GENOA’S PAST.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 9091, 30 April 1890, Page 6

GENOA’S PAST .

(The Chronicle.) Genoa is the principal commercial pore of Italy, and though its comparative poverty in famous works of art, and distance from the centre of the kingdom makes it less well-known to foreigners than Eome, Florence and Naples, it is really a moat interesting city. Thriving and prosperous to-day as a very important member in the body politic of United Italy, it was thriving and prosperous eight hundred years ago as an independent Republic. And this independence, though partially ceded from time to time by different factions of its citizens to rulers of neighbouring States, it never finally or completely lost from the time when Genoa conquered Corsica, about the year 1000, till the great Corsican Napoleon added the city and neighbouring coast to his imperial dominions eight hundred years later. Though the greatness of Genoa may he said to date from the end of the tenth century, the town was even then a very ancient one. Of its foundation and first founder authentic history can tell us nothing to-day. Five or six centuries ago the Muse was less modest, and we read above the arches in the cathedral an inscription in large letters, written there in the beginning of the fourteenth century, which does more credit to the courage and ingenuity of the Genoese of that day than to their modesty or sense of humour. The inscription runs: “Janus, a Trojan Prince, skilled in astrology, while navigating to seek a healthy, permanent and safe place to dwell in, came to Genoa, already founded by Janus, King of Italy, great grandson of Noab, and perceiving it to be very safe, by reason of the mountains, he endowed it with his name and his power.” Not sure, apparently, whether the Trojan Prince or the immediate descendant of the hero of the deluge were the more creditable ancestor, the good citizens of Genoa ingeniously laid claim to both of them.

The name of the town throws no light upon its origin, but it is certain that the vulgar derivation of the word Genoa from the Latin “ genu,” a knee, in reference to the supposed kneelike shape of the Gulf of Genoa is fictitious, and that the name of the town was originally Janus. This name was very possibly derived from the twoheaded Eoman god, a derivation adopted by the municipality of to-day as we see from the images of the god on the street lamps, but more probably from the Latin word “ janus,” a gate, Genoa having served in the Eoman days, as she does now, for the gate or port of the North-west part of Italy. The original founders of the city were probably Celts from Gaul, and when Kome resolved to conquer them, after triumphing over the Carthagenians, she found them no easy prey. Once annexed, however, the province of Liguria, with its capital Genoa, remained part of the Eoman dominions till the collapse of the empire in the fifth century after Christ. There is a curious old .bronze tablet to be seen iu the office of the city authorities which hears the date corresponding to the year 290 b. c., and which is undoubtedly authentic. Q'his tells how two Eoman jurists came from the capital in that year to settle a dispute about the boundaries of Genoa. So, clearly, the town was of considerable importance more than 2000 years ago. The palmy days of Genoa, as has been suggested above, did not begin till long after she had adopted Christianity and became an independent Eepublic. To modern minds accustomed to associate power with huge territories, and to think that a town can only he groat in proportion to the extent and productiveness of the country around it, the extraordinary power and wealth of the mere cities which constituted Eepublics in Italy in the middle ages can never fail to be a source of wonder. The Genoese, though walled up in a little city not a quarter the size of the Genoa of to-day, on an almost barren strip of coast between the mountains and the sea, were able to conquer Corsica, which they held till about a hundred years ago, and this in the teeth of the opposition of the powerful Eepublic of Pisa. They sent a most important contingent of ships and troops to aid in the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, in the first crusade. During this crusade they became possessed of much valuable town property in the East, including several streets in Jerusalem, a third part of Antioch, Tyne, Csesarea and other towns. They defeated and finally crushed Pisa in the struggle which lasted a century and a half, for the proud position of mistress of the western half of the Mediterranean. They achieved in the middle of the twelfth century important victories over the Moors in Spain, against whom they despatched an army of no less than 30,000 men, in sixty galleys and 160 transports. From this war again they brought back great spoils. They faced successfully a little later, the great Emperor Frederic 1., surnamed Barbarossa, being the only town in Northern Italy that was able to repulse his attacks. They secured against this powerful Eepublic of Venice a monopoly of trading rights with Constantinople, which were a source to them of great riches. They became masters without a struggle, of Galata, a suburb’ of Constantinople, by which they secured control of the Bosphorus, and Caff a, which gave them a preponderance in the Black Sea equal to that of Eussia to-day. Finally they carried on throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a war with Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic, in which they struggled long and bravely, though in the end unsuccessfully, with that mighty State, for the supremacy of the entire Mediterranean. And even in these early days fighting

was by no means the only interest of the Genoese. They have always been shrewd traders, a reputation which they fully maintain at the present day.

We have seen how from all the wars which they undertook they brought back great spoils; the holy wars or crusades being no exception to this rule. Indeed, it was probably the desire to add by conquest to the wealth which they were all the time steadily accumulating in trade, that induced them to enter upon many of the ■ wars which they undertook. Individuals very often act from motives so mixed that it is almost impossible to disentangle the more sordid from the nobler, and in the • case of communities this difficulty is greatly increased. The most interesting representative of the legitimate traders of Genoa was the Bank of St George, which lasted for between four and five centuries, and was throughout a wealthy and prosperous con- ■ cern. The building which the Bank occupied, and the principal part of which . was. erected in 1261, is still standing, ... being used now for the Custom House. There is a good deal of talk of moving the Custom House business elsewhere, and turning this most curious old building into a museum of antiquities, a change which it is to be hoped will toe carried out. The spirit of enterprise, stimulated by desire of wealth and success in war, led to the starting of an expedition as early as the year 1291, which, had it been successful, would probably have reveal*-’ 1 America to the people of the Old Woifid if 0 . centuries earlier than it was in fachd* B " covered. It will be remembered ba &B, ' that Christopher Columbus, who wa* born either in or close to Genoa, tried toward the close of the fifteenth century to .nduce the Government of his native stito. ho assist him in that famous undertaking which led to the addition of the wfstern hemisphere to the map of the world. By that time the greatness and spirit of Genoa had become things of the past. InterhM feuds between her chief families,succeediDg to her defeat by Venice, and then the lobeN,, of her Colonies in the East, had subdued her courage, and the opportunity which, she then had she threw away and Spain made haste to seize. ■ ,

At the end of the thirteenth century, on the other hand, Genoa was not fait from the height of her fortune. Enterprise was abundant, the spirit of the citizens was undaunted, and au expedition set out from'Genoa to seek for Asia across-the Atlantic, In those days, as in the time o£ Columbus, the very existence of any largo body of land between the West of Europe , and the East of Asia was not thought of. The history of the world might have been profoundly changed if this expedition had. met with good fortune. I cannot do better than tell the story of this undertaking in a translation of the words of a porary historian:— "And in this same year Tedieio A aria, Ugolino Vivaldi and his brother, with soma other citizens of Genoa, began to make that Journey which, until now, no one attempted to make. For they fitted out' excellently well two galleys, and havingplaced victuals, water and other necessaries therein, they sent them in the month of May towards the straits, in order that they might go by the ocean sea to the regions of India, bringing back from; thence useful merchandise. On which galleys embarked personally the said: two brothers Vivaldi and two brothers! of the Order of Minors, which thing; was wonderful, not only to those who; saw, but also to those that heard it. And] after that they had passed a place called: Gozora (probably Cape Nun in Morocco)! no certain news have we received from' them. But may the Lord preserve them; and bring them again safe and unharmed 1 to their own homes.” It is sad to reflect that this pious prayer was not ('ranted. None of these venture-, some spirits are believed to have survived their bold undertaking. One galley is said to have been wrecked and the other taken by savages on the West coast of Africa. A city which was the birthplace of Andrea Donia, Columbus and Mazzini, from which Godfrey de Bouillon sailed for the Holy Land in 1095 and Garibaldi sailed for the conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily in 1860, and which still has curious relics and reminiscences which the visitor may" examine, connected with almost every great occurrence between these two events, deserves further notice. In my next letter I hope to draw attention to some of the more interesting things still to be seen in Genoa, which keep alive in the hearts of her citizens the memory of the former daya of her greatness.