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

Tyre in October of the same year. Furthermore, a similar charter granted to the Pisans is dated to
July 1187, probably the same time as the Genoese charters were granted. The witnesses to the
charter were also leading figures from the crusading states, domino Raimundi Biblii among them.
The barons' charter was not granted as a reward for particular Genoese service or future
help. The Genoese needed space and houses
to conduct their military and commercial activities in
Tyre. The charter provided a slaughterhouse (macellum), which meant a source of income.
Guglielmo Piperata who acted as a consul et vicecomite Genuensium Tyri, did not promise
anything in exchange at this stage. Presumably, he did not have the authority to promise the help
of the Genoese navy and it is likely that there was no particular battle planned apart from saving
whatever could be saved. David Jacoby argued that Piperata should be identified with Guglielmo
Piper the younger. Jacoby relied in this interpretation on Eugene Byrne's analysis of the Genoese
consulate in the Latin East. 525 Jacoby also suggested that Guglielmo Piper was appointed in
Genoa, before the battle of Hattin, to serve in the kingdom of Jerusalem. This hypothesis is
problematic for several reasons. First, the evidence for the activities of Genoese consuls in the
Latin East comes only from the period subsequent to the battle of Hattin. In other words,
Guglielmo Piperata is the first known Genoese consul in a list of twenty nine consuls or
vicecomites who are known to have acted in the Latin East from 1187 to 1260.526 Furthermore,
Piperata's title, consul of the Genoese in Tyre, suggests that he could not have been appointed to
this position in Genoa before Hattin, while Genoa did not yet possess property and rights
in Tyre.
Jacoby's second hypothesis, that Piperata was appointed by the Genoese refugees and merchants
in Tyre in order to act on their behalf, is therefore more likely.
There are other reasons to conclude that the Genoese did not appoint consuls for Acre
before 1187. In the year 1186, only one year before the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem, Pope
Urban III wrote fourteen letters to the ecclesiastical and lay personnel of the crusader states about
Genoese property and rights. This series of letters was already discussed in Chapter Four because
six of these letters were concerned with the outstanding debts for Byblos. However, eight letters
concerned Genoese property and rights in the kingdom of Jerusalem itself. These letters do not
mention consuls or any other Genoese authority, secular or ecclesiastical, that the king was
requested to cooperate with in order to solve the problem. The only information known about the
patterns of government of the Genoese commune before the war is that in the 1150s Acre was
525
Eugene H. Byrne, `The Genoese Colonies in Syria', in Louis J. Paetow (ed. ), The Crusades and Other
Historical Essays (New York, 1928), pp. 165-170.
526 See Table 5. According to Byrne `nearly fifty (consuls and vicecomites) can be designated by name
between 1187 and the close of the crusades', ibid, p. 169. However, the list presented in the table of the
consuls and vicecomites between the years 1187 and 1260 contains only 29 names.
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