Download PDF | Taryn E. L. Chubb, Emily D. Kelley (eds.) - Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean-Brill (2013).
162 Pages
Describing the Franciscans and Dominicans as the “merchants of the church,” Francisco Garcia-Serrano begins the introduction to his book, Preachers of the City: The Expansion of the Dominican Order in Castile, by placing Castilian Dominicans into a broader historical context.’ In doing so, he points out the many similarities between mendicants and merchants that developed between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries throughout the Mediterranean, but the relationships between the two communities have rarely been addressed elsewhere in the scholarship on this period. Between the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, both mendicants and merchants rose to prominence within medieval society. Garcia-Serrano explains that in the ensuing decades, in cities and urban centers throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, friars and merchants crossed paths daily.
The two groups often lived parallel lives that included travel as well as interaction and exchange with a wide variety of people, but the connections between the mendicants and merchants are not limited to the similarities in their lifestyles. The growth of cities and commerce during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries precipitated major shifts in social organization and interaction. Not surprisingly, such significant changes in the secular lives of those living in the medieval Mediterranean required an equally significant response from the church.
One of the primary concerns of the growing merchant class was usury and the general morality of their business practices. As we shall see, the mendicant preachers provided merchants with spiritual and moral guidance as well as assistance with certain business transactions. Merchants, in turn, offered funding for the establishment, expansion, and ornamentation of monastic complexes in order to legitimize their wealth and secure their eternal salvation.
Although much work has been done in the field of medieval studies on the mendicants and the merchants as individual groups, neither the extensive interaction between them, nor the ways in which they worked together to address issues of usury and morality, have received much scholarly attention.” The present volume is intended to begin to fill this void in the scholarship through the analysis of particular examples of mendicant and merchant interaction in the medieval Mediterranean. These waters were called mare nostrum, or “our sea” by the Romans, who also had a name for the region more broadly: medius terra, or “middle land.”
The Romans’ medius terra eventually came to be known as the “Mediterranean,” which not only referred to the body of water, but also to the networks of roads that carried travelers, goods, and ideas inland to major commercial cities in southern Europe.’ In both the ancient and medieval worlds, this was aregion in which the sea and the surrounding lands were inextricably linked. For the mendicants and merchants who traversed both the waters and the inland trade routes throughout the later Middle Ages, the Mediterranean certainly was the medius terra around which their lives and work were centered.
Recent scholarship on Mediterranean history and historiography has been concerned with identifying the precise geographic, ecological, and cultural boundaries of the region and the present volume is not intended to repeat that analysis, although it is important to define at the outset what is meant by the term “Mediterranean” as it is employed in this collection of articles.‘ For all of the contributors to this study, the Mediterranean is defined in much the same way as it was defined by the Romans— as region in which the sea binds distant lands, not only including port cities and islands, such as Barcelona and Mallorca, but also major centers of commerce farther inland, including Florence. This network of cities and trade routes provided important opportunities for both cultural and commercial exchange.
By focusing on this region and, more specifically, by offering three case studies from the cities of Barcelona, Mallorca, and Florence, we do not mean to suggest that such interaction did not occur elsewhere. Historically, as Francisco Garcfa-Serrano points out in the conclusion to this volume, the Mediterranean had proven itself to be a fertile environment for the trade and exchange of both ideas and goods. The ease with which travel and exchange took place throughout the area makes it a fruitful region to begin to address the relationships that developed between the mendicants and merchants during the medieval period in two of its main centers of commerce, Barcelona and Florence, while also examining the merchantmendicant relationship in the emerging trading city of Mallorca.
Before considering these case studies in greater detail, we begin with an introduction to mendicants and merchants and the broader context of their daily lives and interaction in order to provide a foundation for this volume. Within the introduction, we have provided bibliographic references in the notes for each of the primary topics of discussion. These are by no means complete lists of the extant scholarship; rather, they are meant to provide the reader with some of the most important sources for each topic.
As the backdrop for much of the interaction between mendicants and merchants, medieval cities are an appropriate place to begin. The foundation of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century coincided with a period of urban expansion throughout the Mediterranean region. While the majority of the population still lived in rural areas, cities were growing steadily by the twelfth century. Because cities lacked the feudal organizational structure of rural areas, newly formed communities of mendicants and growing groups of merchants were easily able to find a place for themselves within the more flexible social, economic, and religious organization of these urban centers.’ Cities in Iberia, France, and Italy were linked to one another by the Mediterranean Sea and by the rivers and established trade routes that provided transportation inland. Moreover, the Mediter-ranean connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, a link that was not only important for the exchange of goods, but also for the exchange of ideas.°
As a social group of emerging importance, merchants were a crucial part of these growing Mediterranean centers beginning in the twelfth century. It was during this period that trade expanded and merchants started to take on newer and much more significant roles within cities. In the twelfth century, developments in technology allowed for easier travel over both land and sea, and, at the same time, an increased supply of currency provided the necessary catalyst for changes in trading practices.’
These shifts resulted in the transition from trade being primarily a local phenomenon, centered in city marketplaces and regional fairs, to a more regional and international phenomenon. By the thirteenth century, routes were in place between most major European cities, and foreign merchants had established small colonies in larger trading centers.’ A variety of changes to mercantile practice accompanied this shift in trading patterns. First, modifications to banking practices, including the introduction of the bill of exchange as well as the advent of bankers who would transfer money and hold deposits, eased the process of trade for those merchants who completed large transactions.’
Moreover, by the fourteenth century, a system was in place to insure goods while they were in transit and some larger trading companies were backed by investors.'? Through these shifts in mercantile activity, merchants became more cosmopolitan as they were exposed to the diverse customs, practices, and languages of the various cities within which they traded. In addition, the wealthiest merchants strove to obscure the distinction between their own rank in society and that of the nobility, and this change is demonstrated through their involvement with local government and civic organizations, their educational pursuits, and their charitable activities.''
At the same time, due in part to growing concerns over usury and the morality of mercantile practices, merchants began to commission works of art and architecture for local religious institutions and to donate other funds in order to demonstrate their piety. ‘The merchants discussed in this volume represent a broad range of individuals engaged in commercial activities from the thirteenth century through the end of the fifteenth within the growing urban areas of the Mediterranean, including major centers of trade such as Florence and Barcelona, as well as minor emerging commercial cities such as Mallorca. ‘
The term “merchant” can refer to anyone in the business of selling goods produced by a third party. This profession often, but not always, included money-lending or currency exchange.'* Many merchants were part of a growing group of urban elite whose social status occupied a “middle place” between those of noble birth and laborers. This group, which could also include physicians, notaries, and other non-mercantile professionals with substantial wealth and status, formed a growing non-noble population with increasing political power.'?
As Antonio Zaldivar discusses in his article, these individuals were frequently part of the patriciate, or ruling class, of urban society, and they most often achieved political status through financial means. One of the most famous examples of a merchant achieving elite status is Cosimo de’Medici, who is addressed in the article by Allie Terry-Fritsch. The Medici family gained such wealth and influence that they became de-facto members of the nobility and wielded great political power. At the other extreme, William Hugonis, who is discussed by Robin Vose, began his life as a bow maker and gradually rose to higher status through his commercial activities in thirteenth-century Mallorca.
Together, the following articles consider a broad range of merchants from various backgrounds, all of whom had close ties to local mendicant orders and all of whom contributed substantially to the growing mercantile presence in the urban centers of the medieval Mediterranean.
As elite members of urban society, wealthy merchants also began to serve important roles in civic administration as well as in educational and religious institutions in many cities throughout the region. By the end of the thirteenth century, the wealthiest citizens, primarily those who were engaged in banking and long-distance trade, held increasingly powerful roles in local governments, primarily through their service on city councils.'*
This was particularly true in some of the urban communities of Italy where oligarchies were established, but also true of cities like Burgos, which was under the rule of the Castilian monarchy but was primarily controlled by a powerful group of elite citizens.’’ In addition to their prominence in governing medieval cities, many of these wealthy citizens were also members of confraternities and/or chivalric orders that played an important role in the religious life of the city, activities which are addressed in greater detail below.'® In this regard, as part of the urban elite, the wealthiest merchants were, by the thirteenth century, active in both the political and the religious facets of civic life.
Accompanying their developing roles in civic life, merchants were also important catalysts to the growth of educational institutions within the urban environment and to the increased use of vernacular languages. For merchants, use of the vernacular was common by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and both vernacular literacy and a strong education in mathematics were necessities for successful commercial practice.'’ As a result, cities with large mercantile populations saw an increased demand for schools and the citizens of these cities had higher literacy rates than those in non-mercantile areas since most merchants received at least some basic education, often provided by the mendicants.'*
Furthermore, once printed books became available in the fifteenth century, merchants were some of the principal consumers of these texts, and many of the main centers of printing, such as Antwerp, Barcelona, Bruges, Florence, London, Seville, and Venice, were also major centers of commerce.”
Finally, along with their increased status in society and their growing literacy rates, merchants became great patrons of the arts during this period, commissioning objects for religious institutions as well as for their own homes. Instances of merchant patronage have been particularly well examined in Florence, but merchant patronage was certainly growing in other cities throughout northern Europe and the Mediterranean.” Over the course of the late medieval period, it became increasingly acceptable for the wealthy to commission lavish objects and monumental architecture; in fact, in many cases, this was expected. In the thirteenth century, the Dominican Thomas Aquinas argued in favor of “large expenditures for religious and public buildings,” basing his reasoning on the works of Aristotle.” By the fifteenth century, humanists and theologians, including Leon Battista Alberti, Matteo Palmeri, Antonio Pierozzi and Francesco Altoviti, also favored this type of spending as long as the money used had been earned honestly.” In fact, this was considered an appropriate and pious way for a merchant to spend earnings that were in excess of what was needed to live modestly. In this regard, the commissioning of objects and monuments that would bring beauty to the city and thereby enhance the lives of all who lived there became a way for the wealthy to legitimize their prosperity. This was believed by many to be a pious act that would not only enhance the spiritual well-being of the donor but also improve his or her earthly status.
One of the ways in which merchants habitually contributed to the urban environment was by constructing and decorating an elaborate residence. The size of this structure and the ornamentation of the exterior were part of the visual display of wealth that the family would convey to the rest of the city.*? More important for purposes of this study are merchant commissions for religious institutions. When made for a church or convent, the objects commissioned by merchants were often destined for use in a family chapel and were part of a larger body of pious donations to that institution.
These objects would serve as a public display of the family’s piety, enhancing their status on earth and ensuring their eternal salvation. Moreover, merchants who had the means to do so would secure a burial site inside a church or convent since this was considered the ideal location for interment.” Patronage of a chapel in the local parish church was common since this, along with the construction of a monumental residence, was a way for a family to visually establish their presence in a particular neighborhood.” Once established, this patronage relationship continued with the patron providing funds for the maintenance of the altar, including candles, vestments, and other liturgical objects.”
While patronage within parish churches was important, most merchants of substantial means did not limit themselves to the support of a single institution, and merchant patronage within mendicant convents was particularly common.” This was true in part because the mendicants helped them to reconcile their financial position with their religious beliefs.’* One of the mendicant churches with the most extensive examples of this type of patronage is the Church of Santa Croce in Florence, where various merchant families commissioned numerous chapels in the transept by the fifteenth century. These families included, among others, the Castellani, who were bankers and wool merchants, as well as the Baroncelli, the Bardi, and the Peruzzi, all of whom were bankers.”
Although it has a large concentration of merchant-funded chapels, the Church of Santa Croce is certainly not the only example of such patronage in Florence.* In this volume, Allie Terry-Fritsch examines a later instance of Florentine merchant patronage through her analysis of the Medici family’s fifteenth-century commissions at the Observant Dominican convent of San Marco. Cosimo de’Medici fostered a long-term relationship with San Marco that included the commission of Fra Angelico’s frescoes in the convent’s dormitory. As Terry-Fritsch explains, Cosimo designed these frescoes as deliberate representations of his family’s piety and status that were directed toward the humanist scholars who would have passed through the private space of the convent when visiting the library.
In addition to financing artistic commissions within mendicant institutions, merchants often made donations to these orders in exchange for burial within the convent. Antonio Zaldivar’s article examines this phenomenon at the Dominican convent of St. Catherine in Barcelona and Robin Vose discusses this concept in the context of Mallorca, where he notes examples of merchant donations that were motivated, at least in part, by the family’s connection to specific friars in the convent. As the articles in this collection suggest, merchants favored mendicant institutions as sites for patronage and burial primarily because of the specific spiritual benefits they believed the mendicants could offer them. Furthermore, as we discuss below, mendicants were generally more accepting of mercantile practices than other religious authorities. This may also have contributed to the frequency with which merchants patronized the newly established mendicant institutions, whose monastic complexes became a prominent feature of many medieval cities.
In the thirteenth century, as merchants continued to gain both status and wealth within cities, two of the mendicant orders were founded: the Friars Minor, or Franciscans, in 1209, and the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, in 1215. Although there were other mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans are the best known and have received the most scholarly attention and it is these two orders upon which the articles in this volume are focused.*! From the beginning, both orders distinguished themselves from preexisting monastic communities by committing to lives of poverty and itinerant preaching. Modeling themselves on Christ and his disciples, they settled in cities across Europe and took on the task of ministering to the growing urban populations, including merchants.”
The primary focus of their ministry was instructive, taking the form of preaching as well as teaching in schools and universities; therefore, it made sense for the mendicants to establish monastic complexes within cities, where they could maximize their interaction with laypeople, including merchants, and then dispatch preachers to rural areas when necessary. As the articles in this volume indicate, mendicant convent complexes were usually located near city walls, often adjacent to trade routes, but also not far from cathedrals and markets, specifically so that the friars could see and be seen and have easy access to both the religious and secular centers of cities.** Furthermore, for the traveling merchant, the proximity of the mendicant convents to the city center provided a sense of continuity, allowing a merchant who regularly attended a Dominican church in Barcelona to also easily locate one while traveling in Mallorca or Florence, for example.
The presence of learned friars in major Mediterranean cities certainly appealed to the growing merchant class, who sought both secular and religious education. As has been noted previously, success in commerce required, at the very least, literacy and mathematical skills, although knowledge of languages and other subjects could also be quite helpful. The comprehensive education that the friars received, including instruction in Latin grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, science, moral philosophy and metaphysics not only prepared them for lives of preaching, but also for lives of teaching in convents, cathedral schools, and universities, where merchants were among their students.™4
It was not a coincidence that the Franciscans and Dominicans began deploying their educated members to cities at a time when the growing merchant population began to feel the need for a more sophisticated religious education than had previously been available to most lay people.
The majority of people moving into cities came from rural areas where their primary sources of religious education were local parish priests, many of whom were poorly educated. As mentioned above, of particular concern to merchant communities was the subject of money lending, or usury, which was prohibited by the church, but a necessary part of commercial enterprises. The friars, at least in the beginning, were also concerned with monetary exchange. The very foundations of the mendicant orders rested on the rejection of material wealth; as a result, the morality of monetary exchange within the mercantile profession was particularly distressing to the friars.*°
These preoccupations were hardly new. As early as the fifth century, long before the foundation of the mendicant orders and the growth of the merchant class, Pope Leo I wrote a letter in which he asserted his belief that in order to be successful, merchants had to lie and cheat. This letter reflected the church’s condemnation of occupations that resulted in the exchange of money, which was seen as filthy and the cause of moral decay. Furthermore, the perceived lying and cheating of those who provided goods and services in exchange for money was, of course, considered sinful. Leo’s fifth-century opinion of merchants remained the prevailing viewpoint of the church for centuries and the growth of this portion of the population in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries only served to make church authorities more uncomfortable with such occupations, as will be discussed in further detail later in this introduction. The simple resolution to the problem for both sides was for merchants to abandon the profession, as St. Francis had, for something more acceptable, but the promise of amassing wealth and status kept most merchants from doing so.*°
When the mendicant orders began to establish themselves in cities throughout the Mediterranean, they were confronted with this issue from both sides. The church’s stance on mercantile activities had not changed and merchants were concerned with the fate of their souls, but were also unwilling to abandon their professions. Caught in the middle, the friars had to find ways of reconciling their mission to minister to urban populations with the teachings of the church. The growth of commerce in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that has already been discussed made it necessary for the church to reconsider the issue of monetary exchange, which was centered around the question of whether or not those in urban professions were selling their time and knowledge. Both were believed to have been gifts from God and, as such, they were not to be sold and certainly not for a profit.*”
Both the Franciscans and the Dominicans developed ways of rationalizing the activities of the urban elite, especially merchants. Several mendicant scholars, including Ramén de Penyafort, Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, held that mercantile professions did not necessarily, as Leo I believed, rely on lying and cheating. Instead, as will be discussed further below, they recognized the integral role that merchants had come to play in medieval society and they believed that “modest and honest” profits were justified. Aquinas specifically argued that money was the “measure of things sold but not saleable itself.”** This income, church authorities stipulated, was to be used for the purpose of supporting one’s family and for charitable activities.® In order to explain these matters and keep their followers on righteous paths, the friars took on doctrinal and moral issues in their sermons and they preached in the vernacular, which was far more engaging and accessible to their congregations than the traditional Latin sermon.”
To prepare for this aspect of their ministry, mendicant preachers received special instruction in speaking to the new urban populations. In regard to preaching in cities, the Dominican Humbert of Romans wrote: “there preaching is more efficacious because there are more people, and the need is greater, for in the city there are more sins.”“' In his Instruction of Preachers, Humbert not only included instructions about preaching sermons ad status, which are sermons for specific classes and occupations, but he also included examples of such sermons.” The Dominicans were not alone in promoting the use of sermons ad status. Like Humbert of Romans, the Franciscan Gilbert of Tournai produced his Sermones ad varios status sometime between 1238 and 1284 as part of a larger volume entitled Rudimentum doctrinae.® By requiring instruction on sermons ad status in the formal education of both orders, the friars were prepared to discuss the issues important to those with whom they interacted most often, whether on the road as they traveled the established trade routes or within cities.
As has been mentioned previously, the friars’ education included much more than instruction on preaching sermons ad status. The goal of much of their ministry was to promote confession and repentance as a way for the middle classes to reconcile their secular occupations with their religious beliefs. As Humbert of Romans noted in his De eruditione praedicatorum, “the seed is sown in preaching, the fruit is harvested in penance.” Just as the mendicant orders produced manuals including model sermons to prepare the friars for their preaching duties, they also wrote texts to instruct the friars on hearing confession. An example of one of these texts, which were often written in the vernacular, is the fourteenth-century Regula mercatorum (Rule for Merchants). This is a handbook written by a Dominican that specifically addresses the issue of monetary exchange and money lending within the context of hearing confession.” In addition to handbooks that provided instruction about how to discuss some of the particular spiritual concerns of those in their care, the friars also received extensive instruction in scriptural exegesis that prepared them for discourse on any topic in which their followers might have been interested.“
Besides preaching moralizing sermons and hearing confessions, another way that the friars helped the merchants address the morality of their chosen profession was through the foundation and maintenance of confraternities and tertiary orders, which were exclusively established for the laity. Tertiary orders were always linked to a specific religious order, and they provided members with the opportunity to participate in some aspects of mendicant life without actually taking orders, thus allowing them to maintain their secular lives and occupations. Records indicate that the membership of the tertiary orders included many who were involved in professions related to trade.*” Confraternities were always associated with a specific church, which was often a mendicant church, although that was not a requirement. Such connections provided them with spaces for worship and devotion as well as access to priests who could conduct religious services and provide spiritual guidance. Most confraternities also had a civic purpose, usually related to performing charitable works that members of the confraternity hoped would prove their piety and ensure them a place in heaven upon death.
Charitable works were not only done collectively by patricians who were members of confraternities, but they were also performed by individuals and families. As has been mentioned previously, one of the ways that the mendicants suggested for merchants to legitimize their wealth was to use such funds for charitable activities. Merchants were often patrons of mendicant institutions, providing funding for the friars’ work, the maintenance of the monastic complex, and the commissioning of works of art and architecture. The articles in this volume provide examples of this type of activity. Allie Terry-Fritsch addresses artistic patronage at the Observant Dominican convent of San Marco in fifteenth-century Florence while the articles by Robin Vose and Antonio Zaldivar consider financial donations to the convents of Sant Domingo in Mallorca and St. Catherine in Barcelona, respectively.
Just as elite merchants began to serve important roles within city governments during the late medieval period, the friars were also involved in government affairs, often acting as intermediaries between church and government officials and townspeople, both locally and regionally. Louis IX, Alfonso X and Jaime the Conqueror, among other rulers, were all served by mendicant confessors.” In fact, Jaime’s confessor, the Dominican Miguel de Fabra, reportedly rode beside the king wielding a sword during his conquests of the cities of Mallorca and Valencia in the thirteenth century.” Both secular and religious authorities also called upon the mendicants to assist in specific situations, as was the case with the Aragonese king Fernando I, who called the Dominican Vincent Ferrer from his preaching in Mallorca to Tortosa in order to instruct recently converted Jews in the Christian faith.*' Robin Vose provides the additional example of the Mallorcan Dominicans overseeing trade relations between Mallorca and the Maghreb at the request of the church. As the articles in this volume suggest, the interaction between mendicants and merchants that took place within the confines of monastic complexes frequently had implications for the world beyond the cloister walls.
Regardless of the specific circumstances of each case of mendicantmerchant interaction, this volume makes it clear that the expansion of the profit economy was of central concern to both groups and a factor in many of their activities. As the relationships between mendicants and merchants grew closer and as they became more and more dependent upon one another, the mendicants began to find ways of reconciling the previously questionable (and in some cases, specifically prohibited) business practices of their largest constituency with the teachings of the church. Merchants were especially concerned with the morality of their activities, particularly usury, and the fate of their souls. Mendicants provided spiritual guidance for medieval merchants, at times serving as advocates for the benefits of commerce and often providing intercessory prayers (typically in exchange for alms) to assist the souls of merchants in purgatory. As was discussed above, their training in the preaching of sermons ad status, their use of manuals such as the Regula mercatorum, and their guidance of tertiary orders and confraternities made them uniquely qualified to attend to the spiritual needs of merchants.
As we have already noted, one of the difficulties facing merchants of the medieval period, specifically during the rise of commercialism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was the attitude that mercantile practices were immoral and that merchants were sinful. According to Lester Little, mercantile wealth was viewed as “unjust” since the merchant’s role was only to “buy goods at one price to sell at a higher [price].” This brought into question whether or not the profession “could properly be considered creative work.”** Moreover, mercantile practice was considered one of the “pathways to sin” since merchants were often viewed as being guilty of avarice.*? To make matters worse, the reputation of the profession was very much tainted by its association with usury.™4
In 1187, Pope Urban III established a definition for usury that prevailed for almost a century. He proclaimed usury to be “everything that is asked in exchange for a loan, beyond the value of the loan itself,” and further asserted that “merely hoping to receive additional property, beyond the property itself, is a sin,” and that “asking a higher price for a sale on credit is an implicit act of usury.” Other theologians worked to further characterize the nature of usury as a crime. For example, both Thomas of Chobham, a student at the Paris school, and the Dominican Thomas Aquinas interpreted usury as a theft against God because by putting a monetary value on time, which belonged to God alone, usurers were profiting from one of God’s possessions.* Another explanation of the sinful nature of usury, which was based on Aristotelian thought and employed by scholars including Aquinas, specified that usury was a sin against nature “because it forces money to breed” even though money, by nature, is sterile.”
Despite these negative pronouncements regarding mercantile practice and usury, which suggest a rather black-and-white understanding of the concept and imply that interest may not be collected under any circumstance, usury was not necessarily understood to be strictly synonymous with the charging of interest since, in some cases, such charges were deemed permissible.** As early as the twelfth century, some theologians were writing texts that favored mercantile practice while simultaneously condemning extreme acts of usury. For example, at the same time that he denounced usury as a theft against God, Thomas of Chobham supported other forms of mercantile practice since they could often result in the transfer of wealth from affluent regions to more impoverished ones.” Similarly, as Antonio Zaldivar discusses in his article, Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, both Dominicans who were opposed to some of the most severe acts of usury, also recognized the benefit that the charitable acts of wealthy merchants could provide to the community.® Moreover, in some cases theologians departed from their rather firm definition of usury, permitting, for example, the collection of interest in certain circumstances when it was charged at the market rate, when loans were paid late, or when the lender assumed a certain level of risk.*'
It is not a coincidence that some of the theologians who were most outspoken in their support of mercantile practice belonged to the mendicant orders, who interacted with the merchants daily and who, in many cases, relied on the financial donations of merchant families for the livelihood of their communities. The mendicant friars were the branch of the church that often had the most contact with merchants and, therefore, demonstrated a unique understanding of the benefits that a mercantile presence brought to the urban setting. As a result, they frequently held more liberal attitudes regarding permissible commercial activity. In this volume, Antonio Zaldivar provides a specific example of this relationship as he discusses Ramon de Penyafort, a Dominican from Barcelona who approved of interest charges when the repayment of a loan was late. Antonio Pierozzi, the first prior of the Dominican convent of San Marco who later became Archbishop of Florence, worked closely with the merchant class and was also more lenient regarding the collecting of interest than many of his counterparts.” Similarly, the friars played an important role in assisting usurers, as well as other merchants, to make proper arrangements for the care of their souls in the afterlife. These provisions became particularly difficult for the usurer since, according to the church, his ill-gotten gains could not be given as alms except to the preacher who served as his confessor (although in practice it appears that this regulation was often overlooked).® In addition, the usurer had every reason to make restitution before death since those who did not could be refused Christian sacraments, including burial and extreme unction.™ For the usurer, or any merchant who may have taken part in questionable business practices, the best hope of salvation came from the belief that he might pay sufficient penance before death to at least enter purgatory. Once there, the intercessory prayers provided by family, community, and religious organizations were essential to the eventual ascension of his soul into heaven. For example, in fourteenth-century Italy, many usurers whose business practices were publically known made substantial monetary donations to the church and other pious organizations with the hope of not only receiving absolution but also bettering their family’s image in the eyes of the community. Given their more lenient attitudes toward mercantile practice as well as their location within the urban environment, mendicant communities were often recipients of pious donations from the merchant class. In this volume, Allie Terry-Fritsch addresses the patronage and financial support offered by the Medici family to the convent of San Marco in Florence, which amounted to a display of public piety by the most powerful merchant family in Florence, intended to both better the family’s earthly reputation and to enlist the friars as their spiritual intercessors.
In the introduction to her article, Terry-Fritsch provides documentation of Cosimo de’Medici’s intention that his contributions to the convent would compensate for some of his questionable business activities. Her analysis of the frescoes within the convent provides further evidence of their function as reminders of the family’s piety and powerful position in Florentine society. Likewise, the articles by Robin Vose and Antonio Zaldivar point to similar trends of mercantile financial donations to mendicant institutions made, of course, anticipating reciprocal aid from the mendicants. In fact, as Zaldivar explains, merchants often made their pious donations with the hope that such charity would benefit their souls in the afterlife, lessening the length of their stay in purgatory. Through these examples, the articles in this volume highlight the important role that mendicant institutions played for the merchant class as they strove to have their (sometimes questionable) business practices accepted in Christian society and as they made provisions for salvation in the afterlife.
Each of the articles in this collection draws upon primary source material, much of which has never before been published or included in the kinds of specific case studies that comprise this volume. Antonio Zaldivar’s careful consideration of the testaments of thirteenth-century Barcelonan patricians and Robin Vose’s mining of what is left of the archival holdings of the Mallorcan convent of Santo Domingo both provide examples of the value of including previously ignored or overlooked documents in formulating a more complete contemporary understanding of medieval history. Similarly, Allie Terry-Fritsch’s analysis of the San Marco frescoes relies on the primary source material of the paintings themselves in addition to written documents. Her article demonstrates the rewarding results of such an approach, in which the frescoes provide us with clear visual evidence of their purpose and function as part of the “humanist itinerary” of the convent and, more specifically, as a way for Cosimo de’Medici, a wealthy merchant, to publically demonstrate his piety and generosity. Through their use of primary source material, these three articles examine the development of complex relationships between merchants and mendicant institutions within the western Mediterranean.
Equating the mendicants’ position within the hierarchy of the medieval church to that of the merchants within society by referring to them as the “merchants of the church,” Francisco Garcia-Serrano is among the few scholars to have drawn attention to the connections between the two groups, both of whom occupied a previously nonexistent “middle place” within the church and society. As the articles in this volume demonstrate, mendicants and merchants formed mutually beneficial relationships in cities throughout the medieval Mediterranean. While mendicants served as spiritual advisors to merchants and facilitated some of their commercial activities, merchants, in turn, supported the friars’ work and provided financial support for their ministries and the maintenance of their convent complexes. Mendicant friars made it possible for merchants to legitimize their business practices, previously seen as sinful by the church, through membership in confraternities and tertiary orders and through charitable donations.
By taking up the question of the precise nature of the interaction between mendicants and merchants in specific Mediterranean cities, first studied by scholars such as Jacques LeGoff and Lester Little, this collection of articles has yielded an interdisciplinary discussion of the broader topic and three rich case studies that provide evidence of the complexities of trade and exchange in the region as well as models for employing primary sources in new ways. We hope that this issue of Medieval Encounters will encourage further scholarship on mendicants and merchants and the various connections between the two groups. Although these three studies are a valuable starting point for the exploration of this topic, further research and analysis, particularly beyond Iberia and Italy, is certainly needed in order to provide a more thorough understanding of the implications of the complex relationships that developed in this region between mendicants and merchants during the late medieval period.
Acknowledgements
Much of the content of this volume was originally presented in a session of ginally p the same title held at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2009. We would like to thank the organizers of the Con8 gress for providing us with our first opportunity to gather an interdisciplinary group of scholars for this session. We are also grateful to those who participated in the stimulating discussion that the original session papers inspired. Finally, we would like to thank the two reviewers of this volume for their invaluable suggestions regarding the introduction and the other 88 8 8 articles in the collection.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق