The siege of Genoa of 1317-1331: «maligna et durans discordia inter gibellinos et guelfos de Ianua»

Abstract

The critical stage that Genoa had to face in the years of 1317-1331, gave rise to a traumatic time in the evolution of institutional and social politics of the city. The provoking cause was an inner war between the two factions of nobility, notwithstanding the strong support of a wide public following. The declaration of the pars Ghibelline dictated the beginning of a real and concrete siege, in which both contending parties found important external economic and military support (Viscontis for the Ghibellines, Angiò for the Guelphs), at first in the vicinity of the city and then on the coastlines, in the colonies and up to the Black Sea. In the end, the deterioration of the contending parties on one hand and the threat of a Catalan supremacy on the Mediterranean on the other hand, helped the people of Genoa rediscover unity against a common enemy. The scope of the present essay is to verify, through private and fiscal documentation, how the people lived and operated in the city during those years. In fact, the economic relapse is noteworthy to mention: formation of a burdensome public debt (the share coupons which quickly lost their value), high prices following the difficulty of supplying provisions due to the maritime and land block and the rarefaction of merchant activities. The crisis was also heavily felt in the “private” sector and the family economies, as various findings indicate (the increase of the number of women that operated, in the merchant practices, in name of absent husbands, the scarce occurrence of weddings for the difficulty to pay the dowries).