The Crusades, the Genoese and the Latin East - DSpace at ...

epresentatives of the church of St Lawrence, Rubaldus prepositus and magister Johannes
Archidiaconus, received £50 from Ugo Ferrario junior against the tax (census) that he was to
collect from the possessions of St Lawrence in Acre over a period of one year: `150 nomine
census ecclesie sancti Laurencii quam habemus
in Ancum (sic) ... pro quibus damus et concedimus
tibi plenam et liberam potestatem locandi administracionem dicte ecclesie. '50' Clearly, Ugo
Ferrario was in the same position as Ottone Giudice twenty years beforehand. They were both
asked to collect the same amount of money per annum (Ottone Giudice was sent in 1200 to
collect 150 bezants, which equals £50), and it is hard to avoid the impression that they were
fulfilling exactly the same task. Ottone and Ugo even seem to have adopted a similar economic
approach to their mission to Acre. Like Ottone Giudice, Ugo Ferrario also signed a series of
commenda contracts before his departure from Genoa to the kingdom of Jerusalem. 02 Assuming
that the two contracts of 1200 and 1222 were indeed for the same mission, it is possible to reach
some conclusions. When Ottone was sent to possess the ruga of St Lawrence (iuro... quod tenebo
rugam de Sancto Laurentio de Acri) he was in fact sent to collect the census, for which he
received wide administrative rights by the church over its own possessions.
It is interesting and probably not a coincidence that the sum of the census collected in
Acre was equal to the fee that the Embriaci were asked to pay in the old contract that they signed
in 1154, in which the Embriaco brothers were required to pay 1000s or £50 Genoese 503 The
impression is obviously that the fee paid for Acre remained the same from 1154 until 1222. There
is, however, a major difference between the charter of 1154 and the contracts of 1200 and 1222 in
the sense that the contract from 1154 referred to the entire possessions of the commune of Genoa
in Acre, while in 1200 it is about the census from the possessions of the church, mainly from the
ruga of St Lawrence. The Embriaco family that was given full ownership of the Genoese
possessions in Acre in 1154 was not in fact collecting the revenues from these places in the year
1200. The census belonged to the church of St Lawrence and the appointment of Ottone Giudice
by the Embriaci was perhaps only symbolic. The real revenues came to the Embriaci through
their commercial investments independent of their "ownership" of the ruga st Laurentii.
What was included in the ruga of St Lawrence? In the following paragraphs it will be
argued that it formed only part of the Genoese quarter, most probably only the street of St
Lawrence itself with not more than a dozen buildings. These calculations are based on one of the
most valuable documents existing about the Genoese quarter in Acre, a report which was
compiled in Acre in the year 1249 and which covers a period of two years (1248-9). This report
501 Mag. Sal., no. 550, from 29 September 1222
502 Mag. Sal., nos. 547,549 from 29 September 1200
503 1 Libri lurium, vol. I/I, no, 165, p. 241.
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