jbrouwer semba2009 world economy assignment two

8/8/2019 Jbrouwer Semba2009 World Economy Assignment Two

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World Economy Assignment 2 Jeff Brouwer

2

and this round gold

is but the image of the rounder globe,

which, like a magician's glass,

to each and every man in turn

but mirrors back his own mysterious self.

Herman Melville Moby Dick

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake Auguries of Innocence

Front page coin image: FRANCE, Royal. Philippe IV le Bel (the Fair). 12851314. AR Gros tournois l'O rond (24mm, 3.94 g, 9h). Struck 1285-

1290. + BNDICTV SIT NOm DNI nRI DI IhV XPI/ + PhILIPPVS REX, cross patte within beaded circle; triple pellet stops / + TVRONVS CIVIS,

chtel tournois; border of twelve lis. Van Hengel 604.02; Duplessy 213; Ciani 201; Roberts 2461. VF, toned.


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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my profound gratitude to the following people who each in their own

way have contributed towards the development of this study.

Firstly, I would like to thank Professor Andrew Scott for allowing me to incorporate my passion

for history in this paper.

I would like to thank Associate Professor Raymond De Roover, Wells College, New York, and

Thomas C. Cochran (ed.), Graduate School Of Business Administration, New York University, for

the study on The Medici Bank Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline. I

would like to thank my partner for presenting me with it last Christmas.

I would like to thank Professor Jonathan Phillips, Professor of Crusading History, Royal

Holloway, University of London, and author of several books on the Crusades for helping me

with information on Banking at the time of the Crusades.

Last but not least I would like to thank my family and partner for their outstanding support not

only during this project but throughout my entire studies.


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Executive summary

This paper attempts to compare and contrast the types of international finance extant in the

middle ages, around the times of the Crusades, the Renaissance, around the time of the Medici,

and its modern day counterparts.

As we will see, some issues encountered in todays financial institutions would be quite familiar

to suppliers of finance in medieval times and during the Renaissance.

We will even see conditions imposed by authorities of the day, being the catalyst for innovative

products and services devised to be compliant.


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1 The Crusades and the emergence of a trading giantIn an effort to redirect the efforts of the warring nobles of Europe and to aid the Byzantine

Emperor Alexius I of Constantinople with the Seljuk threat to Anatolia (Eastern Turkey) and to

end the Seljuk occupation (later the Fatimid occupation) of Jerusalem, Pope Urban II launched

the First Crusade in 1095. The Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 and after that many

pilgrims traveled to the holy places. Although Jerusalem itself was secure, the rest of the region

of Outremer (the land overseas) was subject to brigands and bandits and pilgrims were under

frequent attack as they made their journey from the coast at Jaffa, to Jerusalem.

Twenty years later, in 1119, veterans of the first Crusade, supported by senior figures in the

church, and the king of Jerusalem, created a monastic order to protect pilgrims making their

way to the holy places. The order was named Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of

Solomon. The council of Troyes in 1129 gave the order the status of a charity, to which

property and land could be given by those eager to fight in the holy land. In 1139 Pope

Innocents Bull (decree) Omne Datum Optimum allowed the order to operate above the local

law of whichever land they happened to pass through, exempted them from any taxes, and

made them answerable only to the Pope. (Spufford, 2002)

The main mission of the order was military, the majority of the members of the order however

were non-combatants and provided the support and the physical and financial infrastructure

required to maintain operations across various countries.


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Although members of the Templar Order were sworn to individual poverty, the order itself was

given control of wealth beyond direct donations. A noble participating in the Crusades would

often place all his assets under Templar management while he was away.

Having accumulated wealth in this manner throughout the territories of Christendom and the

Outremer, the Order in 1150 started issuing a prt, a type of letters of credit for pilgrims

travelling to the Holy Land. The pilgrims who deposited their valuables with a local Templar

preceptory before embarking, received a document indicating the value of their deposit, and

then were able to use that document upon arrival in the Holy Land to retrieve their funds.

This prt, as a type of instrument or contract, is analogous to a Bill Of Exchange or a Bankers

Draft and may have been an early system to support the use of cheques.

It will have significantly improved the safety of pilgrims by making them less attractive targets

for thieves, and also contributed to the Templar coffers. (Martin, 2005)

With a mix of donations and business dealing as a source of capital, the Templars established

financial networks across the territories of Christendom.

They acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; bought and managed

farms and vineyards; built churches and castles; were involved in manufacturing, import and

export; owned and operated their own fleet of ships; and at one point even owned the entire

island of Cyprus.


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Long before the joint-stock descendents of this type of enterprise, the East India Trading

Companies of England and were founded, The Order of the Knights Templar arguably qualified

as one of the world's first multinational corporations. (Ralls, 2007) (Benson, 2005)

The network of preceptories or propertiesw, was used for a variety of profit making

enterprises. If trade was executed on Templar preceptories or estates, then taxes were levied.

In the Templar preceptory in Provins fairs were held where wool and hides were traded there.

The taxes levied on these trades all went into what was effectively the coffers of the Templar

bank. In the case of Provins furthermore the Templars exploited mills (factories) for milling

flour, dyes, mustard and the like, and fishing rights on the river Varenne. They leased a tile

factory which they owned to a tenant. They were heavily involved in money-lending against the

security of real estate. They were prominent landlords of estates with vines, and timber. They

drew tithes, rents and incomes from the monopoly rights on mills, ovens, and wine presses.

The development of banking and financial services arose quite naturally from the structure of

the Templar preceptories.Monastic houses (monasteries) had traditionally acted as

depositories for precious objects and documents and, with the growth of pilgrimage and

crusade, were often called upon to provode loans and to hold mortgage pledges. The Templars

were better equipped than individual monastic houses to provide these services, since their

web of preceptories made them convenient for crusaders from many regions and their

possessions of the equivalent branch offices at both ends of the Mediterranean, as well as large

complexes in northern Europe in Paris and London, meant that they could make specie

available where and when it was needed and in the form which was locally acceptable (local


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currency). When in the 1260's the Mamluk Turks led by Baybars campaigned in Syria and Acre,

the Patriarch of Jerusalem turned to the Paris Temple to finance the following: Crossbowmen

for the defense of Acre, funding for fifty knights loaned to the Patriarch by various French

Lords, and several other purposes. The Paris Temple had become one of the key financial

centres on north-west Europe. (Barber, 1994)

The Templars' experience in financial administration meant they had quickly acquired a vast

body of expertise of value to secular rulers and the papacy, all of whom desired to improve

their governmental systems to maximize taxation. Financial services, formerly a side line of

Crusading, soon developed as activities in their own right. Services ranging from the most basic,

the use of Templar properties for the safekeeping of important documents (including treaties,

charters, and wills), the guarding of funds and precious objects, all of concern to royals and

nobles, and also of particular concern to the pilgrim or crusader who would be away for several

years. John Sans Terre (King John of England, successor to his brother Richard the Lionheart)

had used the Temple in London (later known as Temple Church) to house the crown jewels. In

1261 John's son Henry III moved these to a Templar fortress in Paris. Henry was to later use

these as collateral for a loan to finance his battle with Simon De Montfort. Documents related

to forthcoming crusades ranged from, papers indicating collateral for loans secured on the, to

donations to the order, and even to wills and testaments. Once these wills or testaments had

been deposited, the Templars often acted as executors of the provisions set out in the wills or

testaments. In 1281 for example the Preceptory of the Temple at La Rochelle, was one of the

executors of the will of Guy of Lusignan, Lord of Cognac, and King-Consort of Jerusalem by way


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of Marriage to Sybilla Queen of Jerusalem. The will stated annual payment of 250 livres to the

Templars in outremer (overseas territory) from a capital sum of 1,500 livres.

An example of how crusaders were able to use the Templar bank was the case of Jean de

Joinville a noble from Champagne and a chronicler who joined King Louis IX expeditions to the

holy land. In 1250 while the army in which he served was at Acre, Joinville had received the 400

livres owed to him in pay. He kept 40 livres for immediate expenses and deposited the

remainder in the Templar bank. When later he sent one of his men to withdraw another 40

livres the Templar commander on duty, claimed to have no knowledge of any money or any

Joinville for that matter. Joinville escalated the matter and four days later the money was

found, and the commander who claimed to have no knowledge of Joinville's deposit was

transferred or otherwise removed from duty. Copies of Joinvilles accounts of the events of

Louis IX had survived and had passed from the French royal library to Philip the Good, Duke of

Burgundy, the predecessor of Charles the Bold, about whom we shall hear more later, in his

dealings with the financial super institution of his time.

Blanche of Castile, one of the Order's most eminent clients, received a summary of movements

within her account, three times a year at the beginning of accounting terms of Candlemas,

Ascension and All Saints. The transaction summary was a detailed record of all the incomings

and outgoings, credited and debited to the account, preceded by a balance brought forward

from the previous accounting term.

Clients served fell into five categories: Officers of the Temple, church dignitaries, the king, other

members of the royal family, and important nobles and bourgeois.


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In 1304 the Templars in London lent 1,300 marks to two merchats from the society of the Mozi

of Florence, repayable at the Paris Temple a few months later. When the Paris representatives

of the Mozi, defaulted on the loan, the London Temple asked the royal courts for a distraining

order (to allow it to sell the goods the Mozi had in London, to cover the losses). The London

Temple also feared the Mozi would default on 700 marks owed for wool supplied to them by

the Temple.

In 1305 the Templars provided the societies of the Galerani of Siena and Frescobaldi of Florence

with financing of 879 marks 6s. 8d. No mention was made of crusading activity and it is likely

that there was no link.

It would have been easy to conceal the loan interest in the currency change, since it was

common in such transactions to set a low valuation on the foreign currency and thereby profit

from the repayment. This is a practice we will see in a successor institution to the Templar

bank. (Barber, 1994)

Edward I King of England (also known as: Edward The Longshanks, Hammer of the Scots) as

Duke of Aquitaine, was a vassal to Philip IV King of France and Navarre. Following the Fall of

Acre in 1291, alliances were reassessed.

The outbreak of hostilities between The Capetians of France and Navarre led by Philip IV and

England led by Edward I in 1294 was the result of expansionism, driven by a secret Franco-

Scottish pact of mutual assistance against Edward I, who was Philip's brother-in-law, and forced

into being by manipulation. In 1293, following a naval incident between the Normans and the

English, Philip summoned Edward to the French court, but the latter, busy harassing Scotland,


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refused to appear. Philip used this pretext to strip Edward of all his possessions in France and

increase tension culminating in hostilities.

The search for income to cover military expenditures set its stamp on Philip's reign and his

contemporary reputation. Another unfortunate event stemming from Philip IVs reign, that was

to have a ripple effect throughout history was the marriage of Philip's daughter Isabella to the

Prince of Wales. Something that was meant to seal peace would instead produce an eventual

English claimant to the French throne itself, and form the start of the Hundred Years War.

Philip was hugely in debt to the Knights Templar, so he conjured up an excuse to disband the

entire organization, or rather coerced the Pope, over whom Philip had great power, to disband

the Order, so as to free himself from his debts. On Friday, October 13, 1307, hundreds of

Knights Templar in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of Philip the Fair, to be later

tortured into admitting heresy in the Order. This event has given Friday the 13th new meaning

ever since.

Had one lived in the 1200's one would have thought only one institution worthy of the title

"The world's local bank".


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2 Financing the Renaissance The Medici BankWe examine finance in the Renaissane by examining, the Florentine Banking System in general

and the Medici Bank in particular. In Florence in the fifteenth century, there were three or four

different credit institutions called banks in Italian: banchi di pegno, banchi a minute, banchi in

mercato, and banchi grossi.

Banchi di pegno were akin to pawn shops.

Banchi a minute were like retail banks, although a different kind of retail than we would be

used to today. Banchi a minute sold jewellery on credit, issued loans secured by jewellery, and

also dealt in bullion and money changing. Only time deposits on which the interest was repaid

at 9 or 10 per cent, were accepted by the bank offices. Their ledgers do not contain any entries

for deposits payable on demand.

Banchi in mercato did business in the public market places of Florence. The owners of these

banks were designated cambiatori (money-changers) or tavolieri as they did their business

from behind a tavola or table, covered by a tappeto (carpet), with a journal and a tasca

(money pouch). By statute money-changers were required to make transfers in their books in

the presence of their customers. As cheques were yet unknown, transfers orders were given

verbally and were written immediately in the bankerss books. Guil d regulations suggest that

the banchi in mercato were the transfer and deposit banks of Florence.


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As elsewhere bank failures were not infrequent in Florence. In 1516 there were only three

banchi in mercato left. One of them, Da Panzano bank, failed on December 29, 1520. Six years

later as Imperial troops besieged Florence, coins became so scarce that banks suspended specie

payments. It is thought the bank had been forced to create credit against government loans. In

any case, the bank money began to depreciate and the agio (exchange rate spread) on the

specie (currency) soon rose from 1 percent to 6 percent.

The Medici were neither really money-changers nor goldsmiths. Their bank was one of those

banchi grossi or great banks which did business inside (dentro). The office or scrittorio of

the bank was in the Medici palace. According to fifteenth-century scholar Benedetto Dei, there

were thirty-three of these banks in 1469 and they dealt in merchandise and exchange in all

parts of the world, wherever there were exchanges or traffic in money.

E chambiano e fanno merchantia per tutti I luoghi del mondo, la ove choronno e chambi e

danaro. - Giovanni Francesco Pagnini, Della decimal e di varie alter gravezze imposte dal

Comune di Firenze, della moneta e della mercatura dei Fiorentini fino al secolo XVI (Lisbon-

Lucca, 177), II, 275 f.

Consequently the Florentine bankers were traders as well as bankers. They combined foreign

trade and dealings in exchange not petty exchange of foreign for domestic coins, but trade in

bills of exchange (cambium per literas). To most bankers it was less important than the trade

in commodities. Even the Medici, the most prominent firm of merchant bankers in Florence,

emphasized trade rather than banking. In 1464, Tommaso Portinari, one of the Medici branch


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managers, made the statement that the foundations of the firms business rests on trade in

which most of the capital is employed. (Gruenzweig, 1931)

In Florence, as in other Medieval centers Bruges for example there was a sharp distinction

between the merchant bankers, whose business interests were international in scope, and the

less important cambiatori or money-changers, who specialized in local banking. All bankers or

tavolieri, great or small, were required to be members of the Arte del Cambio. On the other

hand, the pawn brokers, who were considered as manifest usurers, were ipso facto excluded

from membership in the guild.

Not all Medieval merchants were merchant bankers. A large capital and intensive connections

were needed in order to engage successfully in foreign banking. When in 1429 Cosimo

succeded his father Giovanni di Bicci, the Medici banking house was already a prospering

concern with branches in Venice and in corte di papa, at the papal court. (Sieveking,1909)

(Ceccherelli, 1913)

The origins of the family could be traced back further back in the records of the Calimala an

Cambio guilds. However, the period of rapid expansion came uring the lifetime of Cosimo. New

branches were opened in Pisa, Milan, Geneva (moved to Lyons in 1466), Avignon, Bruges, and

London. Wherever they had no branch of their own, they had correspondents or agents who

would accept or collect the bills of exchange drawn or remitted by their principals.

So the Medici were represented by the firm of Filippo Strozzi and Co. in Naples, by Piero del

Fede and Co. in Valencia, by Nicolaio dAmeleto and Antonio Bonafe in Bologna, by Filippo and

Federigo Centurioni in Genoa, by Gherardo Bueri a relative of Cosimo in Luebeck, and so on.


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All those business firms were Italian and most of them were Florentine. Occasionally though the

Medici would be presented by a native merchant, as was the case in Cologne where their

representative was a German called Abel Kalthoff. Cosimo de Medici did not confine his activity

solely to international banking and foreign trade. He had interests also in wool and silk

manufacturing, the two principal industries of Florence.

In contrast to other companies providing trading and financial services, such as the Bardi and

Peruzzi companies, the Medici banking house was not one partnership but a combination of

partnerships. A separate partnership was formed for each of the Medici enterprises: the bank

or home office in Florence, the branches in foreign countries, and the three industrial

establishments in Florence. Each partnership was a separate legal entity, with a separate

division of capital and allocation of profits, according to the partnership agreements. This

concept is important in understanding the transactions between the different partnerships. A

branch manager, as a kind of partner, in the partnership, would be responsible for part of the

capital and would be allocated part of the profit.

We will illustrate this by examining the partnership agreement for the Bruges subsidiary of the

Medici bank of July 25, 1455. This agreement does not differ from the partnership agreement

for the London subsidiary of the Medici bank in 1446, between the Medici seniors and Gierozzo

dePigli, then manager of the London branch. This agreement can be seen as a typical

partnership (ragione) agreement.

Parties: (1) Piero and Giovanni de Medici, Pierfrancesco de Medici; (2) Gierozzo dePigli, the

former manager; (3) Angelo Tani, the new manager.


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Responsibilities: Angelo Tani to assume government of the company for four years, from March

25, 1456, ending March 24, 1460.

Company purpose: Trade in exchange and merchandise in the city of Bruges in Flanders

Company Style: Piero di Cosimo de Medici, Gierozzo de Pigli and Co.

Company Capital & P&L Allocation: 3,000 Groat, Flemish money (this includes how capital was

to be supplied among the partners)

Restrictions on Capital and P&L: No capital or profit taken out for duration of partnership

agreement, save for 20 Groat per year in living expenses.

Restrictions/Allowances on Conduct: Angelo Tani - to reside in Bruges, to confine actions to

lawful trade and to licit and honourable exchange transactions, to make business trips to

Antwerp, Bergen-op-Zoom, London, Calais, and Middelburg, to extend credit and to deliver

money by exchange to creditable and rated merchants and artificers only, to not extend loans

to princes, to under no conditions sell foreign exchange on credit to lords spiritual or temporal

(no letters of credit on Rome or on any other place unless they had been paid for in advance),

to not buy wool or cloth either in English or Flemish for more than 600 Groat (about 1/3 of the

partnerships capital) in a given year without permission of the senior partners, to limit

uninsured shipments by sea to 60 Groats per bottom (per vessel), consignments overland

could be left uninsured upto the value of 300 Groats. Some more rules can be found about

exclusivity. At the expiration of the partnership contract the partner was to wind up the


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companys business after which capital and accumulated profits were written to the credit of

the partners in the books of the succeeding partnership.

Francesco Sassetti was the most successful manager and after Cosimo s death, became close

advisor to Cosimos son, Piero de Medici and in turn his son Lorenzo Il Magnifico.

Sassetti oversaw reports from all the branch offices and in time appeared to become lax in the

discharge of his duties. He failed to spot grossly overstated profits from the Lyon branch, due to

a lack of provision for bad debts. He recalled Angelo Tani from the Bruges branch, replaced him

with Tommaso Portinari and lifted a number of restrictions previously placed on the freedom of

the managing partner. The fatal mistake was the lifting of the ban on loans to princes upon

renewal of the Bruges partnership and granting permission to lend 6,000 Groat to Charles the

Bold, Duke of Burgundy and ruler of the Low Countries. 6,000 Groats, was twice the firms

entire capital. The debt was allowed to exceed 6,000 Groats. Portinari had become the Duke s

Councillor, and had great influence at the court of Burgundy. This is one of the reasons why

Lorenzo Il Magnifico allowed these transgressions. The loans were used by Charles the Bold in a

war against the Swiss, where he suffered a catastrophic defeat and ultimately fell in battle at

Nancy. This disaster broke the Low Countries. No ruler, no army, no treasury, and nothing to

stop the French from invading. In an effort to recover losses, Portinari, loaned money to

Archduke Maximilian, Charles the Bolds son in law. Portinari invested in Burgundian Galleys.

One ship was captured by a pirate and the other ended up shipwrecked.

The Medici Bank traded in bills of exchange in an environment whereby the major Abrahamic

religions forbade Charging interest on monies, Usury, or Riba (as it is still known in Islamic


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Finance today). In the middle ages Contractum Trinitus and Murabahah contstructions avoided

the Usuary or Riba issue. Dru Exchange was also a way to disguise interest.

In the middle ages the profit of a banker was even less certain than that of a modern day

banker. Then it depended upon the unpredictable swing of exchange rates. Usually the lender

gained and the borrower lost, but the reverse could and did also happen, if the exchange rates

were momentarily out of sync. In the eyes of the church this uncertainty of the lender s profit

justified exchange transactions. As this is concerns Dry Exchange pure interest was hidden in

the exchange rates. In the financial centers of medieval Europe there was a bill market. The

buying and selling was done through brokers and the prices, or the exchange rates, depended

on the supply and demand conditions in the money market.

An example of which comes from the Bruges branch. Around July 15, 1441, the Medici of

Venice bought a bill on Bruges at the rate of 54 Groats per Venetian Ducat (54.5 BG = 1 VD).

Two months later, when the bill matured, they received in Bruges 54 Groats for each Ducat.

With the proceeds of this bill the Bruges branch, acting as agent for the Venice branch, bought

a bill on Venice, payable at the end of two months, at a rate of 51 Groats per Ducat. The

Medici of Venice thus made a profit of 3 groats on each ducat over a period of four months,

since they received 54 Groats and paid only 51 Groats. If the exchange rate in Bruges had

been 54 Groats instead of 51 per Ducat, the Medici of Venice would have broken even

because they would have paid and received the same number of Groats for each Ducat. If the

exchange rate in Bruges had been higher than 54 Groats, the Medici of Venice would have

suffered a loss instead of making a profit. Instead of waiting for a remittance from the Medici


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branch in Bruges, the Medici branch in Venice might have resold their Flemish exchange by

drawing a bill on Bruges. They would have gained with a falling exchange rate and lost with a

rising exchange. They had bought Flemish currency at 54 Groats per Ducat. If they had resold

it at 55 Groats, they would have lost one-half Groat per Ducat, since the Medici of Bruges would

have received 54 Groats per Ducat from the remittance but would have been bound to pay

out 55 Groats per Ducat for the Draft. On the other hand a fall of the exchange rate from 54

Groats to 54 Groats would have resulted in a profit of one-half Groat.

After 1465 business conditions were generally unfavourable, and the value of the gold florin in

silver piccioli rose more than 20 percent between 1475 and 1495. This rise was not solely due

to the debasement of silver currency, but also to a change in the market ratio between gold

and silver. Since most deposits were repayable in gold, the Medici were crushed between the

steadily fall of gold prices and the mounting burden of their commitment to depositors.

The Medici lost in more than one way: First because gold prices of commodities fell steadily,

and secondly because much business was done with countries such as France, England, and

Flanders, whose silver currency was depreciating in terms of gold. What the Medici may have

gained on wages and other small items was probably negligible. While assets thus tended to

shrink in value, liabilities remained the same because the Medici owed gold florins or ecus to

depositors. As the purchasing power of gold increased, interest charges payable in gold became

more and more burdensome. The worst was that the assets declined in value and so reduced

the owners value until there was nothing left. The Medici by relying so much on borrowed


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capital, had weakened their resistance to deflationary pressures and were especially vulnerable

when the crisis came.

People will just never learn from history.


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References :

Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994)

Michael Benson (2005). Inside Secret Societies. Kensington Publishing Corp.. pp. 90.

Alberto Ceccherelli, I Libri di mercatura della Banca Medici e l applicazione della partita doppia

a Firenze nel secolo decimo quarto (Florence, 1913) , p. 43.

Armand Gruenzweig, Correspondance de le filial de Bruges des Medici, Part I (Brussels, 1931),

pp.129, 131. This is henceforth cited with abbreviated title and page reference only, as Part II

has not yet appeared.

Sean Martin, The Knights Templar: The History & Myths of the Legendary Military Order, 2005.

ISBN 1-56025-645-1

Karen Ralls (2007). Knights Templar Encyclopedia. Career Press. pp. 28. ISBN 9781564149268.

Professor Raymond De Roover, Graduate School Of Business Administration, New York

University, The Medici Bank Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline. 1949.

Heinrich Sieveking, Aus Genueser Rechnungs- und Steuerbuechern (Sitzungsberichte der Kais.

Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophische-historische Klasse, No. CLXII, Vienna,

1909), pp. 96 f.;

Peter Spufford, Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (London, 2002)


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It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done;

it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

Dickens, Charles (1859) A Tale of Two Cities