42 Hammel-Kiesow
was forged together with Gothic merchants. During the early thirteenth cen-
tury, West European merchants also formed similar, although non-permanent
alliances. These included the association of mercatores de xvii villes includ-
ing members from Flanders and Northern France (first documented in 1230),
which, at the time of their decline, was called the ‘Hanse of 17 cities’, and the
nations of the Italian merchants, who, like the Flemish and French, had also
formed a universitas at the fairs of Champagne. Sometime around 1200 (docu-
mented in 1241), Flemish merchants from 52 cities had formed an umbrella
organization in London, the “Hanse of London”. However, since the fourteenth
century, these organizations were of no further importance.85 Similar associa-
tions comprising fair attendees were supported by sovereigns in Flanders as
well as in the regions of the Lower Rhine, and the Ijessel. This support was
intended to add greater importance to the trading traffic of the twelfth- and
thirteenth-century fairs, which represented advancing markets.86
In the Baltic, the traveling companies that sailed from Lübeck to Gotland,
and later to Novgorod and Riga, seem to have formed, almost exclusively,
abroad at their respective trade destinations on Gotland or in Riga. However,
such organization could occur at an important milestone along their way as
in the case of those forming during the journey to Novgorod at the mouth of
the Neva River. These were the first associations of the early Hanse to consist
of merchants gathered from a collection of various individual traveling com-
panies. In response, these merchants and their companies discontinued their
competition with each other and thus constituted universitas mercatorum in
arrangements that differed from town to town though part of the comprehen-
sive universitas mercatorum. This is very obvious in the trade treaties of the
twelfth and first half of the thirteenth centuries as in the case of the 1229 treaty
the Prince of Smolensk concluded with the long distance traders from Riga,
Visby, Lübeck, Soest, Munster, Dortmund, and Bremen. This treaty was com-
posed in Riga “in front of the many merchants of the Roman Empire” and con-
firmed “by the seal of all merchants”.87 The Novgorod Schra (Order of St. Peter’s
85 Nicholas, Flanders, 166–168; van Werveke, “Flandrische Hanse,” 15–17; Kohn, “Merchant
Associations,” 6–8.
86 Friedland, Hanse, 99; Franz Irsigler, “Jahrmärkte und Messesysteme im westlichen
Reichsgebiet bis ca. 1250,” in Peter Johanek and Heinz Stoob, ed., Europäische Messen und
Märktesysteme in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, Städteforschung A, vol. 39 (Cologne: Böhlau-
Verlag, 1996), 1–33.
87 hub 1, no. 232.