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In Search of a Business Class in Thirteenth-Century Genoa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Robert L. Reynolds
Robert L. Reynolds
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

This paper is in no way a definitive study of classes, especially of the business classes, in the city of Genoa in the thirteenth century. The materials for such a study do exist in the notarial archives and in earlier publications on this and related subjects. Rather, this is a report drawn from “work resumed” and work in its early stages at that.

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Articles
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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 5 , supplement S1 , December 1945 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1945

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References

1 The very mass of the surviving notarial materials, though what remains today is only a remnant of the twelfth-thirteenth century collection, has led many of us who have worked our way into the registers to attempt smaller special studies on one topic or another, and to publish extracts and synopses of some of the originals. Several registers have drawn attention because of the richness of their contents. Notably the two “parts” of the register Januinus de Predono (actually containing chartae from fourteen notaries, in batches dated all the way from 1220 to 1272) have been so treated. This brief paper has much in common with two others, which it joins in the attempt to study from different points of view the business activity of its epoch. Both of these other studies appeared together in Vol. LXIV, Atti della società ligure di storia patria (Genova, 1935), pp. 163–270 and 271–340.Google Scholar They are respectively by Roberto Lopez (since 1939 at Wisconsin, Brooklyn, Columbia, and Yale), “L'Attività economics di Genova nel Marzo 1233 secondo gli atti notarili del tempo” and by Raffaele di Tucci, “Documenti inediti sulla spedizione e sulla Mahona dei genovesi a Ceuta (1234–1237).” For the most recent description of the source materials in Genoa's Archivio Notarile, Archivio di Stato di Genova, see Moresco, M. and Bognetti, Gian Piero, Per l'edizione dei notai liguri del Sec. XII (Documenti e studi per la storia del commercio e del diritto commerciale italiano, eds. Patetta and Chiaudano, Torino, 1938), especially pp. 24 ff.Google Scholar A brief survey of other studies in this field is also given, pp. 13 ff.

2 G. P. Bognetti, who did the research in the volume mentioned in note 1, describes the enterprise, op. cit., pp. 20–3.

3 The Regents of the University of Wisconsin and a “Demobilization Award” of the Social Science Research Council made the research possible. Both agencies were in part motivated by a desire to help me rub off some rust; I am grateful to them for providing the opportunity.

4 Maitland, Frederic W., Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge: University Press, 1887; reprinted 1921), p. 9.Google Scholar

5 In these documents—Jan. de Predono, I, II, ff. 59, 71V, (1253)—we find one of the noble Genoese of the Tartaro family recruiting peasant settlers for the Tartaro fiefs near Syracuse on terms marvelously like American Colonial and nineteenth-century immigration contracts. Cf. V. Vitale, “Genovesi colonizzatori in Sicilia nel secolo XIII,” Giornale storico e letterario delta Liguria, V, 5 ff.

6 The Lomelli as Counts Palatine created on Imperial authority various men as public notaries.—Jan. de Predono, I, II, f. 18 (1253); Jan. de Predono, I, I, f. 52V, 53V, (1252).

7 Genoese had held fiefs since the First Crusade. Cf. Canale, M-G., Nuova istoria delta republica di Genova (Firenze, 1858–1864), I, 106–8.Google Scholar In this series of notes the land in Genoa owned by the Antiocha family is occasionally encountered. For example, Jan. de Predono, I, I, f. 295V (1234), 52V (1252), 192 (1245). Lopez, R., Storia delle Colonie Genovese nel Mediterraneo (Bologna, 1938)Google Scholar, is the standard study for the whole subject; on this particular point cf. pp. 89–92.

8 Pope Innocent IV, 1243–54, heads the list.

9 In the notarial records, just in this short series, we find reflections of all these combinations, involving Malaspina and Gavi Marquises, the Fieschi Counts of Lavagna, Spinola, Guercii, Embroni, the Carreto Marquises of Savona, Della Croce, Porci, Carmadino, Barcha, the Marquises of Bosco, De Castello, Embriaci, Della Volta, Leccanozze, Venti—Jan. de Predono, I, I, ff. 8, 10, 35, 36V, 39 (1252); 75, 75v (1220); 83, 89V (1229); 144, 156, 174, 181 (1237); 189V, 192 (1245); 253V, 257V, 258V (1233); Jan. de Predono I, II, 22V, 25V, 30V (1253).

10 The notary Januinus de Predono himself, some of whose folios survive in various cartularies, but notably for 1253 in the volume Jan. de Predono I, II, ff. 1–94V, did a very large continuous business for these Piacenzans and their customers. Over sixty such men are identifiable in this series alone, many of them large dealers, many of them resident bankers. Guilielmus Lecacorvo was a councilor (?) of the Piacenzan merchants (ff. 67V, 71) and a banking partner of Jacobus Ravaldus bancherius (“Genoese”); he was separately a commercial partner of his fellow townsmen, Leonardus Rozo and Jacomus Diano, buying and selling cambio over all western Europe, investing heavily for overseas ventures and buying and selling wool, spices, cloth, and the like. Cf. note 23 below.

11 A bankers' courier's contract to carry a pouch to Acre to family agents in 1253 (Jan. de Predono I, II, f. 4) is an interesting item. The listing of the hundreds of promises to pay to bearer and to agent, and of the notarized letters requesting agents in distant places to transfer funds, would be too tedious here.

12 Even in the entries of this small part of all the notarial archives these items can be found. In Jan. de Predono, I, I, ff. 20 (Frenchman), 24 (Tournai weaver), 165V (Douai weaver and wife), 138 (businessmen from Lyons), 301 (French weaver lending on security of some rural property), 304 (English papermaker), 265 (Dixemude cloth seller), 305V (French clavonerius to work in Genoa in the shop of a ferrarius from Asti), 312 (Parisian goldbeater).

The lanerii (or at least sixty of them) contracted reciprocally in 1244, for five years, “in nocte non texere pannos nec batere nee batere seu texere facere” (Jan. de Predono, I, I, ff. 322, 323V). Of the sixty, nine were women contracting in their own names. Incidentally, nearly all business affairs of the weavers were husband-wife matters; the wives were joined with their husbands in credit purchases of wool, in rentals of shops, and so on. One of the nine independent woman weavers was “Alda francigena.” Among the men some carried as surnames the names of the towns of their origins. On this basis these towns are identifiable: Cremona (2), Lodi (1), Pavia (3), Ventimiglia (1), Rapallo (2), Provins in Champagne (1).

At the last moment a three-volume study based on the Genoese notarial materials has reached me (February 1946). This has an enormous number of references which expand the topic touched on here, and it throws light on many of the other questions treated in this paper. The second and third volumes contain 1,877 complete transcriptions of notarial documents. The first volume is a monograph on the subject indicated by the title and has a wealth of material upon all aspects of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century commerce. The reference is: Doehaerd, Renée, Les Relations commerciales entre Gênes, la Belgique et l'Outremont, d'après les Archives notariales génoises aux XIIIe et XIVe siécles (Vols. II, III, IV of Etudes d'histoire économique et sociale of the Institut historique belge de Rome, Bruxelles-Rome, 1941).Google Scholar

13 Too numerous to note are the items recording transfers of lands located in all corners of the Genovesato; some notaries filled their registers pretty largely with such business. In a high proportion of cases it is evident that parties resident in Genoa proper were dealing in properties in districts from which, to judge by their surnames, they had removed; frequently such transactions were between kinsmen, some of whom resided in the metropolis, the others in the home town or village.

The way in which families could be noble in two cities at once is most pointedly illustrated (but not in the series of documents chosen for this study, to be sure) by scraps of information about the Richerius and Baraterius families of Nice and Genoa. The large operations and holdings in Genoa of these families in 1190–92 are seen in our published acts of notary Wm. Cassinensis: Hall, Krueger, Reynolds, Notai Liguri del secolo XII, Gugl. Cassinese (2 vols., Torino, 1938)Google Scholar, see Index, II, pp. 321 and 374. In another volume, published in 1939 but not yet available in America, Buonvillano notaio by Eierman and Reynolds, is a Richerius will (f. 116, cartulary of Wm. Cass.) disposing of very rich properties and feudal rights, in Nice, in 1198.

When Nice was again lost to Genoa, an expedition in 1229 to win it back was entrusted to Baraterii and Richerii.—Canale, Nuova istoria, II, 57.

14 Cf. Canale, II, 31–39; 66–67. Reflections of the severe war (civil? party? territorial?) between Genoa and Savona in this epoch can be found in arrangements for ransoms in this series of notaries. Sestri Levanto, kinsmen of a youth captured at sea by a Savona raider, arranged a guarantee of his ransom with a Genoese bank.—Jan. de Predono, I, I, f. 278V; cf. ff. 268, 268V. Of interest to students of the science of faking transfers of combatant merchantmen to neutral “ownership” is a case connected with the same war.—Jan. de Predono, I, I, 278V-279. A galley owned in Voltri, which was on the side of the metropolis, was “sold,” explicitly to fool the enemy, to an Antibes man who was under the neutral Count of Provence. Return of the galley, when the purpose of the deal had been achieved, was specified.

15 In the register entitled “Januinus de Predono, I, II,” a series of folios for 1233 by Enricus de Brolio Notarius is found, ff. 95–137V. In March this notary apparently went to Noli as a member of the staff of the new podestà for the year. Folios 116–137V cover communal official business and much private business, all done in Noli. The government was Genoa's in miniature. The “patrician” families had members in the council, had houses with the characteristic fighting towers, owned big and small ships, invested large individual sums in the overseas trade, and so on.

16 Judging solely by what their business entries show to have been their interests (i.e., by the evidence that shows them behaving in the same fashion as identifiable Genoese nobles), these were leading patricians in Noli in 1233: Ranaldus de Ranaldo, head of the house of the Ranaldi, Phylionus Vernandus, Wilielmus Avarenus senior, Jacobus Pellacia, Sigembaldus de Verdanna, and the De Guasco, De Puteo, De Bernizono, Carentius, Mabelea, De Sardo, Cassicius, De Castro, De Cagnacio, De Burgaro, De Mari, and Rubeus families. There is a strong possibility that coincidence and the commonplaceness of names of this sort account for the fact that the last three Nolese patrician families had names high in Genoese society, De Burgaro or De Bulgaro, De Mari, Rubeus (Delia Volta); but on the other hand the city was always intimately close to the metropolis, being squeezed uncomfortably between bigger Albenga and Savona, which were perennially unloyal, on the principle of smaller and smaller fleas, which was so vital a factor in Italian politics!

17 Cf. footnote 9 above.

18 One out of a rich series of entries touching the official life of such communities, Jan. de Predono, I, I, f. 292V. Also, ibid., ff. 4V (Nervi), 5v (Bisagno valley), 36 (Sestri Ponente); 59 (Bisagno valley), 61V (Rapallo and Plecania), 63 (same, list ot all citizens present to hire a town syndic), 82–82V and 117–134V (notary functions as official notary of the podestà or the Iudex, in Rapallo, in 1221), 90 (Genoese consul resident at court of a Count of Lavagna), 93V (Pontremulo men), 100 (Voltri), 112V (Corvaria? Cervaria?), 156V (representatives of a group of valley villages back of Sestri Ponente, near Varese, elect a rettore-podestà), 184V (Bisagno valley), 161V (Noli). Cf. Ferretto, Documenti sulle relazioni tra Alba e Genova, Bib. Soc. stor. subalpina, Vol. XXIII, L., 1 and Documenti Genovese di Novi e Valle Scrivia, Bib. Soc. stor. subalpina, XLI, LVII, for other items.

19 The Florentines, Piacenzans (cf. note 10 above), Parmese, and other Lombards and Tuscans were in Genoa in great numbers, constantly. For interesting bits on more exotic characters: two Messina burgenses, one a Girgenti man, the other a Catalan whose father had been a Lucchese (sic), holding an account in the bank of one of Genoa's Piacenzans (Jan. de Predono, I, II, f. 57V); the letter from Genoa's podestà to the Temple Preceptor at Montpellier requesting delivery of debt instruments to four Genoese nobles (Embriaci, Scoti), who had made large loans on those instruments to Guy de Montfort (I take it this De Montfort was the brother of the elder Simon, and uncle to the Earl of Leicester. If so he was killed in the Albigensian Crusade in 1228. This letter is for 1237).—Jan. de Predono, I, I, f. 168.

20 An example noted above, footnote II.

21 Notably the study by Roberto, (S., Robert) Lopez, , Genova marinara del Duecento, Benedetto Zaccaria (Messina-Milano, 1933).Google Scholar Also Belgrano, L. T., Documenti inedite riguardanti le due crociate di S. Ludovico IX re di Francia (Genova, 1859).Google Scholar

22 Jan. de Predono, I, I, f. 192 (1245). The business aspects of the affair (collection until £500 of Parma had been raised) were handled by a banking consortium headed by the Pinelli bank.

23 The Genoese banker, Jacobus Ravaldus, had other partners for other aspects of his business, as in handling cambio on Champagne for £1,365 tournois owed by the French queen (Jan. de Predono, I, II, f. 3v). Likewise the very large Piacenzan operator, Guil. Lecacorvo, had other partners for other affairs (cf. note 10 above). But it is apparent that they jointly administered the societas of the three Fieschi Counts of Lavagna, Innocent's nephews. Investments for Safi, Ultramare, Spain, and Tunis, totaling £1,250, were made in a few days, on the account of the Fieschi societas, the traveling partners all being members of the highest Genoese society: Grimaldi, Camilla, Marino, Sardena, Usodimare, Di Nigro, and Malloni. Jan. de Predono, I, II, ff. 31V, 32V, 35, 35V, and 81v. Cf. Lopez, “L'Attività economica … 1253,” op. cit., p. 192, and pp. 215–16. The connections between the Ravaldus bank and the activities of one of the nephews, Lord Tedisio de Fiesco, in matters of collations and monastic incomes can be seen in the same register, ff. 18V, 21, 25V, 34, and Jan. de Predono I, I, f. 52. Other Fieschi business, ibid., ff. 36V, 43V, 192V.

24 The notarial materials on the Ceuta maona are published, with comment, by Raffaele di Tucci, op. cit. at note 1 above.

25 A full-dress study of the Genoese patriciate could be made from the registers. Naturally, in this single paragraph the activities of many different nobles, revealed in their wills, estate inventories, marriage contracts, estate settlements, and so on, are run into a composite picture. Interesting documents supporting some of the main statements here, some of them inventories post mortem and what we should call “probate” settlements, are found in Jan. de Predono I, I, ff. 15; 31V (noble's estate included a lawbook and a Decrclale); 36V (noble castellani of Palodi); 39 (same for Bonifacio in Corsica); 80 (lands left to a monastery); 119V (series of Genoese nobles who had served as podestà. of Rapallo in the period 1210–20); 89V (noble's claim to castle Aimelii); 96V and 97V (contract of a Genoese noble, Guil. Niger Embriaco to serve as podestà of Alba, 1230); 98V (Genoese noble had been podestà of Voltri); 105 (a Delia Volta family settlement full of items showing types of properties); 141 (nobles of the Guercii family amicably divide family interests, standing on the terrace over looking their baths); 189V (official report on state of defenses in the Levanto districts, 1245, by noble commissioners acting under city laws); 187 (role of the monks of the monastery of S. Andrea of Sesto shows noble Genoese were among the brothers). In a series of acts for 1233, ff. 249–250V, 193–210V, 231–-248V, 251–251V, is concentrated the largest volume of noblemen's overseas business contracts to be found in any register, running to fifty or more per day, and for extraordinary gross sums; 260–261V (Della Croce family estates divided); 300 (Porcelli assets divided); 273V (Malocelli spinster's will); 313V (Fornaria noblewoman's bequests to captives, etc.); 322V, 365V, 367, 368, 369, 373 (noble nuns of S. Andrea de Porta, bearing many of the city's most illustrious names—Di Castello, Grillo, Ceba, Tonello, Bulgaro, Lercario, Rubio—manage convent business). Cf. L. T. Belgrano, Della vita privata dei genovesi, Atti della Soc. Lig., Vol. IV.

26 The series in Di Tucci, op. cit., esp. pp. 282–84; 285–316, is partly drawn from the documents covered in this essay. Many of the entries do show citizens hiring substitutes, some of them non-Genoese.

27 Jan. de Predono, I, I, 189V, report on Levanto garrisons, showing a sartor, serving as sergeant, had gone A.W.O.L.!

28 Now that the war is over, it is to be hoped that the Belgian student of Medieval slavery, Charles Verlinden, who in 1938 minutely examined the Genoese archives for material on the subject, will publish his work.

29 Abstinence pledges: Jan. de Predono, I, II, ff. 4, 8v; Jan. de Predono, I, I, f. 100.

30 A woman baker, panicogola, brought bigamy charges against her Sardinian (?) man, while a wood turner was under an identical accusation by his wife. Particulars of the complaints and the acquittals: Jan. de Predono, I, I, f. 140.

31 I make up here this word estatus in an effort, which may not be happy, to fuse back together as they once were in English the now distinct concepts covered by our terms “state,” “estate,” and “status.”

32 Judices and notaries who were apparently noble, bearing important names: Not. Ingo Gontardus, Not. Bart. Fornarius, Paganus de Cucurno iudex (Lavagna comital family name), Nicola de Turre iudex, Vivaldus de Cruce Not.

33 In a massive series of contracts, all through the registers Matteo de Predono and Jan. de Predono, I, I, ff. 304–25 and 364–77, all by the hand of the notary who chiefly handled his business, Matteo himself, can be seen the methods of operation of Magister Otto physicus Cremonensis, who was manifestly a loanshark, as well as a dealer in syrups and pills and university educated(?, the title magister would seem to indicate it!). I can count at least nine fishy “sea-loans” and several arbitral “settlements out of court” of debts owed him, one of which explicitly was to be “not according to the letter of the law”! Frequently contracts for money owed him were “canceled by wish of the parties.” The series ends up (Jan. de Predono, I, I, f. 374) with his nomination of proctors to defend him at the Court of the Legate against certain charges there brought by the Archpriest of Nervi; the charges are not specified but can be suspected. Many of his debtors were women, one was a cleric.

34 Petrus Campanerius draperius had thirty-four barrels of wine in storage in 1245.—Jan. de Predono, I, I, f. 161. Cf. Lopez, Studi, p. 112.