Champagne Fairs Routes

The cycle of six annual fairs in Champagne that served as the wholesale clearing house of 12th and 13th century Europe.

Overview

Held in rotation at Troyes, Provins, Lagny and Bar-sur-Aube, the fairs brought Flemish and northern cloth face to face with Italian merchants carrying silks, spices and dyes. The counts of Champagne provided safe conducts and courts whose judgments were enforced across borders, and Italian bankers cleared debts between fairs with early credit instruments, effectively a settlement system for medieval trade. The fairs declined in the 14th century as French royal taxation, war in the Low Countries and direct galley service between Italy and Flanders routed around them. Their legal machinery, though, seeded European commercial law.