Introduction Visualizing Conflict and Commerce in the Maritime Cities of Medieval Italy
The maritime cities of Italy announced their presence in the Mediterranean, a political and economic arena already dominated by Muslim powers and the Byzantine Empire, through a combination of military campaigns and commer- cial exchange. This book will explore how participation in trade and warfare defined a distinct Mediterranean identity and visual culture for the cities of Amalfi, Salerno, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in the eleventh to the mid-twelfth century. Each of these Italian locales formulated a unique visual manifestation of the relationship between commerce and conflict through the use of spolia or reused architectural elements, objects, and styles from past and foreign cul- tures. This aesthetic of appropriation with spolia as its central visual element was multivalent, mutable, and culturally inclusive, capable of incorporating multiple and disparate references from various peoples and places across the sea; it was thus the ideal visual medium to manifest the identity of the inhabit- ants of these Italian cities as warriors, traders, and influential forces in Medi- terranean economics, politics, and culture. In the creation and ornamentation of public architectural monuments, each city forged a spoliate aesthetic char- acterized by heterogeneous assemblages of appropriated luxury objects and building elements to reference the Mediterranean cultures that inspired the greatest antagonism, fear, admiration, or emulation.
Conflict and Commerce in the Medieval Mediterranean
It was in the time period immediately before and after the First Crusade that these seafaring cities formulated a Mediterranean identity that combined com- merce and conflict.1 In the eleventh century, the republics of Pisa and Genoa initiated a number of military campaigns against Muslim territories; their readiness to fight for the faith encouraged their early and eager participation in the First Crusade. Venice and Amalfi, however, chose to engage in commerce
1 For recent studies on the significance of the First Crusade, see Susan Edgington and Luis García-Guijarro, eds., Jerusalem the Golden: The Origins and Impact of the First Crusade (Turn- hout, 2014); Peter Frankopan, The First Crusade: The Call from the East (Cambridge, MA, 2012); Nikolaos Chrissis, Crusading in Frankish Greece: A Study of Byzantine-Western Relations and Attitudes, 1204–1282 (Turnhout, 2012), xxvii–xxix.
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2 Claire Norton, “Blurring the Boundaries: Intellectual and Cultural Interactions between the Eastern and Western; Christian and Muslim Worlds,” in The Renaissance and the Ottoman World, eds. Anna Contadini and Claire Norton (Farnham, 2013), pp. 3–21, at p. 4; Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, “Liquid Frontiers: A Relational Analysis of Maritime Asia Minor as a Reli- gious Contact Zone in the Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries,” in Islam and Christianity in Medi- eval Anatolia, eds. Andrew Peacock, Bruno De Nicola, and Sara Nur Yildiz (Farnham, 2015), pp. 118–41, at p. 119. 3 Mike Carr, “Trade or Crusade?: The Zaccaria of Chios and Crusades against the Turks,” in Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, 1204–1453: Crusade, Religion and Trade between Latins, Greeks and Turks, eds. Nikolaos Chrissis and Mike Carr (Farnham, 2014), pp. 115–34, at p. 115; Sharon Kinoshita, “Locating the Medieval Mediterranean,” in Locating the Middle Ages: The Spaces and Places of Medieval Culture, eds. Julian Weiss and Sarah Salih (London, 2012), pp. 39–52, at pp. 40–43; Preiser-Kapeller, “Liquid Frontiers,” p. 123; Norton, “Blurring the Boundaries,” pp. 5, 20. 4 Mike Carr, “Between Byzantium, Egypt and the Holy Land: The Italian Maritime Republics and the First Crusade,” in Edgington and García-Guijarro, Jerusalem the Golden, pp. 75–87, at p. 84.