Mercantile justice is now among the interests of economic historiography on late medieval Europe. That
were ordinary civil, corporate and commercial courts, arbitration or other informal settlement proceedings, the possibility of resorting to justice to protect property rights, compliance with contracts and satisfaction of interests was an indispensable element of the action of the 'international republic of the money'. These were forms of justice aimed at the settlement of the reasons at stake, without the delays of ordinary rituals - based on internationally recognized rules and practices for the use and consumption of the world of commerce and sometimes capable of bending the reasons of diplomacy to those of money. The volume Olschki analyzes some cases of justice in the Mediterranean commercial context. A series of researches, focused on the cities of Florence, Barcelona and Ragusa (Dubrovnik), highlight the variety of cases and the procedures used by the mercantile communities to resolve their disputes. The lowest common denominator is represented by the extraordinary documentary panorama, capable of opening significant glimpses not only in the field of mercantile justice, but also in economic, political and social history as a whole.
Authors: Elena Maccioni, doctoral candidate in Medieval History at the University of Cagliari, was a scholarship holder of the Italian Institute for Historical Studies B. Croce of Naples, conducting a research on the use of the institution of reprisals in the Crown of Aragon. You have published contributions in the "Italian Historical Archive" and "Annals of the Italian Institute for Historical Studies". Sergio Tognetti (Florence 1969) teaches Medieval History at the University of Cagliari. His studies are directed above all to the economic history of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with particular regard to the events of commerce, banking and manufacturing. In addition to numerous essays in magazines and miscellanies, he has published with Olschki: Il Banco Cambini. Business and markets of a merchant-banking company in fifteenth-century Florence (1999); A luxury industry at the service of big business. The market for silk drapes and silk in fifteenth-century Florence, (2002); The Gondis of Lyons. A Florentine investment bank in early sixteenth-century France, (2013).
