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Profit and Patrimony: Property, Markets, and Public Debt in Late Medieval Genoa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2020

Jeffrey Miner
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Abstract

Scholars have long linked medieval and early modern public debts to the rise of capitalism. This article considers one prominent case study in the development of permanent public debt: late medieval Genoa. Previous scholarship has focused on financial speculation and markets for shares as central to how public debts functioned. However, by considering complementary types of sources, this article demonstrates that inheritance strategies and patrimonial considerations operated in dialogue with markets in the development of urban public debts, both in Genoa and elsewhere in Europe.

Keywords

capitalismfinanceGenoapropertypublic debtusury
Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 94 , Issue 1: Italy and the Origins of Capitalism , Spring 2020 , pp. 73 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 The President and Fellows of Harvard College

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References

1 For these transfers, see Compere e mutui 1158, 15r–16v, Archivio di Stato di Genova, Genoa (hereafter ASG). For one transfer, “de voluntate dicti Casani descripte sunt de columpna et racione dicti Casani libre duo millia sive loca viginti et scripta et scripte sunt super Quilicum Bondinarium bancherium cuius sunt titulo emptionis in isto in C LXX IIII presentibus testibus Carlo Cataneo filio Leonardi et Vesconte de Savignonis censarius.”

2 Although some of the details differ from Florence, a helpful summary of the challenges of working with “ambiguous and elliptic” financial registers is Julius Kirshner, “Encumbering Private Claims to Public Debt in Renaissance Florence,” in The Growth of the Bank as Institution and the Development of Money-Business Law, ed. Vito Piergiovanni (Berlin, 1993), 22–23.

3 This practice would become more frequent and easier to detect in the sources in the fifteenth century. Jacques Heers, Gênes au XVe siècle, activité économique et problèmes sociaux (Paris, 1961), 151–52.

4 On the history of the registers and their section of the Genoese archive, see Domenico Gioffrè, Il debito pubblico genovese: Inventario delle compere anteriori a San Giorgio o non consolidate nel Banco (Sec. XIV–XIX) (Milan, 1967).

5 The indispensable, but now dated, work of Heinrich Sieveking adopts this framing, and it remains the only monographic treatment of Genoa's debts before the fifteenth century. Sieveking, Studio sulle finanze genovesi nel medioevo e in particolare sulla Casa di S. Giorgio, 2 vols. (Genoa, 1905–1906).

6 Heers, Jacques, “The ‘Feudal’ Economy and Capitalism: Words, Ideas and Reality,” Journal of European Economic History 3, no. 3 (1974): 647–53Google Scholar. For a longer argument equating usury with capitalism, see Heers, La naissance du capitalisme au Moyen Age: Changeurs, usuriers, et grands financiers (Paris, 2012). Heers defines capitalism as a “form of economy in which the man who has capital, usually money, can profit from others’ labor by lending at interest, investing in mercantile activity, or buying and selling stocks and shares” and refers to the economic activities of ordinary people as “popular capitalism” (pp. 9, 11; my translation).

7 Braudel, Fernand, The Wheels of Commerce, trans. Reynolds, Siân (New York, 1979), 455–57Google Scholar.

8 Luciano Pezzolo, “Tradizione e innovazione: I debiti governativi nell'Italia del Rinascimento,” in Debito pubblico e mercati finanziari in Italia: Secoli XIII–XX, ed. Giuseppe De Luca and Angelo Moioli (Milan, 2007), 20.

9 Fratianni, Michele, “Government Debt, Reputation and Creditors’ Protections: The Tale of San Giorgio,” Review of Finance 10, no. 4 (2006): 487–506CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David Stasavage, States of Credit: Size, Power and the Development of European Polities (Princeton, 2011).

10 Heers, La naissance du capitalisme, 9

11 For a general introduction to economic change in this period, see William Caferro, Contesting the Renaissance (Oxford, 2011), 126–55.

12 Howell, Martha C., Commerce before Capitalism in Europe, 1300–1600 (Cambridge, U.K., 2010), 6–34Google Scholar.

13 Fontaine, Laurence, Moral Economy: Poverty, Credit and Trust in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, U.K., 2014), 5Google Scholar.

14 Fontaine, 6. See also Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1998).

15 Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston, 2001)Google Scholar.

16 Prak, Maartin, ed., Early Modern Capitalism: Economic and Social Change in Europe, 1400–1800 (London, 2001), 14–15Google Scholar. For a growth-oriented account of Dutch urban public finance, see C. J. Zuijderduijn, Medieval Capital Markets: Markets for renten, State Formation and Private Investment in Holland (1300–1550) (Leiden, 2009). For a similar approach, see Philip T. Hoffman, Gilles Postel-Vinay, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Priceless Markets: The Political Economy of Credit in Paris, 1660–1870 (Chicago, 2000).

17 For an interesting congruence, see the critique of Polanyi by Douglass C. North, “Markets and Other Allocation Systems in History: The Challenge of Karl Polanyi,” Journal of European Economic History 6, no. 3 (1977): 703–16.

18 See Kirshner, “Encumbering Private Claims,” 1n2.

19 This remains the dominant interpretive frame in general and popular works on the subject. See, for example, Michael Veseth, Mountains of Debt: Crisis and Change in Renaissance Florence, Victorian Britain, and Postwar America (New York, 1990); and, more recently, Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money (New York, 2012).

20 For an introduction to the literature about Italy, see Mainoni, Patrizia, “Finanza pubblica e fiscalità nell'Italia centro-settentrionale fra XIII e XV secolo,” Studi storici 40, no. 2 (1999): 449–70Google Scholar. For an assessment of the overall economic effects of public indebtedness, see Caferro, William P., “Warfare and Economy in Renaissance Italy, 1350–1450,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 39, no. 2 (2008): 178–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Kirshner, Julius and Klerman, Jacob, “The Seven Percent Fund of Renaissance Florence,” in Marriage, Dowry and Citizenship in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Toronto, 2015), 114–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, MA, 1994); Giovanni Ciappelli, Fisco e società a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Rome, 2009).

22 For a brief introduction and relevant bibliography, see Luciano Pezzolo, “The Venetian Government Debt, 1350–1650,” in Urban Public Debts: Urban Government and the Market for Annuities in Western Europe (14th–18th centuries), ed. M. Boone, K. Davids, and P. Janssens (Turnhout, Belgium, 2003), 61–75. For a broad account of credit institutions both public and private, see Reinhold C. Mueller and Frederic Chapin Lane, The Venetian Money Market: Banks, Panics, and the Public Debt, 1200–1500 (Baltimore, 1997).

23 This is pointed out clearly in Anthony Molho, “Tre città-stato e i loro debiti pubblici: Quesiti e ipotesi sulla storia di Firenze, Genova e Venezia,” in Firenze nel Quattrocento I: Politica e fiscalità (Rome, 2006), 71–95.

24 For a general study, see Sieveking, Studio sulle finanze. On the fifteenth century, when the Genoese had already had 150 or more years to accustom themselves to this new form of wealth, see Heers, Gênes au XVe siècle, 97–192.

25 For a single family, see Yoko Kamenaga Anzai, “Attitudes toward Public Debt in Medieval Genoa: The Lomellini Family,” Journal of Medieval History 29, no. 4 (2003): 239–63. For a similar approach, applied to a few selected families, see also Giovanna Petti Balbi, Simon Boccanegra e la Genova del ’300 (Napoli, 1995), 97–136. For a more comprehensive approach, but one that ignores change over time, see Domenico Gioffrè, “La ripartizione delle quote del debito pubblico nella Genova del tardo ’300,” in La storia dei genovesi: Atti del convegno di studi sui ceti dirigenti nelle istituzioni della repubblica di Genova (Genoa, 1982), 139–153.

26 For a more detailed discussion of the nature of the institution, see Jeffrey Miner, “Genoa, Liguria and the Regional Development of Medieval Public Debt,” in New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy, ed. Robert Fredona and Sophus Reinert (Basingstoke, 2018), 1–28.

27 On Genoese taxation, see Domenico Gioffrè, ed., Liber institutionum cabellarum veterum Communis Janue (Milan, 1967).

28 On the history of Genoa in this period, see Steven Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 958–1528 (Chapel Hill, 1996).

29 For an inventory of the surviving fourteenth-century compere records, see Gioffrè, Il debito pubblico genovese. On the usury question and Genoese public finance later in the fourteenth century, see Julius Kirshner, “Conscience and Public Finance: A Questio disputata of John of Legnano on the Public Debt of Genoa,” in Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Edward P. Mahoney (Leiden, 1976), 434–53. A good introduction to the issue of usury and the monti in Florence can be found in the works of Lawrin Armstrong. See especially Usury and Public Debt in Early Renaissance Florence: Lorenzo Ridolfi on the Monte Comune (Toronto, 2003); and “The Politics of Usury in Trecento Florence: The Questio de Monte of Francesco da Empoli,” Mediaeval Studies 61 (1999): 1–44.

30 For the creation, see Manoscritti, Membranaceo VII, 1r, ASG; for the first contribution, Compere e mutui 1018, 187v, ASG.

31 Michel Balard, “A propos de la bataille du Bosphore: L'expédition génoise de Paganino Doria à Constantinople (1351–1352),” Travaux et mémoires 4 (1970): 432.

32 Compere e mutui 1159, 19r, ASG.

33 Compere e mutui 1159, 241v.

34 For the agreement, see Compere e mutui 1159, 7v; for some examples of the transfers, Compere e mutui 975, 3r, 7r, 8r, 10r, 13r, ASG.

35 The treatise has been edited based on four surviving manuscripts in Alonzo M. Hamelin, ed., Un traité de morale économique au XIVe siècle: le Tractatus de usuris de Maître Alexandre d'Alexandrie (Louvain, 1962). However, both the edition and the printing are faulty and cannot be completely relied upon. The Latin text of the treatise, emended where necessary, will be provided in the notes for consultation.

36 On this genre of writing, see Christopher Schabel, Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages, vol. 2, The Fourteenth Century (Leiden, 2007).

37 For the census contract, see Fabiano Veraja, Le origini della controversia teologica sul contratto di censo nel XIII secolo (Rome, 1960). On the Parisian debate and its context, see Ian P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University c. 1100–1330 (Cambridge, U.K., 2012), 323–45.

38 Hamelin, Un traité, 172–75. The determination is grounded in Luke 19:23: “aliis autem videtur probabilius casum non esse licitum, quia ratione mutui non licet accipere excrescentiam aliquam iuxta illud Lucae: ‘Mutuum date, nihil inde sperantes.’ … Usura est quicquid sorti accidit in mutuo … ratione ergo mutui non licet accipere lucrum, sive excrescentiam.”

39 Hamelin, Un traité, 155: “si aliquis dives habens sibi ad sufficientiam non propter necessitate vitae sed propter avaritiam aut ut ditior fiat tales redditus emit; hoc enim est turpe lucrum ex parte contrahentis.”

40 See, for example, Hamelin, 154–55, 162–63, 166–67.

41 John H. A. Munro, “The Usury Doctrine and Urban Public Finances in Late-Medieval Flanders (1220–1550): Rentes (Annuities), Excise Taxes, and Income Transfers from the Poor to the Rich,” in La fiscalità nell'economia Europea secc. XIII–XVIII: Fiscal Systems in the European Economy from the 13th to the 18th Centuries, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence, 2007), 973–1026; see also James Tracy, “On the Dual Origins of Long-Term Urban Debt in Medieval Europe,” in Boone, Davids, and Janssens, Urban Public Debts, 13–26.

42 Kirshner, “Conscience and Public Finance,” 450.

43 For an argument against this perspective, see Albert O. Hirschmann, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, 2013), 3–5. Despite challenges, this view remains broadly enough held that it is the perspective explicitly offered by a book claiming to be a textbook on medieval economic thought. See Diana Wood, Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge, U.K., 2002), 4–6.

44 The analysis below owes much of its inspiration to Molho, Marriage Alliance.

45 The data was collected from all surviving registers from 1368. Compere e mutui 379, 380, 381, 586, 1026, 1079, 1100, 1158, ASG.

46 Howell, Commerce before Capitalism, 49–52.

47 Manoscritti, Membranaceo IV, 62v, ASG. In this case, the citation is to the Compere of New San Paolo, and the regulations state explicitly that these are the same protections accorded to the Compere of the Chapter and the Compere of Old San Paolo. Manoscritti, Membranaceo IV, 60v.

48 See Manoscritti, Membranaceo IV, 7r for the Great Venetian Loan in 1350; 28v for the Compera of Corsica in 1347; and 73v for the Compere of New San Paolo. The Compera of Corsica allowed no recourse to capital but allowed seizure of paghe for any crime. See Manoscritti, Membranaceo VII, 22r for the Compera of the Regime; 27r for the Compere of Old and New Gazaria; 71v for the Maona of Cyprus; 27r for the Compere of San Pietro; and 65r for the Compere of Old San Paolo.

49 On the legal nature of compera shares as moveable goods and transfers, see Sieveking, Studio sulle finanze, 1:98–101.

50 Notai antichi 353, no. 9–10, ASG.

51 In the formulation of Robert Lopez, the Italian communes were “essentially governments of the merchants, by the merchants, for the merchants.” Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350 (Cambridge, U.K., 1976), 70.

52 Kedar, Benjamin Z., Merchants in Crisis: Genoese and Venetian Men of Affairs and the Fourteenth-Century Depression (New Haven, 1976), 62–3Google Scholar.

53 Historiae patriae monumenta, vol. 18, Leges genuenses (Torino, 1901), col. 348.

54 On the role of the dowry for urban families, see Molho Marriage Alliance, 11–18. For Genoa, see works by Denise Bezzina and Paola Guglielmotti. On the increasingly endogamous networks of the fourteenth-century commercial elite, see Quentin Van Doosselaere, Commercial Agreements and Social Dynamics in Medieval Genoa (New York, 2009).

55 Denise Bezzina, Artigiani a Genova nei secoli XII–XIII (Florence, 2015), 171–97.

56 For an argument in this regard, see Diane Owen Hughes, “Urban Growth and Family Structure,” Past & Present 66 (1975): 3–28.

57 Contrast Compere e mutui 1020, 105r, ASG, where Alamandria uxor Galeoti Grilli transferred shares “de mandato dicte Alamandrie presente et consenciente dicto Galeoto marito suo … presentibus Ansaldo Maraboto fratre suo et Lodixio Maraboto eius consanguineo,” with 3r where Anthoniotus Erminius transferred shares simply in the presence of witnesses: “de voluntate dicti Anthonioti presentibus Domenicho de Rappallo notario et Georgio Roncto.”

58 Denise Bezzina, “Married Women, Law and Wealth in 14th-Century Genoa,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome-Moyen Âge 130, no. 1 (2018): 121–35. See also Bezzina, “Charting the extrados (Non-Dotal Goods) in Genoa and Liguria in the Mid Twelfth to Thirteenth Centuries,” Journal of Medieval History 44, no. 4 (2018): 422–38.

59 Giacomo Todeschini, Il prezzo della salvezza: Lessici medievali del pensiero economico (Rome, 1994).

60 Alexander of Alessandria determined that an annuity could be sold for less money than the sum of all its future payments by starting with a field, a mill, or a tax in mind: “Alii dicunt et melius quod casus est licitus: Primo enim supponunt quod futuri fructus emi possunt sive percipiendorum fructuum sive iura molendinorum vel pedagiorum.” Hamelin, Un traité, 160. For more examples, see, e.g., 152, 154, 156, 158, 159, 161, 165.

61 See, for example, Hamelin, 167: “pecunia non est vendibilis … sed tamen … in rebus nostris tria bona habemus [scilicet]: mobilia et immobilia et ius in utrisque; et sicut distinguitur mobile et immobile et ius in utrisque, ita ipsum ius vendi potest sicut et mobilia et immobilia. Non ergo venditur ipsa pecunia sed ius percipiendi redditus pecuniales.”

62 Hamelin, 168: “… probant aliqui hunc contractum esse licitum quia licite quis posset hereditarie dare alicui … hoc pacto quod recipiens praedium obligaretur … dare quolibet anno centum solidos danti praedium … et sic mediante emptione venditione pretii talis habet pro centum libris centum solidos quolibet anno; nihil aliud autem differet in conspectus Dei… .”

63 Hamelin, 178–79: “… non emitur pecunia sed tantum ius. Ius autem minus valeat quam res in se et ideo potest emi minori pretio. Tutius enim est incumbere pignori quam in persona agree et eodem modo securius est rem possidere et habere quam [ius] illius rei; propter quod potest vendi ius minori pretio.”

64 Kirshner, Julius, “The Moral Problem of Discounting Genoese Paghe, 1450–1550,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 47 (1977): 109–67Google Scholar. For the opinion itself, see Bartholomaeus de Bosco, Consilia, ed. Franciscus Senarega (Loano, 1620), 416–19.

65 Bosco, 417.

66 Bosco, 418.

67 We should be careful not to flatten the late medieval world into one where the laity is made up of purely “economic” actors who create new practices, while a reactive church engages in purely “intellectual” activity. Lester Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy (Ithaca, 1994).

68 Manoscritti, Membranaceo VII, 18v–21v, ASG.

69 Manoscritti, Membranaceo VII, 19r.

70 Manoscritti, Membranaceo IV, 344r.

71 Manoscritti, Membranaceo VII, 73v.

72 Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 228–70.

73 Jacques Heers, Family Clans in the Middle Ages: A Study of Political and Social Structures in Urban Areas, trans. Barry Herbert (Amsterdam, 1977). On the fabric of the city, see Luciano Grossi Bianchi and Ennio Poleggi, Una città portuale del medioevo: Genova nei secoli X–XVI (Genoa, 1980); Poleggi, “Le contrade delle consorterie nobiliari a Genova tra il XII e il XIII secolo,” Urbanistica, Rivista dell'istituto nazionale di Urbanistica 42–43 (1965): 20; Poleggi and Grossi Bianchi, “Dinamica della proprietà fondiaria e immobiliare a Genova fra ’200 e ’300,” in Investimenti e civiltà urbana secoli XIII–XVIII, ed. Annalisa Guarducci (Florence, 1989), 743–70. For valuable insight into one exemplary consolidation, see Paola Guglielmotti, “Agnacio seu parentella”: La genesi dell'albergo Squarciafico a Genova (1297) (Genoa, 2017).

74 Van Doosselaere, Commercial Agreements.

75 Guglielmotti, “Agnacio seu parentella,” 73–88.

76 Caferro, “Warfare and Economy,” 178–79. For an attempt to put the Florentine experience in broader perspective, see Anthony Molho, “The State and Public Finance: A Hypothesis Based on the History of Late Medieval Florence,” Journal of Modern History 67, suppl. (1995): S97–S135. Edited volumes on the subject have usually produced a series of individual authors working from individual national historiographies, rather than attempts at synthesis. See, for example, the many excellent essays in Boone, Davids, and Janssens, Urban Public Debts.

77 See Tracy, “Dual Origins”; and Munro, “Usury Doctrine.”

78 Molho, Marriage Alliance, 19.

79 Vanessa Harding argues that London's lack of separation between its own credit and its role as overseeing the inheritances of orphaned children of citizens was a “problem” that obscures the “real financial situation” of the city. In a broader perspective, though, the linking of orphans’ property with civic debt looks wholly typical. Harding, “The Crown, the City and the Orphans: The City of London and Its Finances, 1400–1700,” in Boone, Davids, and Janssens, Urban Public Debts, 58.

80 García Marsilla, Juan Vicente, Vivir a crédito en la Valencia medieval: De los orígenes del sistema censal al endeudamiento del municipio (Valencia, 2002), 262Google Scholar, 275. See, in particular, the way widows represented a small number of censal sellers but the second-largest group in terms of the amount of capital. García Marsilla, 207–8.

81 García Marsilla, 262–63

82 Fynn-Paul, Jeff, “Occupation, Family and Inheritance in Fourteenth-Century Barcelona: A Socio-Economic Profile of One of Europe's Earliest Investing Publics,” European History Quarterly 45, no. 3 (2015): 417–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Zuijderduijn, Medieval Capital Markets.