The “Sensale” family

matchmaker man

Sensale = Matchmaker.
Simsār from Arabic and this from people Sapsār. Mediator between the seller and buyer in business affairs, especially in the trading of agricultural products, livestock, grain, wine, horses, etc., but also in other activities, rentals, freight market, negotiations between renters and hirers, sale, insurance and other business. With wider meaning even weddings. In ancient Greece the figure of the matchmaker was known by the term proxenètes, from which derives the word “proxeneta”, used both in Roman times that in the medieval period.
The etymology of the term (from the Arabic simsar) is likely to be placed between 600 and 800 AD, a time when southern Italy was conquered by the Arabs. Initially its function was to bring together local people to meet needs also differ from those of a commercial nature, while later, in ancient Rome, the proxeneta assumed the role of intermediary marriages and mediator of disputes family. Only later , with the development of the Roman Empire , his figure assumed the most important role of “mediator in commercial affairs”. Already in Roman times the figure of proxeneta was legally known and codified: to witness is the Corpus Juris Civilis Corpus Juris or Iustinianeum.
They will spend about seven hundred years, however, to find the birth of Commons new legal references related to the figure and the activities of the broker, whose work, thanks to the rapid increase of trade, it became useful to facilitate the trading day taking in many cases the function a public official.
At that time, in fact, together with the commercial activities also developed the auxiliary trade, just as that of matchmaker who, like all aspects of communal life, begins to be duly regulated by the statutes of the guilds and civic. On January 1866 was born the Commercial Code of the Kingdom of Italy, in which the legislation became matchmakers “mediators” and were divided into two categories: public ones, which were equipped with the mandate and the “mediators in other species of mediation”, brokers freight, insurance, rent a boat and those for transport by land and water.
The Act of March 20, 1913 , 272 ruled that the profession of mediator was free and without the need for registration to the roles of the Chamber of Commerce, except for stockbrokers and those who held public office.
In 1958, he was instead reintroduced the requirement of enrollment in the Role of the Chamber of Commerce: to members for the first time was given the title of “business agents in mediation”.
Cafarchia family has been a “Sensale” institution from town of Adelfia, Bari, South of Italy. Has started her brokerage activity since 1914, with Nicola Cafarchia alias “Mest Colino” (my great-grandfather) operating it for the first 36 years. Back then it was the time of market where many emigrants leave from Italy. During this time the products traded was almonds, wine, olive plants, grains, carobs.
His son Domenico nickname “Minguccio” (my grandfather) spent his life on the town square for daily brokerage job between producers and traders: the “sensale” art of brokerage. Back then all the surrounding countryside of Adelfia was called “Città dell’Uva Regina” because many farmers cultivated the table grape of “Regina” variety and was sent on all markets of North Italy and Europe. And after grape period, he working also with olive oil, grains, vinegar, almonds.
His son Nicola (my father) move the first working steps in a home ambience where every day is speaking of food and beverage. In the 60s, go to the Switzerland and met my mother Julia (she’s a cook from Treviso). After some years they transfer in Puglia to keep on our family tradition of brokerage job.
Then, I was born in 1967 and they named me like my grandfather: Domenico… alias Minguccio “The destiny is in my name” and I travel in all over the world to enrich my experience to develop the our family business.