200 Jacoby
and a large volume of acorn-cups from the previous year’s yield had remained
unsold. These commodities had presumably not reached a port in time to be
shipped by the autumn convoys returning to Venice. Aldobrando Baroncelli
found in 1379 that much wine was getting spoiled at Santo Archangelo because
of the absence of a wine cellar, and decided to build one, while at Andravida he
improved the operation of a mill for which he bought a grinding stone.
There is yet another aspect of the Italian agents’ activity in Latin Greece
deserving close attention: they were highly experienced in business admin-
istration. In 1361 Nicola de Boiano was unable to gather reliable information
about the management of Vostitsa and concluded that he had to compile a
new survey of the estate. In 1379 Aldobrando Baroncelli emphasised that
the report he was presenting was systematic, detailed and comprehensive,
which indeed it was. He listed separately revenue and expenditure, item by
item, and computed them; in addition, he recorded the assets in deposit. He
twice alluded to an account book, in which he must have used a sophisticated
method of daily accounting. The nature of that book is suggested by the work
of the Italian officer who in 1365 established the yearly financial balance of the
lordship of Corinth belonging to Niccolò Acciaiuoli. His registration and com-
pilation included double-entry book-keeping in an advanced form, receipts
and expenditure being displayed on opposite pages. This bilateral form was
common at that time in Italian mercantile and banking companies, some of
which operated in Latin Greece, as noted below.
The Italians thus introduced into Latin Greece innovative methods in the
exploitation and management of agricultural and other resources. Non-Italian
barons and knights as well as Greek feudatories of the Frankish Morea were
in close touch with them. They met at their lord’s court or with their lord’s
Italian stewards, several of them had houses in the ports of the Frankish Morea
and the neighbouring Venetian territories, and they conducted business with
Italian traders and bankers.21 As a result, they must have increasingly adopted
the market and export-oriented practices introduced by the Italians.
Venice’s policies in Crete also impacted on rural production. The state’s
interest was already illustrated by the charter which Doge Pietro Ziani deliv-
ered in 1211 to the first military contingent sent to Crete.22 One of the provi-
sions of that charter deals with state control over wheat exports, aimed at
21 David Jacoby, “The Encounter of Two Societies: Western Conquerors and Byzantines in
the Peloponnesus after the Fourth Crusade,” American Historical Review 78 (1973), 891–
902, repr. in idem, Recherches sur la Méditerranée orientale du xiie au xve siècle: Peuples,
sociétés, économies (London, 1979), ii.
22 Jacoby, “La colonisation militaire.”