La stigmatisation des migrants à l’épreuve des faits : le règlement devant la Mercanzia florentine de la faillite Aiutamicristo da Pisa (1390)

In the 1380's, the status of foreigners (forestieri) seems to have caused problems between Flo- rence and Pisa, which leads us to investigate the meaning of foreign origin for commercial actors. The conditions of the 1369 bilateral commercial treaty (merchants non dutiable ; fondaco protected by a Pisan magistrate, etc.) allowed a powerful community of Florentine merchants to settle in Pisa. That treaty's purpose was to let the port traffic increase, for the whole of the city's population to take benefit from it, but a series of incidents occurring in the 1380's reveals the Pisans' opposition against these advantages. For lack of archives preserved in Pisa, the study of the trials of the Florentine Mercanzia — a federation of the Arts involved in foreign trade —gives us useful information. In that context, the bankruptcy proceedings of the Pisan company Aiutamicristo, which was settled in Florence, make it possible to determine whether the status of forestieri — a legal concept that came up very often in the argumentation of the actors of the trial — prevails over the commercial rules for the settlement of commercial conflicts. It seems that the Pisans were well enough informed to use all available legal resources and means, whereas the Florentines denied the depth and quality of their integration in the city of Florence. The debates concentrated on the legal statuses, but in the end, the sentence of the court seems to have given greater weight to the commercial rules, and the Pisans won their case.