90 Bannockburn, Battle of
formed by consortia of merchants who financed large-
scale enterprises for political entities such as states,
princes, and the popes.
See alsoECONOMIC THOUGHT AND JUSTICE;FLORENCE;
SIENA.
Further reading:Center for Medieval and Renais-
sance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, The
Dawn of Modern Banking(New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1979); Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Indus-
trial Revolution: European Society and Economy,
1000–1700,3d ed. (New York: Norton, 1993); Frederic C.
Lane and Reinhold Mueller, Money and Banking in
Medieval and Renaissance Venice: Coins and Moneys of
Account (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1985); Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond, eds.,
Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World: Illustrative
Documents with Introductions and Notes (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1955); Robert S. Lopez, The
Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971); Léon Poli-
akov, Jewish Bankers and the Holy See from the Thirteenth
to the Seventeenth Century,trans. Miriam Kochan (Lon-
don: Routledge and K. Paul, 1977); Nabil A. Saleh,
Unlawful Gain and Legitimate Profit in Islamic Law: Riba,
Gharar, and Islamic Banking(Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1986).
Bannockburn, Battle of This was a battle on the
English-Scottish border on June 23/24, 1314, between the
English army, led by EDWARD II, and the Scots under
ROBERTI THEBRUCE. The Scottish pike men defeated the
English cavalry and the victory helped prolong the inde-
pendence of SCOTLAND.
Further reading: Peter Reese, Bannockburn(Edin-
burgh: Canongate Books, 2000); W. M. Mackenzie, The
Battle of Bannockburn: A Study in Mediaeval Warfare
(Stevenag: Strong Oak Press, 1989).
baptism SeeSEVEN SACRAMENTS.
barbarians and barbarian migrations(nations, inva-
sions)The term barbarianwas based on Greek ideals of
cultural and linguistic “otherness.” Such an attitude was
not in complete conformity with Roman traditions of
inclusion, even of the defeated. By the fourth century,
there were tensions between an ideology that asserted
that Rome possessed a unique capacity to rule and the
reality that the empire was held together with the aid of
many non-Romans. There was still no precise and objec-
tive distinction between barbarian and savage. They
could leave their barbarity behind by living as Romans
and practicing Roman religion and culture.
Many stereotypes from then, however, were ethno-
centric and characteristic of people pressured by political
and social change. These concepts included ideas that the
barbarians were by nature slaves, animals, faithless, dis-
honest, treasonable, arrogant, and drunken sots. Chris-
tians, when they were persecuted, thought God was using
barbarians to punish Roman, especially pagan, sins. By
the fifth century, Salvian, AUGUSTINE, and OROSIUSsome-
what accepted barbarians as part of a new Christian order
that surpassed a pagan past.
It is impossible to be precise about total numbers,
and the archaeology of barbarian transient settlements
has proved elusive. Research on the northern provinces of
the Roman Empire has suggested that, despite consider-
able damage in the late third century and even with more
radical transformation in the midfourth century, rural
land itself was not abandoned by the native inhabitants.
Scholars are less inclined to describe the barbarian settle-
ments in terms of rupture and see them instead as an
interactive process of assimilation.
Further reading:Lucien Musset, The Germanic Inva-
sions: The Making of Europe, AD400–600,trans. Edward
and Columba James (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1975); Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, The Role of
Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary
Civilization vs. “Barbarian” and Nomad(New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2000); Malcolm Todd, The Early Germans
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); Herwig Wolfram, The Roman
Empire and Its Germanic Peoples,trans. Thomas Dunlop
(1990; reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997).Barcelona Barcelona is a city on the Catalan coast of
northeastern Spain. Around 715, the collapse of the
Visigothic kingdom led to the conquest of Barcelona by
the ARABS. In 801, the town was taken by the FRANKS.As
the capital of a county or march on the frontier with
ISLAM, it was integrated into the CAROLINGIANworld,
though it was temporarily captured by the Arabs in 914
and 986. The collapse of the Carolingian Empire allowed
the emergence of a native dynasty of counts, founded by
Wilfred I (r. 870–897). From the 12th century, the counts
of Barcelona united the region of Catalonia around the
town, generally cooperate with the neighboring kingdom
of ARAGON, and later even build a Mediterranean empire
as far as SICILYand ATHENS.
The port of Barcelona expanded rapidly with mer-
chants and artisans contributing to its commercial suc-
cess. A new city wall was built during the reign of JAMESI
(1213–76), enclosing dwellings built beyond the 11th-
century wall.
In the 14th century civil buildings, such as the royal
palace, a hospital, a naval dockyards, the cathedral, and
mendicant convents, were built in the new GOTHICstyle.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, there were damaging
social and political struggles among rich landlords, mer-
chants, and artisans. The effects of PLAGUE, FAMINE, and