The tailors of London and their guild, c.1300-1500
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
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.)
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.
Handspinners of the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance
The Handspinners of Paris, France: In 1270, a royal judge, Etienne Boileau, compiled “Le Livre de Metiers” (The Book of Trades) which contained the ordinances of 100 Parisian craft guilds. By consulting the surviving tax rolls of 1292, 1300, and 1313, it is possible to determine the extent to which these crafts were practiced.
Women, Gender and Guilds in Early Modern Europe
Historians of women and gender, as we might expect, have had a different point of view. In her pioneering 1919 study of women’s working lives in seventeenth-century England, Alice Clark depicted a Golden Age in the medieval period, during which women enjoyed access to skilled and profitable work.
Adventures far from home: Hanseatic trade with the Faroe Islands
he voyage to Iceland, now a major destina- tion, took about four weeks (gardiner & mehler 2007, 403; Krause 2010, 150). The Faroe Islands are situated more or less in the middle of that distance and provided a fine stop-over. The islands were an additional market for their trade business and in case of storms offered a safe and most welcome shelter.
Shifting Experiences: The Changing Roles of Women in the Italian, Lowland, and German Regions of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period
Specifically, the thesis compares and analyzes the changing roles that women could employ economically, politically, socially, and religiously.
“How Could You Recognise a Member of the Merchant Guild in Saint-Omer around 1100?”
This is another summary of a Haskins conference paper given in the session entitled: SESSION II: Who Do They Think They Are?. It deals with the customs of the guild of Saint-Omer
‘You say that the Messiah has come.’:The Ceuta Disputation (1179) and its place in the Christian anti-Jewish polemics of the high middle ages
Disputation could be the result of the Christian protagonist’s meeting with the North AfricanJew face-to-face and discovering that the Messianic promise was a subject of considerableinterest for his opponent. More importantly, regardless of whether the discussion in Ceuta hador had not taken place, the new Christian attitude towards anti-Jewish polemics expressed inthe Disputation’s text was most likely inspired by real-life discussions between Jews andChristians.
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2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Jewish and Christian relations; Mediterranean trade in the middle ages; Ceuta; Genoa;Scriptural exegesis, Almohads
The Messiah came in the twelfth century. This time he did not arrive in themanner anticipated by the prophets of the Bible. Rather, his arrival occurred in theworld of polemics, where he suddenly emerged from relative obscurity to becomethe central topic of the continuing religious debate between Jews and Christians
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 Peripheral Matter? Oceans in the East in Late Medieval Thought, Report and Cartography
Focusing in particular on the southern and eastern parts of the Ocean Sea, this article traces the broad contours of a representational and conceptual shift brought about, I argue, by the interplay between geographical thought and social (navigational, mercantile) practice.
The fabric of society: The organization of textile manufacturing in the Middle East and Europe, c. 700 – c. 1500
In recent years several attempts have been made to use institutional theory to explain this divergence between the Middle East and Europe. Most of these attempts focus on the organization of international trade.
Medieval Fairs: an archaeologist’s approach
This paper intends to explore some of the possibilities offered by the physical and conceptual structures of fairs towards the interpretation of medieval culture from the viewpoint of an archaeologist working largely in southern Italy.
Singers, advisers, and servants: role of eunuchs from a historical context
According to the Book of Matthew, Jesus said that there were eunuchs made of men, who had made them- selves by their fathers to be that way for heaven’s sake, and if they have received such a procedure, then let them keep it. Jesus referred to castration as an infallible way to achieve celibacy. And records of Christian history indicate that many Christian religious figures were castrated.
Mothering in the Casa Datini
The Casa Datini flourished in a region and during a period that historians have carefully explored for decades. Despite its value, however, few researchers travel to Prato to use the Datini collection.
The Black Road – Trade and State-building in Medieval Sub-Saharan Africa
By the early fourteenth century, the Mediterranean was approaching maturity as a commercial structure. Various arteries of exchange brought into its scope the full range of European, African and Asian commodities.
Labor Markets After the Black Death: Landlord Collusion and the Imposition of Serfdom in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
The differences in the imposition of serfdom led to different economic and political effects for the peasantry in Europe. In Western Europe, wages rose, grain prices fell, and the consumption of meat, dairy products, and beer increased. More and more peasants moved into a widening “middle class” that could afford to buy manufactured goods.
‘Images of the Other: Venice’s Perception of the Knights of Malta’
The hostile perception which Venice generally entertained of the Knights Hospitallers on Rhodes and Malta was not an attitude which the Republic secretly assumed and secretly endeavoured with much effort to disguise.
From Wine to Beer: Changing Patterns of Alcoholic Consumption, and Living Standards, in Later Medieval Flanders, 1300 – 1550
The basic problem with the ‘hop’ thesis is that the Flemish evidence for the relative shift from wine to beer consumption comes too late. My primary sources are the annual revenues from sales of excise tax- farms on wine and beer consumption recorded in the treasurers’ accounts of two towns: Bruges and Aalst.
Pervenimus Edessam: The Origins of a Great Christian Centre Outside the Familiar Mediaeval World
This is the meeting place of the western and eastern worlds, for near here passed the movements between Palestine and Mesopotamia associated with Abraham, near here the Assyrians made their last stand after their capital fell in 610 B.C., and near here Crassus ill-advised attempt to press eastwards came to an end.
Motivations and Response to Crusades in the Aegean: c.1300-1350
Since the Fourth Crusade, there had been a permanent Latin settlement in the Aegean made up primarily of the Venetians who had fought alongside the Frankish knights in 1204.
Long Distance Trade Partnerships and Social dynamic in Medieval Genoa
Likewise, for those specifically addressing the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the participation of the dominant class to the Italian medieval commercial revolution often run contrary to account that pits the nobility against the urban merchants.
Aspects of the Anglo-Hanseatic conflict in the fifteenth century
The German Hanse, whose rise and decline spanned almost four centuries, was a rather unique institution in late medieval Europe.
Millstones for Medieval Manors
Richard Holt recently reminded us that mills were at the forefront of medieval technology and argued persuasively that windmills may have been invented in late twelfth-century England.