6
6.1. Corsica, a World Unto Itself
San Giorgio’s territorial control over Corsica was not continuous. It took over Corsica in 1453, gave it to the duke of Milan in 1464, and then ruled it again from 1483 to 1562. Corsica was the largest territory among San Giorgio’s dominions and the one where San Giorgio faced the most conflicts. There are many possible explanations for this. The population in Corsica had very different traditions from those of Genoa, and some families rooted in Corsica had previously controlled the island. Other locations in San Giorgio’s dominion, like the Lunigiana, were closer to Genoa and shared legal traditions and practices with it. In contrast to the cultural diversity of Crimea and Cyprus, Corsica had a more cohesive and isolated culture.
San Giorgio’s archives are quantitatively rich and document the whole administrative system. Thousands of documents survive from Corsica’s governors, documenting the expenses of maintaining various cities, fortification, and ports, the punishment of rebels in the hinterland, and so on.1 Some reports of the chancellery meetings of 1453 contain information on the discussions that led to the transfer of Corsica to San Giorgio. Compared with Caffa, the transfer was quite rapid. There are fewer reports, the assembly decided sooner and organized the administrative structure more quickly, determining how officers would be elected and controlled (through the sindicatori) and the main administrative centers would be Bonifacio, Calvi, Bastia, San Fiorenzo, and Biguglia.2
The contract for Corsica’s transfer (translatio), like the others, contains a short description of the acquisition process and describes the location’s geography.3 The protettori of San Giorgio had accepted the dominion of Corsica, the contract said, for both general and local reasons. Catalans had occupied the area of San Fiorenzo in Corsica, the power balance on the Italian peninsula was unstable, and Constantinople had fallen to the Ottomans, provoking a strong reaction among princes, who had tried to defend it at great expense.4 The contract continues by describing the acquisition of Corsica as a way to permit the Commune to deal with what it perceived as a global crisis. Similar to the way the territories of the Black Sea were dealt with, the contract named cities, towns, castles, fortresses, lands, rivers, lakes, and in this case, the salt mines. Fortresses were probably planned with a view to controlling the hinterland, not to defend lands from external attacks as in Crimea with the Tatars and Ottomans. Threats could sometimes arrive from the sea, but the more constant threats were the conflicts between the Genoese and the population of the hinterland.
These kinds of internal conflicts, together with the fact that here San Giorgio controlled a broad expanse of land, may explain why discourses, criticisms, or more simply references to San Giorgio’s territorial power—especially as related to Corsica—emerged. These discourses and references—along with the passage in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories, who was inspired by the events in Lunigiana in the previous decades—show that it was San Giorgio’s exceptional territorial power that provoked concern in contemporary observers. Among the rich material on Corsica, here we discuss four discourses from various figures. The first two texts revolve around the jurisdictional power of San Giorgio, which at times conflicted not only with the Commune of Genoa, but also with the Church. The first text was written by the bishop of Nebbio in Corsica, Agostino Giustiniani.5 The second is a short reference that reached the center of religious power, the Penitenzieria Apostolica (Apostolic Penitentiary). The third was written by the head of a local faction, Raffaele de Lecca.
The fourth reports the view of the Corsican locals from the town of Calvi. Agostino Giustiniani, as bishop of Nebbio, had conflicts with the governors of San Giorgio in Corsica and considered their power corrupt. A fragment of information about this conflict survives. Giustiniani excommunicated a priest in Corsica who was protected by San Giorgio.6 In his writings, Giustiniani not only criticized San Giorgio’s administration in Corsica, advocating for the creation of a magistrate who could control San Giorgio’s officials, but more subtly attacked the very center of San Giorgio’s power. He drew a distinction between San Giorgio as a closed community of rich owners of the public debt’s shares (the so-called luogatari), and the Commune, which he saw as more inclusive, more open, and governed by citizens.
In 1461 and 1472, officials of San Giorgio addressed two supplications to the Apostolic Penitentiary—the office in charge of pardoning sins, which, like killing a man of the Church, were too grave to be pardoned by the local priests. San Giorgio’s officials had ordered the execution of two priests on Corsica and they wanted pardons for this. The first priest had rebelled (rebelles eiusdem officii), and the second had taken up arms against “the state of the office of San Giorgio” (arma sumpserat contra statum dicti officii sancti Georgii).7 Recognizing San Giorgio’s territorial power, the Penitentiary issued the pardon. If we take this together with the 1456 bull of Callixtus III and the territorial offer of Pius II, we see how it perceived and respected San Giorgio’s territorial power.
Now consider a third text. It was written in 1455 by Raffaele de Lecca, head of the Aragonese faction in Corsica. His discourse is much more grounded in a local context:
the Office [San Giorgio] did not demonstrate that it wants a signory in its signory and dominion as the kings and the great princes of the world do, which are pleased to have as vassals many lords and barons of different dignities, and mostly in Corsica, which [is an] island, where it does not seem that the Office [San Giorgio] wants lords who could defend themselves.
lo Offitio [San Giorgio] non dimostrava havere a charo signorie in loro signoria e dominio como fanno li re e grandi prencipi dil mondo, che se ne honorano tenere per vassalli molti signori e baroni di diverse dignità, e maxime in Corsica che [è] isula, ove non pare che lo Offitio vogliano signori che si possano difendere.8
The text implicitly compares San Giorgio to kings and princes and goes on to describe its dominion as even more absolute, because it will not risk having lords as signories in case those lords had the wherewithal to defend themselves against San Giorgio. The fourth case reveals something of how the subjected populations perceived San Giorgio’s territorial power. In 1463, some years before the Sforza of Milan took Genoa, the population of Calvi “rebelled against the Office of San Giorgio and they said to San Giorgio that they did not want to remain subjected, but wanted to remain under the power of the Commune” (“si [era] ribellata contra l’officio di San Giorgio al quale dice non voler più esser subietta, ma vole esser del comun de Genova”).9 Here it was the population of Corsica that established a comparison and preferred the dominion of the Commune to that of San Giorgio.
Aside from these sources, other documents give an idea of San Giorgio’s administrative processes in Corsica. Unlike those covering other areas, the documents produced in Corsica provide information on its military administration, including fortresses (inventories of objects, descriptions of construction works, lists of people involved in construction and their payments); armies; construction of ports; formal procedures for change of government, the installation of a governor, and so on; and agriculture. Notwithstanding the existence of several studies on the subject, this material offers additional useful information. In Corsica, San Giorgio created a more sophisticated occupation than it had in other territories. At the same time, however, since the territory of Corsica was more extensive, San Giorgio could not always control it. Bandits and rebels often avoided punishment in secluded places in the impenetrably forested areas of the hinterland. Chancellors of San Giorgio referred to these bandits as being “a la selva” (lit. in the woods).10
Corsica was rich in vegetation and natural resources. San Giorgio started plantations in 1539, choosing plants and sending peasants from Liguria to grow them. It sent emissaries to survey the plantations and organize the migration process.11 As in Pietrasanta, where San Giorgio exploited the iron mines, it did not sustain the expenses directly, but instead offered lands—in Ajaccio, Portovecchio, and Aleria—to rich Genoese families such as the De Marini, Salvago, and Passano-De Ferrari.12 This sheds light on San Giorgio’s activities: it was not interested in economic investment or production nor in investments that funded economic development; rather, it served as a financial platform. When San Giorgio’s money was invested in economic activities, it was always through mediators. Ultimately, San Giorgio made money through taxes on trade and production.
For the dominion of San Giorgio in Corsica, and in general for the trade pathways that moved toward Liguria, the island of Capraia (about 30km east of the northern tip of Corsica) was a strategic staging post. The island had belonged to the De Mari family since the early decades of the fifteenth century. In 1504 the inhabitants rebelled against the signory of Giacomo De Mari, lord of Capraia since 1483.13 They asked the protettori of San Giorgio if they could pass under their dominion, but Giacomo laid siege to the island. The situation changed in 1506, when in Genoa the populares (merchants and artisans) rebelled against the French signory ruling Genoa and fought against the nobles. After some months, the artisans took power against the merchants, and the revolt, which by then was quite radical, lasted a year. The inhabitants of Capraia then made their request effective, finding a strong ally in the artisans ruling Genoa. San Giorgio took control of Capraia.14 The documents related to this dominion of San Giorgio has mostly preserved information about the raids of North African sailors and the defense by San Giorgio and the inhabitants, who did not finish building defense structures until the 1540s.15
The government of the island passed through various phases. The people of Capraia at first requested a podestà, but research has not identified any information about this after 1506. San Giorgio likely governed the island through a governor of Corsica. Up to the 1540s, there are no traces of stable magistrates, and from 1541 on, San Giorgio sent a commissary and a captain. Capraia’s translatio is unusual. The current research has not uncovered any document describing the transfer, and an act of vassalage stated that the transfer of control over the territory (merum et mixtum imperium, and gladii potestas) occurred because the inhabitants wanted it.16 The island, however, was under the ownership of the De Mari family. It is possible that since the transfer occurred during the Genoese revolt against the French king and the nobles, the De Mari lost their dominion and never recovered it.
6.2. Lunigiana’s Owners
Some towns and castles with a strategic function in the Genoese defensive system were in Lunigiana (outside present-day Liguria in northern Tuscany). The Commune of Genoa had territorial rights over some areas, but other state powers and families such as the Fregoso and the Malaspina ruled and occupied most locations. It would be difficult to draw a map of the territorial power in Lunigiana, not only because of how many groups exercised power there, but also because there was a large difference between those who ruled the lands formally and those whose power was de facto. Unlike in Corsica or the Ligurian hinterland, when San Giorgio tried to acquire territories in Lunigiana it had to deal not with the Commune but with other external powers. Another complicating factor in Lunigiana was the fact that the area sat at the boundaries between Genoa and Florence, two major Italian city-states. It was the conflict between Genoa and Florence that inspired Machiavelli’s analysis of San Giorgio.17
San Giorgio acquired its territories in Lunigiana at different moments: Pietrasanta in 1446, Ameglia in 1476, Lerici in 1479, Sarzana and the castles nearby in 1484, and Ponzano in 1517, and it ruled them for different periods of time. Sometimes San Giorgio occupied them, then lost them, then reconquered them. Table 4.1 is a list of all these possessions and the duration of San Giorgio’s dominion over them. Sometimes, because the Commune of Genoa formally possessed a territory, it signed a contract with San Giorgio, but then San Giorgio had to fight with those who occupied the territory to take real possession.
Excluding Pietrasanta—San Giorgio’s first territory—the acquisitions of Lunigiana can be organized into four types. The first was that employed for Ameglia, which the duke of Milan, who legally owned it, sold to San Giorgio. Lerici was an example of the second type. It was a real possession, but not formalized, because by law it belonged to the Commune of Genoa. The third type was that employed by the Fregoso family, who gave San Giorgio the small towns and castles they had occupied some years earlier. In this case, the Commune of Genoa also signed a contract with San Giorgio, because it was still the legal owner of these areas. The fourth type was that followed for Ponzano, held by the Malaspina family. San Giorgio initially attacked the Malaspina and then paid them compensation 20 years later. It is likely that San Giorgio acquired towns, castles, and fortresses in Lunigiana because the area was central for controlling the salt trade. As mentioned earlier, it is unclear whether and how San Giorgio was involved in the salt trade, but references in the sources of Lunigiana suggest that it may have played an important role.
Neither experts in Lunigiana’s history nor current research has found any contract related to San Giorgio’s acquisition of Pietrasanta, Lerici, Ameglia, and Ponzano—they may not exist. As with its other territories, San Giorgio officials carefully analyzed the resources on its lands—structures, weapons, objects, and so on—compiling inventories and ensuring that inhabitants swore their obedience. After Pietrasanta, conquered in 1446, San Giorgio took Ameglia in 1476. In 1460 the duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza, acquired the castle of Ameglia from Galeazzino Fregoso and used it as his own. As will be shown, in the 1460s relations between the duke of Milan and San Giorgio were good, to the point that San Giorgio helped the duke of Milan acquire the signory of Genoa. In 1476 the relationship between the two deteriorated, which is when San Giorgio paid 6,000 ducats for Ameglia. Ameglia was strategically placed to control access to the sea and roads used for the salt trade. San Giorgio acquired Lerici at another point when its relationship with the duke of Milan was difficult, in 1479. Again, San Giorgio wanted to acquire a strategic position to control the salt trade.18 The history of San Giorgio’s dominion over Lerici, as with the rest of Lunigiana, was closely tied to the domination by external powers over Genoa and the history of the powerful Fregoso family.
In 1458 French troops occupied Genoa, and Pietro Fregoso wanted Ludovico, a cousin who had helped him in his alliance with the French, to receive 9,000 ducats. Instead of paying Ludovico with cash, the French king offered him Lerici; the following year Ludovico occupied the town.19 Between 1464 and 1477 the Sforza of Milan—and the French between 1458 and 1461—controlled Genoa. At the end of the Milanese signory in 1477, the Sforza continued holding Lerici to influence the Genoese doge’s and San Giorgio’s strategy in Lunigiana. Battista Fregoso was in charge of Genoa, but his rule was unstable; within a few months in the summer and fall of 1478 there were two other governments: a coalition of the two main factions, the Fregoso and the Adorno, and the government of Prospero Adorno. In January 1479, the doge of Genoa considered an alliance with the Aragonese and moved away from Milan. He also donated Lerici to San Giorgio in order to avoid it coming under the control of the duke of Milan, who had initiated an occupation of part of the Lunigiana.20 The Commune did not issue a contract, but an assembly approved the transfer. Some of the participants touched on the problem of the law of Genoa (the regulae), which—as noted earlier—prohibited the alienation of territories. In contrast to Famagusta and the Black Sea territories, for Lerici a member of the assembly, the lawyer Francesco Marchese, stated that San Giorgio and the Commune were members of the same body and thus a transfer of territory between them was not an alienation.21 This was the first and only time a member of the Genoese oligarchy argued that the two institutions were part of the same system. Soon after, on April 24, the men of Lerici swore their obedience to San Giorgio. The text of the oath mentions that the transfer (translatio) had occurred and that San Giorgio would send Francesco Pammoleo and Francesco Doria to take possession of the location.22
The second type of transfer, that of the territories that the Fregoso family gave to San Giorgio, is the most important and the most documented. Like many other Genoese families, the Fregoso owned and ruled territories—small enclaves within the Commune’s territory—in what is now Liguria. Unlike the other families, however, the Fregoso were not nobles, but populares. As we have seen, they alternated with the Adorno in control of the dogeship during the fifteenth century. As chiefs of a faction and men-at-arms, the Fregoso often acquired a dominion as compensation for being exiled—or as a reward from another faction or an external power for renouncing fighting for the dogeship. At other times, they acquired a possession after fighting as men-at-arms.
The territories of the Fregoso were thus quite fragmented. In 1421, Tommaso Fregoso lost the dogeship and left the city, obtaining in exchange from the new lord of Genoa, Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, some territories under Genoese control in Lunigiana: Sarzana, Sarzanello, Castelnuovo, Falcinello, and Santo Stefano. The Fregoso later acquired other territories, including Gavi, which Filippo Maria Visconti gave to Battista Fregoso in 1436; Novi, donated to Pietro in 1452; Corsica, which Pope Nicholas V enfeoffed in 1447 to Ludovico, brother of the doge, Giano; and Rivanazzano, which Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, enfeoffed to Tommasino in 1453. Geographically, the most remote dominion was Sant’Agata Feltria, in the Duchy of Urbino, which was acquired in the early sixteenth century. Through transactions with an external power, the Fregoso also acquired titles and positions. This was the case of Federico Fregoso, who became abbot of Saint Benigne in Digion, after the French king took Genoa in 1515.
In 1479, Ludovico Fregoso and his son Agostino occupied Sarzana, then in the hands of the Florentines. The town of Ameglia, which San Giorgio had acquired in 1476, was not sufficient to control the roads of the salt trade at the mouth of the river Magra, and the Fregoso territories were very important. The council of San Giorgio decided to help Ludovico Fregoso hold Sarzana against the Florentines,23 because even though the Fregoso might plot with the Commune of Genoa against San Giorgio for control of the salt trade, San Giorgio preferred dealing with Genoese than with the Florentines.24 In 1484 the Florentines attacked the Fregoso in Lunigiana, and the same year the family sold Sarzana to San Giorgio. A contract was signed between the Commune and San Giorgio, transferring Sarzana and the smaller castles and towns of Sarzanello, Castronovo, Ortonovo, and Santo Stefano. The text considered the Fregoso’s occupation of the area a consuetudinary action, not a possession bound by legal acts.25 It did not mention the Fregoso as owners, just the Florentines who had occupied castles and fortresses in Lunigiana without any right of possession. The text recorded that the transfer took place by agreement between San Giorgio and the Fregoso family; the latter were unhappy—the contract noted—but accepted the transfer and renounced their rights.26 San Giorgio undertook to pay the costs of the war against the Florentines, up to a maximum of 5,000 ducats; the rest would be provided by the Commune of Genoa.27 The election of a Genoese pope, Innocent VIII (Giovanni Battista Cybo), influenced the war’s outcome, because the pope helped San Giorgio against the Florentines.
Sources in Florence and Genoa on the war of Sarzana are very detailed, documenting various embassies through letters, instructions, and memorandums. Such documents do more than record a specific moment or a fifteenth-century war; they offer rich insights into Renaissance writing, battle music, techniques of war, machinery, and so forth.28 A meeting to resolve the conflict was held in Rome, and the Florentine ambassadors’ documents contain information on Lunigiana that came from Florence, along with the analyses the ambassadors elaborated in Rome while observing the Genoese, meeting with representatives of the papal Curia, and intercepting Genoese letters.
Florentine letters show a grasp of the complex political situation in Genoa, the variety of powers, and the institutional layers. Three entities represented Genoa during the war: the Fregoso—as ex-owners of Sarzana; the Commune of Genoa with its doge, at that time a member of the Fregoso family; and San Giorgio. Two Genoese ambassadors went to Rome, one representing the Commune, the other San Giorgio.
The third type of transfer, that of San Giorgio’s possession of Ponzano, a small town that San Giorgio took from the Malaspina family in 1517, has not been studied up to now and not many sources are extant. The men of Ponzano swore an oath of obedience to San Giorgio on July 1, 1517, joining together in the parliament of their commune and declaring themselves subject to San Giorgio. A text of the same year mentions the arrival in Genoa of six syndicates and procuratori (sindici and procuratores) of the community. They declared that Teodoro, Antonio, Federico, and Rolando Malaspina had oppressed them, both “in their honor and their person,” and had killed men from the community out of enmity (inimicizia).29 Thus the representatives of Ponzano asked to become subjects of San Giorgio. The tale, which seems to be the story of a local feud, was used as a justification for San Giorgio’s acquisition of the territory.30
In Lunigiana, besides external enemies such as the duke of Milan, the Florentines, and the Malaspina, who occasionally threatened some towns, San Giorgio also faced the Genoese family of the Fregoso. When they were in exile—excluded from Genoa and the government but active in controlling the peripheral areas—or when they ruled the city as doges—far from their territories but in the center of the administrative power which assigned offices and charges of distant territories—they were able to take root in the territories. As with some other communities of the Italian peninsula at the time, some Genoese citizens and other inhabitants of towns and castles, even those who lived in the farthest communities subject to Genoa, saw the family as part of their identity. Parties and factions had their own symbology, language, and rhetoric.31 Being part of a faction constituted a person’s identity and could guarantee economic and social resources. To oppose the language of the factions, San Giorgio developed its own rhetoric that emphasized the public good (bonum commune). This rhetoric was integral to defending the “state of San Giorgio” against factions, especially those of the Fregoso in Lunigiana.
The traditional discourse on the res publica as a well-regulated institution, with its various parties and social groups all in harmony, was a classic subject in Italian Renaissance thought. The protettori drew on this tradition when they described “San Giorgio’s state” as well regulated and well administered, often sending letters to various lands that seem inspired by this rhetoric.32 In Corsica, the local factions were considered tyrants; in Lunigiana and in the towns of Liguria— Ventimiglia, Levanto, and Pieve di Teco—San Giorgio opposed the faction of the Fregoso.
6.3. Paying to Be Governed: Liguria
Pieve di Teco and Ventimiglia in the western Riviera and Levanto in the eastern Riviera came under San Giorgio’s control after the French lost Genoa when members of the Fregoso such as Giano (1512–13) and Ottaviano (1513–15) became doges.
The dynamics of power between the Commune of Genoa and San Giorgio changed in the first years of the sixteenth century. The reason for the territorial transfer of Pieve di Teco, Ventimiglia, and Levanto was not, unlike the territories San Giorgio took in the middle of the fifteenth century (i.e., Caffa), the weakness of the dogeship and the strength of San Giorgio. In the early sixteenth century, San Giorgio did not oppose the Commune. In 1515 and 1522, Ottaviano Fregoso—as we have seen—wrote that San Giorgio was the center of Genoese power and exalted the civic virtues.33 Rather than indicating the Commune’s political weakness, the transfers of Pieve di Teco, Ventimiglia, and Levanto were probably the result of territorial reorganization. All three were in strategic locations: Ventimiglia at the extreme western end of the Genoese dominion; Pieve di Teco on the route through Liguria, not far from Ventimiglia. The latter two were essential for the defense of Genoa, and Levanto was an important port. From 1512, Giano took possession of Genoa with the help of Pope Julius II; Ottaviano Fregoso received help from the pope and Spain. But the French troops remained fortified in the city in the fort of the Lanterna; it took Ottaviano nearly a year in 1513 and 1514 to free the city. When these three transfers occurred, the French troops posed a threat to Genoa, which needed to defend its access to Liguria. San Giorgio was better situated than the Commune to guarantee the area’s defense.
6.3.1. Ventimiglia
Along with Ventimiglia, Airole, Bastia, Sasso, Camporosso, Soldano, Vallecrosia, San Biagio, Vallebona, Borghetto, and Bordighera also became dominions of San Giorgio. On the day of the transfer of the territory and again a few days later, 1,511 inhabitants swore an oath to San Giorgio and promised to contribute 3,000 lire each year to pay the salary of the captain.34 The inhabitants of Ventimiglia thus paid some of the expenses of the administrators of San Giorgio. The contract used fewer words to describe the places that San Giorgio was taking over in Liguria than those used to describe the Black Sea possessions. It mentioned the territories, pastures, rivers, and lakes, but not the towns, castles, or fortifications.35 Since these places were relatively close to Genoa, they also had a different jurisdictional structure. The document of the translatio mentions the question of those who committed a crime in Genoa and escaped to Ventimiglia and states that the podestà of Genoa could arrest and judge them.36 This was a crucial difference from the territories in the Black Sea, where San Giorgio held jurisdictional power.
Ventimiglia, like the Lunigiana, was involved in the salt trade. San Giorgio wanted to defend the salt circulation routes from interlopers who crossed the area of Dolceacqua from Nizza and the Piedemont and reached the Riviera to sell salt there.37 Ventimiglia came under attack from various factions—not just the Doria and the Spinola—which did not deal with the dogeship—but also the Fregoso. When the last lost Genoa in 1522, they tried to penetrate the western Riviera from the French side of the coast.38
6.3.2. Levanto
A bas-relief dating to the early sixteenth century on the church of Santa Maria della Costa in Levanto shows Saint George fighting a dragon, quite common on doors in the city of Genoa, but here referring to the Casa’s territorial power. However, unlike other territories of San Giorgio, this image of the saint was adorned with the Da Passano family arms.39 The Da Passano family, particularly Gio. Giocacchino da Passano, dominated Levanto in the first years of the sixteenth century. Born to Nicolò da Passano in 1465, Gio. Giocacchino had an important career in Genoa and outside the Italian peninsula. He circulated in the orbit of the Fregoso family from the early sixteenth century on, when the family was in exile between Urbino and Rome. Because of these contacts, Pope Julius II, himself a member of the Della Rovere family, sent him to Urbino in 1512 to contact the Della Rovere who ruled the city. Like other important Genoese characters, including Andrea Doria, Gio. Giocacchino made his career thanks to the Fregoso network outside Genoa. In 1513, he returned to Genoa with the Fregoso and was named general commander of the galleys.40
Gio. Giocacchino lived with the doge and his family in the ducal palace, in the apartment of the doge’s brother, Federico Fregoso.41 In 1515, he was sent as ambassador to the court of Francis I, the French king who had become lord of Genoa, thanks to Ottaviano Fregoso, the ex-doge. He stayed in France and became an agent of the French king in England between 1526 and 1527.42 In 1538, he moved to Padua, where he died.
Gio. Giocacchino had an international role, and he collected assets, some of which are still preserved in collections: a silver-gilt chalice (which he may have won from the king of England at chess), an eagle lectern, and ten choir books.43 Relevant for his contacts with San Giorgio was the moltiplico he founded in 1545, dedicated to his family and his town, Levanto. The first group of loca was invested to pay the salary of the podestà, the castellan, the physician, and the master of grammar and mathematics in Levanto and to extinguish the town’s taxes (gabelle).44 A second portion of loca, which did not exist at the time of the creation of the moltiplico but was calculated according to future interests that would have generated more loca, was intended to restore the pier at Levanto’s port, its walls, and the fortifications.45 Gio. Gioacchino wanted to use the third and last part of the investment to help the poor of Levanto. Giuseppe Felloni has demonstrated that the moltiplico did not produce what Gio. Gioacchino had calculated, because he had miscalculated the sum, failing to consider that the loca could yield different interests over time and miscalculating the maturation date of the moltiplico.46 Furthermore, the interest on the luoghi was lower than he had planned, because the Republic of Genoa took part of them. The loca were not used for the purposes for which they were invested. The descendants of Gio. Gioacchino used the loca which the Republic had left in their possession.
The fact that Gio. Gioacchino da Passano failed to accurately calculate the revenues of his investment is interesting because it gives us an idea of how the moltiplichi were understood in Genoa at that time. It is also possible that since the people who left a will used notaries and their clerks, advisors existed in Genoa. A comparative study of the many moltiplichi and the history of the investments over time could provide information on the mentality and cultural attitudes of the Genoese.
Gio. Gioacchino da Passano’s investments in the moltiplichi are dated to the 1540s, and he dedicated himself to the town of Levanto in the same years, when San Giorgio controlled it. However, an inscription in the loggia of Levanto dedicated to him mentions his role in the transfer of Levanto to San Giorgio.47 The text is unclear: the first part contains a short biography of Gio. Gioacchino. The sentence that mentions the transfer of Levanto to San Giorgio is at the end of the text—after the description of Gio. Gioacchino’s maturity rather than, as we would expect, where it mentions his youth, which was around the time that Levanto passed into San Giorgio’s hands (1518). The sources on the translatio of Levanto preserve information that allows us to surmise that Gio. Gioacchino was involved in Levanto’s transfer. When the contract was signed, two witnesses were present: Giovanni da Passano—a man closely allied with Gio. Gioacchino—and Gio. Gioacchino’s brother-in-law Domenico Sauli. Considering that Gio. Gioacchino was connected with Ottaviano Fregoso, it is plausible that he was interested in San Giorgio’s acquisition of Levanto.
Similar to their request to Ventimiglia in the eastern Riviera, San Giorgio asked the inhabitants of Levanto to cover a number of expenses. In this case, however, the system was more complicated, and the inhabitants did not pay directly. San Giorgio gave the inhabitants 200 luoghi with the paghe to pay a debt of 6,000 lire (for the translatio and the work of restoration of the castle). In exchange for these luoghi, San Giorgio obtained all the possessions of the people of Levanto and the revenues of the taxes as a guarantee. Until then, it was not the Commune that collected the gabelle but the community of Levanto itself. At the time of the transfer, the value of the gabelle was 2,000 Levanto lire.48
Reports of the meetings of the Commune of Genoa about acquiring Ventimiglia and Levanto mention the existence of factions and how badly they affected life in the towns. The reports stated that—because the factions had provoked fires and robberies—the Commune had asked San Giorgio to take over the territories.49 Ottaviano Fregoso—the doge who promoted the transfer of Levanto, Ventimiglia, and Lerici to San Giorgio—had different politics than other doges who had supported other territorial transfers in the second half of the fifteenth century. Like San Giorgio, Ottaviano fought factions. He did so through peacemaking rituals and religious ceremonies, mainly with the help of his brother, an archbishop and religious man who was close to the milieu of the crypto-Protestants in the Italian peninsula. The weakness of Genoa in the face of the threats of France and the Adorno family, and Ottaviano’s ties with religious practices and beliefs, may explain why he favored San Giorgio and was against factionalism, despite being a member of the Fregoso family.50
6.4. The End of the Territorial Dominion
A hitherto unstudied subject in the history of San Giorgio’s territorial power is how the territories returned to the Republic in 1562. A detailed study is difficult, however, because—as mentioned—there are too few sources on the center of San Giorgio’s government.
A contract of translatio was written and signed in 1562 stating that all territories would return to the Republic of Genoa.51 This document mentions the territories of San Giorgio and describes them. It states that the Republic acquired Corsica, the island of Capraia, Sarzana, Sarzanello, Castelnovo, Ortonovo, S. Stefano, Pieve di Teco, and the communities of Valle Arroscia, Ventimiglia, and Levanto. It then defines the Republic’s obligations and those of San Giorgio. The Republic renounced, from that moment, the payment of ₤75,000 that had been paid yearly to San Giorgio. The salt tax of all the territories remained with San Giorgio. The Republic acquired any weapons and munitions within the fortifications at the time of the transfer.
The text of the contract describes the territories differently than the texts concerning the initial acquisitions. At the time of the initial acquisitions, the territories were called “states” (stati) and the area of Liguria and Lunigiana was called terraferma (mainland). The 1562 contract states that the territories returned to the “strength, dominion, and power” of the Republic, and that the latter would pay to maintain the fortifications so that the territories would acquire more power, dignity, and strength (“imperio, dignità e forze”). The Genoese hoped that the good government over time would make the economic profit greater. The contract then describes in detail the geography of the territories and their resources, presenting the same information found in the various acquisition contracts. Some information, however, was new. For instance, in describing Corsica, the document mentions the city of Ajaccio, founded in 1492 under San Giorgio’s dominion and the aqueduct of Levanto. Finally, the document lists all the privileges and rights of San Giorgio that have passed to the Republic.52
Each territory has its own story and reasons for being given to San Giorgio’s control. One of the main reasons was the need to put the territories of the Commune in the hands of an institution that could pay for their expenses and the need to keep trade flowing in areas threatened by Genoa’s enemies. The first time San Giorgio acquired a territory, Pietrasanta, it was because the Commune wanted to pay back a debt. San Giorgio acquired territories after it had acquired many other rights. In contrast to other territorial acquisitions, such as those of the maone during the fourteenth century, San Giorgio also acquired powers of territorial sovereignty such as the merum et mixtum imperium, the ius gladii, and the plena iurisdictio. These terms appear in the contracts from Famagusta (1447) onward. As discussed, the contracts contain terms that were used in feudal transfers of the previous centuries. The documents of the Commune and those of San Giorgio refer mainly to these transfers with the term “translatio” and sometimes with the Genoese vernacular “apodià” and “arrembà” (to take and acquire). Even though from the Genoese perspective the sovereign power of San Giorgio was clearly defined, the inhabitants of regions far from Genoa probably had more nuanced or different ideas about San Giorgio’s territorial possession.
It appears that some influential and powerful figures in Genoa supported the transfers. For the second half of the fifteenth century, Battita de Goano played an important role in San Giorgio’s acquisitions of Pietrasanta, Famagosta, Caffa, and Corsica. During the first years of the sixteenth century, ex-doge and governor Ottaviano Fregoso had a key role in the acquisition of Levanto and Ventimiglia. He also created a political discourse around San Giorgio as a resource for Genoa. Since Ottaviano held the most powerful roles in the Commune (doge and governor), the tension between San Giorgio and the Commune during his government at the beginning of sixteenth century was less intense than during the first phase of the territorial dominion (1447–79). As will be shown in the following pages, this tension affected individuals as well. Some of the persons who worked in the financial offices of the Commune became fierce opponents of San Giorgio.
The power over territories was well defined through juridical traditions and the terms of plena iurisdictio and ius gladii, but it was difficult to define this power in areas far from Genoa, because of different local conceptions of how a territory was owned and controlled. The Genoese might have a clear idea, but other populations had different perceptions. The juridical landscape of the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant was quite complex, and we should not study these areas just from the point of view of the Genoese. Within the territories of the Black Sea, local populations like the Tatars probably did not have a clear idea of what San Giorgio was. They likely considered the trading posts to be more generically inhabited and controlled by the Genoese. In the territories closer to Genoa, and Liguria—Ventimiglia, Levanto, and Pieve di Teco—the knowledge of San Giorgio and its territorial possessions and the difference between San Giorgio’s and the Commune’s government would have been more evident. In Lunigiana, Florence and the Fregoso and Malaspina families contended over the territories. On the scale of territorial power, Corsica falls between the Levant and Liguria. Here the difference between San Giorgio and the Commune was clear—as seen, for instance, when people in Corsica asked to come back under the control of the Commune. However, many matters connected to the history of territories remain unstudied and unclear. Did San Giorgio administer the territories differently from previous administrations? When San Giorgio acquired lands from the Commune, was its administrative structure different? Did San Giorgio assign offices differently—for instance, without considering the power of the factions?
We have some information about how offices and charges worked (governors, captains, officials), but we lack a clear picture of how the charges and offices were organized. Did it change between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? To answer these questions, additional research is required.
Notes
1. ASG, Primi cancellieri e Cancellieri di San Giorgio.
2. ASG, AS, Sala 34, 607, 2243 [18,60700 2243], fol. 43r.
3. The contract is in ASG, membranacei XXIV, fol. 1r–4v.
4. ASG, membranacei XXIV, fol. 1r.
5. The following pages analyze the text (Part III, § 8.3).
6. ASG, Banco di San Giorgio, Sala 34, 607, 2360. January 15, 1523.
7. Arnold Esch found these references. See Arnold Esch, Die Lebenswelt des Europäischen Spätmittelalters: Kleine Schicksale selbst erzählt in Schreiben an den Papst (Munchen: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2014), 114–115, notes 39–40.
8. Lucien Auguste Letteron (ed.), “Croniche di Giovanni della Grossa e di Pier Antonio Monteggiani,” Bulletin de la Société des sciences historiques et naturelles de la Corse 395 (1907), quoted and commented on by Antoine Franzini, La Corse du XVe siècle: Politique et société, 1433–1483 (Ajaccio: Alain Piazzola, 2005), 252 and note.
9. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS. Italien, 1606, fol. 150r.
10. Vannina Marchi Van Cauwelaert, La Corse génoise, Saint Georges, vainqueur des “tyrans” (milieu XVe–début XVIe siècle) (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011), 162–168.
11. Rosario Russo, “La politica agraria dell’Officio di San Giorgio in Corsica (1490–1553),” Rivista Storica Italiana 4 (1934): 422–468: at 4, 1934 and at 1, 1935.
12. Russo, “La politica agraria dell’Officio di San Giorgio.”
13. Moresco, “Capraia sotto il governo delle Compere,” 358.
14. Moresco, “Capraia sotto il governo delle Compere,” 407–408.
15. Moresco, “Capraia sotto il governo delle Compere,” 381–390.
16. Moresco, “Capraia sotto il governo delle Compere,” 381–390.
17. See here Part III § 6.2.
18. Bernardini, Ai confini della Repubblica, 48–76.
19. Bernardini, Ai confini della Repubblica, 16–18.
20. Bernardini, Ai confini della Repubblica, 75–76.
21. ASG, San Giorgio, Membranacei XXVII, fol. 14v, quoted in Bernardini, Ai confini della Repubblica, 90.
22. “Missi fuerunt ad accipiendam realem possessionem dictae terrae,” ASG, Membranacei, XVII, fol. XXVIr.
23. Bernardini, Ai confini della Repubblica, 78–79.
24. Bernardini, Ai confini della Repubblica, 79–80.
25. Bernardini, Ai confini della Repubblica, 86, footnote 237.
26. ASG, San Giorgio, Membranacei XXVII, fol. 51r.
27. Bernardini, Ai confini della Repubblica, 89.
28. Timothy J. McGee, “ ‘Alla Battaglia’: Music and Ceremony in Fifteenth-Century Florence,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 36, 2 (1983): 287–302.
29. ASG, Cancellieri di San Giorgio, 35 (folder number 8), page without number.
30. Bernardini, Ai confini della Repubblica.
31. On the history of factions during the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the bibliography is quite rich. See Marco Gentile (ed.), Guelfi e Ghibellini nell’Italia del Rinascimento (Rome: Viella, 2005).
32. On the “state of San Giorgio” and the discourse against factions in Lunigiana, see Andrea Bernardini, Ai confini della Repubblica.
33. See here Part I § 3.6.
34. De Moro, Ventimiglia, 203.
35. ASG, Ms di Parigi, 20, fol. 155r.
36. ASG, MS di Parigi, 20, fol. 157v.
37. De Moro, Ventimiglia, 39.
38. De Moro, Ventimiglia, 109.
39. Andrea Lercari, “Tra grande patriziato e notabile locale: i Da Passano nella Repubblica di Genova,” I Signori Da Passano. Identità territorial, grande politica e cultura europea nella storia di un’antica stirpe del Levante ligure, ed. Andrea Lercari, Giornale Storico della Lunigiana 2, 60–62 (2009–2011): 259–644, at 272, picture 3.
40. Lercari, “Tra grande patriziato e notabile locale,” 264.
41. Lercari, “Tra grande patriziato e notabile locale,” 264.
42. Lercari, “Tra grande patriziato e notabile locale,” 264–267.
43. David Skinner, “Princes, Ambassadors and Lost Choirbooks of Early Tudor England,” Early Music 40, 3 (2012): 363–378.
44. Felloni, “Utopia versus Realtà,” 647–648.
45. Felloni, “Utopia versus Realtà,” 648–649.
46. Felloni, “Utopia versus Realtà,” 652–657.
47. “Postremo patres suos imitatus, Levantum sub eorum protectione constitutum, ab eisque maximis commodis et immunitatis beneficio affectum sedatis incendis ac caedibus preter alia innumera beneficia inter quae magnificum illud locorum mille sub Divi Georgii clientelam traducendum curavit.” [My translation: Later on, imitating his ancestors, since Levanto, that was under their protection in order to solve the problems with…, resolved the fires and … among the many other useful things that, wonderful, of 1,000 luoghi managed to put under San Giorgio 1,000 luoghi]. See Lercari, “Tra grande patriziato e notabile locale,” 295.
48. ASG, San Giorgio, Sala 34 607 2271, fol. 32r.
49. On Levanto, ASG, AS 683, fol. 18r–19v.
50. Rodolfo Savelli, “Dalle confraternite allo stato: Il sistema assistenziale genovese nel Cinquecento,” Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria 98 (1984): 171–216; Carlo Taviani, “Confraternities, Citizenship and Factionalism: Genoa in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Brotherhood and Boundaries, ed. Nicholas Terpstra (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 42–53.
51. This contract is also called “translatio.” Here the territories in Lunigiana and Liguria are called “terraferma.” ASG, Ms. Membranacei, XXXIV, fol. 81–85.
52. ASG, Ms. Membranacei, XXXIV, fol. 82.