Trade Between the French Midi and the Kingdom of Sicily

Nicolussi-Köhler, Stephan

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-04915-6_8

Stephan Nicolussi-Köhler⁵

Part of the book series: Mediterranean Perspectives ((MEPERS))

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Abstract

Trade activities of merchants from Marseille with the Kingdom of Sicily are documented from the twelfth century onward. These trading relations were based on privileges in several ports in Sicily. The people of Marseille used different strategies to raise capital for their maritime trade and to attract merchants to their harbor. They adopted an open-door policy and made their privileges and ships available to merchants and goods from other trading towns of southern France. This trade under a foreign flag is easy to overlook at the macro level. By using a micro-level analysis, this chapter attempts to reconstruct the participation of merchants from southern France in maritime trade with Sicily in the thirteenth century.

I would like to thank the editors for their valuable suggestions, which enabled me to sharpen my arguments.

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Notes

1.
The term southern France will be here used in place of the historically correct regional designation. In the Middle Ages, the Languedoc and Provence belonged to different political entities like the Kingdom of Aragon, the Kingdom of France, the County of Toulouse, or the County of Provence (part of the Holy Roman Empire). This is done for the sake of brevity and not in order to imply that the region had any characteristics of a modern “nation state.” For an overview of studies concerning trade between the French Midi and Italy, see Kathryn Reyerson, “Montpellier and Genoa: The dilemma of dominance,” Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994): 359–72; Kathryn Reyerson, “Les strategies commerciales des villes secondaires: identités changeantes en Méditerranée médievale”, in Les Territories de la Méditerranée XI^e–XVI^e siècle, ed. Annliese Nef, with the collaboration of Damien Coulon, Christophe Picard et Dominique Valérian (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013), 193–203; Enrica Salvatori, “Marsiglia, il Midi e la costa campana tra XI e XIII secolo,” in Interscambi socio-culturali ed economici fra le città marinare d’Italia e l’Occidente, ed. Bruno Figliuolo and Pinuccia F. Simbula (Amalfi: Presso la Sede del Centro, 2014), 385–410; Thierry Pécout, “Marseille, a Supporting Role,” in The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Trade Around Europe 1300–1600: Commercial Networks and Urban Autonomy, ed. Wim Blockmans, Mikhail Krom, and Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 192–210; Stephan Köhler, “Handel und Wirtschaft Siziliens im Mittelalter. Verschiedene Betrachtungsweisen von innen und außen,” in Siziliens Geschichte. Insel zwischen den Welten, ed. Wolfgang Gruber and Stephan Köhler (Vienna: Mandelbaum 2013), 144–67.
2.
On Amalric, see the edition of his acts, “Les notules commerciales d’Amalric. Notaire Marseillais du XIIIe siècle.” In Documents inédits sur le commerce de Marseille au Moyen Âge, 2 vols., ed. Louis Blancard (Marseille: Barlatier-Feissat Père et Fils, 1884–1885). See also John H. Pryor, Business contracts of medieval Provence: Selected Notulae from the cartulary of Giraud Amalric of Marseilles, 1248 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1981). The entanglements of economic cooperation between the commercial centers of Marseille, Montpellier and their hinterland in Mediterranean trade are the subject of my thesis, published as Stephan Nicolussi-Köhler, Marseille, Montpellier und das Mittelmeer. Die Entstehung des südfranzösischen Fernhandels im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert, Pariser Historische Studien 120 (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2021). It can be shown that not only were trade privileges decisive for the increasing long-distance trade of the southern French cities, but above all intensive economic collaboration between the southern French trading metropolises and their hinterland was essential. This cooperation provided goods, capital, and labor for trading ventures.
3.
Reyerson, “Montpellier and Genoa,” 363. For detailed treatment of the relations between Genoa, Pisa, and southern France, see André Dupont, Les relations commerciales entre les cités maritimes de Languedoc et les cités méditerranéennes d`Espagne et d`Italie du X^me au XIII^me siècle (Nîmes: Imprimerie Chastanier Frères et Alméras, 1942); and Enrica Salvatori, Boni amici et vicini: le relazioni tra Pisa e le città della Francia meridionale dall’XI alla fine del XIII secolo (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2002).
4.
David Abulafia, The Two Italies. Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicily and the Northern Communes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 95; Kathryn Reyerson, “Montpellier et le transport maritime: le problème d’une flotte médiévale,” in Le Languedoc, le Roussillon et la mer. Des origines à la fin du XX^e siècle, vol. 1, ed. Gérard Cholvy and Jean Rieucau (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1992), 102; David Abulafia, “Marseilles, Acre and the Mediterranean, 1200–1291,” in Coinage in the Latin East. The Fourth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, ed. Peter Edbury and David Metcalf (Oxford: BAR Publishing, 1980), 21; Wilhelm Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen âge, 2 vols. (Leibniz: Otto Harrassowitz, 1885–1886), vol. 1, 188.
5.
David Abulafia, “The Levant trade of the minor cities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: strengths and weaknesses,” in The medieval Levant. Studies in memory of Eliyahu Ashtor (1914–1984), ed. Benjamin Kedar and Abraham Udovitch (Haifa: The Gustav Heinemann Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, 1988), 185; David Abulafia, “Narbonne, the lands of the Crown of Aragon, and the Levant trade,” in Historiographie de la Couronne d’Aragon. Actes du 12^e Congrès d’Histoire de la Couronne d’Aragon, Montpellier, 26–29 septembre 1985 (Montpellier: Société archéologique de Montpellier, 1989), 189–91.
6.
A general discussion about the effectiveness of trade agreements between the cities of the French Midi on the one side and Genoa and Pisa at the other is given in Salvatori, Boni amici.
7.
John H. Pryor, “Commenda: the operation of the contract in long distance commerce at Marseilles during the thirteenth century,” The Journal of European Economic History 13 (1984): 397–440.
8.
Pécout, “Marseille, a Supporting Role,” 192.
9.
Pryor, “Commenda,” 397–8; John H. Pryor, “The unedited commercial charters of the Manduel family of Marseilles, 1191–1251,” in A Distinct Voice. Medieval Studies in Honour of Leonard E. Boyle, O. P., ed. Jacqueline Brown, Jacqueline, and William P. Stoneman (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 502–22; Köhler, Aufbruch in den Osten, 27–36. The documents were published by the archivist Louis Blancard in Documents inédits sur le commerce de Marseille au Moyen Âge, 2 vols. (Marseille: Barlatier-Feissat Père et Fils, 1884–1885).
10.
Abulafia, The Two Italies; 16–24; Reyerson, “Montpellier and Genoa,” 364.
11.
Abulafia, The Two Italies, 83–4.
12.
Dino Puncuh, ed., I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, vol. 1/2 (Rome: Ministero per I Beni Cultural e Ambientali Ufficio Centrale per I Beni Archivistici, 1996), no. 289, 44–7; note also an earlier edition of this document in Liber Iurium Reipublicae Genuensis, Historiae Patriae Momumenta, vol. 7, ed. Carlo Baudi di Vesme, Cornelio Desimoni, and Vittorio Poggi (Turin: Officina Regia, 1854), vol. 1, no. CCXXX, col. 202–3. Cf. Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 472–3; Mayer, Marseilles Levantehandel, 61–2; Abulafia, The Two Italies, 92–6; Salvatori, Boni amici, 74.
13.
Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 472ff.
14.
Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, ed. Ludwig Weiland (Hannover: Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1893), vol. 1, 293, no. 241.
15.
Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 472; Abulafia, The Two Italies, 95. For examples of trade relations in Genoese notaries, see Regesta Chartarum Italiae. Il Cartolare di Giovanni Scriba, ed. Mario Chiaudano and Mattia Moresco, 2 vols. (Rome: Nelle Sede dell`Istituto, via dei Filippini 4, 1935), no. 11; Notai Liguri del Sec. XII. Oberto Scriba de Mercato (1186), ed. Mario Chiaudano (Genoa: R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Liguria, Palazzo Rosso, 1940), nos. 103, 328; Notai Liguri del Sec. XII. Guglielmo Cassinese (1190–1192), ed. Margaret W. Hall, Hilmar C. Krueger, and Robert L. Reynolds, 2 vols. (Genoa: R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Liguria, Palazzo Rosso, 1938), no. 1668.
16.
Vsevolod Slessarev, “Die sogenannten Orientalen im mittelalterlichen Genua. Einwanderer aus Südfrankreich in der ligurischen Metropole,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 51, no. 1 (1964): 22–65.
17.
Dupont, Les relations commerciales, 129–30; Salvatori, Boni amici, 75–82.
18.
Reyerson, “Montpellier and Genoa,” 372.
19.
Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 472.
20.
Diplomata Regum Latinorum Hierosolymitanorum, vol. 1, part 2, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, ed. Hans E. Mayer (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2005), no. 520, 866–9. Cf. Abulafia, “Marseilles, Acre and the Mediterranean,” 19–39; Köhler, Aufbruch in den Osten, 120–38; Reyerson, “Montpellier and Genoa,” 364.
21.
Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, Die Urkunden Friedrichs II. 1198–1212, vol. 14, part 1, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, ed. by Walter Koch (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002), no. 11, 23–6.
22.
The piece is probably a non-completed original or one (unsealed) copy of several multiple issuances. Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, Die Urkunden Friedrichs II. 1198–1212, vol. 14, part 1, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, no. 11, 23–4. For the issuance of privileges during Frederick II’s minority, see Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 487.
23.
Penet, “Les communautés marchandes,” 233.
24.
Trade with southern Italy can also be documented. In 1208 a trade agreement between Marseille and Gaeta indicates economic relations with the city of Gaeta in southern Italy. See Bourilly, Essai sur l’histoire politique, no. VII bis, 257–8; Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 485. For trading activity between Marseille and Gaeta, see for example Amalric, no. 418. See examples of trade in « Les chartes commerciales des Manduel. Négociants Marseillais du XIIIème siècle.” In Documents inédits sur le commerce de Marseille au Moyen Âge, ed. Louis Blancard (Marseille: Barlatier-Feissat Père et Fils, 1884), vol. 1, nos. 1, 2, 61, 67, 75. Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 498.
25.
Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, Die Urkunden Friedrichs II. 1198–1212, no. 131, 255–6. The original is lost and the copy in the Archives de la ville de Marseille is a notarial copy (transsumpt) from 1226/1227.
26.
For the treaty of 1203, see Pernoud, Essai sur l`histoire du port de Marseille, no. II, 292–5. For the treaty of 1229, see Dino Puncuh, ed., I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova, no. 375, 289–302; also in Liber Iurium, vol. 1, no. 675, coll. 851–63. For treaties between Genoa and Montpellier 1202 and 1205, see Reyerson, “Montpellier and Genoa,” 365.
27.
Pernoud, Essai sur l`histoire du port de Marseille, no. III, 295–303.
28.
On the interpretation of the contract, Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 599–600; Mayer, Marseilles Levantehandel, 85; Salvatori, Boni amici, 149–50; Köhler, Aufbruch in den Osten, 150–2.
29.
Abulafia highlighted the close collaboration of merchants and shippers from the “Provençal-speaking world.” Salvatori, following Abulafia, refers to the privilege in Tyre as a collective privilege (“un privilegio collettivo”) granted to several groups of merchants of equal importance. However, we do not know specifically how the fondaco was organized and functioned. Abulafia, “Narbonne,” 192; Salvatori, Boni amici, 106–7. In Acre, where Marseille had a fondaco, the Provençals lived in a joint quarter that is mentioned in several documents from the second half of the thirteenth century (“vicus, qui dicitur Provincialium”). There existed a rue des Provençaux, also mentioned as rue commune, which suggests that the merchants of Provence and Languedoc probably established a jointly commercial presence. The Annales Ianuenses depict the Provinciales to have acted together as a community during the so-called War of Saint Sabas. Mayer, Marseilles Levantehandel, 73 (with references to the mentioned sources). Similarly, the merchants from Languedoc and Provence had a joint-representation at the fairs of Champagne. In 1289 and 1318, several charters mention a captain of Montpellier and the Provençal merchants of the language commonly called Langue d’Oc (capitaneum pro universis et singulis mercatoribus Lingue Occitane sive d`oc; capitain de Provence dit de la Lenga d`oc). Alexandre Germain, Histoire du commerce de Montpellier, anterieurement à l`ouverture du port de Cette, vol. 1 (Montpellier: Imprimerie de Jean Martel Ainé, 1861), no. LXII-LXIII, 307–26.
30.
This practice is recorded, for example, in a treaty between Genoa and Montpellier in 1225. Alexandre Germain, Histoire de la commune de Montpellier. Depuis ses origines jusqu’à son incorporation définitive a la monarchie française, vol. 2 (Montpellier: Imprimerie de Jean Martel Ainé, 1851), no. XXIV, 426–36.
31.
Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser, Die Urkunden Friedrichs II. 1222–1226, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, vol. 14, part 5.1, ed. Walter Koch (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002), no. 1119, 442–5. Cf. Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 498.
32.
Reyerson, “Commerce and society,” vol. 1, 366; Köhler, Aufbruch in den Osten, no. 3, 295–300; Germain, Histoire de la commune, vol. 2, no. XXXI, 457–61.
33.
Diplomata Regum Latinorum Hierosolymitanorum, vol. 1, part 2, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, ed. Hans E. Mayer (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2005), no. 479, 815–18; and Diplomata Regum Latinorum Hierosolymitanorum, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, vol. 1, part 3, ed. Hans E. Mayer (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2010), no. 665, 1116–9. Cf. Mayer, Marseilles Levantehandel, 85–8; Abulafia, “Marseilles, Acre and the Mediterranean,” 29–30; Köhler, Aufbruch in den Osten, 138–46.
34.
Köhler, Aufbruch in den Osten, no. 3, 295–300; Germain, Histoire de la commune, vol. 2, no. XXXI, 457–61; Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 161; Mayer, Marseilles Levantehandel, 86; Köhler, Aufbruch in den Osten, 182–3.
35.
David Abulafia, “Pisan commercial colonies and consulates in twelfth-century Sicily,” The English Historical Review 93 (1978): 76–7.
36.
Abulafia, The Levant Trade, 183–4.
37.
Cf. Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 594–8; Salvatori, Boni amici, 143. For the transportation of wares and merchants on foreign ships, see: Liber Iurium, vol. 1, col. 492–3, 504; 541–2; Antiquitates Italicae medii aevi, vol. 4, ed. Ludovico Muratori (Milan: Typographia Societatis Palatinae in Regia Curia, 1741), coll. 397–8.
38.
Rosalind K. Berlow, “The Sailing of the ‘Saint Esprit’,” Journal of Economic History 39, no. 2 (1979): 345–62; Pryor, Business contracts; Köhler, Aufbruch in den Osten, 31–4.
39.
Cf. Pryor, “Commenda,” 397–440; Abulafia, “Marseilles, Acre and the Mediterranean,” 31–3.
40.
The voyages of several ships have been analyzed in detail. Cf. Berlow, “The Sailing of the ‘Saint Esprit’,” 345–62 (for the “Sanctus Spiritus”); Nicolussi-Köhler, Marseille, Montpellier und das Mittelmeer 410-23 (for the “Sicarda”).
41.
Pernoud, Histoire du commerce, 203–7.
42.
Byrne, Genoese Shipping, 9–11; Berlow, “The Sailing of the ‘Saint Esprit’,” 350; Steven Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 958–1258 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 98.
43.
Amalric, nos. 4, 8, 17, 28, 56, 59, 61–63, 66–9, 73, 80, 85, 93, 95, 107, 121, 131, 135, 158, 160, 169, 192, 196, 198–9, 215, 218, 220, 242–3, 245, 250, 258–9, 261–2, 268, 276, 290, 298, 300, 302–3, 307, 314–5, 317, 321, 324, 329, 336, 338–9, 342, 346–8, 352, 359, 365, 408, 413, 479, 502–3.
44.
Amalric, nos. 27, 106, 264, 369, 405, 417–8, 427, 430, 458, 468, 509–10, 513–4, 519, 526.
45.
Pryor, Business contracts, 114–9.
46.
Berlow, “The Sailing of the ‘Saint Esprit’,” 356; Isidore Loeb, “Les Negotiants juifs à Marseille au milieu du XIII^e siècle,” Revue des Etudes Juives 16 (1888): 73–83.
47.
Amalric, nos. 61, 158, 215, 268, 290, 298, 321, 348 (both merchants from Marseille); nos. 63, 73, 85, 317 (investor from Montpellier and traveling partner from Marseille).
48.
Amalric, nos. 17, 342, 408, 413.
49.
Amalric, nos. 218, 242, 290.
50.
Berlow, “The Sailing of the ‘Saint Esprit’,” 351.
51.
The high investments from Genoa can be explained by the political circumstances. The regime of Genoa was at war with the emperor and king of Sicily and Genoese merchants were banned from trade with Sicily from 1232 to 1251. The Ghibelline fraction of the Genoese, loyal to the Emperor, then carried out its trade with Sicily through the port of Marseille. Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 488–9; Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 121–9.
52.
Schaube, Handelsgeschichte, 502.
53.
Amalric, no. 106.
54.
At this point, it must be emphasized once again that the contracts recorded by Amalric do not cover the entire loading of the ships. These figures are therefore only an “approximate minimum.” Cf. Berlow, “The Sailing of the ‘Saint Esprit’,” 359–60.
55.
Amalric, nos. 61–3, 66–7, 69, 93, 107, 196, 198–9, 315, 346, 352. Cf. Pryor, Business contracts, 73.
56.
Pernoud, Essai sur l`histoire du port de Marseille, no. IX, 321. Cf. Pryor, “Commenda,” 405–6. The foreign investments on ships bound for the Levant were even bigger.
57.
Reyerson, “Montpellier et le transport maritime,” 98–108.
58.
It should not be forgotten that trade on foreign ships and via other ports always meant subordination to the jurisdiction of the other city—a troublesome issue that led to decades of conflict between Marseille and Montpellier in the thirteenth century. Mayer, Marseilles Levantehandel, 86 and 126.
59.
Pécout, “Marseille, a Supporting Role,” 200–3; Lesage, Marseille Angevine, 149–63; John H. Pryor, “Foreign Policy and Economic Policy: The Angevins of Sicily and the Economic Decline of Southern Italy, 1266–1341,” in Principalities, Powers and Estates. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Government and Society, ed. Leighton O. Frappell (Adelaide: Adelaide University Union Press, 1980), 43–55.
60.
Cf. Adela P. Fábregas García, “Other Markets: Complementary Commercial Zones in the Nasrid World of the Western Mediterranean (Seventh/Thirteenth to Ninth/Fifteenth Centuries),” Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 25, no. 1 (2013): 136, https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2013.767512.

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Department of History and European Ethnology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
Stephan Nicolussi-Köhler

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Emily Sohmer Tai
Department of History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Kathryn L. Reyerson

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Nicolussi-Köhler, S. (2022). Trade Between the French Midi and the Kingdom of Sicily. In: Sohmer Tai, E., Reyerson, K.L. (eds) Mapping Pre-Modern Sicily. Mediterranean Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04915-6_8

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