec la propriété romaine, si ce n’est le nom”(19).

the two kinds of property and the rights attaching to them. Thatdifference did not, however, derive directly from their movablestatus. Instead, the Latin terms “movables” and “immovables,”along with their equivalents in French, Dutch, or German (meubles/immeubles in French, meublen/immeublen in Dutch, and beweglicheGüter/unbewegliche Güter in German) were conflated with conceptsdeeply rooted in these cultures and expressed in a vocabulary thatlong predated the imported Latin terms. In French speakingregions, people traditionally spoke of cateux and heritages (héritagesin modern French), not meubles or immeubles. In Dutch speakingregions people spoke of cateylen and erve, and in German-speakingregions of Fahrnis and Erbgüter.2 There are no precise equivalentsto these terms in medieval English law, but the English words“chattels” on the one hand, and “patrimony” on the other capturetheir sense, for cateux, catheylen, and Fahrnis were what we think ofas chattels or personal, private property while heritage, erve, andErbgüter were, in fact, treated as patrimony.

The distinction drawn in northern property law between chattelsand patrimony was not, however, the same as the common-sense


3 Philippe de Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ed. Amédée Salmon, 2vols. (1899-1900; reprint Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1970), nos. 672-8; cited in P.Ourliac and J. L. Gazzangia, Histoire du droit privé francais de l’an mil au codecivil (Paris: A. Michel, 1985), 233.

4 On this point, see Hierbaut, Over lenen en families, 23, and Patault, Droitdes biens, 19: “Mais le mot désigne alors non plus la maîtrise corporelle de lamatière, mais seulement la jouissance de ses utilités. Il n’évoque plusl’orgueilleuse puissance solitaire du propriétaire romain, étrangère auxrapports juridiques entre les hommes. Il est seulement maîtrise partiaireenserrée dans la solidarité des rapports avec les autres et légitimée par leconsensus du groupe. La ‘propriété’ n’est plus la souveraineté, elle estseulement, et pragmatiquement, la possibilité légitime de tirer un profit de laterre. Elle ne se confond plus avec la matiére, elle n’est que l’exploitation dela matiére. La pratique l’appelle ‘saisine,’ mais dés le XIIIe siècle les juristsromanisants effaceront ce terme du vocabulaire de la propriété et généra-liseront les termes romains, proprietas, dominium, pour désigner une techniquepolymorphe d’appropriation qui n’a aucun point commun avec la propriétéromaine, si ce n’est le nom” (19). Also see Philippe Godding, Le droit privédans les Pays-Bas méridionaux du 12e au 18e siècle, 2nd ed. (Bruxelles: Palais desAcadémies, 1991), esp. sections 190-2: 141-3.

notion of the difference between a movable good and an immov-able. The key distinction in customary law was between goods thatproduced income (heritages, erve, or Erbgüter) and those that wereincome (cateux, cateylen, or Fahrnis). Goods that produced incomewere thought to have perpetual lives, yielding fruit or income fromone generation to the next; in contrast, the fruit or income ofthese properties had no productive capacity. In his famous customalof the late thirteenth century, Beaumanoir perfectly expressed thislogic. “Héritages” were goods that “ne peuvent être mus,” thatproduced revenues that “valent par années,” and that wereperpetual because an “héritage ne peut faillir.”3

According to the logic of these northern European customs, agood with perpetual productive capacity was not subject toindividual ownership, not fully available to a single person duringhis or her lifetime precisely because its productive life far exceededthat of any individual. It was thus intended to serve generations,not individuals. Any possessor of such a property, even someoneholding the property as allodium (that is, independently of a lordor lessor), was nothing more than a possessor, and as such alwayshad to take account of the interests of relatives by blood ormarriage, those born or not-yet-born.4 Such assets were patrimony,not “property” in the sense we understand it. In contrast, goodsthat were deemed to be cateux, cateylen, or Fahrnis were under the

542 MARTHA HOWELL

5 Patault, Droit des biens, provides a full discussion of this logic. As sheexplains, “La circulation est au meuble ce que la productivité est à la‘l’immeuble’: le fondament de son utilité sociale” (291). As a result, “depuisle Moyen Age jusqu’à la Révolution, le meuble a été la seule veritable assisede la liberté de disposition” (283). On this see in addition Beaumanior,Coutumes de Beauvaisis, no. 622.

6 See, for these and other examples from the southern Low Countries,Godding, Le droit privé, 2nd ed., section 195: 145. For Germany, see HansPlanitz, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte (Graz-Köln: Böhlau, 1971).

individual possessor’s full control.5 They followed no necessaryroute of transmission and were thought to change ownership simplywith their physical transfer from one holder to another.

Although the movable/immovable distinction could not, then, beneatly equated with the chattel/patrimony distinction, the two setsof terms were treated as rough equivalents for much of the lateMiddle Ages. The conflation functioned so well because land, asboth the premier immovable and the principal patrimonial asset inthe medieval economy, almost perfectly served as the middle termlinking patrimony to immobility. To be sure, there were occasionswhen the equation broke down. Buildings, mills, granaries, crops,fish—all such goods could arguably be considered immovable, asintegral parts of the land, or they could with equal justice be calledmovable, as items separable from the land. Each region, each setof customs, resolved these issues on an ad hoc basis, and, inevitably,the result was diversity.6 Other goods that bore no “immovable”qualities whatsoever might nevertheless have patrimonial uses.Jewels, for example, were hoarded from one generation to the nextand efficiently served to store wealth and preserve status acrosstime. Were they not then “patrimonial” in some sense? As we shallsee, these confusions were one of the major sources of instabilitiesin the legal records that survive from the age, for disputes aboutsuch matters regularly drove people to court or forced judicialauthorities to issue clarifications about definition and categorization.

In cities, such problems of definition became acute, for thereland played so a minor role in economic and social life that itcould not provide the necessary fundament to the immovable/patrimonial equation. Rather, movables were the principal sourceof wealth in urban economies, and they changed hands rapidly inthese commercial societies. The imported luxuries that floodedaristocratic Europe after the Crusades had begun were the first to


7 See in particular Godding, Le doit privé, 142-3.

disrupt medieval Europeans’ easy assumption that “real” wealth wasthe same as land. Then, and of more profound importance for citypeople, came the raw materials, manufacturing equipment, andinventories that constituted the productive basis of urban econo-mies. Along with all of these movables arrived financial paper of allkinds, land rents that had been generated by loans, and eventuallyeven the bureaucratic offices that sovereigns handed out to thehordes of eager bidders of early modern Europe, all of whichwould sit very uneasily on the “movable/immovable = chattel/patri-mony” equation. The value of all such goods, although relativelysmall in the context of the entire European economy, dominatedthe urban.

Although all historians of the northern city have energeticallytaken account of these economic developments and their effects onpolitical, social and cultural life, only legal historians have fullyacknowledged that such a fundamental socioeconomic transforma-tion could have occurred only with a comparable upheaval in pro-perty law. Being regularly confronted with the unstable andcomplex meanings attaching to the categories “movable” and“immovable” in law, they have often commented that property lawwas in motion in this age, and many of them have gone further,sensing the socioeconomic importance of this story and implicitlycalling upon their colleagues to pursue it. In particular, they havepointed out that the moments of greatest tension—and hence ofinstability in law—occurred at marriage and death, for these weremoments of massive property transfers.7

As we shall see, in most customary legal regimes of the North,the use to which movables and immovables could be put wasdetermined by their relationship not just to chattels and patrimonybut also, via chattels and patrimony, to the marital property fund.That fund was made of two categories of property. The first wasjointly owned by husband and wife together; the second wasexplicitly reserved for the “line,” that is, for children born of themarriage or, in their absence, collateral or ascendant lineal kin. InGhent, where this paper focuses, goods considered joint were called“partible” (deelbar) because, being joint to husband and wife, theywere equally divisible between them at death. Thus, the survivingspouse got one-half of all partible goods and the heirs of the

544 MARTHA HOWELL

8 The surviving spouse had rights to half the income of this property forlife. See below for a fuller discussion of Ghent’s customary marital propertylaw.

deceased got the other half. The lineal goods of the deceased, incontrast, went entirely to heirs.8 Thus, as we shall see, the strugglesregarding the definition of movable and immovable and theirrelationship to chattels and patrimony were, in Ghent, waged interms of the partible/impartible divide.

In the end, we shall also see, the terms survived—both thoseindigenous to the North and the imported Latin words, but theirmeanings and relationships in law changed. By the dawn of theearly modern period, an immovable good would no longernecessarily be patrimonial; a movable might acquire that status; agood once labeled movable might at another moment in its econo-mic life be labeled immovable. In this way, Gentenaren took agiant step towards the “commodification of all” that is the tendencyof what we call capitalism but at the same time, they learned newways to resist commodification. To accomplish these apparently in-commensurate ends, Gentenaren had to rewrite property law so asto free their assets to the market but at the same time select someof them for the benefit of the family and its descendents. Bytracing their tortured route, we can learn a lot about their under-standing of property, their sense of the link between property andsocial identity, and their commitment to values beyond those of themarket. In the process, we are granted a rare look at the birthpangs of what we call the market society.

Tracking Movables in Ghent

A version of the transformation that took place in Ghent wasplayed out everywhere in northern Europe, but each story isparticular to the legal jurisdiction in which it occurred, forcustomary law is by definition local and particular. Ghent is anideal setting for such a study, not just because it has preserved thenecessary sources. It was the second largest northern city of thefourteenth and much of the fifteenth century. Until the end of theMiddle Ages when Antwerp, then Amsterdam and still later Londondisplaced it, Ghent was also northern Europe’s leading center of


commercially oriented industry. Although almost entirely devotedto production for export and to trade itself, Ghent neverthelesshonored the system of private property law traditional in this re-gion of the North, carefully distinguishing movables from im-movables and roughly equating the former with chattels (cateylen inthe Dutch language of Ghent) and the latter with patrimony (erve).

Ghent has left rich sources for tracing the long history of thiscustom. Most of the accessible documents are normative in charac-ter, ranging from occasional proclamations to rulings to formalstatements of customary practices, and in their preponderancedating from the late thirteenth century to the first homologizedcustom of 1563. Similar records survive from later years as well, ofcourse, but after 1563 the history of such texts is no longer Ghent’salone, for the later records belong to a larger story of legal changedriven by the ducal court and by legal theory explicitly drawn fromRoman law as earlier custom was not. Another set of documents isless normative in character, for these consist of litigation records ofvarious kinds, ranging from judgments handed down as a result ofdisputes to summaries of hearings in court.

Four principal normative texts are a basis of this study, althoughthey are supplemented by occasional proclamations, charters andsimilar texts.

1. The Grande Charte of 1297 (abbreviated here as GC), aprivilege granted by the Count of Flanders to what was alreadyhis most important industrial center;

2. A text prepared by Ghent’s aldermen (scepenen), which existsin three manuscript versions, summarizing the customary rulesof succession in Ghent and dating from the early sixteenthcentury (abbreviated here as SC);

3. A draft of the city’s entire custom, prepared by the aldermenin 1546 (abbreviated here as DC);

4. The 1563 homologized custom, a redraft of the 1546 customwhich finally earned ducal approval (abbreviated here as HC).

Alongside these normative texts two principal forms of “recordsof practice” survive: a selection of judgments or vonnissen rendered

548 MARTHA HOWELL

12 Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 3-4 (vonnis of 26 July 1350, #2). Also seeMeijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 72 (vonnis of 13 February 1370 (n.s.?), #14): seededcorn on a fief is movable even if the fief is not.

13 In Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21-3 (vonnis of 10 December 1371, #24).“Winter” crops or “winter fruit” were those planted in fall for spring harvest.

14 Coutumes, 1: 588-90. These are crops sown in early spring for summerharvest.

15 Vonnis of 16 June 1367, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21 (#23).

a seeded crop, one already in the ground but not yet ready forharvest, was customarily considered part of the land, which wasundisputedly immovable. But according to a vonnis rendered by thealdermen in 1350, the surviving spouse of a marriage, in recogni-tion of his or her rights to half of all movables in the estate, wasto be compensated for the money that had been spent in preparingthe ground and sowing the seed, presumably since that cost wasassumed to have been borne by the couple together, out of theirjoint movable property. Having paid 50 per cent of planting, thereasoning must have been, the surviving spouse could be dispos-sessed of the eventual crop only after having been repaid his orher costs.12 That ruling assumed, however, that the crops were notready for harvest. When the crop was closer to harvest the situationwas muddied. A vonnis of 1371 decreed that “winter” crops in theground were immovable, but only if the death of the landownerhad occurred before mid-March.13 Accordingly, if one of thespouses were to have died on 31 March, the land alone would goto his or her direct heirs in its entirety, and the survivor wouldhave rights to half the crop in the ground, implicitly on the theorythat the a crop so close to harvest at the time of death wasmovable. If, however, the death were to have occurred on 1 March,the heirs would acquire both the land and the crop on the groundsthat the seed had then not yet produced a recognizably “har-vest-able” crop. According to the same ruling, summer cropsbecame movable after mid-May, a position reiterated in a vonnis of1415.14

Fruit trees caused as much confusion. Apple trees (appelboomen)more than “knee high,” for example, were specifically labeledmovable in the early sixteenth-century listing of customary rulescited above, a statement seeming to confirm a vonnis from 1367(here the term is bogarde or orchard).15 A turbe of 1525 seems,however, to have revised this norm, for there all “fruit trees”


16 Turbe of September 1525, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 79 (#1).17 HC, Articles XXV-4 and 34.18 Vonnis of 12 October 1367, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21, #24; vonnissen

of 1399 and 1415 in Coutumes, 1: 564-9 and 588-90; DC of 1546, article V-3;HC of 1563, XX-3 and passim.

A vonnis of 1363 decreed bushes (bosch) movable if “one customarily cutthem,” and another of 1367 confirmed that willows (wulghen) were movable,both texts suggesting by their very existence that litigants had contested theprinciple and were seeking exceptions (vonnis of 29 June 1363, in Meijers,OVE, Bijlage 1: 16, #17; vonnis of 12 May 1367, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1:20-1, #22).

The sixteenth century SC introduced more vocabulary, this time leavinglittle doubt that the category “trees” was unstable. Article 17 of that text flatlydeclared “upgaende boomen, drooghe often groene” (grown trees, dry orgreen) movable, whether on fief or free land (“leen of erve”), whether insidethe city or outside it (“binnen der stede often buuten”). Article 20 declaredtronckycken (oaken stumps) movable if the trijshoudt (branches or twigs) wereolder than seven years (the branches themselves were also movable, theauthors of the document took pains to remark). Dornehagen (hedges of pineevergreens), however, were movable after three years (article 21), while inarticle 22 it was explained that elshaghen (hedges of alders) had to wait fiveyears. A turbe of 1531 seemed, however, to overturn the earlier statementregarding tronckeycken; here they were declared movable, even if located on afief, and no age limit was indicated (turbe of 17 May 1531, in Meijers, OVE,

(fruutboomen) were deemed movables, without qualification regardingheight.16 The homologized custom of 1563 repeated the sameblanket convention, adding that if the trees were located on a fief,along with its principal dwelling and major “shade” trees, they werenevertheless divisible as movables (here they were called fruytbo-omen).17 Although clear at one level—apple or fruit trees aremovables—these texts are ambiguous at another, for it is not clearwhether they had to have reached a certain growth. Nor is itobvious just what kind of trees were at issue. Were “apple trees,”“fruit trees” and “orchards” the same things in the eyes of litigantsand the court alike? Nothing in the available sources directly tellsus, but it is not unreasonable to suspect that the instability ofterminology and the frequency with which fruit-bearing treesappear in our sources are the faint traces of debate about defini-tion. When we turn from “fruit trees” to “trees” more generally,our suspicions are further aroused, for the texts are replete withsigns of quarrels, indecision, and changes of direction. Some textsflatly labeled trees movable, but others implied that only certaintrees, of certain heights or age, or in certain locations weremovable.18

550 MARTHA HOWELL

Bijlage 2: 99-100, #37). A slightly earlier turbe of 1525 had provided the sameruling, but that text also introduced entirely new terms: hauten (wood) wasmovable, even if on a fief, but the shade trees (schauboomen) were not, andslachoudt (cut wood) was movable so long as the schueten (shoots or limbs) wereat least three years old (turbe of September 1525, in Meijers, OVE, Bilage 2:79, #1).

The DC of 1546 declared that “boomen” (trees) were movable, exceptingonly the schauboomen (shade trees) on a fief. The HC of 1563 significantlyelaborated this ruling: the movable or partible account included only thoseboomen whose trunks were wider than two hands and higher than the chest,along with troncken, again excluding the shade trees on fiefs. Article XXV-32again named slachoudt (cut wood) movable, confirming the minimum age ofthree years, and the next article (XXV-33) reiterated that doornehagen weremovable if three years old, but thought it necessary to elaborate, adding thatthe rys, haer of waey (twigs, sprigs, or branches) were included in that ruling.

19 For measures of subsistence wages in the fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies, see Jean-Pierre Sosson, Les travaux publics de la ville de Bruges,XIVe-XVe siècles: les matériaux, les hommes, Collection Pro Civitate, 48 (Brussels:Crédit Communal de Belgique, 1977), 230-1 and 308-9. Only master artisansin the building trades had incomes high enough to avoid risk of famine; dayworkers and journeymen regularly skirted disaster and sometimes met it. Forthe sixteenth century, see Johan Dambruyne, Corporatieve middengroepen:aspiraties, relaties en transformaties in de 16de-eeuwse Gentse ambachtswereld (Ghent:Academia Press, 2002), and the sources he cites.

If we reflect on the role these goods played in the economy ofthe day, contemporaries’ evident concern with trees and crops, evenfish and peat, becomes comprehensible. In this age seed yields wereonly about 4:1 or 5:1, crop yields seldom exceeded 5 bushels peracre (today they are easily 10-20 times that amount), and foodstuffswere relatively so expensive that a family’s subsistence diet took upa significant portion of the daily wage of an adult male unskilledworker, and in some years took all of it.19 Under those conditions,any surviving spouse, no matter how rich, would have hardly beenindifferent to the decision taken about a crop’s movability (in whichcase he or she got half of it as his or her own), and the heirs ofthe land would have been as eager to have a decision counting itimmovable (in which case they got it all, and had to share only halfits income during the life of the surviving spouse). Wood, whetherused for its fruit, fuel, furniture or construction, was even morevaluable than a crop in the ground itself. This was, let us remem-ber, a part of Europe where most woodland had long ago beendecimated, where lords valued their privileged access to forestsabove most other rights, where Baltic lumber was not yet importedat the rate it would later be (and in any case was used principally


20 See, for example, the dispute between a rich widow and her deceasedhusband’s heirs over household goods and the trees/lumber supplies on theland he had left (vonnis of 12 May 1367, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1, 20-1,#22).

21 Vonnis of 18 February 1350 (ns), in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 3, #4; vonnisof 8 April 1359, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 14, #14; vonnis of 1399, inCoutumes, 1: 564; vonnis of 1415, in Coutumes, 1: 588-90.

22 Turbe of 5 June 1529, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2, 87-8, #17; SC, article17: “huusen, schuren, stallen ende andere edificien, leeninghen endelatinghen, staende often wesende up leenen oft erven binnen der stede oftenbuuten es gherekent often ghehauden muelbe (sic).”

23 Article X-25; repeated in VI-19 of the HC of 1563; also see articleXXI-31 of DC 1546, where houses in the city are once again specificallylabeled partible.

24 The only area of instability or uncertainty concerned houses located onland held in fief. While many of the available texts labeled them movable, asdid article 17 of the early sixteenth-century SC cited above, others introducedqualifications. A vonnis of 1411-1412, for example, exempted houses on fiefsheld of the Duke of Burgundy, ruling that their status was determined by thefeudal court with specific jurisdiction (vonnis of 1411-1412, in Coutumes, 1:582-4). A turbe of 1525 exempted the beste vuurst (best residence) on a fief,

in shipbuilding and other major projects), and where peat was thesole readily available fuel substitute. People, even rich people,hoarded then wood carefully and used it sparingly; so cherishedwas this item that some people made special bequests of it in theirwills.20

Similar struggles plagued Ghent’s neighbors and the decisionstaken in Ghent regarding crops, trees, fish and the like resembled,even if they did not duplicate, those taken elsewhere. Gentenarendeviated dramatically from regional norms, however, in theirtreatment of houses and, especially, of land. All the records wehave from Ghent, even the earliest, treat houses and similarstructures as movable assets. The surviving texts, whether normativeor practical, are unambiguous, even dully repetitive. A vonnis of1350, another of 1359, a third in 1399 and a fourth in 1415 allroutinely included huusen (“houses”) in their lists of movables orchattels.21 A turbe of 1529 flatly repeated the principle, while the SCof the early sixteenth century elaborated further: article 16 intonedthat “all houses or parts of houses” were movable, a rulingrepeated in the subsequent article as well.22 The DC of 1546 spokeeven more aggressively: houses in Ghent are, according to thecustom, “partible and considered chattels and movable property.”23

The HC of 1563 repeated that clause almost verbatim.24

552 MARTHA HOWELL

and the DC of 1546 provided that a house in the countryside, althoughmovable, could be kept whole by the landowner if she or she compensated thehalf-owner(s) for their share of its value (turbe of September 1525, in Meijers,OVE, Bijlage 2: 79, #1; DC of 1546, article XXI-36; repeated in HC of 1563,article XXV-35).

25 For West Flanders, see Meijers, OVE, 33, n.4 and more generally for theLow Countries, Godding, Le droit privé, 2d ed., 143-4. For Germany, seeAshaver von Brandt, “Mittelalterliche Bürgertestamente: Neuerschlossene Quel-len zur Geschichte der materiellen und geistigen Kultur,” Sitzungberichte derHeidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaft, philosophisch-historische Klasse 5-32 (Heidel-berg: Carl Winter, 1973).

26 Meijers’s OVE traces this story. The transition is documented as early asthe fourteenth century, when a vonnis of 1353 declared that “erve withinGhent on which rent was being paid were partible; others from 1371 and1450 repeated the judgment (vonnis of 22 June 1353, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage1: 4-7, #4; vonnis of 10 December 1371, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21-3,#24; vonnis of 1450 in Coutumes 1: 628; vonnis of 22 November 1363, inMeijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 17-18, #19). The sixteenth-century SC confirms thisreading. Following article 24, which explained that all unbuilt erve in Ghentheld of lordships [paying traditional landcijns] were patrimonial, came article

Ghent was not entirely alone in labeling houses movables, forsome other areas of the North did so as well, Lille, Antwerp,several cities in West Flanders and some in Germany amongthem.25 But Ghent stands alone, as far as we know, in labeling mostland movable. The story of how Ghent came to this decision islong and complicated. It originated in the awkward situationproduced when a house and its tenure was being transferred at theend of a marriage. The house, being movable, was to be dividedbetween the survivor of the marriage and the deceased’s lineal heirs(as a partible good), while the land, which was traditionallyconsidered patrimonial and thus impartible, was to be passeddirectly to heirs. The result was confusion: the owner of the landwas not the full owner of the house that stood on it, and theoccupant of the house (typically the surviving spouse) was unlikelyto hold the land rights. At some point during the fourteenthcentury, Ghent’s aldermen decided to treat these “packages” asmovable if the land was encumbered by rental payments. Thetheory here was that the rental payments had been assumed inorder to acquire land for building the house. Later even thoseconditions were dropped, and all land in the jurisdiction of Ghent,whether or not it paid rent and whether or not it was built, wasconsidered movable. This left only land outside Ghent or land heldin fief as potentially patrimonial property.26


25, which deemed movable all patrimonial property (erve) in Ghent that paidlandcijns, implying by the contrast with article 24 that built land payinglandcijns was intended.

Danneel cites two cases appearing to indicate that if a house with landpaying rent had been acquired before marriage or inherited during marriage,the land portion was treated as heritable and only the house entered thecommunity of goods (Danneel, Weduwen en wezen, 268, n. 81). Meijers arguesthat it does not, and the cases he cites, as well as the normative texts, seemto support him. I have been able to check only one of her cases (Gedele 330,#39, fols. 133-4, 13 April 1491). There we indeed find an eervachticheden(patrimonial property) consisting of land and a house, and the aldermen didindeed determine that the land held side, while the house itself was partible.This land was, however, not in the jurisdiction of Ghent, but in Deestinghem,and according to Ghent’s custom as then expressed such land would indeedhave “held side.”

Whatever the confusions of the fifteenth century, the circle had closed bythe sixteenth. All land in Ghent, whether actually encumbered or not, whetheractually built or not, was chattel property and therefore partible. The rulingis first visible in a turbe of 1529 in which “all land within the jurisdiction ofGhent” was deemed cateyl (turbe of 1529, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 91-2,#22). Section XXI-27 of the 1546 DC was equally precise: “Land ‘holds side’except [my emphasis] land that is within the city, which is movable.” The 1563HC extended the reach to the suburbs of Ghent: “land holds the side fromwhich it came, along with the usufruct attaching to it, except [my emphasis] theland inside the city and outer fortifications of the city [which] is partible[movable] ... .”[ HC, article XXV-29]. No mention here of landcijns, none ofhouses. Land, whether or not encumbered or built, was movable if it was inthe jurisdiction of Ghent.

Debt obligations were, however, a considerably more complicatedmatter than either land or houses, and it was this category of asset(or liability if one was the borrower rather than the creditor) thatprovided Gentenaren a way to both serve the market and preservewealth for heirs. Like all other known regions of customary law,Ghent assiduously preserved a key feature of the traditional law ofpatrimony: perpetual “rents,” what Gentenaren called erfrenten,retained patrimonial capacity, even if the rents were paid on landthat was itself considered movable and partible. Like the history ofland and its legal status in Ghent, the story of rents and otherforms of indebtedness is a complex one, and its details beyond thescope of this essay.

Its general shape is, however, evident. In Ghent, as in allregions of customary law, most debts were thought to be personalobligations, and thus to attach to the movable goods of theindividual who incurred the debt, for that was the only property inhis or her possession that was truly personal. A French adage of

554 MARTHA HOWELL

27 Cited in Patault, Droit des biens, 282. The central fundament of the basicrule was preserved in all the normative statements issued by aldermen and inall the rulings issued by municipal courts. A vonnis of 1350 flatly declared, forexample, that debts were to be charged against the movable account of amarriage (vonnis of 15 August 1350, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 4, #3).Another of 1371 was similar: all “huutsculden, insculden, baten ende comer”(“payments or receipts on debts, income and expenses”) were movable (vonnisof 10 December 1371 in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21-3, #24). Article 2 of theearly sixteenth century SC confirmed the rule, specifically naming all“schulden van baten ende van commerce” (“all obligations arising fromincome and expenses”), while article 32 of the same text mentioned “alldebts” and article 26 broadly included all “besproken blat” (“encumberedrevenue”). A turbe of 1531 listed all “contracten [ende] obligatien.” (“contractsand obligations”) (turbe of 12 July 1531, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 100, #3).The DC of 1546 continued the litany; the HC of 1563 repeated thesentiment.

28 From the fourteenth century forward, civil (private) matters were dealtwith by two separate groups of aldermen (scepenen), the “Keure” and the“Gedele.” The former dealt with matters of property transactions, debts, etc.,the latter largely with inheritance and what were called “zoenen” orcompensation payments for personal (and physical) injury. The annualregisters of the Keure (the Jaarregisters van de Keure, series 301) were thetranscriptions of agreements (of a financial nature) voluntarily brought to thealdermen for registration. For a fuller study of this source, see PhilippeLardinois, “Diplomatische studie van de akten van vrijwillige rechtspraak teGent van de XIIIe tot de XVe eeuw,” Licenciaat, U. Ghent (1975-6). Asummary of the thesis was published in Hand. Maatsch. Geschiedenis Gent 31(1977): 65-75.

the day expressed the concept succinctly: “meubles sont sièges desdettes.”27 The notion that debts were personal and thus payable outof personal—movable—property alone had important implicationsfor economic life. Debts “owned” by lenders (what we might call“collectables, “accounts receivable,” “debt payments due,” and thelike) could easily be bought and sold, allowing lenders to tradefuture income for present cash. For example, a lender who was due100 pounds but who needed the funds immediately could sell thatdebt to a third person, who would then collect the amount duefrom the borrower. Lenders had other advantages as well becausethey could claim all the borrower’s movables in case of default anddid not have to rely on a single asset for their security. TheJaarregisters of Ghent’s aldermen of the “Keure” contain eloquenttestimony to the ubiquity of such unsecured debt.28 During themonth of December 1400 alone, for example, Gentenaren regis-tered 114 transactions with the aldermen. Fifty-nine of theentries—over half—recorded debt obligations of unspecified origin


29 This material is all taken from the inventories and case summaries of theJaarregisters published by the municipal archive of Ghent: Regesten op deJaarregisters van de Keure [Inventarissen en Indices gepubliceerd door hetArchief, Stad Gent], ed. J. Boon (Ghent: Stad Gent, 1969) covers 1353-54 and1357-58; Regesten op de Jaarregisters van de Keure, ed. J. Boon (Ghent: StadGent, 1968) covers 1339-40, 1343-44, 1345-46, and 1349-50; the threevolumes of Regesten op de Jaarregisters van de Keure from 1967, 1970, and1972 [no named editor] cover 1400-01) [hereafter RJR].

30 John H. Munro’s “The Medieval Origins of the Financial Revolution:Usury, Rentes, and Negotiability,” The International History Review 25 (3)(2003): 505-62, provides a nuanced discussion of usury laws and their effectson financial markets. His references are extensive, but also see Joel Kaye,“Changing Definitions of Money, Nature, and Equality (c.1140-1270) andTheir Place within Thomas Aquinas’ Questions on Usury,” Credito e usura frateologia, diritto e amministratione. Linguaggi a confronto (sec, XII-XIV) (CNRS,École française de Rome, Università di Trento, forthcoming).

31 The history of debt in medieval Europe with respect to immovables is ex-

and without specific security, just as custom imagined.29 Anotherfifteen of the 114 did specify how the debt had originated, but theydid not imply that the object purchased with the money lent wasspecific security for the loan.

Although this evidence seems to insist that secured debts wereunknown to medieval custom, the contrary is in fact the case. Thetechniques for securing long-term debt developed slowly andhesitatingly, however, for medieval people faced opposition bothfrom spiritual authorities and customary secular law. The problemfor the church was usury, for payments on a secured loan lookedsuspiciously like interest charges unless they totaled no more thanthe precise amount of the loan—a deal no long-term lender couldaccept.30 The problem in secular custom involved patrimonialrights. Only an immovable good could properly secure a loan, foronly such an asset would hold value and generate income to servicethe loan. Such assets were, however, the source of patrimonialwealth—wealth due heirs—and in the medieval imagination thoseheirs were due their property free of debt. No individual, it wasthought, could encumber his or her heirs. Accordingly, the onlyobligations that could attach to or pass with patrimonial assets werethose integral to its use, and such obligations were generallyunderstood to be permanent and of a tenurial nature. The oldmedieval cens (census in Latin) and aides, the dues or honorificpayments to lords that traditionally were exacted from all users ofnon-allodial land, were prototypical.31

556 MARTHA HOWELL

tremely complex and hard to document in its specifics for a particular locality.The fullest study of rents, as they had evolved by the end of the Middle Agesand developed in sixteenth-century France (Paris above all), is BernardSchnapper, Les rentes au XVIe siècle: histoire d’un instrument de crédit (Paris:S.E.V.P.E.N., 1957). Also see Godding, Le droit privé and Munro, “TheMedieval Origins.”

32 RJR, #510, fol. 24v/1.33 Vonnis of 22 June 1353, in both Coutume, 1: 529-40, and Meijers, OVE,

Bijlage 1: 4-7, #4; vonnis of 12 November 1372, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1:23-9, #25.

It was precisely the census or cens, however, which provided thenecessary structure for secured debt because it was early and easilyconflated with what was called a rente foncière or bail à rente.Originally considered a kind of perpetual lease of land in exchangefor a perpetual rent (thus, bail à rente), this instrument could alsobe seen as a sale of land in exchange for a perpetual rent (rentefoncière). In either case no loan was involved—thus, no usury. Thecritical shift, however, was to what were called rentes à prix d’argentor rentes constituées. In this case, money was given in exchange forrent payments in perpetuity, the money being used by the debtoreither to purchase the asset securing the “debt” or, more commonlyas time went on, to invest elsewhere. In the latter case, the “debt”was secured by an asset that the debtor already owned. Althoughthis device had all the earmarks of a secured debt, medieval peoplemanaged to conceptualize it as a sale (of money) in return for aperpetual rent, thus aligning it with the rente foncière or oldcensus—and avoiding both usury prohibitions and disgruntled heirs.

About a third of the entries in the indexed volumes of theJaarregisters concern such debts. For example, in exchange for anunnamed amount of money, Jan Sersanders issued a rent (erfelijkerente) to Jan van Maelgavere of 2 shillings gros tournois per year,secured by a house and tenement (erf). The property was alreadyencumbered with a rent of 2 shillings gros tournois, payable to athird party, so Sersander’s ability to borrow against it a second timeindicates that the property produced at least 4 shillings of incomea year.32

All such rents were treated as immovable patrimony and thus asimpartibles. A vonnis of 1352-1353, for example, clearly declared“eerve, eeveliike rente” impartible; again in 1372 the samelanguage appears.33 The rule is invariable, and is repeated withcasual assurance throughout the period studied. If the perpetual


34 A turbe of 5 June 1529, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 87-8, #17, specifiedthat they were movable (common) unless purchased with the proceeds of thesale of an immovable erve. Another of 10 December 1529, in Meijers, OVE,Bijlage 2: 92, #23, treated losrenten as movables in that they were part ofcommon account. Again, see further in this text for a discussion of thisrelationship. This judgment, however, contradicted another turbe (of 9September 1528, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 83-4, #9, where besette (secured)losrenten were treated as immovables. The difference may lie in the term“besette.” See note 40 below for an explanation of this term.

35 Turbe of 9 September 1528, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 83-4, #9.36 Turbe of 10 October 1530, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2: 96, #31.37 The term “realized” rents first appears in sixteenth-century texts, as an

explicit reference to a process of formal “registration” (which could have beenoral) of a secured obligation. Once “realized,” a debt was pursuable in courtand the security underlying it attachable. I am grateful to Prof. Dr. PhilippeGodding for this explanation. The clause is found in DC XXI-18 and in HCXXV-8 (the term appears elsewhere in these texts as well; see, for example,XXV-40 of the HC).

38 In what might seem a gross contradiction, however, the income receivedby the lender of the funds was treated as a movable (HC, article XXV-27).The logic is, however, clear. Losrenten, being secured by immovables, had tostay attached to that immovable if the creditor was to be properly secured.

rent was repurchaseable by the borrower, however, the situation wasmore complicated in secular law. These losrenten, as they werecalled in Ghent, were structured just like erfrenten but the borrowercould repay the obligation, whenever desired, at some amount thathad been fixed in the original loan agreement. More than anyother financial instrument of the age, these most resemble oursecured loans—and least resemble the old tenurial rent. Becausethey were detachable from the asset (when redeemed), these debtscould logically be considered movable, and that is what severalearly sixteenth-century texts provided.34 Other texts, however,offered a different interpretation. A turbe of 1528 declared all besetterenten (secured rents) immovable except lijfrenten, thereby implyingthat secured losrenten were immovable.35 Article 27 of the earlysixteenth-century SC repeated the same rule, as did a turbe of1530.36 The DC of 1546 as well as the HC of 1583 were clearerstill: all “realized” losrenten were treated as immovables, even if thesecurity was a “movable” house, for under such conditions the rentattached to the real property and followed it.37 By the sixteenthcentury, then, redeemable rents, even if secured by an assetundisputedly movable such as a house, were considered patrimonialand, as such, immovable.38

558 MARTHA HOWELL

While the income from the rent could float free of the property and beconsidered “personal” to the lender, the capital tied up in debt had to beattached specifically to the asset generating the debt; in that way the creditorwas still secured, even if the property was sold to a third party or passed onto heirs.

39 This was a fraught issue everywhere in Europe. For a discussion of thewide variety of solutions, and the patterns of resolution in customary law, seeSchnapper, Les rentes, 244-60.

40 Vonnis of 14 August 1355, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 8, #6 (here it wasexplained that the rent had been purchased with common property during themarriage so the income was, naturally, common as well). A vonnis of 1 April1359, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 12-13, #13, specified that even if the rentalpayment was secured by immovab1es that belonged to one spouse alone theobligation to service the annuity was movable; vonnis of 10 December 1371 inMeijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 21-3, #24, explained that the annuity paymentsreceived were movables if both they had been acquired with common

Clearly, Gentenaren, like others of their age, conceptualizedperpetual rents as a different kind of debt, not in fact as “debt”per se but as a quasi-tenurial arrangement. As such these assetslodged, ultimately, with the family line and were not freely availableto the market.39 The individuals paying the rents (the borrowers)also treated their payments as patrimonial in that they passed toheirs along with the property securing the rent. Oddly, however,this meant that a rent secured by a house and building lot wasdivided between heirs and the successor to a portion of the house.The rent attached to the land went to the heir of the land; half therent went with half the house to the heir, and the other half wentto the surviving spouse.

By the late Middle Ages a new form of the rente constituée was atleast as common, and its appearance further disturbed traditionalnorms. This was the annuity or, in French, rente viagère (lijfrent inDutch). Although structured exactly like the rente constituée, theannuity was not perpetual but was due only for the life of thecreditor (or the group of creditors, since such annuities weretypically written on several lives—husband and wife, or sometimesthe entire nuclear family). The obligation to pay rent ceased whenthe creditor(s) died; then the borrower would own the pledgedproperty free and clear. In this case, the connection between thefinancial instrument and its security was, in effect, temporary, andannuities themselves had short lives—or in any case non-perpetuallives. Annuities were, thus, movables, and belonged in the partibleaccounts of Gentenaren.40


(movable) property. A turbe of 9 September 1528, in Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 2:83-4, #9, went on to specify that they were partible even if secured by erve(“besetten”). These rules were repeated in the SC of the early sixteenthcentury (article 26) and in the DC of 1546 (XXI-20) as well as the HC of1563 (XXV-22). Thus, the annuity payments received by the purchaser duringlife were counted as movables, as were the payments made by the borrower,and the cash received by the borrower when the loan was first made went intothe borrowers’ movable account.

The Import of Change

This legal history can seem a linear story in which Gentenarengradually allowed the imperatives of commerce to trump the weightof medieval tradition. There is no doubt that the category ofmovables and thus of partibles was dramatically increased as theMiddle Ages came to a close. We can also understand whyGentenaren would have wanted to make such adjustments to law.Being dependent on industry and trade for their livelihoods andsocial position, we might reason, Gentenaren would have beeneasily inclined to treat all goods as movables, since movables alonecould be freely released to the market. If, however, we study theentire three centuries of change, if we look not just at the situa-tions where property was freed but also at those where it was not,and if we also observe what Gentenaren actually did with wealththat was considered immovable—we can no longer tell Ghent’s storyas the triumph of commerce over medieval legal tradition. Rather,we come to see that the imperatives of commerce were in constanttension with older and more deeply seated notions imbedded inthe very concept of patrimony: property rights were the basis ofsocial order, the mechanism by which people were connected toeach other through time and space and, not incidentally, the meansfor establishing hierarchies among them. Hence, even if Gente-naren accepted that all wealth had to be released to the market,they were also convinced that the market alone could not bepermitted to allocate property rights. Instead, they believed,property rights should ultimately be conferred by kinship status,and by that mechanism both gender and class hierarchies could beconstructed and preserved.

To achieve these apparently incommensurate goals, Gentenarenmanipulated the partible/impartible divide at the heart of theirmarital property law. As we have seen, in Ghent’s custom movable

560 MARTHA HOWELL

41 Legal historians argue that the community property account central tomarital property law in this region of Europe was a residue of old systems inwhich the entire family constituted the community. For this argument, see P.Ourliac and J. de Malafosse, Histoire du droit privé, 3, Le droit familial (Paris:Presses Universitaires de France, 1968). For examples of non-maritalcommunities, see Jean Hilaire, “Vie en commun: famille et esprit commu-nautaire,” Nouvelle revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4th ser., 51(1973): 8-53.

42 See article XXI-7 of the DC, which was especially clear on this principle.The clause was repeated, almost verbatim, in HC of 1563, article XX-23.

goods were not only equated with chattels, they were automaticallyconsidered partible. All partible goods belonged to what Gente-naren called the community of goods or the community (common)fund that was created when a woman and man married.41 Commu-nity goods were the joint property of both spouses, and at thedeath of either spouse, the survivor (or the lineal heirs of thesurvivor) had a full claim to 50 per cent of those assets, no mattertheir composition. Although the fund was technically jointly owned,during the marriage it was in fact entirely managed—and effectivelyowned—by the husband. As head of household he could buy, sell,exchange, alienate, or encumber the assets however he wished,without asking permission of his wife or her particular heirs.42 Itwas only when he died that the woman acquired her rights, buteven then she assumed ownership only of 50 per cent of the assets;the other half passed to the deceased husband’s lineal heirs. Evenif those heirs were minor children born of the marriage and thewidow managed the assets on their behalf, she did so only astrustee and under the supervision of adult relatives of the deceasedhusband. The reverse was also true; if the wife died first, the 50per cent of the community account that ultimately belonged to herpassed to her lineal heirs, preferentially to her children; thesurvivor of her marriage, even if he was the father of thosechildren, did not have full authority over that portion of thecommunity account. The surviving spouse of the marriage did,however, have lifetime rights to half the income from the portionof the community account (thus 50 per cent of the income from 50per cent of the community account) that had passed to heirs of thedeceased, but those rights expired at the death of the survivor.

It was thus a supremely important matter to decide whether agood belonged in the community account. Although goods labeled“community” were by definition the equivalent of partible goods,


43 Various clauses of the HC of 1563 laboriously detailed the itemsincluded: article XXV-4, for example, listed “houses, trees grown to the widthof a man’s hand span and chest high, logs, chattels, leases and mortgages,minted and unminted coin, jewels and baubles, household furnishings,weapons, bows, stocks of munitions, horses and harnesses, peat and stone thathas been mined ... excepting the shade trees and best residence on a fief thatare expected to follow the fief”; article XXV-6 listed houses or parts of housesin addition to all movables acquired during marriage; article XXV-22 listedannuities (lijfrenten) XXV-24 listed income due from leases but not yet paid;XXV-27 included the income from repurchaseable rents (losrenten); XXV-28specified non-hypothecated (“onbesette”) rents, no matter if they had beenpurchased with impartibles that “held side”; XXV-30 included windmills onfiefs, excepting the parts that were not physically movable; windmills onsimple erve, however, were movable in their entirety; XXV-31 provided thatwatermills were movable just like houses and trees, even if on a fief but inthat case the “stoel metten legghere” [chair with mill-stone] went with the fief;subsequent articles XXV-32-38 provided detailed instructions about trees andfish, while XXV-39 declared all “personal debts arising from expenses”partible.

neither was contained by the terms “chattel” or “movable.” To besure, all goods traditional law had considered movable or chattelwere automatically labeled partible—furniture, cash, unsecureddebts, raw materials, inventories, accounts receivable, clothing,jewelry, arms, kitchenware, household provisions, and animals.43

And, we have seen, by the 1500s the category of movable chattelhad been radically expanded, leaving perpetual rents and landoutside Ghent as the only significant outlyers. Another feature ofcustom expanded the partible account still further. Any goodacquired after marriage, unless acquired by inheritance or giftpromised before marriage, was added to the community account.This could—and did—include land both inside and outside Ghentand perpetual rents, as well as all goods considered movablechattel, for the implied assumption was these assets had beenacquired with funds earned during marriage or obtained by sale ofother goods in the community account.

But there remained a potentially significant category of wealththat would not enter the community account. In the language ofGhent’s custom, these were impartibles. In contrast to partiblegoods that entered the community account and were under fullcontrol of the husband during marriage, impartibles were individu-ally owned during marriage, and they were the residual propertyof lineal heirs of the spouse who possessed them. During marriage,the husband could manage his wife’s impartible goods, but he

562 MARTHA HOWELL

44 See, for example, article 4 of SC. A turbe of 12 July 1531, in Meijers,OVE, Bijlage 2: 100-1, #39, went further, specifying that a husband could not“encumber, alienate or sell” “errgront, erfachtycheid often erfvelicke rente”without his wife’s permission.

45 Article XXV-8.46 Articles XXV-40 and XXV-55.47 Vonnis of 1352-3, pp. 529-40. Also see vonnis of 22 June 1353, in

Meijers, OVE, Bijlage 1: 4-7, #4; SC, article 6 and DC, articles XXI-2 and 11repeated the rules. Article XX-20 of the HC, however, flatly overruled theseproscriptions.

could not sell, encumber, or otherwise alienate these goods withouther explicit consent.44 At death, the impartibles of the deceasedpassed to lineal heirs, and the surviving spouse had only lifetimerights to half the income produced by the assets; his or her heirsdid not assume those rights at the survivor’s death.

Because all movables were by definition partible, all impartibleswere necessarily immovables but only certain immovables acquiredthis status, for, as we have seen, immovables acquired duringmarriage with common funds, as well as land within Ghent’sjurisdiction, were considered partible. This left land outside Ghent’sjurisdiction; as explained in article XXV-29 of the HC, it “heldside.”45 Other articles in that text included rents that had beensecured before marriage as well as land and secured rents acquiredby gift or inheritance during marriage.46 In sum, by 1563 at thelatest, only land outside Ghent and perpetual rents (includingredeemable rents) remained impartible and then if and only if theproperty had been acquired or pledged before marriage or if givenspecifically to one of the spouses by a third party (even duringmarriage). When overlaid on the old movable/immovable divide, thepartible/impartible binary provided Gentenaren a way to limit thefree circulation of wealth and direct it where they wanted it to go.

Customary marital property law was Gentenaren’s chief tool intheir larger social project because it, almost alone, governed allmarital property relations, succession, and inheritance in this city.Published law after published law proclaimed this principle, andcourt case after court case reflected its precepts. Thus Gentenarenwere denied the right to issue wills privileging a spouse more thancustom would have allowed, and they were forbidden to writemarriage contracts instituting terms in violation of custom. Only in1563 was the latter prohibition overturned.47 Ghent was, thus, a


48 While all the evidence suggests that Gentenaren did not regularly issuemarriage contracts, but instead allowed custom to govern marital propertyrelations and succession, some people not only chose to overwrite custom, theyalso got away with it, all the assertions of published law notwithstanding. Itis impossible to know how many of these instances there were, for the onlyrecords we have of such contracts are buried in the hundreds of manuscriptvolumes of Jaarregisters van de Keure housed in Ghent’s municipal archive, theregisters in which private agreements of sales, loans, debt settlements and thelike were recorded. Indices have been published for only seven years of themedieval centuries (1339-40, 1343-4, 1345-6, 1349-50, 1353-4, 1357-8, and1400-01), and these provide our only systematic guide to the frequency andnature of such contracts. To judge from these documents alone, however, themarriage contract was rarely used in medieval Ghent. Of the 1,427 entries inthe Jaarregisters indexed for the six years 1339-40, 1343-4, 1345-6, 1349-50,1353-4, and 1357-8, only ten marriage contracts are mentioned, two of whichthe aldermen later crossed out as inoperative. Among the 1,580 entries for thesingle year 1400-1401, there are only two. Thanks to David Nicholas’sresearch for his Domestic Life in a Medieval City (Lincoln, Neb.: Univ. ofNebraska Press, 1985) we know, in addition, of some 16 additional marriagecontracts issued between 1345 and 1390 and also registered in the Jaarregistersvan de Keure. Altogether then, we have 26 marriage contracts for a period ofabout 60 years. Fifteen of the 26 appear to violate terms of custom, but 6 ofthose elaborately detail the consents obtained from heirs whose interests wereat stake in the changes, leaving only 19 in 60 years that appear to haveviolated custom’s norms.

49 It is also possible that marriage contracts were registered elsewhere thanin the Jaarregisters and were simply not mentioned in the published inventory,but that seems unlikely given the care with which the archive has otherwisebeen catalogued. Some are referenced in the voluminous Weezenboec[en] whereinheritance arrangements were registered, for many of these entries concernthe settlement of orphans’ estates or the terms of wills, and in those texts itis possible to find occasional discussion of a prior marriage contract that setforth the terms of the inheritance. But most of those texts assume custom’srules. It is also possible that Gentenaren simply did not register suchcontracts, but that too seems unlikely given the solicitude they showed inregistering financial agreements of considerably less importance and given aswell the risks that a disgruntled heir or spouse would challenge a marriagecontract that violated published law and had not been publicly registered.

relative latecomer to the marriage contract, and its citizens resortedto such legal mechanism only in rare circumstances.48

In sum, all the presently available evidence depicts people whoalmost always married under the terms of custom and fought theirbattles in court over its terms.49 If they did not—and a fewevidently did not—they were careful to make a public record oftheir decision and often to specially register their heirs’ consent tothe new terms. This does not mean that custom perfectly satisfiedthe needs of all but a few Gentenaren. On the contrary. The entire

564 MARTHA HOWELL

50 For a structural analysis of these exogamous marriages and the socialtensions they produce, see Jack Goody, Production and Reproduction: AComparative Study of the Domestic Domain (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press,1976) and his Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (New York:Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983). The basic text for this approach is ClaudeLévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. J. H. Bell et al. (Boston:Beacon Press,1969).

legal record from Ghent—the editions of custom, the courtdisputes, and even the rare marriage contracts issued to overrideor supplement custom—speak eloquently about the social tensionsembedded in the property relations constructed by marriage in thisage, tensions which had their source in the conflict between theinterests of the nuclear family on the one hand (“le ménage”) andthose of the “line” on the other (“le lignage”). This was, however,but an expression, the exposed surface, of a deeper conflict in thecultural, social, and economic meaning of property. After all, themotor of the struggle between the “ménage” and the “lignage”could not simply have been “tension” between the conjugal unitand the wider kin group, although that is its structural precondi-tion, because such tension is endemic to all societies where womenmarry out of the line and carry patrimonial property with them.50

The evidence from Ghent allows us to go deeper. The powerthat energized this structural tension there (and I would ventureeverywhere in commercialized Europe during the age) was thechange in the nature of wealth and the proliferation of itsmeanings, in all senses of the word—economic, legal, social, andcultural—as movable wealth exploded in quantity and kind. Withthis explosion, the traditional axes by which property relations hadbeen organized—the distinction between patrimony and chattels,between family or kin interests on the one hand and individualinterests on the other—was disturbed, and these axes were thus theground on which this story of “lignage” vs. “ménage” was playedout.

Wealth as Capital; Capital as Patrimony

This legal record reveals that Ghent did not steadily progresstowards what is called a classic market economy, a world of easilyfungible property subjected to a logic of profit and price. Rather,


51 The literature treating this process is rich. For a general summary, with

Gentenaren deviated from that course by finding new ways tosequester wealth, in implicit refusal of such imperatives. In doingso, Gentenaren were enacting a sociocultural logic peculiar to theirage. To understand their behavior and its historical significance, wemust understand the assumptions about property that informed it.

For them, property, or what they typically called “goods”(goeden), was constitutive of the self. Goods had cultural and thussocial significance that did not just exceed their potential marketvalue, but frequently trumped it. These assumptions about prop-erty’s meaning were the fundaments of a venerable and deeplyrooted economic culture in which land had almost iconic status. Forcenturies, land had been not only the principal form of capital, itwas also, in the legal and cultural imagination, the only one. Landwas also the basis of the medieval social order. Peasants were notpeople who “farmed land” but a social class constituted by theirrights to work and inherit the land and to pass those rights toheirs. They did not “do” peasantry; they were peasants. Similarly,aristocrats claimed noble or high gentry status because they livedfrom what other people produced for them—from the land—notsimply because they were rich.

Ghent’s traditional custom, with its clear distinction betweenmovables and immovables, its easy elision of immovables andpatrimony and its implicit equation of both with land, was the legalexpression of this cultural logic. Thus, although Gentenarenmanipulated law so that they could easily buy and sell, alienate andencumber most of their property at will, they did not abandontheir culture’s insistence that property—concrete forms ofproperty—constituted an individual socially. They also eagerlyacquired and hoarded land outside Ghent, often even abandoningmore profitable opportunities in commerce in order to becomeland “barons.” While these decisions had a kind of economicrationality, land being a considerably less risky investment thanmany commercial ventures, the principal rewards of land-owning,at least for urbanites, were not economic but social. Land was thepremier vehicle of social promotion in this age. Thus, even asurbanites helped commodify land, they intensified its socioculturalvalue, for land could powerfully evoke the old equation betweenproperty and status.51 Rents were a close second as status-builders

566 MARTHA HOWELL

useful references, see Fernand Braudel’s magisterial The Wheels of Commerce,vol. 2 of Civilization and Captialism, 15th-18th Century (Berkeley and LosAngeles: Univ. of California Press, 1982), 249-51 and passim.

52 Schnapper, Les rentes, provides details about the history of these twocredit instruments in the Parisian region, and presents data showing theextent to which rental payments were made in kind (see in particular pp.80-3). The Jaarregisters van de Keure in Ghent provide scattered informationconfirming the same pattern. Although it seems that most rents in Ghent wereexpressed (if not paid) in monies of account (the pound groot, the pound parisis,or the gros tournois); they were of course paid in coin or kind. A few entriessuggest the mix: for example, RJR, #576, fol. 28/6 (“... tot het betalen van2 last torven [turf] op 4 schilden ...); 36, fol. 25v/5; RJR, #606, fol. 30v/5 (“...een erfrente van 4 lb. 15s. par. + 4 6/8 kapoenen ...”); RJR, #620 fol. 91v/2(“... tot het betalen van 7 zakken en 7 mud tiendekoren [Aalsterse maat]...”).

The so-called “Orphans’ Books” or Weezenboecen from Ghent provide moreconcrete evidence of Gentenaren’s commitment to land. These registerscontained records of estate settlements and similar agreements, including theaccounts registered on behalf of children who had lost a parent, for at thatmoment, as we have seen, the marital property fund was distributed amongthe survivor and heirs of the marriage. Thus, any so-called orphan standingto inherit any significant amount of property would have been registered here,and the properties to which he or she was heir would be listed, at least insummary form. For the four years from 1349/50 to 1352/53, 239 suchaccounts were registered, of which 79 listed only movables (excluding all realestate) among the assets to be distributed. About one-third held real estateGhent, although only about 5 per cent of the accounts listed significantholdings.

53 The history of clothing and consumption has in recent years been givenserious attention. Building on an older literature treating costume or dress onthe one hand and sumptuary legislation on the other, sociocultural historiansand cultural studies scholars have taken up the more subtle questionsregarding the relationship of clothing and consumption to the creation of theearly modern individual. Important literature (with useful guides to bibliogra-

and were considerably easier to acquire. Many rents were actuallypaid in kind, not coin, a practice that had practical advantages forbourgeois purchasers because it guaranteed them food supplies, butit also had cultural import, for it materially expressed the ideologi-cal link between rents and land.52

For people such as Gentenaren, luxury movables such as jewelryand clothing participated in the same logic. Cloth and clothingplayed a particularly complex role, however, because although theywere traditionally powerful markers of status and social identity,they were also the preeminent commodities of the age. Theirincreasing abundance, the proliferation of variety, and their easycirculation steadily eroded the old equation between the self andthe self’s vestments.53 Urbanites like those in Ghent played a major


phy) includes John Brewer and Roy Porter, Consumption and the World of Goods(New York: Routledge, 1993); Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions:A History of Sumptuary Law (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Anne Jonesand Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Also see Sarah-Grace Heller, “Anxiety, Hierarchy and Appearance inThirteenth-Century Sumptuary Laws and The Romance of the Rose,” FrenchHistorical Studies 27-2 (2004): 311-48, for a useful discussion of the royalFrench sumptuary legislation and its confused textual and bibliographichistory; for Italy see Diane Owen Hughes, “Regulating Women’s Fashion,” inChristiane Klapisch- Zuber ed., Silences of the Middle Ages, Vol. 2 of A historyof Women in the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard UniversityPress, 1992) and Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 2002); for Germany, see Neithard Bulst, “Zum Problemstädtischer und territorialer Kleider-, Aufwands-, und Luxusgesetzgebung inDeutschland (13.—Mitte 16. Jahrhundert),” in André Gouron and AlbertRigaudière, eds., Renaissance du pouvoir législatif et genèse de l’état (Montpellier:Socapress, 1988) and Kent Roberts Greenfield, “Sumptuary Law in Nürnberg:A Study in Paternal Government,” Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical-PoliticalSciences 36 (2) (1918): 1-139; for England, Claire Sponsler, “Narrating theSocial Order: Medieval Clothing Laws,” Clio 21 (3) (1992): 265-82.

I know of no full study of such legislation in the late medieval southernLow Countries, and of no source collections containing such legislation.

54 The relative importance of movables, including luxury movables, in theasset structure of urbanities is well understood, but many historians haveargued, following Sombart and others, that such goods had their mostcomfortable home in the early modern court, among nobles, and they havepointed out that sobriety of dress came to mark the bourgeoisie of certainareas (Amsterdam, for example). See Werner Sombart, Luxury and Capitalism,trans. Philip Siegelman (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Univ. of Michigan Press,1967);Norbert Elias’s The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York:Blackwell, 1982, c. 1978) locates such consumption in a larger process of“civilizing.”

Braudel returns to this issue (The Wheels of Commerce, 488-91). AlthoughBraudel generally assents to the argument that luxury goods were the specialobsession of the courtly aristocracy, he acknowledges that in some cities, incertain periods, urbanites were just as avid consumers of these products.Certainly this was the case in the rich cities of the late medieval southern LowCountries, surely influenced by the sumptuous court of the Duke of Burgundy

role in this disruption, for they were both producers and purveyorsof these goods. At the same time, urbanities were also prodigiouspurchasers of such luxuries and it is in that capacity that they mostclearly displayed their attachment to more traditional ideas ofproperty’s meaning. In that role, they were not so much consumersas obsessive acquirers, for they collected, hoarded, and displayedtheir possessions as though they were the material embodiments ofan imagined self.54

568 MARTHA HOWELL

that resided in these cities, and the pattern continued there after the DutchRevolt. And even the subdued garments of the Amsterdam patriciate wereextraordinarily costly, it should be remembered, for their black woolens andvelvets and their starched collars were unmistakable marks of luxury—and, notincidentally, the dress of the contemporaneous Hapsburg court. Braudel iscertainly correct, however, to point out that dress—sober or fancy—was acontested site in the cultural history of the early modern bourgeoisie, and thatthe relationship between class and dress was unstable, if nevertheless highlysignificant.

55 The rich sociocultural history of the gift in late medieval and earlymodern Europe is treated in Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-CenturyFrance (Madison, Wis.: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2000) and Valentin Groeber,Liquid Assests, Dangerous Gifts: Presents and Politics at the End of the Middle Ages,trans. Pamela E. Selwyn (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). Myown “Fixing Movables: Gifts by Testament in Late Medieval Douai,” Past andPresent 150 (1996): 3-45, explores gifting practices via testament in thesouthern Low Countries.

Much of the historical literature on gifts in this period considers themmore exclusively in terms of their political significance, particularly their rolein state building. See in this regard, W. Paravicini, “Introduction,” in W.Paravicini, ed., Invitations au marriage: pratique sociale, abus de pouvoir, intérêt del’État à la cour des ducs de Bourgogne 1399-1489 (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke,2001); Maurice Arnould, “L’origine historique des pots-de-vin,” Bulletin de laClasse des Lettres et des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 5th ser., 62 (1976): 216-67;Alain Guery, “Le roi dépensier: le don, la contrainte, et l’origine du systèmefinancier de la monarchie francaise d’Ancien Régime,” Annales. Economies,Sociétés, Civilizations 34 (1984): 1241-64; Marc Boone, “Dons et pots-de-vin,aspects de la sociabilité urbaine au bas Moyen Age,” Revue du Nord 70 (278)(1988): 471-87.

City people enacted another aspect of this sociocultural logic byexchanging their goods on non-market terms. Rather than buyingand trading these goods in response to price and profit, they oftenused them as gifts, thereby seeking to fix them in social place,clearly attach them to another person.55 The resistance to a marketlogic implicit in these actions was more than an earlier version ofthe hesitation we exhibit today when we collect family heirloomsand make gifts of them, when we keep unprofitable family farmsrather than sell them to shopping-center developers for easy gains,or when we participate in what anthropologists have called distinct“realms of value” where such goods as antiques or artworkscirculate, far outside the arena where interchangeable commoditiesare traded. But our passion for the uncommodifiable is not theirs.Rather than investing ourselves in particular possessions, we lust formany things, not for this or that precise thing except for briefmoments, in rarified settings, or in occasional instances of senti-


56 For a discussion of this social process and its implications for thedevelopment of capitalism, see Ralph E. Giesey, “Rules of Inheritance andStrategies of Mobility in Prerevolutionary France,” American Historical Review82 (2) (April 1977): 271-89.

57 Historians have referred to these practices as “the treason of thebourgeoisie,” thereby signaling urbanites’ abandonment of the commerce thathad given them birth. Henri Pirenne’s “Stages in the Social History ofCapitalism,” American Historical Review 19 (1914): 494-515, was an earlystatement of this position, a point of view elaborated by such scholars asFriedrich Lütge, Deutsche Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Berlin: Springer,1952). For the Low Countries in particular, see Hugo Soly, “The ‘Betrayal’ ofthe Sixteenth-Century Bourgeoisie: A Myth? Some Considerations of theBehaviour Pattern of the Merchants of Antwerp in the Sixteenth Century,”Acta Historiae Neerlandicae 8 (1975): 31-9; and Marc Boone, “La terre, leshommes et les villes. Quelques considérations autour du thème de l’urbani-sation des propriétaires terriens,” in Actes du 17e Colloque International, Spa16-19 mai 1994, “La ville et la transmission des valeurs culturelles bas moyen âgeet aux temps modernes,” Gemeentekrediet van België, historische reeks in-8 , nr.96 (Brussels: Crédit Communal de Belgique, 1996), 153-73.

mentality. For us, the sphere of the non-commodifiable good issmall indeed; today even babies, embryos, and body parts threatento escape that tiny realm. While Gentenaren surely did not regardthe easy fungibility of land, rents, family homes or even clothingwith the same horror many of us view the selling of kidneys minedfrom the living, they, like all Europeans of their day, behaved asthough goods could not be infinitely abstracted by money and thusrendered essentially identical.

It was in this sociocultural context that Gentenaren adjusted lawaround the movable/immovable divide. Although the legal evidencereviewed here reflects this larger context only indirectly, it directlyillustrates another aspect of this story. This is what other historianshave called the “future-oriented” attitudes displayed when eliteschose to buy assets such as land and rents rather than invest incommerce, industry, or agricultural improvements.56 The practicesare well known to social historians, for they helped created theearly modern “non-commercial” bourgeoisie—the elites of cities,courts and country manors in early modern Europe who lived fromrents and office rather than pursuing the entrepreneurial activitiesthat had made their predecessors rich. And, as scholars have alsopointed out, this class prospered because such assets were trans-ferred from generation to generation, thus solidifying—andrigidifying—a social hierarchy based on inheritance.57 In Ghent, thissocial process was managed via the impartible account where rents

570 MARTHA HOWELL

58 Case studies such as Michel Mollat’s Jacques Coeur ou l’esprit d’entreprise auXVe siècle (Paris: Aubier, 1988) or Robert Forster’s Merchants, Landlords,Magistrates: The Dupont Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore: JohnsHopkins Univ. Press, 1980) give particularly rich texture to this social history,and sociologically inspired research confirms the patterns. See, for aillustrative evidence, Robert S. Duplessis, Lille and the Dutch Revolt (New York:Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991); Barbara Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983); Sylvia Thrupp, The Merchant Class ofMedieval London (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1948); Albert Rigaudière,L’assiette de l’impôt à la fin du XIVe siècle. Le livre d’estimes des consuls deSaint-Flour—les années 1380-1385 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France,1977); P. Wolff, Commerce et marchands de Toulouse (vers 1350-vers 1450), (Paris:Plon, 1954); R. Fédou, Les hommes de loi lyonnais à la fin du Moyen Age (Paris:Les belles lettres, 1964). George Huppert, Les bourgeois gentilshommes; an essayon the definition of elites in Renaissance France (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,1977) surveys and summarizes the literature on France, with references to

and land outside Ghent were carefully sheltered. There, aselsewhere, the law’s focus on the source of the particular assetseligible for impartible status was key to the social process: if theseproperties had come to the marriage by gift or inheritance theyacquired patrimonial status; if purchased during marriage, they didnot. Eligible property thus acquired its impartible status only in thesecond generation (since most gifts were made from one generationto the next and all inheritances flowed in that way). Once “in thefamily,” however—once passed from father or mother tochild—such property could be repeatedly transferred from genera-tion to generation, endlessly guaranteeing class status. It could evenenhance class status, for the older the property, the more power-fully it established social rank. Any Gentenar seeking to preserve orcreate a stable social lineage was thus well advised, indeed com-pelled, to collect rents and rural properties and compelled to passthem as gifts or inheritances. In this way, Ghent’s custom bothinscribed the practices of an emergent rentier class and helped tocreate it.

Thus, Gentenaren were not capitalists manqués. While theyunderstood and accommodated commerce, they also stubbornlyrefused the social implications of unbridled commoditization. Theywere not alone, as many historians have noted. While these patternsof investment and inheritance have been most obsessively studiedin early modern France, they were not confined there. Propertiedurbanites in Germany, Italy, England, and in the Low Countries,did the same.58 Almost next door to Ghent, in Douai, the pattern


other countries. 59 Giesey, “Rules of Inheritance,” summarizes the arguments in this vein.

is especially clear, thanks to the rich trove of marriage contractsleft by its citizenry. So “uncommercial” did such behavior seem toFernand Braudel that he declined to label these people bourgeois,even “non-commercial” bourgeois; instead he wanted to call them“honorables hommes” or even “gentry.” As he pointed out, thesepeople were not distinguished by their entrepreneurial relationshipto capital, but by their way of life, and their way of life was basedon distinctive investment and inheritance practices, not oncommerce and industry.

Although these economic practices undoubtedly had a “stifling”effect on capitalistic development as some scholars have charged,because they immobilized assets that might have been moreproductively employed, it cannot be said that these choicesrepresented an irrational retreat into the past.59 Rather, they werethe solution to the problem of how to accommodate trade whileassuring social order. And by “social order” people meant socialprivilege and class continuity. Hence they sought, and found, a wayto let wealth circulate, but also to allow the most culturallysignificant goods to descend to lineal heirs. In this way, the marketcould flourish but hierarchy would be shored up, risks of socialderogation minimized, and the newcomers more easily kept out.

The evidence from Ghent not only illustrates this social history,it suggests that there was still more to this story. It links thesesocial changes to a redefinition of property itself, giving people likethe Gentenaren who stood at the center of this ideological upheavalan important role in the history of capitalism. The confusion aboutterminology that plagues the city’s legal sources, it is clear, was notjust about words, not even fundamentally about law. It is the recordof a sociocultural revolution essential to the future development ofEurope’s capitalist market society. By its end, the revolution hademptied the term “immovable” of legal meaning, broken thevenerable equation between land and patrimony, redefined propertyor what Gentenaren simply called “goods” as capital, and assignednew patrimonial status to a selected array of capital assets. A lot,it seems, was in a name.

1 Regulations concerning hawkers of fruit in the marketplace only appearbeginning in the seventeenth century. Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck (subse-quently AHL), ASA Interna Markt 9/1 and 9/2 deal with apple-sellers (1614)and the sale of garden produce in the market (1669), respectively. In July1465 a sea captain complained that his shipload of apples had been held upin Wisby, demonstrating that there was some longer-distance trade in this crop(Carl Wehrmann and Paul Hasse, eds., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (subsequentlyLUB) (vol. 10), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 10(Lübeck: Edmund Schmersahl Nachf., 1898), 10: 631.

CULTIVATION AND CONSUMPTION: MEDIEVALLÜBECK’S GARDENS

Charlotte Masemann

Garden production of food and other crops in medieval Lübecktook place on land located outside the city walls, in a broad beltaround the city. Produce grown there was presumably sold andconsumed within the city, although direct evidence on this point issomewhat lacking.1 Analysis of the evidence of this garden produc-tion reveals the types of crops grown in the gardens, some informa-tion on the size and value of the gardens, the location of thegardens and in some cases the identity of the owner or tenant. Italso reveals a high degree of involvement of citizens of the city ofLübeck in the life of these gardens and a corresponding closenessin the urban-rural relationship. Archaeological evidence for theconsumption of the produce grown outside the city underlines theimportance of the urban-rural relationship. Much of the evidencefor consumption of garden produce is derived from the ambitiousarchaeological program undertaken since the Second World War bythe city of Lübeck. Archaeological material provides good evidencefor consumption. Documentary evidence rarely identifies a plant tothe species level; written sources are also generally quiet about foodsources that are gathered rather than grown. Archaeological sourceslack information on production, such as where and on whose landthe plant was grown. A comparative approach to both kinds ofevidence provides the fullest possible picture. The case of Lübeck’surban gardens reveals a closeness in the urban-rural relationship.

573MEDIEVAL LÜBECK’S GARDENS

2 Erich Hoffmann, “Lübeck im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter: Die große ZeitLübecks,” in Antjekathrin Graßmann, ed., Lübeckische Geschichte (Lübeck:Schmidt Römhild, 1988), 306.

3 LUB, 10: 651.4 Margrit Christensen-Streckebach and Michael Scheftel, “Kleinhausbe-

bauung in Lübeck im 16. Jahrhundert. Zusammenhänge zwischen Eigentums-entwicklung und Baustruktur,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für lübeckische Geschichte undAltertumskunde 63 (1983): 168-169.

5 Rainer Andresen, Lübeck. Geschichte der Wohngänge (Lübeck: Verlag Lü-becker Rundschau, 1985), vol. 5.

6 A document from 1465 expressly forbids people from living in housesoutside the city walls. LUB, 10: 651.

7 Hoffmann, “Lübeck,” 302.

Lübeck, located on a peninsula where the rivers Wakenitz andTrave meet, just south of the Baltic coast in what is now Schleswig-Holstein, was founded in the second half of the twelfth century. In1300 the population of Lübeck was about 15,000 and by the begin-ning of the fifteenth century it numbered around 25,000.2 Therewere signs that the city was finding it difficult to contain all itsinhabitants within its walls. A document from 1465 expressly forbidspeople from living in houses outside the city walls.3 The pressureof population, combined with this regulation and others like it,meant that by the sixteenth century many of the large blocks ofland within the city were being subdivided. The small houses builtbetween and behind the larger houses belonging to the wealthiermembers of the city were rented out to those with fewer financialresources.4 Passages were often constructed through these largehouses in order to provide access to an alleyway, or Gang, withmany small houses built on either side. Many of these Gänge sur-vive into the present day.5 While the houses and their inhabitantshave been closely researched, the land that was not built up, bothwithin and just outside the city, has remained largely unexamined.

Although the city discouraged people from living right upagainst the city walls,6 its area and influence extended beyond thosewalls. The original area of city was the peninsula and the strip ofland called Horegenbeke in front of the Burgtor, the gate at thenorthern end of the peninsula. In the fourteenth century Lübecksecured its area, called the Landwehr, with a large ditch, which,combined with natural rivers and streams, provided a barrier toaccess to the Landwehr.7 Many little villages started out as propertyof the city in 1262, but most were alienated into private hands and

574 CHARLOTTE MASEMANN

8 Julius Hartwig, “Die Rechtsverhältnisse des ländlichen Grundbesitzes imGebiet der freien und Hansestadt Lübeck,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für lübeckischeGeschichte und Altertumskunde 9 (1) (1908): 209-212.

9 Hartwig, “Die Rechtsverhältnisse,” 278.10 Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (Vol. 1), Verein für Lü-

beckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 1 (Lübeck: Friedrich Aschenfeldt,1843); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 2.1), Verein fürLübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, vol. 2.1 (Lübeck: FriedrichAschenfeldt, 1858); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 2.2),Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 2.2 (Lübeck:Friedrich Aschenfeldt, 1858); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch(vol. 3), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 3 (Lübeck:Ferdinand Grautoff, 1871); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch(vol. 4), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 4 (Lübeck:Ferdinand Grautoff, 1873); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch(vol. 5), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 5 (Lübeck:Ferdinand Grautoff, 1877); Carl Wehrmann, ed. Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol.6), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 6 (Lübeck:Ferdinand Grautoff, 1881); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch(vol. 7), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 7 (Lübeck:Ferdinand Grautoff, 1885); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch(vol. 8), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 8 (Lübeck:Edmund Schmersahl, 1889); Carl Wehrmann, ed., Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch(vol. 9), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 9 (Lübeck:Edmund Schmersahl, 1893); Carl Wehrmann and Paul Hasse, eds., LübeckischesUrkundenbuch (vol. 10), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthums-kunde, 10 (Lübeck: Edmund Schmersahl Nachf., 1898); Paul Hasse, ed.,Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch (vol. 11), Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte undAlterthumskunde, 11 (Lübeck: Lübcke & Nöhring, 1905); Friedrich Techen,Wort- und Sachregister zu Band 1-11, Lübeckisches Urkundenbuch, Verein fürLübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde (Lübeck: Verlag des Vereins fürLübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde, 1932).

11 Many of the documents preserved in the LUB are derived from the Ober-stadtbücher and the Niederstadtbücher. The Oberstadtbuch was a record of trans-actions of movements of property, mortgages and rents within and, to someextent, outside the city of Lübeck. H. Bickelmann, “Oberstadtbücher,” KanzleiFindbuch (Lübeck: Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck, n.d.), 9. By far the mostcommon source of these documents is the Niederstadtbuch, a record of all sortsof transactions between citizens of Lübeck. While it began as a record of debt

became holdings (Güter).8 Many of these holdings were owned bycitizens of Lübeck who looked on the purchase of land as a secureinvestment; the land was cultivated by the people who lived in thevillages. The influence of Lübeck was therefore extensive in thearea of the Landwehr and beyond.9

The picture of Lübeck’s gardens is partially derived from recordsof land transactions preserved in a collection of documents, theLübeckische Urkundenbücher (LUB),10 dating from 1270 to 1470.11 The


17 AHL HS 289, Ar.

usually indicate land use, as well as the identity of the personpaying the tithes, the owner, if different from the payer, and oftenthe previous owner or payer. The location of the garden in relationto the gardens of others and to local landmarks also appears. Thetithe records usually provide the amount at which the land wastithed. Because of details about ownership, crop and location, it isin many cases possible to establish when the same garden has beentithed in two or more of the documents. Both tithe and land trans-action records indicate that fruit, cabbages and hops were grown ingardens around Lübeck on land owned, rented or mortgaged by itscitizens.

The almost 200 years’ worth of records contained in the Wettegarden books provide some useful information on productiongardens in Lübeck. They confirm the impression given in otherwritten records that there were many gardens just outside the citywalls. Whereas the records in the Niederstadtbücher and the Oberstadt-bücher deal mainly with transactions between individuals, and thetithe records are concerned with payments to ecclesiastical authori-ties, the Wette garden books tell us of the gardens on which rentwas paid to the city. Most of these gardens were located outside thecity walls to the west and south of the city. Payments on approxi-mately 500 pieces of land are recorded in the first book, while thesecond and third contain records of about 250 and about 300,respectively. These gardens must have been a significant source ofrevenue for the city. Analysis of the records concerning the Solte-wisch, an area of land outside the Holsten wall, on the west side ofthe city, reveals that while there was a great range in amount ofrent paid, from four schillinge to 96 schillinge, the amount paid foran individual area remained almost constant over almost 200 years.When both the amount of rent and the area was recorded, fourschillinge per piece was the usual amount. Most payers were men,with some women appearing as well. Most people’s occupationswere not given.

The Wette garden books provide a good general picture of aring of gardens around the city, but none of the entries containsdetailed information about crops. The title page of the secondbook, however, states that it covers hop gardens and gardens (hop-pen höve und garden).17 A leaf inserted into the second garden book


18 AHL HS 289, loose leaf between fols. 7v and 8r.19 LUB, 3: 771. Undated.20 The words used in the document are kerszen and saluyen. Lübben trans-

lates kerszen as Kresse, or nasturtium (August Lübben, completed by ChristophWalther, Mittelniederdeutsches Handwörterbuch (Norden and Leipzig: Diedr.Soltau’s Verlag, 1888), 2: 54). Nasturtium officinale, or Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum, is the hairless creeping perennial known as water cress, which growsin shallow fresh water and mud (David McClintock and R. S. R. Fitter, ThePocket Guide to Wildflowers (London: Reprint Society, 1955), 20-1). Lübben doesnot provide a definition for saluyen, nor do others, such as C. Schumann,“Beiträge zur lübeckischen Volkskunde. Pflanzennamen,” Mitteilungen desVereins für Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 5.4 (1891): 59-63; 78-80;90-4. I am assuming that it refers to Salbei, or sage.

21 The document also lists a vegetable called krickelmoren, which would seemto mean something like crooked carrots, but I have not been able to identifythis vegetable more closely. It could be the wild parsnip, which appears in thearchaeological record of Lübeck. Körber-Grohne notes that the names of boththese vegetables were often used interchangeably in the Middle Ages, for

backs up this assertion, since it is labeled “Van den Hoppenlande”and concerns the four pieces of hop land and a hof owned byTileke Warendorp, the proceeds of which she wishes to go to abrotherhood after her death.18 This emphasis on hops tallies wellwith the information gleaned from other documentary sources.

While the documents that provide the bulk of data for thisanalysis indicate that hops dominated garden production in Lübeck,the regulations of the gardeners’ guild, known as the Willkür derGärtner, amplify the list of crops.19 These regulations cover manyaspects of the life of the guild and its members, including admis-sion of new members, sale of produce, cultivation of produce, landmanagement, fencing, wages, and transportation, among others.The Willkür provides a very important link between evidence forproduction (tithe records, and records of land transactions involvinggardens) and consumption (archaeological data). The document isa prescriptive one, and it gives rules of behavior for the gardenersof Lübeck, although the definition of a gardener never appears.Some of its regulations refer specifically to certain produce. Forexample, it did not allow people to sell produce on the area attheir gardens, other than cress and sage.20 Possibly the authoritieswanted to avoid a situation in which large-scale food marketing wastaking place outside of the central marketplace, where it could bemore closely regulated. However, it also stated that turnips, carrots,krickelmoren,21 red cabbage and green vegetables should be sold bi


example in the Physica of Hildegard of Bingen. Udelgard Körber-Grohne,Nutzpflanzen in Deutschland. Kulturgeschichte und Biologie (Stuttgart: TheissVerlag, 1994), 225.

22 LUB, 3: 771.

sik, which one would presume to mean from one’s house. Thissuggests that the gardeners lived within the city walls, and werepermitted to sell two types of vegetables at their gardens, a greaternumber from their houses, and also could sell from a stall in themarket. It is unclear whether one individual would be engaged inall three activities. Gardeners were not permitted to sell seed if itwould be of use to the guild, and were not allowed to plant onionseed at all. No reason for this last stipulation appears. These regu-lations also make it clear that some gardeners were involved insome processing of their produce. One section of the regulationsdeals with the smoking of garlic. Garlic was to be smoked for ninedays, and could not be brought out of the house without beinginspected by one of the masters of the guild.

The document is interesting not only in that it tells us howvarious vegetables were treated, but also in that it adds to the listof plants we know were cultivated in and around Lübeck. Thevegetables listed here may be the ones grown in the so-calledcabbage gardens. These are onions (cypollen), garlic (knuflok), turnips(roven), carrots (moren), red cabbage (roden kol), and green vegeta-bles (groene warmoos).22

This document is important in another sense, because it providesa link between sources on production, such as the ones beingexamined in this chapter, and the archaeological evidence forconsumption. It is one of the very few early documents that provesthat people in Lübeck sold produce to other people in Lübeck. Itis one of the very few early documents that proves that people inLübeck sold produce to other people in Lübeck. This documentforbade anyone to have more than one stall in the market duringChristmas and at Easter, and thus shows us that gardeners cultivat-ing produce outside the city brought it into the city for the pur-poses of commerce.

All of the records examined here demonstrate that there wereplots of land called gardens by the people who kept records. Thegardens that appear in these records are located just outside thewalls of the city and in the villages of the surrounding Landwehr.


Citizens of Lübeck, men and women, members of the city elite andartisans, were engaged in paying tithes on them, paying rents fromthem to the city, and engaging in various other transactions involv-ing them. They ranged in size from small to large; an absolutedetermination of size is not possible. The primary crop of thesegardens was hops; these records also mention apples, cabbages andberries. Tithe records show that items grown in gardens changedover time, and that some gardens went out of production andbecame bleaching grounds. The Wette garden books show that theaverage income paid to the city from gardens outside the city wallsremained fairly constant throughout the approximately 200-yearperiod covered by these records.

Questions regularly asked by agrarian historians will generally gounanswered by the available documents concerning Lübeck gardens.Little quantitative material is available, and no records that allowus to calculate the productivity of these gardens or to assess if croprotation took place. Hops and fruit trees obviously do not lendthemselves well to such farming systems. The tithe records showthat land use did change over time; the reasons behind thesechanges are not clear, but could have been made based on analysisof prices. Figures for hop and cabbage prices during the fifteenthcentury are unfortunately not available. The documents also do notspecify cultivation techniques; one must assume again that hardwork with a shovel and hoe was the primary method of cultivation.While records concerning gardens in Lübeck do not address wellthe use of technology, crop rotations or yields of these parcels ofland, they do reveal that plots of largely unknown size, often calledgardens, existed outside the city walls and were cultivated for bothindustrial and food crops. They appear to have been a normal partof the life of the city and its inhabitants.

While the Wette garden books, the tithe records, and recordsinvolving land transactions provide much useful information, theydeal almost exclusively with issues of production. For informationon consumption, archaeological evidence is an excellent source.

Much of the evidence for consumption of garden produce inLübeck is derived from archaeological evidence. Documentaryevidence rarely identifies a plant to the species level; written sour-ces are also generally quiet about food sources that are gatheredrather than grown. Archaeological sources lack information onproduction, such as where and on whose land the plant was grown.


23 Karl-Heinz Knörzer, “Aussagemöglichkeiten von paläoethnobotanischenLatrinenuntersuchungen,” in W. van Zeist and W. A. Casparie, eds., Plants andAncient Man. Studies in Palaeoethnobotany (Rotterdam, Boston: A. A. Balkema,1984), 331-8.

24 Knörzer, “Aussagemöglichkeiten,” 331.25 P. R. Tomlinson, “Vegetative Plant Remains from Waterlogged Deposits

Identified at York,” in Jane M. Renfrew, ed., New Light on Early Farming. Re-cent Developments in Palaeoethnobotany (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,1991), 109.

26 Knörzer, “Aussagemöglichkeiten,” 333-6.

Thus a comparative approach to both kinds of evidence providesthe fullest possible picture.

In the case of Lübeck, most of the botanical finds come fromcesspits and wells. Cesspits in particular provide evidence for con-sumption, since they are collecting points for both human andkitchen waste.23 Although preservation condition in cesspits areusually good, the plant material found there can be damaged bymastication, processing as foodstuffs (e.g., milling of grain) and theaction of the human digestive system. Fruit stones are usually verywell-preserved in cesspits, and can give insight into changes in thespecies consumed over centuries, as well as giving an indication ofwhen new species were introduced into the diet. These new speciescan either be imported fruits, or fruit newly going into local culti-vation.24

An awareness of what is likely to survive in the damp conditionsof a filled-in well or cesspit is necessary to a meaningful analysis ofthese plant remains. Pollen grains, seed, wood, and fruit-stones arethe most resilient to rot, and are therefore most likely to survive.Root, stem and leaf fragments are much less likely to survive,although some interesting work has been done on identification ofwaterlogged specimens.25 Grains, legumes, and leaf and root vegeta-bles are rarely well-preserved.26 The material recovered in Lübeckis almost entirely made up of seeds and fruit-stones. It would beincorrect to assume, however, that these seeds give an accuraterepresentation of all the plants grown in these areas. Although noplant remains of the genus Allium, to which belong onions, leeksand garlic, were found, the Willkür states that these were grown inLübeck. Thus comparison of lists of plants found in digs and listsof plants mentioned in contemporary documents could prove veryilluminating.


27 See Tables 1 and 2 for more details.

Another consideration to keep in mind when examining theresults of palaeobotanical analysis is the use of the plant, and theirrelative number of seeds. The seeds of plants that are used forthose seeds (hazel or poppy, for example) will survive in greaternumbers than the seeds of plants used for their leaves or roots, likecabbage or carrots. Similarly, seeds of fruits that have their seedsembedded in them and are therefore part of the package will alsomake their way into cesspits at a greater rate; examples of suchfruits are strawberries (Fragaria vesca), cherries (Prunus avium), anddamsons (Prunus insititia). Another consideration is the number ofseeds produced by each fruit. A single cherry produces one stone,while a single fig can produce thousands of seeds.

It is clear, therefore, that direct correlations between botanicalmacro-remains and the type and number of plants consumed in thearea cannot be established through excavation. One must alwayskeep in mind the plant remains that may have been excreted orthrown into the cesspit, but which rotted or sprouted; the plantswhich were used before they set seed; and the plants which pro-duce many seeds per fruit. Despite these caveats, results of palaeo-botanical work can be very informative, particularly when they areused in conjunction with documentary sources.

Excavations in Lübeck have taken place in a range of siteslocated in areas of differing socio-economic status within the cities.The data derived from these excavations therefore permit commen-tary on the types of plants found, as well as analysis of change overtime. The data also enable comparison of plant consumption bythree socio-economic groups: artisan, ecclesiastical, and merchant/seafarer.

A detailed look at species found in Lübeck reveals the diversityof plants grown and consumed in, and presumably, outside the city.A closer look at the distribution of these species may shed morelight on the effects of social class on food consumption in the city.The following sites are of particular importance, either because theycontained numerous species or an unusual combination of species:St. Johanniskloster, Hundestrasse, and Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden.27

These three sites contained the highest number of species. Each ofthe three also represents a different socio-economic category: eccle-siastical, artisanal and mercantile, respectively. Throughout the Mid-


28 Rolf Hammel, “Räumliche Entwicklung und Berufstopographie Lübecksbis zum Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts,” in Graßmann, Lübeckische Geschichte,64-70.

29 Manfred Gläser, “Archäologische und baugeschichtliche Untersuchungenim St. Johanniskloster zu Lübeck,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kultur-geschichte 16 (1989): 11.

30 Gläser, “Archäologische,” 10.31 Manfred Gläser, “Die Ausgrabungen auf dem Gelände des ehemaligen

St. Johannisklosters in Lübeck,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kultur-geschichte 17 (1988): 118.

32 Gläser, “Archäologische,” 17.

dle Ages, Lübeck’s inhabitants seem to have lived mainly with theirown kind. Merchants and seafarers lived on the western half of thepeninsula, nearer the harbor. The bishop and chapter occupied thesouthern end of the peninsula, while the artisans resided in theeastern area, with some members living in the southeastern areatowards the Trave.28

St. Johanniskloster

St. Johanniskloster was located on the eastern side of the peninsulaand occupied about two hectares. The monastery was founded inthe years after 1173; it began as a Benedictine house, but theBenedictine monks were replaced by Cistercians in 1256 as a result,apparently, of poor discipline.29 The monastery was dissolved in1574. The botanically-analyzed samples date from the beginning ofthe thirteenth century, during the so-called second settlementperiod (Siedlungsperiode II). The excavation took place between 1979and 1983, as a result of a planned extension of a nearby building.30

The results indicate that use of the site intensified during the firstthird of the thirteenth century.31 A new well was built during thisperiod. It has been dendrochronologically dated to around 1211.The monks also built a water channel, carrying water from theWakenitz for workshops, washing and garden; the channel was twometers deep and roofed over. Gläser notes that a layer of humusy-peaty soil, dating to this period, was found towards the southernend of the area. Because the soil had the smell and texture ofgarden soil and contained a number of holes from stakes, he postu-lated that a garden was cultivated there.32 The botanical evidenceseems to support this conclusion.


33 Almuth Alsleben, “Archäobotanische Untersuchungen in der HansestadtLübeck. Landschaftsentwicklung im städtischen Umfeld und Nahrungswirtschaftwährend des Mittelalters bis in die frühe Neuzeit,” Offa 48 (1991): 357.

34 See, for example, Sylvia Landsberg’s discussion of the monastery gardenin The Medieval Garden (London: British Museum Press, n.d.), 34-44.

35 Alsleben, “Archäobotanische,” 360.

Eighteen species of edible, possibly cultivated plants appear inthe data from St. Johanniskloster. Hops are the only beer-brewingplant. Hemp and flax are both found, as are the vegetables Brassicaoleracea/napus, B. nigra/rapa, carrot (Daucus carota), wild parsnip(Pastinaca sativa) and celery (Apium graveolens). Parsley (Petroselinumcrispum) and hazelnut (Corylus avellana) also appear. Fruits arewell-represented, with a total of seven species. Most, if not all, ofthese fruits are those that could be either cultivated or gathered,such as raspberry (Rubus idaeus), elderberry (Sambucus nigra) andwood strawberry (Fragaria vesca), to choose those with the highestseed count. This range of finds, dating from the thirteenth century,gives the impression of a diet that was based on local crops withnot much variation of vegetable matter. No exotic fruits or spicesappear. Alsleben finds it surprising that herbs such as fennel, dill,coriander and caraway do not appear in the botanical finds fromSt. Johanniskloster.33 This does not tally with the stereotypicalimage of the monastery garden as described in some literature.34

It is also in contrast with the gold and silver cutlery found on thesame site dating from the same period.35 No documentary recordof the cultivation of this garden in the monastery has been pre-served; such a record would provide a valuable source with whichto contrast the archaeological plant remains from this site. Theclergy in the thirteenth century do not appear to have eaten moreluxuriously than their artisan brethren residing in Hundestrasse inthe same period; indeed that evidence shows a wider range ofspecies.

Hundestrasse

Finds from Hundestrasse, in the artisans’ quarter, are rich andoccur over a relatively long span. They have been dated to fivedifferent periods: thirteenth century; before or around 1300, four-teenth century; fourteenth to fifteenth century; and before 1615.Twenty-one species, derived from six samples, appear in the botani-


cal record from Hundestrasse in the thirteenth century. The num-ber of individual items found is also high, numbering 1067. Thematerial from this period, particularly from samples 781 and 832,both rich in organic matter, was quite well-preserved. As in theprevious site, hops, flax and two types of Brassica appear. The oilseeds gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa) and poppy (Papaver somni-ferum) are added. There are no vegetables, but the legumes pea(Pisum sativum) and broad bean (Vicia faba) are preserved. Caraway(Carum carvi) and either fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) or dill (Anethumgraveolens) were found. Hazelnuts (Corylus avellana) also appear. Therange of fruit is wider than at St. Johanniskloster, with some of thesame possibly wild species appearing, such as raspberry, strawberryand blueberry. Additions are blackberry, pear, apple, and sweetcherry. While it is likely that blackberries were gathered from thewild, or grew at the edges of the garden, the other three specieswere likely cultivated on trees on site. Grape seeds, perhaps fromimported raisins, perhaps grown locally, appear as well, along withfigs, an unequivocally imported fruit.

A slightly later sample, deriving from a fecal layer, was dated tobefore or around 1300. Fourteen species appeared here, with atotal of 322 items. One hop fragment was found. Species not repre-sented in the material from the earlier period are the sloe (Prunusspinosa), the European plum (P. domestica) and dill (Anethum grave-olens). European plum is not found from any other period inHundestrasse. One find of hops appears, and none of any vegeta-ble. The only oilseed crop is the poppy. Nine of the species arefruit; as in the other periods, hazelnut appears as well.

Thirty-two species were identified from the fourteenth century,from a total of 23 samples, most of which were derived from onecesspit at Hundestrasse 9. Many of the finds are similar to those ofthe previous two periods. However, legumes are represented in thefourteenth century only by a lone lentil. Parsley and celery appear,as do coriander and positively identified dill. New among fruits areelderberry (Sambucus nigra), lingonberry (Vaccinium cf. vitis-idaea),sour cherry (P. cerasus), damson plum (P. insititia) and mulberry(Morus nigra). Numbers among other fruit finds are generallyhigher than for the previous periods. For example, 431 fig seedswere found, as opposed to 76 for the thirteenth century and 200circa 1300, while the numbers for strawberry are 910, whereas pre-viously these had been 523 and 28. These larger numbers may be


36 Doris Mührenberg, “Archäologische und baugeschichtliche Unter-suchungen im Handwerkerviertel zu Lübeck Befunde Hundestrasse 9-17. Miteinem botanischen Beitrag zu den spätmittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichenPflanzenresten von Henk van Haaster,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie undKulturgeschichte 16 (1989): 271.

a result of the large number of samples taken from a cesspit thatprovided excellent preservation conditions.

The smallest number of species derives from one sample, froma humus layer, dated to the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries. Theynumber three, and one item from each species was identified. Onelinseed, one poppyseed, and one stone from a damson plum ap-pear here.

Our last evidence comes from one sample taken from Hunde-strasse 17; it is dated to before 1615 and contained fifteen species.No species were found that had not been unearthed in earliersamples. No hops appear here. The only vegetable to appear is thebrassica; representing herbs are fennel and coriander. Fruits aremuch better-represented, with raspberry, blackberry, sweet and sourcherry, apple, pear, blueberry and fig. It is quite possible that thisnarrowing of species says more about preservation conditions thanit does about changes in cultivation or consumption in this area;hard fruit seeds are more likely to survive worse conditions thanare thinner-walled herb and vegetable seeds. Van Haaster statesthat the sample came from a cultural layer from the fifth period ofbuilding on the site, but does not provide more details about con-ditions favorable or unfavorable to preservation.36 At any rate, un-like the material from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, itdoes not appear to have derived from fecal material or a cesspit.Another reason for the smaller number of species may be that thematerial dated to before 1615 comes from one sample, whereas thematerial with the larger number of species from the thirteenth andfourteenth centuries is derived from six and 23 samples respec-tively.

It is not surprising that Hundestrasse provided more speciesthan St. Johanniskloster, since many more samples, over a longertime span, make up the evidence here. The difference in the num-ber of species between the thirteenth-century samples from each isthree, and shows that plant material consumed and cultivated inthese two gardens was similar. The one surprise consists of the factthat fig seeds were found on the artisan site and not the ecclesiasti-


37 Hans-Georg Stephan, “Archäologische Ausgrabungen im Handwerker-viertel der Hansestadt Lübeck (Hundestrasse 9-17)—ein Vorbericht,” LübeckerSchriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 1 (1978): 78.

38 Van Haaster in Mührenberg, “Archäologische,” 278.39 Doris Mührenberg, “Der Markt zu Lübeck. Ergebnisse archäologischer

Untersuchungen,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 23(1993): 98-101.

40 Stephan, “Archäologische,” 78.41 Stephan, “Archäologische,” 78.

cal, which runs contrary to the assumption that the clergy had ahigher standard of living than artisans. Indeed, Hundestrasse 9 wasa foundation in which poor people lived, from 1358 to the eigh-teenth century; Wilhelm von Warendorp left the house in his willto the poor in 1358.37 The richness of the finds seems to attest,however, to a high standard of living.38 These finds may have beendeposited earlier in the century, or may show that a diet rich infruit and vegetables was accessible to all socio- economic strata. Anexamination of the documentary evidence, conducted below, willshow that those who owned these properties were not necessarilyfrom an impecunious social order.

The general excavations undertaken at Hundestrasse 9-17 canbe helpful in assessing who lived and worked on these lots. DorisMührenberg drew the following conclusions from the excavations.39

First, she notes that the land was increasingly divided and built upover time. The first building went up in the first half of the thir-teenth century, and a fence divided the land into two parcels. Atthe end of the thirteenth century a house with three wings wasbuilt on the lots later numbered 13-17. In the west wing the ar-chaeologists found a pit containing many bones and half-finishedcombs. She therefore concludes that a boneworker who specializedin combs lived and worked here. Timo Wobes, a butcher, lived in15/17 in 1293.40 By the end of the fourteenth century, a housemade of stone had been built on each piece of land, facing ontothe street. Barrels, of the type used by leather workers, date to thisperiod, and Mührenberg suggests that a shoemaker worked here.Stephan states that Nicholas Cuper, a rosarymaker, lived in Hunde-strasse 13 in 1401.41 In the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries wingsreaching back into the lot were built out from the houses. The lotswere divided from one another with brick walls. Evidence fromnumber 15 suggests the activities of a smith. Material from number


42 Rolf Hammel, “Hauseigentum im spätmittelalterlichen Lübeck. Methodenzur sozial- und wirtschaftsgeschichtlichen Auswertung der Lübecker Oberstadt-buchregesten,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 10 (1987):85-300.

43 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 209.44 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 212.45 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 211. These streets were: Schüsselbuden, Fisch-

straße, Holstenstraße, Braunstraße, An der Untertrave 96-114/115. 46 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 212, 213.47 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 213.48 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 276.49 Hammel, Abbildung, 77, 389.

17 from the seventeenth century suggests a textile worker lived andworked here.

Hammel’s study of the Oberstadtbuchregesten reveals much aboutthe ownership and residence of houses in Lübeck from 1284 from1600, the period in which they were kept.42 His examination ofHundestrasse adds to our understanding of its social composition.Hundestrasse was divided into an eastern and a western part by thecross street Rosengarten-Tünkenhagen.43 During the first half of thefourteenth century, the eastern half was characterized by a concen-tration of leatherworkers, while the western half contained ownersof more mixed professions, such as two bakers, eight butchers, twochandlers, a rosary-maker and a carpenter.44 Ownership by councilfamilies was lower here than on any other street he studied.45 Theintellectual occupations were represented by two magistri, both ofwhom lived in the western half of the street. In the second half ofthe century, the dominance of the leatherworkers in the easternhalf continued, but their numbers were reduced to 11 from 21.46

In the western half, the number of houses owned by artisans wentfrom 25 to 15, while the number owned by council families wentfrom 10 to 15. The artisans who remained as owners on the streetbelonged to the occupations of apothecary, butcher, rosary-maker,goldsmith, carpenter, and smith, among others.47 Hammel hasdeveloped and analyzed a list of owners of Hundestrasse 9-17.48 Heclassifies all owners during the second half of the fourteenth cen-tury as belonging to what he terms social level III, except for theowner of number 11, who belonged to social level I.49 According toHammel, social level I consisted of merchants and other people ofstatus, while social level III was made up of the artisanal middleclass, especially those from guilds of about 1350 masters. It also


50 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 130.51 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 218.

included some trades with no guild, such as porters.50 This is con-sistent with his characterization of the street as mainly made up ofmembers of social level three, with some representation from coun-cil families.51

The archaeological evidence presented by Mührenberg and vanHaaster and the documentary evidence by Hammel are quite con-sistent with one another. Each confirms the other’s assessment ofwhen the lots began to be built up. The butcher, who owned thehouse in the first half of the fourteenth century, may have madecombs from the bones left over from his trade, or may have leasedpremises and supplied bones to a specialist. While the guesses ofoccupation made by Mührenberg do not correspond well to thoseof the owners in Hammel’s work, we must keep in mind that thosewho owned the houses did not necessarily live in them. Mühren-berg’s guesses are, moreover, guesses; her supposition that aleather- worker plied his trade at this end of the street does notseem to be borne out by Hammel’s findings.

Both Mührenberg and Hammel suggest that those who residedin Hundestrasse were artisans and mainly belonged to the artisanalmiddle class. If that supposition is true, the botanical evidenceallows us to suggest that the residents of Hundestrasse 9-17 enjoyeda varied diet of fruit, herbs and vegetables, most of which wereindigenous and some of which appear to have been collected fromsurrounding wild spaces. They also enjoyed the fig, an importedfruit. The inexactitude of both documentary and archaeologicalevidence does not allow us to conclude who, and of what occupa-tion, consumed what.

Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden

We now cross from the eastern side of the city to the western, theso-called merchant-seafarer section. Schüsselbuden is the street onthe western side of the market, facing it, while Alfstrasse runseast-west from the market down to the Trave. Alfstrasse/Schüssel-buden provides rich botanical evidence from the thirteenth, fif-teenth and sixteenth centuries. The earliest samples are derived


52 Alsleben, “Archäobotanische,” 333.53 The damson plum (P. insititia) originated in the East as offspring of the

sloe (Prunus spinosa) and the cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera). The Europeanplum developed in the same way, and together they form a varied group ofplums. Helmut Kroll, “Mittelalterlich-frühneuzeitliche Steinobst aus Lübeck,”Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 3 (1980): 167. This varia-tion has led Behre to develop a classification system for the damson plum,based on shape, surface features, measurement and indices, and using hisfinds from Haithabu and Alt Lübeck as samples. Karl-Ernst Behre, “Formen-kreise von Prunus domestica L. von der Wikingerzeit bis in die frühe Neuzeitnach Fruchtsteinen aus Haithabu und Alt-Schleswig,” Berichte der deutschenbotanischen Gesellschaft 91 (1978): 161-79. His original system contained fourclassifications, from A to D. Kroll, noticing a great deal of variation in theC-type among the examples he was finding at Lübeck, extended the systemto six types, A to F. This classification system enables palaeobotanists todistinguish minutely between types. Kroll, “Mittelalterlich- frühneuzeitliche,”168.

from a rubbish pit, while the later samples are taken from twowells. Alsleben, who performed the botanical analysis, is not specificabout their exact location in relation to the modern house num-bers.52

Twenty-eight species are attested from the thirteenth century,from a total of four samples. Hops, sweet gale and cannabis allappear. Vegetables are represented by the brassicas and whitemustard, legumes by broad bean and another lone lentil. The oilseeds are gold of pleasure and linseed. The one herb is fennel.The almost ubiquitous hazel comes as no surprise. Fifteen fruitspecies appear here, including the wild, and assumed gathered,raspberry, blackberry, strawberry, elder, and sloe. Among the culti-vated fruits are apple, pear, grape, sweet cherry and damson plum,both a generic variety and type C.53 One fig seed makes an appear-ance.

Two species that have not been seen before in Hundestrasse orSt. Johanniskloster were found here. The first is hawthorn (Cra-taegus oxyacanthus), found on few other sites. It appears for allperiods for this site, arguing that a hawthorn tree grew on the pro-perty. The second is walnut (Juglans regia), found only at Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden, the tower of the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital, andEngelsgrube. The largest numbers are found at the probable siteof a bakery in Engelsgrube.

Four samples taken from a well and dating to the fifteenthcentury offer the largest number of species preserved at any one


54 A document from 26 July 1467 reports the arrest of a spice merchantfrom Nymwegen. His wife was petitioning the council in order to have hiswares released to her. LUB, 11: 266. Unfortunately, none of the spices werenamed.

55 Kroll, “Mittelalterlich-frühneuzeitliche,” 168-9.

site, namely 46. Many of the species dating from the thirteenthcentury also appear here. New to this site are poppy, carrot, wildparsnip (these last two seen in St. Johanniskloster in the thirteenthcentury and not at all in Hundestrasse), parsley, dill, caraway, andcoriander. The brassicas appear again, but there are no legumes.Once more, hazel appears. The site contains a very wide range offruit species (25), of both wild and cultivated types. Many of theseare common to other sites, such as blackberry, raspberry, straw-berry, sloe, blueberry, and sweet cherry. European dewberry wehave not seen since St. Johanniskloster. Pear species, apple speciesand the damson plum variants B, C, E and F were found here aswell. Fig, with the highest seed count of any site (497), and grapeare represented, as are the more unusual walnut and mulberry. Onthis site we have the first appearance of what may be quince (Cydo-nia sp.).

The last site to be examined offers somewhat less diversity ofspecies, but presents some hitherto unseen in Lübeck. This site alsooffers large preserved numbers of individual species. Hops, canna-bis, the brassicas, poppy, caraway, coriander and fennel come as nosurprise. Some of the spices preserved on this site are, however,unique to it. Grains of paradise (Afromomum melegueta), black pepper(Piper nigrum) and cardamom (Elleteria cardamomum) are all tropicalspices that must have been imported.54 Dyer’s camomile (Anthemistinctoria) is seen here for the first time since St. Johanniskloster.

Many of the fruit species preserved here, which number 27, echothose preserved elsewhere. In some cases the number of preservedfinds is unusually high. Some examples are sloe (411), sweet cherry(2079), and grape (1342). These numbers are many times higherthan the next-highest find from other sites. All variants of damsonplum appear here; the largest finds are of the variants B, C and F,which Kroll points out are probably local, since they are the vari-ants least suited to drying.55 A second quince find appears on thissite. Two species of fruit preserved nowhere else appear here. Theyare the peach (Prunus persica) and the medlar (Mespilus germanica),the former likely imported, the latter a rarely consumed local fruit.


56 The Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden samples were taken from a well and werehigh in organic content; those from Hundestrasse were less numerous (oneper period) and derived from soil less favourable to preservation.

In general, the botanical evidence from Alfstrasse/Schüsselbudencontains a good diversity of preserved species. Much of this diver-sity is exhibited in the fruit finds. Both a wider diversity of indige-nous fruits, and some non-indigenous introductions contribute tothis picture. The picture presented by the finds from the thirteenthcentury does not differ markedly from that we derive from thefinds for the same century at Hundestrasse and St. Johanniskloster.Certainly some species that were found in Alfstrasse/Schüsselbudendid not appear in the other two sites for the same century, such aslentil, fennel, sloe, hawthorn, pear and walnut. However, the situa-tion is reversed in the case of carrot (found in St. Johanniskloster)and pea (Hundestrasse). The appearance of the walnut, which wasperhaps imported, may suggest access to more expensive foodstuffs;figs, also imported, were consumed at both Hundestrasse andAlfstrasse/Schüsselbuden. More fruit species are preserved at thelatter site than at the other two; all but two are species that onemay assume grew in Lübeck. These differences do not seem illus-trative of a significantly higher standard of living, as measured infood consumption, in Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden in the thirteenthcentury.

Evidence from the later two centuries at Alfstrasse/Schüsselbudenoffers much more support for such a claim. Both these sets ofsamples offer a greater diversity of species than the roughly -com-parable, in terms of date, samples from Hundestrasse. Part of thisdisparity may be explained by the superior preservation conditionsoffered for this period in Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden.56 However, whenwe examine the samples taken from similar preservation conditionsin Hundestrasse, we note that a lower number of species was pre-served. This may be attributable to the earlier time period (four-teenth century) and also to the different socio-economic conditions.

Even more telling than this greater diversity of species is thepresence of those hitherto unattested in Lübeck. These species areall exotic and quite probably imported. The first, quince, appearsin the fifteenth century; by the sixteenth, the number has risen tofive, and six if we count the quince finds also attested for thiscentury. This evidence suggests that the range of foods available in


57 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 197.58 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 198.59 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 197.60 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” 198.61 Hammel, “Hauseigentum,” diagram 73.

Lübeck was changing as exotic foods made their way north (thisdoes not explain why figs were accessible in the artisanal quarteras early as the thirteenth century) and that the wealthier membersof society had access to them first. The large number of finds forthis century may also suggest commercial activity in that very sitedealing in foodstuffs, since the ordinary consumption of a house-hold might not produce quite so many fruit stones. The positionof the lot, on the corner of Alfstrasse, which ran straight down tothe harbor, makes this hypothesis perfectly possible.

Unfortunately, Hammel’s study of house ownership is not asuseful for this site as it was for Hundestrasse. His study took in thehouses along Schüsselbuden, but did not extend down Alfstrasse,and he focused on the fourteenth century, a period not covered bythe archaeological evidence presented here. Some of his generalremarks on the socio-economic nature of Schüsselbuden may beilluminating, however.

Schüsselbuden faced onto the market. Permanent market stallswere built in front of the houses and separated from them by alarge passage. In the early fourteenth century, there was a prepon-derance of owners from council families. By the second half of thatcentury, the balance had shifted, with more than half of the ownersbeing artisans. No one profession was dominant.57 These artisanswere concentrated at the south end of the street, south of number16.58 The house at the corner of Alfstrasse was number 6. Hammelis doubtful whether the owners necessarily pursued their occupa-tions from these buildings; he is able to say definitively that thegoldsmith in number 12 did not, since goldsmiths were restrictedto the 12 stalls underneath the arcade of the Rathaus.59 Hammelalso notes that merchants were concentrated in the northern endof the street, and that the two corner lots at Mengstrasse and Alf-strasse were conveniently oriented both to the Marienkirche (thechurch of the merchants) and to the harbor.60 His map for 1350 to1399 shows a tinsmith at Schüsselbuden 8, and also a tanner. Boththese professions are derived from the last names of the owner.61


62 Marianne Dumitrache and Monika Remann, “Besiedlungsgeschichte imLübecker ‘Kaufleuteviertel’,” Lübecker Schriften zur Archäologie und Kulturge-schichte 17 (1988): 112.

No occupation names appear in the map for 1284 to 1349.Hammel’s work certainly does not preclude the presence of arelatively wealthy merchant on this corner lot, but it does not con-firm it either. Dumitrache and Remann refer to imported materialfound on the site that suggests the presence of a wealthy merchant;this includes glazed ceramics in Dutch, Danish and English styles.Unfortunately, because they do not discuss this evidence in detail,it remains suggestive.62

This closer look at the evidence from sites in three differentsocio-economic areas of the city is revealing. It shows that a widerange of fruits and vegetables were consumed on all three sites.Little disparity exists in the evidence from the thirteenth centuryon all three sites, suggesting that the standard of living at that timewas fairly consistent across social levels. The St. Johanniskloster sitedoes not present later evidence. Some of the evidence from St.Johanniskloster and Hundestrasse was slightly surprising. Archaeolo-gists found very little herb evidence in an area thought to be amonastery garden; one would expect herbs to be plentiful in thisarea, in light of documentary evidence from other sites. This anom-aly may be due to preservation conditions or the fact that theleaves of many herbs dried and used, rather than their seeds. Themonastery gardeners therefore would have had an incentive to seethat their leafy herbs did not go to seed.

Evidence from Hundestrasse also presents something of a puzzle.Material found from the thirteenth century to before 1615 showsa consistently wide range of plant material, including fig seeds thatmust have been imported. This appears on a site that was knownto be the home of a poorhouse. This evidence suggests that thepoor may have been eating rather better than one assumes. Docu-mentary evidence shows that the residents of Hundestrasse wereprimarily middle-class artisans; the archaeological evidence suggeststhat this class of person ate a varied diet of locally available pro-duce.

Material from Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden dating from the thir-teenth century does not differ markedly from that found in theother two sites. The real difference appears in the evidence from


63 LUB, 3: 771.

the sixteenth century; this is the only site in Lübeck containingsignificant numbers of exotic spices such as pepper and coriander.This evidence suggests a high standard of living for the residents,as well as the possibility that the site was used by an importer ofspices.

The botanical evidence derived from the archaeological digs inLübeck records a wide variety of plants. The useful plants pre-served there range from fruits, both wild and cultivated, nuts,vegetables, herbs, spices, and those used for flavoring beer, forfibre, and for oil. Some of these plants, such as hops and raspber-ries, are found throughout the city, in ecclesiastical, merchant, andartisanal sites. Others are found only in a very few places duringa very short time period, such as the peppercorns found only inthe merchants’ area. In many cases, the evidence provided by plantremains is the only proof that exists that certain types of plantswere grown or consumed within the city. This is one of the greatboons offered to the historian by the archaeological evidence; it canthrow open a window and show a much wider range than appearsin the documentary evidence.

The case of Lübeck also reveals how this archaeological evidencecan confirm what is known from the documents. Several of theplants found in the archaeological record, such as apples, hops,and cabbages, also appear in the documents. This evidence suggeststhat produce grown outside the city was consumed within it, andthat rural growers supplied the urban market. This was an impor-tant aspect of the urban-rural relationship. In most cases, archaeol-ogy makes the identification more specific, since medieval docu-ments name plants according to the custom of the day, and notaccording to the Linnean system of genus and species used by thepalaeobotanist. In one case, however, in Lübeck, it worked theother way. Allium pollen could be identified, but its species couldnot. Both onions and garlic were named in a document, thusadding to the picture provided by the pollen analysis.63 The evi-dence from Lübeck shows not only what people of different eco-nomic and social status were consuming, but also how well docu-mentary and archaeological evidence combine to provide a morecomplete picture than either can individually.


64 Fritze has made similar observations (Konrad Fritze, Bürger und Bauernzur Hansezeit. Studien zu den Stadt-Land-Beziehungen an der südwestlichen Ost-seeküste vom 13. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Weimar: Verlag Hermann BöhlausNachfolger, 1976), 85, 87).

65 Fritze, Bürger, 68.66 Franz Irsigler, “Die Gestaltung der Kulturlandschaft am Niederrhein

unter dem Einfluß städtischer Wirtschaft,” in Hermann Kellenbenz, ed.,Wirtschaftsentwicklung und Umweltbeeinflussung (14.-20. Jahrhundert) (Wiesbaden:Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982), 181.

67 “The broad belt of gardens that formed around the medieval cities of theRhine was cultivated from the city outwards”(author’s translation) (Irsigler,“Die Gestaltung,” 186).

68 Wilhelm Stieda, “Studien zur Gewerbegeschichte Lübecks. 3. Hopfenbau,”Mitteilungen des Vereins für Lübeckische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 3 (1-2)(1887): 6-7

The picture that emerges of the role of Lübeck’s gardens in thelife of the city appears consistent with other research on the ur-ban-rural relationship in the Hanse and beyond. Many of Lübeck’swealthier citizens owned land around the city, and some indeedowned whole villages.64 Citizens of Lübeck were also highly involvedin gardens outside the city. Ownership or renting of land outsidethe city was of course an economic link, but it also had importanteffects on territorial politics. Many cities, Lübeck included, encour-aged this sort of economic relationship so as to tighten the city’shold on the area around it.65

Franz Irsigler has argued convincingly that cultivators in thearea around Cologne in the Middle Ages made choices based ondemands from the urban markets. Irsigler notes that increasingcultivation of cash crops such as woad and hops formed part of thephenomenon of response to demand from urban markets aroundCologne.66 He also indicates that the cultivation of gardens outsidethe city was strongly linked to the city itself: “Der breite Gürtel vonGartenland, der sich um die mittelaterlichen Städte des Rhein-landes ausbildete, wurde von der Stadt aus bewirtschaftet.”67

The crop that illustrates this point best in Lübeck is the hop.Hops appear in significant numbers in both documentary andarchaeological evidence. As we have seen, a significant proportionof the gardens around the city grew hops, presumably becausethere was a market for them within the city. Hops grown aroundLübeck were sold within the city, and were either used for brewingthere or for export.68 Hops were unequivocally a cash crop; thepossibility is slight that they were consumed only by their growers.


69 Joan Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture: A History from the Black Death to thePresent Day (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 17.Irsigler notes that 1,000 gardeners could occupy themselves on land cultivatedby 100 farmers (Irsigler, “Die Gestaltung,” 194).

70 F. K. Riemann, Ackerbau und Viehhaltung in vorindustriellen Deutschland(Kitzingen-Main: Holzner, 1953), 29.

71 B. H. Slicher van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D.500-1850, trans. Olive Ordish (London: Edward Arnold, 1966), 15-6; EdithEnnen, “Wechselwirkungen mittelalterlicher Agrarwirtschaft und Stadtwirtschaft,aufgezeigt am Beispiel Kölns,” in Cultus et Cognitio. Festschrift A. Gieysztor (War-saw: Paxstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976), 140-1; Adriaan Verhulst,“Bronnen en problemen betr. de Vlaamse landbouw in de late middeleeuwen,”Ceres en Clio, Zeven Variaties op het Thema Landbouwgeschiedenis (Wageningen:Veenman, 1964), 205-12.

Historians of agriculture consider horticulture as a more inten-sive form of cultivation.69 Cultivators of gardens usually manuredthem more thoroughly and cultivated them by hand rather thanwith a plough. This was especially true of hop gardens, since theperennial plantings made ploughing impossible and hops are veryheavy feeders. Seen in this light, the presence of many gardens justoutside the walls of Lübeck can be interpreted as part of an islandof intensification that spread out beyond the city, a model firstsuggested by F. K. Riemann. Riemann argued that in thickly popu-lated areas and those dominated by large towns and cities, agricul-ture is carried on more intensively as a result of the influence ofthose urban agglomerations.70 This idea has influenced the work ofmany agrarian historians and continues to have relevance.71 It isunclear how far this island extended; the ratio of land used forintensive cultivation, or gardens, to the land used for field crops isalso unknown. The gardens of Lübeck seem therefore to fit into apattern seen in other medieval cities in which they were an impor-tant part of the city-country relationship. Many of their ownerscame from the city, they supplied produce for consumers within thecity from a range of socio-economic levels, and they formed a ringof intensive cultivation around the city.

INDEX

Aachen, 441Aalst, 325Abbeville, 199-200Abbo, rector of the Tarentais, 259‘Abd al-‘Azíéz Abué Faéris, Sultan of

Tunis ( .Haf .sid dynasty), 435-6Abel, Wilhelm, 379Abué ‘Abd Allaéh Mu .hammad I,

Sultan of Tlemcen, 435-6Abué ‘Abd Allaéh Mu .hammad b. Abíé

Ya .hyaé , 435Abú Sa‘íd ’Uthmán III, Sultan of

Morocco (Marínid dynasty), 435Abulafia, David, 416-7accounts and accounting, 436, 475,

479-480, 486, 502, 554, 558,560-1, 569; bookkeeping, 112,477; books and ledgers, 139;418, 466, 481; England, 154,164, 176, 211, 213, 217, 219-20, 329, 469-70; Flanders, 310,314, 322, 330; Portugal, 105,112-3, 212, 222, 225; Provence,267

accountability, 212, 220, 225Achilles, Walter, 379administration, Catalonia, 120,

141; Egypt, 401, 403-4; Eng-land, 160, 183, 212, 215, 220,243, 245; financial, 211, 232;organization and methods, 90,113, 120; Portugal, 99-117,223-6, 230-1; Provence, 258,263

Adrar, 423Adrar des Iforas, 394, 413Afonso, Duarte, 110Afonso V, King of Portugal, 96,

114, 220-2

Africa, access to, 93, 94, 97, 99-100, 117, al-Bilaéd al-Suédaén, 389;commodities, 417; Europeantrade with, 102, 105, 115, 117;gold, 98, 102, 115, 387-90,393, 413; slaves, 99, 103-4,107, 108

Africa, East, gold, 396;Africa, North, 101, 417; captain-

cies, 221; commerce, 418;copper, 419; specie markets,396; Sicilian wheat, 298

Africa, sub-Saharan, 415Africa, West, 94-6, 99, 100-1, 105,

106, 108, 110, 117; malagueta,417

Agli, Bernabò degli (firm), 431-2Agordo, 447Agricola, 439agriculture, 250, 302, 597; goods,

539; historians of, 597; im-provements, 569; labor, 266;production, 353, 376; producti-vity, 297, 375; products, 305;technologies of, 350; Tuscan,292;

Agrigento, 299, 301, 307Ahaggar, 394, 413A .hmad b. Abíé Sanuéna, 435Aix (en Provence), 263, 267Alberti, Alberto degli, 427Alberti, Diamante and Altobianco

degli (firm), 419Alberti, L. A., 276Alchian, A. A., 271Alcudia, 421Alexandria, 388, 390, 396, 399;

coinage, 402-3, 404; speciemarket, 409

610 INDEX

Alfons IV, King of Aragon, 123Alfonso V, King of Aragon, 301,

306Algeria, 415Allenbach, 441Allmand, Christopher, 188Allon, Magaluf ben, 431-2, 436Almeida, Francisco de, 104Alps, 265, 387Alsleben, Almuth, 590America, cities, 172Amsterdam, 363, 380; grain prices,

360-1ancien régime, 120Andrea, Domenico d’, 464Andrea, Giovanni d’, 41-3, 46, 53-

57Anjou, wine, 498, 501, 519, 524,

531-2Anjou, counts of, 258Annaba (Bône), 434, 435, 436annuity, 85; census, 64, 83; censal,

122, 126, 128, 133, 139; liftrent,558-9; Portugal, 220; rente via-gère, 558-9; rents, 319

Ano Bom Island, 110Antwerp, 351, 380, 485, 552;

copper, 455; grain prices, 354-61; markets, 361, 478; Pinxten-markt, 478; textiles, 470

Aquinas, Thomas (Saint), 50, 51Arabian Sea, 391Arabs, 434-5Aragon, 122, 136, 145, 306;

Crown of, 302, 416arbitrage, 70, 475Area, Bernat de, 140Arezzo, 280Arguim, 95, 98, 100, 103-8Aristotle, 41-2, 51, 56; Ethics, 41;

Politics, 41Arles, 261, 263

Arnhem, 360Arnold, Wilhelm, 64Arquet, Abraham, 431, 432, 436Arras, 315, 322, 324, 329; Con-

gress of, 198; Treaty of, 483Arrow-Debreu model, 271arsenal, 193-4, 199artillery, 193, 195-201, 203-4, 238Artois, 199, 313, 326-7, 330, 332-

4, 336-7, 339, 341, 343-4, 346,347; cities, 320; merchants,327; money of, 313

Arundell (family), 252Asia, 101; specie distribution, 389Asia Minor, 387, 396Atlas Mountains, 415Austria, 447, 448autonomy (sociological category),

66-7, 80Aups, 264Auvergne, wine, 498, 519, 524Avennes, 200

Baiano, 273Bailey, Mark, 308Bailleul, 325, 337, 339, 341, 343-

4, 346-7Bakewell, 181Balearic Islands, 411, 415-7, 424,

426-7, 434; copper trade, 416,419, 424, 426, 429, 438, 441;merchants, 412, 419; protec-tionism, 418; records, 426; re-exports, 416; staples, 416

Ballard, Adolphus, 168Baltic Sea, 166, 573; grain, 373;

wood, 550Bambeke, 324banking and bankers, 467, 485;

Barcelona, 132, 134; Borromei,466-8, 475-7, 480, 482, 484-8;Borromei Bank Research Pro-ject, 460, 465; centers, 475;companies, 460; houses, 328,

611INDEX

467; Italian, 481; merchant-bankers, 470-2, 475

Banská Belá, 451Banská Bystrica (Neusohl,

Besztercebánya), 392, 451-5Banská Štiavnica, 451Banué ’Amr b. Zoghba, 435Baratier, Edouard, 263-4, 267“Barberia” (Barbary, see Maghrib),

428Barcelona, 120, 122-4, 127, 130,

132, 134, 262, 436, 475, 476;Borromei, 467, 472, 475-6,480, 481-3, 485, 486-8; Datinibranch, 418; Italians, 475;trade, 416

Barcelona, Count of, 262Barchi, Cesare de, 108Bardi (family), 467Barrera, Pere, 431Bartolo, Bastiano di, 428, 432Basel, 465Bassa, Pere, 431-2Bavaria, 447Bavinchove, 324Beaufort, Henry, cardinal, 197Beauvais, 500, 519, 524Beaugency, 191Beaumanoir, Philippe de, 541Beccario, Battista, 424Bedfordshire, 153Belgium, 311Bello, Duarte, 110-1Bellviure, Francesc, 432Benedictine Order, 583Benevent, Peyre de, 261Bengal, Bay of, 391Benin (Kingdom of), 111Benedetti, Ser Marco, 433Bere Ferrers, 387Bergues, 324-5, 337, 339, 341,

343-4, 346-7

Berkeley, 216Berwick, 154, 158, 181Biervliet, 199bill of exchange, 436; 471-9, 482,

484bi-metallic, equilibrium, 387, 390-

1; exchange, 389; parity, 389;ratio, 387, 389, 396, 398, 400-7, 409-10; standard, 389, 391;uniformity, 391

Bindotti, Giovanni, 466Birgu, 302al-Bíéríé, 402Biscaro, Girolamo, 486 488Black Death, 53, 119, 124, 127,

135-6, 138, 153, 269, 281-2,290, 375

Black, Henry, 146Blanchard, Ian, 412-3, 415-6Bleiberg, 445Bloch, Marc, 257-8Blockmans, Wilhelm, 126Bodrugan (family), 252Boescheppe, 322, 324Bohemia, 387; miners and mining,

446, 449; ores, 442Bologna, 47, 54, 464Bon, Bernardo, 424, 426, 428Bonaccorso, Nofri di, 426bondage, 257-8, 265, 269; per-

sonal, 262; to land, 266-7, 269;to lord, 269; “to this land,”257-258

Bonet, Jaume, 431Bordeaux, 238, 246, 248-9Borromei (family), 460, 463-4,

470-1, 475, 478, 484; agents,468; Alessandro Borromei andLazzaro di Giovanni & Co.,464; Antwerp, 485; banks, 460,467-8, 475, 477, 485, 486-7;Barcelona, 472, 480-1; Barce-lona bank, 467, 483, 485, 487,

612 INDEX

488; “Borromei Bank ResearchProject”, 460, 465; Borromeo-Arese family archive, 465;Bruges partnerships/companies,464-6, 471, 472, 475-83, 485-8;Felipe da Fagnano & Co., 487;Filippo Borromei & Co., 466,479, 485, 488; Florence part-nerships, 464; Galeazzo diBorromeo Borromei & Co. ofLondon, 464, 466; Geneva,472; ledgers, 465, 467, 469-72,484, 488; London, 471, 480,485; London partnerships/companies, 464-9, 471, 475,477, 478-9, 481-3, 485-8; Milanpartnerships, 465, 485, 488;profits and losses, 474, 481-4,487; textiles, 468-9; Prevosto eAlessandro Borromei & Co.,487; Venice partnerships/com-panies, 464-5, 483, 485; Venice,471-3, 480, 482; wool, 467,468-9, 477

Borromei, Alessandro di Antonio,462, 465, 485

Borromei, Alessandro di Filippo,464-5

Borromei, Alessandro di Piero,463, 465, 487

Borromei, Antonio, 485Borromei, Antonio di Borromeo,

462, 464-5, 480-1, 483Borromei, Antonio di Francesco,

464-5Borromei, Antonio di Lodovico,

463-4Borromei, Bartolomeo di Frances-

co, 461, 463Borromei, Benedetto di Lodovico,

463-4Borromei, Borromeo di Antonio,

462, 465Borromei, Borromeo di Filippo,

461Borromei, Carlo di Antonio, 462

Borromei, Filippo di Lazzaro, 460Borromei, Filippo I di Vitaliano I,

462, 466, 488 Borromei, Francesco, 461 Borromei, Francesco di Bartolo-

meo, 463 Borromei, Gabriello di Lodovico,

464-5Borromei, Galeazzo di Borromeo,

464-5Borromei, Galeazzo di Giovanni II,

462Borromei, Guiliano di Piero, 464-5 Borromei, Giovanni di Borromeo,

462, 464 Borromei, Giovanni di Filippo,

461, 462Borromei, Giovanni Andrea (Pre-

vosto) di Vitaliano I, 462, 486-7 Borromei, Lazzaro di Giovanni II,

463, 465, 480-1, 485 Borromei, Lodovico, 461 Borromei, Lodovico di Bartolo-

meo, 463 Borromei, Margherita di Filippo,

462Borromei, Piero, 461Borromei, Piero di Bartolomeo,

463-4Borromei, Piero di Gabriello, 463Borromei, Tomasso di Matteo (?),

464Borromei, Venturino di Vitaliano,

462Borromei, Vitaliano I, Count, 461-

2, 465-6, 485-8Bosporus, 135Boston, 246, 329Boto, Dr Rui, 224Bourbourg, 325, 337, 339, 341,

343-4, 346-7Bourges, cathedral, 504

613INDEX

Brabant, 206, 349, 351; alliancewith England, 189-90; markets,350; towns, 325; wool, 468

Brahminism, 76brass (“yellow copper”), 99, 103,

420-1, 427, 439, 494, 509, 527Braudel, Fernand, 571Brecht, Bertold, 41Bridbury, Anthony, 138, 233Bridgenorth, 152, 182Brien, Lord Guy de, Admiral of

the West, 251Brignoles, 261, 263Bristol, 154, 159, 169, 180-1, 183,

246; port of, 218; revenues,218;

Britain, 254Britnell, Richard, 375Brittany, 239, 253Brixlegg, 449, 457bronze, 194, 199-200, 439, 495,

510-1Broussole, Jean, 123Brucker, Gene, 144Bruges, 188, 200, 310, 313, 320,

325-6, 329, 331, 334, 337, 339,343, 344, 347, 371, 380, 427,466, 472; banking, 467; Borro-mei, 464-8, 471-2, 474-83, 485-8; castellany, 331, 336; Cata-lans, 476; constitution of, 324;copper, 419, 441, 447; credit,419; exchange rates, 473-4;fairs, 330, 332-3; Franc of, 316,321, 325, 331; grain prices,356, 359-61; Hanse, 441; im-ports, 470; Italians, 476; mer-chants, 327, 332, 334, 484; mo-ney market, 470; rebellion, 208,483; trade, 331, 334; troops,203, 204, 206

Brussels, 351, 380; grain prices,356, 359-61

Buckingham, estates, 218

Buckingham, Duke of, 216Buda (Tuat oasis, Sahara), 421,

423-5Buda (Hungary), 450bullion (see also precious metals),

383, 470-2, 482-4; “GreatBullion Famine,” 383; ordinan-ces, 483

bullionism, 176Burford, 468Burgundy, 188, 197, 259; alliance

with England, 191-2, 196-8,483; alliance with France, 191,198, 209, 483; army, 193, 194,202-4, 209; artillery, 187, 193-201; fleet, 203-4; hostilities withEngland, 208, 483; HundredYears War, 190; Joan of Arc,191; leaders, 194-5; sieges, 191,196-8, 205

Burgundy, Dukes of, 375Burgos, 327Burwash, Dorothy, 248Byzantium (Empire), 43Cabral, Diogo Fernandes, 110Cadzand Island, 208Cairo, coinage, 402; gold-silver ra-

tio, 398Calais, 191, 197-8, 203, 208, 315;

siege of, 198-206, 208-9, 239,483; Staple of, 468, 477, 482

Calatayud, 137calculability, rational, 74Calderini, Giovanni, 55Cambay, 391Cambrai, 326, 337, 339, 341, 343-

4, 346-7Campanaro, Battista, 434Canary Islands, 98Canche River, 330Cannes, 263Cantor, 108

614 INDEX

Cape Verde Islands, 96-9, 106,110

Cape Bojador, 93, 97Capetian dynasty, 261, 263capital, 155, 268, 279, 292, 564,

571; administrative, 245; assets,571; Borromei, 466-7, 485,487-8; commitment, 283; con-centration, 334; concentrationof in central place, 311; fixed,278; intensive, 311; investment,121, 235, 275-7; land, 565; los-ses, 280; maintenance, 281;market, 275, 320, 326, 331,334, 336 political, 114; social,114; value, 277; working, 279,283

capitals, 120-1, 356, 363, 370capitalism, 60, 68, 71, 73-7, 79,

83-5, 90 111, 544, 571; “capi-talismo monárquico português”(Portuguese state capitalism),90, 111

capitalist, 62-3, 65, 68, 71, 570-1;capitalistic development, 571;economy, 117

Capitana (galley), 427caravan, trade, 387, 394, 411;

trails (Sahara), 394, 396, 413,414, 421, 423-4; robbery, 434-6

Cardiff, 150, 179Carinthia, 447Carneiro, António, 110-1,Carocci, Cristofano di Bartolo,

427-31Carpathian Mountains (western),

451Carpatho-Balkan area (metallo-

genic), 451Cassel, 325, 337, 339, 341, 343-4,

346, 347Castagnolo, Paolo di Antonio da,

466, 486, 488Castellane, 264-5

Castile, 124, 128, 136, 253; mer-chants, 333; wars with Portugal,220, 428;

Catalan dynasty, 262-3Catalonia, count-kings of, 261Catalonia, 119, 122-38, 141-2; car-

tography, 424; censal, 126, 128,130-5, 139, 141-2; Corts, 129-32, 139; fogatge, 131, 138-9; im-posicions, 122-24, 126, 128, 130,132, 134-5, 138-9; imports,416; maritime trade, 415; mer-chants, 305, 424; tallia, 123,130-2, 134, 139; violari, 130-3,135

Catania, 299-300Cattano, Cristofano, 468Celle, 444CŠ echoslav, Jan, 446centinaio (unit of weight), 428central place, 310-2, 319, 322,

326-8, 334, 363, 368, 373;function, 310, 326; theory, 311,321; Ypres, 312, 316, 319, 322,334

cessant gain (lucrum cessans) (inte-rest title), 57, 83

Ceuta, defence of, 221Champagne, fairs, 310, 313-4,

328-33Champion, Pierre, 196Charles VII, King of France (pre-

viously the Dauphin), 192-3,203, 209

Charles, Duke of Bourbon, 205charters, 85; royal or government,

96, 99, 146, 149, 151, 165,168-71, 179, 183, 224, 231,235, 244, 322, 545; exemp-tions, 166, 168-9; foreign na-tion, 333

China, gold, 391; merchants, 391Chartier, Jean, 201Chartres, cathedral, 504-6

615INDEX

Chemnitz, 445Chepstow, 154Chester, 181, 246; Earl of, 536-7Chioggia, 144-5Chittagong, 391Christaller, Walter, 311, 363-5Chopa (vessel), 430Christianity, 60, 72, 77-80, 82;

medieval, 44, 60, 79Christians, Papal authority, 93, 97;

Majorca, 431; merchants, 412;“Old Christians”, 425-6, 433;relations with non-Christians,92, 94

Church, Catholic 49, 59, 68-9,72-3, 74, 77-9, 81, 94, 260,465, 555; early, 43; eastern, 43

CŠ iereazš Mountains, 452Ciompi Revolt, 143Cinque Ports, 235Ciompi Revolt, 143Circassian [Mamluk] (dynasty,

Egypt), 387Cistercian Order, 583cities, 369, 378, 506, 538, 542,

582, 596-7; American, 172;Artois, 320; Catalan, 120, 122-4, 129, 133-6, 141; civitas, 121;classes in, 119; debt, 119;demesnal, 308; elites, 569;European, 119, 349-50, 363;Flemish, 126, 310, 324, 326,334, 552; food, 350, 362-3;German, 64; Italian, 68, 298;Maltese, 308; Mediterranean,142, medieval, 597; medium-sized, 144; Picardy, 320; Por-tuguese, 227, royal, 129; Sici-lian, 299-301, 304

Clarence, Duke of, 216Clausthal-Zellerfeld, 444cloth, 102, 103, 147, 162, 165,

223, 469-70, 481, 494, 496-502,509, 513-5, 524, 547, 566;

broadcloth, 469; demand for,432; European, 418; English,483, 499, 524; export of, 250,329, 418, 469, 477; Flemish,476; industry, 207; luxury, 477;market, 147; production of,315, 322, 470; sales of, 329,468-9; supply of, 305; types of,322; Ypres, 310, 322, 329

clothing, 98, 496, 499-500, 515,524, 539, 546, 561, 566, 569

Cockermouth, 173coins, 48, 50-2, 313, 379, 396,

400-4, 408, 471, 496, 512-3,539, 566; circulation, 402-3;debasement of, 401-2; English,314; exchange, 379, 402;export of, 403; foreign, 313;gold, 402, 430; silver, 313, 401,484; supply of, 213, 383;transfer of, 470

coinage, 401, 483; administrationof, 403; copper, 403; Flemish,313; gold, 401; re-coinage, 484;silver, 401; value of, 484

Cokerulle, rebellion, 321-2Colchester, 154, 246Cologne, 441, 596Collo, 435, 436Comino, 301commerce, 62, 85, 207, 349, 434,

571; medieval, 147, 174, 178,491; England, 176, 349;fifteenth-century, 349; Flanders,207; Ghent, 559, 565, 569-70;late medieval, 373; Levant, 399,402; Low Countries, 349;Lübeck, 579; North Africa, 415,418; North Sea, 350; regula-tion, 374; Sicily, 306; trans-Saharan, 434; viability, 176;urban, 491, 493- 501, 503-30;Western Mediterranean, 415

commercial, activity/presence, 151,160, 163, 166, 172, 297, 308,389, 593; associations, 64;

616 INDEX

blockade, 207; capitalism, 90;cargo, 237; “catchment areas,”447; centers, 169, 538; cities,477; correspondence, 481;credit, 310, 333; customs, 65;dealings, 538; development,176; disputes, 483; economy,166, 176, 325; estate, 438; ex-peditions, 93; exploitation, 298;freightage, 237, 249; goods,545; hazards, 503; industry,545; infractions, 315; interests,245; inventories, 503; law, 59,66; life, 79; networks, 389, 394;“non-commercial”/“uncommer-cial,” 569, 571; operations, 113;partnerships, 60-1, 65, 85;practices, 69, 177, 506; privi-leges, 172, 308; protectionism,320; reasoning, 484; regulation,146; relations, 171, 306, 312;sites/venues, 173-4, 228; socie-ties, 542; system, 391; trans-actions, 402; ventures, 412,565; voyages, 63;

commercialization, 297-8, 308, 564commodities, 96-100, 105, 109,

122, 127, 146-7, 150, 153, 156-7, 160-3, 165-6, 174, 181, 284,298-9, 308, 383, 404-407, 412,432, 467, 472, 494, 547, 566,568

commodization, 570Compiègne, 193; artillery, 195-6;

governor of, 194; defence of,194, 196; siege of, 191-2, 194-5, 197-8, 209

Confucianism, 76-7, 79Constitutum usus (Pisan commercial

code), 65-6consumers, 364, 567; food, 349;

grain, 352; produce, 597;urban, 373; wheat, 352-3

consumptibility, 50, 56consumption, 49-50, 572, 578-81,

586, 589, 595; centres, 364-5,368; essential goods, 376; fire-

wood, 369; food, 582, 592;fruit, 591-2; grain, 299-301,303, 368; hops, 596; house-hold, 593-4; increase in, 353;levels, 353; loans, 63; needs,85; norm, 369; plants, 582,586, 595; point of, 364; priceinelastic, 353; produce, 572,595; species, 581; taxes, 119,122, 126-7, 132, 134, 142-3;vegetables, 594; wood, 370

contado, 143, 299Contamine, Philippe, 190Contarini (family), Alvise, 427; An-

tonio, 427; copper, 424, 427-8430

Contestí, Antoni, 426contract, 9, 45, 48, 49, 53, 55-6,

69-70, 96-7, 99, 106-12, 115,263, 266, 277, 280-1, 283, 287,290, 314, 466, 486-7, 554;census, 64; Edgeworthian con-tract curves, 291; emphyteusis,262, 266; lease, 48; marriage,562-4, 571; medium vestum, 260;monopoly, 111; rental, 48;sharecropping (see mezzadria);stipulatio, 49

converso (Jewish convert to Chris-tianity), 424, 432-4

Cope, William, 218, 220copper, 392, 399, 401, 403, 411-

457; Belluno, 447; Enns Valley,448; Erzgebirge, 445-7; Ham-mergarkupfer, 420; Hungarian,438; Hunsrück, 441; Harz, 442-5; ingot (hallmarked), 420,(loaf) 419-20, 428, 432; LowCountries (Bruges), 419; plate,419, 421, 428-9, 431, 437-8,448; Polish, 438, 441, 447; raw(Schwarzkupfer), 420; rod, 419,437; Rosettenkupfer, 420; scrap,419; Salzach, 447; Schwaz/Brixlegg (Inn Valley), 448-50;Slovak, 438, 441, 450-6; Swe-

617INDEX

dish, 441, 447; Valle del Fer-sina, 447; Walchen, 448

Corbie, 326Corbinelli, Antonio, 464Cornwall, Duchy of, 215-6, 218,

245Cornwall, 235, 246, 250; shipping,

251; textiles, 500, 519, 524; tin,420

costs, commodity, 103, 353, 369,468, 507; borrowing/credit, 475;cost-benefit analysis, 113; farm,279-80, 548; fortifications, 113;gunpowder weapons, 187, 197-8; information, 287; labour,442; monitoring, 275-6, 291;opportunity, 57, 291; ports andships, 235-9, 243, 248, 250-1,253; production, 363-5, 376;prospecting, 449; revenue gene-ration, 112, 220; royal house-hold, 214-5, 217; state andgovernment, 91, 210, 215, 221;taxation, 140, 152; trade, 178,308; transaction costs, 100,112-3, 271, 297, 351, 362, 503;transport and travel, 290, 352,362-4, 373-5, 377-9, 468, 470;war, 93, 187, 190, 233-5

Côte d’Or, 199Courtenay (family), 252Courtrai, 188Coventry, 168credit/creditor, 48, 50-1, 53-4, 67,

81, 85, 135, 143-4, 214, 268,312-6, 319, 321-2, 326, 332-4,466, 467, 475, 479-81, 498,501-3, 507, 530-7; Catalonia,132, 135; Champagne Fairs,328; city, 141; commercial,310-348, 431, 433, 437, 458,468, 471-2, 475, 484; creditore,458; credit market, 133; Flan-ders, 315; Florence, 144;Genoa, 143; Ghent, 533, 558;

Portugal, 221; Provence, 268-269; Ypres, 310-348

Creil, 197crisis, absence of, 269; climatic,

267; demographic, 275, 281,287, 293; “energy,” 442;fourteenth-century, 119, 275,293; gold, 383, 393, 399, 401,407; in Manresa, 136, 142-3;Malthusian, 267; Puget-Theniers, 269; revenues, 91;socio-political, 91, 425

Croatia, 450Crokele (Crokesle), Richard, 517Croft, Sir Richard, 212Crouch, David, 508Crown, Aragonese, 121, 123-4,

127, 129, 132-5, 140, 301-2,416, 428; Castilian, 135; Eng-lish, 176-8, 214-6, 218, 220-1,231, 233, 235, 237, 240-1, 243,245, 248-50, 470; Portuguese,89-118, 221, 222-8, 231-2

cruzado (unit of currency), 111Cumbria, 235Cunningham, Sean, 210Cuper, Nicholas, 587currency, 187, 387; common, 484;

Egyptian, 401; foreign, 480;fractional, 402; fluctuations of,187; manipulation of, 483;prevailing, 352; values of, 352;Venetian, 401

customs, legal, 65, 69, 146, 170,173-4, 177-83, 324, 502, 542,545, 551, 555, 559, 561-5, 570;customals, 541; customary law,539, 541, 543-9, 553, 555, 564

customs, 91-2, 96, 112, 130, 167,176, 216-20, 228, 230-1, 243,437, 468, 484; accounts, 329,469-70; African regions, 105;agencies and officials, 101, 244,307; customary charges/dues,148, 152, 167, 216, 223, 252;

618 INDEX

farming-out, 109; valuations,469

Dalton, 173Daémghaén, 391Dandolo (firm), 430Danzig (Gdaxsk), 441Dar’a, 423Dartmouth, 244-6, 249, 250-1;

harbour, 245, 251; revenues,180, 218

Datini, Francesco di Marco ofPrato, 411-2, 417, 428, 431-4,436-7

Datini (firm), 424-7, 432, 441,449, 454; agents and factors,411, 417, 424, 427, 431;archive, 411, 416-9, 441, 458;Barcelona branch, 418 431,437; Compagnia di Catalogna,417-8, 427; competitors, 428;copper, 426-9, 431, 432-4, 436-8, 455-6; Florence mothercompany, 431, 436; Jews, 430-1; ledgers, 421, 456; letters,418, 421, 424, 426, 438, 456;Majorca branch, 412, 418-9,420, 427, 432, 436, 437, 458;North Africa, 418; Tuatcaravan, 434; Valencia branch,418, 429, 431-3, 436

Darwin, 273Dauphiné, 265Day, John, 383debt, 135, 137, 142-4, 207, 268,

313, 481, 502-3, 531-4, 553-8,561; civic, 119, 131-3, 139,141; collection of, 312, 554;debtors, 46, 49-60, 53, 68, 312-3, 315-6, 322, 333, 432, 471,475, 480, 556; funded, 143;policy, 144; public, 132, 134,464; recognitions, 310, 312-3,315, 319, 321-2, 328-9, 331,335; royal household, 211, 214,219, 221-2, 227; secured, 555-

6; system, 119, 134, 144;unsecured, 554; Ypres and itsjurisdiction, 312-5, 322, 324-9,331-2, 334

deforestation, 442Della Casa, Antonio, & Co., 486demography and demographic

trends, 91, 142, 144, 274-5,280-3, 287, 290, 293, 303, 349,375, 503

Del Treppo, Mario, 305De Vries, Kelly, 187Des Marez, Guillaume, 310-1Dendermonde, 325Derby, 177, 181Despy, Georges, 147Devon, 153, 235, 244, 246, 248,

250-1, 387Devon, Earl of, 252Dhué ’Ubayd Allaéh (nomads), 435Dias, Manuel Nunes, 90Dickinson, Joyceline Gledhill, 198dinar (unit of currency), 401, 404,

408; double (dobla), 389, 399-400, 402, 408, 413, 437; naé .siríé404, 409-10

dirham (unit of currency), fulué s,401-4, 408; half-Mu’ayyadíé, 409-10

dividend, fixed (certum lucrum), 63double (dobla) (unit of currency),

389, 413, 437 (see also dinar)Domesday Book, 149, 153, 179Domesday Books, 154; Ipswich,

146-8, 163domination (sociological category),

78, 260, 262dominium, 93Dordrecht, 441Dorset, 246; revenues, 218Douai, 310, 329, 337, 339, 341,

343-4, 346-7, 351, 380, 570;

619INDEX

castellany, 320; constitution,324; fairs, 330

Dover, 153Drava River, 450Drienok, 453Drogheda, 182-3Dublin, 182Duby, George, 259, 266ducat (unit of currency), 402, 404,

409-10, 473, 475ducat (aka dinar ifrantíé) (unit of

currency), 402, 404Dufourq, Charles-Emmanuel, 416Dulcert, Angelino, 424Dumitrache, Marianne, 594Dunkirk, 208Durance River, 264Durham, 246, 369Dyer, Christopher, 368economic, actions, 77, 79; activity,

363, 376; advantages, 250, 374;approach, 114; barrier, 373;change, 66, 150, 223, 257; con-cepts, 365; condition, 81; con-traction, 152; control, 325;costs, 190, 233; cross-connections, 453; culture, 565;depression, 426; development,59-63, 67, 72-3, 79, 81, 84,239, 543; divide, 191; disloca-tion, 268; doctrines, 64; enter-prises, 91; environment, 177;equivalent, 272; ethics, 57, 73,75-6, 80; expansion, 61; events,274; evolution, 272; firms, 81;goals, 112; growth, 78, 151,349; health/well-being, 174,208; historians, 54, 85, 147,235, 377, 503; history, 233, 71;illogic, 267; integration, 298;institutions, 60; interests, 84,173; intervention, 308; impact,268, 375; issues/matters/affairs,60, 71, 79, 96, 173, 187; life,542, 544, 554; limits, 377; link,

596; meaning, 564; needs, 62;niches, 503; opportunities, 91;players, 92; potential, 321;practices, 72, 82-3, 571; pres-sures, 269; privileges, 308;process, 77, 272; problems/difficulties/troubles, 45, 191,208, 257, 267, 432; procedures,70; process, 89; projects, 91;questions, 44; rationale, 172;rationality, 92, 565; rational-ization, 77-8; recovery, 218;reforms, 301; regulations, 68,regions, 311-2; relationships,596; relevance, 64; resources,266, 299; results, 82, 351;rewards, 565; scene, 62; sectors,418; sphere, 80; status, 259,595; structures, 71, 82; terms,100; theories, 365; thought, 43,47, 50, 54, 114; transactions,78; viability, 364, 452-3;viewpoint, 61

economics, 191, 271; of house-hold, 91; “New InstitutionalEconomics” (NIE), 270

economists, 57, 59, 81-2economy, economies, 73, 77, 178,

550; agrarian, 539; and agri-culture, 302; capitalist, 60, 89,117; commercial, 166, 176,325, 350; commercialized, 298;Economy and Society, 61, 73, 75,77; Egyptian, 405; English,233; and ethics, 41; European,67, 543; [financial restraint],211, 215; Italian, 67; latemedieval, 297; and law, 61, 66-7; Low Countries, 467; Man-resan, 139; maritime, 235, 245;market, 80, 538, 564; medieval,71, 539, 542; medieval Europe,297; “middle band,” 416; mo-dern, 77; monetized, 266; net-work, 270; overseas expansion,89; political, 71, 82; port town,146, 236, 239; profit, 80; ra-tionalized, 77-8, 82; regional,

620 INDEX

415; and religion, 60-1, 75, 78,86; salvation, 60, 79-80;shipping-based, 245, 350; Sicily,300; site-based, 320; urban, 67,150, 542-3; and war, 233, 235

Edward I, King of England, 150,176-7

Edward II, King of England, 176Edward III, King of England, 189,

253Edward IV, King of England, 214,

216Egypt, 383, 387, 389, 413; copper,

400-1, 415, 456; economy, 405;gold prices, 396-7, 399; gold-silver ratio, 406-7; monetarysystem, 399, 400-1, 415; speciemarkets, 396, 400-1, 404, 413,415;

Eiblschrofen, 449Ekelund, Robert, 81Elba, 464Elburz (Reshteh-ye Alborz), 391Elton, Sir Geoffrey, 211Elverdinge, 321emergent loss (damnum emergens)

(interest title), 83Endemann, Wilhelm, 64, 65, 67England, 138, 146, 250, 320, 327,

336-7, 340, 342-4, 346, 348-9,363, 368-9, 509, 570; Anglo-Saxon, 149; authors, 491, 493;balance of trade, 467, 469, 470;bills of exchange, 477; Borro-mei, 479, 485; conflicts withFrance, 234; conquest of, 188;Calais, 204, 205; Chancellor ofthe Exchequer, 212; Cofferer,213, 217; 219-20, 231; Crown,176-8, 221, 231, 233, 235-6,245, 248-9, 250, 469; eastern,468; fairs, 329; exchequer, 211-2, 215-21, 231; Flanders, 206,328, 329; firewood, 369-71;fleets, 203, 208, 240; grainprices, 354, 355, 356, 358-61;

Hundred Years War, 188-90,233-6, 238, 245, 249, 253; im-ports, 477; king of, 205, 236;legislative control, 375; mar-kets, 352; market integration,349; merchants, 169, 172, 328;Papal revenues, 470; Parlia-ment, 173, 189, 214-7, 231,240-2; ports, 146, 233, 234,235-6, 238, 240, 243, 246, 248;revenues, 146-78, 231; royalcourt, 210; royal household,211-220, 232; shipping, 235,237-41, 243, 248, 253-4; shop-ping, 483; silver, 387; south-eastern, 349, 350, 369, 372,376; southern, 354, 355-6, 358-61, 380; textiles, 483, 499;towns, 169, 175, 233-6, 238,248, 370, 372, 374-5; tolls,146-78; trade, 156, 166, 238,327, 329, 331; transfer of coin,470; Treasury of the Chamber,211-20, 231; Treasury of theHousehold, 212-5, 217, 220,231; urban occupations, 504;warfare, 239, 253; wool, 163,175, 328-9, 467-8, 477-8

English Channel, 251Enns Valley, 448Enrique I, King of Castile, 136,enterprise, Africa, 90, 92, 97, 100-

1, 106, 113-5, 117; Borromei,481, 485-6; business/economic,65, 69, 91; long distance, 111;noble, 91; overseas, 91, 92,105, 111, 117; private, 91;royal/state, 91, 102, 117; ship-building, 240; urban zones, 172

epidemics, 91Epstein, Steven, 142, 299,equilibrium (economic), 270-1Erdmannsdorf, 446Erg Chech, 421Erzgebirge, 442, 445-6; copper,

447

621INDEX

Erzgebirgsvorland, 442, 445-6Essex, 246Europe, 281, 413; aristocratic, 542;

balance of trade, 467; banking,475, 485; bullion, 383, 385;capitalism, 571; Central, 399;commodities/ goods, 418; earlymodern, 543; economy, 543;gold, 383-7, 391, 393-4, 396,399, 401-2, 407; gold-silverratio, 389, 391; copper, 438-9,440, 443, 453, 455; medieval,43, 57, 119, 137, 297; markets,391; merchants, 404; minerals,440; money payments, 471;Northern, 349-51, 363, 374-5,385, 453, 464, 538-9, 543-4,552; NorthWestern, 351, 361,442; Roman law, 528; silver,387, 389, 393, 413, 415; speciemarkets, 391, 399, 407; trade,349, 389, 404-5, 413; wood,550

evolution, 271, 277-80, 283, 286,290-2, 356; Darwinian, 272;Lamarckian, 272; mechanisms(as analogies), 272; of contract,274; of mezzadria, 280; ofpeasantry, 261-3; of tax sys-tems, 120, 123

Evora, Pero de, 109Évora, 211, 227exceptio usurariae pravitatis

(canonical defence), 69-70Exeter, revenues, 179, 218, 238exchange, 70, 83, 85, 560; bill of

exchange, 436, 471-2, 476-9,484; mercantile, 167, 300, 306,320, 334, 351-3, 361-2, 416,538

expenditures, 109, 126; royalhousehold, 213, 215, 217, 219,221-2; state, 91

Fagnano (family), Ambrogina da,462; Giacomo da, 462; Feliceda, 462, 486-7

fairs, 331, 338-40, 498, 524;Antwerp, 478; Bruges, 330,333; Champagne, 310, 313-4,328-33, 339-48; Christmas, 473;debts, 331; English, 148, 154,171, 183, 329; Geneva, 472,474; Ghent, 333; Flemish, 330-4, 339-48; interregional, 310,328, 331; Lille, 330; local, 331;Manresa, 121; Mesen, 330;payments, 331-3; Portugal, 223;Provins, 310; regional, 351;Sicily, 300; St Bartholomew,474; St Peter, 474; tolls, 154;Torhout, 330; Ypres, 330, 332-4, 339-48

Falkenstein, 448Falchi, Giaconello de’, 426Falun, 441family/families, 121, 211-2, 252,

259, 263, 304, 324, 368, 370,425, 447, 460-1, 464-5, 467,485, 544, 550, 558, 564, 568-70, 588-59, 593

famine, 91, 131, 137, 141, 483-4Faraj (al-Na .sir), Sultan of Egypt,

401, 404Farbisšte, 453Farmer, David, 161-2Fazuati, Samuel, 431Felipe (Mestre), 108Fenughil (Fenourhil), 423Feraig, Balaix, 430Ferdinand I, King of Aragon, 306Feria bridge, 182Fernandes, António, 109Fernando, Infante Dom, 96, 114Ferrer, Rafael, 431, 432Fersina, 457feudal, dominance, 121; dues, 123,

132, 134; economy, 60, 71; law,92; lords, 300-1; period, 259;possessions, 120; tenure, 224,268; towns, 121

622 INDEX

Février, Paul-Albert, 259Fez, 415, 421, 434, 435fief, 92, 120, 125, 302, 461, 549,

552Figuig, 424finance/financial/financing, 68, 85;

administration, 211, 224-6, 231-2, 401; assistance, 503; bureau-cracy, 218; burden, 303; civic,135; conquest, 129, 188; cons-traint, 213; court, 212; Crown,221, 232, 327; effects, 135;deficit financing, 119; depart-ments, 212, 220, 231; difficul-ties, 487; financiers, 130; formsof, 189; Ghent, 546, 573;household, 214-5, 219-20, 222-3, 226-8, 231; incapacity, 141;institutions, 120; instrument,471, 557-8; levies, 134; ma-chinery, 119, 129-30, 212, 222;military, 188; ministers, 216;municipal, 129; operations,312, 467; paper, 543; andParliament, 189; planners, 145;public works, 148; recovery,214, 227; reform, 122; rebel-lions, 188; records, 491; re-form, 210; responsibility, 114;royal, 129, 211, 220-1, 230;stature, 425; trade, 477, 485;trouble, 215; urban, 124, 148,150; walls, 151, 173, 181; war,187-91, 196, 198, 206-8

Finland, firewood, 369fisc/fiscal, 135-6, districts, 114;

concerns, 301; “domain state,”117; exhaustion, 129; fiscalism,95-6; fiscality, 129; innovations,121; institutions, 188; policy,122; privileges, 308; problem,91; system, 117, 128-9

Fischbach an der Nahe, 441Fitzwarren, estates, 218Flanders, 126, 199, 204, 312, 320,

324-7, 330-3, 336-7, 340-1,343-6, 349, 351, 416; alliance

with England, 189, 207-8;balance of trade, 467; bankingand capital market, 336, 475-6;cities, 310, 538; coinage andmoney, 313-4; copper, 319,438, 441-2, 445, 447; fairs,313, 330-3, 438; hostilities byEngland, 208, 328; merchants,321, 329, 333; raids on, 253;rebellions, 188, 483; subjects ofBurgundy, 206, 208; textiles,476; towns, 315, 325; transferof coin, 470; troops, 204, 205;Venetian galleys, 416, 427-8,431; west, 552; wool, 329, 329,468

Flanders, counts of, 315, 321, 545Flavy, Louis de, 195Flavy, Guillaume de, 194-6Flextorfer-Zenner, 392Florence, 53, 69, 107, 120, 134,

142-4, 280, 286-7, 290, 298,428, 460; Borromei, 460-1,464-5; Catasto of 1427, 464;Datini firm, 431; merchantsand merchant houses, 321, 328,392, 464-5, 469

florin (unit of currency), 52, 308,401, 407-8, 410, 432, 434, 464-5, 488

Fogo Island, 110Fomseca, Joham de, 110Fonseca, Afonso de, 104Fontcuberta, Julià, 425food and foodstuffs, 103, 174,

213-4, 222, 227, 320, 539, 550,572, 581; access to, 375; con-sumption, 349, 582, 592; con-trols, 304, 374; crops, 580; de-mand for, 297, 372; duties andtaxes, 306; exotic, 593; andgardens, 572-607; grains, 350-4, 361-2, 368-9, 371; imported,592; marketing, 374, 578; pro-duction, 349, 352, 368-9, 371;range of, 592-3; shortages, 267-

623INDEX

8; sources of, 363, 372-3,375-6,421, 572, 580; supply, 301,363, 368-9, 372-3 373-4, 566;trades, 174, 495-6, 500, 503-7,512, 527

Ford, C. J., 250Fordwich, 158, 180foreign, carriers, 248; coins, 313;

correspondents, 471; creditors,312; currency, 480, 484; debt-ors, 313; exchange, 485; in-come, 219, 230; merchants,166-7, 300; nation, 333; ope-rations, 465; policy, 129; ship-ping, 251; shippers, 232; trade,228; traders, 167

foreigners, and trade, 166; taxeson, 131, 167, 170;

Forqualquier, 262, 264fortifications, 137, 141, 194, 201,

202-3, 514; cost of, 113, 238Fostat (Fus .ta .t), 402Fowey Water, 245, 246Fowey, 250, 252Freiberg, 445Freiberg-in-Meissen, 387France, 136-7, 147, 261, 327, 332,

336-7, 340-1, 343-4, 346-7,509; coinage, 313; early mo-dern, 570; English armies, 208;firewood, 369; Hundred YearsWar, 188, 190, 192; northern,314; peace with Burgundy, 192;southern, 268, 333; Sicilianwheat, 298; wine, 519

Francia, 259Francisco, Pedro, 110Franks, 400Frederick II, Holy Roman

Emperor, 298Freiberg, 446Frome, 153Fryde, E. B., 469fungible, 42, 49-53, 55-6, 564

Funk, Franz Xaver, 64Furness, Abbey, 173Fugger-Thurzo, partnership, 454-5

Galápagos Islands, 273Gaddi, Zanobi di Tadeo, 427, 438galley(s), Majorcan, 432-3;

Venetian, 406, 416, 427-8, 429;Capitana, 427; Lombarda, 427;Moceniga, 427; Giustiniana, 427;Verzona, 428

Gallici, 392Galloway, James, 368-70Gambia River, 108-9game (theory), 275-6; positive-sum,

275, 292; zero-sum, 292Ganshof, FL, 149Garéolt, 261Garland, John, 491, 493, 495,

497-8, 504, 508-9, 514-7;Dictionarius, 492-4, 504-6, 508

Gascony, 238-9, 245; wine, 498,501, 519, 524, 531-2

Gaussols, 265Gdaxsk (Danzig), grain trade, 354Gelnica (Hnilec, Gölniczbánya,

Bánya, Bana), 453-5Geneva, 470, 475; fairs, 472, 474Gennaio, Tuccio di, 429Genoa, 120, 129-31, 134-5, 142-4,

252, 298, 300, 407; gold, 401;gold-silver ratio, 398, 400;maritime trade, 415; merchants,392, 412, 434

Géraud, Hercule, 508Germany, 64, 70, 147, 188, 327,

333, 336, 338, 340, 342-4, 346,348-9, 570; alliance with Eng-land, 189; creditors, 314; fire-wood, 369; laws, 552; mer-chants and merchant houses,314, 328, 333-4, 392; scholars,363; smelting, 420; towns, 361;trade, 349

624 INDEX

Ghadames, 387, 396Gha .s .saé .s .sa (Alcudia), 411, 420-1,

425, 429, 456Ghent, 310, 324-6, 334, 371, 538,

545, 546, 547, 551, 559, 570,571; aldermen (scepenen), 545,546, 548, 552, 554; constitu-tion, 324; custom, 545, 549,553, 555, 559, 561-3, 565, 570;fairs, 330, 333; Gentenaren,538, 544, 551, 553-4, 558-60,563, 565-6, 569-71; houses,551-2; jurisdiction, 552, 562;land, 539, 542-3, 546-8, 550-3,555-6, 558, 561-2, 565-6, 569-70; neighbours, 551; privateproperty law, 545, 564; records,547, 564; rents, 557-8, 562,566; troops, 203-6

Ghir-Saoura, 423Ghormali, 425ibn Ghuraéb, Ibrahíém, 401-4Giustiniana (galley), 427Glandèves (family), 263Gläser, Manfred, 583Gloucester, Duke of, 215Gloucester, Earl of, 530-2Gloucester, 154-5, 159, 182-3Gloucestershire, 153, 246Godeveertsvelde, 322Godinho, Vitorino Magalhães, 225gold, 387, 389, 391, 393-4, 396,

399, 401-8, 413, 415, 430, 496,498, 502, 507, 513, 516, 524,527, 529, 533, 584; boom, 393,396, 399, 407; Chinese, 391;coinage, 139, 389, 401, 484;crisis, 383, 407; European, 391,393, 399, 402; markets, 383;mining, 387, 391; minting, 387;prices, 383-7, 389-90, 393-7,399-400, 407; production, 391,393; exchange for silver, 387,389; Slovak, 392; sources of,392, 413; supply of, 387, 393-

5; stocks, 383, 396, 401, 407;trade, 227-8, 388; from WestAfrica, 94-5, 98, 102-3, 116,387-90, 393

Gold Coast, 95, 98, 100, 102Goldschmidt, Levin, 59, 66, 67,

75, 80Gomes, Diogo, 94Gomes, Fernão, 97, 98, 99, 107,

111, 112goods, 65, 81, 106, 119, 147, 156,

174-5, 214, 236, 251, 262, 265,268, 315, 319-20, 354, 373,375, 405, 477, 493-6, 499, 503,507, 509, 541-2, 544, 546-7,567-71; African, 106; agricul-tural, 539; basic, 376; bulk,362; commercial, 546; commu-nity of, 560; concealment of,95; cost of transport, 378;Crown, 105, 113; essential, 376;European, 404, 418; exhibiting,350; export, 304, 478; flow of,375-6; fungible, 42; goeden,565; illicit trading, 95, 98, 105;immovable, 542; impartible,561-2; imported, 166, 223; andincome, 541; lists of, 157, 166;luxury, 74; manufactured, 122;movable/immovable, 218, 228,258, 553, 559, 561; moving,374, 378-379; partible, 543,560-561; passage of, 148;pirated, 252; prices of, 156,161; prohibited, 94; role of,550; saleable, 228, 232; signi-ficance of, 565, 567; smugglingof, 95; status of, 538; trade,146-7, 157-63, 165, 389, 405,416, 419, 434; value of, 156,161-3, 543; wholesale, 166; atYpres, 329, 334

Gottleuba, 446Gozo, 301, 306grain, 49, 103-4, 122-3, 131, 137,

156, 160, 166, 265, 277, 297-309, 350-79, 416, 496, 515,

625INDEX

527, 539, 581; commodity, 299;corvées of, 261; consumption of,368; demand for, 300, 303,350, 354, 368-9; exports, 299-302, 306; governments and,304-8, 378; hierarchy of, 252-3;imports, 302-3, 305; markets,300-1, 306, 354, 373; permitsand licences, 300-1, 306; prices,300-1, 352-8, 361, 378-9; pur-chases of, 319; procurement,304-5, 307, 350, 351; produc-tion of, 299, 300, 352, 370-1,376; reserves, 300; shortages,303, 352; sale of, 300-1, 305,307; sources of, 352, 362;stocks, 301; supply of, 370-6;tolls, 160; trade, 297-8, 300,305-6, 350, 354, 356; yield, 368

salma (unit of weight), 299Grand Erg Occidental (Great

Western Sand Sea), 421Grantham, 154Grasse, 261, 264-5Gratian, 43, 69Gravelines, 200, 206Great Yarmouth, 155Greece, 135; lands, 402Greenwich, meridian, 423Gregory IX, Pope, 44Grimsby, 173Grispi, 276, 279gros tournois (unit of currency),

313-4, 329Gross National Product, 539Großkogel, 448Grummitt, David, 211, 220Guinea, Upper, 99, 106,Guinea, 95, 99Guinea Rivers, 109Giovanni, Polo di, 426Goslar, 442Gurara, 421, 422, 435Haddaé j, 435

.Haf .sid dynasty, 435; mints, 395-6,413

Haim, Aion, 430

.Hakíém, 435Hainault, alliance with England,

189Hamilton, Earl, 127al-Hamma, 436Hammel, Rolf, 588-9, 593-4Hampshire, 235, 246Hanse, 441, 450; salt fleets, 252Hartz Mountains, 442, 445;

copper, 447Harzgerode (Hagenrode), 444-5Hasele, William de, 517Hatcher, John, 308Haverfordwest, 238Hawley, John, 251, 253Heers, Jacques, 416Henrique IV, King of Castile, 114Henrique, Infante Dom (Henry

the Navigator), 92-3, 96, 100,114

Henry I, King of England, 150Henry III, King of England, 169,

493Henry V, King of England, 203Henry VI, King of England, 196,

214Henry VII, King of England, 210-

2, 215-8, 220, 223, 230-2, 242Henry VIII, King of England, 211Heraclea, 307 Hereford, 151-2, 182Herlihy, David, 122, 143Heron, John, 212-3, 217Hettstedt, 445Hijaz, 387, 402Hindu Kush, 391Hithe, 182Hoffman, Richard, 508Holland, 199, 207, 349, 469

626 INDEX

Honein, 411-2, 415, 419, 421,424-6, 431, 433-6; copper, 428-9, 431-2, 437-8, 441, 456;caravans, 428-9; Jews, 425, 429,437

Hontiton, Count of, 195Hora Svaté Kateršiny (St

Katharinaberg), 446Hornsea, 180Horrox, Rosemary, 210Hosenbachtal, 441Hosenberg, 441Hostiensis (Henry of Susa, c. 1200-

1271), 44-6household, Crown Prince, 114;

income, 174-5; noble, 91;peasant, 268; royal, 91, 210-23,226-32; urban, 119, 124, 127-8,132, 138-9, 141, 143, 303, 491,504, 507, 546, 560-1, 593

Hull, 239, 246Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,

208Hundred Years War, 188, 195;

aristocracy, 234; benefits, 239;Burgundy, 190-1, 196-8, 209;costs, 190, 235-7; financing,188-91, 208, 233; historiogra-phy, 188-9, 191, 233-5; impact,233, 235, 238-9, 240, 253-4,374; Low Countries, 190; out-come, 191; piracy and priva-teering, 239, 250; phases, 196;port towns, 233-5, 237-8, 244-7, 249, 253; profits and losses,187, 190, 235, 253; shipping,236, 237, 241, 242, 244-5, 247,249; sieges, 195, 198, 208;troops, 241; trade routes, 234

Hungary, copper, 392, 393, 438,441, 450, 457; gold, 387, 392-4; kingdom of, 392; Lower,451; mines and mining, 438,451 453-4; Upper, 453

Hunsrück, 441, 447Hunt, Tony, 508

Huntingdon, 158, 168, 170, 180,197

Iberia, 93, 122, 127, 245, 327,331, 336-7, 340, 342-4, 346,348, 428, 456

Ibiza, 429-30ideology, modeling, 89-90; moti-

vator, 91Ieper, 336Ifriqíya, 413, 415, 435IJzer, 321, 324, 337, 339, 341,

342, 344-5, 347Île-de-France, wine, 498, 524Imperina, 457income, 96, 113, 541, 560, 562,

580; consumers, 352-3; cus-toms, 218, 228; fixed, 112;future, 554; guaranteed, 111-2;household, 141, 174-5; land,91, 218, 231, 550; loan servic-ing, 555; market, 174; maximi-zation, 111, 173, 364; mone-tary, 92; net, 115, 117; noble,155, 224; overseas, 115, 117,221, 227-8; per capita, 128;property, 556; rents, 91, 174;royal, 92, 115, 122, 127-8, 130,132, 215-7, 226-8, 231; sourcesof, 92, 216, 219; toll, 149, 154-5, 165, 167, 174, 276, 279,291, 302, 482

India, 101, 108; trade, 231Indian Ocean, 389; spice trade,

223industry, central place, 311; cen-

ters of, 311, 538, 545; cloth,207; Ghent, 545, 559, 569,571; labor, 311; medieval, 311;rural, 368; shipping, 241;silver, 392; textile, 310-1, 323,334; Ypres, 325-6, 334

industrial, capital, 71; cities, 310;crops, 580; infractions, 315;investment, 235; operations,312; production, 349; protec-

627INDEX

tionism, 320; statutes, 314;transformation, 234; uses, 369;Ypres, 310

inheritance, 205, 257-8, 265-6,324, 464, 480, 561-71, 575

Inn Valley, 449, 450Innsbruck, 448interest, 45, 53, 61-5, 67, 69-71,

73-81, 83-5, 119, 132, 134-5,141-4, 315, 473, 555

Inzegmir, 423Ipswich, 146, 180-1, 246;

Domesday Book, 146-8, 154,163; leadership, 146; privileges,168; tolls, 154-5, 158, 164

Irsigler, Franz, 596Isabel the Catholic, Queen of

Castile, 114Isaurian Taurus, 389Islam/Islamic, 76, 79, 82, 93, 259Israel, 76Italy, 133, 143, 327, 331, 332,

336-7, 340, 342-4, 346, 348,456, 485, 570; balance of trade,467, 469-70; central, 273; bank-ing, 467; cities and towns, 349,374-5; cartography, 424; coin-age, 313; governments, 374-5;grain markers, 301; merchants,327-9, 333, 392, 424, 426, 469,470; money market, 481; nor-thern, 298-9; sharecropping,270, 274; sources, 328; textiles,469; trade, 349, 416; transferof coin, 470; wool, 468-70

Ixer, R. A., 440Jargeau, 191Jasov, 453Jaume II, King of Aragon, 121-2,

125, 129Jew(s), 74, 76-77, 82, 108, 180;

aljama in Palma de Mallorca,425; copper trade, 425, 431,433-4, 437; Honein, 525, 437;Maghribi, 424-6; Majorcan,

424-6, 429, 430; merchants/traders, 412, 424, 429, 433,437; negotiators, 436; Tamen-tit, 425; Tuat, 425; Valencian,429

Joan of Arc, 191-6João II, King of Portugal (pre-

viously Crown Prince), 97, 100,105, 114-5, 210, 221, 224, 232

John XXII, Pope, 56John the Fearless, Duke of

Burgundy, 198John Lackland, King of England,

153John, Duke of Bedford, 192, 208Johnson, Dr Samuel, 353Jonas, Ilona, 267Juana, Crown Princess of Castile,

114Judaism, 76-7, 82jurisdiction, 43, 178, 222, 259-60,

263, 266, 281, 287, 290, 299,304, 312, 319, 379, 544, 552,562

Justinian, Emperor of Byzantium,43, 45

Kahal de Tabelbala, 423-4Kammerer-Seiler (firm), 392Kandlerin, Gertrud, 449Kapelle, 324Kaérimíé merchants (tujjaér al-kaérim),

405Karst, 450Keene, Derek, 369, 370Keller, Franz, 73, 74Kent, 246ibn Khalduén, Walíé al-Díén ‘Abd al-

Ra .hmaén Abué Zayd, 421, 423Kharaé j, 435Killem, 324King’s Lynn, 158, 168-70, 180Kleinkogel, 448Knight, J., 271

628 INDEX

Kolba, 452Kortrijk, 325Kraków, 441Kraslice, 446Kremnica, 451Krk Island, 450Kroll, Helmut, 591Krusšné Hory, 446Kulmbach, 447Kupferberg, 445-7Kutná Hora, 387Kvarnericá Embayment, 450

labour, 276, 278, 292, 311, 368,528; agricultural, 266; cost of,442; division of, 297, 425;incentives, 291; labour-intensive, 95 275; labourers,138, 275-6; land/labour ratio,279, 283; market, 334; services,261; shortages, 138-9, 391;undersupply of, 276; works(corvées), 257

La Celle, Abbey of, 261-3Lagny, 310Lagos, 107Lagos Lagoon, 109Laguedoc, 263Lancashire, 173Lancaster, Duchy of, 215-7land, 192, 197, 204, 207, 259,

278, 292, 299, 350, 352, 464,552, 553, 561, 570-1; alienationof, 261, 265; allodial/non-allodial, 260, 555; area re-quirements, 368-73, 376;“bondage to,” 257-8, 266-7,269; casamentum, 265; Church,259-61, 263; colon, 259; com-modification, 565; confiscations,216, 221, 231;Crown, 220-1,224, 231; fungibility, 569; hold-ings, 91; immovability, 539,542; importance, 539, 542-3,565; inheritance, 550-2, 558;

investment in, 63, 312, 334,565, 569, 574; king’s, 214-8,224; “land service”, 243; land/labour ratio, 279, 283; land-lords/landowners, 51, 275-85,288-93, 364, 548; law, 552-3,562, 565; market, 268; mov-able, 552; noble, 263, 269;ownership, 121, 144, 552, 565,596; peasant and farm, 164,258-60, 262, 265, 268, 273-4,302, 362, 364, 368, 565;private, 259; products of, 546,548; property rights, 275;public, 127; rents, 274, 543,552-3, 555-6, 558, 561-2; rightsto, 539, 552, 566; royal grantsof, 220, 224; revenue, 215-6,218-9; serfs, 262, 265-6; trans-actions, 574-5, 577-8, 580; ur-ban, 572-3, 575, 579, 587; use,365, 368-70, 547, 575, 577-80,596, 597; value, 539, 575-6

Langdon, John, 374Langholm, Odd, 51, 54, 55Lannoy, Hugh de, 206, 208Laon, 197Lapaccio, Ser Antonio di, 432-4,

436La Rochelle, 327Lastig, Gustav, 65Latham, R. E., 508law, 41-58, 61-2, 64-7, 543, 546-7;

canon, 43-50, 52-7, 61, 64,67-9, 74-5, 78, 83; civil, 66, 70;commercial, 59, 66; common,66; customary, 539, 541, 544,553, 555, 562; English, 171,177, 540, feudal, 92; Flemish,315; Ghent, 547, 553, 559,561-2, 565, 569-71; mining,448; natural, 41, 43, 47-53,55-8; navigation, 428; northernEuropean, 538-9, 544; patri-mony, 553; positive, 43, 47, 56;Portuguese, 94-9, 227; pro-perty, 539-40, 543-6, 559, 562;

629INDEX

Roman, 43-7, 49, 51, 258, 262-3, 266, 287, 538, 545; secular,94, 555, 557

lead, 158-9, 194, 392-4, 440, 444-5, 453, 510

leases and leasing, 48, 96-8, 106-9,113, 115, 154-5, 273, 278, 320,566, 589; leaseholders (trauta-dores), 106-7

legal, analysis, 61; arrangements,65; barriers, 96, 297; change,545; collection, 492, 518; con-cepts, 54; construction, 62, 64;controls, 308; customs, 324;defence, 70; development, 64;dissolution, 412; distinctions,259; doctrine, 168; evidence,569; expression, 565; forms,491; heritage, 287; history andhistorians, 543, 559; illegal acti-vities, 253-4; imagination, 565;jurisdiction, 544; liability, 66;materials, 493, 517; mechan-isms, 563; meaning, 564, 571;opinion, 546; patterns, 442;perspectives, 66; profession,293; protection, 85; records,491, 538, 542, 564; reforms,232; regimes, 543; rights, 169;scholars, 64, 67; sources, 571;standard, 47, 56; status, 553;strength, 95; systems, 43, 266,324; tender, 313; theory, 168,545; tradition, 559

Leicester, 168, 519, 524Leiden, 380; grain prices, 354-61;

markets, 361Leighton Buzzard, 153Leonor, Queen of Portugal, 114Lérins, Abbey of, 258, 263Leuprandus, 273-4, 276-8Levant, 384, 404, 438, 456, 472Lewes, 149, 179Licata, 299, 305, 307licences and licensing, 85, 96-9,

106, 112, 174, 250, 306

Lier, 356, 358, 361, 380Liguria, 143Lila, Joham de, 109Lille, 310, 326, 329, 334, 337,

339, 341, 343-4, 346-7; castel-lany, 320; constitution, 324;fairs, 330, 332; government,313; law, 552; merchants, 332

Lincoln, 154, 171, 182Lincolnshire, 154, 246Lindsey (Lincs.), 468Lipari Island, 307Lisbon, 97-8, 210, 225, 227, 231;

Ribeira Palace, 228, 231; SãoJorge Castle, 228;

Liverpool, 246loan (mutuum), 41-2, 48-50, 52-3,

57loans, 59, 61-5, 73-5, 77, 81, 83-5,

131, 133-4, 144, 212, 219, 268,281, 307, 315, 333, 461, 464-5,472-5, 477, 543, 555-7

Loire River, 191, 193, 259Lombard, Peter, 44Lombard Street, 467Lombarda (galley), 427Lombards, 315Lombardy, towns, 374London, 155, 159, 162, 179 181-2,

240, 246, 349, 363, 369, 370-1,375; banking, 467; bills ofexchange, 478; Borromei, 464-8, 471, 475, 478-83, 485-8;firewood, 369, 371, 373; foodsupply, 372; galleys, 468-9;international trade; 470; Italianimports, 469-70; Mercers, 477-8, merchants, 468, 477, 502,533; revenues, 218; textiles,470, 499, 519, 524; Tower of,220; wool 468-9

Lorenzo, Stoldo di, 428Lorini, Antonio di Filippo, 426-7Lösch, August, 363-5

630 INDEX

loss (economic), 62, 66, 73, 102,128, 184, 190, 244, 403, 434,466, 473, 481-6, 539; of busi-ness, 174; of capital, 280;emergent, 83; of income, 174;of property, 94-5; of revenue,173-4

Lostwithiel, 245Louis IX, King of France, 313Louvain, 351, 380, grain prices,

356, 359-61Lovell, Sir Thomas, 212-3Low Countries, 188-9, 198, 209,

327, 336, 338, 340, 342-3, 346-377, 570; artillery, 200; balanceof trade, 467; banking, 478;Calais, 206; bills of exchange,477; citizens of, 208; copper,419, 441, 456; English cam-paigns, 253; farmers, 372;grain, 353-4, 356, 361, 373;heating fuel, 371; HundredYears War, 190; markets, 352,362; market integration, 349;rebellions, 190, 209; southern,350-1; towns, 350, 375; textiles,477, 483

Lübeck, 441, 572, 574, 579, 588,593-6; Alfstrasse/Schüsselbuden,582, 590, 592-4, 598-607;archeological evidence andexcavations, 582, 587, 594, 595,598-607; cesspits, rubbishpitsand wells, 581-2, 598-600;citizens, 580, 596; city of, 575;elites, 576, 580, 593; Engels-grube, 590; gänge, 573; gardensand gardeners, 572, 575, 577-9,594, 596-7; guild (Willkür derGärtner), 578, 581; Heiligen-Geist-Hospital, 590; holdings(Güter), 574; Holsten, 577;hops, 575-8, 580, 584; 586,590-1, 595-6, 600; Horegen-beke, 573; Hundestrasse, 582,584-9, 591-2, 594, 598-607;inhabitants, 583; Landwehr, 573-

4, 579; Lübeckisches Urkunden-buch (LUB), 574-6; Marien-kirche, 593; market, 593;Mengstrasse, 593; merchants,333; Mühlentor, 576; Nieder-stadtbücher, 577; Oberstadtadt-bücher/regesten, 577, 587; popu-lation, 573; produce, 579, 580-1, 590-2, 595; Rathaus, 593;Rosengarten-Tünkenhagen,588; Soltenwisch, 577; species,582, 584-6, 590-2, 595, 600-7;St Johanniskloster, 582-4, 586,590-2, 594, 598-607; TilekeWarendorp, 578; “Van denHoppenlande,” 578; walls, 573,577, 579, 597; Wette Garten-bücher, 575, 577, 580

Mubietová (Lybetha, Libethen),451-3, 455

Lucca, 276, 280, 328, 466Luporini, A., 276Luther, Martin, 42, 71Luxembourg, Jean de, 194-6luxury, 567, cloth, 477; eating,

584; goods, 74, 331, 353, 400;imported, 542; movables, 566

Lynn, 246

Maastricht, 441Macaire, Pierre, 416Mâconnais, 259Madeira Island, 228manufacture and manufacturing,

275, 406; cloth, 322; goods,122; equipment, 543; luxuryarticles, 400; techniques, 503

Marlgavere, Jan van, 556Maggiore, Lake, 461Maghrib, 387, 407, 413-6, 436; al-

Maghrib al-Aq .saé , 387; com-merce/trade, 415-8 425-6, 432;commodities, 417; copper andcopper trade, 420, 427-8; gold,395-6; imports, 418; demand,432; Jews, 424-5, 430, 436;

631INDEX

markets, 413, 418; payments,432; ports, 411, 419; regionaleconomies, 415, 418; western,413

Maillane, 261Maio Island, 110Majorca, 135, 411-2, 416-7, 425;

conversos, 424, 433-4; coppermarket and trade, 412-3, 416,419-21, 426-8, 431-4, 436-8,454-5; Datini branch, 418-9,420, 426, 432; flood, 430;intermediaries, 418; Italians,433; Jews, 411, 424, 426, 429,433-4, 337; Maghrib, 427, 429,431; merchants, 411, 419 424,427-9, 432, 433; money, 421;notaries, 426; “old Christians,”425, 426, 433; portolans, 424;records, 421; tin 420

Majorca, Kingdom of, 416Malborough, 169Malfante, Antonio, 412Mallorca, 417; Ciutat de (mod.

Palma), 425, 427, 430Malta, 297, 301, 302, 306-8;

cotton, 306; government, 304-6;grain shortages and imports,303-4; Sicilian grain, 302-3,307; Turkish invasion, 303

Malta Islands, 297-8, 301Manchester, 181Manresa, 119-144Mansfeld, 445Manuel I, King of Portugal, 100-1,

105, 111, 114, 210-1, 222-4,227-8, 230-1

Ma‘qil, Arab nomad group, 434-5March, estates, 218March, Mr Thomas of, 468Marchione, Bartolomeu, 107-8Marck, 202Margaret, Countess of Flanders,

313

Maria, Queen of Portugal, 114Marínid dynasty, 435; mints, 395-

6, 413market integration, 297-8, 308,

349-52, 354, 361-2, 373, 376,378-9

marketing, 174, 269, 308, 374,578

market(s), 70, 78, 85, 99, 105,111, 113, 150, 163, 166, 168,172-3, 300, 325, 351-3, 362-3,368, 376, 378-9, 387, 389-90,396, 399 405, 407, 491, 507,544, 553, 558-9, 571, 579, 596;access to, 297; African, 117;capital, 275, 320, 326, 331,334, 336; centre, 363, 367;city/town, 147, 151, 153, 172,579, 593; commodity, 308, 305;conditions, 399, 405, 408; cop-per, 412, 418-22, 427-30, 432-3, 436-8, 453, 456; credit, 67,133, 134, 268, 324, 327; deve-lopment, 61, 379; disorders,383; distant, 352; economy, 80,538, 564; environment, 81,405; equilibrium, 383; ex-change, 484, 538; fees, 154;feudal, 121; forces, 375; gold,383, 391, 396, 399, 413; grain,300-301, 306, 350, 352-4, 356,358, 361, 368, 373; hierarchies,311; integrated, 350, 352, 373,378; internal, 298; interna-tionalization of, 362; labour,334; land, 268; late medieval,352; local, 354; logic, 568;marketplace, 78, 148, 165, 194,379, 407, 578; money, 467,470-1, 481; networks, 297, 399;organization, 373; prices, 401;regional, 351, 362; religious,84; research, 101; revenues andincome, 153-5, 174; rights, 173,177; royal, 105; rural, 165,168, 175; situation, 407;society, 544, 571; specie, 383,387, 389, 391-2, 396, 399, 409;

632 INDEX

speculation, 547; stock, 70;structure, 389, 413; student,495; terms, 568; tolls, 153-4,171, 177; towns, 153; traders,165, 174; universal, 391; urban,350, 352, 374, 595-6; value/s,99, 153, 544, 565; wine, 121;wool, 163, “world market,” 321,330

marriage, 44, 123, 131, 258, 262,324, 538, 541, 543, 548, 552,560-4, 570-1

Marseille, 258, 259Marseille, count of, 261Marseille, viscounts of, 263Martin I, King of Aragon, 300-1,

306Martin V, Pope, 464Martínez, Manuel Sánchez, 129Marx, Karl, Capital, 41-2, 71al-Maqríézíé, Taqíé al-Díén A .hmad b.

‘Alíé al-Qaédir b. Mu .hammad,400, 404

Masschaele, James, 374Mattei, Piero, 430Mauritania, 98, 423Mayer, Joseph, 508Mazara, 307Mazzuoli, Niccolò di Giovanni,

431-4, 436-7, 456McFarlane, K. B., 190, 233, 235Mdina, 302Measham, 181Mešdešnec, 446Mešdešný Potok (Kufurbach, Kup-

perbach), 454Medici (family), 392, 465, 467;

bank, 467, 484Mediterranean Sea, 274, 384, 389;

copper; 419, 455; gold, 399;ports, 399; specie markets, 399;trade, 62-3, 298, 413, 415, 456;western, 413, 415, 417, 419,445, 447, 455

Melanchton, Philip, 42Melcombe, 246Melo, Fernão de, 111Meneses, Duarte de, 114merchandise, 98, 101-5, 111, 113,

117, 152, 157, 162, 170, 242,429, 437, 472, 477

merchant(s), 57, 68-9, 79, 84, 163-75, 213, 235, 239, 240, 251,301, 305, 310, 321, 331-2;Balearic, 412, 418-9; banker,471-2, 493-4, 510; bankinghouses, 328, 353, 378, 394,403, 420; Berber, 103; Bruges,334; Burgos, 327; Catalan, 305,476; Chinese, 391; Christian,412, 425; converso, 412; credit,431, 472; English, 167, 169,171-2, English, 329; European,405; Fez, 434; Flanders, “Ger-manic,” 327; Florentine, 107,469; foreign, 166-7, 300, 484;France, northern, 314; Geno-ese, 407, 434; guilds, 75; inter-national, 69; Italian, 314, 328,433, 469-70; Jewish, 411-2,424, 429, 437; Kaérimíé, 405;Lisbon, 97; local, 165, 170-2,213, 220, 313; London, 477-8;long-distance, 163; Lübeck,583, 588-9, 593-5, Majorcan,411, 424-5, 429, 432; MerchantAdventurers, 477; Milanese,469; Montpellier, 312; Muslim,391, 429; native, 23; Nürnberg,454; private, 105; rights andprivileges, 168-72, 175; sea-farer, 582; ships and fleet, 236,242; Southampton, 468; Spisš,453; and taxation/tolls, 166-75;of/in town, 165, 168; Tlemcen,434; Tuscan, 411, 419; Valen-cian, 419, 429; Venetian, 426;wealthy; 163, 165, 173-4, 594;wholesale, 174, wool, 69, 163,175; Ypres, 322, 327-8, 332

Mesen, 331, 332; fairs, 330

633INDEX

Messina, 299, 300, 306Meung-sur-Loire, 191mezzadria (sharecropping), 273,

278, 280Michele, Benedetto di, 427Micheli, Giovanni di Michele, 466,

486Micheli, Niccolò, 486Middle East, gold, 399; silver, 389;

specie markets, 396Middleburg, 468, 470Middlesex, county, 372Midlands, 468Milan, 470; Borromei, 460-1, 465-

6, 468, 485-6, 488; merchantsand merchant houses, 469;wool, 468

Milet, Jean, 197Miller, Joseph C., 89mint(s) and minting, 379; 383,

387; 389, 396, 400, 413, 513;French, 313; .Haf .sid, 396, 413;Marínid, 395-6; 413; Mamluk,400; Maghrib, 387; Philip theGood, 484

Mittelharz, 444Mixtow (family), 253; John, 252;

Mark, 252Mnísšek nad Hnilcom (Meczenzéf),

454Moceniga (galley), 427Modena, 424monetarism, 187monetized economy, 266;

demonetizing, 401monetary, assignments to royal

household, 213, 219; confusion,483; disorders, 407; income,92; mechanisms, 291; pay-ments, 241; problems, 379,482; reform, 483; revaluation,484; surplus, 228, 231; stability,484; stock, 404 409; system,399, 402-403, 415; value, 50;

money, 113, 128, 153, 176, 225,313, 402, 471, 475-9, 484, 531,533-4, 548, 556, 559; annuity,133; borrowing, 81, 476, 479;changers, 431, 496, 505, 512-3;collection of, 139, 140, 225;conscience, 68, 79; disburse-ment of, 213; flows, 68, 415;function of, 42; incentive, 192;investment of, 75; king’s, 197,211-212; lending and loan, 42,48, 76-7, 316, 327, 472, 478,502, 555; liability for, 220;making, 416; market, 467, 470-1, 481; need for, 128, 130,192, 502; owing, 121, 502;Parisian, 496; payments, 575;prize, 253; purpose, 74; raising,123, 132, 151, 238; receipts,116; royal households, 212,216-7, 220, 226, 231-2; sourcesof, 216-8, 228-31, 238, 466,469; supply, 151, 314; transfer,113, 219, 253, 476-7; use of,41, 219, 222, 226, 228, 320,437, 556

Monmouthshire, 154monopoly, 81, 96-7, 99-100, 111,

121, 244, 300, 374, 405Monroy, Gonsalvo, 306Monstrelet, Enguerran, 194-6, 200,

202montes pietatis, 79Monti, Richard, 508Montmajour, Abbey of, 258Montpellier, merchants, 312-3;Monzón, 139morabatin (unit of currency), 139Mornevech, Reinekin, 333Morocco, 98, 113, 413, 415;

armed forces, 435; markets,421

Mostaganem, 436Moulouya River, 434-5Mueller, Reinhold C., 471,

634 INDEX

Mührenberg, Doris, 587, 589municipality/municipal, 133;

accounts, 314; appointments,304; authorities, 305; council,303-304; documents, 182-3;finance, 129; fiscal system, 128;officials, 148, 154, 300-1; royal,133; universitas, 304-8; taxes,123

Munro, John, 176, 187-8, 190,191, 233, 411, 455, 477

Münzer, Hieronymus, 97murage, 151, 155, 162, 167, 169-

71, 175-6, 182-3, 243Murphy, Margaret, 368-70

Nadal, Pere, 141Naples, 301, 424nave (ship type), 429, 431, 433Nefzaoua, 436Nelson, Benjamin, 59, 80, 82Nelson, R. R., 272Netherlands, firewood, 369; towns,

351Neudorf, 445Neusohl (Banská Bystrica), 392New Institutional Economics, 270-

2New World, 254Newark, 183Newcastle, 150, 155, 158, 170-1,

179, 239, 246Nice, 261Nieuwpoort, 319Niger Bend, 387, 396, 413, 421,

456Niger Delta (Rios dos Escravos),

107-10Nigro, Giampiero, 418, 458nobles and nobility, 91, 113-4,

121, 205-6, 221, 223, 234, 260,306, 507-9, 539, 542, 565

Noonan, John T., 54

Noordschoote, 324Norfolk, 246Normandy, 203, 253North, D. C., 270North Sea, 349-50, 354Northhampton, 154, 182Northumberland, 246Norwich, 158-9, 162, 168, 171,

180Nottingham, 468Nová Banš a, 451Novalesa, Abbey of, 259Novo Brdo, 393Nunes Jorge, 110Nürnberg, copper, 456; corpo-

rations, 392; merchants, 392,454

Ober Enns Valley, 448Oberfranken, 447Oberharz, 442, 444-5Öblarn, 448Odon, João de, 111Okehampton, 153, 179Oran, 436ore minerals, arsenopyrite, 452,

454; auriferous quartz, 391;cuprite, 452; chalcopyrite, 452-3; fahlore, 439-40, 447-8; enar-gite, 439; galena, 454; siderite,452; sphalerite, 454; sulphideores, 442, 452; Kupferkies, 447;tennantite, 439, 449, 452-3;tetrahedrite, 439, 449, 452-4

Orléans, 191Ormuz, 391Orwell Haven, 246Oswestry, 154Oudenaarde, 325Oued Guir, 415Oued Messaud, 423Oued Saoura, 415, 423Oued Tuat, 423

635INDEX

Oujda, 435Oundle, 181overseas expansion, 89; Africa, 90;

economy, 89; Portuguese, 89,92, 113-4, 118

Oxford, 491-3, 518-9, 524Oxfordshire, 468Oye, 202

Pachs (brothers), 425, 432-3;Nicolau de, 432-3

Padua, 462Palastrello, Alessandro da, 486-7Palermo, 299Pamir, 391Panigarola, Arrighino, 475, 483Pánský Diel, 452Paolo, Paoluccio di Maestro, 427Parco Nazionale Dolomiti Bellu-

nesi, 447Pardo, Miguel, 105Pardo, Pere, 432Parigi, B., 276Paris, 47, 193, 203, 349, 354, 363,

371, 491, 493-4, 498; Grand-Pont, 494, 496, 510, 512-3; Île-de-la-Cité, 494; Latin Quarter,494; Left Bank, 494; linentrade, 506; metal trades, 503;money-changers, 496, 512;Notre-Dame, 498, 516; PorteSt-Lazare, 495, 510; RightBank, 494; rue Galande (clos deGarlande), 494, shops andshopping, 504, 506, 508-10

partnerships, commercial, 60-6, 75,85, 106, 109-11, 316, 322, 454-5, 461, 464-5, 468, 484, 486,488; commenda, 62, 74; societasmaris (sea-loan), 62, 66, 74;dare ad proficuum maris, 62-3,74; dare ad portandum in com-pagniam (land-loan), 65; foenusnauticum (sea-loan), 74

Patay, 192

patrimony, 121, 132, 144, 205,215, 228, 538, 540-6, 552-3,555-9, 564-5, 570-1

patronage, 233, 245pavage, 151, 167, 170, 176, 182-3Pay, Henry, 252, 253peasant/peasants, 163-6, 172, 174,

191, 258-69, 539, 565; bon-dage, 265, 269; and capital,268; and credit/creditors, 268-9;dependent, 266, 268; free, 259,263-6, 302; freehold, 260; land,258-60, 262; and lords, 266-8;obligations, 265; rich, 260; ser-vitude, 257, 260; status, 263;tenure, 262, 268

Pedro, Infante of Portugal, 92Pedro I, King of Castile, 136 137,

140Pegolotti, Francesco Balducci, 420-

1, 438, 448Pere II, King of Aragon, 120Pere III, King of Aragon, 135,

136, 141Pérez, María Dolores López, 416Péronne, 326Persian Gulf, 391Perugia, 328Peterborough, 159, 181, 183Petrarch, 54Pettauer Weg, 450Pevensey, 153Philip, Count of Alsace, 324Philip Augustus, King of France,

506Philip the Good, Duke of Bur-

gundy, 187, 191-3, 196-8, 200,203, 204-6, 208-9, 482-4

Piacenza, 487Picardy, 197, 199, 326-7, 330-3,

336-7, 340-1, 343-4, 346-7;cities, 320; merchants, 327;troops, 205

Piesky (Sandberg), 452

636 INDEX

Pinto, Duarte Rodriguez, 110piracy, 94-5, 99, 239, 250-4Pisa, 63, 65-6, 280, 460Pistoia, 143plague, 119, 126, 128, 130, 134-5,

137-9, 142-3, 283, 442Plymouth, 239, 244-6, 249, 250;

harbour, 245Podbrezová, 451Podlipa, 452Pomana, 451Poland, copper, 438, 447, 450,

456; grain, 354; lead, 392Pomerania, 363Ponická Lehôtka, 453Poniky (Drienok, Predbane), 452-3pontage, 151, 167, 170, 175-6, 183Poole, 252Poperinge, 321, 322population, 111, 210, 272-5, 277-

8, 282-3, 285, 287, 290, 292,302, 311, 350, 363-6; nomad,413; overpopulation, 391; rural,267-9, 368-70; taxes, 127, 207,221, urban, 119, 124, 126, 128,137-9, 142-5, 248, 301, 303-4,311-2, 321, 325, 363-76, 573,597

Portinari, Bernardo, 484Portsmouth, 240, 245Portugal, 89-118, 188, 210-2, 220-

232, 252, 428, 456; and Africa,89-90, 93-7, 99, 117; alfândegas,101, 229; almoxarifes, 108, 110,225-6, 321; almoxarifados, 101,227-9; Aposentador Mor, 227231; aposentadorias, 226; Arma-zém, 101,103; assentamento, 114;Contador da Casa, 222; caravel,249; Casa da Ceuta, 100; Casados Contos, 223, 226, 231; Casados Escravos (Slave House), 101,108-9, 113; Casa de Guiné (Gui-nea House), 100, 102-3, 105,

113; Casa de Guiné e Mina, 100-3, 105, 113-6, 229; Casa da Ín-dia (India House) e Guiné, 101,228-9, 231-2, casamento(s), 114;Cortes, 99, 111-2, 115, 221,227; Crown, 89-117, 221-231;dízima, 223; dominium, 93; Escri-vão da Câmara, 222; expansion,89, 92, 113, 114, 221; expen-ditures, 114; fazenda, 92, 100-1,224-5, 228; fazenda de Guiné,100; Feitoria das Ilhas, 101;kings of, 221, 232; legislation,92-5, 97-8, 224-7; moradias,210, 222, 228-30; nobility, 113;and the Papacy, 93-4; relationswith non-Christians, 94; orça-mentos (budget estimates), 115;quittances (cartas de quitações),116, 212, 221-2; regimentos,103; revenues, 92, 95-6, 101,111-117, 221-3; royal court,210, 228; royal fazenda, 92,100-1, 224-6, 231; royal house-hold, 210-1, 222, 226-7, 230-2;revenues, 225; royal power, 92;reconquista, 92; sisa, 107, 223-5,227, 229, 231; state capitalism,90, 111; taixas, 104-5; tença(s),114; Tesoureiro Mor, 222;trautadores, 106; Vedor da Casa,222; Vedores da Fazenda, 225-7,231 vintena, 110; VintenaHouse, 109

Postan, M. M., 190, 233, 235pound (unit of weight), 162-3,

165-6, 431, 455; Majorcan, 421,433

pound (unit of currency), 276,465, 481-2, 554; Artois (Arte-sian), 313; Barcelona, 122, 124-5, 127-8, 132, 137, 141;English/sterling, 153-5, 161-2,192, 194, 214-7, 219-20, 225,227-8, 231, 238, 250-3, 312,314, 327, 329, 466-70, 501;Flanders (Flemish), 313, 466,

637INDEX

471-2, 474-6, 478-84, 486;Milanese, 487; tournois, 327-8

poundage, 216-8, 220, 252power, 91; bargaining, 270, 283,

390; baronial, 163; civicgovernments, 375; comital, 260,262; financial/capital, 68, 75;legislative and jurisdictional, 92,96, 98, 260, 263; noble, 375;political, 92, 100, 114, 239,374, 375; purchasing, 404, 406;royal, 92, 96, 98, 100, 114,117, 375; seigneurial, 262-3,266; state agents and officials,140; of subjects, 114, of wealth,564-6

Pozzobonello, Arrighino di Am-brogio, 488; Francesco di Arri-ghino, 388

Prato, 411, 428, 458precious metals, 49, 383, 387, 389;

399, 404, 413, 452-3precious stones, 98, 513prerogatives, royal, 112, 231;

seigneurial, 262prescription (praescriptio) (Roman

law contract), 45-6prestige, 54, 69, 92, 212, 453, 465price, just (iustum pretium), 78, 79prices, 373, 378, 564, 568; com-

modities, 111, 156-7, 161-4,300-1, 306, 305, 352-62, 379,383, 392-3, 399-403, 407, 420,495-6, 501-3, 531-3, 580; cop-per, 419-20, 427-8, 437; cor-relation, 353-63, 378; controland regulation, 224, 231, 300,304-5, 361; data, 156, 161,355, 362, 376, 378, 380; fixed,99, 104; gold, 383-7, 389, 391,393-7, 399-400, 407; inelastic,353, 363; land, 575; levels,126; market, 70; movementand trends, 122 127-8, 142,161, 164, 275, 306, 351-4, 361,376, 379, 396, 399, 404-5; taixa

(Crown price list), 104-5; andtransport, 373

Príncipe Island, 110Pršísecšnice, 446privateering, 234, 239, 250-2, 254privileges, 165, 168, 461; access,

550; charter of, 96, 333, 545;Cape Verde Islanders, 96-7, 99;commercial, 172, 308; court,227; economic, 308; executive,112; exemption, 168-70, 175;Fernão Gomes, 107; fiscal, 308;merchant, 167, 171; monopoly,121; institutional, 299; Ipswitch,146; local, 150; recognition of,171; royal, 121, 140, 155, 306;São Tomeans, 111; social, 571;spouse, 562; toll, 170; towns,168, 170, 177, 183, 235, 244;trade, 306-7

products, 275, 291, 305, 389, 407,504, 507, 546; cloth, 477;copper, 420, 438, 445, 449

producers, 308, 373, 567; cloth,470; copper, 420; of fuel, 371;of gold, 392, 394; peasant, 163

production, 363, 376, 503; agri-cultural, 352, 376; costs, 363-6,376; copper, 438, 445, 452,454-5; crop, 364, 548; for ex-port, 545; firewood, 369, 371;food, 349, 368-9, 371, 373;fuel, 373; garden, 572, 577-80;gold, 391-4, 407; grain, 299-300, 303, 352, 370-1, 376;heating supplies, 369; indust-rial, 349; lack of uniformity in,364; levels of, 393; regions of,364; patterns of, 368; perfume,98; silver, 387; technical coeffi-cients, 291; wheat, 299; wood,370; wool, 163; zones of, 364

productive, basis, 543; capacity,541; life, 541

productivity, 297; of assets, 571;agricultural regions, 375; offorests, 369; of gardens, 580;

638 INDEX

land, 372, 539; overseas re-gions, 375; soil, 376

profit and profitability, 41-2, 48,50-1, 57, 62-4, 66, 69, 73-4,76, 80, 94, 96-7, 99, 100, 105-6, 111-4, 174, 187, 190, 214,216, 218, 220-3, 225-8, 230-1,235, 239, 249-54, 300, 308,356, 363-4, 378, 389, 400, 405,418, 428, 432, 461, 465-6, 470,472-5, 481-8, 512-4, 564-5, 568

property, 45, 49, 62, 538, 544,559, 565, 570, 573, 590; allo-dium, 541; alienating, 324, 565;assumptions about, 565; cate-gory, 539; circulation of, 538;community, 324-5, 560; confis-cation, 94; debt, 555-6; defini-tions, 538-9; fines, 231; formsof, 565; fungible, 564; “goods”(goeden), 565; immovable (im-mobilia, immeubles, immeublen,unbewegliche Güter, heritages,erve, Erbgüter), 324, 538-48,550, 555-7, 559, 562, 565, 569,571; impartible, 544, 547, 552,556, 559, 561-2, 569-70; inheri-tance, 324, 555; joint, 560; law,539-541, 543-4, 546, 553, 559,562; loss of, 94-95; marital,543, 559, 562, 564; meaningof, 564, 567; movable (mobilia,meubles, meublen, beweglicheGüter, cateux, cateylen, catheylen,Fahrnis, chattel), 234, 538-54,557-9, 561-2, 564-6, 569; patri-mony (erve), 538, 540-546, 552-3, 555-9, 564-5, 570-1; partible(deelbar), 543, 547, 551-3, 558-2; perpetually producing, 541;personal, 236, 538, 540, 553-4;private, 215, 540, 545;relations, 564; real, 64, 557;rents, 556, 558; rights, 258,266, 275, 540, 559; residual,561; taxation, 121; transfers of,538, 543

Protestantism, 77, 80, 84

Provence, 257-9, 261, 262-4, 266-9; maritime trade, 415

Provence, counts of, 262Provins, 310; fairs, 310Ptuj, 450Puget-Theniers, 265, 267-9Pukanec, 451Puritans, 74

quayage, 176, 183Quint, Antoni, 425, 434quintal (unit of weight), 429-30,

432-3, 436-7, 456Qu .seir, 396

Rachfahl, Felix, 68, 71, 73, 74Rabat, 302, 303Raimund Berenger V, 262Raimund Berenger III, 262Rammelsberg, 442, 444Ramon Folc IV, Viscount of

Cardona, 120rationalization (social process), 59,

61, 76, 80, 82; economic, 77-9,82; ethical, 78

Rau, Virginia, 225Rayy, 391reconquista, 92Redolho, Calliro, 107-8Reformation, 83regalian rights, 91, 112Reggane, 421, 423-4real/réis (unit of currency), 107-12,

114-6, 224-5, 227-8 Remann, Monika, 594rent, 51, 91, 270, 273-4, 278-9,

319, 552, 553, 556-8, 562, 565,569, 575; African regions/com-modities, 98, 101, 106-10;agreements, 48; annuity, 64,319; bail à rente, 556; collectionof, 225-6, 570; contracts, 274;erfelijke rente, 556; “eerve, eeve-liike rente,” 556; erfrenten, 557;

639INDEX

farm, 281, 291, 364; gardens,575, 577, 580; houses, 573;impartible, 556; income, 174;inheritance, 558; land, 543,553, 566, 575, 577, 596; lijf-rente (rente viagère), 557-8, 561;losrenten, 557; payments/char-ges, 49, 552, 556, 566; pea-sants, 165, 266; perpetual, 6264, 553, 556-8; redeemable,557, 562; rentable, 48, 50; rentefoncière, 556; rentes à prixd’argent, 556; rente constituée,556, 558; rentier class, 570;rent-seeking behaviour, 81;royal, 216, 224-5, 228; secured(besette renten), 557, 562; tenu-rial, 557

rentables, 48-52revenue, extraordinary, 130; mar-

ket, 155, 172; maximization,94-5, 117, 174; noble/seigneu-rial, 91, 117; nominal, 126-8ordinary/regular, 123, 134, 140;Papal, 470; royal, 91-2, 95-6,101, 105-7, 109-15, 117, 121,127, 214-32, 298; tolls, 147,151-6, 167, 174; urban, 122-8,130-4, 139-40, 145, 152, 172-3,237-8, 541, 577; village, 267

Rexpoede, 322, 324Reynolds, Susan, 508Rheims, 203Rhineland, 596; gold, 393Rhine River, 259Richard III, King of England, 210,

215Richardson, H. G., 492-3, 518Richardson, W. C., 212Richtárová, 452Ridolfi, Lorenzo, 55Riemann, F. K., 597Riera, stream, 430Rio Primeiro, 109

risk, 62-5, 83, 95, 109, 280, 439,565, 571

ri.tl (unit of weight), 400, 408Rocchi, Ambrogio Lorenzi de’, 427Rodrigues, António, 110Rodriguez, Graviel, 110Rodriguez, Nicolão, 110Rogers, Clifford, 189Romanus Pontifex (Papal Bull,

1455), 93-4Romney, 180Roover, Raymond de, 467-70, 481Rotterdam, 199Rozšnš ava, 453Rubin, Barbara Blatt, 508Rudabánya, 453Rudnš any, 454Ruffini, Agostino, 483Runn, lake, 441rural, 125; areas, 311, 324, 371,

375; artisans, 322; creditors,498; domains, 321; environs,325; growers, 595; hinterland,165; industry, 368; land, 312;markets, 165, 168, 175; people,370; population, 368; prole-tariat, 71; properties, 570; ser-vants, 523; settlements, 302;urban-rural relationship, 572,595-6

Rye, 246

Sachsenberg, 445Sahara, 412, 415; central, 387;

copper, 411, 441, 456;northern, 421, 426; trans-Saharan trade, 98, 411-3, 416,418, 429, 438, 441, 447, 456;trade routes, 394, 396; west-central, 413-5

Sahel, 394Saigerprozess, 392; Saigerhütte, 392salvation economy, 60, 79-80Saint Louis, King of France, 262-3

640 INDEX

Saint-Bertin, Abbey of, 199Saint-Omer, 199, 313, 326, 328;

constitution, 324; fairs, 330Saint-Quentin, 326-7Salisbury, 216Salon, 263Salviati (family), 467Salzach, 447Samaran, Colette, 265Samuel, 431San Miniato al Tedesco, 460-1San Salvatore, Abbey of, 273, 276Sanchez, Manuel, 123Sandwich, 180, 239, 246, 470Sangerhausen Revier, 445Santarém, 211Santiago Island, 110Santiago de Compostella, 244,

248-50São Tomé Island, 99, 110-1São Jorge da Mina, 99, 101-3,

110, 221Sardinia, 129, 135-6Savoy, 265 Saxony, 387 449; ores, 442, 445Scarborough, 154, 176, 182, 238,

239Scheldt River, 330Scheler, August, 508Schladming, 448Schleswig-Holstein, 573Schmoller, Gustav, 71Schwabboden, 449Schwaz, 449, 457Schwaz-Brixlegg, 448Sciacca, 299, 300, 307Scotland, 188; wars with England,

239Selonnet, 261Semmeringstraße, 450Senegal, 94, 108,

seisin, 168-169, 171Senj (Segna), 450Serbia, 393; gold, 393; mining,

394serfdom, 257-258, 262, 266serfs, 258, 262-264Sersanders, Jan, 556servitude, 257-268Seyne, 261al-Shaé ‘baéníé, Yashbak, 401, 403,

408sharecropping, see mezzadriaSherborne, J. W., 235shipbuilding, 240, 245, 248, 253,

551shipping, 233-5, 244-5, 350-3, Bri-

tish, 248; cost of, 237, 373;copper, 419; “Councils ofShipping,” 240; Crown relianceon, 240; depots, 175; econo-mies, 245; enemy, 250; expan-sion of, 248, 349; experts, 240-1; foreign, 251; industry, 241;investment, 250; lanes, 245;late medieval, 239; to Maghrib,429; mercantile, 236-7, 249;and Parliament, 241; trade,252; and war, 239-40, 253;Western Mediterranean, 447;Valencian, 416; Venetian, 406;West Country (England), 249

ships, 203, 239, 242, 248, 251,308, 374, 406, 426, 468, 517;arrival of, 108, 204; blockade,207; building, 237; cargo, 236;costs of, 238; Crown and, 106,235-238, 241, 243-4, 248; fund-ing for, 249; impressment, 236,241-4; merchant, 236; navalservice, 246-7; and Parliament,241-2; paying for, 238; sold,123, supply, 103; value of, 235;and war, 199, 236, 239, 241,243-4

shopkeepers, 240

641INDEX

shops, shopping, 464, 491,493-501, 503-7, 508-30

Shrewsbury, 152, 155, 169, 170,182

Shropshire, 154Sicily, 297-8, 302-3 308; govern-

ments, 304-5; markets, 298;ports, 299; towns, 299, 301,305, 307; wheat, 298-300, 307

Sicily, Kingdom of, 302, 306, 309Siena, Gerard de, 41-2, 46-8 50-7Siena, 273, 280, 286, 290, 464Sierra Leone, 109Sijilmassa (Tafilelt), 413, 415silver, 95, 313, 378-9, 387, 389,

391-4, 396-7, 399-405, 407-10,413, 415, 439, 444-6, 449, 452-3, 484, 494-6, 502, 507, 509,511, 513, 527, 533, 584; silvermining, 391-3, 387

Sisteron, 261Slánské Hory, 453Slovakia, 393; Central, 451, 453;

copper, 438, 441, 447, 450-1,454-7; Eastern, 453; gold, 392;ores and minerals, 440, 451,454-5; mines and mining, 394,438, 453; silver, 393

Sluys, 199, 200Smale, William, 251, 253Smith, Robert D., 187Smolník (Szmolnokbánya,

Schmöllnitz), 453-5social, asocial, 41; barriers, 297;

capital, 114; changes, 223, 571;class, 565, 582; composition,588; consequences, 233; crises,91; derogation, 571; disloca-tion, 268; divisions, 260; domi-nation, 262; force, 260; goals,91; groups, 165; hierarchy,569; history and historians,569, 571; identity, 539, 544,566; implications, 570; inten-tionality, 271; interaction, 114;

landscape, 259-60; level, 588-9,594; life, 211, 542-3; lineage,570; logic, 547; meaning, 564;necessity, 45; order, 539, 559,565, 571, 587; payments, 113-4; position, 559; place, 568;privilege, 571; processes, 89,569-570; project, 562; promo-tion, 565; rank, 213, 242, 570;relations, 59, 271; rewards,565; roles, 260; science, 271;significance, 565; sphere, 66;strategies, 117; status, 259, 595;structure, 259; system, 269; ten-sions, 564; ties, 212; unrest,214; variability, 165; work

societal, approach, 89; autonomy,66; order, 75, 77-8; spheres, 82

society/societies, 363, 403, 564,593; capitalist, 571; commer-cial, 542; commercialized, 308;European, 80; human, 56; mar-ket, 544, 571; Northern Euro-pean, 538; record, 157, 180-3;and war, 233

socioeconomic, areas, 594; cate-gory, 582; conditions, 592;groups, 582; importance, 543;levels, 597; nature, 593; status,576, 582; strata, 587; transfor-mation, 543

Sombart, Werner, 60-1 71, 73-4,76

Somerset, 153Somme River, 320, 326-7, 330,

336-7, 340-1, 343-4, 346-7Sonnenberger Moor, 444Sorell, Solomon, 431Southampton, 169, 175, 181, 240,

245-6, 470; Italian imports,470; merchants, 468; port of,218; revenues, 218; wool, 468,470

Southwark, 179sovereignty, 92, 119, 140, 543

642 INDEX

Spain, 188, 407, 456; ships, 251;Sicilian wheat, 298

SŠpania Dolina, valley, 452Spencer, 216Spinelli, Tommaso, 465spices, 122, 228, 405-6, 468, 496,

584, 591, 595, 595, 603; Afri-can, 97-8, 417-8; spicers, 496,505, 514; spicing, 498, 501,511, 526; trade, 108, 223, 227-8, 230, 405-7; wines (spiced),498, 524

Spisš (Zips), 453Spisšská Nová Ves, 453Spisšsko-Gemerské Rudohorie, 453St Ives, 183St John, Knights of, 304St Kenelm the Martyr, 517St Victor of Marseille, Abbey of,

258, 260St Vällan, lake, 441Stamford, 322, 519, 524Stapel, 324Staré Hory (Altgebirg), 452Starohorské Vrchy, 451state/states, 89, 308; city-states,

287, 467; “domain state,” 117;enterprise, 91; finances andcredit, 119, 142, 143-4; Iberian,127; late medieval, 91; Sicily,298, 301, 309

Steenvoorde, 324Stephan, Hans-Georg, 587Štiavnica, Banská, 451-2; strato-

volcano, 451; ore district, 452stipulatio (Roman law contract), 49stock exchange, German, 60,

69-70Strasbourg, 380; grain prices, 361-

2Stufford, 182Styria, 448Suakin, 396

Sudan, Western, 411, 416, 434Suffolk, 246Sugden, R., 270Sumption, Jonathan, 189Susen, Ayon, 426, 431-2, 437Susen, Haim, 430-1Sussex, 149, 153, 246Svätodusšná, 452SŠvedlár (Schwedler), 454Sweden, copper, 441; firewood,

369Switzerland, 472Syracuse, 299, 305Syria, 402

Tabelbala, 424Tademaït Plateau, 421Tafilalt, 413, 415, 423Tagenduhet, castrum de, 424Tagus River, 228ibn Taghríé-Birdíé, Abué al-Ma .haé sin

Yué suf, 402Tamentit (Tamantít), 421, 423-4;

Jews, 425Tamest, 423Tanezruft (Sahara Desert), 413,

421, 424Tangier, defence of, 221Taoism, 76-7Tartary, 399Tatra Mountains, DŠ umbierské

Tatry, 451; Lower (NízkéTatry), 451

taxes and taxation, 91-2, 96, 105,107, 112, 224, 231, 461;burden and coercion, 124, 137-40, 142, 173; censal, 126, 128,130-5, 139, 141-2; civic, 119;collection, 140, 143; comital,265; consumption, 119, 122-3,127, 132, 134, 142-3; custom-ary, 216, 223; direct, 152;dízima, 223; exemptions, 221,

643INDEX

243; export, 328; extraordinary,123, 126, 129, 134-5, 138;forms of, 148; indirect, 122-3,304; imposicions, 122-4, 126,128, 130, 132, 134-5, 138-9;institutions, 188; Manresa, 123-42; municipal, 132-42, 224,374; ordinary, 129, 218; porttowns, 253; regular, 125, 129-31, 138, 228; sale of, 123-4;sales taxes, 172; sisa, 107, 223-5, 227, 229, 231; tallia, 123,130-2, 134, 139; trade, 156,172, 306; violari, 130-3, 135war, 233, 268-9

tax farming, 96, 106, 108-10, 113,115, 132, 151, 154-5, 169, 173,252, 304

Taunton, 153Taurirt, 435Telkibánya, 453teloneum, 148, 170textiles, crafts, 497; display of,

102; entrepreneurs, 321-2;Flemish, 310; industry, 310-1,323, 334; imported, 223;magnates, 327; trades, 234,504-6; workers, 321-2, 504-6,588 (see also “cloth” and“clothing”)

theology, moral, 41-53, 56-8Terranova, 305, 307Tewkesbury, 153Thames River, 210, 246Thomas, R., 270Thomaz, Luís Felipe, 89, Thorn (Torux), 441Thorold Rogers, James, 161, 164Tichá Voda (Stillbach), 454Tidikelt, 421time, sale of, 48Timmi, 423-4tin, 244, 250, 420, 430, 438, 510Tirol, 447

Tits-Dieuaide, Marie-Jeanne, 350-1Tlemcen, 415, 434-5Tokaj Mountains, 453tolls, 112, 146-83; Anglo-Saxon,

149; assessing, 148, 156; collec-tion, 146-7, 149-50, 152-3, 156,168-9, 173-5, 177-8; collectors,151-2, 162, 165, 167-8, 173-4,177; customary, 148; descrip-tion of, 147; documents, 147;Domesday Book, 149; disputes,169, 173; evasion, 167; exemp-tion/freedom from, 148-9, 165-71, 244, 307; grants of, 151-2,155, 169; impact of, 148, 165;lists of, 147, 149, 152, 156,179; local, 148-154, 156-60,163, 166-7, 169, 172, 175, 179-83; market, 153; murage, 155;passage of goods (thurghtoll,teloneum, teoloneum, theolonium),148; paying and payers, 146,148, 165-7, 171-17; policy, 174;privileges, 170; public works,149, 151-4, 156-7, 159-60, 166-7, 169-72, 175-7, 181; rates,147-8, 150, 157-66, 172-4, 177;revenue/income generated, 147,149, 151-5, 167, 174; right tocollect, 150-1, 168-9, 173; sales,148-9; schedules, 156, 174;special, 148; structure of, 158;“toll and team,” 149; towns,151-4; and trade, 146-8, 161,172-8; on trade, 300, 435;transit, 149; types/forms of,146-8, 151, 156; use of, 147,176

Tommaso, Cecco di, and brothers,475, 480, 483

Toreyó, Joan, 425, 431-2Torhout, 329, 334; fairs, 330, 332-

3Torres, Dolors Pifarré, 416, 419Torksey, 158, 179Tortosa, 123

644 INDEX

Tosinghi, Giovanni, 433-4, 437Totnes, 500, 519, 524Toulouse, 514Tourelles, 191Tournai, 189, 326, 337, 339, 341,

343-4, 346-7towns, 350, 352, 362, 371, 375-6,

378, 402, 507, 597; bailiwick,121; Brabant, 325; capture of,192-3; charters, 146, 149, 169-1, 224; Catalan, 120; coastal,198, 203; councillors, 128; cus-tomary, 146; defence, 137, 193,202, 208, 238, 243, 253; eco-nomy, 239; English, 147, 150-83, 200, 233-53, 349-50, 374-5;feudal, 121; Flemish, 315, 321,324-5; food supply, 363, 368-70, 372-4; fortifications, 194;fuel, 369-73; French, 192-3;German, 361; government, 146,173, 301, 316; gilds, 165, 172;hinterland, 165, 174; Hungary,451, 453; Italian, 328, 374-5;jurisdiction, 319; leadership,151; litigation, 171; Low Coun-tries, 190, 208, 361, 375; mar-ket, 121, 153, 172; medieval,507; mining, 453; networks,297; Netherlands, 351; NorthSea, 349-50; northern Europe,375; patricians, 140; Picardy,327; population, 325, 363, 371-2, 374-5; port, 233-40, 243,248, 253; Portuguese, 211, 224,227; Provence, 262, 267; realestate, 62; records, 136, 491;resources, 132; revenues, 237-8;rights and privileges, 168-83;rivalries, 208; royal, 132-3; Si-cily, 299, 301, 304-5, 307-8; ta-xes and tolls, 132, 151-77;townspeople, 121, 146, 193,195, 201, 312, 370, 372; size,363, 371-5, 377; villa, 122;walls, 151, 202, 349; Walloon,324, 326

Trapani, 299trade, 62, 74, 76, 146, 156, 163,

166, 172-3, 180-1, 191, 207,221, 328-34, 349-50, 353, 362,378, 404-6, 416, 425, 468-70,477, 482, 484-5, 538, 548, 559,571, 589; Asia, 101; balance of,467, 470; Balearic coppertrade, 411-57; bulk, 407;bullion, 383; carrying, 249-51;centres, 434, 447; costs of, 178,308; conduct of, 178; controlof, 208; constraints on, 308;development of, 147; commo-dities and goods, 150, 153,157-9, 165, 407, 568; English,147, 156, 166, 327; export,407; fish, 319; flow of, 297,305, 415; food, 174, 350, 376;foreign, 228; geography of,161; gold, 227-8, 388, 390,399, 406-7; in goods, 389, 405;grain, 297-300, 305-6, 353-6;Hanseatic, 450; impedimentsto, 161; impact on, 153; im-port, 407; India, 231, 101; in-ternational, 163; inter-regional,300, 310; intra-European, 349;internal, 300, 306; Jewish, 424-5; local, 163, 331; long-distance, 163, 349, 374, 446;manual, 420; maritime, 234-5,413, 415; metal, 438; network,389; overland, 349; overseas,228, 230, 238, 248, 250; pas-senger, 249; permits, 300; pri-vate, 110; regional, 121, 308,326; right to, 167, 171; role of,297; royal interference, 176;“secrets,” 426; shipping, 252;silver, 391; slave, 106, 113,118; small-scale, 163, 174;specie, 389, 399, 405; spice, 97,107; 223, 227-8, 230, 405-7;taxation on, 156, 172, 223,306; terms of, 275; textile, 234;tolls and, 146-8, 161, 163, 165,168, 172; trans-Saharan, 394,

645INDEX

416, 422-4, 441; unit of, 157;urban, 275, 491, 503; volume,172, 223; wholesale, 166, 321;with West Africa, 92, 94-112,115, 117-8, wine, 246, 327;wool, 163, 328-9, 467-8, 483

traders, 106, 172-5, 178, 378;converso, 433; foreign, 167; in-digenous, 405; Jewish, 429,433; local, 175; long-distance,374; low-level, 495; Maghrib,425, 427, 431-2; petty, 165,172, 174; private, 98, 106;retail, 494, 503; river, 374;small-scale, 163, 165, 174-5;stock-market, 70; urban, 172

trades, urban, 284, 493, 589; foodand drink, 493, 495-8, 500-3,506, 511-12, 513, 515-7, 523-7,530-2; leather and skins, 494-5,497, 501-6, 509-11, 515, 523,527-9, 533-4; metals, 494-6,501, 503-6, 507, 509-13, 515,523, 527-8; stone, 505, 509;textiles, 493, 496-500, 502,504-5, 510, 513-16, 523-4, 533;wood, 497, 510, 514

transport/transportation, 102-103,156, 193, 242, 246-7, 373, 539,578; costs, 352, 362-4, 373,375, 377-9, 468, 470; desert,394; horses, 236, 241; improve-ments in, 353; inland, 374;metal, 425; mode of, 147, 163;network, 394; pilgrim, 246-9;river, 374; sea, 299; technology,286, 375; “Transport of Flan-ders,” 325; troops, 235

Trave River, 572Trento, 447Treppenhauer, 445Trevelyan (family), 252Trieste, 450Troeltsch, Ernst, 72, 72tronage, 154Tuareg, 434

Tuat, 411-3, 415-6, 421-6, 433-7,455-6, 458

Tuat al-henna (see Zaglou), 423Tudela, Bernat, 425, 427Tudela, Jaume, 429Tudor dynasty, 211tunnage, 216-8, 220, 252Turner, Hilary, 155Turner, Thomas Hudson, 493Tuscany, 54, 273, 464; agriculture,

292; merchants, 411, 419, 460;towns, 374

Tyrrhenian Basin, 389Tyrol, 448

Ubaldi, Baldus degli, 54Ulverston, 173Ungheria (see Hungary), 451Unterharz, 444Unterinntal, 448urban, 572; agglomerations, 597;

analysis, 366-7; areas, 324, 334;artisans, 503; budgets, 153;characteristics, 310; consumers,373; consellers, 120; centres,299, 371, 375; charters, 170,231; commerce, 491, 503, 506;creditors, 498, 523; crisis, 143;debt, 120; demand/needs, 297,308, 374, 376; development,120; dwellers/urbanites, 275,349, 369-70, 373, 565-7; elites,308, 576; economy, 67, 542-543; “enterprise zones,” 172;finance, 124, 148, 150; gar-dens, 572; government, 120,374; growth, 376, 446; house-holds, 507; institutions, 120;legislation, 375; life, 152, 491;markets, 350, 352, 374, 595-6;masses, 301; occupations, 493498, 504; population, 128, 363,372; poverty, 507; rights, 454;servants, 523; tax and revenue,120, 122-3; trade and traders,

646 INDEX

172, 491, 503; trades andcrafts, 503-4, 516; types, 160;urban-rural relationship, 572,595-6; unrest, 120

urbanization, 311, 349-50, 374usury (usura, usurae), 41-86; Aris-

totle on, 41-2, 51, 56-8; “ex-trinsic titles” to, 57, 64, 83;Gerard of Siena on, 47-53;Giovanni d’Andrea on, 54-6;Henry of Susa on, 45; laws, 63,64, 67, 71; prohibition of, 45,47-50, 59-79, 81-5; restitutionof, 46; Roman law definitionof, 49; Thomas Aquinas on, 50;Weber, Max on, 59-86

Utrecht, 380; grain prices, 354,356, 359-61

Valencia, 412, 427-8, 431; copper,429, 431, 434, 437; Datinibranch, 418, 429, 431, 433;intermediaries, 418; Muslimmerchants, 429, 433; shipping,416

Vallis dominorum (Herrengrundvalley), 452

Valle del Fersina, 447Valle Imperina, 447Valois, Dukes of, 187value, 50-3, 55-6, 284; of bills of

exchange, 471-2, 474-8; capital,277; of cargo, 406; of commo-dities/goods/merchandise, 156-7,161-5, 329, 543; coinage, 484;currency, 362, 399, 402-4, 468;exchange, 313, 475, 482; offungibles, 52, 55; of gardens,572; of gold, 408-9; of immo-vables, 555; of imports, 470-1;imposicions, 124; intrinsic, 51,313, 402-4; of land, 539, 575;market, 99, 565; of markets,153; measure of 41; monetary,50; of movables, 539; of sales,163; ships, 235; silver, 95;source of, 41; 50-3, 55-6; of

tolls, 153; of trade, 112, 406;of wool, 469

values, 77, 83, 544, 565, 568Van der Wee, Herman, 350, 351Van Haaster, Henk, 586, 589Var River, 263-4Varpan, lake, 441Vatican, 424Vaughan, Richard, 196, 203Vaz, Estevão, 103Velebitski Kanal (Canale della

Morlacca/della Montagna), 450Veneto, 447Venice, 120, 134-5, 142, 144-5,

404, 407, 411-2, 416, 439, 464,472, 475-6; and Aragon, 428;banking, 475; bills of exchange,476; Borromei, 460, 464, 471,475-6, 480, 481-3, 485; com-panies, 464; copper, 411, 416,419-21, 424, 426-8, 430, 433,438, 440, 447-50, 454-7; cur-rency, 401; exchange rates,473-4; exports, 400, 406; firmsand agents, 419, 424; galleys,416, 427-9, 431, 469, 472;gold-silver ratio, 398, 400, 406,407; lagoon, 450; merchants,392, 424, 427, 475; moneymarket, 471; shipping, 426,433; textiles, 469; tin, 420;trade, 406

Ventura & Co., 475Veporské Pásmo, 451Veporské Vrchy, 451Verdon River, 264Verzona (galley), 428Veurne, 325, 337, 339, 341, 344,

346-7; castellany of, 316, 319,324, 337, 339, 341-5, 347

Vienna, 450Vienne, Council of (1311-1312), 56Villadestes, Mecià de, 424Visby, 441

647INDEX

Visconti, Dukes of Milan, 461, 465Viseu, Duchy of, 221, 228Vismara, Taddeo di Ardizio, 388Vitaliani (family), Gerolimo, 462;

Giacomo, 462Von Thünen, Johan, 363-9, 376Volovské Vrchy (Volovec, Ochsen-

berg), 453Volterra, 464

Waitz, Georg, 492, 517Wakenitz River, 573, 583Walaé ta, 413, 423Walchen Valley, 448Wales, 235-6, 246, 468Warendorp, Wilhelm von, 587Wargla, 387, 415wars and warfare, 91, 119;

Aragon-Castile, 124, 128, 136;Aragon-Genoa, 135, 136;Aragon-Genoa-Venice, 142;Aragon-Sicily, 300; benefits,239; civil, 124, 136, 144, 214,483; domestic, 259; expendi-tures, 91; England-Scotland,239; fifteenth-century, 188;financing and taxation, 119,128, 135, 187, 189, 190, 191,233, 268-9, 436; Flanders, 310;Genoa-Venice (War of Chiog-gia), 144; Hundred Years War,187-8, 190-1, 195-6, 198, 209,233-5, 239, 240, 245, 249, 253-4; Iberia, 136; impact, 119,142, 161, 233-5, 237, 238, 253,351, 428; material and sup-plies, 199, 236, 237; medieval,187; Portugal-Castile, 220, 223,428; shipping, 236, 237, 239,241-2, 244-7, 249; sieges, 195,208; Wars of the Roses, 216,220

Warwick, Earl of, 216Warwick, estates, 216, 218Waterford, 182

Waurin, Jean de, 195, 196, 200wealth, 91-92, 227-8, 248, 464-5,

535, 542, 553, 555, 559, 561,565; as capital, 564; circulationof, 562, 571; immovable, 538-9;king’s, 215; metropolitan, 221;movable, 538-9, 56; nature of,564; patrimonial, 555; percapita, 126; private, 215; public,215; “real,” 543

Weber, Max, 59-84; dissertation,60, 61, 67; Economy and Society,61, 73, 75 77; History of Com-mercial Partnerships, 61; Protes-tant Ethic, 60, 67-8, 70-1, 73-5,79; non-Christian religions, 76-7; “spirit of capitalism,” 67-871; usury, 60-1, 67, 72-3, 75-84

Weinberger, Stephen, 260Welf, 444Wennington, Robert, 252West Country, 249, 252, 254Westminster, 177, 240; Abbey,

492, 517Wettinger, Godfrey, 303Weymouth, 246William the Conqueror, King of

England, 188Wilson, Alan G., 365Winchelsea, 246Winchester, 180, 183, 517wine, 49, 51, 119, 121-3, 127, 137,

158-60 162, 165, 223, 238,245-51, 277, 281, 327, 495,498, 501-5, 511, 524, 530-2

Winter, S. G., 272Wissenbach, 442Wisla River (Vistula), 441Wobes, Timo, 587Wolkenburg, 446Wolof, 108wool, buying of, 322, 328-9, 467-

70, 478; cloth and clothing,477, 496-7, 500, 507, 510-1,

648 INDEX

513, 516; draper, 502, 507,513-5; England, 147, 158-66,175, 327, 329, 467-70, 478;exports, 328-9, 469, 477, 481;imports, 69; Italian buyers andsellers, 328-9, 467-70; Ma-ghribi, 417; market, 163; priceof, 161; merchants, 175; reve-nue from, 127, 147, 158-63,175, 328; sale of, 165-6, 416;shipping of, 175, 328; Staplers,477; trade in, 163, 328-9, 467-8, 470, 483; workers, 498, 506,516; value of, 164, 469; yield,163-4

Worcester, 168, 182Wright, Thomas, 508Wyffels, Carlos, 311

Xipio, Jucef, 429

Yarmouth, 159, 239, 246Yaxley, 179Yemen, 387, 402York, 171, 182; crown estates, 218York, Duke of, 215Yorkshire, 246Ypres, 188, 208, 310, 313, 315-6,

319, 322, 324, 327-9, 333, 336-9, 341-2, 344-5, 347; capitaland credit, 320, 322 324, 327,329, 331-4, 336; castellany,321, 324, 332, 337, 339, 341,342, 344-5, 347; central place,312, 321-2, 325-6, 330-1, 333-4; citizens, 319, 325, fairs, 314,329, 330-3, 339-40, 342-8;government, 312-3, 316, 319,322, 328; industry, 311, 316,321, 327, 329; legal system,324 merchants, 322, 327, 329;port, 319; residents, 321, 322;rebellions, 322; suburbs and sa-tellites, 321, 324; troops, 205,206

Zaglou, 423

Zagreb, 450Západné Karpaty, 451Zeeland, 207zentner (unit of weight), 392, 454-5Zerner, Monique, 257, 260-1, 264,

266zinc, 420, 439, 448, 453Zschopau Valley, 445Zwickauer Mulde, 446Zwin River, 208