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

et male zelantibus cupidis negotiatoribus, ex soliti quaestus diminutione. '79 This statement
implies that some merchants were playing a double role in this situation of famine; some were
saving people from hunger while others took advantage of the starving people.
It is also interesting to contemplate the economic meaning of such an investment in
comparison with the export of commodities in peaceful years. The Itinerarium twice remarks that
the price of one measure of wheat, which was small enough to be carried under one's arm,
amounted to 100 golden coins: `modii tritici, mensura modica quam videlicet quis facile portaret
sub ascella, centum aureis vendebatur. ' Ambroise also wrote about the lack of supplies and the
high price of wheat, which indeed amounted to 100 bezants: `Mull iert li muis de ble pesanz, l
Qui costoit en Post cent besanz. '80 Later on in the text. He repeated this information:
Qui esteit as gerniers gisanz, l
Que cil vendeient cent besanz, /
Sil mist de cent besanz a qutre: /
Tel marcheanz s'il dut enbatre /
Qui taut et si tost embati. [my emphasis] 81
Other sources provide similar information about the high price of commodities and
especially grain. In Merton Hubert's translation of Ambroise, John La Monte noted about these
prices that contemporary Muslim chronicles also wrote that a sack of grain was purchased in Acre
for 100 bezants 82 The value of grain and wheat was usually much lower of course. The Genoese
merchants who delivered the supplies to the Latin East had purchased these products in Europe
for much lower sums. For example, a merchant named Ugo Papazella was sent in the spring of
1190 from Genoa to Corneto to purchase 10 modii frumenti. He was instructed to pay 18s per
modium83
The evidence of famine and great demand for grain suggests that even when the price of
grain had been reduced because the loaded ships arrived the revenues for the merchants were
high. This also explains why some Genoese mariners asked to be paid in grain rather than coins.
In the sailing contract between the shipowner, Bernardo Ricio, and two mariners from Camogli
79 Ibid, Ch. 79, Stubbs, p. 136; `the only ones who were sad and resentful were the greedy merchants,
because the profits that they had been making would be reduced'', trans. by Nicholson, p. 136.
80 Ambroise, L'estoire de la guerre sainte, histoire en vers de la troisieme croisade (1190-1192), ed.
Gaston Paris (Paris, 1897), p. 113, lines 4217-8. Merton J. Hubert translated these lines as: `Heavy the peck
of grain that cost / An hundred besants in the host', Ambroise, The Crusae of Richard the Lion-Heart,
trans. Merton J. Hubert with notes and documents by John L. La Monte (New York, 1941), p. 181.
81 Ambroise, 4493-6; Hubert translated: What corn the granaries contain- /A hundred besants cost the grain
-/ And from a hundred cut the rate/ To Four. Well doth negotiate/ A merchant who thus lowers price.
82 Merton Hubert (ed. ), The Crusade of Richard Lion-Heart, p. 181, n. 24
83 OS, 1190, no. 261, from 16 March 1190. See also a discussion of this contract in David Abulafla,
`Corneto-Tarquinia and the Italian Mercantile Republics: The Earliest Evidence', Papers of the British
School at Rome, 42 (1974), pp. 226-7.
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