although her house was ransacked and she
lost nearly all of her possessions. In 1577
she was accused and tried for witchcraft,
but won an acquittal through an impas-
sioned defense. Her books have survived
as eloquent witness to the social life of
Venice and her personal battles in support
of women and the poor.
Fugger, Jakob ..................................
(1459–1525)
Born in Augsburg, Germany, the son of
Jakob Fugger the Elder, Jakob Fugger the
Younger was an investor, speculator and
banker who built the most profitable com-
mercial enterprise in Europe. His elder
brother Ulrich had provided money and
goods to members of the Habsburg dy-
nasty, who came to rely on the House of
Fugger for substantial loans in times of
need. As a young man Jakob traded in
valuable spices, which arrived from Asia at
great cost and were readily sold at a large
markup to Europe’s wealthy families. He
also took advantage of his family’s control
of mines in central Europe to monopolize
the copper market. With the profits from
these and other operations he began loan-
ing money to kings, to hard-pressed mem-
bers of the nobility, and to the church. Al-
though usury was banned by law in many
places and condemned by the church, au-
thorities in need of money to finance mili-
tary campaigns and grandiose construc-
tion projects managed to overlook Fugger’s
high rates of interest. He built a conglom-
eration of banks, mines, factories, and
trading companies, earning enormous
profits through the consolidation of his
far-flung ventures. His true cash cow, how-
ever, was the banking business. In 1519, he
raised nearly a million florins (more than
five hundred thousand florins from his
own bank) to help Charles V bribe the
electors of the Holy Roman Empire and
defeat his rival for the imperial title, Fran-
cis I of France. In 1514 he funded a com-
plex of houses for the poor of Augsburg.
These “Fuggerei” are still in existence and
run by the Fugger family, who still collect
from tenants the original Renaissance-era
sum of one gulden (translated into .88
euros) a year for rent. Historians estimate
that on his death Jakob Fugger was worth
several million gold florins, making him
by far the richest man in Europe, and one
of the richest in history.Fugger, Jakob