that the shipping of the Levant was placed in a different category. Syrian merchandise paid two bezants[1] and a half per livre; from Alexandria, the rate was one bezant and a half; and from the island of Gerbi, upon the coast of Africa, three bezants and a half. There were also other municipal dues. If a foreign ship in the port of Marseilles took on board pilgrims, passengers, or cargo for the Levant, the owner was obliged to pay the commonalty one-third of the freight. It will be seen, therefore, that Marseilles exacted as high differential duties as her republican neighbours of Italy.
Again, while the Christian religious bodies received many privileges as shippers, the Jews throughout the whole of this period were ground down under excessive taxes. In the same spirit, the Venetians shut them out from the Damascus trade; the Spaniards, as far as they could, expelled them from Spain, and they were then universally persecuted, as much, it may be, from popular indignation against
- ↑ It is almost impossible now to determine the relative values mentioned in records so old as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Moreover, research only shows that there was the greatest confusion both as to the names and as to the values of the weights and measures of that period. The Bezant (or Byzant), taking its name unquestionably from the City of Byzantium, was a common term for gold money in Western Europe from the tenth to the fourteenth century. Thus Dunstan bought Hendon of King Edgar for two hundred Byzants (Camden's "Remains concerning Britain"), and Wyclif, in his translation of the Bible, uses "besauntis" for the ten pieces of money in the parable. These Byzants were not always of the same weight or purity, but it is generally believed that, in the time of Constantine, seventy-two were coined to the pound, and that therefore they were worth about the same as the ducat (with which they are often confounded), viz., 9s. (Savile Script. Dec. post Bedam, fol. 76, 6. Ducange Gloss. in voce.) Those of Alex. Comnenus, A.D. 1081-1118, weigh about seventy grains English.
