Early Fairs and Markets

It is no longer possible nowadays to take the view that the Germanic invasions put an end to the commercial life which still characterized the last centuries of the Roman Empire. The new states which arose on all sides upon the ruins of Romania were still the scene of relatively intensive trading operations. Foreigners as well as natives took part in this economic activity. Among the former the Syrians especially attract attention. They were already to be found everywhere during the Imperial period: from Egypt to the Danube, from Spain to England. M. P. Charlesworth, among others, has fully demonstrated this point. In the fifth century Salvianus speaks of the negociatorum et Syricorum omnium turbas quae majorem ferme civitatum universarum partem occupant. These ‘Syrians’ are, however, at least in part, Greeks, and in their ranks should no doubt be included those Greek merchants of Orléans mentioned by Gregory of Tours who received a visiting Merovingian sovereign to their town with songs.

In the Midi towns especially the population was a cosmopolitan one. At Narbonne, in 589, it comprised Goths, Romans, Jews, Greeks and Syrians; certainly these three last groups lived primarily by trade. The Jews, who were numerous throughout Gaul and in Spain, were frequently forbidden to possess and to traffic in Christian slaves, a fact which is proof that they did play an important role in this trade.

Port organization continued to follow the Roman pattern, witness the catabolus or cataplus of Marseilles found in Gregory of Tours and in a document of Clovis III dated 692. Further evidence is to be found in the thelonearii who welcomed to Visigothic Spain the transmarini negociatores