Medieval Benghazi

The port at Benghazi, where it all began

Benghazi has been much in the news lately. As with any part of the Eastern Hemisphere, it has been around long enough to have medieval history.

Hundreds of years BCE (sources vary regarding the date of its founding), a city called Euesperides was founded by the Greeks on the coast of the Mediterranean. It was likely named in honor of the Hesperides, the daughters of Hesperus who tended a peaceful garden in the extreme West. Coins from Euesperides dating as far back as 480 BCE have been found, with Delphi on one side and the silphium plant on the other. Silphium, valued as a spice and a medicine, was a major export; today, however, we have no idea what plant species it was.

Herodotus mentions it in his History when the satrap of Egypt sends a force to conquer the Cyreneans there. The Greek historian Thucydides mentions it being besieged by "Libyans"; the town was saved that time by a fleet led by a Spartan general who arrived by accident due to unpredictable winds. One of their kings, Arcesilaus IV, competed in the Pythian Games* in 414 BCE.

Euesperides moved in the mid 3rd century BCE—presumably because of the silting up of the lagoon its ships used—and was renamed Berenice (for the daughter of King Magas of Cyrene. Ancient Berenice was located under what is now the center of the modern city.) The city later came under Roman rule and existed for several centuries, but dwindled to a small settlement. St. Anthony the Great may have traveled through there on his way to be a hermit in the desert.

In the 13th century, the location became a stopping place for Genoese merchants who wished to trade with the interior. (Remember, the Genoese were spreading out all over the mediterranean, even as far as Monaco.) By the 1500s, it was appearing on maps as Marsa ibn Ghazi. I have not discovered who the "sons of Ghazi" were for whom it is now named, but Ghazi is a Muslim title of respect, so it may have a non-specific origin.

Benghazi has been through many changes of name, and its long history is fraught with conflict and attempts—some successful—for regime change.

*The Olympian Games were not the only "world-wide" athletic competitions in the Classical World.

Medieval Prices

Marketplace, from 16th c.
Les Livres du gouvernement des Princes

Yesterday we talked about the gold bezant and the difficulty in understanding what it was worth. We only know what things were worth in history when someone records what they paid for something. We know, for instance, that Cécile Dorel was "worth" 10,000 bezants. Thanks to the efforts of others, however, we have some idea of the purchasing power of certain currencies.

Here is a page that lists several prices, gleaned from medieval records in England. It offers the different years those prices were recorded, so that one can try to account for changing value over time.

First let us look at relative value:
1 pound = 20 shillings
1 shilling = 12 pence
1 pence/penny = 4 farthings

Also, an English groat was worth 4 pence. Keep in mind that Marco Polo considered a bezant to be worth 20 groats, or 80 pence; this would make a single gold bezant the equivalent of 6.66 shillings, or one-third of a pound.

Let's say we found three gold bezants while we ransacked Constantinople in 1204 as part of the Fourth Crusade. (This was alluded to here; some day I will decide to tackle that complex story.) We take them back to England, and we decide to spend them. We have a whole pound to spend. What shall we do?

According to the above webpage, if we wanted to buy livestock we could get 10 pigs, or we could buy about 500 chickens. Chickens came two to a penny, but if we just wanted eggs, that penny could get us two dozen. If we wanted to enjoy the country life but didn't want to farm, we could rent a cottage for four years (5 shillings/year). That's going to be a one- or two-room affair. In town, renting a merchant's house (which would have several rooms for personal and commercial use) would require about 10 bezants, not the three we have.

If we bequeathed the bezants to our descendants (and assuming they maintained their worth), our great-great-grandsons could have bought three peasant-quality swords for joining the Hundred Years War.

If, however, we just wanted to spend the money on a feast for our neighbors, we could provide a real Babette's Feast.
Good wine (2 gallons) = 20 pence
Sheep to roast = 17 pence
Pig to roast = 24 pence
10 chickens = 5 pence
80-pound cheese wheel = 40 pence (this will last far beyond the fast date)
Salted herring (20) = 15 pence
Dried fruit (raisins, dates, figs, etc.) =  20 pence (1-4 pence per pound; let's be lavish)
Spices (cinnamon, sugar, cloves, etc.) = 20 pence (1-3 shillings per pound; we won't get too much)
Let's get a couple ceramic cooking pots = 1 pence

At this point, we've spent just over 160 pence of our 240.

Alternately, we could probably forgo all of this materialistic pleasure and buy a book. One book. If we were lucky, we'd have three pence remaining and could buy 2 pounds of tallow candles by which to read it.

The Bezant

Coins from Kingdom of Jerusalem in British Museum
(l. to r.) dinar (1162-75), Arabic bezant (1140-80),
Christian bezant (1250-) [source]

Yesterday's post mentioned 10,000 bezants being paid as a bride price. Let's discuss the bezant.

Discussions of items of currency in history break down into two parts: "Where did it come from?" and "What is it worth?" The first part is far easier to deal with. You might guess that the name bezant comes from its relationship to its place of origin: Byzantium.* Gold coins could be called after a particular place because they were not that common: few places minted them, silver and bronze being the more common metals used (hence, of course, the traditional use of gold, silver, and bronze for medals in competition). Gold coins were used for special occasions or for attention-getting: gifts, tributes, awards or, as we saw yesterday, impressing your fiancé's guardian.

Gold coinage started in antiquity in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean and slowly spread westward as trade increased. Of European merchants, those from Italy had the most familiarity with eastern gold coins from the east and used the term bezant to refer to gold coins from Egypt (the dinar in the above picture); Marco Polo used bezant to refer to the gold coins he saw in East Asia.

What was a bezant worth? That depended on a lot of factors, and there was no "gold market" like we have today that monitors fluctuations in price. The best we have in most cases is a comparison to other coins. Marco Polo describes one bezant as worth 20 groats or 133.33 tornesel. This tells us only that gold coins were proportionally far more valuable than other metals. The gold coins that were minted in England in the 10th and 11th centuries were decreed to be worth nine times the value of a similar-sized silver coin. Suffice it to say that any gold coin had much more purchasing power than most coins in circulation that the average person would be likely to use on a daily basis. Unfortunately, we do not have lists of prices of everyday items or services from history...but we do have some, which we will look at tomorrow.


*Byzantium was re-named Constantinople in 330CE; later, of course, it became Istanbul in 1930. Enjoy the song.

The Power of Gold

Yes, it's the witch-weighing scene
from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

There is a medieval anecdote in the so-called "Chronicle of Ernoul" that, though fanciful, is based on a true story. The author, "Ernoul," names himself in his Chronicle and says he was a squire of Balian of Ibelin, one of the Crusader nobles who helped take and maintain (for a short time) Jerusalem. He tells a story of a bride (Lucie) who was put on a large scale by a suitor, who offered her guardian (Raymond III of Tripoli) the lady's weight in gold for the privilege of marrying her.

The true story is just as demonstrative of the power of gold, however, and doesn't need a set of scales.

The lady was Cécile Dorel, who inherited lands in Tripoli upon the death of her father. Raymond III (1140-1187), Count of Tripoli, was her uncle. Raymond was approached by two men for Cécile's hand in marriage (and the coastal lands in Tripoli that she now possessed).

One of the men was Gerard de Ridefort. His origin is uncertain, but by the time of this story he was in the service of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and held the title Marshal of the kingdom, putting him in charge of all mercenaries and disbursement of spoils of war. This would have been a noble match between Gerard and Cécile, but Raymond III acted differently. He married Cécile to the nephew of a Pisan merchant. Why? The bride price was too handsome to ignore. The bride price was money or valuables offered to the family of the bride by the groom or his family in order to ensure the marriage (feel free to read "buy the woman"). The Pisan nephew, whose name was Plivano, offered 10,000 bezants for Cécile. Bezants varied in weight and value, so it is difficult now to determine exactly how much that bride price was worth in today's money. It was clearly, however, an amount not to be ignored—and not easily matched—and so Plivano had his bride.

Gerard took the loss poorly and fell ill. He swore off women, apparently, and became a Templar, going on to a great career in that order. That, however, is a another story.

The Name of the Pope

It is common practice for popes of the Roman Catholic Church to take a new name—called their regnal name—upon elevation to the Throne of Peter. They will usually offer a reason for the new name. Cardinal Albino Luciani took the names of both his immediate predecessors and called himself Pope John Paul I. When he died after a very short (33 days) reign, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla chose to honor him by taking the name Pope John Paul II upon his accession.

Pope "Mercurius"

It hasn't always been thus, however. Whereas now almost all popes take the name of a saint, early popes used their own names—names that were not always common. So you had popes named Anacletus, Evaristus, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Soter, Eleuterus, Zephyrinus and others among the more common names like Felix and Boniface and John; and they only rarely needed numbers next to their names, because the likelihood of there being more than one pope named "Anterus" or "Eutychian" or "Miltiades" was slight.

The practice of taking a new name began not to honor a predecessor, however, but to avoid an embarrassment.

After the death of Pope Boniface II in October 532, there was a two-month vacancy in the position. Part of the reason for this was a (ahem) change in the process. You see, it had become common for some candidates to ensure their election through bribes and gifts. The Roman Senate forbade this practice just before the death of Boniface. Athalaric, the King of the Ostrogoths in Italy, upheld the Senate's decision, and added his own flourish: a disputed papal election that needed to come before his court would be fined 3000 solidi (a solidi was a gold coin of 4.5 grams) and the money given to the poor.

The cardinals fell into agreement on a distinguished priest of Rome, aged about 60. He was willing to take the job, but he had one concern. His Roman parents had given him a theophoric birth name—a name that honors a god in order to impart luck and protection to a child. His name was Mercurius. Father Mercurius did not think it was appropriate for a Christian pope to bear the name of a Roman god. He decided to take the name of a pope from a decade earlier who had had a good working relationship with Athalaric's grandfather.

And so Father Mercurius became Pope John II, the first pope known to have taken a new name upon election.

The King of Sicily

Sicily, an island of less than 10,000 square miles just off the coast of Italy, would not seem to merit its own king, and for a long time it didn't have one. But just as England was brought to heel under a Norman ruler, so too did Normans take over Sicily and eventually expand its power.

Christ crowns Roger II of Sicily [art link]

Before William of Normandy conquered England, Normans were also traveling in other directions. Norman mercenaries went through southern Italy in the late 10th century, looking for employment. Originally they fought on behalf of the city-states in the region, but by the 11th century they were actually ruling the regions of Naples, Capua, Apulia, Clabria, and had carved up Sicily into several smaller counties and dukedoms.

Roger Hauteville and his brother Robert Guiscard came to southern Italy and discovered the Byzantine Greek Christians living under Muslim rule by Moors from Tunisia. In 1061 the two brothers and an army took Messina, then captured Palermo in 1071. Over the next few years they expelled the Moors, and Roger became Count of Sicily. Roger had three wives and several children. One of his last children was also named Roger.

Roger II (22 December 1095-1154) became Count of Sicily in 1105, inheriting the title (and parts of Sicily) when his elder brother died. At the age of 16, he was named Count of Sicily and Calabria. In 1122, Roger's cousin, Duke William of Apulia, accepted Roger's help in dealing with an enemy; in exchange, he offered to renounce his claims to certain lands. When William died in 1127, Roger claimed all lands that had been distributed to members of the Hauteville family on Sicily and in the Italian peninsula: Calabria and Apulia, as well as Capua.

Pope Honorius II was wary of the growing power of Normans in southern Italy and Sicily, but his attempts to counter Roger with force or politics failed. By 1129, Roger's rule of Apulia was accepted by his neighbors. When Honorius died in 1130, Roger threw his support behind Anacletus II against Innocent II. Anacletus prevailed and, despite being later declared an antipope, he was able to reward his supporter with a papal bull declaring Roger King of Sicily. Roger was undisputed ruler of the island and much of southern Italy, a worthy kingdom indeed.

Roger continued to expand his territory. When Roger's sister, Matilda, who had married Ranulf II of Alife, came to Roger claiming to have been abused by her husband, Roger took Ranulf's lands as well as his brother's county.

Pope Anacletus died in 1138, and Pope Innocent II sent an army to teach Roger a lesson: the pope mistrusted the power of the expansive Kingdom of Sicily, and wanted a buffer state between Sicily and his own territory. Innocent thought Capua would make a good neutral space between the two. His army failed, however.

The King of Sicily had a long life and accomplished numerous things, but I'll mention just one more: Roger invented a new coin that would standardize monetary exchanges throughout the Mediterranean. He named this gold coin after the duchy of Apulia: the ducat. (To be honest, this coin failed to be widely adopted. The ducat with which we are familiar was introduced by Venice in 1284.)

Æthelstan—The Forgotten King

In the history of the Middle Ages, there must be many "forgotten kings"—those whose rules were too short or too obscure or too trivial to add any momentous events to the modern consciousness (many people know the phrase "The Norman Conquest" even if they couldn't tell you details). In the case of Æthelstan (c.894-939), however, his reign was significant enough for the history of England that it is a shame that he is not known better.

Perhaps there is irony that part of his undeserved obscurity is actually paired with elements that should have helped to make him more noteworthy. To a modern world who wants only a few highlights from studying the past, his accomplishments are overshadowed in classrooms by those of his grandfather, Alfred, the only king in English history to have earned the epithet "the Great."

Also, we have an account about him from William of Malmesbury (c.1095-1143) who said of Æthelstan "no one more just or more learned ever governed the kingdom." Most modern scholars, however, mistrust the Malmesbury account (although some have argued that internal evidence suggests that Malmesbury is actually drawing on an earlier and probably reliable biography). A 10th century Latin poem says of him: "Holy King Æthelstan, whose esteem flourishes and whose honor endures everywhere."

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle often only mentions military engagements, and therefore neglects his administrative and economic achievements. But in his lifetime, he was praised as "the English Charlemagne." He financed Catholic churches. He regulated currency and controlled the weight of silver coins and passed laws to penalize currency fraud. (In the image below of the Æthelstan penny, note the "braiding" around the edge that prevents "coin clippers" from shaving off silver in order to spend a coin of less weight.) He regulated commerce, confining it to the burh (Anglo-Saxon "town"; think Modern English "burg"), encouraging the growth of towns. He consolidated the wilderness areas and settlements in the Midlands, creating new shires, asserting royal control and law more consistently over the entire country.

Æthelstan silver penny

He also made valuable alliances. He married off his half-sisters to European noble families, so that he had connections with brothers-in-law such as the future Holy Roman Emperor Otto. King Harald Fair-Hair of Norway sent his son Haakon to foster at Æthelstan's court. When Harald died and Haakon's brother Eirik Bloodaxe proclaimed himself king, Æthelstan equipped Haakon with ships and men to take his rightful place as King of Norway (which he did).

He won a decisive battle, the Battle of Brunanburh in 937; summed up by Winston Churchill:

The whole of North Britain—Celtic, Danish and Norwegian, pagan and Christian—together presented a hostile front under Constantine, king of the Scots, and Olaf of Dublin, with Viking reinforcements from Norway. [History of the English-Speaking People]

After Æthelstan's victory, he could rightfully call himself "the King of all the English"—the first ruler on that island to be able to do so.

Upon his death in 939, he was laid to rest in Malmesbury Abbey—a place for which he had great affection—rather than the traditional Winchester, which was the seat of power for the royal family of Wessex.

Perhaps, as one fan of Æthelstan put it, his fame is tenuous because there are too many things about his life that cannot be grasped succinctly and with certainty: did he possess the greatest collection of sacred relics at the time, including the Spear of Longinus? Why did he not marry and have children? Did he have a half-brother killed? Was his mother a concubine? These questions, however, should not prevent knowing something about a remarkable and forward-looking figure from England's past.

Marco! Polo!

Today is the 758th anniversary (according to tradition) of the birth of Marco Polo (1254-1324). Son of a wealthy Venetian merchant who traded with the Middle East, Marco might have simply grown up to follow his father's footsteps, but he instead followed a different set of footsteps: at the age of 17 he accompanied his father and uncle to Asia.

At the time, Marco's father and uncle had just returned from a trip to the East. They brought with them a letter from Kublai Khan of the Mongols (1215-1294), to be delivered to the Pope, requesting 100 missionaries and oil from the lamp of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. In 1275, after a three-year journey, the two Polos and Niccolo's son Marco delivered the oil to the Khan. There, we are told, the Khan took a liking to Marco. Marco returned 24 years later to find Venice at war with Genoa; Marco was imprisoned by Genoan authorities because of his participation in a naval battle, and spent his time in prison dictating an account of his travels. The rest, as they say, is history.

But what about history before Marco?

Trade between East and West at this time benefited from the Mongol Expansion (c.1207-1360), because it broke the monopoly on trade routes enjoyed by the Islamic Caliphate. Marco's family was well situated for these travels. His grandfather, Andrea Polo of San Felice, was noble and well-off. Andrea set up his three sons (Marco, young Marco's father Niccolo, and Matteo*) in commerce. They had offices in Constantinople and at Sudak on the Black Sea. Niccolo and Matteo had met Kublai Khan when, on a trading expedition, they met up with his envoys who were returning from visiting the Khan's brother Hulagu in Persia. The Polos were persuaded to make the journey to Cathay to meet the Khan. It was Kublai's first meeting with Europeans, and he was fascinated by what they had to tell him about Europe and the Latin West. He asked them to take his request to their Pope; he wanted to learn all about Christianity and the liberal arts of the growing university system.

Marco Polo's travels

Upon returning home, the brothers discovered that Niccolo's wife had died, leaving Marco to be raised by relatives. Pope Clement IV had died and a new pope had not yet been chosen. After two more years with still no papal successor in place, the brothers decided they could wait no longer, and headed East with young Marco. They stopped at Acre and consulted with the papal legate Teobaldo Visconti, who gave them letters for the Khan explaining why their commission failed. They continued East.

Not long after, however, they learned that Teobaldo himself had been named pope, and they turned back to Acre and managed to get communications to and from him. Now, as Pope Gregory X (c.1210-1276), he could only offer a couple Dominicans. These Dominicans lost heart in Armenia when they ran into the troops of a sultan, and turned back for home.

The Khan was pleased to see the Venetians, who did not return to Europe for many years. According to Marco's account, not only did he see coal and paper money for the first time, but he was made governor of Yang-chow, with 27 cities under him, for three years, and given several missions by the Khan to visit other areas in Asia and return with information. It was more than 20 years before the Khan gave them permission to return home.

People of his era had a difficult time believing the stories he told. Later scholars had an even more difficult time: why did he never mention chopsticks in all that time? Or the Great Wall? But the Great Wall was a work in progress, much of which was only built after Marco's time there. And perhaps chopsticks weren't an impressive enough difference to bother reporting; after all, his was a Europe still only slowly adopting the use of the fork.

But, embellishments or not, his name is famous—even if children who play it in a swimming pool have no idea who he was. (And some day soon I'll tell you about the "Reverse Marco Polo," Rabban bar Sauma.)

*Half the sources call him "Maffeo"

It's the Economy, Stupid!

Even fans of the Middle Ages probably would never think to pair the phrase "economic theory" with the adjective "medieval." It would be a mistake, however, to assume that medieval thinkers were not aware of the needs and changes of the local economy. The 14th century alone saw some radical economic events, like the collapse of some Italian banking institutions. Whether this can truly be ascribed, wholly or in part, to Edward III, it is true that his administration spent larger sums of money than was prudent. The Black Death also had an effect on economy.

Merchants fueled a thriving middle class.

During the economic shifts of the 14th century, an anonymous poet wrote an alliterative poem addressing the topic of those who spend lavishly and those who are more frugal and prefer to make and save money. The poem probably would have been lost if not for the efforts of Robert Thornton, who in the 15th century made a hobby of collecting manuscripts. His copy of the poem—the only version we have—may have textual errors due to hasty copying. Still, it offers us an interesting look at that society.

The poem is called Wynnere and Wastoure, and refers to Winners (who earn money) and Wasters (who are extravagant with money). The narrator, while walking on a sunny day, falls asleep by a stream and has a dream-vision. (This is a common way to begin an allegory.) In the dream, Winner and Waster each lead an army. Just before their battle begins, a messenger arrives who summons them before the king, who will listen to their argument and resolve their issues definitively.

This he fails to do. After listening to the arguments of the two, the king gives an ambiguous judgment, condemning each as unbalanced practices but endorsing both as necessary actions in society—although the king does point out that Winner will never be able to keep up with Waster. Thornton's manuscript breaks off at line 503, so any conclusion after his judgment is lost to us.

Internal evidence in the poem suggests a date of composition prior to 1370: it mentions a Chief Justice, William Shareshull, who died in 1370. That would place the composition in the reign of Edward III, and it is generally accepted by scholars that the king of the poem is meant to represent Edward, who himself would have had constant dealing with "wasting" because of his expenses on wars and living well, and with the "winners" of a growing and increasingly wealthy middle class.

International Banking

The Collapse of the 1340s

Florence was the headquarters for some powerful families in the Middle Ages who used their wealth and business acumen (and the stability of the Florentine gold florin) to create the first international banking corporations. Two of the biggest, run by the Bardi and Peruzzi families, collapsed in 1346 and 1343, respectively. The excuse for the collapse is usually given as Edward III of England's default on loans he took to pay for expenses during the Hundred Years War. Estimates put Edward's debts at 900,000 florins to the Bardi and 600,000 to the Peruzzi--an enormous sum in any age.

More recent assessments of the situation, however, spread the blame. Edward's expenses were incurred earlier, and the two banks survived for some years afterward. Also, a third bank, the Acciaiuoli, failed in 1343 without having loaned any money to England. Various Florentine banks also loaned money to finance a war against Castracane of Lucca, and to put down a peasant revolt in Flanders. Also, an uprising in September 1343 in Florence created vast property damage that would have affected the banks (according to the 16th century historian Giovanni Villani).

It is impossible to understand every aspect of the collapse of the 1340s, especially since records such as we expect modern companies to maintain were not kept, and records that were kept did not necessarily survive until today. We do know that, in a world where nations did not maintain careful accounting practices, or have "social safety nets" established, it took very little to create widespread economic turmoil.