venice and its minorities 461
not have it opened, the collegio ordered that for their satisfaction and to
avoid any harm to the customs revenue, a small door of a specified size
be made in the gate to admit them in accordance with the regulations in
effect prior to 1479.
in view of the role of the German merchants in importing into Venice
northern products, including much desired precious metals such as gold,
silver, and copper, and then in turn purchasing and exporting goods of
local provenance as well as those coming from the east, when in 1505
the fondaco burned down, the government built for the merchants on
the Grand canal next to the rialto Bridge a new and spacious fondaco.33
an ordinance of 1528 reiterated that those Germans and other foreigners
from the northern lands who were required to reside in the Fondaco dei
tedeschi were to do so, while those who were not required to live there
were to stay in other specific houses set apart for them subject to a fine
of 25 ducats. this legislation, which in 1531 the collegio ordered published
and enforced, may no longer have been motivated solely by the tradi-
tional commercial considerations of trying to prevent evasion of the cus-
toms payments as well as unsupervised trade between the tedeschi and
other merchants, but also by the desire to limit the spread of new Prot-
estant ideas and practices by restricting the freedom of residence of all
those coming from the Germanic lands and elsewhere north of the alps.
Understandably, German merchants were suspected of bringing heretical
Protestant books into Venice and of spreading heretical ideas. However,
not all of the German merchants were Protestants, and in any case, the
trade of the merchants in the fondaco was too important for the govern-
ment to disturb. Finally, in 1657, at which point the danger that Venice
might become Protestant no longer existed, the Protestant merchants in
the fondaco received permission to hold private services and to bring in a
preacher from Germany.
While the fondaco became a center for all kinds of activities for its
inhabitants, it by no means served as the place of residence of all Ger-
mans in Venice but, rather, constituted the premises given to a group of
elite German merchants whose presence the Venetian government very
much desired to attract to the city yet whose activities they wanted to
supervise and control.34 according to a report of the papal nuncio of
33 see chambers and Pullan, eds., Venice: A Documentary History, pp. 329–30.
34 the past concentration on the Fondaco dei tedeschi and minimization of the pres-
ence of other Germans in the exclusion of other Germans has been noted by P. Braun-