Corneto-Tarquinia and the Italian Mercantile Republics: The Earliest Evidence

On balance far more is known of trade in luxury goods during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than of trade in essential foodstuffs and minerals such as wheat and salt. This is surprising in a way, because the sources that refer to commodity movements, such as commercial treaties, are often far more eloquent on vital topics such as grain than they are on the myriad luxury items that passed through Acre, Messina and other great ports of the late twelfth century. Partly this emphasis on high-class goods has been the responsibility of recent historians, who saw in the spasms of Mediterranean trade the key to European economic development; partly it is the fault of the treaties and privileges that survive, for there is no knowing whether, say, two hundred salmae of wheat that a monastery was allowed to export free of tolls represented all its export capacity, part of that capacity, or an amount normally well above that capacity—a purely notional figure.