5

On the Black Sea

The regions along the Black Sea had been important trade areas for the Genoese for centuries, in part because they were situated on the Silk Road that connected Genoa to Asia. When San Giorgio took possession of several trading posts and cities on the Black Sea in the middle of the fifteenth century, trade was fading because of Ottoman pressure. This situation and the contemporary massive Genoese economic presence and business in the Iberian Peninsula originated the view of a shift of Genoese investments from the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea to the Atlantic between the fifteenth and the early sixteenth centuries.¹

The Genoese were actively involved in the east in numerous businesses, including slavery, which remained very profitable until the late fifteenth century. Tana and Caffa (today Feodosia), the latter of which remained under Genoese rule until 1475, were the main slave markets. The Genoese had traded extensively in the Black Sea in enslaved people for centuries before San Giorgio took control of this area in 1453. These people were initially Circassians, then from the late fourteenth century usually Tatars.² In recent years the increased focus on the history of slavery has fueled studies of Genoese traders and their involvement in this business. Interestingly, some studies are looking at the possibility that Genoese transplanted capital and economic institutions from the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean to the Atlantic, where they were among the first to initiate the transatlantic slave trade.³

Certainly, some Genoese investors in slavery kept their money in San Giorgio’s bank, and possibly San Giorgio as a bank favored the transfer of money to the Iberian Peninsula and later the Atlantic. As will be shown later (§ 5.3), San Giorgio attacked Catholic religious authorities it deemed insufficiently supportive of slavery. The extension of the Genoese involvement in slavery, however, has not been studied and is not part of this chapter, which looks at San Giorgio’s territories in the Black Sea. Like San Giorgio’s other territories, those in the Black Sea contributed to its enduring fame in northern Europe and the Atlantic as a private corporation that controlled land. This is the story told here.

5.1. A Multifaceted Landscape

A stylized castle frequently appears on medieval and early modern Genoese coins.⁴ In the city of Caffa, one of the main Genoese trading posts along the shores of the Black Sea on the Crimean peninsula, archaeologists have found coins with a Genoese castle (called castrum) on one side and on the other the Thamga—the dynastic monogram of the Tatars of the Golden Horde of Crimea.⁵ Caffa was one of the most important trading posts on the Black Sea and a node for trade with the east, toward India and China.⁶ The Genoese found there Venetians, Ruthenians, Bulgarians, Moldavians, Tatars (from the Golden Horde of Hagi Giraj), Armenians, Greek, Jews, Syrians, Circassians, Zikhs (from the northern Caucasus), Adyghe, Abkhazians (from Sevastopol, now Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia), Georgians, and Mingrelians (a subgroup of Georgians). Probably there were also Goths, an ancient population. Among the Genoese, there were various groups: some were born there, others naturalized, others were there only temporarily.⁷ In the middle of the fifteenth century, the city was bounded by lands populated by the Tatars of Khan Hacı Giray, which were attacked by the Ottoman armies of Mehmed II.

In previous decades, the Genoese had prohibited the minting of coins in areas far from their eastern Mediterranean dominions, to avoid unauthorized local coins.⁸ During the Middle Ages and the early modern period, much like today, sovereign powers very jealously guaranteed the minting of coins. Counterfeiters were charged with the “crime of injuring sovereignty” (crimen laesae maiestatis), and the central mint strictly controlled production of coins. Over time, however, since the Genoese wanted to guarantee the circulation of coins among populations in far-flung places in the east, they founded a number of mints in Caffa.⁹

The Genoese ruled within the city walls of Caffa and outside through a network of trading posts on the Black Sea and the Azov Sea. Along the caravan routes that penetrated the hinterland toward the Levant was a wide territory populated by people with a very different concept of territorial power from the Genoese. Here, the Genoese had no territorial power. In the areas at the boundaries between their trading posts along the shore and the hinterland, different territorial conceptions—many more than those found in Liguria—merged, collided, and interacted. Not only did more populations cohabit in Crimea, but the Tatars—the largest group—were nomadic, traveling widely over land they did not control.¹⁰ A clue to the variety of territorial conceptions is provided by the way the Genoese, translating Tatar terms into Latin or the vernacular, changed their meaning. Treaties—called jaligs—existed between the Tatars and Genoese and indicated that the Genoese should pay a tribute. Ancient Genoese sources, however, defined this tribute as a gift (exenia), probably to avoid recognizing a subject relationship. After the second half of the fourteenth century, as the Tatars became progressively weaker, the Genoese downplayed these treaties and payments (regalie) even more.¹¹

The Thamga appeared on Genoese coins exchanged in Crimea from the late fourteenth century on, when the Golden Horde prospered under the dynasty of Khan Hacı Giray.¹² Symbols of two republics or two Christian princes rarely coexisted on one coin. It happened, rarely, when a political power took the signory of another power. In Genoa, for instance, it occurred between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, under the external French and Milanese dominions.¹³ Probably the Genoese–Tatar coin could be minted in Caffa because Genoese and Tatars had a different concept of sovereign power and using the symbols of the two powers increased the number of people who trusted the currency, facilitating its circulation. Between the 1450s and the 1470s, coins minted in Caffa changed their symbols. The Thamga of the Tatars remained on one face; on the other face, instead of the castle, was the image of Saint George fighting a dragon, the symbol of the Casa di San Giorgio. At that point, San Giorgio began to deal with these territories differently from the way the Commune had.

Along with Caffa in 1453, San Giorgio also took over Soldaia (Sudak, in Crimea), Cembalo (Balaklava, now a neighborhood of Sevastopol in Crimea), Samastri (Amasra, now in Turkey), and trading posts including Gozia, Vosporo (Kerch), Copa (Slavjansk na Kubani in Russia), Sevastopol (Sukhumi, in Abkhazia), Trebisonda (Trabzon in Turkey), Sinope (Sinop, in Turkey) and Tana (Azov, on the Azov Sea). San Giorgio’s fifteenth-century sources called all these places Caffa and the Mare Maius (Major Sea). During the fourteenth century, this area was defined as Gazaria, and the office that ruled over the area was the Officium Gazariae, founded in 1313–14. It managed trade, planned cities such as Caffa, and was represented at the Commune’s most important meetings.¹⁴ Other offices such as the Officium Romaniae, whose functions still remain unknown, collaborated with this office. Archival material related to these offices has been preserved randomly. Territorial possessions and trading posts were used for trading with the hinterland, but there were also important outposts on the Black Sea and the Azov Sea. While San Giorgio’s territorial power here did not last long, the cultural significance, richness, and extent of these areas were important.¹⁵

The Genoese remained in Crimea until 1475, although the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II captured the trading posts outside the peninsula sooner. Samastri, the largest of the trading posts, on the shores of what is now Turkey, fell to the Ottomans in 1461. Genoese lived in and ruled each of these trading posts, cities, fortresses, and areas in quite different ways. In Crimea they were very rooted, while in other areas their cohabitation with different populations and their occupation and control of territories were more difficult. Culturally very diverse, at the boundaries with the territories of the Golden Horde of Tatars, in Caffa there were Genoese living together with Armenians, Greek, Jews, Russians, and Tatars.

Even before San Giorgio’s acquisition of Crimea, various offices made up the Genoese administration in Caffa. Their names and functions mirrored those of the Commune—for example, the Officium Monetae, Officium Mercantiae, and Officium Misericordiae. When San Giorgio took over, it absorbed some of these offices. In the second half of the fifteenth century, San Giorgio’s outposts in these areas had changed compared with the previous centuries. Classical ruins of the Roman colonies were preserved in Samastri. The Byzantines had reused the structures and materials of these colonies, but the Genoese inhabited a smaller area,¹⁶ reusing just some of the ancient streets, bridges, and buildings.¹⁷ Less information survives on the minor outposts. Sometimes the sources do not even mention if they were inhabited; they appear as a landscape at the end of the world: finis terrae. Sources are so scattered that scholars are sometimes unsure if an outpost existed or if a garrison or merchants visited it. At Sevastopol, for instance, there is no information until 1455, when the Abkhazians plundered the area. If we did not have information about the salary of the consul in 1475, we could question whether anyone lived there.¹⁸ The trading posts along the coast, often placed on rocks or protected by defensive walls, were plundered by enemies of the Genoese, then inhabited again by a small garrison sent by San Giorgio. Nobody from the administration of San Giorgio wanted to leave Genoa to travel to these places.¹⁹ Although at times uninhabited, some had histories that stretched back to classical antiquity, visible in the architectural structures. Some were placed at the crossroads of ancient maritime routes. We do not know whether this earlier importance is why the Genoese established their trading posts there.

The difference between these minor trading posts and the major hubs—Sudak with its powerful walls, or Caffa, a large, densely inhabited city—was not only the size of the population or the urban structure and logistics; it was the type of territorial power San Giorgio had over these territories (see Map 4.3). San Giorgio did not exercise territorial power over Vosporo, Copa, Sevastopol, Trebisonda, Sinop, and Tana. San Giorgio’s archives and those of the Commune did not preserve for these areas sources with formulas such as plena iurisdictio, ius gladii, and merum et mixtum imperium. Three of these areas—Copa, Sevastopol, and Trebisonda—were near the Ottomans, in what is now Turkey. Vosporus was in Crimea; and in Tana, the most distant outpost, on the Azov Sea, the Genoese had a consulate, and competition—a Venetian trading post. Among the areas in close contact with the Ottomans, only on Samastri did Genoese have the plena iurisdictio.

When San Giorgio took over the territories in the Black Sea in 1453, Mehmed II had already taken Constantinople. Pera (Galata), a Genoese neighbor in northern Constantinople, had also fallen into Ottoman hands. In the first decades after the Ottoman takeover, the Genoese lost their administrative power in Galata, but continued to trade, as shown by the many notarial deeds written there.²⁰ Mehmed imposed a treaty stating that the Genoese could maintain their properties and goods. As in many other Christian enclaves in the Ottoman Empire, Genoese were not permitted to build Christian churches, but Christian practices and rituals were tolerated.²¹

During the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the doge, Pietro Campofregoso, encountered various problems.²² He had ties with the poorer part of the populares, the artisans, and had started attacking the nobles and San Giorgio. To support the artisans, he cancelled some of the gabelle. A series of meetings to discuss San Giorgio’s acquisition of Caffa and the trading posts on the Black Sea began on November 12, 1453. During a debate in a meeting of 275 creditors of San Giorgio, the chancellor introduced the possibility, describing it as an extraordinary event. The transfer of territories was extraneous, he wrote, to San Giorgio’s business (balia).²³ Some of the large creditors of San Giorgio—such as Dorino Grimaldi, Barnaba Vivaldi, Antonio Lomellino, Luciano Grimaldi, and Giovanni Giustiniano—and lawyers such as Battista de Goano also spoke in the assembly. Their arguments were similar: it was necessary that San Giorgio take Caffa. Physician Antonio da Novi used an interesting metaphor, arguing that physicians sometimes had to use a strong medication to heal their patients; similarly, San Giorgio could take control of Caffa.²⁴

The meeting record states that there was no power in the body of the Genoese Republic more suited to the task than San Giorgio.²⁵ Only 27 creditors voted against the proposal, and San Giorgio acquired the iurisdictio, the merum et mistum imperium, and the gladii potestas over all Genoese territories in the Black Sea. The contract was written on November 15, a few days after the meetings began. The introduction of the contract contained similar justifications as those in the meeting record, but with more details. It mentioned some of the areas under San Giorgio’s iurisdictio, that is, Caffa, Soldaia, Samastri, and Cembalo. The other places were described only as “the other cities and lands which the Commune possesses in the various regions of Ponto.”²⁶ The text explained that Mehmed II had built the fort of Rumeli Hisari (1452) close to Constantinople, opposite the older fort of Anadolu Hisari on the other shore of the Bosphorus, and controlled the channel.²⁷ Rumeli Hisari had allowed Mehmed II to weaken and conquer Constantinople, preventing the help that could have come from the Black Sea. No fleet, the contract continued, could cross the Bosphorus without great peril. Since San Giorgio was the body that could most help the Commune in this situation, and since the meetings had decided to follow the advice of lawyers Andrea de Bengassio, Battista de Goano, and Luciano Grimaldi, it had decided to place these territories under San Giorgio’s power. The second part of the contract established powers and rights of San Giorgio over territories: the iurisdictio, the merum et mistum imperium, and the gladii potestas. Unlike its acquisition of Famagusta in 1447, San Giorgio took the territories forever. In addition to Caffa, the contract named, without specifically identifying, other urban settlements—civitates (large cities), urbes (cities), terra (lands), oppida (towns), castella (castles), and fortilia (fortresses)—and land resources, including forests, ports, rivers, lakes, and hunting and fishing areas.

The Black Sea’s geographic landscape and natural resources were very diverse, the most diverse of San Giorgio’s territories. San Giorgio also acquired the power to issue fines and punishments against criminals, a power defined and obtained through a derogation of the regulae, the laws of the Commune, and by modifying the contract of Famagusta, which did not state it.²⁸ For the acquisition of Famagusta—as mentioned—the only derogation to the regulae related to the law called de non alienando castra, “on the non-alienation of castles,” which prohibited the modification of territories. This derogation was also applied in the Caffa contract, which also stated that San Giorgio acquired any rights that the Commune had contracted with the local populations. The Commune could not establish any future connection with anybody in the same area; from that moment onward, San Giorgio’s eight protettori would have the last word in any local conflict. The doge (the Commune’s highest position) could only offer advice and help. The contract also abolished the Officium Romaniae, passing all its powers to San Giorgio.²⁹

The Genoese quickly perceived the Ottoman’s arrival in the Black Sea as a threat, knowing that Caffa was Mehmed II’s next objective. San Giorgio tried to build an alliance with the Tatars, but failed, as they already had an agreement with the Ottomans. The agreement stated that if the Ottomans occupied Caffa, the Tatars would take the city, while the Ottomans would take all the Genoese as slaves. Mehmed’s expedition stopped at the walls of Caffa. From then on, San Giorgio paid a tribute to the khan of the Tatars.³⁰ In the following weeks and months, many inhabitants left Caffa, both because of the possible Ottoman arrival and because they feared San Giorgio. Many Genoese feared that San Giorgio’s administration would review the city’s account books and take action against those who had broken the law. Some private tax collectors—the so-called gabellotti—had not taken adequate care with their accounts, and some had collected more taxes than they were permitted. Some left Caffa to live in nearby lands inhabited by the Tatars, but San Giorgio granted a general amnesty to whoever wanted to re-enter the city.³¹

The efforts to preserve Caffa and the territories in the Black Sea were not just local matters. Between 1455 and 1456, San Giorgio sent ambassadors to Rome to set up a system and receive resources. These maneuvers—as we will see—can be considered part of the Crusade to reconquer Christian dominions in the Aegean Sea. To better defend Caffa, the Genoese sent representatives to Rome to speak with the pope and Genoese cardinals. Battista de Goano and Dorino Grimaldi often went there, and theology master and Servite friar, Deodato Boccone, also bishop of Ajaccio in Corsica, remained in Rome permanently.³² In April 1455, pope Callixtus III began a campaign to sell indulgences and collect the decima (taxation for the Church) in the Ligurian bishoprics and those nearby such as Luni, Tortona, Alba, Aqui, and Asti. Preachers sent by San Giorgio collected funds and gave them to San Giorgio.³³ During the same month, Cardinal Fieschi named 50 clerics to collect indulgences, which the pope later reduced to 23.³⁴ Between the end of 1455 and the beginning of the following year, the pope issued two bulls authorizing the San Giorgio protettori to take all the revenues from selling indulgences, if they used it to protect Caffa.³⁵ In March 1456, Callixtus III also asked the duke of Milan and the marquis of Monferrato to give their decime to San Giorgio.³⁶

For the majority of the Genoese, it was clear at that point that San Giorgio ruled the Black Sea. We cannot be entirely certain that the other powers of the Italian peninsula also understood the double power now in Genoa, but we can infer how they perceived the relationship between the Commune and San Giorgio by looking at the rituals and practices of political representation. The papal court and those of Milan, Florence, and Venice addressed San Giorgio and the Commune separately in their correspondence and through their ambassadors. San Giorgio and the Commune, meanwhile, each sent their own representatives to these courts. At least at the court of the Sforza in Milan, from the middle of the 1460s, the difference between the Commune and San Giorgio was probably clear, because the Sforzas took the signory of Genoa and—as we will see—had the opportunity to learn how San Giorgio functioned.³⁷ Other states probably did not have the same knowledge: sometimes documents produced outside Genoa referred to San Giorgio’s territories in the Black Sea simply as Genoese territories. For example, Callixtus III in the letters to Francesco Sforza and to the marquis of Monferrato in March 1456 mentioned the city of Caffa generically as subjected to Genoese dominion (“subditam dominio januensi”).³⁸

As the Ottoman crisis worsened, San Giorgio appears in external sources as a specific institution separate from the Commune of Genoa. It is likely that San Giorgio as an institution was known by the people living in the Black Sea. The preachers sent there to collect the indulgences and the decime carried San Giorgio’s banner, created by painters Gasperino dell’Acqua, Antonio da Bologna, and Giovanni da Pavia for the preacher Odoardo de Servi.³⁹ In Rome, San Giorgio’s role emerged clearly in 1456 when a group of Genoese tried to create a financial plan to raise resources for Caffa that had implications for the legal discussions around usury, becoming a case that theologians cited in the debate about whether Christians could speculate on shares of debt. Scholars have not studied it, however, from the perspective of the history of San Giorgio and its territorial dominions.

One of the goals of Battista de Goano’s embassy and of the advocacy of Cardinal Fieschi and of Deodato Boccone was to get Callixtus III to issue a bull granting San Giorgio a special privilege. The bull—dated May 12, 1456—stated that San Giorgio could not pay the pagae of 1455 without any new resources. San Giorgio had asked the Commune to use the tax on the loca, the paga floreni, instead of paying it to the Commune, as it normally would. The Commune accepted, but no pagae floreni were available for the next ten years. Typically, when the Commune was in need, it asked San Giorgio for money, giving it the paga floreni in advance, but now only the pagae of 1464, 1465, and 1466 were available. The bull gave San Giorgio permission to undertake two financial operations: authorizing the protettori of San Giorgio to take the paga floreni of 1464, 1465, and 1466 and to sell them in advance, that is, ten years earlier in 1456.

Jacques Heers downplayed the importance of this, maintaining that, as had occurred at other times, all that was happening was that San Giorgio took the paga floreni because it had advanced money to the Commune.⁴⁰ However, if we focus on the context of the bull, it is possible to explain the acquisition of the paga floreni differently.

Ten years was a long period, and San Giorgio asked the pope for permission to sell the pagae at a discount on the market. It is unclear whether the protettori wanted to sell new pagae and offer them on the market at the best offer, or whether they wanted to sell the paga floreni—the tax—of 1464, 1465, and 1466 at a discount (i.e., sell the options in advance), offering buyers a cash sum after ten years.⁴¹ Centuries later, in 1751, when San Giorgio wanted to shorten the length of time between when pagae were issued and paid, it encouraged the study of old cases, asking a group of experts to explore the question of how and when the delays on the pagae had started.⁴² They concluded that in 1456, San Giorgio had not sold either the pagae or the paga floreni at a discount. Instead, they said that San Giorgio—thanks to the papal bull of Callixtus III—designed matters so that the owners of the loca, that is San Giorgio’s creditors, bore all the uncertainty of the financial maneuver. The pagae of these loca matured slowly over ten years and then, starting in 1464, San Giorgio no longer offered the standard 4%, but only 3.1%, using the papal bull as justification. Since they did not find a document that proved that the pagae had been discounted, they concluded that San Giorgio had never proposed such a transaction. They were unable to clarify whether the financial operation mentioned in the papal bull had occurred, or whether no pagae had been discounted.

The papal bull maintained that purchasing pagae at a discount made people worry about whether they were permitted to sell, acquire, or exchange these pagae.⁴³ Scholars so far have failed to discover any proof of such troubled consciences,⁴⁴ something we will look into further. Why did the papal bull authorize the financial operation? This is a question that no scholar has so far considered. The bull’s text mentioned that San Giorgio sent supplicants to Rome who explained how Mehmed II had treated Caffa and how San Giorgio wanted to defend the city. It mentioned San Giorgio’s two financial requests and that it was well known that “the government and the defense of this city [Caffa] pertained to this Office [San Giorgio].”⁴⁵ The terms “government” and “defense” (regimen and defensio) referred to the territorial powers, rights, and duties San Giorgio acquired over Caffa and other territories of the Black Sea when it signed the contract with the Commune.

Callixtus III issued the permission to conduct a financial operation notwithstanding the usury law, because San Giorgio held territorial power. This is the most relevant aspect of the bull, which scholarship has overlooked. It is a text that signals a change in the attitude of the Roman Curia, which became more evident in the following decades when papal offices clearly acknowledged San Giorgio’s iurisdictio over territories.⁴⁶

5.2. Usury

The matter of discounting the pagae was connected to San Giorgio’s territorial power not just when the Black Sea territories became part of its dominions in the 1450s, but later when San Giorgio lost them and tried to get the papacy to help it reconquer them. These attempts, as will be shown in the next paragraph, continued until the 1480s.

If one focuses—as Julius Kirshner did—on earlier or later periods far from San Giorgio’s entanglements with territorial power, the study of the discount of the pagae reveals other interesting aspects related to the history of usury. The usury issues connected to San Giorgio’s financial shares are complex, but it is important to know that Catholic laws prohibited transactions of financial shares as a way of earning money without laboring. Despite this, in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Genoa, as we have seen, traders could make money on financial shares by smartly using risk and time.

In 1446, the monastery of San Niccolò del Boschetto in Genoa requested Antoninus, archbishop of Florence, later declared a saint, to write a legal opinion on the discount of the pagae.⁴⁷ He avoided defining the pagae as currency and concluded that such a financial transaction was legitimate when work (labor) and danger (periculum) were at stake. This could happen if a seller was in extreme need and had to sell the pagae or when a purchaser could lose their pagae in the event of San Giorgio’s financial default, or if they had to spend a great deal of effort to acquire pagae.⁴⁸ Since the end of the fifteenth century, theologians have analyzed the bulls of Callixtus III and Sixtus IV as a way to understand the illicitness, under Church law, of financial speculation. Theologians no longer dealt with the territorial role of San Giorgio, probably because San Giorgio lost its territories after 1562 and because the debate became wider and more theoretical. It remains relevant, however, because some of the main figures who took positions on these subjects were prominent in the events connected to San Giorgio’s history.

At the end of the fifteenth century, most theologians considered the practice of discounting pagae to be licit, while those in the second half of the sixteenth century, during the Reformation, opposed it.⁴⁹ Among the first group, Silvestro Mazzolino (ca. 1456–1523) had a particularly detailed knowledge of Callixtus III’s and Sixtus IV’s bulls. Born in Savona, Mazzolino entered the Dominicans in Genoa. In 1515, during the pontificate of Leo X, he became master of the sacred apostolic palace in Rome and was one of the most respected theologians of the time. In his Summa summarum he offered a legal opinion in favor of discounting the pagae, but admitted that this was true only within a context framed by the papal bulls of 1456 and 1479. In an argument based on civil law, he considered licit only the purchase of the pagae San Giorgio had issued on the market, not those traded on the secondary market (by far the more widespread transactions).⁵⁰

Quoting Baldo degli Ubaldi, Mazzolino stated that a civitas like Genoa, a community that exercised the law, did not recognize any superior power (civitas superiorem non recognoscent) and thus—like the emperor ruling the world—could rule a region. He did not refer to the territorial power of San Giorgio, which was mentioned in the bull; he used only the term “Genoa.”⁵¹ Another Ligurian theologian, Giovanni Cagnazzo da Taggia (active 1470–1522), arrived at the same conclusion, but he was convinced that it made no sense to distinguish between private individuals’ purchase of pagae from San Giorgio and a transaction among private individuals in the secondary market. Cagnazzo da Taggia maintained that Mazzolino’s argument was wrong, since during his life there had been no distinctions between the types of transactions.⁵² The famous theologian Tommaso de Vio, who was among the first to oppose Luther, thought that discounting the pagae was licit and focused more on the sources of the pagae: the loca. De Vio maintained that the purchaser did not buy the pagae, but rather loca, which then gave him the right to collect the pagae. Thus, according to De Vio, discounting pagae was licit. He admitted, however, that his knowledge of the Genoese financial system was not extensive. Among the theologians, the only one who opposed the purchasing of pagae at a discount was the Observant Franciscan Angelo da Chivasso, an expert in the Genoese financial context. In 1462 and 1467 he was a vicar of the Observants in Genoa, and in 1486 published his Summa conscientiae, usually known as the Summa angelica and likely written between 1460 and 1480.⁵³ In 1484, he founded the Monte di Pietà in Genoa, which, like San Giorgio, loaned money (at a rate of 5%). Probably because its activity overlapped with that of San Giorgio, the Monte di Pietà never became a powerful institution.

The traditional reasoning used to explain why discounting the pagae was not usury—reasons first defined by Antoninus—focused on two arguments: first, that the purchaser bore risks related to a possible default by San Giorgio; second, that one had to expend labor to acquire the pagae. Angelo da Chivasso, however, stated that the excuses of labor and risk were invalid (nec labor seu periculum excusat). To make his point, Chivasso compared the maturation of the pagae to a fruit that requires human labor to grow and mature. This comparison allowed him to conclude that pagae were different, because, unlike a fruit, there was no risk that they would not mature. The only case Chivasso countenanced was someone purchasing pagae at a discount for someone in need.⁵⁴

Julius Kirshner insisted on the importance of focusing not just on the theological debate on usury but on financial practice. How did people behave? Were the investors touched by the theological debate? These questions are relevant not only for the history of usury, but also for the Genoese case study, because the theological debate arose some decades after the fact. Following Kirshner’s suggestion and looking at studies and sources on Angelo da Chivasso in Genoa, it is possible to reach some new conclusions.

Between March 18 and 23, 1467, Angelo da Chivasso and a number of Genoese law experts, including Battista de Goano, Andrea de Benegassio, Francesco Marchese, and the Dominican friar Giovanni Musso, met in Genoa on behalf of the Commune to rule on various religious and financial matters.⁵⁵ They decided that it was illicit to discount the pagae and that whoever did so would be punished with a fine equal to the amount of the discount (20 lire for each paga). Some years later, in 1470, Francesco da Borlasca appealed to the Commune on behalf of San Giorgio, because the office of contracts of the Commune wanted to fine the gabellotti (tax collectors) who purchased the pagae at a discount.⁵⁶

Members of this office, among them Manuel Salvago, maintained that a law existed that prohibited such transactions. It is likely that he was referring to the law that the committee of theologians and legal experts had authorized in 1467. Borlasca explained that this law would ruin San Giorgio’s entire system. The gabellotti usually advanced a sum of money to San Giorgio, which later paid the interest on that loan to the owners of the pagae. To reduce the amount of cash they had to give to San Giorgio, the gabellotti very often acquired—on the secondary market at a discount—as many pagae as possible and paid San Giorgio. Prohibiting the discount of the pagae would have affected a fundamental system of exchange. An opinion was requested from an expert in law, once again Battista de Goano, who had a history of supporting San Giorgio, who wrote a positive opinion in favor of San Giorgio. His legal advice was accepted and the gabellotti were not charged.

5.3. Crusades

Once San Giorgio took the territories in the eastern Mediterranean in 1453, its relations with the papacy became closer, because San Giorgio could help with crusades. Several popes tried to organize crusades during the fifteenth century and needed economic resources.⁵⁷ Pope Callixtus III planned a crusade in 1456, but San Giorgio was not involved. Instead, Genoa created a new set of ad hoc credits, the compera of Mitilene, which was independent from San Giorgio.⁵⁸ According to the initial project plans, the papal fleet was to leave for the eastern Mediterranean in April 1456, but it was delayed to June. The captain in charge was Ludovico Trevisan, who soon moved to Rhodes and Chios. At the end of the year, the expedition freed the islands of Lemnos, Samothrake, and Thasos from the Ottomans.⁵⁹ This was an important area for Genoa, because the Gattilusio, a Genoese family, had signory over all of these islands. The crusade ended in July 1457.⁶⁰ While San Giorgio was interested in acquiring territories, it had different goals than the papacy had, because San Giorgio’s ultimate interest was the financial revenues it could collect, which depended on trade. Crusades could affect and even ruin trade, which was quite clear in Caffa during the years San Giorgio controlled it. At that time, San Giorgio had conflicts with the Catholic bishop. Caffa had two religions and three bishoprics (Catholic, Coptic, and Armenian), and the strong advocacy of the Catholic archbishop, Dominican Girolamo Panissari—who had attacked the legitimacy of trading enslaved people as well as mixed marriages—had led to controversy. Armenians and Greeks protested the criticisms against slave trading.⁶¹

In the following years, San Giorgio facilitated the arrival of Franciscan friars in Caffa to contain the bishop’s strength.⁶² Around 1459, similar troubles occurred with the Holy See. Pope Pius II continued the actions of his predecessor, launching a crusade against the Ottomans in the Greek islands. In 1459 the pope created a military order, the Knights of Our Lady of Bethlehem, to fight against the Ottomans to reconquer the dominions of Aegeus (Aegean Sea). Even though they received some relevant resources, the knights were unable to occupy the islands.⁶³ Sometime after his coronation, Pius II began planning a new crusade, convoking the Council of Mantua for the beginning of June 1459.⁶⁴

Before the council began meeting, the pope offered San Giorgio the signory of Lemnos, Thasos, and Samothrake, which were controlled by the Gattilusio family, and the smaller island of Imbros.⁶⁵ The Gattilusio, like the Zaccaria earlier, had a signory on these lands separate from the power of the Commune of Genoa, but they always remained in contact with Genoa.⁶⁶ There is no known information on the pope’s actions, but San Giorgio’s papers mention that on June 12, 1459, Jacobo de Marcheize was sent from Rome to speak with the protettori.⁶⁷ The general meeting at San Giorgio discussed the offer of territorial acquisition and revenues (“iurisdictione e rendite”) of the islands;⁶⁸ essentially, the pope was offering a territorial signory to San Giorgio, having previously, as noted in the record of the meeting, offered them to the Venetians and the Catalans. The assembly of San Giorgio, however, decided that it was unwise to attack Mehmed II, because it might put Caffa and the Black Sea at risk.⁶⁹ Later, when San Giorgio lost all its territories in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea (Caffa fell in 1475), it tried to mount a strong military action, which was related to Sixtus IV’s renewal of the bull in 1479. In 1480 in Vilnius, the khan of Tatars, Meñli I Giray, asked San Giorgio to reconquer its former territories in the Black Sea. San Giorgio convoked an assembly to discuss this request on June 22, 1481. The issue was relevant to San Giorgio’s interests for two reasons: the government of the signory of Levant (“lo governo delle signorie del Levante”) and the exercise of trade, from which the compere collected all the revenues (“per lo exercitio de la mercatura, da la quale le compere prendono pur lo emolumento”).⁷⁰ The first was a territorial reason, the second a financial one. San Giorgio wanted to reconquer its old territories and conquer some new trading posts. Bartolomeo Fregoso and Ludovico Fieschi were sent as ambassadors to the khan of the Tatars, arriving between the end of 1482 and the beginning of 1483. San Giorgio armed a fleet of four ships, owned by Iulianus de Grimaldis, Dominichus Spinulla, Tedixius de Camilla, and Cosmas de Nigrono, and issued 727 loca valued at 50 lire each (the interest, pagae, had to be repaid by a drictus) to cover equipping the fleet and sending the embassy to the khan.⁷¹ But the pope did not move the fleet from Otranto, in Salento, in southern Italy to help the Genoese, probably because the Venetians had influenced him against them. The Tatars, on the other hand, supported the Genoese envoys and said that their fellow citizens in Caffa wanted to return to their old government.⁷² On August 20, 1483, a letter to Khan Meñli I Giray advised him that the Genoese remained interested in reconquering those areas, adding that in the past in Caffa, Genoese and Tatars had joined together to form a union, almost a single soul in a single body (“seando noi [i genovesi] sempre stati e reputandose una medesima cosa cum quella [il Khan], et reputando noi et quella sua et nostra cità di Caffa essere una sola anima in uno corpo”).⁷³

5.4. The End of “Colonies”

Modern scholarship defines medieval Genoese territories in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea as colonies. Most historians agree on the use of the term, but Mario Buongiorno has raised some interesting criticisms, pointing out that these areas were very well integrated into the administration of Genoa.⁷⁴ Unlike Venetian sources, the word “colony” does not appear in Genoese contemporary sources, which use specific terms defining the area of the Black Sea like Romania and Gazaria. “Colony” appears, however, in a text—La vita, et sito de Zychi, chiamati Ciarcassi (The Life and Place of the Zychi, called Circassi) by Giorgio Interiano—from 1502, a date close to the end of Genoese dominions in the Black Sea.⁷⁵

Before San Giorgio took over these areas, the law of the Commune did not identify them as subjected to a different territorial power (iurisdictio) or a different system of taxation than that of the Commune and its dominions in Liguria. Some differences, however, existed between the administration of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, on one hand, and that of the so-called districtum of the Commune—the area between Capo Corvo and Monaco—on the other. The regulae (the laws of the Commune) stipulated that the inhabitants of the districtum could vote in the elections of magistrates, while inhabitants of Crimea or the trading posts in the Black Sea could not.⁷⁶ The use of the term “colony” in current scholarship might depend on the classical tradition that was revised in the early twentieth century.⁷⁷ As noted earlier, some Genoese trading posts, especially those in contemporary Turkey, were located in the same places as those of ancient Greek and Roman colonies (Samastri, the ancient Amastris and Sinop). The question of whether the Genoese in the Middle Ages perceived these areas—and their role in occupying them—as having a continuity with classical antiquity, however, has not been studied. One can wonder whether the practices of reusing ancient urban structures, materials, and ruins influenced the Genoese perception of these places, but at present, we do not know.

Given the classical tradition and the differences in administration between Liguria and the Black Sea, the term “colony” is still useful in contemporary scholarship on Genoese settlements in the Black Sea and Cyprus between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The term is misleading, however, when one focuses on the territories of San Giorgio between 1453 and 1562. The administration of San Giorgio’s territories is not distinctive enough to create a clear set of characteristics that define the concept of a colony of San Giorgio. Some of the acquisitions were very similar. San Giorgio acquired Famagusta, Caffa, and Pietrasanta when the Commune was very weak. Pietrasanta was a territory that was not in the Commune of Genoa but was close to Liguria and was never considered a colony. The acquisition of Corsica occurred at the same moment as that of Caffa, but the acquisition was not a consequence of the same political dynamic.

The city of Caffa had a different administration from the others, because there the Commune (earlier) and San Giorgio (later) replicated the Commune’s offices like the Officium Monetae and the Officium Mercantiae. Perhaps it is time to consider whether the term “colony” is appropriate for San Giorgio’s territories. If, following the traditional scholarship, we call Caffa and Famagusta colonies, should we also use the term for Corsica? In Corsica, San Giorgio created plantations with peasants sent from Liguria. Much later, of course, plantations became an important characteristic of colonial settlements (for instance, in the Atlantic). If we consider Corsica a colony, should we use the same term for Lunigiana in northern Tuscany? What about the enclaves of San Giorgio in Liguria such as Pieve di Teco and Levanto? Should we consider them and the whole dominion of San Giorgio to be a colony? During the sixteenth century, San Giorgio’s territories in Liguria and in Lunigiana were defined in Genoa as “domini di terraferma” (mainland dominions), but this was probably a geographic definition and is not present in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century sources. From this we see that when we describe San Giorgio’s dominions, it may be wise to use different terms that those we use to define the Commune’s earlier dominions to avoid the term “colony.”

Michel Balard has described the transfer of Famagusta and Caffa, along with the trading posts in the Black Sea, from the Commune to San Giorgio as the beginning of the end of Genoese colonies.⁷⁸ Their donation by the Commune, which lacked the resources to defend them, some years before the Ottoman arrival (1447 for Famagusta) or their acquisition immediately after the fall of Constantinople (e.g., Caffa, in November 1453), has led scholars to consider them as having been economically and politically weak. San Giorgio tried to improve the trade in these areas, but the result was, as Michel Balard wrote, only “to move forward for a while the inevitable loss of the colonies.”⁷⁹ Balard’s statement is certainly true if one considers the entire period of Genoese dominion over the Black Sea. The papal bull of 1456 and the words used in San Giorgio’s meeting preceding the acquisitions point to the difficulties in these areas. Furthermore, research has shown that some areas were depopulated in those decades.⁸⁰ But if we focus on the 20 years of San Giorgio’s dominion, we can distinguish different moments and notice that—at least from 1464—the Black Sea dominions improved economically, compared with the period of the Commune’s territorial power.⁸¹ It is possible that Genoese territories were helped by the poor relationship between Venice and the Ottomans.

Moreover, as the works of Babinger and Kate Fleet have shown, the progressive presence of the Ottomans in the eastern Mediterranean did not lead to an immediate end to Genoese trade in this area.⁸² Interpreting the whole territorial domination of San Giorgio over the Black Sea and Cyprus in terms of an end and closure of contracts may be to overlook the richness of cross-cultural relations, trading connections, and the plurality of territorial conceptions of an area that had always been balanced between cultural mix and crises.

Notes

1. Charles Verlinden, “Italian Influence in Iberian Colonization,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 33, 2 (1953): 199–211.

2. Hannah Barker, That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260–1500 (Philadelphia: University Pennsylvania Press, 2019); Evgeny A. Khvalkov, The Colonies of Genoa in the Black Sea Region: Evolution and Transformation (New York and London: Routledge, 2017).

3. Steven Teasdale, Slavery and Social Networks: Genoa and the Genoese in the Mediterranean World, 1348–1528. Ph. D. dissertation in progress, University of Toronto, Toronto.

4. Giuseppe Pesce and Giuseppe Felloni, Le monete genovesi. Storia, arte ed economia nelle monete di Genova dal 1139 al 1814 (Genova: Cassa di risparmio di Genova e Imperia, 1975).

5. Geo Pistarino dated the early coins to 1376–93; see Geo Pistarino, I Signori del mare (Genova: Civico istituto colombiano, 1992), 93.

6. After a few months, the Ottomans entered Caffa. The Russian merchant Nikitin reached the city after traveling through Asia, as reported in his diary. See Jacqueline Margaret Brown, The Khozhenie za tri morya of Afanasy Nikitin: A Critical Edition. Master thesis, Durham University, Durham, 1984.

7. Michel Balard, La mer noire et la Romanie génoise (XIII–XV siècle) (London: Variorum Reprints, 1989), 234–235.

8. This was the case with the statutes of Gazaria (1316) and Pera (1304), which prohibited the local minting of coins. Pistarino, I Signori del mare, 92.

9. A mint in Caffa is attested to from 1453–54; Pistarino, I Signori del mare, 92.

10. On the state formation and conceptions of nomadic populations of Central Asia, see James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

11. Khvalkov, The Colonies of Genoa in the Black Sea Region.

12. Pistarino, I Signori del mare, 92.

13. During the rule of the Milanese Sforza (1464–1477) and the French king (1499–1512), their symbols appeared on the Genoese coins. Pistarino, I Signori del mare, 90.

14. Khvalkov, The Colonies of Genoa in the Black Sea Region.

15. Among the first scholars who realized the importance of these territories for San Giorgio was Gian Giacomo Musso, who organized an exhibition. See Gian Giacomo Musso, Il Banco di San Giorgio: fonti e cimeli. Mostra a cura del Banco di Roma. Genova, Palazzo S. Giorgio, 16–28 maggio 1970. Catalogo (Genova: Banco di Roma, 1970).

16. James Crow and Stephen Hill, “The Byzantine Fortifications of Amastris in Paphlagonia,” Anatolian Studies 45 (1995): 251–265.

17. Christian Marek, “Amastris, Geschichte, Topographie, archäologische Reste,” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 39 (1989): 373–389.

18. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, 7, 2, at 958 and 960.

19. This happened at Trebisonda (Trabzon), where the consuls, Galeotto Spinola and Leonardo Doria, did not accept the office in 1454, and at Sevastopol, where in the same year Filippo Clavarezza also refused to go. See Vigna, Codice diplomatico, 7, 2, at 955 and 959.

20. Ausilia Roccatagliata, Notai genovesi in oltremare. Atti rogati a Pera e Mitilene, vol. 1: Pera, 1408–1490 (Genova: Università di Genova, 1982).

21. Vigna, Codice diplomatico.

22. See here Part II § 6.2.

23. “La qual cossa, quantuncha fosse aliena da la nostra bailia, pur … abbiamo pensato di proporlo a voi.” ASG, Banco di San Giorgio, Sala 34 607 2243, fol. 60v–61r. The emphasis is mine. The contract is in Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 1: 24–32.

24. ASG, Banco di San Giorgio, Sala 34 607 2243, fol. 63r.

25. “Cogitantes nullam esse in toto corpore Januensis reipublice aut aliquo eius membro … paratiorem opem in omni … eventu quam est in magnificis protectoribus comperarum sanctigeorgi.” The Bank took the “dominium, regimen ac omnis administratio civitatis Caphe,” ASG, Banco di San Giorgio, Manoscritti Membranacei XXIV, fol. 19v.

26. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 33.

27. The names of the fortresses are in the contract. See Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 33.

28. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 41.

29. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 42.

30. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 65.

31. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 80.

32. Archivio di Stato di Genova, Sala 34, 607/2319. This volume—a San Giorgio register called Litterarum (letters)—contains many letters of the Genoese in Rome.

33. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 226.

34. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 447.

35. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 448.

36. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 567, March 14.

37. See here, Part III.

38. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 567.

39. Orlando Grosso, Il San Giorgio dei Genovesi (Genova: Libreria Editrice Moderna, 1914), 178–179.

40. Heers, Gênes au XVe siècle, 165.

41. Julius Kirshner based his 1456 case study on the works of Jacques Heers. Jacques Heers’s information on paga floreni is in various parts of his work; see Heers, Gênes au XVe siècle, 99–100, 103–104, 162–165 (on Caffa). Probably Kirshner considered the paga floreni a negotiable title, because there was no systematic study; see Kirshner, “The Moral Problem,” 112. As far as I can ascertain, however, in Genoa there was only a market for luoghi and paghe, while the paga floreni was not negotiable.

42. ASG, Sala 35, 860 (without pagination).

43. “Nonnulli, hesitantes an ipsi futuri proventus sic licite vendi, emi vel permutari possint,” Kirshner, “The Moral Problem,” 160.

44. As Kirshner noted, even though the papal bull stated that someone feared that he or she could commit the sin of usury, no sources about this have been found in Genoa. See Kirshner, “The Moral Problem,” 112–113.

45. “Petitio continebat quod, alias cum fama vulgaris deferret Turchorum ducem civitatem Caphe obsidere et diripere velle … cum ad vestrum officium ipsius civitatis regimen et defensio dignoscatur pertinere … propter que … particibus et locatariis solitam annuam summam … solvere et respondere minime poutissetis, nisi paga floreni unius proventumum comperarum unius proventuum comperarum huiusmodi per dilectos filios commune Ianuense pro singulo loco capi solita annorum trium futurum, videlicet millesimo quadringentesimo sexagesimo quarto, millesimo quadringentesimo sexagesimo quinto, millesimo quadringentesimo sexagesimo sexto, vobis in subsidium assignata fuisset.” After mentioning the situation of the paga floreni of 1464, 1465, and 1466, there was a part on discounting the pagae: “eadem petitio subiungebat vos adhuc participibus, locatariis et creditoribus dictarum comperarum proventus trium annorum vobis per ipsum commune assignatos huiusmodi plus offerentibus vendatis vel permuteatis … pro minori summa.” This passage is quoted from Kirshner, “The Moral Problem,” 159–160.

46. See here Part II § 6.1.

47. Julius Kirshner, “An Opinion of Raphael de Pornasio, O.P. on the Market in Genoese Lire de Paghe,” in Xenia Medii Aevi historiam Illustrantia oblata Thomae Kaeppeli O.P. (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1978), 507–517, 511–512.

48. Kirshner, “An Opinion of Raphael de Pornasio,” 511–512.

49. Kirshner, “The Moral Problem.”

50. Kirshner, “The Moral Problem,” 142.

51. “Civitas autem et dominus superiorem in temporalibus non recognoscens habet in suo territorio iurisdictionem quam in toto orbe de iure habet imperator,” Kirshner, “The Moral Problem,” 144 and note.

52. Kirshner, “The Moral Problem,” 149.

53. Kirshner, “The Moral Problem,” 132, 150–152.

54. Kirshner, “The Moral Problem,” 134.

55. ASG, ms. 141. Julius Kirshner analyzed the subject in detail. He studied the theological debate and searched for documents without finding the most important. Jacques Heers made reference to ASG, AS 581, fol. 81. Valeria Polonio found the manuscript; see Valeria Polonio, “Un affare di Stato: La riforma per le monache a Genova nel XV secolo,” Monastica et Humanistica, Scritti in onore di Gregorio Penco O.S.B., ed. Francesco Giovanni Battista Trolese, Studi e documenti di storia monastica 23 (2003): 323–352. Valeria Polonio focused on the control of the behavior of the nuns—a subject that is present in the manuscript—but not on the discount of pagae or Angelo da Chivasso, his participation in the committee, and the role of San Giorgio in 1470.

56. ASG, ms. 141, fol. 22v–23r.

57. Norman Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, 1453–1505 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 127–134.

58. Alfonso Assini, “La ‘compera Metilini’ e la difesa genovese dei Gattilusio dopo la caduta di Costantinopoli,” in Πράκτικα Σύνεδριου Όι Γατελούζοι τής Λέσβου, 9–11 σεπτεµßpíou 1994, Mυτιλήνη, ed. Andreas Mazarakis (Athens: Brill, 1996), 272–275.

59. Wright, The Gattilusio Lordship, 71. See Pio Paschini, “La flotta di Callisto III,” Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 53–55 (1930–1932): 177–254; Kenneth Meyer Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976), 166–167.

60. Wright, The Gattilusio Lordship, 71.

61. Jean Batou and Henryk Szlajfer (eds.), Western Europe, Eastern Europe and World Development, 13th–18th Centuries: Collection of essays of Marian Małowist (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 122.

62. Batou and Szlajfer, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, 125.

63. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, vol. 2, 203.

64. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, vol. 2, 201.

65. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 938.

66. Wright, The Gattilusio Lordship, chapters 1, 3.

67. I hypothesize that this preacher was Jacobo delle Marche. On this, see Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, ad indicem.

68. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 937.

69. Vigna, Codice diplomatico, vol. 6: 938.

70. ASG, Membranacei, XXVII, fol. 36r and Giacomo Grasso, “Documenti riguardanti la costituzione di una lega contro il Turco nel 1481,” Giornale Ligustico 6 (1879): 321–494, at 62.

71. Felloni, http://lacasadisangiorgio.eu/main.php?do=scheda&ricerca=0&idscheda=86558&page=2 (accessed February 11, 2022). Three ledgers survive called registri galearum, which report the expenses for the armament of the ships. Gian Giacomo Musso studied these volumes; see Gian Giacomo Musso, “Le ultime speranze dei Genovesi per il Levante; ricerche d’Archivio,” in Genova, la Liguria e l’Oltremare, ed. Raffaele Belvederi, vol. 1 (Genova: Fratelli Bozzi, 1974), 1–39.

72. On the 1481 crusade, Grasso, “Documenti riguardanti la costituzione di una lega”; Musso, “Le ultime speranze dei Genovesi,” 1–39; Marco Villa, Paolo Campofregoso e la partecipazione genovese alla riconquista di Otranto (1481–1482), Master dissertation, Università di Genova 2008–2009.

73. Grasso, “Documenti riguardanti la costituzione di una lega,” 173.

74. Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels; Robert Sabatino Lopez, Storia delle Colonie Genovesi nel Mediterraneo (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1938); Enrico Basso, Genova: Un impero sul mare (Cagliari and Genova: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Istituto sui Rapporti Italo-Iberici, 1994); Khvalkov, The Colonies of Genoa in the Black Sea Region. Mario Buongiorno criticized the use of the term “colony,” calling it anachronistic; Buongiorno, L’amministrazione Genovese nella “Romania”, 261. According to Buongiorno, the term is misleading because the offices that dealt with the businesses of the Genoese in the east (Romania and Gazaria) exercised a strong influence in the Commune, participating in many of its meetings, and because during the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries the populations of these areas were quite well represented.

75. La vita, et sito de Zychi, chiamati Ciarcassi, Historia notabile (Venezia: Aldo Manuzio, 1502).

76. Buongiorno, L’amministrazione Genovese nella “Romania”, 49.

77. The 1914 colonial exhibition in Genoa probably had a strong influence on Genoese scholarship. See Nicola Labanca, L’Africa in vetrina: Storie di musei e di esposizioni coloniali in Italia (Pagus: Treviso, 1992).

78. Balard, “Il Banco di San Giorgio,” 63–73.

79. Balard, “Il Banco di San Giorgio,” 73: “delaying the inevitable fall of the colonies” (ritardare l’inevitabile caduta delle colonie).

80. Khvalkov, The Colonies of Genoa in the Black Sea Region.

81. Khvalkov, The Colonies of Genoa in the Black Sea Region.

82. Kate Fleet, European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 122, quoting Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 433.