THE GUIZOLFI FAMILY: BROKERS IN THE MEDIEVAL BLACK SEA SPACE
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Abstract
This paper focuses on the Guizolfi family and showcases the aftermath of the Genoese colonization of the Black Sea area, highlighting the complex and entangled multiple identities that resulted from more than two centuries of the Genoese presence there. The Guizolfi were a Genoese patrician clan that was integrated into both the life of the Genoese Black Sea colonies and the local environment of Circassian and Zikh nobility. The prominent role it played in Eastern Europe went far beyond the Genoese Gazaria in the course of the late Middle Ages and early Modernity. Guizolfi intermarried with the local Circassian nobility and were quite successful in playing on double identities. One of the last representatives of this family in the area, Zaccaria Guizolfi, took measures to resist the Ottoman threat, but later on he began considering moving to the Russian Principality of Moscow, where Ivan III Vasilyevich was happy to accept the Christians who were fleeing from the Ottomans from the South. Zaccaria Guizolfi negotiated the terms of his potential service at the court of Ivan III, but finally failed to travel to Muscovy and found his way at the service of the Khans of Crimea. What is more interesting is a supposed link between Zaccaria and certain events in the religious life of Russia. Since long time ago, Zaccaria Guizolfi, Prince of Taman, also known as Zaccaria Skara from the above-mentioned correspondence with Ivan III, was identified by some scholars as a Jew Scharia, who was a heresiarch of the Judaizing heresy in Novgorod and Moscow. This point is a matter of ardent debate in historiography for decades, and till now there is little certainty on this matter.
How to Cite
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Black Sea, Caffa, Circassians, colonies, Genoa, Ivan III Vasilyevich, Khanate of Crimea, Matrega, Zaccaria Guizolfi
Archivio di Stato di Genova, Sala 34, 590/1225, San Giorgio, Massaria Caffe 1231 (1423).
Archivio di Stato di Genova, Sala 34, 590/1225, San Giorgio, Massaria Caffe 1242 (1461).
Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria (1871), Vol. 8/1, Genoa.
Brun F. (1880), Chernomor’ye. Sbornik issledovaniy po istoricheskoy geografii Yuzhnoy Rossii, Odessa. (In Russian).
Brutzkus J. (1932), “Judaisierende”, in Jacob Klatzkin (Ed.), Encyclopaedia Judaica: Das Judentum in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Bd. 9, Verlag Eschkol A.-G., Berlin, cols. 520–522.
Corpus inscriptionum medii aevi Liguriae (1978–1987), Vol. 1–3, Centro Storico, Genoa.
Dovnar-Zapol’skiy M. V. (1898), “Litovskiye upominki tatarskim ordam. Litovskiy skarb i tatarskiye ordy v 1502–1509 gg. Skarbovaya kniga Metriki Litovskoy 1502–1509 gg. (tekst)”, in Izvestiya Tavricheskoy Uchenoy Arkhivnoy Komissii, Vol. 28, Simferopol, pp. 1–91. (In Russian).
Florovskiy G. (1988), Puti russkogo bogosloviya, YMCA-PRESS, Paris. (In Russian).
Khoroshkevich A. L. (2001), Rus’ i Krym: Ot soyuza k protivostoyaniyu. Konets XV – nachalo XVI vv., Editorial URSS, Мoscow. (In Russian).
Khoulett Ya. R. (1993), “Svidetel’stvo arkhiyepiskopa Gennadiya o eresi ‘novgorodskikh eretikov zhidovskaya mudr”stvuyushchikh’”, in Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoy literatury Instituta russkoy literatury (Pushkinskogo Doma), Vol. 46, Dmitriy Bulanin, Saint Petersburg, pp. 53–73. (In Russian).
Kras P. (1998), Husyci w piętnastowiecznej Polsce, Towarzystwo naukowe katolickiego uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, Lublin.
Likhachev D. S. (1973), Razvitiye russkoy literatury X–XVII vekov. Epokhi i stili, Nauka, Le-ningrad. (In Russian).
Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives du musée du palais de Topkapi (1978), École des hautes études en sciences socials, Mouton, Paris, La Haye.
Löwe R. (1896), Die Reste der Germanen am Schwarzen Meere, Halle.
de Michelis C. G. (1993), La Valdesia di Novgorod, Claudiana, Torino.
Moskovskaya politicheskaya literatura XVI veka (1914), M. Kovalensky (Ed.), Tipo-lit. Ener-giya, Мoscow. (In Russian).
Panov I. (1877), “Eres’ zhidovstvuyushchikh”, in Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniya, Vol. 189/2, Saint Petersburg, No. 1, pp. 1–40; No. 2, pp. 253–295; No. 3, pp. 1–59. (In Russian).
“Poslaniye inoka Savvy na zhidov i na eretiki” (1902), in Chteniya v Obshchestve istorii i drevnostey rossiyskikh, Book 3, Part 2, Moscow, pp. 1–94. (In Russian).
Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva (1884), Vol. 41, Saint Petersburg. (In Russian).
Taube M. (1995), “The Kievan Jew Zechariah and the Astronomical Works of the Judaizers”, in W. Moskovich et al. (Eds.), Jews and Slavs, Vol. 3, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, pp. 168–198.
Taube M. (2005), “The Fifteenth-Century Ruthenian Translations from Hebrew and the Heresy of the Judaizers: Is there a Connection?”, in V. V. Ivanov and Julia Verkholantseva (Eds.), Speculum Slaviae Orientalis: Muscovy, Ruthenia and Lithuania in the Late Middle Ages, OGI, Moscow, pp. 185–208.
Taube M. (2010), “Transmission of Scientific Texts in 15th-Century Eastern Knaan”, Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism, Vol. 10, No. 2, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, pp. 315–353. https://doi.org/10.2979/ale.2010.10.2.314
Tyszkiewicz J. (1989), Tatarzy na Litwie i w Polsce. Studia z dziejow XIII–XVIII w., Państwowe Wydawn. Nauk., Warsaw.
REFERENCES
Archivio di Stato di Genova, Sala 34, 590/1225, San Giorgio, Massaria Caffe 1231 (1423).
Archivio di Stato di Genova, Sala 34, 590/1225, San Giorgio, Massaria Caffe 1242 (1461).
Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria (1871), Vol. 8/1, Genoa.
Brun F. (1880), Chernomor’ye. Sbornik issledovaniy po istoricheskoy geografii Yuzhnoy Rossii, Odessa. (In Russian).
Brutzkus J. (1932), “Judaisierende”, in Jacob Klatzkin (Ed.), Encyclopaedia Judaica: Das Judentum in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Bd. 9, Verlag Eschkol A.-G., Berlin, cols. 520–522.
Corpus inscriptionum medii aevi Liguriae (1978–1987), Vol. 1–3, Centro Storico, Genoa.
Dovnar-Zapol’skiy M. V. (1898), “Litovskiye upominki tatarskim ordam. Litovskiy skarb i tatarskiye ordy v 1502–1509 gg. Skarbovaya kniga Metriki Litovskoy 1502–1509 gg. (tekst)”, in Izvestiya Tavricheskoy Uchenoy Arkhivnoy Komissii, Vol. 28, Simferopol, pp. 1–91. (In Russian).
Florovskiy G. (1988), Puti russkogo bogosloviya, YMCA-PRESS, Paris. (In Russian).
Khoroshkevich A. L. (2001), Rus’ i Krym: Ot soyuza k protivostoyaniyu. Konets XV – nachalo XVI vv., Editorial URSS, Мoscow. (In Russian).
Khoulett Ya. R. (1993), “Svidetel’stvo arkhiyepiskopa Gennadiya o eresi ‘novgorodskikh eretikov zhidovskaya mudr”stvuyushchikh’”, in Trudy Otdela drevnerusskoy literatury Instituta russkoy literatury (Pushkinskogo Doma), Vol. 46, Dmitriy Bulanin, Saint Petersburg, pp. 53–73. (In Russian).
Kras P. (1998), Husyci w piętnastowiecznej Polsce, Towarzystwo naukowe katolickiego uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, Lublin.
Likhachev D. S. (1973), Razvitiye russkoy literatury X–XVII vekov. Epokhi i stili, Nauka, Le-ningrad. (In Russian).
Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives du musée du palais de Topkapi (1978), École des hautes études en sciences socials, Mouton, Paris, La Haye.
Löwe R. (1896), Die Reste der Germanen am Schwarzen Meere, Halle.
de Michelis C. G. (1993), La Valdesia di Novgorod, Claudiana, Torino.
Moskovskaya politicheskaya literatura XVI veka (1914), M. Kovalensky (Ed.), Tipo-lit. Ener-giya, Мoscow. (In Russian).
Panov I. (1877), “Eres’ zhidovstvuyushchikh”, in Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniya, Vol. 189/2, Saint Petersburg, No. 1, pp. 1–40; No. 2, pp. 253–295; No. 3, pp. 1–59. (In Russian).
“Poslaniye inoka Savvy na zhidov i na eretiki” (1902), in Chteniya v Obshchestve istorii i drevnostey rossiyskikh, Book 3, Part 2, Moscow, pp. 1–94. (In Russian).
Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva (1884), Vol. 41, Saint Petersburg. (In Russian).
Taube M. (1995), “The Kievan Jew Zechariah and the Astronomical Works of the Judaizers”, in W. Moskovich et al. (Eds.), Jews and Slavs, Vol. 3, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, pp. 168–198.
Taube M. (2005), “The Fifteenth-Century Ruthenian Translations from Hebrew and the Heresy of the Judaizers: Is there a Connection?”, in V. V. Ivanov and Julia Verkholantseva (Eds.), Speculum Slaviae Orientalis: Muscovy, Ruthenia and Lithuania in the Late Middle Ages, OGI, Moscow, pp. 185–208.
Taube M. (2010), “Transmission of Scientific Texts in 15th-Century Eastern Knaan”, Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism, Vol. 10, No. 2, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, pp. 315–353. https://doi.org/10.2979/ale.2010.10.2.314
Tyszkiewicz J. (1989), Tatarzy na Litwie i w Polsce. Studia z dziejow XIII–XVIII w., Państwowe Wydawn. Nauk., Warsaw.
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