Municipal courts in the Champagne fair-towns provided a second set of tribunals for
merchants at the fairs. These town courts were integrated into the public legal system
in multiple ways, since they were based on devolved jurisdictional rights granted by
the prince, their judges often also held princely office, and litigants were entitled to
appeal to princely courts. Town courts evidently offered an attractive alternative to the
prince court system since, as we have seen, foreign merchants visiting the fairs
voluntarily used them, arousing jurisdictional rivalry between the communes and
princely prévots.
Municipal jurisdictions outside Champagne also contributed to enforcing fair-
contracts, since foreign merchants brought disputes to the courts of their own and their
debtors’ home cities. In 1230, for instance, a conflict over a debt incurred by Cambrai
merchants with Bologna merchants at the Provins fair in 1213 was resolved before the
local court of the archbishop of Cambrai, advised by municipal councillors attesting to
the authenticity of the seal on the contract.124 In 1279, a conflict over an unpaid fair-
debt between Florentine and Piacenzan merchants was referred to ‘the Potestà,
Captain, and council of the commune of Florence’.125 In 1292 a group of Florentine
merchants enforced payment of a fair-debt from a Venetian merchant in 1291 by
mobilizing their own municipal jurisdiction to put pressure on the Venetian city-
court.126 In 1294, the French king guaranteed Flemish merchants of the ‘Seventeen
Towns’ frequenting the fairs the right to appeal to their own municipal jurisdictions.127
In 1312, a Bolognese merchant pursued a fair-debt from a Florentine creditor through
his own municipal jurisdiction and then the town court of Florence.128 Revealed
preference suggests that Italian and Flemish merchants regarded municipal
jurisdictions, both in the fair-towns and in each other’s home towns, as an effective
way of enforcing international trading contracts.
The church offered a further source of public contract enforcement to merchants at the
Champagne fairs. The fair-tribunals operated by local religious houses were integrated
into the public legal system, through their basis in jurisdictional rights granted in
124 Carolus-Barré (1965), 26-7.
125 Berti (1857), 247-50.
126 Bassermann (1911), 58.
127 Bourquelot (1865), I:137.
128 Bassermann (1911), 57-8.
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