Metadata: Spanish chancellery, general correspondence
Collection
- Country:
- Italy
- Holding institution:
- State Archive of Milan
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archivio di Stato di Milano
- Postal address:
- via Senato 10, 20121 Milano
- Phone number:
- +39 027742161
- Web address:
- http://www.archiviodistatomilano.beniculturali.it/
- Email:
- as-mi@beniculturali.it
- Reference number:
- Boxes 89, 105, 110, 128, 130-131, 140, 148, 202-204, 225, 227, 231, 233, 96, 102-103, 106, 310, 366, 409
- Title:
- Spanish chancellery, general correspondence
- Title (official language):
- Cancelleria spagnola, carteggio generale
- Creator/accumulator:
- Governor (1499-1796); Milan, Grand Chancellor (1535-1753)
- Date(s):
- 1548-1617
- Language:
- Italian
- Extent:
- 435 boxes
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
This series contains correspondence of the governmental chancelleries (State Secretariat and Secretariat of War and cipher) and of the chancellery of the Grand Chancellor (or secret chancellery) "with the central and peripheral authorities of the State, with the communities and 'details'“ (GG II 931). It mostly consists of: correspondence of the Governor with different individuals, , with the Grand Chancellor and the Captain of Justice; correspondence with various ducal magistrates; internal correspondence with the localities of the duchy etc .; correspondence concerning castles and lords; war correspondence with captains and company commanders; concessions and privileges; proclamations; documents concerning the revenue and feuds; documents concerning the tax and postal service.
Documents relevant to Jewish interest date from as early as 1519 with the appearance of Jacob Levita Morello. He enjoyed special privileges granted to him by Louis XII and confirmed by Francis I, and had a monopoly on moneylending in Pavia for about thirty years, arousing particular aversion among the population for the high interest rate he charged, which led to a series of protests against him beginning in 1534. He had obtained in 1546 an exemption from paying state taxes from the governor Ferrante Gonzaga, but following the remonstrances of the citizens of Pavia, in 1548 the Gonzaga ruler conceded a public hearing of the accusations against the Jewish moneylenders, included Morello.
The series also includes documents dealing with the difficulties with students. For example, there is testimony of Leone Morello, who accused them of stealing a ledger, taken from the bench of his father, Jacob Morello. As for the Jews' obligations towards the student guild, Leone Morello exhibited to the rector of the jurists the receipt of three scudi paid in 1550, 1551 and 1552, by decision of the Senate, in place of the capons to be offered to students on the feast of St. Catarina, their patron saint.
Finally, there are documents on the assets of the Marranos on which the podestà of Pavia’s decision is requested. On 16 July 1551 the council listened to the governor's letter regarding the Marranos stating that the merchants should not be arrested unless there was conclusive proof that the property belongs to the Marranos. On 24 July 1551, it was ordered to postpone for a week the discussion about the confiscated goods because they were considered to belong to people who falsely claimed to be Christian. A letter of the official of the revenue of Pavia, dated 17 August 1551, requests that an acceptable decision be taken in relation to the confiscated assets for the commissioner of the Marranos.
- Archival history:
-
The fonds is the result of the merger of the state chancellery papers existing at the time of the Spanish-Austrian domination, i.e the Governor's secretariat, itself divided in the secretariat of State and secretariat of War and Cipher, and the chancellery of the Grand Chancellor, also called the Secret Chancellery.
To these were added documents from the Plenipotentiary Minister’s chancellery (after the suppression of the office of Grand Chancellor in 1753) and, to a lesser degree, material from the archives of the other chancelleries created after Theresian and Josephine reforms, namely the Government chancellery and the State chancellery.
The merger of the documents probably took place at the San Fedele Government Archive, under the directorship of Luca Peroni. After 1818, in fact, the archives of the Visconti-Sforza and Spanish-Austrian ducal period were merged and the documents ordered chronologically in order to select, extract and sort the documents by subject, according to the system known as "Peronian". From this fusion of fonds of different origins derives the vast archival complex of the Milan State Archive called Government Acts (see the archive complex record Acts of Government asmi0100), which was further enriched by the papers of the State chancelleries.
Under the directorship of Luigi Osio (1851-1871) the bulk of the documentation underwent a new reorganisation, constituting a part of the so-called Historical-Diplomatic Section commissioned by Osio himself. The fonds was named "Diplomatic correspondence of the various governments in the State of Milan after that of our dukes" or "Post-1535 diplomatic correspondence" and also included "documentation following the duchy, until 1815: archives of Melzi’s Vice-Presidency, of the Italian Republic, of the Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Italy and of the Bellegarde Imperial Commission"(GG II 931).
Subsequently, under the directorship of Cesare Cantù (1873-1895), the chronological limit of the series was brought back to the end of the duchy (1796) and, with the new name of "General Correspondence" or "Diplomatic documents", it formed a single series with the Visconti-Sforza correspondence.
This order remained unchanged until the early years of the directorship of Luigi Fumi (1908-1920), when the correspondence of the chancelleries, together with that of the Visconti - Sforza, constituted the fond "Diplomatic documents of the lords of Milan, of the Visconti, of the captains and defenders of the Ambrosian Republic, of the Sforza, and of the foreign sovereigns succeeded to the same in the government of Lombardy". The unbundled archives of the following period formed instead the so-called National Archive (that is the complex of fonds relating to the Napoleonic period); the acts of the Bellegarde Commission were in turn attached to the Government Presidency of the Venetian-Lombard Kingdom.
With Giovanni Vittani (1920-1938) the correspondence of the state chancelleries was arranged in a logical and chronological way and the registers were placed after it (see complex archive record Registers of the State chancelleries and various magistracies, asmi1060). In the guide to the fonds kept in the Italian state archives of 1944, finally, the correspondence (more precisely called Correspondences) is one of the two parts - next to the registers - of the documentary complex Secretariat of the State of Milan (1536-1796). The description of the material, which at that time consisted of 517 envelopes covering the years 1536-1796, with the exception of the last seven containing documents from the Austrian period, points out that: "most of the correspondence and acts that originally formed this series were distributed in the various entries of the Peronian system: those that remain are documents of various kinds: reports of ambassadors and commissioners in the various cities of the duchy and minutes of the replies to them, minutes of decrees, petitions of parties, drafts of chancellery, arranged chronologically under the item Diplomatic documents "(State Archives 1944, p. 151 ff., in particular pp. 152-153). Currently the preserved documentation only goes as far as the years 1623/1624, as the fonds suffered enormous damages following the bombardments of August 1943.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The documents belonging to the series "Spanish Chancellery" can be traced back to two different creators: the Grand Chancellery (1535-1753) and the Governor of Milan (1499-1796). Detailed information about them can be found on the respective pages http://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/istituzioni/schede/8000028/ and http://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/istituzioni/schede/8000027/.
- Access points: locations:
- Pavia
- Access points: persons/families:
- Gonzaga, Ferrante, 1507-1557
- Subject terms:
- Crime
- Financial matters
- Financial matters--Moneylending
- Privileges
- Yerusha Network member:
- Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center - Milan
