the anthropology of venice 499
the practice of islam within the confines of Venice was not yet the issue
that it would become in the 17th century.34
like the Turks, the far more numerous germans represented a transi-
tory presence in Venice. Their fondaco or warehouse at the rialto was a
vital commercial asset that the Venetians prized, but its merchants came
and went. germans did not present a cultural challenge to the Venetians,
at least before Martin luther’s books and ideas began to spread in Venice.
Sanudo himself owned some lutheran books, and the republic was slow
to suppress them. The patriarchal vicar arranged for a police raid on a ger-
man bookseller’s shop in 1520, but the most dangerous source of lutheran
ideas in Venice came not from germans but from the extremely popular
preaching of Andrea of ferrara, whom the pope insisted must be silenced.
By 1525, Sanudo noted that the majority of germans in the fondaco ate
meat during lent, a sign of lutheranism, but the heresy was not necessar-
ily associated with german ethnicity.35
encounters with greeks and Jews were more fraught than those with
german lutherans, simply because the Venetian government permitted
the practice of the ancient religions, often in the face of opposition from
ecclesiastical authorities. Unlike the germans whose presence was exclu-
sively commercial, the greeks included prominent intellectuals, refugees
from lands conquered by the Turks, and stradioti, cavalrymen recruited
from Dalmatia, Albania, and greece. The issue for them was the free prac-
tice of the greek rite, a privilege that the Venetian government with papal
backing sought to guarantee but that the patriarchs habitually opposed.
After the Venetians allowed the greeks to build their own church, the
patriarch excommunicated them and arrested one of their priests in an
attempt to force them to use catholic priests. it took a papal commis-
sioner to resolve the dispute.36
even more controversial among Venetians were the Jews. Since during
the 15th century they could not legally reside in the city, most had houses
in Mestre, on the edge of the lagoon. There was periodic agitation against
them, especially by preachers during lent. Stories of alleged ritual mur-
der, such as that of Simon of Trent in 1475, circulated in Venice, but the
Jews’ economic usefulness led to their negotiated protection guaranteed
34 Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople; ella-natalie rothman, Brokering Empire:
Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul (ithaca, 2011).
35 Sanuto, I diarii, 29:135, 492, 552, 615; 38:185.
36 Sanuto, I diarii, 42:101; 46:381–82, 410–11; 49:93.