COMMERCE, PATRON SAINTS OF. There was a widespread dedication during the early Middle Ages of churches and fraternities to St. Nicholas of Myra in Lyda, and Professor G. Unwin (in the Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society, 1910, p. 13 ir.) has sought to establish a connection of these on the one hand with the spread of commercial usages and gild organisations from the Levant westwards, and on the other hand with the simultaneous spread of a particular method of city construction and city expansion which had been practised from the earliest historic times in Mesopotamia, and was especially exemplified in the foundation of Baghdad by the Caliph Mansur in 776 A.D. In the second century B.C. Delos was the prin cipal intercontinental market for slaves. " The dedi cations to Isis, Hermes, and the Tyrian Hercules of the fraternities with clubhouses and chapels of the merchants who frequented it, point to their descent as institutions from a much earlier time, whilst, on the other hand, they were almost identical in their social and religious character with the merchant guilds of the early Middle Ages. One of the chief patron deities of commerce at Delos was naturally Poseidon; and later, in the second century A.D. a gild of merchants dedi cated to Poseidon still existed at Tanais, at the mouth of the Don (Minns, Scythians and Greeks). Tanais, which had long been under the influence of a cosmo politan Judaism, was a frontier post of that Levantine world, whose curious transitional blend of more primi tive enstom with Hellenism and with Christianity has been interpreted by Sir W. Ramsay and Professor Calder. Fraternities, at first Pagan, but afterwards Christian, played a large part in that world. The cult of Poseidon amongst seafaring merchants was displaced by the veneration of St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia (Lawton, Modern Greek Folklore) to whom a church was dedicated by Justinian at Constantinople in 530 A.D. Until the rise of the Italian republics the Levantine region, of which St. Nicholas thus became the tutelary
genius, remained the seat of active commerce in Europe and the intermediary through which the products and the technique of the more advanced industries of Meso potamia and Central Asia, China and India slowly passed into the civilisation of the West. Greek and Syrian Christians were the first agents of this inter course, as is shown by the earliest dedications of Florentine churches (Davidsohn, Geseh. d. Florenz) to St. Miniata, a Greek, in 250 A.D. and to St. Reparata, a Syrian, about 400 A.D.; but after the rise of Islam Arabs played a large part, and Offa's gold tribute to Rome in the eighth century was paid in Arab dinars (Brit. Nurnis. Journal, vol. v.)." From the ninth to the twelfth century the centre of this commerce and cul ture tended to gravitate towards Baghdad. The spread of St. Nicholas dedications began at the period of the Crusades. " In the last decade of the eleventh century Venice and Bari were contending for the possession of the saint's body and a large proportion of the churches erected at new ports or new markets throughout Nor thern Europe were dedicated to St. Nicholas." Unmis takable instances of the connection between St. Nicholas and new settlements of traders are found at Brussels, Ghent, Amsterdam, Middleburg, Leyden, Berlin, Ham burg. Leipzig, Frankfort-on-Maine, Prague, Stockholm, Paris, Rouen, Amiens, Chartres, London, Newcastle, Durham, Bristol. Liverpool, Yarmouth, Rochester. There are 3S5 dedications to St. Nicholas in England alone, many of them being in insignificant villages. The rapid spread of the cult of St. Nicholas at ports and markets seems to indicate " the activity of Levantine influences either through the migration of the traders themselves or through the adoption of their methods and traditions in the West."