A closer look
Controlling the candle supply was the medieval equivalent of cornering the global oil market. Underwater excavations of the Bremen Cog, a 14th-century Hanseatic League trading ship, revealed a cargo hold packed not just with timber, but with massive, standardized ingots of Baltic beeswax. The Catholic Church required millions of pure beeswax candles for their endless masses, allowing the ruthless Hanseatic merchants to form a hyper-lucrative monopoly that dictated prices across Northern Europe.
