Vox Mercatoria, the Unipd podcast on words in the history of commercial law
August 25, 2026
The podcast Vox Mercatoria is one of the outputs of the ERC CoG project MICOLL "Migrating commercial law and language. Rethinking lex mercatoria (11th-17th cent.)", led by Stefania Gialdroni (Department of Private Law and Critique of Law of the University of Padua).
Vox Mercatoria stems from one of MICOLL’s central questions: what can we learn about the history of commercial law by following not only rules and institutions, but also the words used by merchants, jurists and merchant communities?
Each episode starts from a word – with one deliberate exception, an episode devoted to the iconography of justice – which opens a window onto the history of trade, law and mercantile cultures.
The podcast is conceived as a conversation among scholars from different disciplines, also accessible to a non-specialist audience. The guests change from one episode to the next, bringing different disciplinary perspectives to the conversation. Stefania Gialdroni, Principal Investigator of MICOLL, is the host of the entire series.
Vox Mercatoria was produced by Growing Production Srl.
The episodes of the podcast series
Episode 1 – Debt and Credit, with Nicoletta Maraschio and Francesca Fusco: where do the words debt and credit come from, and how have their meanings evolved over time? The conversation explores the link between credit and trust, the language of accounting, double-entry bookkeeping, and the gradual standardisation of commercial vocabulary.
Episode 2 – Bankruptcy, with Matthias Heinz and David De Concilio: where do terms such as bankruptcy, bancarotta and Bankrott come from, and do they really describe the same phenomenon? The episode retraces the linguistic and legal history of business failure, from the stigma attached to the insolvent merchant to the gradual distinction between misfortune, fault and fraud.
Episode 3 – Friendship and Trust, with Fabio Masi, Alessio Casarin and Corrado Tatangelo: can trade – or any collective enterprise – exist without trust? Starting from the experience of making MICOLL’s film Le vie dell’acqua, the dialogue unfolds through historical mercantile relationships and the bonds of trust, collaboration and friendship that make a creative project possible.
Episode 4 – Justice, with Georges Martyn, Valeria Paruzzo and Bettina Pfotenhauer: for once, Vox Mercatoria does not begin with a word, but with an image: that of Justice. The episode explores how commercial justice was represented in medieval and early modern Europe, and what courtrooms, paintings, symbols and pictorial cycles can tell us about merchants, authorities and the administration of justice. This is the only episode in the series recorded in English.
Episode 5 – Profit, with Annamaria Monti, Matteo Moro and Davide Basaldella: is profit a purely economic concept, or also a legal and moral one? The conversation examines changing attitudes towards commercial gain, the relationship between profit and usury, and the long history of attempts to distinguish legitimate proceeds from illicit enrichment.
Episode 6 – Capital, with Luisa Brunori and Ana Belem Fernández Castro: what exactly is capital, and when did this term acquire its economic and legal meanings? From the earliest commercial partnerships to transatlantic companies, the episode investigates the relationship between capital, property, investment and business organisation, including the – often overlooked – role of women as investors.
Episode 7 – Risk and Fortune, with Maria Fusaro, Jake Dyble and Valeria Paruzzo: trade has always involved uncertainty. How did merchants understand and manage risk before modern statistics and actuarial science? From maritime trade to general average, by way of insurance, gambling and the case of the ship Zong, the episode explores the shifting boundary between fortune, calculation and danger.