Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

The Merchant of Prato by Iris OrigoReview by: F. S. L. LyonsIrish Historical Studies, Vol. 11, No. 44 (Sep., 1959), pp. 368-369Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30006478 .

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368 Short notices the Two Sicilies is closely connected with the fall of the Latin Empire and the tortuous negotiations between popes, emperors and kings of France and Spain in their effort to fill the gap. Great names occur repeatedly in this story: St Louis of France and his brother, Charles of Anjou- who is in many ways the villain of the piece; the exiled Latin Emperor Baldwin; Manfred, the tragic heir to the great Hohenstaufen tradition; and a succession of popes, French and Italian, who are unequal to the 'difficulties with which they are faced. It is indeed a complicated story. Mr Runciman, though he writes clearly and well, cannot overcome its difficulty for the average reader-who will most probably turn to the few elaborate set-pieces in which this accomplished historian tries his hand at a word-portrait of some king or prelate or courtier.

Irish readers may well feel that the book deals with a world which is wholly remote from the history of their own country; and that is largely true. One slight, but interesting link between Ireland and the court of Manfred in Naples is the (probably Norman) philosopher, Peter of Ireland, whose name occurs in the earliest biographies of St Thomas Aquinas as the future Dominican doctor's first guide in the study of Aristotle. Mr Runciman has some comments to make on Manfred's interest in intellectual questions, but (not unnaturally) has nothing to say of this unexpected link between Naples and Ireland. More real in its permanent effect was the French grip upon papal policy, which goes back to the unlucky bargain which Urban IV, looking desperately for a protector who should be more useful and less dangerous than the Hohenstaufen kings of Naples and Sicily, made with Louis of France and Charles of Anjou in 1263. From that bargain came the whole grim story of Angevin rule, which ended in bloody massacre on the night of the Sicilian Vespers. From it came also that French control of the college of cardinals, which became almost a monopoly in the brief reign of Celestine V; which came to a head in the dramatic seizure of Boniface VIII in his palace at Anagni; and which led inevitably to the Babylonian exile of Avignon. Irish churchmen and Irish chieftains had closer contacts with the Avignon papacy than they had ever had with any of the short-lived popes of the late thirteenth century. If you would know how France came to get this grip on the machinery of papal government, Mr Runciman's detailed story will help you to clearer knowledge. And if you are a student of Dante's Divina commedia, you will find in his pages something like a Who's who of those whom Dante hated and the few whom he admired.

AUBREY GWYNN

THE MERCHANT OF PRATO. By Iris Origo. Pp. 380. London: Cape. 1957. 35s.

READING this book one finds it difficult to imagine how the question of the existence of credit in the medieval world can ever have been the subject of controversy, as for a long time it undoubtedly was. The 'merchant of Prato' of whom the Marchesa Origo writes, was Francesco di Marco

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Short notices 369 Datini, one of the most versatile merchants and bankers of his day, and his papers have been known to Italian scholars for nearly a century. The discovery of the Archivio Datini was one of those near-miracles historians dream of, but which scarcely ever happen in real life. When Datini died in 14Io he left instructions that all his papers should be carefully preserved and kept in his own house. This was done-the house still stands in Prato-but until the second half of the nineteenth century they remained in sackfuls, forgotten under the stairs. When opened they were found to consist of 150,0oo letters, over 5oo account books and ledgers, 3oo deeds of partnership, 400 insurance policies and several thousand bills of lading, letters of advice, bills of exchange and the like.

By now, of course, most of this material has been worked over by professional economic historians, but even a layman will be able to gather from the earlier chapters of this book (which does not pretend to any technical expertise) how much the Datini papers have meant to the historians of capitalist enterprise in the middle ages. The variety of the goods in which Datini dealt; the number of the companies and partnerships in which he was involved both in Italy and in various parts of Europe; above all, perhaps, the subtle and complicated relationships he and his colleagues succeeded in developing amongst each other and with the people with whom they dealt-all these things illustrate most strikingly the extraordinary range of medieval business contacts.

But, although the Marchesa deals very clearly and intelligently with these matters, they are subsidiary to her main purpose, which is to use the papers the professionals have neglected-chiefly the correspondence between Datini and his wife-to give an intimate and detailed picture of life in a Tuscan household in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. In this she brilliantly succeeds, and without any of the pseudo- historical devices to which amateurs are prone on such occasions she has brought alive in the most vivid way Datini and his family, his servants and slaves, his friends, his house, his food, his ailments, and his never- ending business and domestic anxieties. It is a fascinating story and it makes a delightful book which, however, it is only proper to add, is also in its own right an important contribution to the social history of the Italian trecento.

F. S. L. LYONS

FIVE NORTHANTS FAMILIES, 1540-I64o. By Mary E. Finch. Pp. xx, 246. Northants Record Society, vol. xix. I956. 30s.

THE nature of the English society which produced the Anglo-Irish planter class of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is a question of some importance for Irish history. Surprisingly little is known about it, although in recent years several prominent English historians have devoted their attention to the subject. They seem to have been tempted to generalise too soon upon a narrow basis of evidence and many of the views have had a highly speculative character, not incompatible

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