“A ship loaded with honey:” assessing the honey trade in the Crown of Aragon, fifteenth to sixteenth centuries

ABSTRACT

Honey, a staple product in premodern societies, has been too often overlooked by historical research. The present article focuses on a moment when the honey trade was in decline in the Crown of Aragon (c. 1440-1570). After the heyday of exports to the Levant of the late fourteenth century, supply was now mostly reserved to domestic consumption. Through the analysis of different fiscal sources from Valencia and Barcelona, this study addresses the principal supplying regions in the Crown of Aragon, the actors involved, and the means of transport in the honey market.

KEYWORDS:

• Maritime trade
• land trade
• honey
• apiculture
• taxation
• pottery

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The research for this paper was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and is part of the project “Bees in the Medieval World: Economic, Environmental and Cultural Perspectives” (RPG-2018-080). I wish to thank Alexandra Sapoznik (King’s College London) and Mikel Soberón (Universitat de Girona), as well as the two anonymous reviewers and the editor of the journal, for their helpful suggestions and comments on the first drafts of this article.

2 ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1555 “23” (25 November 1555).

3 Salicrú, El tràfic de mercaderies; Orti Gost, Renda i fiscalitat.

4 Orti Gost, Renda i fiscalitat, 431–33.

5 As assessed in Sales i Favà, Sapoznik and Whelan, “Trade, Taste and Ecology.”

6 Igual Luis, Valencia e Italia, 128–29, 141–43.

7 The great majority of dealers coming from the Kingdom of Valencia were granted an exemption. See Igual Luis, “Política y economía.”

8 On the different types of ledgers recorded for this compound of taxes, see Igual Luis, Valencia e Italia, 141–42.

9 Alonso de Herrera, Obra de agricultura, 281; Riera i Melis, “El azúcar en la farmacopea.”

10 Sales i Favà and Sapoznik, “The Production and Trade of Wax;” Sales i Favà, Sapoznik and Whelan, “Beekeeping in Late Medieval Europe.”

11 Contrasting with the cases of Andalusia or Toledo, in which permanent institutions regulated this activity. See Carmona Ruiz, “La apicultura sevillana;” Fernando Gómez and Sánchez González, La apicultura. No lligallos or beekeeper guilds are known yet to have existed in the Crown of Aragon in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries.

12 Guinot, “El problema de la renta feudal,” 81; Aparici, “De la apicultura a la obtención de la cera;” Garcia-Oliver, La vall de les sis mesquites, 62–63, 192–94; Navarro Espinach and Villanueva Morte, Los mudéjares de Teruel y Albarracín, 207–08; Hinojosa Montalvo, “Ondara, señorío del Duque de Gandía, 42; Silvestre Pérez, “El procés repoblador postmorisc,” 71–72.

13 In contrast with other known cases, such as fifteenth-century Lisbon, where a body of veedores were assigned to strictly control the quality of honey. See Sales i Favà, Sapoznik and Whelan, “Trade, Taste and Ecology.”

14 ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1526 “8,” s.f. (5 February 1526).

15 In 1510, a man sold 36 cànters of mel grossera and paid the correspondent tax, telling the scribe that he was also in possession of ten quintars of mel neta. ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1510–1511, s.f. (11 December 1510).

16 Prosperi, Il miele nell’Occidente, 16, 141. In addition, between 1487 and 1491, honey specifically coming from arbutus pollination (“arboç”) was identified as such in the Lleuda.

17 Coulon, Barcelone et le grand commerce, 374–75.

18 Coulon, “Quelques observations sur le négoce,” 31. See also ASP, Busta 1171 – INS.1, Valute of Barcelona, doc. 9301256 (4 November 1400); Capmany y Montpalau, Memorias históricas 3:161.

19 Cuadrada and López Pérez, “A la Mediterrània Medieval;” Ferrer i Mallol, “La Corona catalano-aragonese;” Orlandi, “Les précurseurs des voyageurs; Duran i Duelt, Manual del viatge, 90; and especially Coulon, Barcelone et le grand commerce, 334–37, which includes a wide set of examples for the trade of honey to the Eastern Mediterranean. After Mequinensa, other praised honeys came from Tortosa, the Maestrat and the Penedès. Before 1430 the international market is said to be controlled by Italians merchants, as a secondary product accompanying the wool of the Maestrat largely extracted by Genoese companies. During the second half of the fifteenth century, some of the Manifests de la Mar of Valencia that registered the exportation rights, and also the local customs of Tortosa, give evidence of remittances of small amounts of honey to Genoa and Venice, respectively. For the latter case, see ARV, MR 10.260, f. 9r-20r (19 October 1462) and ARV, MR 10.260, f. 9r-20r (26 April 1464); for the former, see Vilella Vila, “El movimiento comercial,” 1:144, 163, 164, 219, 309, 320.

20 Manual de novells ardits 3:75; Iglésies, Pere Gil, 292.

21 Salvador, “El comercio;” Sales i Favà, La ciutat de Barcelona.

22 Allsop and Miller, “Honey,” 516; Villemon, “A partir des sources,” 251. But it is significantly lower than the 1.1 liters consumed by the monks in Soissons in the ninth century, when sugar was not yet widely available. See Hocquet, “Le pain,” 680.

23 Ouerfelli, Le sucre, 222; 647; Crane, The World History, 493.

24 Total or partial exemptions had to be justified through the identification of the origin of the taxpayer. See Orti Gost, Renda i fiscalitat, 431–33.

25 As has also been proved for the domestic wax trade into Barcelona; see Sales i Favà and Sapoznik, “The Production and Trade of Wax.” The distribution, in liters of honey, of the producing regions that are informed in the source is the following: Anoia-Penedès (928 l.), Girona (853 l.), Tarragona (330 l.), Vallès (315 l.), Bages-Osona (99 l.), Roussillon (93 l.), Maresme-Selva (88 l.), Mallorca (73 l.), Catalan Ebro (26 l.), Minorca (20 l.).

26 ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1555 “23” (25 November 1555).

27 ACA, Reial Patrimoni, Mestre Racional, sèrie A, 67, 68 and 69. I thank Mikel Soberón, who generously supplied me with this data.

28 Soberón, “El Dret d’ancoratge.”

29 Carrère, Barcelona, 1380–1462, 1:331–32; Vilella Vila, “El movimiento comercial,” 1:308–10.

30 A special duty on the transit of merchandises –the passatge-, levied together with the Lleuda, is traced only in thirteen of the 1,715 entries of honey collected.

31 Salvador, “El comercio.”

32 The absence of honey from the southern Kingdom of Valencia is questionable. It could have been conducted to Valencia by terrestrial means. Some exportation of honey has been assessed from the seaport of Alicante by the late fifteenth century, and the chronicler Viciana reported in the sixteenth century intense apicultural activity in Montesa, between the cities of Valencia and Alicante. See, respectively, Hinojosa Montalvo, “El puerto de Alicante;” and Martí de Viciana, Crónica de la ínclita, 3:107 (f. 46).

33 Naso, “Apicoltura,” 209.

34 Rabassa i Vaquer, “Funcions econòmiques,” 2:1279–80. Similar activity has been documented in the Aragonese Matarranya in the 1440s, where locals transported the produce to Tortosa, whence it was shipped. See Laliena Corbera, Sesma Muñoz and Villanueva Morte, “Transformaciones en la baja edad media,” 192–94.

35 Cortes de los antiguos, 21:412.

36 Sales i Favà, Sapoznik and Whelan, “Beekeeping in Late Medieval Europe.”

37 For references to historical or traditional apiculture in these inland regions, see for the Matarranya and near-by Andorra de Aragón, Vázquez Lacasa, Datos históricos, 73–74; Lombarte Arrufat and Quintana i Font, “L’apicultura tradicional a Pena-roja;” for the Terra Alta, Pallarès, “L’apicultura tradicional;” for Els Ports and the lower plain of the Ebro, Curto Homedes, “La gestió dels Ports,” 45.

38 According to Vilella Vila, “El movimiento comercial,” 1:306, honey arrived at this town from Aragon, 30%; Lleida, 22%; Mequinensa, 17%; Escarp, 17%; Escatron, Flix and Serós, 14%. For these transits, see Sauco Álvarez and Lozano García, “El puerto de Tortosa.” For the function of the Ebro as a marketing route in the late middle ages, see Zulaica Palacios, “Mercados y vías fluviales.”

39 These destinations were the Levant (6.5%), Venice (3.5%) and Genoa (2.5%), see Vilella Vila, “El movimiento comercial,” 1:308–10.

40 Aparici, “Hombres de mar;” Rabassa i Vaquer, “Funcions econòmiques;” Igual Luis, “Non ha porto alcuno.”

41 Igual Luis, “Una aproximació al comerç,” 114, and “Operadores económicos,” 214. Bee harvesting has been assessed as an important activity inside the municipal territory of Castelló by Saura Gargallo, “L’estructura de la propietat agraria.”

42 ARV, Batllia, 12.195, f.84v (22 March 1488). Other examples can be found in ARV, Batllia, 12.195, f.89v (23 March 1488) and ARV, Batllia, 12.195, f.154v (16 May 1488).

43 For the honey trade from these same harbors in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, see Blanquer Rosselló, “El comercio,” 347–53.

44 The arrival of a caravel from Portugal is in ARV, Generalitat, 4.934, f. 57r (18 February 1494) and of a navili from Galicia in ARV, Generalitat, 4.934, f. 358r (3 December 1494). Both carried honey.

45 Like one Francesc Bassa of Gelida, in the Penedès, who in 1465 brought two jars (cànters) of honey to sell [ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1464–1465, s.f (26 May 1465)], or the vicar of nearby Collbató, who two years before had taken just one [ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1463, s.f (8 September 1463)].

46 ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1487–1488, s.f (18 December 1487) and Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1492–1493, s.f (13 October 1492).

47 Taking into account only the years for which I have collected the full twelve months. In 1487 and 1488, of a total of 189 individuals selling honey, 1 actor (n.) appears 14 times (t.) (0.5%); n. 3, 4 t. (1.6%); n. 3, 3 t. (1.6%); n. 19, 2 t. (10%); n. 159, 1 t. (79%). 1491–1492: 231 individuals; n. 1, 9 t. (0.4%); n. 1, 7 t. (0.4%); n. 1, 6 t. (0.4%); n. 1, 5 t. (0.4%); n. 1, 4 t. (0.4%); n. 9, 3 t. (3.9%); n. 18, 2 t. (7.8%); n. 199, 1 t. (86.1%).1526: 120 individuals; n. 1, 6 t. (0.8%); n. 1, 5 t. (0.8%); n. 1, 4 t. (0.8%); n. 6, 3 t. (5%); n. 10, 2 t. (8.3%); n. 101, 1 t. (84.2%). 1572: 39 individuals; n. 1, 2 t. (2.6%); n. 38, 1 t. (97.4%).

48 Taking into account only the years for which I have collected the full twelve months. In 1487 and 1488, of a total of 189 individuals selling honey, 4 actors (n.) raised between 6% and 9% of the total share (2.1%); 1 n., 3% - 6% (0.5%); 184 n., <3% (97.4%). 1491–1492: 231 individuals; 1 n., 9% - 12% (0.4%); 1 n., 6% - 9% (0.4%); 4 n., 3% - 5% (1.7%); 225 n., <3% (97.4%). 1526: 120 individuals; 1 n., 12% - 15% (0.8%); 1 n., 9% - 12% (0.8%); 5 n., 3% - 6% (4.2%); 113 n., <3% (94.2%). 1572: 39 individuals; 2 n., 12% - 15% (5.1%); 2 n., 6% - 9% (5.1%); 7 n., 3% - 5% (18%); 30 n., <3% (77%).

49 ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1487–1488; Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1488.

50 Sales i Favà, Sapoznik and Whelan, “Beekeeping in Late Medieval Europe.”

51 ACB, Llibre del candeler de la Sagristia, 1503–1505, f. 22r.

52 ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1486–1487, s.f. (20 March 1487).

53 Wax is mentioned in sixty-four entries; olive oil in twenty-two; dried fish in eighteen; tallow, meat or hides in thirteen; wool in twelve; cloth and linen in twelve; spices in eight; and a variety of still other commodities in thirty-two.

54 A similar case is met in 1510, when out of thirty-three different merchants, one actor registers three trips; three appear twice and the rest only once. But of all these, four actors or companies concentrated 60% of the liters transported to Valencia: Antoni Ferrer and Pere Vidal, 18,3%; Gaspar Manuel, 17,5%; Joan Pellicer, 12,6%; and Joan Valdeperes, 11,8%.

55 Both olive oil and legumes (described as such but also fava beans and lentils) are mentioned in four occasions each. In the only honey transit from Tortosa that year, the merchant supplied also figs, raisins, flax and salted pork.

56 ARV, MR, 10.915, f.54v (17 February 1503); ARV, MR, 10.920, f.20v (16 January 1510); ARV, MR, 10.920, f.485r (6 December 1510).

57 ACA, Reial Patrimoni, MR, A-401, f. 242–247v (1515). About the Alfòndec, See Baula Pallarès, La Ciutat de Tortosa, 104.

58 ARV, MR 10.939, f.39r (9 February 1538) and ARV, MR 10.939, f.40r (9 February 1538).

59 In 1532, the Italian Domenico Servero brought seven gerres of honey holding 209.9 liters, from Tortosa to Valencia: ARV, MR 10.934, f.380r (2 May 1532).

60 They generally were simple preveres, such as one Miquel Simó who was involved in large shipments of honey from Peníscola to Valencia in 1520 (1,220 liters in January of that year): ARV, MR 10.923, f.8v (10 January 1520) and ARV, MR 10.923, f.38v (28 January 1520). But other prominent ecclesiastical actors are also traced in the honey trade. The comendador of the order of Montesa in Peníscola was responsible in 1459 for sending 360 liters of honey to Valencia. See ARV, Varia, Llibre 198, s.f. (27 February 1459).

61 As was also suggested for the extractive activity (beekeeping) in the case of Xàtiva by Ferrer Mallol, “La moreria de Xàtiva,” 199.

62 Honey had traditionally not been subject to regulations regarding who was allowed to retail it. The first known Valencian regulation on honey reselling is from 1577, when, to prevent hoarding, it was established that resellers were only allowed to buy three wineskins of honey—which was nonetheless a considerable amount—at a time. This was valid for everyone except for “apothecaris, sucrers i speciers,” who could deal with as much quantity as they needed. See Bosch, Reals Crides, 1049–50. Some years later, in 1592, a suit arose in Valencia between the chandlers (cerers) and the grocers (especiers) on one side, and the sugar dealers (sucrers) on the other. The guild of the chandlers and grocers alleged that they had been rendering wax and confitures of honey for a long time and that they were subject to a system of quality evaluation, which did not apply to sugar dealers. See Beneyto Pérez, “Regulación del Trabajo,” 233. By contrast, the production, quality and trade of wax had been strictly controlled by grocers and chandlers since the early fourteenth century in Barcelona (see Vela Aulesa, “El control de la candeleria”) and Valencia (see Furió and Garcia-Oliver, Llibre d'establiments, 376–77, doc. 419; Beneyto Pérez, Regulación del Trabajo, 207; and especially AHCB, Manuscrits, 01/1G-071, f. 22r-23v, 1306.

63 By number of appearances: Notaries and scribes (six), Apothecaries (three), Clerics and ecclesiastical officers (obrer) (three), Bakers (two), Doublet-makers (two); of the following, one each: Carpenter, Glovemake, Grocer (especier), Blanket-maker (flassader), Shoemaker, Silk weaver, Furrier, Ship-builder, Butcher, Officer, Rents broker (corredor de censals), Dry cleaner, Silversmith, Carder, Servant, Tanner.

64 This is the case of a woman surnamed na Sureda said to be living “in the house of en Verdera.” In 1488 she bought the only jar of honey (≈ 26 liters) that Huguet de Cabot had brought from Sardinia on a royal ship. ARV, Batllia, 12.195, f.61v (25 February 1488).

65 In addition, it must be noted that the retail market, which was mostly in the hands of locals (grocers, apothecaries, resellers), is completely absent from this source since locals were granted a total exemption from the Lleuda.

66 AMP, 2203 (Segon llibre de cauteles de Barthomeu Collell, prevere i procurador).

67 Data provided in the literature is highly variable; I opt here for the lowest outputs. In nineteenth-century Múrcia, each hive is said to provide 2.76 kg of honey (1.94 liters) on average, but in that same period in Ceret (Roussillon), a hive would have yielded double the amount; see Lemeunier, La apicultura, 35. Similarly, in Alcalà la Real (Jaén), by 1524, each hive was providing 11 libras (3.6 liters); see Jaime Gómez and Jaime Lorén, Historia de la Apicultura, 2:54. The hives in the massif of Corbières near Narbonne could give as much as 3.5 liters by the late fourteenth century; see Larguier, Le drap et le grain, 124. Gil, Perfecta y curiosa, f.148v-149r, made note of some yields that would have been only possible in exceptionally good harvests: 200 hives yielded 1,800 libras of wax and 400 robas of honey (that is, 17.7 liters of honey per hive).

68 Vessels described as esquifs, barquetes and góndoles – all of which would have held between 100 and 150 quintars of tonnage – are also here considered.

69 A smaller variation of it, the olleta, gives 2.9 l. of honey on average. For different types of late medieval olles unearthed in Barcelona, see Beltrán de Heredia, “La cerámica de les voltes,” 62; Soberón, “‘Que en ell starà segur’,” 69. Olles carrying honey are still documented in the early twentieth century in the lower Catalan Ebro; see Subirats Rosiñol, “El treball de la pauma,” 57.

70 López Vilar, “Notes sobre l'església de Nalec, 189.

71 This is not far from the suggestions of Coulon, Barcelone et le grand commerce, 374–75, and Bertrán de Heredia, “Les gerres de transport,” 94, for whom the cànter of honey was equivalent to a half quintar, which in turn would equal half a gerra. With the available data, cànters do not contain exactly the capacity of a half a gerra, but slightly less. The traditional Valencian cànter contained 10.77 liters. According to my data, a smaller variation of the cànter, the canteret, could contain, on average, 2.8 liters of honey.

72 The equivalent of the Greco-Roman amphora. See Bertrán de Heredia, “Les gerres de transport,” 85.

73 Which is very close to considering that 1 gerra = 1 quintar.

74 ARV, MR 10.923, f.111r (12 March 1520).

75 ARV, MR 10.920, f.267r (7 June 1510), and ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1526 “5,” s.f. (12 January 1526). By the early fourteenth century, in Valencia it had been established that these gerretes could not contain less than 7.5 liters of honey ( =  1 rova). See Furió and Garcia-Oliver, Llibre d'establiments, 99–100 (doc. 83).

76 Beltrán de Heredia, “Les gerres de transport,” 85, 92.

77 Vila i Carabasa, “Política municipal,” 108; AHCB, Manuscrits, 01/1G-072 (Llibre del Mostassaf de Barcelona), f. 218r.

78 See “orsa” in Alcover and Borja Moll, Diccionari català-valencià-balear.

79 See “tabaira” in Alcover and Borja Moll, Diccionari català-valencià-balear.

80 Beltrán de Heredia, “Terminologia i ús,” 50.

81 Vila i Carabasa, “Política municipal.”

82 ACB, Llibre d'Administració de la Lleuda de Mediona, 1488, s.f (26 February 1489).

83 It has been assumed that in southern Iberia during late Antiquity odres were used to transport honey on mule-back; see Chic García, “La miel y las bestias,” 159. In the accounts of the Generalidades of Aragon, on the border with Catalonia, honey appears generally transported in these wineskins in the fifteenth century; see Sesma Muñoz, El tráfico mercantil, 120.

84 In the Écija ordinances of the wineskin makers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was stated that those used for carrying honey or oil ought to be particularly well sheared. See Martín Ojeda, Ordenanzas del Concejo, 223–24; 372–73.

85 ARV, Generalitat 4.934, f.358r (3 March 1494).

86 ARV, MR, 10.933, f.432r (25 November 1532).

87 Similar to the equivalence of 30.35 liters per barriló provided by Riu Riu, “Pesos, mides i mesures.”

88 Aparisi, “L’apicultura.”

89 On a similar case of agricultural reorientation for growing cities, see Limberger, “Feeding.”

90 Narbona Vizcaíno and Cruselles, “Espacios económicos.

91 In theory, an exercise of this sort could be possible since certain ordinances settled the necessary distances between apiaries for the optimal performance of bees. See Carmona Ruiz, “La apicultura sevillana,” 138–39.

92 Sales i Favà and Vela Aulesa, “Llogar els ciris.”

93 Data has been collected only for the months indicated inside brackets.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Leverhulme Trust: [Grant Number RPG-2018-080].

Notes on contributors

Lluís Sales i Favà

Lluís Sales i Favà received his PhD in Medieval History from the Universitat de Girona, where he specialized in the study of private credit and nonpayment in rural contexts during the medieval period. He works with unpublished documents issued by local jurisdictional civil courts in order to describe the mechanisms through which default was pursued (and thus upheld the credit market). In various publications, he has underscored the capacity of serf peasantry in Catalonia to get involved in court actions in defense of their own economic interests. He has also focused on other aspects of the peasants’ standards of living, especially commercial livestock breeding and the trade of commodities in small towns of northeastern Catalonia. His work for the project “Bees in the Medieval World” based at King's College London (funded by the Leverhulme Trust), explored the production, trade and consumption of wax and honey in late medieval societies. Recent publications include his monograph La jurisdicció a Sabadell a la baixa edat mitjana. Edició i estudi d’un llibre de la cort del batlle (1401-1404), Girona: Biblioteca d’Història Rural, 2019. Among his forthcoming articles are “Mercado ganadero y estratificación social en el medio rural catalán (s.XIV),” Historia Agraria, and “Leasing, Fattening and Guarding Livestock in Times of Crises: Northeastern Catalonia, c. 1330-1370,” Agricultural History Review.