The commercial revolution, with its growing dependence on money, took off so fast that there simply were not enough coins for all the transactions taking place. Peppercorns, which have a long shelf life and a fairly uniform weight, served as a useful substitute. The document printed here was a contract drawn up in Genoa on January 14, 1156, to make a payment before Easter in either pepper or coin. A pound of peppercorns was equivalent to a monetary pound.

I, Rinaldo Gauxone, promise you, Lamberto Grillo, or your accredited messenger, £6½ in pepper or in coin [to be delivered any time] up to next Easter; otherwise [I will pay] the penalty of the double, under pledge of my orchard in Sozziglia [a region of Genoa]. And you may enter into [possession] of it for the principal and the penalty on your own authority and without order by the consuls [the chief judges of Genoa]. Done in the chapter house, 1156, on the fourteenth day from the beginning of January, third indiction [an old Roman dating term]. Witnesses: Sismondo Muscula, B. Papa Canticula Macobrio, notary, Baldo Rubeo, watchman.

Source: Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World: Illustrative Documents, trans. Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond (1955; repr. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 145.

Question to Consider

What does this document reveal about the development of commerce and the nature of commercial transactions in this era?