Champagne fairs

The Champagne fairs, sited on ancient land routes and largely self-regulated through the development of the Lex mercatoria ("merchant law"), became an important engine in the reviving economic history of medieval Europe, "veritable nerve centers"[2] serving as a premier market for textiles, leather, fur, and spices.

At their height, in the late 12th and the 13th century, the fairs linked the cloth-producing cities of the Low Countries with the Italian dyeing and exporting centers, with Genoa in the lead,[3][4][5] dominating the commercial and banking relations operating at the frontier region between the north and the Mediterranean.

Troyes and Provins had been administrative centers in Charlemagne's empire that developed into the central towns of the County of Champagne and the Brie Champenoise; the fair at Bar-sur-Aube was held just outside the precincts of the Count's castle there, and that at Lagny in the grounds of a Benedictine monastery.

[10] To cross the Alps, the caravans of pack mules made their way over the Mont Cenis Pass, a journey that took more than a month from Genoa to the fair cities, along one of the varied options of the Via Francigena.

P. Huvelin documented the existence, by the second half of the thirteenth century, of a faster courier service that facilitated the transfer of letters and market information between north and south for the particular advantage of the Arte di Calimala, the cloth-merchants' guild of Florence,[11] the cities of Siena and Genoa, as well as the mercantile houses.

[13] The fairs were also important in the spread and exchange of cultural influences—the first appearance of Gothic architecture in Italy was the result of merchants from Siena rebuilding their houses in the Northern style.

[18] Eventually even the king became involved; in 1209 Philip Augustus granted safe conduct within France to merchants traveling to and from the Champagne fairs, increasing their international importance.

[4][21] Fernand Braudel also saw the decline as due to the increasing sophistication of communications and distance credit, changing the medieval merchant from a person engaged in constant arduous travel to one who mostly controlled his affairs by correspondence.