Complicating matters
Jun. 16th, 2010 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ossamentaA classic, but unfortunate (often recurring even) episode in any writer’s life is the need to add a reference or text, and you have only a vague idea where in your copious amounts of papers it may be. As it turned out, my first two guesses were totally wrong, so I went googling instead. This turned out to be lucky.
Setton’s book The papacy and the Levant was far more detailed than my original source, which only said that when alum* was found in Italy in 1461, trade in alum from the Near East ceased. Apparently, the reason the other alum trade ceased? Papal monopoly on the Italian alum trade. If you bought from the Turks, it was a non-pardonable sin. Previous alum sources had been in the Greek islands and in Turkey and beyond. But that was now under control by the Ottoman Empire, who could and did charge a lot for it. Genoese merchants had grown rich on the alum trade in previous centuries, but I’m not sure how much that affected the Pope’s decision (nepotism and ancient enemies and all that) and how much was fear of the slowly encroaching Ottoman Empire/Islam and how much was mere greed.
Asoursin says: it’s always more complicated. And often, complicated makes it so much more interesting!
*: alum is used for curing leather, and produces a white skin. The craftsmen were called tawyers in English, but vitgarvare (white-tanners) in Swedish**.
**: and in German, for that matter (Weissgerber).
Setton’s book The papacy and the Levant was far more detailed than my original source, which only said that when alum* was found in Italy in 1461, trade in alum from the Near East ceased. Apparently, the reason the other alum trade ceased? Papal monopoly on the Italian alum trade. If you bought from the Turks, it was a non-pardonable sin. Previous alum sources had been in the Greek islands and in Turkey and beyond. But that was now under control by the Ottoman Empire, who could and did charge a lot for it. Genoese merchants had grown rich on the alum trade in previous centuries, but I’m not sure how much that affected the Pope’s decision (nepotism and ancient enemies and all that) and how much was fear of the slowly encroaching Ottoman Empire/Islam and how much was mere greed.
As
oursin says: it’s always more complicated. And often, complicated makes it so much more interesting!*: alum is used for curing leather, and produces a white skin. The craftsmen were called tawyers in English, but vitgarvare (white-tanners) in Swedish**.
**: and in German, for that matter (Weissgerber).