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ASTI AND MONFERRAT (1100-1400)

THE "LOMBARDS" AND THE CASANE

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Dardanoni thought of those shell clusters drawn on the page. A counting system. “Where did the casane keep their merchandise and money?” he persisted.

“Most of them had towers for that. Or the lower level of their fortified houses.”



Asti - Palazzo Zoja

“The families weren’t positive figures,” Luigi continued. “They had begun changing money at the fairs throughout Europe but soon specialized in money-lending. With the letters of credit they issued, they made it possible for traders to move about without carrying with them unsafe amounts of silver and gold coins. Over time, these casane of Asti, who had come to be known all over Europe from the 1200s to the 1400s as the Lombards, evolved into usurers, in competition with the Jews but enjoying the advantage of full civil and political rights. Never mind how they’d come by their capital initially, what’s important was that these Lombards charged interest rates of over forty percent and their profits were sky-high."




BONIFACE I AND THE FOURTH CRUSADE

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“I am looking to make historical connections and physical evidence for my hypotheses. Such evidence may be lying behind glass in a provincial museum. Or in a castle like this one, as I said when we arrived, belonged to Boniface I, Marquis of Monferrato—which includes Asti—and Emperor of Constantinople.”

                Henry Decaine - Boniface of Monferrat


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