Here are a few recent releases for medievalists hunting for Black Friday books and early Christmas gifts!
Fair Trade?: A Look at the Hanseatic League
October 11, 2015 By
In the 14th century, an ongoing feud ensued between the Hanseatic League and non-Hanse merchants. Here’s a quick look at the rise and fall of the one of the most powerful organizations of the Late Middle Ages.
Papers on Medieval Prosopography: Session #47 at KZOO 2015
May 29, 2015 By
Three fantastic papers on Prosopography from #KZOO2015.
Flee the loathsome shadow: Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) and the Medici in Florence
November 9, 2014 By
This article examines the changing political landscape of Medicean Florence, from Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464) to his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492), through the letters of the celebrated neo-Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-99).
CONFERENCES: Arnold Fitz Thedmar: an Early London chronicler
October 4, 2014 By
Another fascinating paper given at the Institute for Historical Research in central London. For those of you interested in chronicles, urban history and London, this paper was definitely for you. Ian Stone discussed his dissertation about thirteenth century London through the eyes of wealthy Alderman, Arnold Fitz Thedmar.
Pedlars and Alchemists in Friuli History of itinerant sellers in an alpine reality
August 25, 2014 By
This short review discusses about itinerant sellers in Friuli, who are Cramaro called (XI-XIX centuries). Attention is focused, in particular, on the question if some of theme were alchemists.
Venetian Trading Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean
August 6, 2014 By
To understand the system of business relations within the commercial network of the Republic of Venice, this article adopts a network analysis that differs from a standard narrative based on a privileged subset of actors or relations. It allows us to examine the socially mixed group of entrepreneurs, brokers, and shippers at the heart of Venice’s economic system.
Did Purchasing Power Parity Hold in Medieval Europe?
August 4, 2014 By
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.
England’s First Attempt to Break the Commercial Monopoly of the Hanseatic League, 1377-1380
July 27, 2014 By
During the second half of the fourteenth century English traders first seriously threatened the Hanseatic League’s commercial monopoly in the Baltic. The League, attempting to defendits monopoly, treated the English unjustly,where upon in 1377 the English Parliament rescinded the charter that granted the League important concessions and privileges in its English trade.
Time, space and power in later medieval Bristol
May 26, 2014 By
With a population of almost 10,000, Bristol was later medieval England’s second or third biggest urban place, and the realm’s second port after London. While not particularly large or wealthy in comparison with the great cities of northern Italy, Flanders or the Rhineland, it was a metropolis in the context of the British Isles.
Notarial Convention in the Facilitation of Trade and Economics in Mid-Thirteenth Century Marseille
February 22, 2014 By
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.
Legal Competition in the Medieval World
December 6, 2013 By
Legal Competition in the Medieval World Aaron L. Bodoh-Creed (Cornell University) Cornell University: Working Paper, June 30 (2009) Abstract We develop a model of competition between legal systems with overlapping jurisdictions based on Hotelling competition that suggests that, absent institutional reform, courts with overlapping jurisdictions will be driven to adopt divergent legal doctrines in order to extract […]
Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments
December 4, 2013 By
Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments Samuel Cohn, Jr. Economic History Review: University of Glasgow, 19 October (2012) Abstract Over the past decade ‘material culture’ has become a sub-discipline of Italian Renaissance studies. This literature, however, has focused on the rich and their objects preserved in museums or reflected in […]
Shops and Shopping in Britain: from market stalls to chain stores
November 29, 2013 By
The first retail shops, as opposed to those of craftsmen and artisans selling goods they made themselves, were drapers, mercers, haberdashers and grocers.
Finland, Tallinn and the Hanseatic League: Foreign Trade and the Orientation of Roads in Medieval Finland
November 24, 2013 By
What was the role of Finland in the trade of the Hanseatic League in the Middle Ages? Thisquestion has been widely discussed in Finnish history since 1882, when J.W. Ruuth publishedhis study on the relationship between Finland and the Hanse before 1435.
The Brewer, the Baker, and the Monopoly Maker
November 24, 2013 By
This paper seeks to examine how productive entrepreneurial activities, such as innovation, influence unproductive entrepreneurial activities, such as regulatory rent seeking.
Past/Present: Leonardo Bruni’s History of Florence
August 18, 2013 By
Past/Present: Leonardo Bruni’s History of Florence Giuseppe Bisaccia Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 21, No 1 (1985) Abstract The importance of historical consciousness in the Renaissance is a fact generally recognized by scholars of the period. From Petrarch on, it is possible to discern a growing awareness of the past “men became more and more conscious that […]
Knighthood in later medieval Italy
August 6, 2013 By
There is a clear reason for this general discounting of Italian knighthood in the later Middle Ages. The traditional focus of northern Italian historiography being cities and civic life, knighthood has struggled to find a place in the world of communes and city-states, merchants and markets.
Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice: From Oriental Bazar to English Cloister in Anglo-French
April 1, 2013 By
Until recently, such limited interest as late Anglo-French was able to arouse amongst scholars specializing in medieval French has been confined, with only a very few exceptions, to the efforts made in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries to teach what was by now a language unknown to most of the inhabitants of a country moving inexorably towards the unchallenged dominance of English as the national language.
The Family Consciousness in Medieval Genoa: The Case of the Lomellini
March 10, 2013 By
The most famous figure of the family in this century was Napoleone Lomellini. He was a member of the ‘anziani’ and was known as ‘multum dives et magnus mercator a very rich and important merchant’
The tailors of London and their guild, c.1300-1500
February 8, 2013 By
The unusually full medieval records of the guild of London tailors, known from 1503 as the Merchant Taylors’ Company, provides a rare opportunity to assess the variety of roles which these organisations played in late-medieval London.
City and Countryside in Medieval England
January 27, 2013 By
An impressive array of data, ranging over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, has been collected by two full-time researchers, James Galloway and Margaret Murphy. Of primary importance for the project are demesne farming accounts and inquisitions post mortem (detailing manorial land and other assets, especially again those of the demesne), both of which sources survive in very large numbers for the period under review. Also, the project incorpor- ates large amounts of data from urban records, particularly those dealing with merchants who were prominent in organizing London’s food supply.
CRISIS OF CONTRACTS FOR MERCHANTS IN CRISIS: INSTITUTIONS, CORPORATE FINANCE AND GROWTH IN GENOA (11TH -17TH C.)
January 13, 2013 By
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.
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