transmitting information about the past behaviour of other merchants. Did the
Champagne fairs indeed lack public authorities and legal contract enforcement?
The answer is no. As we have seen, the ascendancy of the Champagne fairs as the
major fulcrum of international trade in thirteenth-century Europe was sustained by a
comprehensive system of public contract-enforcement. The counts of Champagne
provided a state legal system which secured property rights and commercial contracts
for visiting merchants at multiple levels. Its incentive to provide good services to
visiting merchants was enhanced by the competition offered by two other components
of the public legal system - the municipal courts of the fair-towns and the
ecclesiastical tribunals of local religious houses. In addition, the counts of Champagne
set up special public tribunals at the fairs in which contracts could be judged and
enforced by princely fair-wardens.
The fair-wardens, counter to their description by Milgrom, North and Weingast as
‘private judges’, were officials appointed by the counts of Champagne (after 1285 by
the kings of France), and their jurisdiction derived from that princely jurisdiction.118
The fair-wardens’ courts were also part of the princely legal system by virtue of
litigants’ right to appeal against their judgments to higher state courts - the Jours de
Troyes and, after 1285, the Parlement de Paris.119 In 1287, for instance, several
burghers of Châlons-sur-Marne appealed to the Parlement de Paris against a seizure of
cloths mandated by the Champagne fair-wardens.120 In 1296, the city of Milan
appealed to the Parlement de Paris against a fair-ban imposed by the wardens.121 In
1306, a Genoese merchant appealed to the Parlement de Paris against a decision of the
fair-wardens dismissing his demand for payment from another Italian merchant.122 In
1310, a merchant sentenced by the Champagne fair-wardens to pay a fair-debt
appealed first to the Jours de Troyes and when that failed to the Parlement de Paris.123
The fair-wardens’ courts were thus fully integrated into the princely legal system.
118 Bloch (1964), 86; Alengry (1915), 108; Bart (2000), 18.
119 Bassermann (1911), 3; Alengry (1915), 116-17.
120 Boutaric (1867), I:252 (#2596).
121 Laurent (1935), 297 with n. 1.
122 Boutaric (1867), II:31 (#3297).
123 Boutaric (1867), II:80 (#3843).
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