456 benjamin ravid
Zannini advanced the hypothesis that at the end of the Middle ages, for-
eigners constituted no fewer than 15,000 to 20,000 persons, and perhaps
many more, out of a population of around 100,000 to 110,000.17 as for the
Jews, a judicious examination of the extant evidence seems to point to a
slow rise in population from approximately 700 in 1516 when the ghetto
was established, according to one contemporary source, up to between
2500 and 3000 individuals in the first half of the 17th century, and then a
gradual decline to 1626 at the time of the abolition of the ghetto in 1797.18
thus, very generally speaking, the Jews seem to have constituted between
slightly more than 1 per cent and 2 per cent of the total population of the
city, and may possibly have constituted the third largest readily identi-
fiable group of foreigners in Venice, after the Greeks and the Germans.
Hopefully, future research will further refine all these estimated figures.
iiiUnderstandably, for reasons of proximity and ease of travel, many immi-
grants to the city of Venice came from the Venetian terraferma. encourag-
ing this was the fact that all citizens, but not all inhabitants, of the large
cities of the Venetian terraferma, as well as those of Venetian dalmatia,
possessed citizenship de intus but not de intus et de extra, in the city of
Venice itself.
immigrants also came from elsewhere on the italian peninsula. espe-
cially prominent in the earlier period were the Luccans, impelled by
political strife in early 14th-century Lucca.19 they became very signifi-
cant in the Venetian silk industry, and their immigration continued in
the 15th century. initially, the Luccans in Venice prayed in the monastery
of the servi di Maria, a Luccan order that had established a monastery
in Venice in 1316, and they also used it as a burial place. then in 1359,
17 see Zannini, Venezia città aperta, p. 40.
18 see G. Favero and F. trivellato, “Gli abitanti del ghetto di Venezia in età moderna:
dati e ipotesi,” Zakhor 7 (2004), 44. on the figure for 1516, see M. sanuto, I Diarii, 58 vols
(Venice, 1899–1903), 22:108–09; and Favero and trivellato, “Gli abitanti del ghetto di Vene-
zia in età moderna,” p. 45 note 1. the information on the ghetto in the catastici of 1713,
1739, 1771, and 1810 has been published and analyzed in G. carletto, Il ghetto veneziano nel
settecento attraverso i catastici (rome, 1981).
19 on the Luccans in Venice, see L. Mola, La communità dei Lucchesi a Venezia; Immi-
grazione e industria della seta nel tardo medioevo (Venice, 1994), esp. pp. 87–107; also cal-
abi, “Gli stranieri e la città,” p. 915; ortalli, “Per salute delle anime,” pp. 104–07; and Zannini,
Venezia città aperta, pp. 71–72.