Besides Sicily and much of the Italian mainland, Pedro
also took Malta and Tunisian Djerba island.
Meanwhile Pope Martin IV, feudal lord of Sicily
and proponent of its Angevin king Charles of Anjou,
excommunicated Pedro in November 1282, deposed
him in March 1283, and transferred all his realms to the
son of Philippe the Bold of France, Charles of Valois, in
February 1284. The Catalans supported their king, but
the Aragónese had been ill-disposed toward the Sicilian
adventure from the start. In that long and bloody war,
one episode stands out—the Challenge (desafi ament) of
Bordeaux. Anjou offered to settle the war by personal
combat with Pedro, but instead arranged a trap for his
arrival at English Bordeaux; Pedro still appeared, met
the challenge, and escaped, to the edifi cation of Europe’s
chivalric classes (1283). More formidably, a papal cru-
sade to set Valois during Pedro’s reign saw an army of
118,000 foot and 7,000 horse under Philippe the Bold
sweep into Catalonia. Pedro delayed this greatest army
since ancient Rome at Girona until Llúia’s fl eet from
Sicily could arrive to destroy the French naval fl ank
and logistics, ending the invasion (September 1285).
Pedro suppressed a plebeian revolt in Barcelona under
Berenguer Oller that same year, negotiated a major
commercial treaty with Tunis, and mounted a punitive
amphibious expedition against his traitorous brother on
Mallorca, but died on the road to join the fl eet.
The contemporary memoirist Bernat Desclot calls
Pedro “a second Alexander” for his generalship. Dante
lauds him as “the heavy-sinewed one [who] bore in
his life the seal of every merit”; and he appears both
in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Shakespeare’s Much
Ado about Nothing. Pedro was a troubadour (two of
his poems survive) and their patron. He presided over a
constitutional revolution (Aragón’s Privilege of Union,
Catalonia’s Recognoverunt proceres annual parliament)
in 1283–1284. He stabilized coinage with his silver
croat, and maritime law with his restructured Llibre
del Consolat (1283). He protected Jews and gave them
important posts in his administration. As a politician and
diplomat he is thought superior to his great father, and
he presided over a commercial, literary, and architectural
fl owering in Catalonia.
See also Jaime II; Philip III the Bold
Further Reading
Soldevila, F. Pere el Gran. 2 parts in 4 vols. Institut d’Estudis
Catalans, Memòries de la Secció Histórico-arqueològica. Vols.
11, 13, 16, 22. Barcelona, 1950–1962.
———. Vida de Pere el Gran i d’Alfons el Liberal. Barcelona,
- XI Congres de Història de la Corona d’Aragó. 3 vols.
Palermo, 1983–84.
Robert I. Burns, S. J.
PEGOLOTTI, FRANCESCO DI
BALDUCCIO (born c. 1280s)
Francesco di Balduccio Pegolotti was a Florentine factor
for the great Bardi banking house in the fi rst half of the
fourteenth century, until its failure in 1347. His name
appears in 1310 in the fi rm’s payroll for the branch in
Florence, at a rate which suggests that he already had
considerable experience. His work was rewarded with
promotions to positions of greater importance. In 1315,
he negotiated trade rights for Florentines in Antwerp.
From 1318 to 1321, as director of the fi rm’s English
offi ce, he had duties that included fi nancial transac-
tions to help fi nance the English king, private business,
and transferral of the tithes collected in England to the
papal curia. Pegolotti next moved to Cyprus, where he
remained until 1329; again, his job involved diplomacy,
handling papal monies, and handling monies for indi-
vidual merchants. He returned to Florence in order to
hold civic offi ce but then moved back to the east by 1335.
In 1340, he returned again to Florence, for the last time.
The last known mention of him is in 1347, when he was
one of the civic offi cials overseeing the liquidation of
the assets of the bankrupt Bardi fi rm.
Pegolotti is best known not for his service to the
Bardi but for the compilation of his observations on
trade now known as La practica della mercatura. The
oldest known manuscript, from 1472, is a copy made
by Filippo di Niccolaio Frescobaldi in the Riccardian
Library in Florence. The manuscript has evident inac-
curacies, which can be attributed to the copyist; these
include misreadings that arose when the copyist was
trying to expand the original abbreviations, and chapters
that are out of place. Internal evidence, such as the men-
tion of current kings, helps to show that the material in
the Practica was collected throughout Pegolotti’s career
with the Bardi, and also that it was not written down
all at one time.
The Practica is one of a “genre” of documents called
merchant manuals. It is by far the best-known because
historians have used Pegolotti’s discussion of the route
to Cathay as proof that Europeans had knowledge of
and easy access to the Silk Road. The data come from
Pegolotti’s experience and from documents he col-
lected that had something to do with his work—such
as a list of brokerage fees charged in Pisa, quoted from
the Breve dell’ Ordine del Mare of 1323. The section
on Cathay is almost certainly based on information
Pegolotti collected rather than on personal experience.
The manual contains information on conversions for
weights, measures, and currencies between various
places, as well as discussions of other topics such as
the steps involved in producing the most important
commodities of a particular region and the expenses
involved in producing coins. The Practica is among thePEGOLOTTI, FRANCESCO DI BALDUCCIO