ABSTRACT
After a series of bankruptcies in the second half of the fourteenth century had ousted the Florentine companies from the foreground of international trade and banking,6 the dukes of Burgundy had to turn to merchants of the nearby city of Lucca to relieve their financial and commercial needs. This enabled a dynasty of Lucchese businessmen, all of them professionally and personally related, to win over ducal favour and to keep hold of it for the next 45 years. The first and by far the most successful of them was Dino Rapondi. Rapondi had worked his way up in international trade in Bruges and had occasionally provided money to Philip the Bold, younger brother of the French king, during the 1360s and 1370s.7 The merchant’s star rose even higher when Philip succeeded Louis of Male as count of Flanders in 1384: Rapondi was appointed ducal counsellor, would advise his employer in all financial matters and would negotiate innumerable loans. Having moved to Paris, he became the duke’s banker in everything but in name, supplying hundreds of thousands of pounds from 1392 onwards, from modest daily advances to colossal credits, and transferring the contributions from the Flemish cities to the ducal treasury. At the same time he sold cartloads of satin, silk cloth, and gold and silver thread to the ducal family, who wore his fabrics on every important occasion.8
