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ELISA VERMIGLIO Archives and sources for medieval Sicily: a study upon the urban reality of a port (Messina in the 15th century)* This paper will be focused on the economic district of the Strait of Messina, between Calabria and Sicily. This issue is, at present, widely debated by both historical and financial analysts, mainly due to the interest raised by the project of a bridge over the Strait, but also because both Reggio Calabria and Messina have recently been included in the list of Italian metropolitan areas.1 In view of the reevaluation and reassessment of this geographical district (which extends from Gioia Tauro to Messina and lies at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea) the historical background is of primary importance. The aim of my research is to carry out a micro-historical analysis of a specific area of southern Italy: the city of Messina. I then intend to place the results of this undertaking in a Mediterranean perspective by means of late medieval ar- chival documents.2 As we know, the historical events of both before and after the unification of Italy have caused many archives to be split up. These devel- opments have made conservation and consultation problematic.3 As a premise, * This paper was presented at the international workshop New Perspective on the Research of Medieval Sicily: Prospects and Challenges, organised by the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” (Heidelberg University, 22nd October 2014). 1 Already in the 1960’s Lucio Gambi, in his human geography studies, offered, through a careful analysis of the repopulation of Messina and Reggio after the earthquake in 1908, a historical reading of the phenomenon coming to an intuition which anticipated the debate on the strict conurbation. The formation of a large urban area that included Messina, Reggio Calabria and Villa San Giovanni, represented, for this eminent scholar, the only choice for future develop- ment. Lucio GAMBI, La più recente e più meridionale conurbazione italiana, in: Quaderni di geografia umana per la Sicilia e la Calabria 5 (1960), pp. 3–7. 2 Enrico Pispisa wrote: “Today the history of cities, especially small ones, which are the subject of our interest, it is proposed as a topic of major investigations: not only because the line of studies, dedicated to small centers, participates to the so-called micro-history problems [...], but also because of the renewed focus on local customs, on traditions of fairly restricted territorial areas, largely encouraged by an intellectual orientation committed to recover particular reali- ties”, Enrico PISPISA, Città, storia locale, microstoria. Questioni di metodo, in: “Ante quam essent episcopi errant civitates”. I centri minori dell’Italia tardomedievale, ed. Francesco P. TOCCO (Percorsi medievali 4), Messina 2010, p. 7. The micro-historical analysis of a Mediter- ranean seaport may offer interesting insights to understand the broader context of international trade. For the micro-history, please see Giovanni LEVI, A proposito di microstoria, in: La sto- riografia contemporanea, ed. Peter BURKE (Biblioteca universale Laterza 401), Rome / Bari 1993, pp. 111–134. 3 As we know, at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries the suppression of the religious orders meant that most of the documents were moved to the State Archives. As a consequence, there was a dispersion of the archive series with the new classification, for example, based on themes. The Italian archive system, after the unification of Italy and the laws of 1939 and 1963, assumed the current characteristics with a State archive in each provincial capital and some sections in towns with an important historical tradition (like Prato). However, not all archive 278 ELISA VERMIGLIO in order to link this paper to the “Archives and Sources” topic that was assigned to me, I would like to illustrate the available sources for the socio-economic reconstruction of medieval Messina. By doing so, I hope to help direct students and scholars who are about to carry out research on the city. I. The sources Like other medieval cities, the archival documentation concerning Messina, alt- hough varied, is incomplete. Indeed, a great part of the historical documentation has been lost. Firstly, the earthquake of 1908 destroyed Messina and Reggio Calabria. Secondly, the area was bombed during the Second World War.4 How- ever, historical memory can be found in survivor sources, which – just to quote George Duby – appear to historians as an “unravelled cloth to be sewn to- gether”.5 Nonetheless, if we compare the documents of Messina with those of other south Italian cities, we can say that both private and public archive mate- rial is more than enough to define the social and economic structure of this area and to provide an interpretation that can be compared with the available bibli- ography.6 The sources for reconstructing medieval Messina come from different types of documents. These include narrative sources which are either generally con- cerned with Sicilian history, or, focused on Messina (like the Iconologia della Vergine by P. Samperi).7 Further information also derives from chroniclers’, voyagers’ and geographers’ descriptions.8 These are a mixture of contemporary material was moved to the State Archives. There are many archives of religious orders which were not suppressed or other organisations such as hospitals or private entities. This has caused a problem for conservation and consultation. 4 The earthquake of 1908, but above all the conflicts and the bombings of World War II led to the dispersal of most of the archival property of the city. On the effects of the earthquake, see Giuseppe MERCALLI, Contributo allo studio del terremoto Calabro-Messinese del 28 dicembre 1908, in: Bollettino della società sismologica Italiana 13 (1908–1909), pp. 305–326; Messina e Reggio prima e dopo il terremoto del 28 dicembre 1908, Florence 1909; Gaetano OLIVA, Messina prima e dopo il disastro, Messina 1914, printed again with “Introduzione” by Carmelo Trasselli, Messina 1987. 5 George DUBY, Il sogno della storia, Milan 1986, p. 40. 6 Please refer to the following notes. 7 Placido SAMPERI, Iconologia della gloriosa Vergine madre di Dio Maria protettrice di Mes- sina, Messina 1644, anastatic reprint with introduction by Giuseppe LIPARI, Enrico PISPISA and Giovanni MOLONIA, Messina 1991. 8 Information about Messina can be deduced from the descriptions of Arab travelers gathered by Michele AMARI, Biblioteca arabo-sicula. Testo italiano, Turin / Rome 1880–1882. The port of Messina evoked the special admiration of Al-Idrīsī, an Arab traveler to the Norman court, so much so that he described the port in glowing terms: “it receives large ships as well as travelers and merchants of various Latin and Muslim countries; markets are flourishing, the merchandise are sold off and many patrons pour out there [...] it is much talk in the world because there is no ship of any tonnage, that cannot drop its anchor near the beach so from the unloading of the goods passing them from one to another hand to the mainland”, Al-Idrīsī, Il libro di Ruggero, .
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