Merchants and the Great Western Schism: Malaise or Business as Usual?

The Great Western Schism is the period of the late Middle Ages that witnessed a mainly dual and eventually tricephalic papacy that divided an Avignonese, a Roman, and later Pisan papal court and obedience. In short, between 1378 and 1417, two popes and their respective courts and obedience ruled Christianity. Originally the division was between a pope based in Avignon (France) and another one based in Rome (Italy). In 1409, after the Council of Pisa failed to reunite Christianity, a third pope was added to the list of contenders (he never found a secure basis of power). Much ink has been spilled on the political, legal, and theological causes and consequences of the division of the papacy, especially at the institutional level. The majority of historians have dwelled on issues of political legitimacy, obedience, papal authority and conciliarism. The present paper will enlarge the field of investigation by studying the ramification of the crisis on a specific segment of the population: the merchants present in Avignon. Recently, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinsky’s Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism: 1378-1417 (2006) has concluded that the writing and utterances of her authors demonstrate that the Schism produced a deep feeling of anxiety, a general malaise. This paper will attempt to assess if indeed for the merchant class of Avignon there was a malaise and the level of its gravity whether material or spiritual. Using the letters of the Avignonese correspondents of Francesco di Marco Datini and the expenses registers of pope Clement VII at the Vatican Archives, Introitus & Exitus 350-378 I will test whether indeed the words of Boninsegna di Matteo “It is good to live here, no injury is done to the people of our tongue” rang true to the reality of the merchant’s experience.