venice and its minorities 477
might allude to the new christian background of the merchants. For at
least 30 years, until his death in 1603, he submitted, with indefatigable
zeal, a steady stream of projects and proposals to the Venetian govern-
ment. central were his two basic major interrelated projects, apparently
first proposed in late 1576 or early 1577 but ultimately implemented only
after 1589: first, the establishment of a free-transit port at spalato (split),
then a Venetian possession on the dalmatian adriatic coast; and sec-
ond, the granting of a charter conferring extensive commercial privileges
throughout the Venetian state to Jewish merchants who, he envisioned,
would play a major role in developing trade between Venice and spalato
by virtue of their extensive kinship networks. it was his conviction that
they would enable Venice to maintain its entrepôt function and enhance
its customs revenue in the face of increasingly serious commercial diffi-
culties resulting from the gradual shift in maritime trade from the Medi-
terranean to the atlantic, the increased presence of the ships of england,
France, and spain in the eastern Mediterranean ports, and the shift of
Venetian patricians from trade to other economic activities.
as a result of rodriga’s persistent lobbying, in 1589 the Venetian govern-
ment accepted his utilitarian considerations of commercial raison d’état
as constituting the least objectionable way to remedy the decline in Vene-
tian maritime commerce and adopted his proposal to issue a charter invit-
ing iberian new christian merchants to settle with their families in the
Venetian state, with immediate privileges of engaging in trade between
Venice and the Levant, rather than the usual 25-year waiting period, and
of paying the same customs rates as native and naturalized Venetian
merchants.71 However, in order to avoid religious ambiguity and also the
precedent of allowing non-native christians to engage in trade between
Venice and the Levant without a lengthy waiting period, these iberian
new christians were required to assume Judaism upon their arrival in
Venice, and to go directly to reside in the ghetto under the designation
of Ponentine Jews, with the assurance that they would not be molested
on account of religion by any magistracy. at the same time, this charter
also invited Levantine Jewish merchants, who previously had been sup-
posed to stay only briefly in the city on their own in order to complete
their commercial business, to settle in the city with their families with
the same commercial privileges as the Ponentine Jews. although issued
for a limited ten-year period, this charter was to be renewed periodically
71 see chambers and Pullan, eds., Venice: A Documentary History, pp. 346–49.