This book investigates the economic, intellectual and political history of late medieval and early modern Genoa and the historical origins of the Genoese presence in the Spanish Atlantic. Salonia describes Genoa’s late medieval economic expansion and commercial networks through several case studies, from the Black Sea to southern England, and briefly compares it to the state-run military expansion of Venice’s empire. The author links the adaptability and entrepreneurial skills of Genoese merchants and businessmen to the constitutional history of the Genoese commune and to the specific idea of freedom progressively protected by its constitutions and embodied by institutions like the Bank of St. George. Moreover, this book offers an unprecedented account of the actions with which Ferdinand the Catholic protected Genoese merchants in his dominions and of the later, mutual understanding between the Genoese community and emperor Charles V during the Italian Wars, and in particular during the 1520s. These developments in Hispanic-Genoese diplomatic and economic relations are of great significance. The sixteenth-century Hispanic-Genoese alliance is important to understand the characteristics of Habsburg governance and the resilience of Genoa’s republican conservatism. Genoa’s republicanism (based on private wealth and private arms) contradicts historiographical narratives that assume the inevitability of the emergence of the modern, militarized and centralized state. It also shows the inadequacy of Tuscan-centric historical accounts of Renaissance republicanism. The last chapter of the book reveals the consequences of the 1528 Hispanic-Genoese alliance by considering case studies that illustrate the Genoese presence in the Spanish Americas, from Chile to Mexico, since the early stages of conquest and settlement.

Within two years of the success of his first play Die Räuber on the German stage in 1781, Schiller wrote a drama based on a rebellion in sixteenth century Italy, its title: The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa. A Republican Tragedy. At the head of the conspiracy stood Gian Luigi de’ Fieschi (1524-1547), Schiller’s Count Fiesco, a clever, courageous and charismatic figure, an epicurean and unhesitant egoist, politically ambitious, but unsure of his aims and principles. He is one of Schiller’s mysterious, protean characters who secures both our admiration and disgust. With Fiesco as tragic hero Schiller examines the complex entanglement of morality and politics in his own times that was to preoccupy him throughout his career. The play was a moderate success when performed in Mannheim in 1784; it was more popular in Berlin where, during Schiller’s lifetime, it was performed many times in a version by Carl Plümicke, which however radically altered the play’s meaning. There have been some noteworthy productions on the German stage and television, even if it has remained somewhat in the shadow of Schiller’ other works. In the English-speaking world it is all but unknown and very seldom performed. This translation aims to remedy that oversight.

A Companion to Medieval Genoa introduces recent scholarship on the vibrant and source-rich medieval history of Genoa, with thematic chapters positioning the city and its people within the broader history of Italy and the Mediterranean ca. 1100–1500.

This book offers the first English translation of the Chronicle of the city of Genoa by the thirteenth-century Dominican Jacopo da Varagine, an author best known for his monumental book of saints’ lives, the Golden legend. Jacopo’s Chronicle presents a coherent vision of Genoa’s place in history, the cosmos and Creation as written by the city’s own archbishop – mixing eyewitness accounts with scholarly research about the city’s origins and didactic reflections on the proper conduct of public and private life. Accompanied by an extensive introduction, this complete translation provides a unique perspective on a dynamic medieval city-state from one of its most important officials, broadening the available literature in English on medieval Italian urban life.