LAUSR

If notarial offices in medieval Italian towns had not offered their dual services of commercial law contracts and family law documents on the same premises and in the homes of their clients, perhaps the cross-fertilization of ideas that created the instruments of trade sustaining Europe’s emerging market economy would not have followed. Italian traders carried the contracts that undergirded long-distance trade across Europe and the Mediterranean Sea leaving a singular mark on economic development. Corresponding effects on families who were involved in trade were dramatic, if unintended.