It is always a pleasure to reread the delightful monograph Merchants and Bankers of the Middle Ages by the eminent and prolific French medievalist Jacques Le Goff, who passed away in 2014. Published as part of the famous Que sais-je? collection more than 60 years ago, in 1956, Le Goff was commissioned to write a short monograph on trade in the Middle Ages, which he synthesized for posterity into a concept, or in his own words, a new social category: the merchant-banker. With a masterly pen, he portrayed the world of the first emergence of capitalism and the role, perhaps the leading role, that merchants—the original bankers—played in Europe’s economic growth, especially in urban areas, and in its cultural flourishing since at least the 13th century. With great didactic skill, he explains the possible birth and widespread use of the bill of exchange, insurance, and double-entry bookkeeping—improvements in methods and techniques that stimulated the activity of the societas maris or merchant compagnias. Merchants who, at a slow pace—as Le Goff recounts through a thorough and engaging use of sources—gradually became useful and necessary among and for the various sectors of society, their society. Merchant-bankers of whom Benedetto Cotrugli of Ragusa, in his manual On Commerce and the Perfect Merchant, written in the mid-15th century, could already state, “[…] they deal with craftsmen, gentlemen, barons, princes, and prelates of all ranks, who flock to visit the merchants, whom they always need […].” A necessity not without some controversy. Le Goff, a self-professed agnostic, does not shy away from clearly addressing the evolution of the Church’s attitude toward these merchants and their activities, moving from a debate centered on usury and credit to accepting, valuing, and occasionally even protecting merchant-bankers, encouraging their charitable work and fruitful cultural patronage. A patronage that, as Le Goff acknowledges, would open new and fertile horizons for ideas and the arts on the threshold of Humanism and the Renaissance.
