The most prominent merchant of the House of Bardi banking family of Florence, Italy, which flourished in the first half of the fourteenth century.
Francesco Balducci Pegolotti’s association with the Bardi House lasted from about 1315 to 1340. During that time, he served in various branch offices of the Bardi House, among them Antwerp, Cyprus, and London. Near the end of his career, he negotiated trading rights between the Florentines and the king of Little Armenia.
Pegolotti is best known for his book Practica della Mercatura (The Practice of Trade), a guide for conducting business in medieval Europe. The book contained detailed descriptions of business practices such as taxes, ports, trade routes, weights and measures, and pricing tables. Exchange rates in two currencies were included, demonstrating how complex the process of international trade had become by the Middle Ages. A specialist in the wool trade, Pegolotti devoted much of his attention in the book to that commodity and how to judge its quality and value and the character of the supplier.
The thoroughness of this work gives the reader a sense of the merchant’s life in Pegolotti’s time as well as the practical bent of its author. In advising those who would venture along the Silk Road, Pegolotti stipulates where to find the best-quality goods and offers such practical advice as imploring the reader not to tempt fate by hiring bargain-rate translators for the Eastern portion of the trip. One copy of the manuscript survives and can be found in the Riccardian Library in Florence.
Ann Saccomano
See also: Bardi House of Banking.
Evans, Allen, ed. Francesco Balducci Pegolotti: La Practica della Mercatura. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1936.