Sea loan or pecunia traiecticia belongs to the heritage of Roman legal thought. It seems to occupy a distinctive position in the conceptual framework of private law and few researchers are interested in investigating it. One of them is Z. Benincasa who has analyzed the topic in her general monography on risk in maritime journeys till the 2nd century AD. This article has been inspired by her book, however it is also the result of own studies on sea loan not only in the ancient Roman law but also in the medieval, modern and contemporary legal thought. Thanks to broad insight into the history of sea loan it was possible to take an approach which was only mentioned before. Namely that Roman sea loan provides the solution which today seems to be present in Project Finance. It was reasonable to start the broad comparison again from ancient Roman law. First of all, it has shown that sea loan served not only as a method of taking over the risk by a creditor, but it was also a kind of speculative investment and opportunity to gain a great profi t from maritime trade. At the same time it enabled a debtor to organize a risky journey. There were two kinds of sea loan. One was a loan given on the condition that a debtor would successfully reach the port of his destination. The other one was a loan with the same condition, but also with an added time limit, e.g. 200 days of navigation – so called dies incertus sensu stricto. Secondly, the profit of a creditor was strictly attached to the gains from maritime trade and depended on the success of a maritime journey. On the one hand, debtors’ personal liability was moved as far as possible, in order to satisfy creditors just from profit or items acquired during the trade expedition. On the other hand, the way to enter into the contract to attach high interests and finally to sue a debtor and his heirs was very flexible. Thirdly, emperors were interested in sea loan and provided in their constitutions balanced position of a creditor and a debtor. It can suggest that pecunia traiecticia was important for Roman economy, maybe in the same way that Project Finance is for our times. This work seeks to broaden previous studies on western legal tradition and Roman law and is an attempt to find out whether the Roman concept of sea loan is applicable also nowadays.

The beginning of sulphur ore mining in Swoszowice, having lasted for almost 500 years, goes back to the 15th century when the need for sulphur increased along with the firearm production development. In the Middle Ages alchemists called sulphur the ‘element of flammability’. After the invention of fi rearm sulphur gained big importance. It became an ingredient gunpowder. The real impulse for sulphur mining development in Swoszowice, a village near Krakow, was the publication of two documents: Village Land Act in Swoszowice and Diploma, that permitted mining in Swoszowice and gave a privilege to miners guild (co-partnership extracting sulphur ore) that enabled them to carry out extraction of sulphur in the whole country. It was given in 1415 by the Polish king,Władysław II Jagiełło. In the beginning, the miners guild consisted of well-known Cracow burghers: Michał Fayger, Piotr Słodownik, Mikołaj Sołtys from Stradom and a mineworker Krystian. Then it became a part of goods of Corpus Christi Monastery in Kazimierz and after the partitions of Poland it was a state-owned entity until 1887. Sulphur mining in Swoszowice made Jagiellonian dynasty powerful and influential. It lasted almost continually till 1886. At that time the pit in Swoszowice was the biggest in Europe. In the 18th century 250 workers worked there and 2,5 tones of sulphur were mined each year. In the late 19th century (1871–1876) the mine in Swoszowice covered 80–90 % of sulphur demand in Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. There were many reasons for the fall of the sulphur mine in Swoszowice such as: predatory economy, decrease in sulphur ore and increase of production costs, caused for example by the rise of wood prices (wood was needed to make protection systems of the shafts), groundwater floods in the shafts. Miners were also exposed to harmful impact of hydrogen sulfi de. Additionally, the mine business in Swoszowice was negatively infl uenced by ongoing competition, the renewal of sulphur production in Sicilia, cheaper sulphur production from pirytes in Hungary, markdown of tariffs on sulphur carriage as a consequence of the Trade Act between Austria and Italy lowering the duty on imported sulphur from Sicilia. The last attempts to restart the mine in Swoszowice were made during the World War I, in 1917. For that reason the Polish Sulphur Factory consortium was created. It conducted mining works in the area of bathing facilities. Two shafts were deepened: Elżbieta and Piotr. Sulphur ore, with 22–25% sulphur content, was discovered on a depth of 18 meters in the first one. The mining works were stopped though.