{"title":"Pawned Horses: Risk and Liability in Fourteenth Century German Small-Credit Market","authors":"Aviya Doron","doi":"10.1163/15700674-12340113","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\nMany Jewish-Christian credit transactions relied on pawns as collateral, which presumably eliminated the risk in the case of debtors’ default. However, keeping and maintaining certain pawns involved particular risks that further complicated these transactions. This paper focuses on live pawns, specifically horses, where the safekeeping of the animal involved far greater difficulties and risks than with other valuable objects that were pawned with Jews. By tracing how legal norms and practices addressed some of the unique risks attached to receiving horses as pawns, this article will outline the expectations both Jews and Christians had when engaging in credit transaction secured by horses. Relying on responsa literature, urban legislation, and court cases from the late thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries, this analysis will discuss some of the complications relating to liability over live pawns, with the goal of demonstrating how a specific type of pawn, and its unique risks and benefits, reflects previous assumptions and expectations regarding risk and trust.","PeriodicalId":52521,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Encounters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Medieval Encounters","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15700674-12340113","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Many Jewish-Christian credit transactions relied on pawns as collateral, which presumably eliminated the risk in the case of debtors’ default. However, keeping and maintaining certain pawns involved particular risks that further complicated these transactions. This paper focuses on live pawns, specifically horses, where the safekeeping of the animal involved far greater difficulties and risks than with other valuable objects that were pawned with Jews. By tracing how legal norms and practices addressed some of the unique risks attached to receiving horses as pawns, this article will outline the expectations both Jews and Christians had when engaging in credit transaction secured by horses. Relying on responsa literature, urban legislation, and court cases from the late thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries, this analysis will discuss some of the complications relating to liability over live pawns, with the goal of demonstrating how a specific type of pawn, and its unique risks and benefits, reflects previous assumptions and expectations regarding risk and trust.
期刊介绍：
Medieval Encounters promotes discussion and dialogue accross cultural, linguistic and disciplinary boundaries on the interactions of Jewish, Christian and Muslim cultures during the period from the fourth through to the sixteenth century C.E. Culture is defined in its widest form to include art, all manner of history, languages, literature, medicine, music, philosophy, religion and science. The geographic limits of inquiry will be bounded only by the limits in which the traditions interacted. Confluence, too, will be construed in its widest form to permit exploration of more indirect interactions and influences and to permit examination of important subjects on a comparative basis.
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