The Practica della mercatura, also known as the Merchant's Handbook, is a comprehensive guide to international trade in 14th-century Eurasia and North Africa as known to its compiler, the FlorentinebankerFrancesco Balducci Pegolotti. It was written sometime between 1335 and 1343, the most likely dates being 1339 or 1340. Its original title was the Book of Descriptions of Lands ; its more common name is that from its first printing in 1766. Pegolotti's work is based on his own experience as a banker and merchant for the Bardi, and on various local documents, statutes and price lists available to him.
History
No autograph survives. The sole surviving manuscript, used by all the printed editions, is that in the Biblioteca Riccardiana at Florence. It states that it was copied on 19 March 1472 by Filippo di Niccolaio Frescobaldi from a copy held by Agnolo di Lotti of Anella, who claimed it had been made from Pegolotti's original. Pegolotti seems to have had access to an earlier, much more limited, compilation made at Pisa in 1279, now preserved in the Biblioteca Comunale at Siena, entitled Memoria de Tucte le Mercantie. Pegolotti's work was probably used by the compiler of the Venetian trade manual Tarifa zoè noticia dy pexi e mexure di luogi e tere che s'adovra marcadantia per el mondo in the 1340s. It then served as a source for a later work which shares its title, the Pratica della mercatura compiled by Giovanni di Bernardo da Uzzano in 1442. Soon afterwards it was drawn on by the author of Libro che tracta di mercatantie et usanze de' paesi, compiled in 1458 probably by Giorgio Chiarini, afterwards incorporated in Luca Pacioli's Summa de arithmetica.
Contents
Glossary
Glossary of terms then in use for all kinds of taxes or payments on merchandise as well as for every kind of place where goods might be bought or sold in cities. Languages listed as necessary include
Listing of the principal routes and trading cities frequented by Italian merchants; the imports and exports of various important commercial regions; the business customs prevalent in each of those regions; and the comparative value of the leading moneys, weights and measures.
Includes main headings for the following trading places. Many others are listed incidentally. Under each heading there are lists of the main commodities with details of weights and measures, laws and customs of trade, pricing, customs duties. Pegolotti adds tables of comparison of each city's weights and measures with those of others to facilitate calculations.
*Cipri, chiefly Famagosta di Cipri. Pegolotti notes that he has negotiated a reduction of customs duties for the Compagnia dei Bardi and for those identified as Florentine merchants by the Bardi representative at Famagusta
Types and qualities of spices and other trade goods
Editions
Pegolotti's Pratica della mercatura was first published by Gianfrancesco Pagnini as part of Della Decima, his multi-volume history of the finances of Florence, in 1766. Only short sections have appeared in French and English translation. The 1936 edition by Allan Evans is now standard: it includes important glossaries of commodities, place names, coins and money, etc., but no translation.
