What: First Workshop of the Project IUSTITIAM: Jurisdictional Places for Commerce (11th–17th Centuries)
Where: Venice – Deutsches Studienzentrum in Venedig; Padua – Palazzo del Bo, Aula Vigini
When: 25–26 September 2025
The first international workshop of the project IUSTITIAM – Iustitia Mercatoria. Places, Spaces and Iconographies of Mercantile Justice in Europe (11th–17th centuries) will take place on 25–26 September 2025, between Venice and Padua, in person and live on Zoom.
Funded by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (MUR) under the FARE Ricerca in Italia scheme and hosted by the University of Padua, IUSTITIAM investigates the places, spaces, and iconographies of mercantile justice as a way of understanding how merchants perceived law and justice in medieval and early modern Europe.
The workshop, entitled “Jurisdictional Places for Commerce (11th–17th centuries)”, will explore the spaces where merchants settled disputes and administered justice — from loggias and guild halls to consulates of the sea and private homes.
By combining legal history, art history, and urban studies, the event aims to reconstruct the symbolic and material dimensions of commercial justice. As the program highlights, merchants operated within a wide variety of jurisdictions, both public and private, and the places they used for arbitration or litigation were often imbued with political meaning and social representation.
From the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice to the Loggia della Mercanzia in Genoa, from the Consulate of the Sea in Valencia to the Collegio del Cambio in Perugia, these architectural spaces were not merely functional—they communicated a specific vision of justice, trade, and community. Even the private settings where merchants met—houses, chapels, or confraternities—reflected the intricate relationship between law, ritual, and commerce.
The IUSTITIAM project is closely connected to the ERC project MICOLL – Migrating Commercial Law and Language. Rethinking Lex Mercatoria (11th–17th centuries), also based at the University of Padua.
Both initiatives share a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the study of medieval and early modern commercial law, and both seek to understand how legal norms and practices were shaped by human mobility and material environments.
While MICOLL focuses on the migration of legal language and models across Europe, IUSTITIAM explores how the spaces of justice embodied these transnational exchanges.
The upcoming workshop will therefore be an important step in strengthening the dialogue between the two research teams, opening new perspectives on the interaction between legal pluralism, spatial practices, and visual culture in the history of commerce.
Program highlights
The two-day event will open on 25 September in Venice, hosted by the Deutsches Studienzentrum in Venedig within the framework of the Studienkurs Venedig 2025 directed by Prof. Albrecht Cordes.
The following day, 26 September, the discussion will continue at the University of Padua (Department of Private Law and Critique of Law, Aula Vigini, Palazzo del Bo).
Among the speakers and topics:
Guido Rossi (University of Edinburgh / University of Palermo), Places of Law in the Common Law Tradition
Donatella Calabi (IUAV, Venice), Ideas of Justice and the Use of Space in the Rialto Market
Stefania Gialdroni and Valeria Paruzzo (University of Padua), The IUSTITIAM Atlas and the Case of Padua’s Palazzo della Ragione
Presentations on mercantile spaces and tribunals in Florence, Brescia, Milan, Verona, Genoa, Bolzano, Mantua, Perugia, and beyond, by Ana Belém Fernández Castro, David De Concilio, Matteo Moro, Bettina Pfotenhauer, Daniele Tinterri, and Chiara Lo Giudice.
Registration and participation
Participation in person is free but limited; please register by 22 September 2025 by contacting:
📧 valeria.paruzzo@unipd.it | anabelem.fernandezcastro@studenti.unipd.it
Only the Friday, 26 September session will be available live on Zoom at:
🔗 https://rb.gy/wfmmhp
