Luigi Speranza
For the sake of clearness I call the period of Genoese history which will now occupy us, ranging from the suppression of the Consulate in 1190 to the nomination of the first Doge in 1339, the Podesta Period; that is the Government of the town by a chief magistrate remaining in office for one year only and chosen from one of the neighbouring states of Milan, Brescia, Lucca, Florence, Verona, Bologna, and so on. As a matter of fact, however, the rule of the Podestas only lasted for eighty years, when the Genoese got tired of them and attempted a return to the National Government of the former century by electing Captains of the people with much the same powers as the Consuls had possessed. But the nobles fought among themselves to be captains just as they had done to be consuls, and the experiment proved altogether such a failure that the town was quite ready at the beginning of the fourteenth century to adopt a still more thorough system of foreign dominion than the Podesta by naming Henry VII, Emperor of Germany, Head of the State, and after him Robert of Anjou, King of Naples, who remained sovereign of Genoa until within a few years of the election of the first Doge.
Whether under Podesta, Captains or foreign Kings, it was always the same story in these one hundred and fifty years that come between the Consuls and the Doge; constant fighting in the streets and neighbourhood of Genoa between the chief families, nominally on political grounds, as between Ghibellines upholding the cause of the Emperor and Guelphs faithful to the Pope and to liberty, but in reality a purely personal contest, founded about equally on jealousy and ambition. In fact, .we see in the course of this period the Ghibelline Dorias and Spinolas in deadly feud between themselves, and the Guelph Fieschis and Grimaldis making common cause with the Dorias against the Spinolas, who attained to such power in the thirteenth century that they threatened to overshadow the three other great families completely.
You will find an interesting record of this phase of the Spinola greatness in the house on the Piazza Fontane Morose, with the privileged black and white stripe, which has five statues in niches on the front. This house is of later date than the period under review, being of the beginning of the fifteenth century, but it is built on the foundations of the old tower that was the chief stronghold of the Spinolas of Luccoli, that branch of the family which in 1240 removed higher up the town than the parent stem of S. Luca, and which by the end of the century had covered with palaces a considerable area all round the tower, ranging from what is now Piazza Corvetto down to Piazza Luccoli. The name of Luccoli comes from the Latin «lucoli» or little woods and suggests a very different appearance of the part of Genoa below Piazza Fontane Morose to what it now wears. In the early days S. Maria delle Vigne was in the middle of vines, Campetto was a green field, and Soziglia, that is to say « sub sylva » « under the wood, » the bed of a brook that ran from the hills to the sea.
To return to the Luccoli Spinolas, when at the height of their prosperity they were attacked, as already mentioned, by the combined forces of the other three great families, in fact the Spinolas of S. Luca turned against them as well, and after a tremendous amount of fighting the Luccolis in 1309 were overpowered, their towers along with many of their palaces destroyed and Opizino Spinola, head of the family, banished. Of the statues in the niches three represent the most celebrated Luccoli Spinolas, the first on the left being Oberto, son of Guglielmo Spinola, founder of the Luccoli branch, the second, Conrad, who held temporary rule over the town in 1206, and the third, Opizino, mentioned above. This Opizino married one of his daughters to Theodore Paleologus, Emperor of Constantinople, and lived in a truly kingly fashion, so that it used to be said of him at the time that he only wanted the title to make him a full monarch. The fourth niche contains a female figure, probably representing one of the ladies of the family, while the last is occupied by a mere conventional type of warrior apparently put in to fill up the space.
In connection with the turbulent spirit that pervaded this period I may call your attention to the Embriaco Tower which I mentioned in the last lecture. Under the Consuls this tower was only one of the many that the Genoese nobles were in the habit of adding to their palaces, with apparently the primary object of getting a good view of the sea and being able to get early notice of the return home of their galleys, but when street fighting between the two factions got to be the order of the day these towers became such an intolerable nuisance, from the facilities they afforded for throwing down stones, molten lead, boiling oil or any other means of destruction on the people below, that in 1196, in the first years of the Podesta, they were all ordered to be razed to the ground. The Embriaco Tower, in consideration of the splendid services of Guglielmo Embriaco at the Crusades,
alone was spared. One cannot help feeling specially irritated over all the useless breaking of Guelph and Ghibelline heads, when one thinks that without it Genoa might now possess perhaps a dozen towers, each as picturesque as that of the Embriaci, to form a distinctive architectural feature and beauty of the town.
We learn a curious, and one might almost say amusing, instance of the manner in which justice was administered in these days from Giustiniani, when relating the visit to Genoa in 1232 of Alexis Lusignan , King of Cyprus, a descendant of Guy Lusignan, last King of Jerusalem, who was deprived of his throne in 1187 by Saladin and afterwards was given Cyprus as a compensation. These Lusignans during the three centuries they reigned over the Island paid frequent visits to Genoa; in fact the place must have become only too familiar to them, seeing that on another occasion, which will come under our notice later, a whole family of Lusignans, father, mother and infant son, were shut up in the lighthouse, which was far less roomy in those days than now, for nine years. There was however no unpleasantness of this kind in connection with Alexis Lusignan's - 55
visit, only the king arrived in a state of great perplexity as to whether one of his knights, Giacomo Grillo by name, had or had not murdered, during the voyage, another knight who was known to be on bad terms with Grillo and who had mysteriously disappeared. The King submitted the matter to the Podesta, a Milanese, who must have found himself rather in the dark on the subject but who hit on the expedient of obtaining a decision by judicial combat in conformity with Lombard law. Accordingly lists were marked out on piazza Sarzano, that open space in the most ancient part of the town which is so often mentioned in early Genoese history. Two champions were chosen, one for the dead man and one for Grillo, and the combat was held on the appointed day in presence of the Podesta, the King of Cyprus and Grillo himself. One can imagine this last individual watching the proceedings with the most painful interest and with considerable misgiving as to the whole thing being a sham, that is to say that his champion had been probably told privately not to complicate the course of justice by making too stout a resistance. And so indeed it proved, for the dead man's representatives had it all their own way, Grillo was declared beaten and consequently guilty, was taken back to prison where his head was promptly cut off, and Alexis Lusignan proceeded cn his voyage to France, no doubt cheered with the thought that he had taken the very best possible course under the circumstances. Piazza Sarzano must however have been the scene of a great many encounters much more deadly than this judicial duel, for we read that towards the end of the sixteenth century, when a cistern was being dug under the square to collect the water supply for the well we now see there, the workmen came upon a great mass of human bones mixed with weapons of various kinds and helmets, some of which still contained heads that had been severed frcm the bodies.
With all this fighting going on at home one can understand that it must have been a real relief for all peaceful citizens each time that war was declared with outsiders, when the turbulent spirits would find occupation for their swords away from the town and with a fair chance of never returning; and of these opportunities for legitimate fighting there were plenty. Just about one hundred years after Genoa and Pisa became enemies, as I mentioned in the last lecture, over the possession of Corsica, war in 1208 was commenced with Venice and, like that of Pisa, continued for over a century and a half in a dreary alternation of successes and reverses, with the very important difference, however, that it terminated at the close of the fourteenth century in the collapse of the Genoese supremacy in the Mediterranean , whereas in the case of the Pisan war it was the Pisans who were ultimately crushed by their rivals at Meloria.
To explain the origin of the war with Venice I must dwell for a moment on the circumstances attending the fourth Crusade, although not directly connected with Genoese history. You will remember that in 1202 some forty thousand crusaders assembled at Venice to embark for the deliverance of Jerusalem, but as they had not money enough to pay their passage the Venetians refused to take them. The matter was at last settled by a compromise, according to which the Crusaders, in exchange for a free passage, were to help the Venetians to recover the port of Zara in Dalmatia which had been taken from Venice by the King of Hungary. This arrangement, which turned the wearers of the cross into mere mercenaries, naturally caused great scandal in Christendom and made the Pope, Innocent III, very angry, but the Venetians were too strong to mind him, and after the capture of Zara they proposed to their sword-bearing passengers a second venture of the same kind at Constantinople, where the overthrow of the Emperor Isaac Commenus by his brother gave a pretext for interference. Constantinople was quickly taken from the usurper and the son of the Emperor Isaac placed on the throne, but as may be well imagined the Venetians and their allies were not in the least disposed by this time to abandon empty handed the richest town in the world and go on quietly with the dry work of the Crusades. An opportunity was soon found for getting rid altogether of the Comnenus dynasty and laying hands in the confusion on the enormous treasures of the city, while the imperial crown was offered to Enrico Dandolo, the Venetian leader; but the blind old Doge preferred the substance of power to the show and induced the Crusaders to name instead Baldwin, Count of Flanders, Em
peror, thus founding the Latin dynasty of the East which lasted sixty years. Meanwhile the Venetians who were virtually masters of Constantinople promptly made use of their power to deprive the Genoese of the trading rights that had been acquired from the Comneni about fifty years before, and which the Genoese had been making such good use of that their commerce in the East was becoming the envy of all Italy. This wound in their tenderest point, their pockets, made the Genoese mad, and from that moment the Venetians became their sworn enemies. No wonder that a few years afterwards a pretext was found for declaring war against them, such pretext being given by a dispute about Candia which had been bought by the Venetians from the Marquis of Montferrat, who had got the island as his share of the spoils of the fourth (so called) Crusade and had also offered it to the Genoese.
Besides the Pisan and Venetian wars the Genoese, just about the middle of the period we are reviewing, in 1244 and 1245, had a hard struggle against Frederick II, grandson of Barbarossa. Frederick appears to have hated Genoa much more than his grandfather did, no doubt because the Genoese took up a much more decided Guelphic attitude in the time of the second Frederick than of the first, and this may probably be accounted for by the fact that Pope Innocent IV, the great opponent of Frederick II, was a Genoese, a member of the Fieschi family. In 1244, when the Ghibelline cause was everywhere triumphant in Italy and the Pope was on the point of falling into the hands of the Emperor, he fled for shelter to Genoa and remained three months here, partly in the palace of the Archbishops near the Embriaco Tower, partly in the neighbourhood of the town between Cornigliano and Sestri in the monastery of S. Andrea, which no longer exists and of which the site is now occupied by the conspicuous marine villa of Signor Raggio. Frederick was furious at the Genoese helping his rival to escape him and, in conjunction with the Pisans who were thorough Ghibellines, did his utmost to crush the Republic, but the Genoese held their own stoutly against the combined forces, and although they had no special victory to boast of they considered themselves justified in recording the result of the campaign in a somewhat new and vain-glorious form 01 seal which you may very likely come across in connection with old historical documents. This seal dates from 1245 and, instead of the solitary Griphon which was the old seal of the town, consists of a Griphon trampling on an Eagle, emblem of the Empire, and a fox, representing Pisa, with the motto « Gryphus ut has angit, sic hostes Janua frangit» «As the Griphon teareth them so doth Genoa break her enemies. »
Undoubtedly the most important as well as the most successful event of the Podesta period is the recovery by the Genoese in 1261 of their commercial position in Constantinople and the founding of their two great colonies, Pera or Galata and Caffa, the pearls of Genoa in the Bosphorus and Black Sea, her two eyes in the East as they have been called, through which, until the taking of Constantinople by the Turks two centuries later, she held the first rank as trader in the world. I must briefly explain how this came to pass. After the expulsion from Constantinople of the Comneni by the Crusaders of 1203 one °f t'ie branches of the house, the Lascari, had founded an Empire at Nicea in Asia Minor, and in the middle of the century , the reigning Lascari being a minor, the State was managed by his guardian, Michel Paleologus, a highly clever and ambitious man of noble family. Paleologus perceiving that the Latin rule at Constantinople was falling to pieces owing to the incapacity of Baldwin II, successor to the Baldwin elected by Dandolo, determined to win back the city for himself, and he felt that the Genoese with their hatred of the Venetian occupation would be his willing allies. They did in fact respond with the greatest alacrity to his overtures, and a treaty was signed at Ninfea, near Smyrna, by which the Genoese bound themselves to furnish a fleet for the transport of the Greek troops, and Paleologus on his side promised the Genoese a monopoly of trade in Constantinople so soon as it became his. This contract worked splendidly well for the Genoese, as Baldwin turned out such a coward and his subjects proved to be so ready for a change of rulers that Paleologus got the town almost without striking a blow, and the Genoese, without losing either men or money, found themselves in an even better position in Costantinople than the Venetians had been sixty years before. They at once proceeded to fortify the suburb of Pera or Galata which had been specially assigned to them, and we hear from later writers that this Galata became a city in itself, surrounded by high and strong walls, full of houses and inhabitants and guarding the passage of the Bosphorus as absolutely as the Czar of Russia would do now were he master of Constantinople. It seems strange that the only record of this greatest of Genoa's colonies should be the name of a very shabby modern street , the Via Galata near the Brignole station. Only second to Galata in importance was Caffa in the Crimea, a port that the Genoese so developed both in a commercial and military point of view that its possession gave them the same preponderance in the Black Sea that the Russians have now. In the case of Caffa not even a secondrate street preserves the name, unless indeed Via Caffaro may be supposed to record the colony as well as the Consul and writer Caffaro who fought in the first Crusades and afterwards wrote a history of them.
In connection with this most interesting achievement on the part of the Genoese, the peaceful recovery of their commercial supremacy in the East, I should like to call your attention to the building, situated near the Exchange by the sea, which is now the Custom House and which was for four centuries the Bank of S. George. This building bears actual traces of the change of power in 1261 at Constantinople from tha Venetians to the Genoese, for the two lions' heads which are conspicuous on the land front of the palace came from the Venetian fortress that Michel Paleologus handed over to the Genoese, and which was at once demolished in hatred of their rivals. The lions' heads, along with other sculptured stones, were sent home as trophies and were secured by Guglielmo Boccanegra who had interrupted the line of Podesta by becoming Captain of the people for a few years in the middle of the century, and who was then engaged in building this palace, afterwards Bank of S. George, for his own use. After the death of Boccanegra his palace was taken for a government office, principally for the registration of the public loans or « compare,» which dated in the Republic as far back as 1147, when
the preparations for the expedition against the Moors in Spain had drained the Treasury. The interest and sinking fund on each of these loans was secured on a stated branch of the public revenue and was paid with the utmost regularity, so that the shares or «luoghi» were as saleable as consols at the present day. This makes Genoa, in point of national credit, full five hundred years ahead of England where the market dealings in State funds only began in 1689. The Genoese indeed seem to have been as handy with their accounts as with their scaffolding, and just as the machine invented by Embriaco at Jerusalem secured their eminence in the first Crusade, so did their quickness in book-keeping lay the foundation of the credit of their State and the unrivalled prosperity of the Bank of S. George.
From the main use to which it was put the palace was styled Palazzo delle Compere until 1407, when the confusion and distress occasioned by the hard rule of Boucicault, who governed Genoa for Charles VI of France, made it advisable to consolidate all the branches of the national debt into one administration which was styled S. George. The Company then added general banking to the service of the public debt, and the Bank of S. George became famous in the world until the great Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, when it collapsed, never to rise again. The cause of the downfall was the mania, for which the French were primarily responsible, that spread at that time over the continent for trying everything new and reversing everything old, and, when the last Doge — Gerolamo Durazzo — was expelled and the Ligurian Republic, that weak little imitation of the French, came in, one of the first measures passed was to take the management of the public debt out of the hands of the Bank and give it to a freshly constituted national office. The result, as might have been expected, was speedy bankruptcy of the State and equal ruin of the Bank of S. George, which, being suddenly deprived by the action of Government of all its liquid resources, had only house and landed property to fall back upon to meet the claims of the general creditors; and as, owing . to the badness of the times, such property was practically unsaleable, suspension of payments necessarily followed. The only wonder indeed is that the bank lasted so long. The contrast between the peace within the walls of that old palace, during
the five-hundred years that business was carried on there, and the tumult without is certainly one of the most remarkable features of Genoese history. The Directors sat at their board, the clerks posted up their books, the coupon was paid on the rente and the dividends were distributed with the utmost regularity while a whole succession of foreign rulers, Emperor of Germany, King of Naples , Dukes of Milan, and Kings of France obtained supreme power, while Guelphs and Ghibellines, Spinolas and Dorias, Adornos and Fregosos filled the streets with dead bodies and smoking ruins, and while the General of Charles V, Pescara, subjected in 1521 the town to a sack almost as destructive as that of the Saracens six centuries before. It must be said of the Genoese that, however divided they may have been among themselves on any point connected with political power or mutual distrust, they were thoroughly agreed on that one point of keeping up for their own sakes their great savings bank, S. George; and they were quite right, for the bank not only gave them good interest for their money but in times of crisis rendered most important help to the State. For instance, when in 1625 Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, in conjunction with the troops of Louis XIII, planned an invasion of Genoa, it was the Bank of S. George that headed the subscription for raising the necessary funds for undertaking that splendid defensive work, the outer line of walls, which we see fully preserved to this day; and again, in 1746, when the Austrians had taken the town and their brutal general, Botta Adorno, threatened it with complete destruction if they did not pay an enormous ransom at once, it was from the bank that the money came. On the other hand it must be confessed that the Government behaved rather shabbily to the bank in the matter of the colonies. A great deal has been written as to the proud position of the Company of S. George when they were made masters of Galata, Caffa and Corsica, and comparisons have been drawn between them and our East India Company, but as a matter of fact the colonial administration of the Bank of S. George was a mere farce; the Government only gave over the colonies when they were too hot to hold, and the Bank of S. George was no more able to set things straight than a London bank now would be able to deal with large estates in the disturbed
parts of Ireland. The cession of the colonies above named took place in 1453 , when Mahomet II had taken Constantinople and when consequently the position of the Genoese in the Bosphorus and the Black Sea had become untenable, while as to Corsica, as I mentioned in the last lecture, the island was a perpetual thorn in the side of the Republic and an unremitting source of expense instead of gain. Galata was at once lost, but Caffa continued to hang on to Genoa for some years, and the bank spent so much money on it and on Corsica that in 1456 no interest could be paid 011 the Public debt. There was in fact a suspension of payment on the part of the Company for three years, and to mitigate the bad effect on their credit the Government got the Pope Calixtus III to sanction the measure with a bull, which was all the more useful as many of the principal shareholders in the concern were priests and religious corporations. After nine years trial of the colonies the bank could stand them no longer, and in 1462 such of them as remained were returned to the State.
Of the Bank of S. George, or rather the Custom House as you now see it, only the land front, that with the lions' heads, forms part of the original palace of Guglielmo Boccanegra. All the rest of Boccanegra's house has disappeared in the successive alterations and enlargements of the building, the last and most important dating from 1571 when the great hall of the Council was added and the present facade to the port built. The chief ornament of this sea front is a fine fresco of S. George by Tavarone, one of the well known Genoese sixteenth century artists, which is sadly faded and stained by exposure but which still shows a very clever effect of foreshortening. Whether you stand in front of the painting, or whether you approach it either from the left or right, the Saint and his horse always appear to face you. With reference to S. George you will have no doubt been struck by the number of representations all over the town of the Saint and the dragon in fresco, slate, stone and marble. It is one of the many records that meet us of the part taken by the Genoese in the Crusades, as it was on the occasion of their first expedition to Palestine, in 1098, that they came across S. George of Cappadocia who with his legend of the dragon which he killed to save the life of the princess — no doubt taken from Perseus and Andromeda — had been long celebrated in the East, and S. George was brought back to Genoa as Patron Saint of the town. The reason of the Genoese choosing S. George of Cappadocia rather than any other saint was probably the fact of the name being already familiar to them, as they possessed a S. George in a small way before. This early and humble S. George was one of the martyred companions of S. Fruttuoso, a bishop who perished in Spain under the persecution of Valerian and whose ashes, brought along with those of his brother martyrs to these shores by some Benedictine monks in the eighth or ninth century, were the origin of the Monastery of S. Fruttuoso at Portofino where the tombs of the Dorias are. There is in the village of Portofino a church of S. George, earlier than the Crusades, which took its name from the Spanish martyr and not from the Cappadocian. To return to the marine facade of the Bank of S. George, there hangs in the clock tower above the fresco a bell which was used to summon the meetings of the Grand Council, and which was presented to the Bank in the seventeenth century by the Republic of Holland as a return compliment for a copy of the regulations of the Company of S. George which the Dutch Government had asked to be supplied with. The interior of the building is so disfigured with dirt and with the ugly wooden partitions which have been everywhere put up for office purposes that the hall of the Grand Council is really the only point worth seeing. This hall is remarkable for its great size and noble proportions, and the statues ranged round the walls give it a special interest. These statues, of which there are thirty five between the hall and the vestibule, represent the principal benefactors of the State through the Bank during a period of about three hundred years, from 1370 to 1670, and include the patrician names of Doria, Spinola, Grimaldi, Lomellini, and so on. Some of the figures are seated, others standing, according to the sum given. The honour of a seat was only awarded to those who provided over 100,000 livres, equivalent say to L. 10,000 of our money, while with half the amount a standing statue could be procured. The charity of all these great benefactors seemed to run in one groove, namely to deposit a sum at
the bank, to let it accumulate at compound interest for a more or less extended period, and then to devote the proceeds to the redemption or diminution of a particular tax, generally on wine or corn. It may be an open question whether or not this form of bounty was the most advantageous to the needy classes, but there can be no two opinions as to the ingenuity of the plan for making the most of the money. The periods for which the gifts were deposited before being distributed were as a general rule so considerable, half a century at least, that the ultimate amount for which each benefactor was credited as a donor was out of all proportion with the sum originally disbursed. For instance, Francesco Vivaldi, who has a sitting statue, gave only ninety shares or 9000 livres in 1371 and in 1467 is honoured as the donor of eight thousand shares or 800,000 livres. Dominico Pastene, who is one of those standing up, gives in 1411 7000 livres which become 200,000 in 1475. Francesco Lomellini contributes the unusually large sum of 20,000 livres in cash, not to be touched however till they reached 400,000. Eliano Spinola gives 12,600 livres to rank ultimately as 100,000, and so on. The multiplication
of the original sums through mere interest seems marvellous, and yet the rate is only about five per cent. The bank certainly behaved very handsomely to the benefactors in allowing them their statues on the amounts ultimately realised and not on those actually disbursed and also in giving them their own time for the money to increase, for in this way a comparatively moderate sum, say equivalent to one thousand pounds now, would procure after a few generations a first class statue and the reputation of another Duca di Galliera, or a Genoese Peabody. On the other hand it was no doubt in the interest of the bank to encourage a class of customers who made fixed deposits at such long terms of withdrawal and at a fair rate of interest, so that altogether both sides must have had every reason to be pleased with each other — and with themselves.
Besides the statues the great hall used to possess an object of great interest in the shape of a marble representation of the seal of the Republic already mentioned in connection with Frederick II, the griphon tearing the eagle and the fox, which was almost as old as the original seal, having been put up by Boccanegra on the outside of his palace in 1260. On some occasion, probably in one of the many alterations of the building, it was taken down and after lying by for centuries was eventually given a conspicuous place in the great hall (over the end door to the right) in 1751 , when the triumph over the Austrians had apparently brought back to the Genoese the memory of the prowess of their ancestors. The inscription put up at the time remains , but the group itself was most unfortunately destroyed in 1797 by the founders of the so-called Ligurian Republic who seem to have vied with Napoleon in making away with as many as possible of the artistic and historical treasures of the town. As I have just said, the building in its present state is so outrageously dirty that there is positively no pleasure in remaining inside it, but if the government would only carry out the scheme which one hears every now and then talked about of turning the Palace of S. George into a museum when the Custom House business is moved elsewhere, there is no doubt that the result would be a great success. The building is entirely capable of restoration and with proper treatment would make as stately a receptacle of art and history as the Bargello at Florence, while the rich materials now lying hid in so many houses in the town would , if brought togethen, form a Genoese national collection in the highest degree important and attractive.
We must now resume our sketch of the thirteenth century and, as the next event of importance after the successful treaty of the Genoese with Paleologus, we have to notice the battle of Meloria which terminated the wars between Pisa and Genoa by the entire collapse of Pisa. There is in fact a certain connection between the two events, since the Genoese supremacy at Costantinople made the Pisans hate their rivals more than ever, and it was partly the old story about the possession of Corsica, partly the capture at Pera of a Pisan galley that wanted to force the passage of the Bosphorus, that brought on the final contest. The Pisans were determined to do their best and got the Venetians to lend them an Admiral, Alberto Morosini, a relation of the Doge, while the Genoese were under the command of Oberto d'Oria. The two fleets, carrying between them nearly sixty thousand fighting men, met on the sixth of August 1284 off Meloria near Pisa, a spot already well known by a battle between Pisans and Genoese thirty years before, where the Genoese had beeu badly beaten. Doria cleverly turned the circumstance to account to put more spirit into his men. He told them that they were at the Rocks of Meloria which a Genoese defeat had made famous and which a victory must now render immortal, that they had been fighting the Pisans for two centuries, and that at last the decisive moment for settling off the score was in their grasp. The Pisans on their side had met with a bad omen, the crucifix which the Archbishop lifted up to Mess the fleet as they left the port having snapped in two and fallen into the sea, and although a voice was bold enough to cry « let the cross be with the Genoese so long as the wind is with us » they appear to have entered into battle with a presentiment of evil. A more substantial reason for defeat was the treachery or cowardice of Count Ugolino, the one. made so famous by Dante, who commanded a division of the Pisan fleet and ran away with his ships to Pisa without scarcely striking a blow. He really behaved so badly in the supreme crisis
o the fortunes of his country that one feels for that alone he almost deserved the sufferings so wonderfully described in the thirty third canto of the Inferno. As for the results of the battle you can read them for yourselves, tersely summed up in an inscription on the Church of San Matteo which was founded by the Dorias, as I mentioned before, in 1125. The present facade was built in 1278, and it bears a proud record, on the white marble slabs which alternate with the black, of the many Doria victories. The Meloria inscription which is the fourth from the top runs as follows « In the name of the Holy Trinity — in the year « of our Lord 1284 on the sixth day of August — «the high and mighty Lord Oberto Doria, at that «time Captain and Admiral of the Commune and .« of the Genoese people, triumphed in the Pisan « waters over the Pisans taking from them thirty «three galleys, with seven sunk and all the rest « put to flight and with many dead men left in the « waters, and he returned to Genoa with a great « multitude of captives so that 7272 were placed «in the prisons. There was taken prisoner Albert « Morosini of Venice, then Podesta and Commander « General in War of the Commune of Pisa, with
«the standard of that Commune captured by the « galleys of Doria and brought to this church with «the seal of the Commune, and there was also « taken Loto the son of Count Ugolino and a great « part of the Pisan nobility. » Another and a sadder record of Meloria is to be found in the Campo Pisano, a small open space under Piazza Sarzano which is now surrounded with houses but was then a strip of beach sloping from the creek between the hills of Sarzano and Carignano, that served at that time as port, up to the old city wall. Here on the return of the Genoese fleet from Meloria, the Pisan prisoners were massed, and besides those sent to jail a great number must have had their throats cut on the spot, for the Campo Pisano is known in Genoese history as a field of blood, and you can see there a mural tablet put up at the time of the unification of Italy which speaks of the blood once shed being washed out by the peace-and good will now prevailing between the sister cities.
After Meloria the Pisans, although so weakened by their losses, still attempted to carry on the war, but they never met with any success, and after four years they sued for peace. A treaty of peace was agreed upon between the two Republics, but the Pisans tried to shuffle out of the conditions and gave the Genoese a pretext, which they were very likely glad of, for striking one more decisive blow. In September 1290 a fleet under another Doria, Corrado, sailed from here for Porto Pisano, the port of Pisa at the mouth of the Arno, broke the chain which had been stretched across, and utterly destroyed the fortifications and harbour. Only a very few faint traces of masonry now mark the site of Porto Pisano, but it was a strongly fortified place as we can judge from a highly interesting bass-relief which you will find on the wall of the last house to the right, coming down from the Porto S. Andrea by the Borgo Lanieri to Piazza Ponticello. This relief shows the Pisan port with its towers and chain, and bears the following inscription « 1290 in the « month of September, the Lord Conrad Doria, « Captain and Admiral of the Genoese Republic «destroyed the Pisan port. This work was done « by order of Nicolo di Guglielmi. » This Guglielmi appears to have personally taken part in the capture of Porto Pisano and to have lived in the house on which the marble was placed six cen
turies ago, so that the house of itself, as the type of the dwellings of the Genoese in the thirteenth century, deserves attention. Two links of the Pisan chain used to hang under the bas-relief, while other and larger portions were suspended from the Porta S. Andrea, from the Porta di Vacca, over the door of the church of S. Donato and on the land front of the palace of S. Georgio. They were all taken down in 1861, at the same time as the memorial tablet was put up in the Campo Pisano, and restored to Pisa where you may now see the pieces in a corner of the Campo Santo, not presenting however nearly such a picturesque appearance as they did here.
At the end of the thirteenth century the Genoese were in the full tide of victory. A few years after the destruction of Porto Pisano in 1290 anoi ler Doria, Lamba, completely routed the Venetians at Curzola, in the Adriatic off the coast of Dalmatia. The account of the battle, like that of Meloria, can be read on the facade of the church of S. Matteo in the white stripe on the top. T he inscription runs as follows «To the « glory of God and of the blessed Virgin Mary, « in the year 1298 on Sunday 7 September. This « angel was taken in Venetian waters in the city « of Curzola, and in that place was the battle « of 76 Genoese galleys with 86 Venetian galleys « of whom 84 were taken by the noble Lord « Lamba Doria then Captain and Admiral of the « Commune and of the people of Genoa, with « the men on them of whom he brought back to « Genoa alive as prisoners 7400, along with « eighteen galleys, and the other 66 he caused « to be burnt in the said Venetian waters — « he died at Savona' in 1323. » The words « this angel » apparently refer to the central figure in a bas-relief which you will see placed in the wall above the inscription and below the right hand window of the church, the work being part of the sarcophagus which Lamba Doria brought back as a trophy from Curzola and in which his remains were laid at the time of his death. The sarcophagus originally stood in Lamba Doria's palace which is on the left side of the Piazza S. Matteo, as you go down, but at some later date the bones were taken to the church and the sarcophagus, or at least the front slab, placed in its present position. Among the prisoners taken at Curzola was the famous Marco Polo, who had only returned to Venice after many years travelling in Asia a short time before the ill-fated expedition against the Genoese set out. Marco Polo was detained in Genoa between one and two years, but he made good use of his time by writing, when in prison, that celebrated account of his- voyages which has taken so leading a place in early geographical literature. Tradition says that a Pisan fellow prisoner served Marco Polo as a scribe, the unfortunate captives of Meloria being still in confinement at the time of Curzola: indeed the prisoners from both battles were set free at the same time, the Venetians showing much more energy as to the release of their fellow countrymen than the Pisans appear to have done. When at last, after sixteen years, the doors were opened to the prisoners of Meloria, scarcely one thousand were found to remain out of a number variously estimated at from seven to fifteen thousand. Marco Polo's place of confinement was most probably the prison of Malapaga which had been built in 1269 and was situated on the sea, a little to the west of the Campo
Pisano. The building still exists but was turned of late years into barracks for the Custom House guards and has been so modernised that it is impossible now to trace Marco Polo's cell, or even to imagine it.
In connection with the great traveller I may here mention a most interesting attempt at discovery that was made in Genoa towards the end of the thirteenth century; for although it took place several years before the publication of Marco Polo's book', and even before his return to Europe, still the fame of his doings in Asia must already have fully spread in Genoa and must have given a natural stimulus to the search for new colonies. In the year 1291 Tedisio Doria fitted out two galleys, and on them the two brothers Vivaldi, accompanied by two Franciscan friars for missionary purposes, set sail from these shores in the hope of reaching Asia — or as they called it India — from the West, the intervening presence of the continent of America being entirely unsuspected at that time, as
it was in fact two hundred years later unsuspected by Colombus, the impression existing that Asia extended east to within navigable distance of Europe. A contemporary chronicler thus describes the expedition: — «And in this same year TeK disio Auria, Ugolino Vivaldi and his brother, « with some other citizens of Genoa, began to « make that journey which until now no one « attempted to make. For they fitted out excellently « well two galleys, and having placed victuals, « water and other necessaries therein, they « sent them in the month of May towards the « straits, in order that they might go by the « ocean sea to the regions of India, bringing back « from thence useful merchandise. On which « galleys embarked personally the said two brothers « Vivaldi and two brothers of the Order of Mice nors, which thing was wonderful not only to « those who saw but also to those that heard it. « And after that they had passed the place called « Gozora .— this apparently corresponds to Cape « Nun in Morocco — no certain news have we « received from them. But may the Lord pre« serve them — and bring them again safe and « unharmed to their own homes.» The wish, however, was not granted for not a soul of those on board ever returned. The explorers appear to have been daunted by the ocean and to have turned back on the coast of Guinea, where one of the galleys was wrecked and the other taken by the savages out of whose hands not one of the crew escaped. Socleone, the son of Ugolino Vivaldi, appears to have long kept up a touching belief that his father had survived, for a notarial act of 1302 has been preserved in which Socleone Vivaldi, eleven years after the expedition, describes himself as the son of the Living Ugolino, and he is even reported to have searched for his father in Africa, but no details of the journey have come down to us, and it certainly led to no result. In spite of the collapse of the Vivaldi expedition it unquestionably gave the start to the Genoese spirit for discovery which culminated in Columbus. In 1315 we hear of another Vivaldi, Benedetto, the nephew of Ugolino, preparing for another search for India and beginning by starting a Company « in partibus Indiarum » which presumably did Not pay dividends. The term «Compagnia delle Indie » (which is in every day use in commercial circles here as applied to swindling or utterly losing concerns) will probably be found to date from Benedetto Vivaldi's Indian Company.
There remains now but little more to say of the history of this second period. As I mentioned at the beginning of my lecture, Opizzino Spinola, head of the Luccoli branch, had been driven out of Genoa early in the fourteenth century by the combined efforts of the three other great families, and he turned for protection to Henry VII, Emperor of Germany, who had come to Milan in order to receive as King of Italy the iron crown of Lombardy. The Emperor agreed to visit Genoa so as to pacify the contending factions by his presence, and in 1311 he arrived here in great state, with Opizzino Spinola at his side. The sight of Opizzino in such apparent favour made his rivals fear that he would use his influence with Henry to seize once more supreme power, and as the least of two evils they agreed that it would be better to be ruled by the Emperor than by him. So on All Saints day of that year 1311, on the Piazza Sarzano, Henry VII received at the hands of the Dorias, Fieschis, Grimaldis and San Luca Spinolas, along with other families of less note, the sovereignty of Genoa for twenty years, thus beginning the long list of foreign rulers that lasted, with only short interruptions of national government, until 1526. In these two hundred and fifteen years the state passed successively into the hands of one Emperor, one Pope, one King of Naples, one Marquis of Montferrat, four Dukes of Milan and seven Kings of France. To reward his supporters Henry VII gave them the privilege of carrying the Imperial Eagle in their arms, and all the Eagles that we now see about the town over the palace doors date from this time. Henry only lived two years after being named sovereign of Genoa, and at his death the fighting between Guelphs and Ghibellines went on as usual until in 1318 the Guelphs, having the upper hand, appointed Pope John XXII jointly with King Robert of Naples to be rulers. The sovereignty of the Pope was only nominal, but King Robert kept hold of Genoa for seventeen years, when the Ghibellines at last got the best of it and turned him out. By this time the feeling of popular indignation against the nobles, whether Guelphs or Ghibellines, for their absolutely selfish disregard of any interests except their own was no longer
to be restrained, and the ground was prepared for the election of the first Doge of the people, of which I shall speak next time.
To conclude with a few words of notice of the principal architectural additions to the town in this second period I will point out to you the portion of wall by the Mole, built in 1276 and enclosing the part where Marco Polo's prison of Malapaga is situated, also a more important addition to the defences of Genoa which was made by the Guelph party in 1326, when they feared an attack on the part of Ludwig the Bavarian, the Emperor who succeeded Henry. This line of wall started from the Acquasola, came down to the Porta d'Arco and round by Carignano till the old line was joined under Piazza Sarzano. The first harbour works, that is the commencement of the old Mole and of the Darsena , near the Annunziata, date from the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and it is simply a marvel how the Genoese can have got on during two hundred years of maritime greatness without any artificial protection for their ships. It seems hard to believe that fleets such as those that took part in the Crusades, captured Almeria and won Meloria and Curzola, could have been held in what then represented Genoa harbour. Maritime accommodation mainly consisted of the Mandraccio, that indentation of the shore between the old Mole and the bank of St. George which is now almost entirely filled up and built over, but which in old times used to run inland almost as far as San Lorenzo. The Mandraccio appears to have served as the port of Genoa from the highest antiquity, before the days of the Roman occupation even , for it was there that the beak of Mago's galley was found, while the name itself is said to be of Phoenician origin and to have existed in Carthage as an appellation of the port. Besides the Mandraccio the Genoese largely used as a depot for their ships the creek running up to what is now Piazza Ponticello, between the hills of Carignano and Sarzano under the present bridge. This creek is now entirely reclaimed from the sea and covered with houses, but its former use may still be traced in the name of one of the streets in the neighbourhood, the Via dei Servi, so called because the captives brought back in the galleys used to be landed and kept there.
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