ABSTRACT
Merchants’ testaments reflect the anxiety, along with an awareness of life’s fugacity and the hazard of unforeseen death, at times in poetic and scripturally informed terms. Regardless of social standing, the shared experiences allowed the merchants of Barcelona to develop a religiosity unique to tradesmen, evident in their manners of private worship, their venues of religiosity in the public sphere, and their piety shaped by the risks associated with travel. The merchant’s home, especially its private, intimate rooms, became the scene of the family’s innermost spirituality. In the public realm, the foundation of benefices, the promotion of chapels, and the commission of liturgical furnishings and altarpieces were also part of merchants’ devotional lives, often closely linked to their choice of burial place and concerns about the afterlife. In the course of the negotiations, the assistance of merchants was crucial: merchants provided information about the coveted relics, and it was a merchant, Simó Salzet, who led the expedition to retrieve them.
