Migrating commercial law and language. Rethinking lex mercatoria (11th-17th century)

Project Information

MICOLL

Grant agreement ID: 101002084

DOI

10.3030/101002084

EC signature date 5 March 2021

Start date 1 October 2021

End date 31 March 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 610 593,00

EU contribution

€ 1 610 593,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MICOLL (Migrating commercial law and language. Rethinking lex mercatoria (11th-17th century))

Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

What is the problem/issue being addressed
Throughout history, the idea of a lex mercatoria, i.e. a supposed “universal” body of mercantile customs and procedures spread (at least) in Europe in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, has been used for its symbolic value in order to demonstrate that merchants have “always” acted according to non-state rules, able to cross national boundaries (“soft law”). This project wants to verify whether the lex mercatoria is only a myth, considering that the concept is today often used to lend historical legitimacy to the supporters of corporate self-regulation.

Why is it important for society?
Recent historical research has analyzed the encounter, over the course of history, of “cultural” or “cross-cultural brokers”. Mechanisms of inter-religious contacts, cross-fertilization, and communication have been studied through sources provided by people living in a cultural environment different from their own: diplomatic envoys and scholars, artists and translators, religious experts and missionaries. Beside them, merchants have been defined “latent brokers”, i.e. agents whose impact on another culture was the by-product of an activity that had other aims (i.e. to make profits). The analysis of this activity can help us to better understand this impact but only if we find out whether, and to what extent, the interweaving of cultures and ethnicities really influenced everyday life. Law, and in particular commercial law and practices, constitute a privileged point of view from which to evaluate this influence.

What are the overall objectives?
The main objective of MICOLL is to shed light on one of the main issues of commercial law history by means of a tool almost ignored in this field: historical linguistics. As legal institutions are represented by technical legal words, an analysis of the terms merchants actually used is a powerful and never attempted way to verify the impact of merchants’ migrations on the development of commercial law, which had, in its turn, tremendous effects on social and economic history.
Did merchants actually use the same legal terms in different geographical areas? And, above all, did they grant these words the same legal meaning? MICOLL will answer those questions by means of three main outputs: 1. A “Glossary of medieval and early modern commercial law terms”; 2. Two interactive digital maps; 3. Publications.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

6 postodcs were recruited between March and April 2022: 2 historians, 2 linguists and 2 paleographers. An information engineer was recruited in October 2022: https://www.micoll-erc.eu/team/.
4 out of 7 postodcs hired at the beginning of the project left after having obtained permanent positions or won their own grants (including an ERC CoG). A new paleographer was recruited in January 2023.

The whole team worked on the realization of the 3 sub-objectives of the project:
SO1: DIG UP! – Searching, analyzing, updating
All secondary literature relevant for the project was identified. The same has been done for the edited sources, which are divided into 4 groups as far as the “Glossary of medieval and early modern commercial law terms” is concerned: commercial letters, contracts, statutes, and treatises. The archival research was conducted in all 4 cities foreseen in the project, i.e. Venice, Genoa, Lübeck, and Nuremberg, as well as in Augsburg, Lüneburg, and Florence. Several documents were digitized.
At the same time, also literature and sources to reconstruct the land trade routes have been collected. The medieval itineraries have been traced using especially pilgrims accounts. Otherwise, for the modern period, the main sources used have been so far printed postal itineraries.
SO2: SET UP! - Developing innovative IT tools for the history of commercial law and language
Both the glossary and the maps are still under construction and not available online. However, the layout of the maps has been already developed and 48 itineraries have been uploaded. The structure of the glossary is almost ready and the list of commercial law terms has been identified starting from a masterpiece of commercial law literature: Johannes Marquard’s, “Tractatus politico-juridicus de iure mercatorum et commerciorum” (1662). This kind of approach is unprecedent and will provide a useful tool for jurists, historians, and linguists.
SO3: KEEP UP! - Creating a model for future researches
This sub-objective is strictly connected to the previous one: both glossary and maps are being developed in order to create a model able to be implemented in the future by other researchers.

A series of workshops and conferences brought in further expertise and helped dissemination. The team members presented papers about the project in Italy (Padua, Trento, Udine, Turin, Rome, Palermo, Naples, Bologna), Germany (Frankfurt a.M.) and Great Britain (St. Andrews).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project applies for the first time the tools of historical linguistics to the study of the history of commercial law by proposing a multilingual and comparative glossary which will be combined with an interactive digital map. This approach is particularly suited to commercial law, which is inherently transnational in nature.

Both outputs, the “Glossary of medieval and early modern commercial law terms” and the interactive digital maps of the land trade routes, go beyond the state of the art.
They will be finally combined providing a visual understanding of the diffusion of technical mercantile law terms between two incredibly lively areas from the point of view of the development of commerce between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period: northern Italy and northern Germany, the city-states (“comuni)” on one hand, with Venice as epicenter, and the Hansa on the other hand, the network of cities and merchants “led” by Lübeck.
In synthesis:
1) The very structure and content of the outputs differ from the existing historical and legal vocabularies/ glossaries on one hand and from the existing historical digital maps on the other.
Innovative characters of the glossary:
a) The selection of words is limited to those terms characterizing a certain sector of the law;
b) The entries include extensive explanations from both a legal-historical and linguistic perspective;
c) The terms do not refer to a specific national language but are selected according to point 1). The entries are in English providing the several synonims to be found in the sources in Latin, Italian vernaculars and (high and low) German.
Innovative characters of the maps:
a) They display trade routes on both land and water;
b) They show change over 6 centuries (as far as historical sources allow);
c) They are be capable of integrating multiple source bases;
d) They are possessed of an unparalleled level of transparency with regards to those sources, allowing the user to see (and cite) the underlying information lying behind each aspect of the map.
2) Online vocabularies and digital maps have never before been combined for the study of legal history.

The combination of the two outputs, together with scientific publications, will provide the most important results at the end of the project.

MICOLL's Team, Advisory Committee, and guest speakers at the 1st Workshop in Padua_Dec 2022