Economic Credit in Renaissance Florence

It has been rarely remarked how seldom a competitive spirit comes into play in the relations among these [Renaissance Florentine] merchants. The vast correspondence of Datini and of the Medici themselves (the largest collections of business letters to survive before the sixteenth century) yields hardly a hint of competition.... However individualistic the Florentine world appears in contrast with the tight corporate structures elsewhere-the Venetian senate, the Hanseatic league, the south-German cartels, the London regulated companies-it was still permeated with something of the spirit of medieval corporatism. This is what the fiducia Florentine business historians make so much of really comes down to-that sense of trust in one another that in a way also kept everyone in line.(1)