princely charters and their manning partly by princely officials. Ecclesiastical tribunals
also offered contract-enforcement to foreign merchants visiting the Champagne fairs
in a wider, European forum. In principle, the medieval church exercised a jurisdiction
which transcended territorial and linguistic frontiers, was recognized by temporal
authorities throughout Christendom, and disposed of enviable moral suasion and a far-
flung network of personnel. Ecclesiastical jurisdictions were thus in a position to
compete effectively with princely and municipal tribunals in enforcing international
trading contracts. Until the 1270s, according to Bautier, merchants visiting the
Champagne fairs were more likely to have commercial contracts sealed in church
tribunals than by the fair-wardens.129 This meant that any ensuing dispute over that
contract would be referred to a church court. Appeals against the decision of a church
court were referred to the Pope, who would delegate final judgment to an important
cleric in Champagne, such as the dean of Bar or the prior of Saint-Ayoul in Provins.
The requirement to settle a fair-debt was usually accompanied by a sentence of papal
interdict or excommunication in the event of further default.130 The princely legal
system itself recognized the importance of ecclesiastical jurisdictions in providing
contract enforcement to long-distance merchants, as shown by the demands sent
abroad by the Champagne fair-wardens pursuing defaulting debtors, which were
explicitly addressed ‘to all justices, as much of the church as secular ones, who see
these present letters’.131
The Champagne fairs thus clearly possessed public authorities with the willingness
and capacity to provide contract-enforcement to international merchants, not only by
witnessing and sealing commercial agreements but by adjudicating conflicts and
enforcing compliance. This is not to deny any role for informal, reputation-based
contract-enforcement mechanisms. Informal mechanisms are ubiquitous in all
economies, and it is unlikely that they were absent from the Champagne fairs. But
there were no private judges. Public courts with coercive powers were omnipresent at
the Champagne fairs and played an important role in contract enforcement among
merchants. The view that long-distance trade expanded in medieval Europe based
129 Bautier (1952), 318-20; Bassermann (1911), 4-5; Verlinden (1965), 128, 132.
130 Goldschmidt (1891), 233; Bourquelot (1865), I:182ff; Bautier (1953), 123 with n. 1.
131 Berti (1857), 256-7.
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