always possessed some role as local markets and royal legislation concerning the protection and taxing of merchants confirms that this continued under the Lombards. By the eighth century salt produced at pans on the northern Adriatic coast became one of the first commodities to be traded over longer distances and promoted the rise of first Comacchio and later Venice. As a subject of Byzantium Venice had privileged access to markets in the east and soon diversified from salt and fish into importing luxuries such as textiles and spices and exporting slaves. The will of a doge shows that by 829 a large part of the aristocracy's wealth lay in investments in overseas trading ventures. In the early tenth century Venetian merchants are recorded at Pavia as paying customary gifts of spices and cosmetics in return for their right to sell oriental luxuries. Venetian commerce acted as a stimulus to Lombard cities, who supplied the coastal city with food and cloth and re-exported its imports to northern Europe. A similar luxury trade also operated to the south in the late ninth century, as is shown by a saint's life in which Venetian merchants praised a Byzantine cloak which the hero had purchased in Rome. Such items constituted catalysts to more general economic activity and were in great demand as status symbols. In the south the chief centres of longdistance commerce were Gaeta, Amalfi, and Naples, subjects of Byzantium which also carried on a flourishing trade with the Arabs.

Inland cities such as Milan and Cremona had their prosperous merchants by the ninth century, but they remained a minor element who tended to use their wealth to buy land or to marry into aristocratic families. The future trading giants of Pisa and Genoa were still little more than villages. Unlike the eastern empire, where such groups saw their interests and ambitions as lying with the metropolitan life of the capital, Italians developed a fierce pride in their local city, which was expressed through the cult of patron saints and even in revolts against royal officials. Cities possessed ill-documented institutions such as the court of 'worthy men' and the 'assembly in front of the church' in which market arrangements and other common concerns were discussed. One example of this civic

-27-