venice and its minorities 453
additionally, it is often unclear whether a family name indicating a cer-
tain foreign city or country of origin refers specifically to the provenance
of the individual in question or whether the family had resided in Venice
using that name for generations. Moreover, the retention of such fam-
ily names is not necessarily indicative of the degree of the maintenance
of previous traditions, for the individual or the family in question may
well have completely assimilated into Venetian society. Moreover, many
foreigners italianized, or rather Venetianized, their names in order to
appear to be Venetian and benefit from certain privileges.7 since Venice
never imposed any requirements on where foreigners had to reside—with
the exception of German merchants engaged in large-scale international
trade, all Jews after 1516, and Muslim merchants after 1621—they tended
to settle in the city based on their own social, professional, and economic
considerations, which generally meant in proximity to other immigrants,
especially of their own group, in areas in which inexpensive housing
was available.8 the reconstruction of the locations in which identifiable
groups of foreigners lived, usually based on street names, is now being
refined by analyses of the decima tax on real estate and of other archival
sources, and the results point to a substantial presence in the districts of
castello, rialto, and san Marco, as well as in cannaregio.9 More research
seems necessary to differentiate between activities in which a significant
number of the minority in question engaged or assumed a disproportion-
ate role, and those in which some individuals happened to engage; for
various reasons, activities associated with commerce and artisanal work
tended to predominate in some groups, and military or domestic service
7 For one example, the case of the albanians, see s. Moretti, “Gli albanesi a Venezia tra
XV e XVi secolo,” in d. calabi and P. Lanaro, eds., La città italiana e i luoghi degli stranieri,
xiv–xviii secolo (rome/Bari, 1998), p. 7.
8 see B. imhaus, Le minoranze orientali a Venezia, 1300–1510 (rome, 1997), pp. 219, 222,
and 227.
9 see, for example, imhaus, Le minoranze orientali, pp. 219–27, and the plans on pp. 221,
223, and 225. see also the famous prospective plan of Jacopo de’ Barbari of 1500, with the
addition of locations of the major dwelling and business places of foreigners in Venice in
d. calabi, “Gli stranieri e la città,” in Gino Benzoni and antonio Menniti ippolito, Storia di
Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, 14 vols (rome, 1992–2002), vol. 5 (1996):
Il Rinascimento. Società ed economia, ed. alberto tenenti and Ugo tucci, p. 916; although it
should be noted that as of 1500, neither the Jews nor the turks were confined to a specific
area; also the detailed maps of Venice indicating the location of the dwelling of foreigners
on the basis of the catastico of 1661, in J. F. chauvard, “scale di osservazione e inserimento
degli stranieri nello spazio veneziano tra xvii e xviii secolo,” in calabi and Lanaro, eds.,
La città italiana, pp. 87, 91, 93, and 99, and the methodological caution expressed in note 2,
pp. 104–05.