Juliann Vitullo and Diane Wolfthal “Trading Values: Negotiating Masculinity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe”

Juliann Vitullo and Diane Wolfthal “Trading Values: Negotiating Masculinity in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Edited by Vitullo, Juliann and Diane Wolfthal  Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2010. Print.

In their chapter, Vitullo and Wolfthal plot how ideas of masculinity are tied to and, in some cases, exemplified by money and trade in late medieval Italian and Northern European art and literature. First covering the critiques and concerns over the increasingly monetized culture and the role of merchants, Vitullo and Wolfthal read texts that show how merchants, in particular, tied ideas of masculinity, fertility, and money in order to push against these critiques. Focusing first on Italy, specifically Florence, Vitullo and Wolfthal demonstrate that merchants consciously pointed to the benefits that their trade provided for the common good and, at the same time, tied this to merchants' roles as fathers providing for future generations. By continuously tying to this language of paternal responsibility, the merchant's trade is argued to be a positive force in the community rather than negative. Vitullo and Wolfthal ties these same threads through the art of these respective regions, showing how what is emphasized and de-emphasized in artistic representations of merchants becomes part of the rhetorical move to reconcile merchants with heavily anit-mercantile dialogues in late medieval Europe. 

What I find most interesting in this chapter is how the masculine fertility itself is tied to money. One of the larger complaints against money and merchants goes back to Aristotelian condemnations of how usurers, and many merchants, attempt to multiply money "against nature" (156). To counteract this, the positive image of the merchant as father, both literally and in his contributions to the community, are employed in art and literature. Furthermore, many artistic depictions of merchants begin to show them with wives and children in order to better emphasize that their procreation and trade is proper, fitting in with the natural order of things and aiding future generations. While my work tends to focus more on gender issues with women and money, this chapter will, I think, force me to consider not only the role of men as merchants more thoroughly but fertility and reproduction in the context of an increasingly monetized culture. If the fertility of male merchants is vital to ameliorate their profession, how does this work for figures such as the Wife of Bath and Lady Mede?