State Cash Resources and State Building in Europe 13th-18th century
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The Paga Floreni. Political Uses of a Dividend Tax in Genoa (Late Fifteenth Century)
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- 1 Florentine public finances in the early Renaissance (1400–1433), Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard Univers (...)
1One of the main differences between public debt in Genoa and that in other cities during the Renaissance was the organization of creditors. While state creditors elsewhere became influential, they did not make up an independent association. It is surmised that in Florence the major lenders of floating debt acquired a power which enabled them to influence political dynamics, but they did not come together in an incorporated institution.1 By contrast, in Genoa creditors brought into being a corporate body, the Casa di San Giorgio, which not only gradually gained strong independence from the commune, but developed political – and hence territorial – power. Set up in 1407, between 1446 and 1562 the Casa di San Giorgio acquired a number of territories from the commune, namely Pietrasanta and Sarzana in present-day northern Tuscany, Famagusta on Cyprus, Kaffa on the Black Sea, Corsica, Levanto, Ventimiglia and Lerici, and Pieve di Teco in Liguria. Although political influences could be gauged on many fronts, the acquisition of territories surrendered by the commune to San Giorgio is an especially important aspect of the political history of San Giorgio. Not only did San Giorgio enjoy the disposal of the property in those areas, but it governed them with the greatest power and dominion possible at the time, exercising ius gladi and plena iuridictio, terms confirmed by the commune in the surrender contracts.
- 2 I quote here the long passage of Florentine Histories, VIII, 29 on San Giorgio: ‘Hence the affectio (...)
2One of the first contemporary analyses to examine this political process and establish its reputation was written by Machiavelli in chapter 29 of Book VIII of Istorie Fiorentine (Florentine Histories). Machiavelli identified two powers in Genoa, the commune and San Giorgio, co-existing within the same ‘city walls’.2
- 3 Rodolfo Savelli, ‘Tra Machiavelli e San Giorgio. Cultura giuspolitica e dibattito istituzionale a G (...)
- 4 Carlo Bitossi, ‘Il governo della Repubblica e della Casa di San Giorgio: i ceti dirigenti dopo la r (...)
3From the time of the publication of the Florentine Histories, Machiavelli’s vision of San Giorgio was discussed, mainly in Genoa, where the concept of a divided power could present a problem. In more recent times researchers have focused on the significance of this, not only gauging its importance in the Genoese context,3 but also commenting on it from a historical point of view, that is to say, seeking to assess the soundness of Machiavelli’s judgement.4 Carlo Bitossi has argued that Machiavelli’s vision of a double political power is at variance with reality, since in Genoa the families who held administrative positions at San Giorgio and in the commune were one and the same. That analysis covers the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth. Yet the Florentine Histories were written at the beginning of the sixteenth century and Machiavelli’s perspective refers to contemporary historical reality and that of the preceding decades. This is a rarely studied period in the history of San Giorgio. My research aims to shed light on certain aspects which may clarify relations between San Giorgio and the commune during that period. Various themes might be examined from this standpoint, but my research will focus above all on the acquisition of territory (1446–1518), on the writing of secret financial and political documents and on matters to do with the holding and acquisition of instruments of credit. This article will examine the second of these points partially and the third point more thoroughly. It will look at one of the secret records written by Genoese financial experts between the middle and end of the fifteenth century and will discuss the taxation of credit instruments.
4From the time of its foundation San Giorgio sold public debt securities (‘luoghi’) of a nominal value of 100 lire. Each security yielded interest (paghe) to its owner. Both the securities and the paghe were negotiable. Interest on securities was paid through tax receipts transferred from the commune to San Giorgio. San Giorgio contracted out to private collectors the right to collect the taxes and the collectors paid a discounted estimated sum of the amounts which they expected to collect subsequently.
- 5 According to Giuseppe Felloni the tax was levied for the first time in 1419, then between 1420 and (...)
- 6 Giuseppe Felloni: http://www.lacasadisangiorgio.it/main.php?do=node&tag=5_113_869.
- 7 Jacques Heers, Gênes au XVe siècle, Paris, SEVPEN, 1961, p. 103 and footnote 3. According to Heers (...)
- 8 Ibid., p. 163; Giuseppe Felloni: http://www.lacasadisangiorgio.it/main.php?do=node&tag=5_113_869.
5The ‘paga floreni’ was the tax levied on the paghe by the commune at the rate of one florin (i.e. 25 ‘soldi’) per security (luogo). The commune received the tax from San Giorgio and the municipal office charged with collecting the money was the Officio di Moneta.5 San Giorgio collected it, applying a levy on the paghe which it had to pay to the owners of the securities (luogatari).6 A portion was withheld from the four paghe which the security owners received annually. These luogatari could subtract a percentage of this tax from the payment of the main tax, the ‘Avaria’. Some security owners, however, were exempt altogether from paying the tax, to wit, the religious and forestry institutions (in particular the inhabitants of Asti).7 There is documentation relating to the middle of the fifteenth century which enables us to trace complex operations regarding this tax. Jacques Heers and Giuseppe Felloni have shown how the paga floreni, despite being owed to the commune, was very frequently appropriated by San Giorgio.8 This took place because, being short of money, the commune requested an advance on the payment of the paga floreni months and sometimes even years ahead.
6This study sets out to show a number of instances in which the paga floreni was taken by San Giorgio. It was not always merely a security for a loan to the commune, though even where it was, factors came into play which were not just financial, but political. By analysing a number of cases, the intention is to show how San Giorgio superimposed itself on the commune in political functions. Analysing the use of the paga floreni becomes a means of examining relations between San Giorgio and the commune. As will be made clear, in the most important instances San Giorgio played a role which was not only political in general, but also territorial.
I. The Acquisition of the Paga Floreni by the Casa di San Giorgio
- 9 Archivio di Stato di Genova (ASG), AS 538, c. 89v.
- 10 All the other contracts are in the parchment manuscript series of the Genoa State Archive.
- 11 See Pietrasanta Municipal Historical Archive, Councils and Parties, year 447, 38, c.1 et seq.
7On 7 August 1446, as security for a loan to the commune, San Giorgio obtained the paga floreni for 1447 and 1448. In addition, however, the commune, by way of guarantee, also ceded to San Giorgio the village of Pietrasanta, so that together with the paga floreni, San Giorgio took over a territory, the first of many that it gained subsequently. The contracts ceding the other territories have been preserved, stipulating not only the transfer of the property, but also the handover of the plena iurisdictio, that is, of the power to govern the land and its inhabitants. No contract has survived for the ceding of Pietrasanta, merely a note in the municipal records.9 The state of the existing documentation suggests that no contract was drawn up.10 Nonetheless, we know that San Giorgio acquired the right to govern that area, since in the following weeks the Pietrasanta records refer to the change in administration.11 Representatives of San Giorgio came to Pietrasanta and its government changed. For the political and territorial history of San Giorgio the handover of Pietrasanta is important because it was the first territory to be handed over by the commune.
- 12 The surrender contract is in the Genoa State Archive, parchment manuscript XXIV, c. XVIIIIr [sic].
- 13 Genoa State Archive, Room 64, 607/2319. This volume, one of the San Giorgio Litterarum Registers, c (...)
8A few years later the levy of the paga floreni by San Giorgio once again became a matter of territorial iurisdictio. After 1453, with the fall of Constantinople, the Genoese administration of the colonies in the Mediterranean became extremely complicated. At the end of the year, in order to meet expenses, the city of Kaffa on the Black Sea was surrendered to San Giorgio by the commune. San Giorgio once again acquired it with the merum et mixtum imperium and the gladii potestas.12 At the end of 1455 a group of Genoese were sent to Rome to discuss matters relating to the defence of the Mediterranean with Pope Callistus III. Among these were master theologian Deodato Bochono, bishop in Corsica, Battista de Goano, Dorino Grimaldi and Cardinal Fieschi.13 Battista de Goano played a pivotal role in the history of San Giorgio. Not only was he present at the meetings at which some of the largest territorial acquisitions were decided upon, but he also took part in the discussions and influenced their outcome.
- 14 Jacques Heers, ‘La vente des indulgences pour la croisade, à Gênes et en Lunigiana, en 1456’, Misce (...)
- 15 J. Heers, Gênes au XVe siècle…, op. cit., p. 165.
9The pope issued concessions for the sale of indulgences, and during the following year many Franciscans were sent to Liguria to receive these. Jacques Heers looks at this aspect in greater depth and Julius Kirshner examines the interesting theological debate that followed many years after the 145614 financial operation. Not all aspects of San Giorgio’s involvement in the 1456 operation have been explored. On 12 May 1456 Callistus III authorized the protectors of San Giorgio to collect the paga floreni for the three years following. Jacques Heers holds that, as in most other cases, San Giorgio took the paga floreni because it had advanced monies to the commune.15 Nonetheless, since no trace of such transactions has survived, the levying of the paga floreni does perhaps have another explanation, highlighting the context of the Papal Bull.
- 16 Julius Kirshner bases his reconstruction of the 1456 case on the relevant pages in Jacques Heers, G (...)
- 17 As Julius Kirshner notes, although the papal bull referred to the ‘nonnulli’ which one might fear i (...)
- 18 The papal bull stated that the Genoese petition addressed to the pope said that if the paga floreni(...)
10At that time there were no paghe available for the years immediately following and San Giorgio was forced to draw on the paga floreni on the paghe for 1464, 1465 and 1466. It was one of the cases where the paghe were sold a long time before they ‘matured’, i.e. before they could be collected. It was this protracted lapse of time that persuaded the buyers, taking upon themselves a risk, to seek a discount on the price of the paghe.16 Such a transaction could have constituted the sin of usury and, as the research of Julius Kirshner has brought to light, over the following decades the matter was much discussed by theologians. Although the Bull of Pope Callistus III referred to the scruples of conscience of the purchasers of the paghe, we still do not know whether the practice of discounted sale of paghe was widespread before that time, nor whether it truly aroused fears and, if so, whether it did so in the minds of the Genoese investors.17 The Papal Bull gave permission to sell the paghe at a lower price. This also provides a major argument to suggest that San Giorgio had a hand in the matter. It was said that not only could San Giorgio obtain papal approval for the complex operation, since it had defended the lands of Christendom, but it was also possible because the government of those lands belonged to San Giorgio (‘the government and the defence of this city [Kaffa] belonged to your office [San Giorgio]’).18 The governing of the land (the iurisdictio) occupied a pivotal role in the papal approval.
11The financial operation was again upheld, when in 1479 the Bull of Callistus III was confirmed by Pope Sixtus IV. Then the quarrel with the Turks changed and henceforth the Genoese colonies in the eastern Mediterranean were lost.
12In addition to the case of Kaffa, San Giorgio appropriated the paga floreni many times. In most instances the process began with a need for money on the part of the commune, but almost every time the outcome was that San Giorgio took over from the commune roles that were not solely financial.
II. A Sovereignty Divided
13On 8 August 1474 a meeting of the protectors of San Giorgio along with 256 of those participating in compere (consolidated loans) was held to discuss spending. The shores were plagued by pirates and ships needed to be armed for defence. It was not only Genoa, but all coastal regions that were in danger.
- 19 Genoa State Archive, Bank of San Giorgio, Manuscripts, 38, cc. CIv–CIIr.
14The eight protectors of San Giorgio had been granted full authority (ampia balia) to obtain money to arm a fleet of galleys. In this instance it was decided by the doge himself that the ‘medio fiorino’ (one-half of the paga floreni) both for 1486 and for 1487, which ‘was to be given to the Ufficio di Moneta, but remained unpaid’, should be converted into arming the fleet. San Giorgio is believed to have armed the fleet.19 Again on that occasion it was not the commune that performed that function, but San Giorgio, and the paga floreni was not handed over to liquidate a loan from San Giorgio to the commune, but to enable San Giorgio to meet a cost relating to Genoa’s sea defences, a task normally discharged by the commune.
- 20 Genoa State Archive, AS 539, 10 June 1448, cc. 93v–94r.
15On 31 August 1475 the eight protectors together with delegates from the Scio Office – a special judiciary elected to deal with Chio questions – appeared before San Giorgio’s full assembly, consisting of 332 participants in the compere. According to reports, in the municipal assembly a few days earlier, made up of 450 citizens, it was decided to employ all possible means to save Chio.20 The decision was taken to levy the paghe floreni for the years 1479, 1480 and 1481.
- 21 ‘Lo dicto officio non solamente non a voluto acceptare, ma etiam dio non a volsudo meterlo denanci (...)
16The advance of the paga floreni to the commune was always put before the San Giorgio assembly. We do not know whether a majority of the luogatari (shareholders) took part in all cases. What was involved in every case, however, was a contract resulting in no discount whatsoever. On 10 June 1448, for example, owing to the war against the Marquis of Finale, the commune had asked the protectors of San Giorgio for an advance on the paga floreni for 1450, but, although a good price was settled for the loan, ‘The office [San Giorgio] not only did not want to accept it, but it even did not want to propose it to its counsel.’21
17Documentation on the paga floreni enables analysis of those occasions when San Giorgio justified the request to take that money to accomplish certain important operations. In numerous papers containing the decisions we find reflected the position of the protectors of San Giorgio, defending the imperative of finding money on the grounds that it was for the public good, i.e. war, territorial administration or the needs of the navy. Most of these documents reflect the position of San Giorgio. In the same years, however, within the commune’s Ufficio di Moneta, there was gathering criticism of this practice and probably of the Casa di San Giorgio itself. It is impossible to substantiate these standpoints with much documentation. Nonetheless, in some instances a few documents have come to light. Between the 1460s and 1470s, the commune of Genoa came under the rule of the Sforza family, the lords of Milan. Thereupon, as at other times when Genoa had been under Milanese rule, San Giorgio became an important institution for the Milanese. Towards the end of the 1460s an official from the Ufficio di Moneta penned a secret memorandum for the duke of Milan. Stepping out of their official roles, the notaries and scribes of that Office, such as Giovanni Capello, and financial experts of the commune and San Giorgio, could become able advisors.
- 22 The sentence is a mixture of the vulgar tongue and Latin, as is the rest of the memorandum: ‘Perché (...)
18Capello wrote that Genoa could be governed only on the condition that the Adorno and Fregoso factions were excluded, and provided much advice on how to control the intricately indented Genoese coastline. There remained, however, a third power, San Giorgio. While the factions were a normal feature of political life which could be ignored, because it controlled the ports of Liguria, San Giorgio was an institution which interacted differently with the commune: ‘The reason why in Genoa the governments are weak is that there are two regna, San Giorgio and the commune, and you cannot govern two regna at the same time.’22
- 23 ‘Lo fiorino de’ loci già non è de Santo Georgio, scilicet è de’ locatarii, ma perché da molti ani i (...)
19The duke’s advisor suggested reforming San Giorgio and among various pieces of advice he proposed that the duke of Milan should take for himself the paga floreni and use it to reduce taxes so as to gain popularity. The paga floreni belonged to the commune of Genoa, not to San Giorgio, and the duke of Milan as ruler of the commune of Genoa was entitled to make use of it. Capello describes the process whereby San Giorgio had appropriated to itself the paga floreni: ‘The fiorino of the luoghi does not belong to San Giorgio, that is to the possessors of the luoghi, but, as since many years it was continuously [decided] for the Palace [the commune], than it can belong to the governors.’23
20Within the Ufficio di Moneta there was increasing radical criticism not only of the use of the tax, but of the functions actually performed by San Giorgio. According to these criticisms San Giorgio during the late fifteenth century had held certain prerogatives from the commune and was now enjoying these for its own profit. The paga floreni was becoming a symbol of the power of San Giorgio. As noted previously, a few decades later Machiavelli in his Florence Histories described the functioning of San Giorgio and this work has always been seen as a eulogy. It would be difficult to discern a concealed irony. Reading between the lines, however, there was the observation that in Genoa a dual power had arisen ‘within the same city walls’. This division of the iurisdictio would have lain like a shadow over the judgement of the descendants of the rulers of Genoa. In subsequent centuries, with the rise of a new vocabulary of political power, it was to become an exemplar of the perils of divided state sovereignty.
Notes
1 Florentine public finances in the early Renaissance (1400–1433), Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1971, and ‘Le città-stato e i loro debiti pubblici. Quesiti e ipotesi sulla storia di Firenze, Genova e Venezia, in Italia 1350–1450’, in Tra crisi, trasformazione, sviluppo (XIII Convegno di studi: Pistoia, 10–13 May 1991), Pistoia, Centro Italiano di studi di Storia e d’Arte, pp. 185–215. The presence of certain major lenders of floating debt is examined by Jérémie Barthas in L’argent n’est pas le nerf de la guerre: Essai sur une prétendue erreur de Machiavel, Rome, École française de Rome, 2011. See in particular the appendix with the list of the great investors.
2 I quote here the long passage of Florentine Histories, VIII, 29 on San Giorgio: ‘Hence the affections of the citizens are transferred from the government to the San Giorgio, on account of the tyranny of the former, and the excellent regulations adopted by the latter. Hence also originated the frequent changes of the republic, which is sometimes under a citizen, and at other times governed by a stranger, for the Commune, and not the San Giorgio, changes the government. So when the Fregosi and the Adorni were in opposition, as the government of the republic was the prize for which they strove, the greater part of the citizens withdrew and left it to the victor. The only interference of the Bank of St. Giorgio is when one party has obtained a superiority over the other, to bind the victor to the observance of its laws, which up to this time have not been changed; for as it possesses arms, money, and influence, they could not be altered without incurring the imminent risk of a dangerous rebellion. This establishment presents an instance of what in all the republics, either described or imagined by philosophers, has never been thought of; exhibiting within the same community, and among the same citizens, liberty and tyranny, integrity and corruption, justice and injustice; for this establishment preserves in the city many ancient and venerable customs; and should it happen (as in time it easily may) that the San Giorgio should have possession of the whole city, the republic will become more distinguished than that of Venice’. Niccolò Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, translated by Laura Banfield and Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1988.
3 Rodolfo Savelli, ‘Tra Machiavelli e San Giorgio. Cultura giuspolitica e dibattito istituzionale a Genova nel Cinque-Seicento’, in Aldo De Maddalena and H. Kellenbenz (ed.), Finanze e ragion di stato in Italia e in Germania nella prima età moderna, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1984, pp. 249–321.
4 Carlo Bitossi, ‘Il governo della Repubblica e della Casa di San Giorgio: i ceti dirigenti dopo la riforma costituzionale del 1576’, in Giuseppe Felloni (ed.), La Casa di San Giorgio: il potere del credito, Atti del convegno, Genoa, 11 and 12 November 2004, Genoa, Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 2006, pp. 91–107.
5 According to Giuseppe Felloni the tax was levied for the first time in 1419, then between 1420 and 1421, possibly between 1422 and 1437 and between 1438 and 1517 (see website: http://www.lacasadisangiorgio.it/main.php?do=node&tag=5_113_869). The inventory identifies the volumes corresponding to the paga floreni. According to Sieveking, however, security owners were required to pay the tax only in exceptional circumstances. See Heinrich Sieveking, ‘Studio sulle finanze genovesi nel medioevo e in particolare sulla Casa di San Giorgio’, in Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 35 (1–2), 1905–1906, p. 98.
6 Giuseppe Felloni: http://www.lacasadisangiorgio.it/main.php?do=node&tag=5_113_869.
7 Jacques Heers, Gênes au XVe siècle, Paris, SEVPEN, 1961, p. 103 and footnote 3. According to Heers the exemption is attested from 1449. A survey carried out by Heers reveals that the exemption of religious institutions amounted to 2 to 2.25% of the total value of the tax in 1456 and 1463 (ibid., p. 163).
8 Ibid., p. 163; Giuseppe Felloni: http://www.lacasadisangiorgio.it/main.php?do=node&tag=5_113_869.
9 Archivio di Stato di Genova (ASG), AS 538, c. 89v.
10 All the other contracts are in the parchment manuscript series of the Genoa State Archive.
11 See Pietrasanta Municipal Historical Archive, Councils and Parties, year 447, 38, c.1 et seq.
12 The surrender contract is in the Genoa State Archive, parchment manuscript XXIV, c. XVIIIIr [sic].
13 Genoa State Archive, Room 64, 607/2319. This volume, one of the San Giorgio Litterarum Registers, contains a vast number of letters by the Genoese from Rome. The question of discounting the paghe, however, is not mentioned. This provides grounds for believing that Battista de Goano, Cardinal Fieschi, Dorino Grimaldi and Deodato Bochono were in some way aware of the request of San Giorgio.
14 Jacques Heers, ‘La vente des indulgences pour la croisade, à Gênes et en Lunigiana, en 1456’, Miscellany of Ligurian History, Institute of Medieval and Modern History of the University of Genoa, III (1963), pp. 73–74. Julius Kirshner, ‘The moral problem of discounting Genoese paghe, 1450–1550’, Archivum. Fratrum Praedicatorum, 47 (1977), pp. 109–167. So far as can be determined, the debates of theologians, begun at the end of the fifteenth century, never touched on the matter of the territorial power of San Giorgio. What does emerge, for example in the writings of the theologian Silvestro Mazzolini, is the classical argument of civitas superiorem non recognoscens (see J. Kirshner, ‘The moral problem…’, op. cit., p. 144, footnote 99). The distinction on which the civitas at Genoa was based, whether the commune or San Giorgio, is not apparent from the texts of the theologians. Very ancient, but rich in documents, is the work of Amedeo Vigna, ‘Codice diplomatico delle colonie Tauro-Liguri durante la signoria dell’Ufficio di S. Giorgio (1453–1475)’, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, VI (1868). On the same subject see also references in Carlo Cuneo, Memorie sull’antico debito pubblico: mutui, compere e banca di S. Giorgio in Genoa, Genoa, Stamperia dei Sordimuti, 1842, pp. 119–120.
15 J. Heers, Gênes au XVe siècle…, op. cit., p. 165.
16 Julius Kirshner bases his reconstruction of the 1456 case on the relevant pages in Jacques Heers, Gênes au XVe siècle. For all its detail, the volume of information provided by J. Heers on the paga floreni is wanting on certain points (J. Heers, Gênes au XVe siècle…, op. cit., pp. 99–100, 103–104 and 162–165, the case of Kaffa). It may have been the lack of systematic treatment that led J. Kirshner to view the paga floreni as ‘negotiable’ (J. Kirshner, ‘The moral problem…’, op. cit., p. 112). So far as I can see, however, in Genoa there was only a market in luoghi and paghe, while the paga floreni was simply a tax.
17 As Julius Kirshner notes, although the papal bull referred to the ‘nonnulli’ which one might fear incurring for the sin of usury, apart from this reference no specific documents have been found in Genoa. J. Kirshner, ‘The moral problem…’, op. cit., pp. 112–113.
18 The papal bull stated that the Genoese petition addressed to the pope said that if the paga floreni of the years 1464, 1465 and 1466 could not be taken by San Giorgio, it would not be able to give the usual dividends to the shareholders, as it was known that the leader of the Turks wanted to occupy and destroy Kaffa and that the defence and the government of the same city belonged to San Giorgio. The Latin text is: ‘Petitio continebat quod, alias cum fama vulgaris deferret Turchorum ducem civitatem Caphe obsidere et diripere velle … cum ad vestrum officium ipsius civitatis regimen et defensio dignoscatur pertinere … propter que …particibus et locatariis solitam annuam summam … solvere et respondere minime poutissetis, nisi paga floreni unius proventumum comperarum unius proventuum comperarum huiusmodi per dilectos filios commune Ianuense pro singulo loco capi solita annorum trium futurum, videlicet millesimo quadringentesimo sexagesimo quarto, millesimo quadringentesimo sexagesimo quinto, millesimo quadringentesimo sexagesimo sexto, vobis in subsidium assignata fuisset’. After the reference to the paga floreni of 1464, 1465 and 1466 followed the information that the paghe of such years could not be sold without a discount: ‘eadem petitio subiungebat vos adhuc participibus, locatariis et creditoribus dictarum comperarum proventus trium annorum vobis per ipsum commune assignatos huiusmodi plus offerentibus vendatis vel permuteatis […] pro minori summa’. I quote from Kirshner’s edition of the bull; see J. Kirshner, ‘The moral problem…’, op. cit., pp. 159–160.
19 Genoa State Archive, Bank of San Giorgio, Manuscripts, 38, cc. CIv–CIIr.
20 Genoa State Archive, AS 539, 10 June 1448, cc. 93v–94r.
21 ‘Lo dicto officio non solamente non a voluto acceptare, ma etiam dio non a volsudo meterlo denanci al suo conseglio’, ibid., c. 94r.
22 The sentence is a mixture of the vulgar tongue and Latin, as is the rest of the memorandum: ‘Perché governi in Genoa sum brevi, questa è la causa, che duo sunt in ea regna: unum in Palacio, alterum in Sancto Georgio et regni duos diu retinere nequit’ (‘Why governments in Genoa are short-lived, this is the cause, that there are two realms therein, one in the Palace, the other in San Giorgio, and two realms cannot long be maintained’). ASMi, Sforzesco 1319, Memorandum of Giovanni Capello. On this subject I would like to refer to my previous article: ‘They have taken the affections of the people from the commune and placed them with San Giorgio. The image of the commune and the Casa di San Giorgio of Genoa (15th–16th centuries)’, in Matthias Schnettger and Carlo Taviani (ed.), Libertà e dominio. Il sistema politico genovese: le relazioni esterne e il controllo del territorio, Roma, Istituto storico germanico di Roma, 2011, pp. 281–304.
23 ‘Lo fiorino de’ loci già non è de Santo Georgio, scilicet è de’ locatarii, ma perché da molti ani in qua continue è stato deliberado al Palatio, dunce se poote esser per experimento de chi governa’, ASMi, Sforzesco, 1319, c. 2v.
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