4 - Cassandra Grimaldo’s Voyage of No Return : A Genoese Businesswoman in Habsburg Spain

Summary

Abstract

This chapter investigates the travels of Cassandra Grimaldo (c. 1540–1618), a member of the renowned Grimaldo family of Genoese financiers, as she crossed the Mediterranean from Genoa to Castile and other Spanish cities where her husband had considerable land investments. The daughter of Nicolao Grimaldo, banker to the Spanish Habsburgs, Cassandra married her father's business partner, Esteban Lomelín, another Genoese financier whose financial transactions were based in Granada and Madrid, among other cities. The considerable difference in their ages, and the fact that she had no children, allowed her to take over her husband's business. On his death, she assumed the reins of an international financial enterprise at the time that the Spanish Monarchy consolidated power in Europe.

Keywords: Cassandra Grimaldo, Esteban Lomelín, Genoese businesswomen, Habsburg financiers, early modern women

New research and archival discoveries have recently confirmed that throughout Europe and throughout the transnational territory of the Spanish Monarchy, women in the early modern era conducted business both in commerce and in production (Martín Romera 2009). Cassandra Grimaldo is a good example of a businesswoman who took advantage of the close relations between the Spanish Monarchy and Genoese commercial interests. She built a career for herself, traveling from her birthplace to the Iberian Peninsula to live. Her experience illustrates the options for women like her who left their home kingdoms to advance themselves economically through their own efforts.

Cassandra was born in Genoa sometime in the 1540s and died in Madrid in 1618. Her mother, Julia Cybo, and her father, the businessman Nicolao Grimaldo, had three sons and seven daughters. The family did not have a noble title, though they may have aspired to one. Nicolao Grimaldo made a fortune as a financier for the Spanish Monarchy during the second half of the sixteenth century. He and his colleagues transferred and exchanged currencies and accepted deposits that they then loaned to their monarchs. They also conducted international commercial transactions (Álvarez Nogal 2022, 27–53). Theirs was an itinerant profession, and throughout the early modern era it was increasingly common for wives and children to travel with them (Mazzei 2009, 60).