454 benjamin ravid
in others. in any case, the numbers of any group could fluctuate greatly,
not only because of births and deaths but also due to immigration and,
probably to a lesser extent, emigration.
consequently, as andrea Zannini concluded, “the problem of quantify-
ing, even approximately, the size of the various communities of foreign-
ers in Venice seems at the present state of research, unresolvable.”10 For
the medieval period, he pointed out, only very approximate information
is available on the total population of Venice. the first census of Ven-
ice was undertaken in 1509, but the documentation has been lost, and he
believed that it is only possible to estimate a total population of 100,000
inhabitants. More reliable information is extant for the second half of the
16th century, but without even an approximate estimate of the number of
foreigners in the city.
However, a significant amount of information about the places of ori-
gin of foreigners naturalized in Venice has been retrieved from surviv-
ing grants of citizenship preserved in the Venetian state archives. While
presumably many or even most of these individuals did not retain links
with their past but acculturated, assimilated, and integrated into Vene-
tian society, the grants of naturalization do give some indication of the
origins of a group of “elite” immigrants who could meet the naturalization
requirements. an investigation by reinhold Mueller of the privileges of
citizenship de intus et de extra granted between 1305, when the require-
ments were definitively fixed, and the end of the 15th century reveals that
approximately 3500 were granted to around 4000 individuals, for an aver-
age of around 18 to 20 annually.11 during the first two years after 1305,
125 grants were made; then from 1330 to 1429, the annual average was
between 25 and 40 grants. However, after 1430 the number of privileges
issued dropped to fewer than ten annually, probably as a result of the
increase in the area under Venetian rule and the immigration of citizens
residing in its major cities who were granted de intus citizenship in Ven-
ice. although these naturalization figures did not constitute appreciable
demographic growth for a city with a population of around 80,000, never-
theless, from an economic point of view, these newcomers constituted an
10 see a. Zannini, Venezia città aperta, p. 38.
11 see r. c. Mueller, “ ‘Veneti facti privilegio’: stranieri naturalizzati a Venezia tra xiv e
xvi secolo,” in calabi and Lanaro, eds., La città italiana, pp. 41–51, summarized in Bellavi-
tis, Identité, p. 39; and Zannini, Venezia città aperta, pp. 36–37; see also L. Mola and r. c.
Mueller, “essere straniero a Venezia nel tardo Medioevo: accoglienza e rifiuto nei privilegi
di cittadinanza e nelle sentenze criminali,” in s. cavaciocchi, ed., Le migrazioni in Europa
(sec XIII–XVIII) (Florence, 1995), pp. 838–51.