ROBERT THE WISE OF NAPLES, 1309-43thousand tons of wheat from Apulia. Charles de la Ronciere
has counted over forty grants of export rights to these and
lesser Florentine banks in the thirty years from^1290 to 1329,
all of them secured by handsome loans to the crown. In
1311 alone the quantity of recorded grain exports was about
45,000 tons; and the steady rise in the volume of these exports
was aptly matched by massive amounts of gold advanced to
Charles II and Robert the Wise, such as a sum of over 18,000
ounces in 1305.^24 Repayment took many forms, such as per-
mitting the banks control over the collection of revenue from
royal assets, including the fishing port of Castellamare near
Naples, the royal mint or harbour taxes in various provinces.^25
Meanwhile, access to south Italian markets gave the bankers
the chance to sell considerable quantities of Florentine cloth
in Naples. It was a profitable relationship, not so much for
the government of Florence as for the bankers and textile
producers of the city; the relationship also took pressure off
the food supply of Florence, which depended heavily on
imported wheat.
Such activities planted in the minds of the rulers of
Naples schemes to develop internationally successful textile
industries of their own. Native assets appeared to make such
plans viable: the existence of a local wool supply, in which
Charles I had expressed interest as early as 1279; the exist-
ence of a dyeing industry in such centres as Salerno, where
the Jews had a special role; this industry was given further
impetus by Charles II in 1299 when he tried to set up new
dyeing workshops in southern Italy. Later in his reign Charles
II paid two brothers from Florence the sum of 48 ounces of
gold to encourage them to set up a textile factory in Naples.
These efforts, which have ample contemporary parallels in
neighbouring lands such as Majorca, were repeated under
Robert the Wise; but success was limited, and even the
monarchy's attitude cooled when it became apparent that
there were heretics among the north Italian textile workers
who came to Naples.^26
- C. de Ia Ronciere, Florence, centre economique regional,^4 vols (Aix-en-
Provence, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 565, 571-3, 625. - D. Abulafia, 'Southern Italy and the Florentine economy 1265-1370',
Economic History Review, ser. 2, vol. 33 ( 1981), pp. 380-1. - R. Caggese, Roberto d'Angiii, 2 vols (Florence, 1922-30), vol. 1, pp.
530-6.