Kultura zawodowa kupca weneckiego w świetle "Zibaldone da Canal"

Abstrakt

This article concerns the issue of the professional culture of Venetian merchants in the second half of the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth century. It is based on the Zibaldone da Canal. This book, which appeared in the early decades of the fourteenth century, contains a variety of materials collected by its merchant compiler. An important part of these is information useful in trade. In it, the author of the handbook brings together information that he considers essential to be acquired by young Venetians preparing to enter the wide world of trade. The aim of the text is to indicate the most important elements that go to make a merchant’s education, to establish the place and possibilities of action open to individual merchants in the late medieval reality of Venice, and to discuss merchants’ personal and revealing experiences in trade. A survey of its contents leads to an attempt to give a picture of the professional culture of Venetian long-distance merchants; they formed an exceptionally active, enterprising, and cohesive social group, engaged in profitable but very precarious maritime trade.