Identity in The Medieval Mediterranean World of Merchants and Pirates

Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean World of Merchants and Pirates
Author(s): Kathryn Reyerson

Source: Mediterranean Studies , Vol. 20, No. 2 (2012), pp. 129-146
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/mediterraneanstu.20.2.0129
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Mediterranean Studies
This content downloaded from

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
MS
Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean
World of Merchants and Pirates
Kathryn Reyerson, University of Minnesota
abstract: Identity in the medieval Mediterranean world was complex and multifaceted.
Medieval Europeans, especially merchants, borrowed and shifted identities according to the
circumstances. They might sail under the flags of other polities and become pirates and privateers
on occasion. This study examines cases of shifting identities, multiple identities, borrowing of
identities, and mistaken identities within a shared Mediterranean maritime culture, using
literary evidence, judicial records, treaties, and documents of practice.
keywords: Mediterranean, merchants, pirates, Middle Ages
Long-distance international trade was a significant feature of the medieval

Mediterranean. Where there was trade, there was often piracy. Merchants turned
pirate or privateer on a dime, changing their identities. Identity as a term is itself
contested particularly in social science historiography, but it is still useful as long
as the complexity is maintained; more than race or ethnicity is involved, as law,
class, political affiliation, religion, language, and culture can also be at issue.1 This
study examines incidents of piracy, privateering, and reprisal, using lawsuits,
literature, and documents of practice in an effort to problematize the question of
identity in the multicultural medieval Mediterranean world. From this evidence
one finds cases of shifting identities, multiple identities, borrowing of identities,
and mistaken identities. These are the organizing categories of this study. But let
us begin with two stories to set the scene.
In day 5, story 2 of the Decameron, the early Italian Renaissance author
Boccaccio (1313–75) has his narrator tell the tale of the lovers Gostanza and
Martuccio of Lipari, a small island off the northern coast of Sicily.2 Gostanza’s
father thought Martuccio too poor to marry his daughter. The story relates
Martuccio’s departure on the sea to make his fortune and his experience as a
Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2012

Copyright © 2013 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 129 13/02/13 10:19 AM

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
130 Kathryn Reyerson
captive in North Africa. Gostanza, believing him dead, casts herself adrift in a
boat to take her life but instead arrives in Susa on the North African coast. At
the end of the story, Gostanza and Martuccio are reunited and return to Lipari
to marry.
There are many interesting facets to this story, but the one pertinent to this
study is the matter-of-course fashion with which Boccaccio invokes piracy. The
worthy Martuccio, rebuffed by Gostanza’s father, decides to leave Lipari. Boccaccio
tells us,
Martuccio took an oath in the presence of some of his friends and kinsfolk
that Lipari should know him no more until he was wealthy. So away he
sailed, and took to scouring the seas as a rover on the coast of Barbary,
preying upon all whose force matched not his own. In which way of life
he found Fortune favorable enough, had he but known how to rest and be
thankful: but ’twas not enough that he and his comrades in no long time
waxed very wealthy.3
Instead of quitting while they are ahead, Martuccio and his companions con-
tinue their piracies and are captured by Saracens and taken to Tunis as prisoners.
Martuccio’s merit ultimately has him recognized by the king, however, in spite
of his pirate ways. He and Gostanza, once happily reunited, are well received in
North Africa, inhabitants of which Martuccio had preyed upon in his incarnation
as a pirate, and then, in the denouement, they are reintegrated back into Lipari
society.
A second Boccaccio tale, in Decameron day 2, story 4, recounts the fate of
Landolfo Rufolo of Ravello, depicting another scenario in which a merchant
turns pirate.4 Landolfo is a wealthy merchant who wants even greater riches.
His investment in a ship destined for Cyprus proves a disaster, however, since
he is unable to sell his goods in Cypriot markets at the price he was hoping for.
Rather than return home penniless, he sells his ship and purchases a smaller vessel
to use as a corsair, that is, a privateer, targeting Turkish cargoes in particular.5
After great success, as he is sailing home with his new wealth, he is attacked by
Genoese carracks that sink his ship, causing him to lose everything once again.6
But after Landolfo has been taken prisoner in one of the carracks, it too sinks in
a storm. Landolfo survives by clinging to a chest. After Landolfo and his chest
wash ashore on the island of Corfu, the chest turns out to contain precious stones.
Landolfo reaches home after all with a great fortune. He returns to his upstanding
and honorable life, sends money to those who helped him get home, and never
reprises his pirate ways.

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean World 131
What stands out in these tales is the ease with which Boccaccio has the
admirable Martuccio turn to piracy to make his fortune, a large one at that, and
the matter-of-fact way in which he describes Landolfo’s decision to become a
privateer to remake his fortune.7 The transition from islander to pirate or from
merchant to privateer, was not couched in dissembling, in role reversal, or in
gender bending. It was clearly commonplace.
Long ago, economic historians Robert Lopez and Irving Raymond noted the
persistence of privateering during the medieval period “as a form of business
activity.” As they state,
Romantic notions about the life of the buccaneer ought not to make us
forget that piracy was a form of economic enterprise and that pirates had
to be businessmen as well as fighters. Most of them, in fact, alternated
[between] privateering and ordinary trade.8
Piracy could even be financed with credit and through contracts in a way similar
to ordinary trade.9
In the competitive environment of trade, merchants from a variety of towns, in
particular, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, dispatched fleets to prey on each other’s trade.
Genoa seems particularly versatile in this regard. There was a common saying,
“I am Genoese, therefore a merchant,” but an alternative version states, “Citizen
of Genoa, therefore a pirate” (Sono januensis, ergo mercator. Civis januensis, ergo
pirata). In five of the eight piracy references in Boccaccio’s Decameron, the pirates
are Genoese or Ligurian.10 In the Landolfo tale, Boccaccio calls the Genoese “by
nature greedy and rapacious men.”11 But the Genoese were not alone in having a
double identity; shifting identities were common in maritime contexts. Medieval
merchants and admirals could turn pirate or privateer when the occasion presented
itself or when necessity required.12
Shifting Identities and Multiple Identities
The medieval historian Fredric Cheyette has commented, “The step from rapacity
to respectability—and back again—was easy to make. It was easy in part because
piracy was not necessarily a dirty word nor a pirate automatically a criminal.”13
Cheyette also notes, “The problem, of course, was to decide who were friends
and who were enemies: which was but another side to the distinction between
legitimate violence and illegitimate.”14 Clearly, it all depended on the audience.
Perception and perspective were key.

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
Much of the piracy that one can trace in the medieval era relates to individuals
with maritime experience who constructed multiple identities for themselves, one
of which, in the right circumstances, could be that of pirate. For this reason,
piracy offers a unique context in which to examine the shifting identities of the
period. Piracy itself was joined by privateering, which was piracy legitimized
with a license to prey on a political enemy. This license was usually delivered
in the form of a letter of marque, from a political authority, that is, a sovereign
power. First appearing in the twelfth century as a means of enforcing unexecuted
contracts, letters of marque were used from the mid-thirteenth century as a way
to combat maritime predation.15 Privateering or corsairing reflected both political
and military motives.16
A system of reprisal developed through letters of marque.17 The law of marque
was an area of medieval international law that involved reprisal and reimburse-
ment for merchants whose goods were “unjustly” seized by pirates or stolen by
robbers on land. Creditors might also pursue such reprisals against defaulting
debtors.18 Victims could appeal to the political authority of the perpetrators for
compensation; should their requests go unanswered, they could address their
complaints to their own political authority, whether a king or a town or some
other authority, which could then accord a letter of marque, permitting the victim
himself to seek retribution by attacking compatriots of the perpetrators. Letters
of marque thus permitted merchants to become privateers on their own behalf.
Because innocent compatriots of the original perpetrators were often made to
pay, opposing letters of marque might be issued, leading to an unending chain of
marques and counter-marques.
The thirteenth-century Genoese Benedetto Zaccaria is a kind of archetype of the
merchant/privateer who made his fortune in trade and industry and accumulated
vast wealth in ships, mastic plantations (a plant resin used as an adhesive) on Chios,
and alum mines (a dye fixative) on Phocaea as well as investments in real estate,
public debt holdings, and other resources.19 Zaccaria also served as admiral for
the king of Castile, assisting in his efforts to rid the Straits of Gibraltar of Muslim
maritime operations (i.e., privateering). The commander of a fleet could sign
himself over to the power he chose. Zaccaria wore several hats. In fact, these lords
of Outremer (the Eastern Mediterranean), families like the Zaccaria (who were
installed at Phocaea and Chios), or the Gattilusio (with holdings at Lesbos, Lemnos,
Tasos, and on other small islands), enjoyed a kind of dual identity, as citizens of
Genoa and as quasi-autonomous possessors of Greek lordships. The situation
became very ambiguous when incidents occurred that might lead to reprisals.
These merchants were remarkable entrepreneurs, but they became corsairs when
necessary in the murky world of Genoese colonies in the eastern Mediterranean,

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
the faltering Byzantine Empire, and their own family interests. The Catalans, allied
with Cyprus and the Hospitallers of Rhodes, operated in somewhat the same way
in these waters, rarely resisting the opportunity to capture a great prize.20
Merchants were preponderant among pirates and privateers, but there were also
some noble lords, such as Guglielmo Raimondo III di Moncada, who, in the late
fourteenth century, was the count of Augusta (Sicily) and of Novara in Italy as well
as marquis of Malta and Gozo. He was also castellan of Malta. He seems to have
turned pirate and corsair after inheriting the county of Augusta, for he bought two
ships to operate first in the Levant and then off Tunisia, attacking Tunisian vessels.21
A famous example of a figure who floated between legitimacy and illegality was
Enrico Pescatore. Genoese in origin, he held the island of Malta in fief from the
king of Sicily at the end of the twelfth and in the early thirteenth centuries. Some
viewed him as a pirate, but to others he was a fighter in the employ of his king
and of his Genoese homeland. Between 1206 and 1216 Enrico took Crete from
the Venetians, who considered him an unspeakable pirate. He generally attacked
Venetian and Pisan ships, and these actions served their archrival Genoa well. So
for Genoa he was legitimate and even a hero. Enrico was immortalized by Peire
Vidal, a troubadour from the medieval region of Languedoc, who sang,
He is upright, generous and courtly,

the star of Genoa;
on land and at sea
he makes all his enemies tremble.22
Not only were there famous pirates, there were also many famous captures.
In 1379 in the waters off Rhodes, two galleys of Marseille, returning from Beirut,
were taken by fifteen Venetian galleys and robbed of their cargo of coins, jewels,
and pearls. Near Majorca the same year a ship carrying several Jewish merchants
with cloth was attacked by two galleys of Marseille, which were supposedly armed
to fight as privateers against the Saracens. Off the island of Elba, the Genoese
Giovanni Grimaldi, in the service of the lord of Milan, caught a Castilian ship
coming out of Porto Pisano, the port of Pisa, that had been leased to Sienese
merchants carrying grain from Sicily.23 Here, too, commercial competition led to
privateering. No fewer than three hundred boat captures have been noted in the
Mediterranean during the period 1350–1415.24
Between 1375 and 1419 the Aragonese rulers of Majorca issued eighty licenses
to arm ships, akin to letters of marque. The Moors were the most frequent
target, though different areas and peoples—Muslims and Christians alike—
were targeted at different times according to the state of diplomatic relations.

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
The inhabitants of Granada, North African peoples, as well as Genoa and Pisa,
longtime rivals of the Aragonese, were all targets of Aragonese attack at various
times. The holders of these licenses operated under very strict conditions. Subjects
of the kingdom of Aragon and its allies were exempt from attack. Those who armed
vessels had to furnish an indemnity to cover any damages for an unauthorized
capture. Guarantors for these indemnities were required to countersign. There
was sometimes a defined area in which ships could patrol, as the motive behind
the licenses was the defense of the coasts.25 Lacking a sufficient navy for coastal
defense, polities used privateers instead.
Islands and coasts with particularly secluded bays were ideal pirate refuges.
Western Mediterranean islands like Malta, Sardinia, and Corsica harbored pirates.26
Crete, in the eastern Mediterranean, was closely controlled by the Venetians in the
high and late Middle Ages, but little islands in the Adriatic offered safe havens
for pirates. The vast majority of Mediterranean pirates of European origin were
Italians, reinforcing the links between merchants and pirates, as Italy was also in
the forefront of medieval economic development and international trade.27
As we have seen, merchants, admirals, and even lords could become pirates,
shifting identities easily. The maritime environment and a shared maritime culture
provided a background of diversity that helps to explain the multiple identities
one finds in the Mediterranean world in this period. In the western Mediterranean
basin, islands and coastal settlements encouraged the emergence of a skilled mari-
time culture. We see it in Boccaccio’s lovers, Gostanza and Martuccio, both of
whom had seafaring skills. A case study can illustrate the multiple identities,
indeed the multiethnic mix, that existed in Mediterranean ports.
Multiple Identities: The Case of Aigues-Mortes
When it was built in the mid-thirteenth century by Saint Louis to launch his
first crusade, the port of Aigues-Mortes on the Languedocian coast of France was
the only French royal port on the Mediterranean.28 The port was granted exorbi-
tant privileges from the beginning, notably a monopoly of imports and exports in
southern France and a tax of one penny per pound (1 d./l.) on merchandise in tran-
sit.29 From Leucate to the Grau de Passon, all ships were obliged, in theory, to land
first at Aigues-Mortes. These demands, admittedly hard to enforce, caused prob-
lems in the second half of the thirteenth century. The reign of King Philip IV of
France at the end of the thirteenth century marked the return of some commercial
entente regarding Aigues-Mortes, but commerce was still punctuated by disputes.30

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
In 1299 Philip agreed to inquire into the complaints about taxation and the
actions of royal officials.31 Witnesses’ testimonies from this inquiry have been
preserved.
It comes as no surprise that a Mediterranean port such as Aigues-Mortes would
have a diverse population of inhabitants and transients, tied in one way or another
to the sea. However, it is rare that we can hear their voices and learn about their
backgrounds. Our medieval sources are generally elite and often ecclesiastical. In
this case the royal judicial inquiry of 1299 generated eighty-four folios of testimony
in Aigues-Mortes from seventy men of diverse origins: sailors, former sailors,
merchants, fishermen, immigrants from Genoa, men from Catalonia, Roussillon,
Provence, Majorca, central France, and small maritime places nearby. Some were
immigrants; some were in transit. Many of the witnesses were fifty years or older,
with memories extending back thirty or more years. Two were older than eighty,
and one of these claimed to be an active mariner and merchant. They revealed
their occupational history as well as their experience in trading along this stretch
of Mediterranean coast. They provide a microcosm of the maritime population of
Aigues-Mortes.
At issue was the tax by officials of the king of France of one penny per pound
on merchandise on board ships putting in near Aigues-Mortes. The witnesses were
all asked by the interrogators to offer information on this matter. The testimonies
of these witnesses can be used as a vehicle for exploring the ethnic composition
of a maritime port, maritime memory, immigration and transiency, the language
mix, and the shared references to people and events—cultural signposts—used
incidentally in response to the inquest interrogation on the specific issue of
taxation practices in the waterways surrounding Aigues-Mortes.32 For a particular
moment in time the multiethnic maritime population, partly indigenous to the
coast of southern France, partly immigrant, and partly transient, becomes visible
to the historian.
The geographic origins of the witnesses are varied, the most common being
the Languedocian coast near Montpellier, but Genoa, Marseille, Ventimiglia,
Piacenza, Catalonia, and the Balearic Islands are also mentioned. The seventy
witnesses represent both a transient and immigrant population; only one witness
actually claims to be a native of Aigues-Mortes. The language mix, at a minimum,
included Provençal, Occitan/Languedocien, Cahorsin, Catalan, Genoese, and
probably additional Italian dialects. The written testimonies themselves and
the interrogatories were, of course, in Latin, though the oral testimony was
undoubtedly in the vernacular. And while in other early fourteenth-century
witness testimonies there was the occasional inquiry into whether the witness

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
knew Latin, in this inquest there was no such question, and the assumption must
be that most of the witnesses, with one or two exceptions, were very likely unable
to read or write in any language.33 However, they probably understood a kind of
Mediterranean lingua franca, acquired in the course of their maritime experiences,
be this Italian, French, Occitan, or perhaps a kind of Franco-Italian such as the
romance author Rusticello was employing at this very time in a Genoese prison
recording Marco Polo’s travels.34
It is the immigrant population in Aigues-Mortes itself that is the most
interesting for a study of identity. The five Genoese witnesses were all Aigues-
Mortes immigrants, some of them having probably come at the time when the
Genoese Guillelmus Boccanegra was administering the port for the king of France
in the years 1262–74.35 From 1248 Genoese reinforced the French royal navy in the
region, and many of them settled down. One such witness, Nicolosus de Riverolo,
mentioned a thirty-five-year residence in Aigues-Mortes with his family.36 The
change of residence from Genoa to the south of France would have almost
inevitably entailed some shift in personal and cultural identity, encouraged by
long-term residence in the adopted home.37
What can the testimonies of these men tell us of maritime and cultural
identities? The signposts of collective memory are particularly interesting. Saint
Louis’s Tunis crusade of 1270 was mentioned several times, and two witnesses
referred to the Damietta crusade of 1248. The association of Saint Louis with
Aigues-Mortes and the crusades is hardly surprising. A figure recurring in the
testimonies is the former political leader of Genoa, Guillelmus Boccanegra,
whose connection to Saint Louis and Aigues-Mortes is well known. Boccanegra
had contributed financially to the 1248 crusade, lending the king of France seven
hundred livres tournois. He had had an illustrious political career in Genoa, but
a shift in political fortune caused his banishment from Genoa in 1262. Taking
refuge in France, he served as administrator of the port of Aigues-Mortes for Saint
Louis and later for Philip III.38 The Genoese witnesses were quick to mention
Boccanegra, but they were not the only ones to recall the Tunis expedition, Saint
Louis, and Boccanegra. A witness from the diocese of Gerona did so, as did many
Languedocians.39
Geographic expertise regarding the graus, or streams that led from the inland
lagoons (étangs) to the sea, was also widespread. As one witness from Sommières
explained it, Aigues-Mortes was the only port in the sénéchaussée (French royal
administrative district) of Beaucaire. He described it as lighted by a lantern in
the tower (of Constance) at Aigues-Mortes, the lighthouse beckoning mariners
to shelter. The south of France, with the exception of Marseille, was not endowed

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
with impressive harbors. The coastal lagoons near Aigues-Mortes offered some
shelter for ships. The graus along the Languedocian coast were unstable, shifting
their beds and sanding in, sometimes at an alarming rate. At least four graus were
identified in the testimonies. In addition to the challenges of the graus, navigat-
ing the lagoons could be complicated as they were encumbered by a remarkable
number of fishing installations, leaving, at best, a narrow channel for passage.40
The lagoons were ideal spots for pirates to prey.
The port itself, built back from the sea, was reachable by streams that could not
accommodate the largest ships that offloaded at the shore. The witnesses described
the experiences of ships of various provenances when arriving in the vicinity of
Aigues-Mortes. They might be coerced by armed craft of the guardian of Aigues-
Mortes (the custos) to put in at Aigues-Mortes for the purposes of taxation; if
they were too large, they had to offload on smaller craft that were then required
to present themselves to be taxed. Some ships tried to use one of the graus that
led to Lattes rather than put in at Aigues-Mortes. The small port of Lattes was a
preferred destination, partly because it was located on the lagoon and was con-
nected by road and overland transport to the commercial center of Montpellier,
and partly because the ships that used it could avoid paying the tax that would be
charged at Aigues-Mortes.41 Witnesses had many stories to tell about ships being
seized and dragged to Aigues-Mortes to pay taxes. Officials would sometimes seize
even the sails and masts of merchant vessels that were attempting to avoid Aigues-
Mortes.42
In the end, a compromise was reached. Montpellier agreed to French royal
control. On the other hand, smaller craft, that did not need offloading, could sail
to Lattes without putting in to Aigues-Mortes as long as they paid the king’s tax
of one penny per pound. The king’s tax was fairly modest, representing more a
symbol of royal authority than a significant addition to the royal coffers.43
But for historians, the most interesting aspect of this judicial inquiry is not
the resolution of the conflict that generated it, but the insight it provides into
the cosmopolitan population of Aigues-Mortes. The inhabitants of this bustling
port town had a variety of skills related to seafaring, trade, and agriculture,
and they could also claim multiple identities. They were members of a mobile
Mediterranean culture of transients and immigrants with shared memories
of major events and major Mediterranean players, along with an in-depth
knowledge of the perils and vicissitudes of navigation along the Languedocian
coastline. Whether Genoese, Catalan, or locally Languedocian in origin, the
immigrants and transients, often long-lived, shared the bond of a multiethnic
maritime Mediterranean identity.

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
Borrowed Identities
The ambiguities characteristic of the medieval merchant identity can be pursued

in greater depth through an examination of borrowed identities. Identity is
constructed, not innate, resulting from social practice and anchored in a certain
historical context. People change their identities and forge new ones. While a
person’s identity can be imposed from the outside to some extent, by someone
attempting to categorize him or her as a stranger or an “other,” self-definition
and self-presentation are also at play. As we have seen, multiple identities were
common in the Mediterranean world, thanks to travel and emigration. The
typical medieval inhabitant identified with his or her place of origin, such as an
Italian city-state, for example, or a pays. Beyond that there is much ambiguity;
few medieval people would have identified with a country in the modern sense of
patriotism.44 Sovereignty took many forms in the Middle Ages: there were kings,
emperors, popes, and city-states, to name but the most prevalent.
The medieval Mediterranean was a multicultural environment where peo-
ples of different backgrounds, Jews, Muslims, and Christians—each internally
diverse—encountered one another frequently. Merchants, travelers, pilgrims,
armies, pirates, and privateers needed to maneuver abroad within this diverse and
changing context to accomplish their ends.45 This sea provided a liminal space.
Far from their roots, seagoers confronted different cultures, different ethnicities,
unfamiliar languages. Citizens of the Mediterranean kingdoms, emirates, and city
republics around its shores shifted identities as the occasion required. And the sea
was a no-man’s-land that no one power controlled. Even in the Adriatic Sea, with
the Venetians patrolling, pirates preyed on Venetian sea lanes.46
To capitalize on the privileges of the most important commercial and maritime
cities, merchants hailing from some of the lesser towns in the western Mediterranean
basin often chose to adopt another identity, passing themselves off as Pisans or Genoese
in North Africa and in the Levant. Colonists of Venetian territories adopted Venetian
identity abroad even though the acquisition of actual Venetian citizenship was very
difficult. There was a commercial advantage to this strategy. Merchants from the inland
Italian towns of Tuscany frequently chose to masquerade as Pisans in the Levant.
Merchants of San Gimignano and Florence, for example, passed themselves off as
Pisans in Egypt about 1270 so that they could use the Pisan fondaco (an extraterritorial
colony with mercantile facilities such as a warehouse, housing, notaries, interpreters,
brokers, weighers and measurers, etc.) and benefit from the privileged commercial
position enjoyed by the Pisans.47 European fondachi abroad offered merchants an
infrastructure and a means of doing business that was essential in foreign lands.48

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
Merchants of lesser towns often sailed on ships flying the flags of major towns,
frequently assuming the identity of the major town during the voyage and in ports
where the major town might enjoy trading privileges.49 Merchants of Marseille
traveled under the flag of Pisa in the twelfth century.50 Merchants of Montpellier
did the same with Genoa in this era as Genoa and Pisa vied for hegemony over
the coast of southern France.51 It was advantageous for merchants from lesser
cities to identify themselves with these powers. Merchants of Montpellier
voyaged under the flag of Marseille in the first half of the thirteenth century.52
Merchants of Catalonia might travel under the flag of Montpellier to Cyprus in
the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.53 The practice of borrowing
identity thus seems quite common, although attempts at quantification have
proved elusive.
Thanks to treaties with the local emirs, it was common for all merchants traveling
to North Africa in Pisan ships to be assimilated with Pisans and thus to be in complete
security for their persons and merchandise because of the treaties that the Pisans
held with the emirs. The same practice existed in North Africa for Genoese ships.
There was a general principle in the treaties of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
between European powers and the rulers of Tunis to treat all those traveling to Tunis
in the same way as the owners of the ships under whose flag they were sailing.54 Thus,
through the Pisans, merchants from smaller states, such as Florence, Lucca, and other
Italian towns, were able to benefit from Pisan privileges. Florence grew in importance
over the centuries, and by the fifteenth century the Florentines enjoyed similar
dispositions through treaties in their own right.
The same mechanism of assimilation operated in the Levant as well. Merchants
from towns without treaties in the region assumed the identities of those from
towns that did have diplomatic arrangements. In the thirteenth century, for
example, Cambio, a merchant of San Gimignano, died in the crusader port city
of Acre on the Syro-Palestinian coast. In a dispute over the disposition of his
goods, his associate, Guido, a Pisan merchant, maintained that Pisan inheritance
guidelines applied since, as he stated, the merchants of San Gimignano assumed a
Pisan identity in Acre and Syria, not having treaties with these areas themselves.55
At times merchants actually disguised themselves physically to fit in abroad.
According to an article of a Florentine treaty with the sultan of Syria in 1497,
Florentine merchants could dress in Muslim fashion when they visited Syrian
villages in order to buy cotton.56 This practice recalls the advice offered in
the fourteenth-century merchant manual La pratica de la mercatura by the
Florentine Francesco di Balduccio Pegolotti to merchants seeking to cross
Central Asia on the way to China. “First of all, it is advisable for him to let

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
his beard grow long and not shave.”57 Furthermore, Pegolotti advised taking
a good dragoman (interpreter) and, if desired, a woman, one who spoke the
Cumanic tongue.
In the medieval Mediterranean world, guarantees of safe conduct were granted
by rulers to merchants, but there were no identity cards or passports, and few
citizenship papers were in use. An exception from the later Middle Ages is
instructive, however. During the fourteenth century there was an unusual rise in
the demand for papers of Genoese citizenship by Venetians in the Black Sea area.
Genoese consuls were selling these papers (which also granted trading privileges)
to Venetian merchants and others in spite of Byzantine disapproval.58 Those with
Genoese citizenship had trading privileges desired by all.
Commercial and maritime collaboration further muddied identity. Merchants
from those cities that lacked significant fleets had to cooperate with merchants
from larger cities if they wished to sail the seas. So, in addition to borrowing
the flags of other cities, merchants of Montpellier collaborated intensely with
merchants of Narbonne in ventures to the Levant in the first half of the fourteenth
century.59 Ships of diverse provenance, captained by men of Narbonne, Perpignan,
Barcelona, Majorca, Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Lucca, Montpellier, and Aigues-Mortes,
can be noted in sailings from the south of France to the Levant.60 Moreover, the
situation on board ship was one of diversity. A crew might include Muslims and
Jews, as well as Christians, and even the Christians would frequently have different
origins.61 The problem of borrowing others’ identity persisted well into the early
modern period.62
Mistaken Identities
Borrowed identities easily led to mistaken identities, and sometimes these

mistaken identities were involved in the punishment of piracy. Muslims and
Europeans alike were guilty of faulting the wrong ethnic group in retribution for
piracy or privateering. Arab chroniclers in piracy incidents did not often clearly
identify the perpetrators. Muslims had a tendency to consider all travelers and
merchants from the West, as Franci, that is, Europeans. Muslim powers were not
much interested in Europe, and they were often ill informed about Europeans.63
Giovanni Villani, a fourteenth-century Florentine chronicler, recounts an incident
involving the Pisans in Tunis.64 One day in 1252 the emir of Tunis, who viewed
the Pisans highly, observed a gold florin among some Pisan coins. The Florentines
had begun coining gold in that year, but they were still under Pisan protection at

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
Tunis in the thirteenth century and were not well known there. The Tunisian emir
questioned the Pisans, “What is Florence?” “Not much,” was the Pisan response.
The emir found a Florentine merchant who could inform him more fully about his
countrymen. The emir then courted Florentines with the offer of a church and a
fondaco.65 The story suggests that while the Muslims lacked concrete information
about some Europeans, some were willing to inform themselves more fully.
Mistaken identities could also lead to other unwanted consequences. It could
be costly for “pseudo-Genoese” or “pseudo-Venetians” when the Mamluk sultan
decided to wreak reprisal on merchants of Venice and Genoa for some transgression.
Innocent merchants of minor towns, who had perhaps been trading as if citizens
of Venice or Genoa and thus benefitting from their privileges, were punished in
persons and goods.66 One of the principles of reprisal was that a victim of a wrong
could move against the goods of the compatriots of an offending party. At times
the confusion in reprisal came down to similarity of names of individuals of shared
origins. Some Genoese expatriates of the Grimaldi family living in Monaco made
a name for themselves in piracy. There are records of incidents where the Venetians
exercised reprisal on all men with the last name Grimaldi, necessitating a defense
by the doge of Genoa that many Genoese carried the surname Grimaldi, not all of
whom belonged to the pirate clan of Monaco.67
These tendencies were not restricted to Italians. The term “Catalan piracy”
masked the responsibility of other dependents of the crown of Aragon, who were
assimilated with Catalans because of Catalan dominance of international trade.
Catalans could be blamed for acts committed by Majorcans and Valencians.68 In a
memorandum of 1424 to prepare an Aragonese embassy to the sultan of Egypt, a
diplomatic mission that, in fact, did not take place, there was a clause stipulating
that no sanctions could be applied to Catalans for piracy committed by Castilians
or Basques. The implication, of course, was that reprisals often occasioned the
hasty assimilation of Castilians or Basques to Catalan merchants, whereas piracy
was actually much more complex.69
Conclusion
What then are the insights gained from considering multiple identities, borrowed
identities, and mistaken identities? As Eric Dursteler said of early modern
Mediterranean identity, so too in the Middle Ages we have identity that is
“multilayered, multivalent, and composite.”70 With the intrusion of the Ottomans
into the Mediterranean in the late fifteenth century, even more complexity develops,

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
with renegades, Christians who converted to Islam, and captured Christian youth
(Janissaries) who were forced to convert to Islam. Already in the Middle Ages,
however, this brief study has demonstrated that medieval Europeans, particularly
merchants, chose to play a variety of roles according to the demands of the
circumstances. The maritime population was a mobile group, with great ethnic
diversity, sharing a maritime culture. Sometimes these mariners were engaged in
legitimate activities; sometimes they acted outside the law. Some were pirates;
some were privateers. Many merchants of lesser towns, without fleets of their own
or separate treaties with Muslim rulers, acquired more favorable trading privileges
by borrowing identities of more prominent European cities. By the same token,
they could be wrongly victimized when assimilated with merchants from better
known cities by those seeking to punish piracy or privateering. Both Muslims
and Europeans were responsible for such mistaken reprisals. In the medieval
Mediterranean world, identity was multifaceted, even hybrid, and the common
denominator for both merchants and pirates was a widely shared, Mediterranean
maritime culture.
Notes
1. See, for example, Philip Gleason, “Identifying Identity: A Semantic History,” Journal
of American History 69 (1983): 910–31, and Robert Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond
‘Identity,’” Theory and Society 29 (2000): 1–47.
2. The story is found in Miriam Cooke, Erdag Göknar, and Grant Parker, eds., Mediterranean
Passages: Readings from Dido to Derrida (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008),
147–52, and Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. and intro. G. H. McWilliam (London:
Penguin, 1972), 417–23.
3. Cooke, Göknar, and Parker, Mediterranean Passages, 148; Boccaccio, Decameron, 418.
4. Boccaccio, Decameron, 136–41.
5. Corsair and privateer are synonyms for someone who commits piratical acts legitimately,
with a license from a political authority to attack enemies and seek reprisal. Pirates act similarly
but without authorization and thus illegally.
6. Carracks are large, three- or four-masted, oceangoing ships.
7. Robert S. Lopez remarked on this in his article “Dieci documenti sulla guerra di corsa,”
in Su e giù per la storia di Genova, ed. Lopez (Genoa: University of Genoa, 1975), 313–27, see
esp. 314.
8. Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World (1955;
repr., New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 221.
9. Lopez, “Dieci documenti.”
10. Emily Sohmer Tai, “Honor Among Thieves: Piracy, Restitution, and Reprisal in Genoa,
Venice, and the Crown of Catalonia-Aragon, 1339–1417” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1996), 7.
11. Ibid., 7.
12. Ibid., 7. The term admiral comes from the Arabic amir.
13. Fredric Cheyette, “The Sovereign and the Pirates, 1332,” Speculum 45 (1970): 40–68, see 46.

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
14. Ibid., 57.

15. Marque may come from market, the venue in which unfilled obligations could occur. See
Pierre-Clément Timbal, “Les lettres de marque dans le droit de la France médiévale,” Recueil de
la Société Jean Bodin, vol. 10 (Brussels: Édition de la Librairie Encyclopédique, 1958), L’Étranger,
108–38.
16. Tai, “Honor Among Thieves,” 72ff. Perception was key in the determination of whether
an act was piracy or legitimate, i.e., privateering. Beyond the glamour and the adventure, the
violence and excitement of capture, the study of piracy and privateering permits an investigation
not only into issues of identity, but also into cross-cultural relations and considerations of
state building in the medieval Mediterranean world. Roman and early medieval maritime law,
such as the Rhodian Sea Law, made little distinction between piracy and its legitimate twin—
privateering. But medieval legal documents such as the thirteenth-century Libro del Consolat de
Mar of Barcelona do introduce a distinction.
17. Timbal, “Les lettres de marque.”
18. On the law of marque, see Tai, “Honor Among Thieves,” 8–9. See also Emily Sohmer
Tai, “Marking Water: Piracy and Property in the Premodern West,” in Seascapes: Maritime
Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges, ed. Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal,
and Karen Wigen (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 205–20; and Kathryn L.
Reyerson, “Commercial Law and Merchant Disputes: Jacques Coeur and the Law of Marque,”
Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 9, no. 2–3
(2003/2004): 244–55.
19. Robert S. Lopez, Genova marinara nel duecento. Benedetto Zaccaria, ammiraglio e mercante
(Messina: Principato, 1933).
20. Pinuccia Franca Simbula, “Îles, corsaires et pirates dans la Méditerranée médiévale,”
Médiévales 47 (2004): 9, accessed October 13, 2012, http://medievales.revues.org/document500.
html.
21. Ayse Devrim Atauz, Eight Thousand Years of Maltese Maritime History: Trade, Piracy, and
Naval Warfare in the Central Mediterranean (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2008),
65–66.
22. “Adregz es e larcs e cortes / Et estela dels Genoes, / E fai per terra e par mar / Totz sos
enemics tremolar.” For text and translation, see Veronica M. Fraser, The Songs of Peire Vidal:
Translation and Commentary (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 168–71.
23. Simbula, “Îles, corsaires et pirates,” 3.
24. Ibid., 8.
25. Ibid., 4.
26. Atauz, Eight Thousand Years of Maltese Maritime History, 65–66.
27. Tai, “Honor Among Thieves.”
28. For a detailed study of Aigues-Mortes, see Georges Jehel, Aigues-Mortes. Un port pour un
roi. Les Capétiens et la Méditerranée (Roanne: Éditions Horvath, 1985).
29. Sums quoted in this study are in Tournois coinage in denominations of deniers (d.) and
livres (l.).
30. Jean Combes, “Introduction géographique et historique,” in Gard. Canton Aigues-Mortes,
Inventaire général des monuments et des richesses artistiques de la France. Commission régionale du
Languedoc Roussillon (Paris: Imprimérie Nationale, 1973), 18–22.
31. Ibid., 20.
32. The witness testimonies were partially transcribed and published by the nineteenth-century
historian of Montpellier Alexandre Germain, Histoire du commerce de Montpellier antérieurement
à l’ouverture du port de Cette, 2 vols. (Montpellier: Imprimérie de Jean Martel aîné, 1861),
1:326–78. I have acquired a CD-ROM copy of the manuscript of the witness testimonies (Archives
Nationales document J 892 no. 9) in order to work from the original document. There are slight
discrepancies between the Germain published transcriptions and the original manuscript.

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
33. See, for example, my article, “Le témoignage des femmes (à partir de quelques enquêtes
montpelliéraines du XIVe siècle),” in L’Enquête au Moyen Âge, ed. Claude Gauvard (Rome: École
française de Rome, 2008), 153–68.
34. Marco Polo, The Travels, trans. and intro. Ronald Latham (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959).
35. Jehel, Aigues-Mortes, 142.
36. Germain, Histoire du Commerce, 1:350.
37. The three from Mèzes were mariners, one from Agde was a former mariner, now a fisherman
(piscator), the other a mariner. Some witnesses added a political orientation to their geographic
identity. Two called themselves “men of the king of Majorca.” A mariner from Collioure also
held allegiance to the king of Majorca. It should be noted that the majority of the inhabitants
of Montpellier, those of the seigneurial quarter at least, were also subjects of the king of Majorca
in 1299. The king of France held only the episcopal quarter at this time. The hinterland of
Montpellier was small, but clearly within a thirty-kilometer radius, Majorca held sway. Five
witnesses were “men of the lord bishop of Agde.” There was no mention of the king of France to
whom residents of Aigues-Mortes were theoretically subject.
Occupational identity also comes through in these testimonies. Far and away the most
common occupation was that of mariner (marinarius); there were twenty-two active mariners
and seven former mariners. Young men went down to the sea for adventure, travel, and fortune.
The age spread of witnesses is also striking, the majority of them between forty and fifty-
nine years of age, distributed almost evenly over those years. Even more interesting is the pres-
ence of older witnesses; sixteen witnesses were sixty or older, and two claimed to be eighty.
38. Jehel, Aigues-Mortes, 139–40.
40. Guy Romestan, “Le rôle économique des étangs au moyen âge,” in Les étangs à l’époque
médiévale, ed. Christian Landes (Lattes: Musée archéologique de Lattes, 1986), 63–65.
41. On the maintenance of this overland connection, see Albert Berne, Consuls sur mer et
d’outre-mer de Montpellier au Moyen Âge (Carcassonne: Imprimérie André Gabelle, 1904).
43. This tax in 1288 was estimated to bring in 5,500 l.t., reflecting a significant volume of trade
worth 1,300,000 livres. Circa 1324 the estimate had risen to 1,500,000 livres, probably the apogee.
44. For a discussion of the development of national sentiment in the French context, see
Colette Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late Medieval France,
trans. Susan Ross Huston, ed. Fredric L. Cheyette (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
45. See Kathryn L. Reyerson, ed., Cross-Cultural Encounters on the High Seas (10–16th Centuries,
thematic issue of Medieval Encounters 13, no. 1 (2007), for articles addressing multiethnic encounters.
46. Alberto Tenenti, Piracy and the Decline of Venice 1580–1615, trans. Janet and Brian Pullan
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).
47. Olivie Remie Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade,
and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003), 272.
48. Ibid.
49. Kathryn L. Reyerson, “Les stratégies des villes secondaires: identité changeante en Méditerranée
médiévale,” in L’espace économique de la Méditerranée, ed. Annliese Nef et al. (forthcoming).
50. David Abulafia, “Marseilles, Acre and the Mediterranean,” in Coinage in the Latin East: the
Fourth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, ed. P. W. Edbury and D. M. Metcalf
(B. A. R. International Series 77) (Oxford: B. A. R., 1980), 29.
51. On Italian hegemony over the coast of southern France, see André Dupont, Les relations
commerciales entre les cités maritimes de Languedoc et les cités méditerranénnes d’Espagne et d’Italie
du Xe au XIIIe siècle (Nimes: Chastanier frères et Almeras, 1942); see also Enrica Salvatori, Boni
amici et vicini: Le relazioni tra Pisa e le città della Francia meridionale dall’XI alla fine del XIII
secolo (Pisa: Gisem Edizioni ETS, 2002).

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
52. Abulafia, “Marseilles, Acre and the Mediterranean,” 29.

53. Germain, Histoire du commerce, 2:1–6. In 1236 the king of Cyprus, Henry of Lusignan,
accorded commercial advantages to Marseille, extending similar privileges to Montpelliérains.
Pope Innocent IV confirmed these privileges in 1250. A member of the celebrated Conques fam-
ily of Marseille, of which there was a branch in Montpellier in the thirteenth century, served as
consul of the Montpelliérains at Acre in 1236.
54. Louis de Mas-Latrie, Relations et commerce de l’Afrique septentrionale ou Maghreb avec les
nations chrétiennes au moyen âge (Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Co., 1886; repr., Elibron
Classics/Adamant Media, 2006), 184: “Tout homme bien famé, dit le traité de 1264, venant
avec les Pisans, sera traité et payera ‘comme un Pisan.’ . . . Tout marchand étranger venant avec
eux, portent les traités de 1313 et 1353, aura les mêmes droits et les mêmes devoirs que les Pisans”
(“Every man of good reputation, says the treaty of 1264, coming with the Pisans, will be treated
and will pay like a Pisan. . . . Every foreign merchant coming with them, state the treaties of 1313
and 1353, will have the same rights and the same duties as the Pisans”).
55. Jong-Kuk Nam, Le commerce du coton en Méditerranée à la fin du Moyen Âge (Leiden: Brill,
2007), 113. The same was true for merchants of Florence, Pistoia, Lucca, and Siena in this era: pro
Pisanis recognoscuntur et habentur (they are recognized and considered as Pisans).
56. Ibid., 114.
57. Lopez and Raymond, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, 356–57.
58. Tai, “Honor Among Thieves,” 127–28.
59. Ships were possessed jointly by merchants of Montpellier and Narbonne, particularly
the Saint-Clément, whose voyages between Aigues-Mortes and Romania (the remnants of the
Byzantine Empire) can be traced in 1336, 1342, and 1343, and the Sainte-Marie-de-Vauvert, whose
trips between Aigues-Mortes and Cyprus can be documented for 1341, 1432, 1343, and 1346. See
Reyerson, “Les stratégies.”
60. See Kathryn L. Reyerson, “Commerce and Society in Montpellier, ca. 1250–ca. 1350”
(Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1974), 2 vols., 1:82–83. See also Kathryn L. Reyerson, “Montpellier
and the Byzantine Empire: Commercial Interaction in the Mediterranean World Before 1350,”
Byzantion 48 (1978/1979): 546–76; “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 XXe siècle, ed.
Jean Rieucau and Gérard Cholvy (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992), 1:98–108; and “Montpellier and
Genoa: The Dilemma of Dominance,” Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994): 359–72.
61. See Reyerson, Cross-Cultural Encounters on the High Seas; and Luigi de Rosa, Le gente del
mare Mediterraneo (Naples: Lucio Pironti Editore, 1981). Incidents of piracy over the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries reveal Montpelliérains sailing in ships under a great variety of flags.
In addition, notarial contracts—commenda and societas maris, which are forms of commercial
partnership—document the trade behind these voyages. Men of diverse backgrounds invested in
trade with these contracts, and women were present as sedentary investors. Notaries who wrote
these contracts were careful to indicate names and places of origin as well as immigrant status, in
most instances, of contractual participants. Other evidence from chronicles provides additional
information about the composition of ships’ crews and passengers.
62. Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1973), 293: “The French largely replaced the Venetians in the Levantine part of the [spice] trade
during the War of Cyprus, 1570–73, or rather, French flags or passports did, since Genoese and
many other Italians, including even some Venetians, when not adequately employed in fighting
the Turks under Spanish or Venetian flags, traded in the Ottoman Empire with French passports.”
63. Damien Coulon, Barcelone et le grand commerce d’Orient au Moyen Âge (Madrid-Barcelona:
Casa de Velázquez, 2004), 208. See also Kathryn L. Reyerson, “Merchants of the Mediterranean:
Merchants as Strangers,” in The Stranger in Medieval Society, ed. F. R. P. Akehurst and Stephanie
Cain Van D’Elden (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 1–13.
64. Mas-Latrie, Relations, 239.

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC
65. Constable, Housing the Stranger, 130, believes the story to be apocryphal since there is little
thirteenth-century evidence of Florentine presence in the Hafsid emirate, though Florentine
merchants traded in Tunis at the time of Giovanni Villani.
66. David Abulafia, “The Levant Trade of the Minor Cities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Centuries: Strengths and Weaknesses,” Asian and African Studies 22 (1988): 191.
67. Tai, “Honor Among Thieves,” 173–74.
68. Coulon, Barcelone, 208.
69. Deliberate misidentification of the provenance of cargoes was an extension of the problem
of misidentification of persons. See Reyerson “Les stratégies,” for a series of incidents.
70. Eric Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Co-existence in the Early
Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 20.

161.116.100.134 on Tue, 19 May 2020 20:49:45 UTC

Identity in The Medieval Mediterranean World of Merchants and Pirates

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Identity in The Medieval Mediterranean World of Merchants and Pirates

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean World of Merchants and Pirates

Author(s): Kathryn Reyerson

This content downloaded from

keywords: Mediterranean, merchants, pirates, Middle Ages

Long-distance international trade was a significant feature of the medieval

Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2012

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 129 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 130 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

Shifting Identities and Multiple Identities

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 131 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 132 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

He is upright, generous and courtly,

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 133 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

Multiple Identities: The Case of Aigues-Mortes

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 134 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 135 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 136 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 137 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

The ambiguities characteristic of the medieval merchant identity can be pursued

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 138 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 139 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

Borrowed identities easily led to mistaken identities, and sometimes these

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 140 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 141 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 142 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

14. Ibid., 57.

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 143 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 144 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

52. Abulafia, “Marseilles, Acre and the Mediterranean,” 29.

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 145 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

MS 20.2_01_Reyerson.indd 146 13/02/13 10:19 AM

This content downloaded from

You might also like