Nicolò Zennaro
University of Antwerp
Jacques Le Goff described the Middle Ages as a period of “multiple temporalities”, where a change in the mentality of medieval man took place, causing the “merchant time” to take over the “church time” between the 12th and 15th centuries. The “church time” was linked to religious rituals, eschatology and the cycles of nature. The “merchant time” represented the urban society’s necessity to measure his working time. This need arose when the medieval men, especially the merchant, began to consider each unit of time as a measurable, valuable and saleable “good” for their profit. Jean-Claude Schmitt detected a change in the concept of the future in medieval mentality during the same period studied by Le Goff. The future of the Latin Church (futura), knowable in broad outlines, became an unknown and unknowable future (avenir). Nicholas Scott Baker analysed the effects of this cultural transformation on the merchant’s culture between the mid-15th and 17th centuries. In his book, In Fortune’s Theater (2021), he described multiple future perspectives, defining different ways of thinking about the future: the Christian eschatological future, the one claimed through divinatory techniques, the everyday prudential impressions of the future and, the one considered as an unknown and unknowable time yet to come, deeply influenced by the concept of God and Fortune. Baker traced this change of mentality to the 16th century. The studies have not focused on the Italian merchant’s concept of the future and his way of thinking about it between the 14th and 15th centuries. The investigation of this critical period could help historians to define new perspectives on Italian mercantile culture.
This article will deal with the ways of thinking about the future of the late medieval Italian merchant during a crisis, focusing on the one influenced by God’s agency. Will be analysed the correspondence of Bindo di Gherardo Piaciti, a fattore of Francesco di Marco Datini in Venice from 1389 to 1411. The examination will focus on the letters written by Bindo and his collaborator Bartolo di Amerigo Zati in 1400. This year was critical for the Venetian market. The worst plague epidemic since the Black Death spread through the city, Tamerlan’s campaign of conquest blocked the Syrian route, and the city of Saint Mark had to bring heavy economic aid to Florence, engaged in a war with Milan. A comparative analysis will be presented between the references to God and their use in the letters during this critical year and those used in more peaceful periods. The similarities and differences revealed by this examination will reveal how these two Italian merchants conceived of divine intervention in their actions and their future during a crisis.