This article is about the medieval community of merchants and financiers. Not to be confused with the inhabitants of
Cahors, who in modern usage are referred to as Cadurciens.
The Cahorsins were merchants and financiers from the French city of
Cahors and the surrounding region of
Quercy during the
High Middle Ages. During their 13th-century heyday, they were among the most prominent communities of Christian long-distance traders outside of
Italy, and were particularly prominent in commerce between
England and its continental lands of the
Duchy of Aquitaine. They declined rapidly from around 1300 CE, but their name long remained synonymous with
usury in much of Western Europe.[2][3]
In the modern period, possibly because of the negative connotations associated with the Cahorsins' lending practices, people from Cahors have been instead referred to as Cadurciens.
Overview
Cahors lies on the land road between
Montpellier on the
Mediterranean Sea and
La Rochelle on the
Atlantic Ocean, and the emergence of the Cahorsins as a significant trading community has been related to the emergence of these two new port cities in the 11th and early 12th centuries.[3]: 46 Despite major lapses in documentation, evidence for the long-distance merchant activity of Cahorsins goes back to the late 12th century, with their attested presence in
Marseille and
Saint-Gilles in 1178 and in
La Rochelle in 1194.[5] Via the
Lot and
Garonne rivers, Cahorsins exported their
local wine to England and imported wool from there, while they transported more valuable goods and spices imported from the
Levant to La Rochelle via land roads.[3]: 54 Their presence at the
Champagne fairs is documented from 1216,[3]: 59 and in
Flanders from 1230.[3]: 60 In 1240,
Henry III exiled from England some Cahorsins, mainly of
Sens, for usury with extortion.[8][7]: 239
By the middle of the 13th century, Cahors played a larger role in long-distance trade than most other cities of southwestern France, including
Toulouse.[2]: 237 In the third quarter of the 13th century, the Cahorsins were major financial system participants in
London and
England, on a par with Italian merchants from
Florence,
Lucca and
Siena,[3]: 57 and some of them took over the former properties of
English Jews following the
Edict of Expulsion in 1290.[9]
The causes of the Cahorsins' decline in the late 13th and early 14th centuries have not been identified with certainty. They may have been related with the 1294–1303
Gascon War which put an end to their prior balancing act as subjects of the King of France in and around Cahors, but active in English lands in Aquitaine and Great Britain. That period also saw the decline of the Champagne fairs and increased competition from Italian merchants.[3]: 64
The legacy of Cahorsin opulence has been related to the rise of Jacques Duèse from Cahors up to his election in 1316 as
Pope John XXII. Duèse's father had probably been a merchant and moneychanger.[10]: 162
Reputation and historiography
The Cahorsins' name was often used to refer to Christian (i.e. non-
Jewish)
usurers, together with that of
Lombards, both during the 13th century and in the later period following their decline. Their usury activity was prohibited by rulers such as
Henry III, Duke of Brabant in 1261[11] and successive kings of France,
Louis IX in 1269 and
Philip III in 1274.[3]: 63
Dante Alighieri referred to Cahors and Cahorsins twice in the Divine Comedy, in part out of his aversion for contemporary
Pope John XXII. In Canto XI of Inferno, he paired Cahors with
Sodom (Soddoma e Caorsa) as sinful places, respectively associated with
sodomy and usury;[7]: 239 and in Canto XXVII of Paradiso, he portrayed
Saint Peter referring to Cahorsins and Gascons (Caorsini e Guaschi) in an allusion to the rapacity of John XXII and of his predecessor
Clement V, who was from
Villandraut in
Gascony.[12]: 250 Giovanni Boccaccio later echoed Dante's disparaging references to Cahorsins in commentary of his own.[2]: 230
References to usurers as Cahorsins were widespread in late medieval Germany,[13] where their name was spelled Kawertschen.[14] As late as the mid-17th century, they were still lambasted as "worse than Jews" by a legal scholar in
Bordeaux, echoing similarly stereotypical language formulated in the mid-1230s by
Matthew Paris.[15][16]: 52
A stream of early French historiography, initiated in the 17th century by
Du Cange and partly perpetuated in the 19th century by
Maurice Prou among others, has portrayed the medieval Cahorsins as Italian merchants from
Tuscany and/or
Piedmont.[17] This was, however, disproved in studies by
Edmond Albe [
fr] and
Philippe Wolff in the second quarter of the 20th century.[2]: 230 Yves Renouard contributed further research on the Cahorsins in the early 1960s.[3]
Raymond and Elie de Salvagnac, from Cahors and established in Montpellier, lent money to
Simon de Montfort for the
Albigensian Crusade around 1210 and, in lieu of reimbursement, were granted the lordships of
Pézenas and
Tourves as well as the spoils from the storming of
Lavaur in 1211, as related by chronicler
William of Tudela;[3]: 49-50 by the late 13th century, Raymond's sons were established as prominent clerics in Paris.[3]: 61
The Conques family, initially based in Figeac, became prominent in the Mediterranean ports and the Levant in the early 13th century; Raymond de Conques was consul of Montpellier in
Acre in 1236, Bernard de Conques was a wealthy citizen of Marseille, and Hugues de Conques was a prominent follower of
Charles I of Anjou who ennobled him and granted him lands in Southern Italy.[3]: 52
Savary de Cahors became mayor of La Rochelle in 1251.[3]: 53
The brothers Pierre and Guilhem Béraud held the largest wool export license granted by the Kings of England in the early 1270s, and acted as
tax farmers and lenders to the English monarchy. Their relative Arnaud Béraud endowed the
Dominican convent in Cahors, across the
Lot river from the old city.[3]: 58
Jacques de Jean, from Cahors and established in Bordeaux, was a significant lender to
Edward I of England in the late 13th century.[3]: 55 In 1316,
Gauscelin de Jean became
cardinal under pope John XXII.[10]: 162
Guilhem Servat worked for
Edward I of England and became burgher of London in 1286, alderman of
Walbrook in 1309,
member of Parliament in 1313, and one of London's richest and most powerful individuals until his death in 1320; in 1290, he traveled to
Norway to negotiate the financial arrangements for the marriage of
Margaret, Maid of Norway with Prince
Edward of Caernarfon, the future Edward II.[3]: 58-59
Bernard de Favas, from
Gourdon, established himself in
Marseille in 1302 and developed a trading network that extended into the
Levant.[5]
Guy de Cahors led the minting of gold coinage for
Philip V of France around 1320.[3]: 61
^Dominique Ancelet-Netter (2010),
"Chapitre IV. Le vocabulaire de la dette", La dette, la dîme et le denier : Une analyse sémantique du vocabulaire économique et financier au Moyen Âge, Histoire et civilisations, Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, pp. 227–267,
ISBN9782757421499
^
abcGérard Sivery (1984), L'Économie du Royaume de France au siècle de Saint Louis, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, pp. 262–263
^Jean Lartigaut (1993), Histoire du Quercy, Toulouse: Privat, p. 115
^Alfred Haverkamp (2015),
Jews in the Medieval German Kingdom(PDF), translated by Christoph Cluse, Universität Trier, Arye Maimon-Institut für Geschichte der Juden, p. 52
^Maurice Prou (1885),
"Cahorsins", La grande encyclopédie: inventaire raisonné des sciences, des lettres et des arts, vol. 8, H. Lamirault & Cie, p. 770