Medieval Sourcebook:
Partnership Agreements:
For Foreign Trade, 1248
Mediterranean trade in the thirteenth century as carried on at Marseilles apparently
required partnerships of relatively large size. In the instance given below the active
partner furnished one third of the capital but received half the profit.
April ninth in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1248.
I, Durand Leclerc of Montauban, acknowledge and confess to you, Bertrand Laporte, that
I have received in partnership and by reason of the partnership, 174 pounds in mixed money
now current in Marseilles, renouncing, etc., in which partnership I ought to put
eighty-seven pounds of mixed money of my own. In this partnership and with other orders
which I have I shall go, God willing, on the next voyage which I shall make to Acre or to
Sicily or wherever God wills, for the sake of business, for your profit and mine and for
half the gain which I ought to have, you having the other half. And I promise you by this
agreement to look after the affairs of the partnership and to do business for it as well
as I know how and as well as I am able; and I promise to return all the capital with half
the profit to you or your servants and to tell you the truth and to bear faith with you,
pledging all my goods, renouncing the benefits of all laws, etc. And I, the said Bertrand
acknowledge that John Decases of Montpellier and Bernard Loubier each have a third part in
my share of the partnership.
Witnesses, etc.
Source:
From: L. Blancard, ed., Documents Inédits sur le Commerce de Marseille au Moyen Age,
(Marseilles: Barlatier-Feissat, Pere et Fils, 1884), Vol. II, p. 35, reprinted in Roy C.
Cave & Herbert H. Coulson, A Source Book for Medieval Economic History, (Milwaukee:
The Bruce Publishing Co., 1936; reprint ed., New York: Biblo & Tannen, 1965), pp.
188-189.
Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton. The text has been modernized by
Prof. Arkenberg.
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