Erasmo Castellani Foreigners in Venice: Common Features and Particularities of Dalmatians

Erasmo Castellani Foreigners in Venice: common features and particularities of Dalmatians, Germans, and Lucchesi in Pre-modern Venice. Some historiographical issues. Leaving behind the crowded streets surrounding St. Mark’s square towards Castello, one of the six districts in which Venice is divided, one can find calle degli Albanesi, rio, calle and salizada dei Greci, fondamenta dei Furlani. Proceeding, there are Calle Schiavona, Calle Schiavoncina, fondamenta San Giorgio degli Schiavoni and Corte Schiavona. The waterfront which goes from the Dogal Palace almost up to the Arsenal is called Riva degli Schiavoni. These names are traces of the importance of the eastern Adriatic coast and its people for the history of Venice: they are there to testify to former settlements of communities of the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, in particular Dalmatian people, which have been a major component in the life of the Most Serene Republic. Perhaps geographically less visibly spread, but certainly no less important, was the presence of German immigrants, whose signs are still tangible today on a couple of bas reliefs in the parish of Saint Samuel, where was located the fraternity of the German shoemakers, and in the massive building right at the feet of Rialto bridge, the Fontego dei Tedeschi, just recently transformed in a luxurious—and controversial—shopping mall. 1 All over Venice there are traces of the presence of “national” communities which inhabited particular sections of the city: calli, fondamente, corti are named after the people from Florence, Bergamo, Lucca, Spain, Lombardy, Morea, who migrated and settled in Venice from the middle ages onward. Since most of the times these national groups excelled in a particular activity, their presence defines as well a geographical division of labor in Venice: Dalmatians established themselves near the Arsenal, the heart of the seafaring activities of the Republic, and in the area where traders unload their cargo ships, because they had a primary role in shipbuilding, sailing and trading activities; The Germans, the largest foreign community of merchants, were right next to the Venetian market center par excellence, Rialto; the Lucchesi settled as close as possible to the German headquarter in the neighborhood where other textile industries were already in place, since they manufactured and traded silk. The importance of foreign communities and labor-specific immigration is well known and studied as a common phenomenon in early modern and medieval Europe, as a necessary element for the survival of cities, whose mortality rates usually exceeded the birth rate.1 Foreigners and immigration in pre-modern Venice specifically, has been extensively studied with different goals and methodological takes. These works focus mostly on the economic and social dimension of immigration, whether on a micro or a macroscopic level (e.g. the 1 S. Caciovicchi (ed.), Le Migrazioni in Europa, in which several Italian cities are juxtaposed to French and Mediterranean centers in order to define communal pattern of migration in Medieval and Early Modern time; E. Schubert, “L’Etranger dans l’Allemagne Médiévale et Moderne,” in L’Etranger au Moyen Age, pp. 191-215. 2 study of one nation or a specific artisanal activity on the one hand, or to the function of trading networks and the relationship between “citizen” and “foreigner” on the other),2 or deal with the political administration of fluxes of immigration in different moments of the most serene Republic.3 Yet, in the light of these studies, general patterns of immigration show their limits and inaccuracies, and a too simplistic way to read the phenomenon. Here I will try to analyze the historiography of three of the most prominent and well-studied foreign communities in Venice, highlighting potential and limits of both sources and methodological approaches of these works. I have decided to focus mostly on European bibliography mainly for two reasons. First, these communities have been an object of interest predominantly for European scholars. Secondly, American historiography considers by and large the different nations settled in the Venetian republic with little attention to their specificities, being more prone to identify paradigms of immigration and foreignness rather than peculiarities of each group. Here I will consider the works on the Dalmatian, the German, and the Tuscan nazione of the Lucchesi to exemplify the interpretative obstacles encountered—and sometimes generated—by the scholars. Rather than simply summarizing the features of 2 G. Fedalto, “Le Minoranze Straniere a Venezia tra Politica e Legislazione,” in Venezia Centro di Mediazione, vol.1; A. Bellavitis, Identité, Mariage, Mobilité Sociale: Citoyennes et Citoyens à Venise au XVI. Siècle. Rome: 2001. 3 A. Zannini, Venezia Città Aperta; for an overview of the historiographical approaches to immigration in premodern Europe—in particular regarding German and Italian cities, G. Rossetti (ed.), Dentro la Città, pp. XXI-XXVI. In general, German historiography tends to focus on the legal consideration of foreignness, while Italian (but also Spanish and French) historians are more interested in socio-economic studies of the subject. 3 these three different groups, I will try to highlight the elements which can constitute a common ground for immigration (at least in pre modern Venice), as much as those which make problematic a general understanding of this phenomenon. This aspect is, I believe, crucial not only to understand the different dynamics of their settlement, but it also forces us to unpack and re- conceptualize the dimensions of “foreigner” and “nation” in pre-modern time. Prior to any enquiry on immigration—in Venice, as anywhere else—should be an understanding of who were the immigrants and their relationship with the city they were settling in. Being a city whose growth and development in the Middle Ages was strictly connected with trade and thus the presence of merchants from a variety of places, this question has been widely studied, sometimes comparing its dynamics with those of Genoa, which shared with Venice a common trading vocation and the republican government, but differed significantly in its administration. Roberto Sabatino Lopez and Benjamin Z. Kedar describe the generosity with which “Genoa bestowed citizenship on all comers,” as opposed to Venice, which was far more cautious in conceding such privilege.4 Such statements may be understood as general political trajectories, but the surviving archival documentation shows that these narratives are at times exaggerated, if not completely fabricated to support mythical or anti- mythical narratives of these cities.5 Reinhold Mueller describes profusely how 4 B. Z. Kedar, Merchant in Crisis, p. 8. 5 G. Casarino, “Rappresaglie o Privilegi?,” in G. Petti Balbi (ed), Comunità Forestiere e “nationes,” pp.321-324. Here there is the example of a Lucchese living in Genoa from 17 years who, in 1404 finally received a “temporary citizenship” for 10 years. 4 Venetians and the Venetian Republic dealt from time to time with immigrants, forensicus, updating—sometimes dramatically changing—the legal requirements for conceding different degrees of citizenship, according to a combination of ecological, economic, demographic, and political factors.6 The different trajectories which emerged from the studies of the three nations mentioned above clearly show how these factors intertwined and determined fortunes and misfortunes of their presence in Venice. Perhaps the most relevant—if not the only—trait shared by these three groups is something that we could call “professional geographical determinism:” the Lucchesi manufactured, spin and trade silk, the Germans—with regional specificities—imported to Venice metals, furs and leather, and established themselves in the lagoon as bakers, shoemakers and, later, as printers, while the Dalmatians excelled in seafaring and shipbuilding activities. If that may certainly explain that their professional specialization fulfilled Venetian deficiencies in said professional sectors, and that most of the immigrants who came to Venice worked in the respective regional area of expertise, it is however insufficient to describe and explain immigration and immigrational flows to Venice. For instance, it only offers hints for interpreting why the Venetian Republic decided to rely on foreign groups for certain professions; moreover, it leaves in the shade all the other unskilled individuals who migrated to Venice along with their fellow specialized countrymen, attracted by professional 6 R. Mueller, Immigrazione e Cittadinanza, pp. `17-31. 5 opportunities, who constituted, in Gigi Corazzol’s provocative words, Microsocietà incapsulate (encapsulated micro-societies).7 Did they stay at the margin of their own original group or were they assimilated in the local social fabric, giving up their original territorial identity? Also women are almost completely silent in the sources and, consequently, in the studies. An interesting perspective on the subject is given by Patrick Gilli, who introduces his work on the Italian city-states of the late middle Ages with a consideration over the meaning of étranger. He makes the distinction between the binary categories citizen/non-citizen and indigenous/stranger. Stanger, in fact, was not only someone born in a different place, but also all those categories who were excluded from the enjoyment of—most—legal rights: children, poor people and, indeed, women.8 Thus, women appear in

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