The Crusades, the Genoese and the Latin East - DSpace at ...

Benjamin Kedar, Marie-Luise Favreau-Lilie and Sandra Origone. Works by these authors are
referred to in many chapters. Inevitably, the above authors have also dealt with aspects of
commerce in the Mediterranean. However, on the medieval Mediterranean and on commerce
there are also the monumental works, though dated, of Wilhelm von Ileyd, Adolf Schaube,
Fernand Braudel and Claude Cahen, which were often consulted during the research. Finally, this
list includes many general works on the crusades, and especially titles by Hans Mayer, Jean
Richard and Jonathan Riley Smith.
The cartularies:
The cartularies are notebooks in which notaries wrote down a large variety of records, from
business partnership to travelling contracts, sea-loans, purchase of goods for credit and
individuals' last wills (see Figure 1: a photo of an open page in the cartulary of
Giovanni di
Guiberto showing nine contracts with horizontal lines separating them from one another). The
cartularies which are available nowadays contain only part of the total number of contracts
composed during these years in Genoa. They therefore provide the opportunity to observe
Genoese life for rather short and scattered spans of time during the crusade. From the years of the
Third Crusade, cartularies remain only from 1190 to 1191, written by the notaries Oberto Scriba
de Mercato, Guglielmo Cassinese and Guglielmo di Sori. From the time of the Fourth Crusade,
two cartularies remain, but only from the year 1203. These cartularies are attributed to Giovanni
di Guiberto and to Lanfranco 2 Finally, from the period of the Fifth Crusade cartularies are
available from 1213 (Oberto Scriba), 1216-7 (Lanfranco) and from 1222-3 (Magister Salmonis).
These latter cartularies therefore apply to the years of planning the Fifth Crusade, the preparations
for it and the period shortly after the defeat of the crusaders at Damietta. In order to establish
patterns of commerce it is also necessary to study the activities of merchants in peacetime. Many
other cartularies from the 1170s until 1226 were thus used in this research. This broad view of
Genoa's commercial activities opens tip the opportunity to track the career of
individuals before,
during, and after the crusades. It also enables the recognition of changes in travel routes. The
establishment of commercial relations in markets that were not previously visited by Latin
merchants are revealed. It will be argued in Chapter One, for example, that one of the results of
the Third Crusade was that a commercial link was created between Genoa and England.
Similarly, it will be argued that the growing interest of the Genoese in the northern parts of the
crusader states and the opening of the route to Aleppo were carried out in response to the
Venetian conquest of Constantinople. The research in the wider context also allows the
z The cartulary of Lanfranco contains records of other notaries too. Not all of them were identified.
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