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By the tenth century, the Venetian duchy had established the political structures and commercial connections that would eventually support its extraordinary expansion. However, the familiar image of Venice as a great maritime republic still belonged to the future.

Early Medieval Venice – How a City Emerged from the Lagoons https://www.medieval.eu/early-medieval-venice-how-a-city-emerged-from-the-lagoons/

“So, what do you think defined the Renaissance? What made it so different?”

I gulped and suggested that the real difference was that the patrons, aristocrats, popes and kings started to treat the artists as artists rather than mere decorators.

On Finding the Beauty in a Block of Stone https://lithub.com/on-finding-the-beauty-in-a-block-of-stone/

This does not mean that human trafficking was the only foundation of medieval Italian prosperity. Smith acknowledges that much of the evidence is indirect and that the precise scale of the trade remains difficult to establish.

Nevertheless, his research suggests that the buying and selling of enslaved people may have played an important role in the commercial development of western Italian ports during the centuries before the Crusades.

How Human Trafficking Fuelled Medieval Trade https://www.medievalists.net/2026/10/how-human-trafficking-fuelled-medieval-trade/