The Beheaded Banker of Barcelona
Was a medieval banker in Catalonia executed for going bankrupt?
Templar Banking: How to go from Donated Rags to Vast Riches
While the Crusades gave the Templars a stage to project their might, their true source of power lay within a revolutionary new financial system: the Templar Bank.
From Moneylending to Hell
Moneylending was serious business in the Middle Ages. You could be risking your very soul! Lucie Laumonier talks with Sama Mammadova, a PhD candidate at Harvard University, who studies the history of usury and moneylending in fourteenth and fifteenth-century Italy. How did moneylenders reconcile their business with the fear of sin?
World cities before globalisation: The European city network, A.D. 1300-1600
This dissertation is a quantitative study of the spatial business strategies of 130 late medieval and 16th-century European commercial and banking firms, the business networks of which have been put together for a structural analysis of the European city network between ca. 1300 and ca. 1600.
Bankers and Banking in Medieval Italy
Banks as we have come to know them in today’s world owe their origins to the innovative credit mechanisms developed in medieval Italy.
Did Purchasing Power Parity Hold in Medieval Europe?
This paper employs a unique, hand-collected dataset of exchange rates for five major currencies (the lira of Barcelona, the pound sterling of England, the pond groot of Flanders, the florin of Florence and the livre tournois of France) to consider whether the law of one price and purchasing power parity held in Europe during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.
BOOKS: The Feuding Families of Medieval and Renaissance Italy
Put down the Godfather, turn off the Sorpanos, and check out the real Italian families of Medieval and Renaissance Italy!
Notarial Convention in the Facilitation of Trade and Economics in Mid-Thirteenth Century Marseille
This paper examines Marseillaise notarial documents of 1248 from the cartulary of Girauld Amalric. Amalric’s cartulary demonstrates how notarial techniques and related legal conventions facilitated Marseille’s long- and short-distance trade.
Economic Credit in Renaissance Florence
What were the social and institutional factors that led to, and reinforced, the precocious emergence of Florentine commercial capitalism, especially in the domain of international merchant banking?
Lodovico Capponi: A Florentine Banker and a Lending Transaction in 16th Century Florence
This paper examines how loans transpired in early 16th century Italy, taking a look at a specific transaction involving Lodovico Capponi of Florence and the Vatican in Rome.
CRISIS OF CONTRACTS FOR MERCHANTS IN CRISIS: INSTITUTIONS, CORPORATE FINANCE AND GROWTH IN GENOA (11TH -17TH C.)
My paper focuses these “merchant princes” from Genoa before the “industrial revolution”. The rise and fall of Genoa provides indeed a striking case about the success and failure of what, in the same vein than Bagehot, Joseph Schumpeter called the “creative destruction”, and the role financial markets in that process.
Religion, Warfare and Business in Fifteenth Century Rhodes
How did a military-monastic order manage the resources of an island commercially asimportant as that of Rhodes while overcoming the limitations due to its patrimonial struc-tureto cover their defensive needs? In this essay weattempt to answer this question interms of practice and in the light of relationsthatthe Knights maintained with two distinctgroups of merchants: the Catalan-Aragonese and the Florentines.
A Tale of “Benevolent” Governments: Private Credit Markets, Public Finance, and the Role of Jewish Lenders in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
In Tuscan private credit markets, Jewish lending helped households to smooth consumption, buy working capital, and provide dowries for daughters.
15th century Italian banking records discovered in London manuscript
Records of Italian bankers partially covered over fifty years later by traditional English crests
Economy of Ragusa, 1300 – 1800: The Tiger of Mediaeval Mediterranean
An economist is indeed tempted to think of Ragusa as the “Adriatic Tiger “ of yesteryear, an early example of a small open economy with strong fundamentals, and to hypothesize further that, in analogy to the current consensus about what it takes to minimize the impact of external crises, these strengths also allowed Ragusa to mitigate the effects of the many external shocks and financial crises in Medieval Europe.
The politics of factional conflict in late medieval Flanders
In his influential study on political factions in medieval Europe, Jacques Heers demonstrated the importance of factionalism in the political life of the middle ages, at the level of cities and regions as well as at the ‘national’ level.
The Social Stratigraphy of Coin and Credit in Late Medieval England
The money that the medieval English made conducted matters of state into the heart of society. The concerted quality of value – the fact that creating a currency connected public authority with every individual holding it – made that unavoidable.
The evolutionary dynamics of the credit relationship between Henry III and Flemish merchants, 1247-1270
Within England, the royal household was by far the biggest single customer for cloth,
wax and other high-status goods.
Medieval Market Design: Product Grouping on Medieval Fairs
Medieval Market Design: Product Grouping on Medieval Fairs Boerner, Lars (Humboldt University Berlin) Paper given at the European Historical Economics Society Conference (2005)…
Early medieval port customs, tolls and controls on foreign trade
Early medieval port customs, tolls and controls on foreign trade Middleton, Neil Early Medieval Europe, Vol.13:4 (2005) Abstract The objective of this paper is…
The State as an Enforcer in Early Venetian Trade: a Historical Institutional Analysis
The State as an Enforcer in Early Venetian Trade: a Historical Institutional Analysis González de Lara, Yadira (Dep. of Economic Analysis. University of Alicante) Paper…
The Medici Bank and the World of Florentine Capitalism
The Medici bank is certainly the most suitable subject for such an investigation. More is known about it than about any other firm in Renaissance Florence.
Pope Eugenius IV and Jewish Money-Lending in Florence: The Case of Salomone di Bonaventura during the Chancellorship of Leonardo Bruni
Pope Eugenius IV and Jewish Money-Lending in Florence: The Case of Salomone di Bonaventura during the Chancellorship of Leonardo Bruni By Andrew Gow…
Funduq, Fondaco, and Khan in the Wake of Christian Commerce and Crusade
Funduq, Fondaco, and Khan in the Wake of Christian Commerce and Crusade Olivia Remie, Constable The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and…
AN ENQUIRY INTO THE CHARGES AND MOTIVATIONS OF THE CAPETIAN MONARCHY BEHIND INSTITUTING THE FALL OF THE ORDER OF THE TEMPLE
AN ENQUIRY INTO THE CHARGES AND MOTIVATIONS OF THE CAPETIAN MONARCHY BEHINDINSTITUTING THE FALL OF THE ORDER OF THE TEMPLE Singhal, Chetan The Concord Review,…