Download PDF | (Crusade Texts in Translation 26) Martin Hall, Jonathan Phillips - Caffaro, Genoa and the Twelfth-Century Crusades. Caffarus-Routledge (2013).
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Acknowledgements
The authors have been fortunate to receive the kind interest and support of a great many friends and colleagues. They would particularly like to thank, in no particular order: Dr Elena Bellomo, Dr Susan Edgington, Professor Damian Smith, Dr Michele Campopiano, Dr Marianne Ailes, Dr William Purkis, Dr Simon John, Dr Merav Mack, Professor Bernard Hamilton, Professor Carole Hillenbrand, Professor Felicitas Schmieder, Dr. Konrad Hirschler, and Professor Jonathan Harris. We are particularly grateful to Professor Peter Edbury for his detailed and highly constructive observations on the text. We would also like to thank Dr John Smedley of Ashgate Publishing for his encouragement in bringing this project to fruition, as well as the editorial expertise of Kirsten Weissenberg and Isabel Miller, along with our indexer, Meg Davies.
Jonathan Phillips would also like to acknowledge the important contribution of the following conferences and seminars at which he set out and evolved his ideas on Caffaro, Genoa and the Crusades: Professor Thomas Madden and the ‘Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict’ Conference at St Louis, USA; Dr Catherine Léglu and the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, Reading University; the Crusades and Mediterranean Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, London; Professor Per Ingesman and the ‘Religion as an Agent of Change’ conference at Aarhus University; the Leeds International Medieval Congress; Dr Eddie Coleman and the University College Dublin, History Seminar. Most importantly of all, he would like to thank Martin Hall for his considerable patience, enthusiasm and erudition in leading Caffaro to a wider audience.
Martin Hall would like to thank Jonathan Phillips and Susan Edgington for the opportunity to undertake this work so early in his medieval career. He is also grateful to colleagues young and less young at Royal Holloway, University of London and Queen Mary, University of London, for their continuing interest and support and especially their collective approach to problem-solving at Susan’s Latin therapy sessions.
The authors are pleased to acknowledge the generous help of a grant from the late Miss Isobel Thornley’s Bequest to the University of London. They would
also like to thank the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, for their permission to use the illustration from MS Latin 10136, f.1, and Rossana Rummo, Direttore Generale, Archivi, Ufficio Centrale per i beni archivistici, for her agreement to our use of texts from ‘I Libri Iurium della Repubblica di Genova’. They owe an abiding debt to Luigi Tommaso Belgrano, and succeeding generations of Italian scholars, for the textual material that underlies this book.
Introduction: Caffaro of Genoa and the Crusades
The city of Genoa lies at the top of the western ‘half’ of the Mediterranean. Hemmed in by the Ligurian hills and with limited natural resources in its hinterland, the sea offers a more obvious source of prosperity. In the course of the eleventh century Genoa began to emerge as an important trading centre and by the middle of the century it was engaged in commerce across the Mediterranean.’ Technically the city was subject to the distant authority of the German Empire but in reality there was a tradition of self-government and during the twelfth century it blossomed into a powerhouse of commercial and civic advancement; trade, travel and holy war came, largely via the sea, to the citizens of Genoa. Contact with the Provengal ports, Pisa, Amalfi, Salerno, Sicily, Iberia, North Africa, Byzantium, Egypt and the Latin East meant a multilayered and, on occasion, contradictory web of political and commercial agreements, some of which are covered here. The city also experienced moments of serious tension with the German Empire while relations with the Pisans, their neighbours and greatest commercial rival, veered between occasional alliances and (the more customary) ferocious hostility. In the course of the twelfth century —a period of Europe-wide economic, political and cultural progress — the city also secured two notable markers of status; its own coinage and an archbishopric. In the person of Caffaro it acquired that rarest of creatures for the age, a secular commentator. Through the eyes of Caffaro and his successors, as well as a rich collection of charter material, we have a vivid testimony of this complex and, at times, unsteady evolution; revealing this to a wider audience is the main purpose of this volume.
The First Crusade holds a special place as a prime driving force in this process of change. This radical event, which infused people across western Europe with an unprecedented desire to join together and to recover the Holy Sepulchre for Christianity had significant repercussions for Genoa. The city was quickly drawn into the crusading movement and this, in turn, would impact upon its relations with the wider world; it changed the terms of engagement with the Muslim lands too. For Caffaro — whose account was endorsed by the consuls and became Genoa’s official history in 1152 — the crusade was a crucial catalyst in the city’s institutional development, its self-regard and its commercial steps
forwards. To become successful holy warriors on behalf of Christendom, to enhance the city’s status and esteem, and to make economic progress were all, as we will see, prominent features within his writings.
Principles of Selection
This volume contains full translations of the three narratives composed by Caffaro himself, as well as extracts from the first two of his continuators. This enables us to follow the story of Genoa and the crusades from the late eleventh century to the end of the Third Crusade. We have also included the ‘Short History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, a text often associated with Caffaro’s manuscripts but which was certainly created after his lifetime. Along with these texts we have chosen a series of charters designed to complement the narratives and to help show the range and nature of Genoa’s political and commercial involvements.
Biography of Caffaro
Caffaro di Rustico, Lord of Caschifellone (an area just north of the city) was born c.1080 into a moderately important family descended from the tenthcentury viscounts of Genoa.” He was not on the first Genoese fleets that went to the Holy Land in 1097 and 1099 but he did join the ships that sailed to the Levant in the late summer of 1100 and therefore took part in the siege and capture of Caesarea and Arsuf the following year, as well as making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Easter 1101 where he (eventually) witnessed the miracle of the Easter Fire.
His actions over the next couple of decades are relatively unknown but he evidently become a man of some standing because in 1121 and 1123 he was sent on important missions to Rome (see below, pp. 12-13, 60-61, 103-105). These concerned control of the bishoprics of Corsica, a matter bitterly contested with the Pisans. Perhaps on account of a successful outcome to the first of these journeys he was elected consul de comuni (responsible for administration, diplomacy and military leadership) in 1122, the start of no less than six such appointments: 1122, 1125, 1127, 1141, 1146 and 1149. He also served as a consul de placitis, or judge of lesser pleas, in 1130 and 1144. He would be used as a diplomat again in 1127 on a mission to the count of Barcelona and most importantly of all he led vital embassies to Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa of
Germany in 1154 and 1158. He commanded military campaigns against the Pisans in 1125 and to Minorca in 1146. He died in 1166. In short, therefore, this was a long-lasting career at the heart of civic and international affairs; when one couples this with his interest in writing and recording history we can admire a genuinely remarkable life.
Three years after Caffaro’s death the consuls appointed Oberto Cancelliere to resume the work. Oberto ‘the chancellor’ held this important role for two decades and as a senior city official he was regarded as an appropriate continuator. He lauded the writing of his predecessor and noted the utility of such texts in offering direction for the future. Oberto covered the period from 1164 to 1173; he died in early 1175. Once more there was a pause in the record before a more lowly official, Ottobono Scriba, took over until 1196. His appointment has been characterised as ‘the moment that the annals truly became a government record, written by employees of the regime with the purpose of justifying the actions and policies of those in power.’* Thus a change from Caffaro’s more discursive and moralistic tone becomes palpable. After Ottobono the ‘Annals’ were continued by various writers until 1293 with the archivist and member of a powerful ruling family, Jacopo Doria, covering the final decades of the story. Jacopo was responsible for reviving and preserving the didactic tone of his admired founding father, as we will see below. While the latter century of the ‘Annals’ is beyond the purview of this work, taken as a whole, from Caffaro to Jacopo Doria, they stand as a unique form of government-endorsed record written by laymen.‘
Caffaro’s Purpose in Writing and the Composition of the Texts The ‘Annals’ of Genoa:
The triumph of the First Crusade in 1099 provoked an unprecedented efflorescence of narrative histories.° Because the capture of Jerusalem was seen as such a miraculous event people across the Latin West felt compelled to record this great achievement, and particularly to represent the deeds of people from their own area. This emotion or trend seems to have influenced Caffaro too because we quickly register a sense of pride in the efforts of his home city. The ‘Annals’ begin with his comment: ‘Whoever, for his own benefit or on behalf of someone else wants to know about earlier years, from the time of the expedition to Caesarea until the present, let him discover and read this record based on Caffaro’s recollection... so that the victories of Genoa might be known to men in the future for all time thereafter — the time when they set off in 1100 and returned in 1101.’° It is possible that during his stay in the Holy Land Caffaro had seen or heard of the texts being produced in the aftermath of the First Crusade and, suitably impressed, thought to create his own account with, quite understandably, Genoa at its centre.’ Initially, at least, this was conceived as being for private consumption and over time it evolved into an account of the history of the city. In 1152 he presented it to the commune and the consuls promptly ordered it to be copied and continued for the public record.° ‘Since it seems good and useful for past events to be remembered, contemporary happenings to be given consideration, and the future to be anticipated, and likewise the names and deeds of past, present and future consuls of Genoa, and what happened year by year in the city of Genoa, Caffaro started writing them down and making a record of them when he was 20 years old. As is recorded in this book, he has compiled and made note of all this up to the present day.’? In other words, he began to write around 1101. Caffaro sought to give authority to his work by advising the reader of his own high-profile career and his knowledge of, and consultation with, other important figures; he also used documentary evidence as appropriate. It is, however, a serious problem for the modern reader that we have no clear indication of the levels of modification and refinement that Caffaro subjected the ‘Annals’ to. Thus, do his comments actually reflect ideas from the first decade of the twelfth century, or were they reformulated in the sixth decade? Given that this was a particularly fertile age in the evolution of crusading ideology our ignorance here is frustrating although we can usefully compare his outlook with other sources. There is also a more basic point that any writer’s personality and pre-occupations will probably change over such a long period.
Both in light of Caffaro’s own statements and the level of detail for events in the Holy Land, we must suspect some episodes of more intensive note-taking or the creation of a rough version of the text, although for years such as 1114, 1115, 1116 and 1117, or 1131 and 1132, his coverage of events was thin. His style can be characterised as pretty simple, adorned with only a few direct references from the Bible or from the Church Fathers, (and some of these are embedded within the writing of others, such as a letter of Pope Alexander III) and, strikingly, a couple of classical lines, one from Sallust, as well as the flattering comparison of Rainald of Dassel, the imperial chancellor, to Cicero.'®
If it was the First Crusade that inspired a young Caffaro to begin his writing, then by the time he presented the work to the consuls and in the section composed after this date an avowedly didactic purpose had also emerged: ‘But because there is great value in having information about past events, both for understanding the present and forecasting the future, and because both auspicious and inauspicious events took place through the vagaries of fate during this consulate, Caffaro decided to tell the truth, as far as he knew it, to contemporaries and men in the future.’'’ As we will see below, the early 1150s were a time of particular difficulty for the city and the idea of looking back to past successes may have been especially attractive at this point. For Genoa, the call of the First Crusade prompted a sworn association of urban elites and this provided the impetus for subsequent communal organisation. Campopiano shows that, unlike the situation in Pisa and Milan, the Church in Genoa had a relatively low profile in this process. It was a secular elite that emerged in Genoa and, through the writings of Caffaro, the place created its unique historical culture.'* With the city in dire economic straits in the mid-twelfth century the ‘Annals’ reminded people that both the consuls and crusading had achieved great things while the divisions of the present were to be ended and harmony restored.”
Such worthy thoughts aside, we might observe that Caffaro sometimes passed over the less positive aspects of the Genoese story; didactic elements notwithstanding, this was hardly the place to describe major setbacks. In taking such an approach he was (and is) hardly unique — William of Tyre, his nearcontemporary and an author often held up as a serious (and self-proclaimed) historian of the age was certainly culpable of such practices. Thus, William concealed the considerable tensions between the recently-arrived King Fulk of Jerusalem (formerly Count Fulk V of Anjou) and the native nobility of the Holy Land behind a story of Queen Melisende’s alleged infidelity. Similarly, William’s account of King Amalric’s visit to Emperor Manuel Komnenos (114380) in 1171 consists of a long description of the king’s stay in Constantinople but omits the crucial, albeit embarrassing, likelihood that he had to pay homage to the Greek emperor.'* With regard to an assessment of Caffaro’s reliability we can often draw upon the evidence of other writers to confirm or contradict his perspective and, as presented here, we have a selection of Genoese charters too. Such documents were available to Caffaro and he occasionally made reference to them in his texts; they can be used to supplement some of his comments, such as the long-running commercial dispute with the kings of Jerusalem; they can also provide another side to his account when, as noted above, he chose to be less forthcoming than he could have been. Examples of this concern the situation in Genoa in the early 1150s (see below, pp. 71—72).
Main Concerns of the ‘Annals’:
Several prominent themes emerge in the course of the ‘Annals’, beginning with the First Crusade. The issue of Italian trading cities’ involvement in the crusades is a much-discussed topic and many writers have expressed scepticism about the level of their spiritual motivation; Byrne, for example, wrote: ‘it would almost seem to them... [that] the crusade was a matter of indifference except as it affected their material prosperity’.'° More recently, however, authors such as Bellomo and Marshall have countered that we should give due notice to their religiosity and this is a line of argument further supported here.'®
Unlike De liberatione civitatum orientis (see below) the ‘Annals’ contain no discussion of the origins of the First Crusade or the capture of Jerusalem. Instead, the story plunges straight into the events that involved Genoa, perhaps reflecting the fact that the piece was originally written for Caffaro’s own benefit. The narrative begins with the departure of a Genoese fleet in August 1100. The situation in the Holy Land was difficult because the ruler of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, had died on 18 July 1100 and Prince Bohemond I of Antioch had been captured by Turks in August 1100. According to Caffaro, it was the Genoese, along with the papal legate Maurizio, cardinal-bishop of Porto, who took a central (if uncorroborated) role in the selection of their replacements. Count Baldwin I of Edessa received a promise of Genoese help to capture further Muslim cities and, trusting in God and the Ligurians, he began this task. These campaigns proved vital in the conquest of the Levant because the Franks’ grip on the region was tenuous, at best. While they had a number of important strongholds, such as Antioch and Jerusalem, many other cities remained in Muslim hands and it was essential for the Christians to consolidate their position. Securing the coastal cities was a priority because it provided a means for crusaders, pilgrims and settlers to reach and to defend the holy places; it would also promote trade — in other words a combination of factors that would attract the Genoese.’
Caffaro recounted these campaigns in terms conventional for the age: thus Baldwin was ‘God’s warrior’ fighting the Turks, ‘the enemies of God’. Caffaro also noted that the Genoese celebrated the holy offices of Palm Sunday and prepared to fight and ‘to serve God and the kingdom of Jerusalem.’'® This phrase of serving God and a secular institution (acknowledging that the kingdom of Jerusalem was a very unique ‘secular’ institution) was a formulation that Caffaro would later apply to his own city too.
A highly significant section of the ‘Annals’ is Caffaro’s eye-witness
description — the most detailed to survive — of Jerusalem’s principal liturgical ceremony of the year and one that attracted particular attention from the Frankish settlers and western pilgrims; namely, the miracle of the Holy Fire, a tradition created by Eastern Christians and first related by a western pilgrim in 870.'° On Easter Saturday worshippers of all denominations packed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and after a lengthy service all the lights in the building were extinguished. The faithful waited for one of the lamps in front of the sepulchre itself to re-ignite spontaneously, a miracle that symbolised the Resurrection. The fire was then taken to the patriarch who lit his candle from the flame and this was passed from person to person and gradually the entire church filled with light. But in 1101, as the contemporary writer Fulcher of Chartres confirmed, in spite of repeated efforts to invoke God’s favour, this did not happen for a day and a night.*? Legate Maurizio’s sermon identified a lack of belief amongst the audience and he advised that a procession to the Temple might secure God’s approval. The king, the patriarch and other dignitaries duly complied but once back at the Holy Sepulchre two further failures occurred, only at the third attempt did a light appear and this ‘great miracle’ delighted them all. Caffaro then went on pilgrimage to the River Jordan.*' Thus, through their participation in Easter Week and a visit to the Jordan we can see Caffaro and the Genoese as entirely conventional pilgrims and crusaders.
The description of the siege of Caesarea gives an intriguing insight into Caffaro’s perception of the expedition. He included a (purported) conversation between the Muslim leaders and Patriarch Daimbert and Maurizio.** Such ‘setpiece’ exchanges are a regular feature of crusading texts and can be noted, for example, in the Gesta Francorum of the First Crusade; the Anonymous Monk of the Lido’s Translatio sancti Nicolai of 1116 and De expugnatione Lyxbonensi (The Conquest of Lisbon) from the siege of Lisbon in 1147.” The strict accuracy of these pieces is dubious, but one theme to emerge across the three accounts noted here is that of a Muslim challenging the motives of Christian warriors or, to put it more directly, a need to justify or to explain Christian holy war. Kedar has observed that comments supposedly made by the Muslim elders at Lisbon were perfectly in line with Islam’s questioning of the basic tenets of Christianity.** As a member of a Mediterranean trading community Caffaro would certainly have had contact with Muslims during his career, although whether that extended to much real understanding of the Islamic faith is unknown. The Muslim leader at Caesarea asked how Christians could kill people ‘with the appearance of your God’. The patriarch acknowledged this was a reasonable question but he countered with the point that Christians had been unlawfully expelled from Caesarea and he claimed the crusade was a matter of
recovering what was rightfully theirs. In other words, he outlined a fairly standard justification for holy war. He argued that killing those hostile to the law of God was proper and cited Deuteronomy 32.39 in support of this; he also promised to let live those who submitted immediately.” Another way of looking at this passage is to see it as a reflection of the novelty of crusading around 1100-1101 and as a wish to explain its ethics and theology; in any case, Caffaro’s text showed how such principles had permeated the thoughts and writings of a layman.
Following this, the patriarch called the Genoese crusaders to hear a sermon, an entirely customary pre-battle event.*® Daimbert urged the crusaders to confess, to take communion and then to scale the walls; if they did so, he prophesied, they would acquire the city, its men, women and treasure; statements in direct contradiction to Urban II’s decrees at Clermont that instructed the crusaders to journey ‘for devotion alone and not for honour or money.’*” We might suspect that Caffaro had tailored his account here to fit subsequent Genoese pleasure at securing spiritual as well as monetary advantage. Yet surely such promises — not to the exclusion of religious rewards — motivated some crusaders. For laymen across the West the hope of financial reward was one of many elements that drove them forwards; at the very least, given the expense of crusading, they would not, or could not, spurn such prizes entirely.
Stephen of Blois provides a secular, northern French, example. When, in March 1098, he wrote home to his wife Adela the count was proud to talk of ‘the army of Christ’, of Christ’s leadership of the army and (several times) of the divine favour received by the crusading forces. Yet he also delighted in more worldly good fortune: ‘Know for sure, my love, that I now have twice as much gold, silver and other riches as you gave me, my love, when I took leave of you.’ In a similar vein, in 1147, the bishops of Toledo and Leon offered crusaders at Almeria remission of their sins and ‘prizes of silver... and all the gold which the Moors possess’.”°
Many Church writers warned against greed, although where to draw the line between appropriate reward and excess was difficult. This was a matter covered by the canon lawyer Gratian (c.1140) who indicated that the spoils of war went to the victorious leader who would distribute them to his soldiers according to their efforts. Based on the sermon of John the Baptist to the Roman soldiers, Gratian argued that it was acceptable for troops to receive legitimate and necessary wages for their services, but condemned seeking booty for private gain. Thus, it was permissible, as well as practical, to make payment from a centrally gathered fund — exactly as the Genoese crusaders did in 1101.*° The
Old Testament included several references to the combination of fighting the Lord’s wars and obtaining booty, stories that the Genoese clergy would have been familiar with. For example, in II Chronicles 14, 9-15, King Asa of Judah defeated the Ethiopians, despoiled their cities and lands and seized an abundant quantity of moveable goods.*”
We have to differentiate between the strict ecclesiastical theory of Urban II and the aspirations of laymen such as Caffaro and Stephen of Blois. These latter sources demonstrate a combination of motives and a sense of reality, a viewpoint recognised by some churchmen such as the bishops of Leon and Toledo noted above. From a lay perspective, why should crusaders of proper moral direction not enrich themselves at the expense of the enemies of Christ? The outcome of warfare was determined by the providence of God. A decade before the First Crusade, Anselm of Lucca, credited as being one of the prime thinkers behind Christian holy war, wrote to William the Conqueror and ascribed the reward of riches won after strong deeds as being granted by God.*!
Outside Caesarea Guglielmo Embriaco (‘Hammerhead’) the Genoese consul and military leader of the campaign exhorted his troops to act.** The initial attack faltered and so Guglielmo prayed for help. He then climbed a tower, wrestled aside a Saracen and was able to signal to his colleagues that the wall could now be taken. The Genoese ‘wearing the cross on their right shoulders’ swarmed into the city and took the booty and prisoners promised to them by Patriarch Daimbert; all this was achieved ‘with God’s help’.*? The Genoese combination of wearing the crusaders’ most iconic symbol and securing a divine response to their prayers fits alongside mainstream crusading accounts. The issue of secular rewards plainly did not remove spiritual motivation as Byrne (note 15 above) crudely assumed. In other words, the Genoese saw themselves as crusaders, their contemporaries saw them as crusaders, and modern readers should recognise them as such. After the battle ended the Ligurians were awarded privileges and a church dedicated to St Lawrence, the patron saint of Genoa. As Caffaro observed: ‘the name of Jesus Christ was adored and worshipped while the diabolical name of Muhammad has been expelled from the city’, a rare example of explicitly anti-Muslim rhetoric in his text.*
In the aftermath of these successes Caffaro described the division of booty: one fifteenth went to the crews, a ‘substantial’ amount to the consuls, sea captains and ‘men of quality’; the remainder each received 48 solidi of Poitou and 2 librae of pepper. Pepper was, of course, a luxury item; presumably the crusaders had come across a storehouse full of the spice and because of its high value they regarded it as appropriate to distribute as a form of payment. After this the Genoese returned home ‘in triumph and covered in glory’ — a succinct statement of Caffaro’s ideal blend of civic, spiritual and economic achievement.°°
Over the next few years Levantine campaigns saw the capture of Tartus (1102), Acre (1104), Jubayl (1104), Tripoli (1109) and Beirut (1110). These victories, along with the earlier conquest of Antioch, meant that the Genoese secured a variety of territorial and economic rights, as detailed in the charters below, (see for example, Documents 1, 2 and 3). But, as emerges from Caffaro’s narrative, being granted such rights was not necessarily the same thing as being able to enforce or to maintain them.
Aside from crusading, one of the most prominent aspects of Genoese history in this period was the rivalry — and often outright warfare — with neighbouring Pisa, just over 100 miles south-east down the coast. Back in the eleventh century the two cities had worked together in a raid on Sardinia (1016) and then helped to resist Muslim efforts to seize the island. The Italians also took part in the conquest of Mahdia in North Africa in 1087.°° By the early twelfth century political and economic competition had intensified. This came to manifest itself in open warfare (1119), encompassing a savage dispute over the bishoprics of Corsica, and wider control of such an important commercial base. A series of papal rulings gave the Pisans the right to consecrate Corsican bishops, something that was to the detriment of the Genoese and, so the latter claimed, to the standing of the Roman Church. In late 1120 Caffaro himself was dispatched to Rome to try to ‘encourage’ a change of heart by the curia, although the chronicler chose to omit this story from his work, preferring perhaps to slip past an episode that was not especially flattering to anyone involved. A copy of the agreement that resulted from this visit was, however, preserved in the city archive and this offers a detailed account of events (see below, pp. 103—105).°’
Once at the papal court Caffaro began to advance his city’s case; he also promised to bring 1200 silver marks to Pope Calixtus IT (1119-24) and 300 marks to other members of the curia before 11 November 1121; he distributed 500 marks immediately. In return the Pisan privileges were withdrawn (3 January 1121) and it was decreed that the bishops of Corsica should be consecrated by the Roman church alone. Caffaro then dispensed other generous gifts to various cardinals, bishops and the important and influential aristocrats of Rome, including an emerald to the wife of Peter Pierleoni (the Pierleoni were an important Roman family).*° This represented an enormous expenditure and, to a modern reader, seems an outrageous move; ‘proof’ of the stereotypical grasping, money-obsessed Italian traders. In fact, it was the papacy who required such blessings’, and several contemporary parallels exist. For example, Archbishop Diego Gelmirez of Compostela sent the curia numerous gifts of gold, silver and precious objects in return for a variety of titles, privileges and confirmations between 1117 and 1130. Robinson suggests that payments of this sort had become necessary to cover the substantial running expenses of the papal court.°° With regard to Caffaro’s situation it seems that the decree of 1121 did not settle the dispute and so Calixtus asked representatives of both Genoa and Pisa to attend the First Lateran Council in March 1123. Caffaro was again involved and this time, for reasons that will become apparent, he was pleased to report the meeting in some detail. The main body of cardinals and the other churchmen failed to reach a decision so Calixtus set up a panel of 24 senior churchmen to resolve the matter; they ruled that Pisa should lose the right to consecrate the bishops of Corsica, a judgement confirmed by the pope. Caffaro, with evident relish, related that Archbishop Roger of Pisa hurled his ring and mitre at Calixtus’ feet and shouted that he would no longer be his bishop and archbishop — only for the pope to kick the objects away and respond: ‘Brother, you have done wrong and I shall certainly make sure you regret it.’ The ruling in Genoa’s favour stood and Caffaro could return home and report his success to a plenary meeting of the city’s senior figures; modestly he commented that the transactions had been handled with ‘prudence and rectitude.’*°
Needless to say this was not the end of the matter and the troubles with Pisa escalated. Raids and naval battles took place in which the Genoese generally had the upper hand and often returned with a considerable amount of booty. Broader religious and political matters began to draw in the Ligurians too and given the realities of geography it was inevitable that the city became engaged in the schism of the 1130s between Pope Innocent II and his challenger, Anacletus II. The Genoese backed the former and he helped to broker a peace agreement with Pisa on 20 March 1133. That same day Innocent rewarded the Genoese by granting the city the status of an archbishopric which represented another important advance in its standing and identity.*!
Aside from local and international events the ‘Annals’ can also tell us much about the internal development of Genoa. As well as listing the names of the consuls we can see how the office itself evolved in terms of the number of office-holders and the division of responsibility between the two forms of consul: those who controlled the city, and the consuls of the pleas who dealt with lesser justice. The text vividly reveals the violence within Genoa as various factions and families tried to establish their dominance; at times levels of criminality were worryingly high. It seems that (especially) from the 1150s onwards periods of acute unrest frequently formed a prominent aspect of urban life. In 1187 one of the consuls di comuni, Anglerio de Mare, was murdered in the street, the following year, Ingone della Volta was bludgeoned to death with a rock. Yet on some occasions, such as the launch of the First Crusade and in the early stages of the Third Crusade, plans to help the Holy Land brought at least a temporary end to these troubles.*”
A further governmental issue was the coinage (see also, pp. 47-48 below). This was reformed in 1102 and 1115 before, most significantly, the city was granted the right to mint its own coins by King Conrad III of Germany (113852) in December 1138, in itself a rare glimpse of some form of imperial overlordship prior to the more interventionist reign of his successor Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152—90).** Caffaro recorded ecclesiastical matters too, such as the consecration of the church of San Lorenzo as a cathedral by Pope Gelasius IT (1118-19) in October 1118 and the death of the long-lasting (1133-— 63) Archbishop Siro who merited a generous encomium.“
A striking feature of this period of Genoese history was the spread of its trading network, often into areas under Muslim control. On occasion this was extended by forceful means, such as the attack on Bugia in North Africa in 1137, at other times it took the form of a diplomatic approach including the nonaggression pact with Morocco of 1138 or the peace and trade treaty with the king of Valencia in 1149 (see Documents 4 and 9). Evidence also shows Genoese merchants visiting Damascus in 1156. Given the inherent tensions between this commercial activity and the emerging idea of the crusade it is interesting to see Caffaro’s language in these situations. During the eleventh century the Genoese had traded with (for example) Cairo and Alexandria, but they had also fought Muslims at Mahdia in North Africa and Tortosa in Spain.*° Caffaro’s entry for 1101 shows that he regarded these latter two conflicts as part of the same struggle as the First Crusade, yet the harsh edge to some of his language in the crusade situation (most notably in the aftermath of the capture of Caesarea in 1101, p. 56 below) did not mean that all Muslims were enemies of Genoa and that it was no longer possible to trade with them. His accounts of the missions to Valencia and Morocco in 1160-61 simply give the name or title of those with whom the Genoese were engaged such as Lupus (either Yusuf ibn Mardanish, who governed Valencia, or his superior and brother, Ibn Mardanish, who was the ruler of the whole Levante region, the central-eastern section of Iberia), and the king of the Almohads (Caliph ‘Abd al-Mu’ min). Caffaro’s continuators, Oberto Cancelliere and Ottobono Scriba, noted further missions to Morocco in 1169 and 1170 and the conclusion of a twenty-year peace with the Muslim ruler of Majorca in 1188.“
The advent of the crusades could not end commerce with the world of Islam.“ For a trading city such as Genoa, to cease dealing with Muslims would have been economic suicide. Self-evidently, however, holy war could produce tensions; for example, in 1103, the arrest of all the Genoese in Cairo showed Fatimid awareness of the commune’s importance in the conquest of the Latin East and this crackdown presumably represented an effort to punish them.” Yet Genoese merchants returned to Egypt and a letter from the 1130s describes travels inland from Alexandria.°° At times the Genoese themselves chose to hamper Muslim power. In 1151 the consuls banned unlicensed trade in oars, spears, timber for constructing galleys, or weapons. This could be interpreted as a measure to preserve their control over such activities but the closing phrase that the consuls did so ‘because they recognise that this is our duty to God, to the whole of Christendom and to the commune of Genoa’, signals a religious aspect to the decision as well (See Document 10). The issue of dealing in materials of war could represent a line between the two faiths and periodically the papacy, presumably on behalf of the Latin East, tried to prevent this. Decrees of the Third Lateran Council of 1179 (possibly echoing earlier legislation from 1162) banned the sale of arms, naval timber and iron to the Muslims. At times, this boundary was crossed; a document from the Fatimid chancery shows a Genoese merchant trading timber in Cairo in the early twelfth century. It seems that by 1175 the earlier ban had been lifted because Saladin could claim to the caliph of Baghdad that the Genoese, Pisans and Venetians were delivering arms and riches to him (see below, p. 18 for the text of this letter). Perhaps it was this situation that prompted the legislation of the Third Lateran Council.°'
The specific issue of war materials aside we can see from a list of tithes owed to the archbishop of Genoa in 1143 that the city was engaged in trade with Muslim Egypt, the western Maghreb (‘Barbaria’), Africa, Tunis, Bugia and Almeria, as well as numerous Christian ports in the Latin East and Byzantium, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, Calabria, Provence and Iberia.** The most dramatic indication of the extent and volume of trade is in material surviving from the remarkable cartulary of Giovanni Scriba, a document which still contains over 1,300 acts from the years 1154 to 1164. This is the oldest surviving collection of its sort in Europe and it shows a sophisticated commercial world at work, although given its unique nature we cannot confirm how representative it truly is; furthermore, it is clearly incomplete, and omits northern Europe, for example. That said, it is impossible to ignore such rich evidence and as the tables show, the most valuable markets for the Genoese were Syria (meaning the Latin East) On the surface this commercial relationship with the Muslim world can look like the Italians putting money before religion. Such dealings seem a long way from the militant rhetoric of the accounts of First Crusade sermons written in northern France or the strident criticism of Islam produced by some twelfth-century writers. Aside from the impracticality of ceasing to trade, real life in the Mediterranean area was, of course, far more complicated than crusade sermons allowed for — as Caffaro’s writings reveal. The twelfth-century kingdom of Sicily, for example, was a polyglot society of Christians, Muslims and Jews. The Muslim and Christian worlds were both highly fragmented with each containing multiple political and denominational groups, while there are numerous examples of treaties and alliances between parties of opposing faiths throughout the period and across the Mediterranean region.** The Latin States themselves could not have survived without trade with the Muslim hinterland as Ekkehard of Aura observed when writing about the reign of Godfrey of Bouillon: ‘he maintained firm peace with Ascalon and Damascus for the sake of commerce...’.°°
Similarly the markets of Alexandria were pleased to welcome Frankish traders. Ibn Jubayr, a Spanish Muslim pilgrim who passed through the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1184 (in other words at a time of mounting tension between Saladin and the Franks) wrote with astonishment that ‘though the fires of discord burn between the two parties, Muslim and Christian, two armies of them may yet meet and dispose themselves in battle array, and yet Muslim and Christian travellers will come and go between them without interference.’ Ibn Jubayr himself sailed from Ceuta in North Africa to Alexandria on a Genoese ship.”®
Even Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), a man determined to recover Jerusalem from Islam, acknowledged the need for economic exchange (excluding specified materials of war and shipbuilding, the sailing of Muslim ships or provision of vessels) in a letter to the Venetians in December 1198.°’ Thus we have to recognise and to accommodate the complexities, contradictions and inconsistencies of the situation. In 1161 the Genoese concluded truces with Ibn Mardanish of the Levante (or his brother, Yusuf) and ‘Abd al-Mu’min of Morocco. Yet with no irony, in his entry for the same year, Caffaro reported welcoming Pope Alexander III to Genoa immediately afterwards.°® By a similar token, Saladin himself wrote to the caliph of Baghdad in 1175: ‘Among the [enemy] armies were also Venetians, Pisans and Genoese. They sometimes behaved like invaders, producing a harmful effect and a maleficence that were intolerable, and sometimes like travellers, imposing their law on Islam with their imported goods and escaping strict regulation. Yet there is not a single one of them who does not come today to bring us the weapons with which they fought and conducted the holy war, not one who does not seek out our favour by offering us the rare products of his labour and patrimony. I established alliances and peace accords with them all, on the conditions that we set, in keeping with our interests against their interests.’°°? The Genoese envoy Rosso della Volta concluded a peace agreement with the sultan in 1177 and the latter’s envoys are known to have passed through Genoa during discussions with Frederick Barbarossa.”
Not every Genoese adventure proved profitable. The capture of Almeria and, most particularly, Tortosa in 1147—48, while celebrated in Caffaro’s text (and discussed below, pp. 36—40) proved hugely expensive and provoked financial and political crises in the city; Caffaro recorded a debt of 15,000 librae. His accounts of the years 1148 to 1153 are very brief. The city was described as ‘a ship without a helmsman’ and it even lacked the galleys to defend itself.*' After a period in the wilderness some of the consuls from pre-1149 were brought back to power, presumably having paid the penalty for their perceived responsibility for the debts. Caffaro may well have been one of these men and he was never elected consul again, although he would serve the city prominently as a diplomat, as will be seen below. The consuls had to resort to drastic actions to survive and leased or mortgaged numerous rights and privileges to groups of private citizens to raise cash. Some of the contracts were directly concerned with Almeria and Tortosa; others included Genoa’s salt pans (see Documents 8a, 8b). In the Levant the Embriaco clan used the opportunity to confirm their control of Jubayl and to extend their hold to encompass Genoese possessions in several cities such as Latakia, Acre and Antioch (Document 11b); the Acre charter even made explicit mention of ‘the pressing need’ of the commune.
These measures, difficult as they were, had some success because in 1155 Caffaro recorded the redemption from pledge of numerous public assets and the start of the construction of the city walls, in itself an expensive undertaking.” The end of this crisis provoked one of Caffaro’s moralising passages on the importance of peace and good government. We also see a manifestation of the author’s conventional piety with his aside that he prayed for the troubles to pass. This sentiment was repeated in his entry for 1157 with the statement that he prayed three times a day for Genoa’s peace, harmony and wealth.™
Against this turbulent economic background two further crises emerged, one involved Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, the other concerned the Genoese possessions in the Levant. In 1154 Frederick journeyed to northern Italy to assert his rights there and to extract the payment of tribute. The Genoese relationship with the Empire was vague and distant with the 1138 grant of the right to mint coins one of the few identifiable signs of this.°* Yet Frederick, not least through his obvious military strength, deeply worried the Genoese. Issues of authority aside, this was, as we have seen, a particularly bad time for the city to face demands for money. Caffaro himself was chosen as one of the envoys and he reported that news of Genoa’s determined preparations to resist convinced the emperor to treat the city ‘with greater respect than all the other cities in Italy’; other, undisclosed, matters of mutual benefit to both parties were discussed too. Caffaro’s visit was witnessed by another important chronicler of the age, Bishop Otto of Freising, who tells us that the Genoese presented Frederick with gifts of lions, parrots and ostriches. Otto also referenced the Genoese as the victors of Almeria and Tortosa, showing the recognition drawn by this achievement.
For all these diplomatic niceties, we can see the Genoese trying to navigate through an ever more complex series of conflicts and tensions. Frederick’s principal enemies were the Sicilians, yet the latter were highly important trading partners for the northern Italian commune. Likewise, Sicilian aggression towards Byzantium was another issue to take into account, as we will see below. There remained ongoing trouble with Pisa, particularly over control of Sardinia and Corsica. As one of the smaller parties in the political and economic arena, Genoa had to play a carefully calibrated game not to antagonise or alienate too many powerful players. Hence in November 1156, taking advantage of a period of relative calm, the Genoese and King William I (1154-66) made a treaty which yielded significant commercial advantages for the Genoese. They also promised not to deploy their fleet on behalf of either of William’s imperial opponents.” We should be careful not to regard ‘Genoa’ as a single, unified entity in these dealings with external powers. The narratives of Caffaro and his continuators describe the substantial levels of political infighting and we must register the likely influences of different factions, although it is not often possible to ascribe particular foreign policy preferences to specific family groups.”
Two years later (1158) Frederick Barbarossa returned to northern Italy and brought Milan to heel. He followed this up with an imperial diet (parliament) at Roncaglia. Caffaro claimed that Genoa was not obligated to show Frederick the level of loyalty and submission displayed by other Italian cities because its traditional duties to the Empire were limited to a requirement to protect the coasts from non-Christians, a responsibility so expensive that nothing more could be asked of them. To some extent this was probably a justifiable claim to make; piracy was certainly a problem in the north-western Mediterranean and for reasons of their own security, if nothing else, it was a matter the Genoese were always keen to deal with.®* Caffaro also struck a belligerent note here because, legal and historical precedents aside, the Genoese were frantically working on their new city walls, just in case the situation should become critical. The author proudly noted the huge civic effort to bring the fortifications to a robust and usable state. Caffaro himself took part in a second embassy to the emperor and a reciprocal visit to Genoa by Rainald of Dassel, the imperial chancellor, saw the commune present him with a gift of 1,200 silver marks while maintaining its apparent freedom to act.® Otto of Freising’s account suggested that the imperial presence in northern Italy intimidated the Genoese and for reasons of self-preservation they made a payment to the imperial treasury and allegedly promised to stop building their walls.”
The succession of Pope Alexander ITI (1159-81) triggered another papal schism and the pro-imperial Victor IV emerged as his challenger. Alexander wrote to Genoa to seek support for his position. He alleged corruption and irregularity in his opponent’s election and in a letter included by Caffaro he asked the city to act as a bastion defending the house of God.”' In 1162, amidst huge delight and ceremony, Alexander was welcomed into the city, making plain Genoa’s allegiance to him. In almost the same breath, however, Caffaro showered praise on the pope’s sworn opponent, Emperor Frederick, as a man whom he judged as deserving to stand ahead of all the Caesars in his efforts to rebuild the Empire.”
In March 1162, Frederick sacked Milan and began to increase pressure on the Italian communes. Three months later he granted the Genoese a charter (Document 13a) that, in essence, confirmed the city’s independence from the Empire (they could wage war, choose their own consuls, receive no imperial governor), he also promised them the city of Syracuse if they helped him to conquer Sicily and southern Italy, as well as indemnifying them against losses incurred because of this agreement. Aside from engaging with Pope Alexander’s enemy, this was, of course, contrary to the spirit of previous deals with the Sicilians. Pragmatism was the order of the day in Genoa. Coupled with Frederick’s recent military victories, which as Caffaro commented at this point, aroused a real sense of fear in northern Italy, it seemed likely that the emperor would succeed in the south too; it looked a prudent move, therefore, to align with him and to swear an oath of loyalty. In the event, troubles in Germany distracted Frederick and he was unable to reach southern Italy as planned.” The complexities of Genoa’s external affairs are brought home by observing that at the same time the agreement noted above with Frederick was signed, Pope Alexander III excommunicated the emperor for supporting the anti-pope, Victor IV. 74
Relations with Sicily were mended by 1174, although imperial power in northern Italy meant that in the early 1190s the commune, by now trading heavily with the island, was obliged to try to hedge its bets once more. Emperor Henry VI (1191-97) was determined to invade Sicily and by mid-1191 the Genoese felt obliged to agree to support him, resulting in the re-issue and extension of Frederick Barbarossa’s privileges of 1162, see Document 13b.” Henry did not manage to invade the island until 1194 but with Genoese and Pisan help he made rapid progress. It came as a great shock, therefore, when he utterly refused to fulfil the terms of these arrangements and to give them Syracuse. Ottobono reported that the emperor described the Genoese as nothing more than men of the sea and boasted that he and his army could raze their city to the ground.”
Aside from issues concerning Sicily and the Empire, Caffaro covered several other matters in the later stages of his contribution to the ‘Annals’. First of all war with Pisa broke out again in the summer of 1162, a struggle primarily focused on control of Sardinia. Over the next 13 years a series of raids, naval battles and diplomatic confrontations occurred, some of which were played out under the direction of imperial authority.”” Amongst the most violent of these took place in Constantinople, the heart of another major location for Genoese commerce, the Byzantine Empire.
The contemporary relationship between Genoa and Byzantium had not started on a good footing. In the aftermath of the First Crusade ships from the commune came into conflict with Greek vessels off the island of Ithaca, although a subsequent embassy to Constantinople seems to have improved matters and in 1106 Emperor Alexios Komnenos (1081-1118) asked for Genoese help against the impending invasion of Bohemond of Taranto.’”* Genoese traders were in Constantinople from the 1130s and the early 1140s although this was lowvolume commerce that lacked the concessions already acquired by, for example, the Pisans. Prior to this period Genoa’s interests had been elsewhere but the emergence of problems with Sicily and the Levant meant that it was wise to look more widely. Caffaro noted diplomatic contact with Emperor John Komnenos (1118-43) in 1142-43, and then again in 1155 when, on the back of Genoa’s economic recovery, the city made a formal agreement with Emperor Manuel Komnenos (1143-80), see Document 12.” Just as the Genoese were seeking to expand their market opportunities so the Byzantines wanted an ally, or at least a neutral power, in their own developing conflict with the Sicilians. The Greeks made some cash payments but the promise of a commercial compound and the same, advantageous, tax rates as the Pisans were of greater interest to the Genoese. Further diplomacy took place in 1157 and 1160, missions that were required because, unsurprisingly, the Genoese treaty with William I of Sicily of 1156 was poorly received in Constantinople and this delayed implementation of the Ligurians’ agreement with Byzantium.”°
By 1162 the Genoese had established themselves in Constantinople only for their Pisan and Venetian rivals to attack and destroy their compound. The losses were considerable and while embassies of 1164 and 1168 led to the mutual defence treaty of 1169 (Document 15 below), Ottobono Scriba noted continued mistrust between the two parties during diplomatic exchanges in 1170. The new Genoese quarter in Constantinople fared little better than its predecessor when it too was sacked by the Venetians in 1170, although the latter were expelled from Constantinople in 1171 and went to war with the Greeks.®' Genoese losses in 1170 were 5,674 hyperpera, representing the claims of 85 individuals. For a period after this, however, the Genoese gave naval support to Manuel and trade blossomed. Ottobono recorded the emperor’s death (1180) with sadness, describing this as a cause of ‘utter ruin and loss’ to Christendom.” During the subsequent dynastic upheavals of the early 1180s a strong anti-Latin sentiment emerged in Byzantium, and along with the other western commercial entities, the Genoese suffered very badly in the massacre of 1182. Their losses on this occasion totalled over 200,000 hyperpera, indicating a colossal rise in their commitment to the city over the previous decade. For a while Genoa had no official position in Constantinople and it was only towards the end of the period that concerns us here that a new and generous agreement was made between the two parties (1192).*
Interleaved within these multi-dimensional international dealings was one relationship of particular interest to this volume, namely that between Genoa and the kingdom of Jerusalem. At around the same time as the city was emerging from its financial crisis in the early-to-mid 1150s it sent an envoy to the court of Pope Adrian IV (1154—59) to protest at the diminution of rights granted by the rulers of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Tripoli during the early years of Frankish settlement in the Levant. Documents 1, 2 and 3, for example, reveal these privileges. Caffaro also insisted that Pope Lucius II (1144—45) had reconfirmed their rights in Syria in 1144.** Yet the Genoese had played an essential role in the conquest and preservation of the Frankish East, something achieved, as Caffaro commented, ‘at great expense and with much bloodshed’; a fact attested by other writers such as Fulcher of Chartres.® As we saw earlier, Caffaro regarded the Genoese as crusaders as well as traders.
By the time of Baldwin ITI (1143-63) the Frankish rulers felt sufficiently secure to rein in some of his predecessors’ privileges, but as we have noted, this was a particularly bad time for the Genoese to suffer a reduction in their income. The figures provided by Giovanni Scriba illustrated the importance of trade with the Crusader States and, coupled with the recent losses connected with Almeria and Tortosa, one can appreciate why the Genoese became so agitated. By the same token, King Baldwin may have hoped to exploit this period of weakness to boost his own financial position; he was apparently required to pay Genoa 600 (presumably gold) bezants a year, as well as maintaining the commercial concessions.®° The protest was triggered when vassals of King Baldwin seized Genoese ships and treasure. Pope Adrian’s response was to order the restitution of these goods and he urged Baldwin to allow the Ligurians to hold their property in Acre peacefully and without interruption. He sent warnings along similar lines to Antioch, Tripoli and the Provencal ports.®’ By the pontificate of Alexander III the case was complicated by the pope’s wish to secure the endorsement of the king and the patriarch of Jerusalem in his struggle against the antipope Victor IV (or Octavianus as Caffaro called him) — yet he also hoped to maintain the support of Genoa too, as we have seen above.
Relations between Genoa and Jerusalem were even more difficult during the reign of Amalric (1163-74), in large part because the king destroyed an inscription, written in golden letters on the walls of the Holy Sepulchre, that recorded the privileges awarded to the Italians by King Baldwin I in 1104 and recognised their courage and contribution to the early conquests (See Document 2a). This inscription has been the subject of a vigorous scholarly debate. Mayer and Favreau-Lilie argued that it never existed and that the privilege was a Genoese forgery. Kedar has convincingly shown that it was real and that Amalric had indeed removed it; his motives for doing so marked a continuation of Baldwin III’s policy.®?
A further reason why Amalric may have clamped down especially hard on the Genoese was because of his developing relationship with Pisa, something in turn influenced by events in the Near East. Once again we can see how the position of the Genoese (or any of the players) interacted with the interests and actions of many others and how a move by one party could have multiple and overlapping consequences. In 1157 Baldwin III granted the Pisans privileges at Ascalon and in 1165 his successor confirmed their rights in Tyre. The 1160s were dominated by Amalric’s struggle with the Syrian Muslim ruler Nur ad-Din to conquer the failing Fatimid Empire in Egypt. The king needed naval support and in 1166 he sent an embassy to Pisa to negotiate help and to offer privileges. We should also note that in the background here was yet another convulsion of the Pisan— Genoese war. Amalric further ‘encouraged’ Pisan involvement by annulling the privileges of the Genoese, as noted above. The prospect of disadvantaging their main rivals in Jerusalem and gaining a premier position in the richest market in the Mediterranean was obviously tremendously attractive to the Pisans. In May 1167 their galleys helped to (briefly) capture Alexandria, and in 1168 they again sent a force to the eastern Mediterranean, although early the following year Saladin, nominally on behalf of Nur ad-Din, seized control of Egypt and secured a considerable strategic and financial boost for his master.®°
Alexander III tried hard to restore the standing of the Genoese with letters to both Amalric and the patriarch of Jerusalem in 1167-69 (See Documents 16a and 16b), that urged them to recognise the importance of the commune’s contribution to their lands. These letters had little effect but the vagaries of succession to the throne of Jerusalem gave the Genoese a real opportunity to reassert themselves. When Amalric died unexpectedly in 1174 the throne passed to his young son, Baldwin IV (1174-85), who was soon discovered to have leprosy. It was necessary, therefore, to choose a husband for his elder sister, Sibylla and it was likely that this man would become the joint ruler of Jerusalem once the sickly Baldwin died. The High Court of Jerusalem fixed upon William ‘Longsword’ of Montferrat in northern Italy, a first cousin of both King Louis VII of France (1137-80) and Emperor Frederick. The leading men of the Holy Land regarded the selection of a man closely tied to the emperor as a wise move given the apparent imperial ascendancy in the West, although this would hardly win much favour with Pope Alexander. From a Genoese perspective the Montferrat dynasty were highly familiar because their lands lay only 40 miles to the north-west of their city. In 1150 William’s father (William ‘the Old’) had sworn an oath of submission to the Ligurians and, a few subsequent tensions aside, relations had been cordial; the engagement with Sibylla of Jerusalem offered an obvious challenge to Pisan power in the Levant. As Document 17 shows, William, en route to the Holy Land, swore to recover lost Genoese possessions, excluding those in the royal domain. In the event, this promise proved only fleeting because William’s death in June 1177, only nine months after he arrived in the East, ended the prospect.”
This setback prompted a resumption of efforts to get papal support. In 1179 Alexander III wrote to Baldwin IV, and in 1186 Urban III contacted Baldwin V (Documents 16c and d). The second of these messages pointedly reminded the people of Jerusalem that the Genoese might be less inclined to help them if the current dispute continued. Urban made a concerted attempt to intervene by proposing the archbishop of Nazareth and the masters of the Templars and Hospitallers as arbitrators in the dispute. By this stage the papacy was leaning strongly towards the Genoese side with other letters to the prior and canons of the Holy Sepulchre referring to ‘culpable and high-handed’ behaviour by their forefathers in the ‘destruction of the historical record’, and directing them to restore the inscription and not to repeat such behaviour (Document 16f). In another letter of the same day the pope instructed the patriarch of Jerusalem to put pressure on the canons of the Holy Sepulchre to comply. The situation remained unresolved before it was overtaken by Saladin’s crushing victory over the Frankish forces at the Battle of Hattin (4 July) and the capture of King Guy, many of the leading nobles of the kingdom and the True Cross. Acre fell within days.
In the inevitably confused aftermath merchant vessels were the quickest way for news to reach the West and ships could have arrived in Genoa by late August 1187. The citizens composed a detailed report on the battle and sent it to Pope Urban II (See Document 18), thereby providing historians with an important contemporary account of the conflict.*' The letter also stated that Genoa looked to Urban for leadership and direction and assured him of the city’s support in the aftermath of this calamity. As an aside, it is worth noting that the Genoese lord of Jubayl, Ugo II Embriaco, was amongst those taken at Hattin and that his town surrendered to Saladin in return for its lord’s freedom.”
Meanwhile, events in the Holy Land opened out a whole new series of opportunities for the Genoese. In the latter half of July 1187 Raymond of Tripoli and many of the surviving senior figures of the kingdom gathered in Tyre. The chance presence of Genoese ships, combined with their existing holdings in the city offered a vital source of support for the beleaguered Franks. In return for promises of assistance a senior Genoese figure, Guglielmo Piperata, formerly consul in 1174 and 1186, was able to secure important concessions. As Document 19a shows, these marked a major advance for Genoa’s position in Tyre.
Within a couple of weeks, the unexpected arrival in the East of Conrad of Montferrat presented further potential advantages to Genoa. In 1186 Conrad had been invited to Constantinople to support Isaac II Angelos’s attempts to hold onto the imperial throne; he had also married the emperor’s sister. The marquis helped Isaac to defeat his challenger but in the aftermath he was forced to flee and, as the Genoese text known as the Brevis Historia (see below pp. 41-42 for a discussion of this source) tells us, he elected to leave Constantinople on a Genoese boat with a senior nobleman from the commune, Ansaldo Bonvicino.”° Conrad decided to head towards the kingdom of Jerusalem where his nephew (Baldwin V, 1185-86) had reigned briefly and his father William ‘the Old?’ still held lands. Conrad was unaware of the disaster at Hattin until he reached Acre (by then in Muslim hands) but his vigorous leadership did much to preserve the city of Tyre in Frankish hands and to maintain an important toehold on the coastline of the Latin kingdom.
The release of King Guy of Jerusalem in the summer of 1188 complicated the politics of the region because Conrad had set himself up as the de facto ruler in Tyre and twice he refused to acknowledge Guy’s authority. The latter, in response, besieged the city of Acre. The Genoese — and the Pisans — proved vital in the survival of the Frankish East during this period. The ‘Annals’ of Ottobono Scriba noted a series of Genoese fleets sailing ‘for the relief and service of God’ to fight at the siege of Acre where the Ligurians used their expertise to construct siege engines and wooden fortifications.** The existing ties between the house of Montferrat and the Genoese seemed to signpost an obvious bias in the latter’s allegiance but they chose to steer a middle path, maintaining recognition of Guy as king.” Thus, in May 1190 the commune was awarded extensive privileges in Acre, as detailed in Document 21. By this time Guy and Conrad had come to some form of agreement with the latter confirmed as ruler of Tyre. He had already rewarded Ansaldo Bonvicino with the post of castellan there in late 1189, and the privileges of 1187 were reconfirmed and extended by Conrad in April 1190; see Document 19b.”°
The demands of the situation in the Levant, coupled with the West’s inevitable response to the fall of Jerusalem, the Third Crusade, both came to exert a significant impact on Genoa.” The efforts to assist the crusade meant that numerous leading figures were absent, a situation that caused the citizens to adopt what was for Genoa a novel form of government. Other northern Italian cities had taken to employing a podesta, an official — usually an outsider — to act as their governor and in 1190 the Genoese chose a Brescian, Manegoldo, for the task, although he was in post for only a year (1191) before the older system was restored.”
One vital aspect of preparations for the crusade was the transportation of large numbers of western knights to the Holy Land. In 1188 Rosso della Volta was sent to England to consider travel arrangements with the English king, and the following year other Genoese envoys discussed the relief of the Holy Land with Richard I of England and Philip Augustus of France.’ Richard himself passed through Genoa in August 1190 but the city became more closely involved with the French crown. In February 1190 Philip’s representatives concluded an agreement to transport 650 knights, 1300 foot-soldiers, 1300 horses and their weapons, equipment and food for eight months (see Document 20). The contract specified matters of accounting and timing, it also insisted on the restoration of former Genoese possessions in lands captured by Philip and his vassals (except Richard) and required comparable privileges in any new conquests. Document 22 shows that he reconfirmed these earlier promises when he passed through Genoa. Philip left the Holy Land soon after the surrender of Acre in July 1191.
In spite of his close ties with Guy and the Pisans, Richard remained on sufficiently good terms with the Genoese to write to them in October 1191 to discuss the possibility of invading Egypt.'°° The spring of 1192 saw Acre as the setting for the latest eruption of conflict between Pisa and Genoa. By this time, the death of Guy’s wife and daughters (and through their bloodline his claim to the throne of Jerusalem), coupled with the weight of political will, meant that Conrad, who had by now married Isabella, the sole heiress to the throne, was recognised as the future king. As he prepared for his coronation Conrad rewarded the Genoese for their previous assistance and sought their allegiance in the future. From the Brevis Historia we also learn that he sent precious relics back to the cathedral of San Lorenzo.'®' In Document 23 we can see the award of further substantial privileges in Acre. It is interesting that Conrad lavished praise on the Genoese for their crusading efforts and recalled the fact that they had been crusaders ‘since times long ago.’ He commented that they had suffered heavy losses in these expeditions, he applauded their bravery and faith and compared them to the Old Testament warriors, the Maccabees. Clearly there was an element of flattery here, but it is undeniable that the Genoese put an immense effort into the defence and the attempted recovery of the Holy Land and, aside from seeking commercial advantage, they acted from religious devotion as well. Conrad also made reference to that most controversial of matters, the Golden Inscription in the Holy Sepulchre, and he promised its restoration if Jerusalem was recaptured.
Within weeks, however, this tremendous position would be threatened. Conrad’s murder on 28 April 1192 drastically undermined Genoa’s standing and while his eventual successor, Henry of Champagne reissued the charter, it was less generous in some respects, (See Document 24). We might also note clauses that defined liabilities on cargoes arriving by sea from Egypt and North Africa and by land ‘from any Saracen territory’. Thus it appears that Christians and Muslims were trading by the latter months of 1192, although there is evidence to indicate that such activities had not stopped at all during the crusade. While a document from Genoa of 1190 forbade traders from going to Alexandria and the Latin East, Egyptian tax records show that during 12 months in 1191—92 exports by Christian merchants from the Nile ports were worth over 100,000 gold dinars.
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