The formation of trusting relationships between merchants in Mallorca and Barcelona 1240-1350.

by Annabel Hancock, St John’s College, Oxford

Through my research on Catalan and Mallorcan traders in the medieval Mediterranean, I seek to explore the ways in which identity, trust, and community both in the past, and now, shape human lives. I ask what it means to be a part of a group, what it means to make agreements with others, and how interactions with others change the ways we understand our own identity. The medieval world, far from the parochial backwater it is often seen to be, was filled with movement and connections. Traders from Barcelona corresponded with people and exchanged objects from England to the Middle East to China. These interactions involved cooperation between different communities, different languages, and different cultural understandings of the world.  

My research really grew from a query about how complex trade relationships could coexist with violence and danger. Scholarship shows that large-scale and long-distance trading operations took place across the Mediterranean Sea, and yet this took place alongside raids, piracy, and violence, often between the same two parties. My work examines how complex trusting relationships within identity, gender, and faith groups were formed and maintained within an environment of clashing motives.

In the thirteenth century, the Crown of Aragon became a dominant mercantile power, engaging with and challenging the great trading cities of Venice and Genoa. Barcelona and la Ciutat de Mallorca (today known as Palma) were central hubs for investors and merchants, and can be seen highlighted on The Catalan Atlas of 1375 (Figure 1). Barcelona was the centre of royal power in the Crown of Aragon and home to a majority Christian and minority Jewish population. Palma de Mallorca was conquered from Muslim rulers by Jaume I of Aragon in 1229 to 31. Despite a large amount of Catalan repopulation, the island was home to important Jewish and Muslim communities which included both investors and merchants.

To create and officially record investments and sales, traders went before notaries who, while appointed by royal and municipal authorities, served a private function, creating documents for individuals. Writings of notaries were legal agreements which could be used as evidence in courts. As a result, we might expect documents to look the same and contain the same language, such as standardised legal phrases. However, the texts vary and include emotional and trust-making languages full of promises and suggestions. The documents were commonly crossed out and rephrased, showing the development of the text; these agreements were created collaboratively between the notaries and parties.

The Catalan Atlas of 1375, attributed to Cresques Abraham, working in Mallorca. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

I have put together a database of over 1300 notarial documents referring to long-distance trade from Barcelona and Mallorca 1240-1350 and seek examine how linguistic choices and changes were affected by factors such as gender, faith, and citizenship. We find different identity groups engaging with the Christian notarial office. For example, female parties were commonly investing in trade. A small minority of documents also included Jewish parties. The relationship between the Jewish communities of Mallorca and Barcelona and the Christian notarial institution is of particular interest. I consider what the power relations between the men and women stood in the notarial office may have been, the agency Jewish parties had to shape the language being used and the relationship being built, and what we might be able to learn about how trust varied between groups when we analyse the linguistic choices in detail.

One of the ways in which I have sought to explore these connections is by engaging with network science. This is a kind of analysis that developed in mathematics and computer science focusing on the representation and exploration of relationships and connections. Use of network analysis in the humanities typically focuses on relationships between humans, for example tracing correspondence in letters. Exploring this method of analysis and considering the ways in which varied historical source materials can be utilised, has allowed me to better understand the ways in which medieval Mediterranean trade took place and to explore how different economic communities might have functioned, challenging some of our assumptions related to medieval maritime movement.  For example, Figure 2 shows a graph created from a small subset of notarial documents written in Barcelona, showing relationships between any named people in the contracts (apart from the notaries themselves). Even this small network of relationships presents some interesting findings. Firstly, that the actors in the network are mainly connected. This suggest a trading community that was not defined by small family loyalties but instead by inter-group cooperation. Secondly, that Maria de Medalia, the matriarch of a prominent merchant family, appears as one of the most important investors in the network. Women are not frequently understood to play a prominent role in medieval maritime trade. Further exploration of the role of Maria de Medalia, as well as other powerful Barcelonan women, might prove that we need to rethink how these economic communities really functioned. 

Relationships between traders, investors, and witnesses in Barcelona notarial contracts, 1250-1350. Node size, colour, and node label size are defined by weighted degree. Created with Gephi.

Additionally, I place individual merchant and investor relationships within the wider field of negotiation and institutional bolsters which enabled complex trusting partnership to take place, examining Arabic diplomatic letters between rules of North Africa and the Crown of Aragon as well as documents related to episcopal intervention in trade. Rulers were central to the creation of stable cross-group relations and formed part of a wider environment of trust, enabling the conduct of trade across long-distances and between communities. Through a language based on trust and friendship, similar to that of the notarial contracts, we can see how rulers engaged with daily mercantile business and facilitated trusting relationships.

I have found that flexibility and an acceptance of risk and unpredictability were central to the agreements, while personal relationships affected the ways in which trust was created more than pre-established groupings (such as faith and citizenship). I look forward to continuing this research as I write up my DPhil thesis and beyond.

Annabel Hancock is a final year DPhil student in History at St John’s College, Oxford, co-funded by the OOC AHRC DTP, St John’s College, Oxford, and the Clarendon Fund. She is a College Lecturer in Medieval History at Oriel College, Oxford and previously studied her MA in Medieval Studies at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York and her BA in History at Oriel College, Oxford. She is interested in how and why group identities were formed, the ways in which groups reacted to ‘others’, and how trust/distrust was constructed and maintained within and between identity groups (including religion, gender, and citizenship). She also maintain an interest in digital humanities, exploring the uses of network science to study the past, as can be seen in her recent publication ‘Tracing connections: using network analysis to study trade and movement in the Mediterranean in the 11th to 14th centuries’, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Volume 38, Issue 4, December 2023, pp. 1536–1563, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqad056.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Andreas Lehnertz (February 13, 2024). The formation of trusting relationships between merchants in Mallorca and Barcelona 1240-1350. medievalJewishStudiesNow! Retrieved November 2, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/vtou


About Andreas Lehnertz

As Juniorpofessor of medieval history with a specialization in Jewish history at the University of Trier, Andreas Lehnertz studies the social, cultural, and religious history of Europe. His academic pursuits focus on the nuanced dynamics of everyday Christian-Jewish relations, the study of marginal Hebrew and Yiddish deeds, the study of Jewish and general sealing practices, and the in-depth study of Jewish craftspeople. He wrote a book on "Jewish Seals in the Medieval German Empire: The Authentication and Self-Representation of Jewish Men and Women". His expertise has been further honed through his roles as a postdoctoral fellow in the ERC project "Beyond the Elite - Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe" at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and as a member of the Martin Buber Society in the Humanities and Social Sciences, also at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Currently he writes a book that about "Jewish Craftspeople in Medieval Germany". Through his research and publications, he aims to make a meaningful contribution to the academic discourse surrounding medieval history and to provide valuable insights into the rich tapestry of European history during this pivotal period.

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