| The inhabitants of the small town of Santa Coloma de Queralt, like hundreds of communities in medieval Catalonia, created written records of their lives through the notarial documentation of wills, marriage contracts, property sales, and other commercial transactions. Utilizing this rich fount of information, I have examined three notarial protocols for the years 1293--4, 1304--5, and 1312--3, which name over 4700 people. The commercial needs of these rural inhabitants directly affected the establishment of community in Santa Coloma at the end of the thirteenth century as the town filled a gap in the commercial economy of the region. The larger market towns were inconvenient, because of distance and terrain, for many villagers across the Baixa Segarra and Alt Gaia region. It is my purpose to better understand rural commerce by examining the trade, debt financing and exchange of goods in a rural community.;The marketplace of Santa Coloma de Queralt was a vital center of trade and exchange at the turn of the fourteenth century, one of many small settlements in Catalonia engaged in the trade necessary to sustain daily life. Labor-animals, grain, cloth and saffron formed the main items for sale. This dynamic local market required a critical mass of components. First, Santa Coloma needed the physical space to bring buyers and sellers together: plazas, shops and specialized space around the town, such as the carniceria inside the walls having multiple stalls for competing butchers, or the corrals outside the walls used by the horse and cattle merchants.;Santa Coloma also provided the mechanisms required for fair and equitable trade, particularly the scribania, run by the notary and staffed by a number of scribes present to record contracts. The town possessed a system of regulated weights and measures, and the officials to supervise the operation of the market. Finally, the intangibles of a market economy were present: the conceptual means of executing the exchange of goods. These included a stable selection of accounting and real currencies, designated in terms of money and grain, as well as the communal mentality which regulated the actions of merchants, consumers, creditors, and debtors. |
