venice and its minorities 455
increase in the commercial and economic elite. By areas of origin, initially
the tuscans were the most numerous, 281 Florentines and 260 Luccans
for a total of 541, followed by inhabitants of the Veneto (540), and then by
Lombards (515). For the considerably later period from 1534 to 1622, anna
Bellavitis discovered that the senate issued 278 privileges of citizenship
(55 de intus and 223 de intus et de extra) to 325 individuals, and in 150 cases
also to their descendents, for an average of around three privileges and
3.6 new citizens annually. to a great extent, they were Venetian subjects
who came from the terraferma, especially from Bergamo, and engaged in
commercial activity or were craftsmen, and to a much lesser extent indi-
viduals from other italian states and the stato da mar.12
not on the basis of citizenship grants but rather adopting a prosopo-
graphic approach, Brunhilde imhaus selected out of a very large number
of documents between 1300 and 1510 the names of 2938 immigrants who
most probably came from southeastern europe. this total was comprised
of 1210 dalmatians, 932 Greeks, 637 albanians, 84 miscellaneous south
slavs (Georgians, circassians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, and russians), 35
tartars, 21 Moors, and 19 turks. of these immigrants, the overwhelming
number, 2782, came from the Venetian colonies, while only 156 came from
outside the Venetian state.13 since the number of immigrants seems low
and also only 6.5 per cent of the individuals were women, Zannini sug-
gested that the names found represent only a small percentage of the total
immigration from the southeast to Venice, although they did indicate the
diversity of its origins.14
Giorgio Fedalto believed that the Greeks in Venice numbered around
4000 or slightly fewer at the end of the 15th century and either 4000 or
possibly around 5000 at the end of the 16th, and that they constituted the
largest community of strangers in the city.15 Phillip Braunstein accepted
that figure for the Greek community and thought that the German pres-
ence in Venice was roughly the same or possibly larger.16 on this basis,
12 see Bellavitis, Identité, pp. 43, 50, with a detailed breakdown on pp. 50–56; cf. Zan-
nini, Venezia città aperta, pp. 113–14.
13 see imhaus, Le minoranze, pp. 38–39; also the charts and maps on pp. 41, 43, 45, 47,
55, and 57, and the list of individual names with available information, pp. 435–562.
14 see Zannini, Venezia città aperta, pp. 38–39.
15 see G. Fedalto, “Le minoranze straniere,” 1:148–49, and G. Fedalto, “stranieri a Vene-
zia e a Padova, 1550–1700,” in Girolamo arnaldi and Manlio Pastore stocchi, eds., Storia
della cultura veneta, 6 vols (Vicenza, 1976–86), vol. 4 (1984): Dalla Controriforma alla fine
della Repubblica. Il Seicento, part 2, pp. 499, 505.
16 see P. Braunstein, “remarques sur la population allemande de Venise a la fin du
moyen age,” in Beck, Manoussacas, and Pertusi, eds., Venezia, 1:233–43