"When the mendicant orders were founded in the thirteenth century, they quickly began to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships with the emerging merchant class, but these relationships have rarely been addressed by scholars. Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean, edited by Taryn Chubb and Emily Kelley, is an interdisciplinary study of the intricate connections that developed between the two groups, focusing specifically on three examples of mendicant-merchant interaction in Barcelona, Mallorca and Florence. The studies in this volume demonstrate the complexities of commercial and religious trade and exchange in the region and they reveal the extent to which the friars and merchants came to depend upon one another"--Back cover.