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

East, especially under Conrad of Montferrat. Genoese knights and merchants such as Ansaldo and
Baldovino Bonvicino, Marino Mazuc and Marino Rocia were such individuals. 7
While Guido Spinola and the Genoese knights were fighting in Acre and establishing the
commune in Tyre, the preparations in Genoa continued for the shipping of thousands more
crusaders to the Latin East in the following year. More Genoese were preparing for embarkation.
Under the leadership of two consuls of the year 1190, Maurino Rodoani and Simone Vento, a
new wave of the Genoese crusade was organised. The activities of the Genoese as crusaders in
the year 1190 gained less prominence in the annals of that year, probably because the
preparations of the English and French contingents and their arrival at the ports of Genoa and
Messina were more noticable. However, few examples may demonstrate the attitude in Genoa to
the progressing crusade. The will of a Genoese merchant in the cartulary of Oberto Scriba is
evidence of support of the crusade at the time. Anselmo Buxono bequeathed £10 in his will of
August 1190 to the consul Simone Vento, to be given to him if Anselmo died before they
embarked on the crusade `Si obiero ante quam Symon Ventus transeat Ultramare, lego ei ad
suum pasare de Ultramare DO. ' Anselmo also bequeathed his land to his wife to use as long as
she lived or to his relative Guglielmo when she died. When Guglielmo died the property should
be given to charity: to hospitals, churches `et in recuperare Terrain Ultramaris. X38 Steven Epstein
did not include this bequest in his list of bequests for the crusade because the will did not spell
out the reason for Simone Vento's travel to the Latin East. As was mentioned above, however,
Simone Vento was a consul of Genoa and one of the two leaders of the Genoese contingent sent
in that year and Anselmo's bequest should, therefore, be regarded as a bequest for the crusade. 39
Anselmo Buxono was not the only Genoese to include bequests for the Holy Land in his
will. In the winter of the following year, on March 1191, approximately one month before the
embarkation from Messina, Guglielmo Gallo bequeathed £7'/2 `in servicio Dei et de Ultramare. '40
Guglielmo himself did not plan to go on the crusade. He was involved in the family business, a
shop that belonged to his brother and himself, 41 and in the autumn of that year he travelled to
Ceuta. 2 His wife Agnes, however, invested £20 in a commercial venture that shipped grain to
Ultraware in January 1192. It will be discussed below that the shipping of grain to the Latin East
might have involved an act of crusading charity in addition to the purely business investment 43
"See the discussion in Chapter Five of the opportunities offered to the Genoese by Conrad of Montferrat.
38 OS, 1190, no. 609.
39 Steven A. Epstein, Wills and Wealth in Medieval Genoa, 1150-1250, (Cambridge Mass., 1984), pp. 187-
189.
40 GC, 1191, no. 334, from 21 March 1191
41 GC, 1191, nos. 325 and 952
42 GC, 1191, nos. 1218-1219, from 11 October 1191
43 GC, 1192, no. 1526, from 27 January 1192
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