Justice in the Florentine Trading Community of Late Medieval Buda

Florentine merchants in some parts of Europe had by the mid-14th century established corporations, known as nazioni, which aimed at providing a jurisdictional and organizational framework for their activity. The consuls of the nazioni often acted as judges or legal representatives of Florentine merchants, mediating between the merchants and the local society. Besides the consuls, merchants living abroad had the possibility to bring their business cases before the guild consuls as well as the Mercanzia, which operated as the supreme commercial court in Florence, or before local authorities, such as the ruler and the town court judges. The paper analyzes various jurisdictional aspects of Florentine merchants’ trade in Buda during the late 14th and early 15th centuries.