ABSTRACT

Offering snapshots of mercantile devotion to saints in different regions, this volume is the first to ask explicitly how merchants invoked saints, and why. Despite medieval and modern stereotypes of merchants as godless and avaricious, medieval traders were highly devout – and rightly so. Overseas trade was dangerous, and merchants’ commercial activities were seen as jeopardizing their souls. Merchants turned to saints for protection and succor, identifying those most likely to preserve their goods, families, reputations, and souls.

The essays in this collection, written from diverse angles, range across later medieval western Europe, from Spain to Italy to England and the Hanseatic League. They offer a multi-disciplinary examination of the ways that medieval merchants, from petty traders to influential overseas wholesalers, deployed the cults of saints. Three primary themes are addressed: danger, community, and the unity of spiritual and cultural capital. Each of these themes allows the international panel of contributors to demonstrate the significant role of saints in mercantile life.

This book is unique in its exploration of saints and commerce, shedding light on the everyday role religion played in medieval life. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of religious history, medieval history, art history, and literature.

chapter 1|18 pages

Introduction

part I|1 pages

Merchant devotion to regional saints

chapter 3|20 pages

The Sunday saint

Keeping a holy “merchant’s time” in the Middle English Life of Erasmus 1

part II|1 pages

Merchant patronage and individualized piety

chapter |19 pages

For the hope of salvation and the honor of family

Merchant devotional concerns in early sixteenth-century Burgos 1

chapter 6|21 pages

For salvation or reputation?

The representation of saints in a Jouvenel des Ursins book of hours

chapter 7|17 pages

Spaces and times for worship

Merchant devotion to the saints in late medieval Barcelona

chapter 8|18 pages

The Fisher Miscellany

Reconstructing a late medieval merchant family’s book and its fashionable hagiography

part III|1 pages

Holy protectors for merchant corporations

chapter 10|30 pages

Success, salvation, and servitude

Tallinn’s Brotherhood of the Black Heads and its relationship with local and regional saint cults 1

chapter 11|28 pages

Reanimating the power of holy protectors

Merchants and their saints in the visual culture of medieval and early modern Venice

part IV|1 pages

Patterns of saintly intercession in the late medieval world

chapter 12|16 pages

The service of merchants

Politics, wealth, and intercessional devotion in later medieval Italy