Letters from Constantinople:
The Venetian Community in the Byzantine Capital on the Eve of the Ottoman Conquest
When the Ottomans under Mehmed II conquered Byzantine Constantinople in May 1453, a community of Venetians had worked, traded and lived in Constantinople virtually uninterrupted for centuries, enjoying commercial privileges as well as a dedicated quarter on the shore of the Golden Horn, along with their own churches, warehouses and civic administration. This talk will address patterns of Venetian activity and residence in the last few decades before the rupture of 1453: what did it mean to visit or even reside in Constantinople as a Venetian? How large was the community, and how constant was its composition? What structures and dynamics can be discerned in relationships among Venetians – both patricians and non-patricians – and in relation to other communities, including the Byzantines? What commercial and other interests occupied them, and to what extent did the threat of an Ottoman attack affect these?
The loss of the records of the Venetian chancellery in Constantinople – presumably destroyed during the city’s conquest – has placed limits on our understanding of the Venetian presence in this particular period. Moving beyond well-known sources such as the invaluable libro dei conti of Giacomo Badoer (resident in Constantinople 1436–1440), this presentation uses unpublished contemporary documents from the Archivio di Stato di Venezia to draw a fuller picture of the experience of Venetians in the Byzantine capital up until 1453. Of exceptional value is a small trove of private letters sent home by various correspondents between the 1420s and the 1440s.
