Compagnia dei Bardi
Encyclopedia
The Compagnia dei Bardi was a Florentine
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 banking and trading company which was started by the Bardi family
Bardi family
The Bardi family was an influential Florentine family that started the powerful banking company, the Compagnia dei Bardi.Along with the Peruzzi family, the Bardis lent Edward III of England 400,000 Gold Florins, which he never repaid....

. The Bardi company was one of three major Florentine banking companies (called "super-companies" by some modern scholars) that assembled large amounts of capital and established wide-ranging, diversified business networks, doing business throughout the Mediterranean and in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The Bardi traded oil and wine, and had close economic ties to southern Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 and Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

. Their chief product, however, was high-quality woolen cloth. The Bardi were the largest of these super-companies, however, and seem to have been 50 percent larger than their closest rival, the Peruzzi company.

In 1344, at about the same time as the Peruzzi company, the Bardi company went bankrupt and the Florentine writer Giovanni Villani
Giovanni Villani
Giovanni Villani was an Italian banker, official, diplomat and chronicler from Florence who wrote the Nuova Cronica on the history of Florence. He was a leading statesman of Florence but later gained an unsavory reputation and served time in prison as a result of the bankruptcy of a trading and...

 blamed this on the repudiation of war loans by King Edward III of England
Edward III of England
Edward III was King of England from 1327 until his death and is noted for his military success. Restoring royal authority after the disastrous reign of his father, Edward II, Edward III went on to transform the Kingdom of England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe...

.

However, Villani was not an independent source, his brother was a member of the Peruzzi
Peruzzi
The Peruzzi were bankers of Florence, among the leading families of the city in the 14th century, before the rise to prominence of the Medici. Their modest antecedents stretched back to the mid 11th century, according to the family's genealogist Luigi Passerini, but a restructuring of the Peruzzii...

 company that also went bankrupt. Villanni said that Edward owed the Bardi 900,000 gold florins (£135,000) and the Peruzzi 600,000 (£90,000). However, the Peruzzi's records show that they never had that much capital to lend Edward III. Edward did not default on all his loans and repaid some with cash and others with royal grants of wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

, a principal export of the English economy at the time.

Further, at the same time Florence was going through a period of internal disputes and the third largest financial company, the Acciaiuoli
Acciaiuoli
The Acciaioli, Acciaiuoli, or Acciajuoli was an important family of Florence.Family name is also written Acciaioli, Acciainoli, or Accioly and Accioli in Portugal and Brazil, where there are branches of it. Descent can be traced in an unbroken line from one Gugliarello Acciaioli in the 12th...

, also went bankrupt, and they did not lend any money to Edward. What loans Edward III did default on are likely only to have contributed to the financial problems in Florence, not caused them.

The bankruptcy of the Bardi and Peruzzi companies marked an end of the medieval super-companies. In the future, smaller, more agile companies would be the dominant economic actors.

Further Reading

The operations of the Bardi company (along with the other "super-companies") are discussed in:
  • Hunt, Edwin S. The Medieval Super-companies: A Study of the Peruzzi Company of Florence. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
  • Hunt & Murray, A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550, Cambridge University Press, 1999 (especially chapter 5).
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