Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society 1660–1914

Jewish Consuls in the Mediterranean
Livorno of 1591 is highly dependent on the text of the 1572 invitation
by the Duke of Savoy to the Sephardic Jews (which was never to
advance beyond its early stages). 106 Pre cisely what is lacking in this
document is anchored in detail in the Livorno charter, namely, the
office of the consul. The adoption of the consulate in the charter bears
the ‘signature’ of Maggino and perhaps Rodriga.
It is conspicuous that Maggino’s Tuscan negotiations were oriented
by the model of the Christian consul in the Levant, and the same
is undoubtedly true of Rodriga’s activities in previous decades. For
instance, a prominent passage in the edict that Ferdinando I promulgated
in Livorno in 1591 expressly states that the office and privileges
of the Jewish consul Maggino do not differ from those of his
Christian colleagues. 107 Yet in reality, the extent of legal power in
relation to settlement policy claimed by Maggino in Livorno, and
granted to him by the Grand Duke, far exceeded the official duties
and privileges of most Christian consuls, as was probably the case
with appointment for life. 108 In the Christian mercantile world, it was
customary that the consul was not himself involved in business, 109 a
rule to which neither Maggino nor Rodriga adhered.
Consulship and Jewish Diplomacy
The attempt to establish the office of consul within a Jewish context
in Italy (Rodriga) and in the Holy Roman Empire (Maggino) was, in
my opinion, neither arbitrary nor accidental. It must be regarded as
a genuine attempt to find an answer to the sensitive question of an
appropriate title for representatives of Jewish elites in Italy and the
Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth century. 110 A salient example of
106 Salvatore Foa, La politica economica della case savoia verso gli ebrei dal sec. XVI
fino alla rivoluzione francese (Rome, 1962), 21.
107 ‘con tutte quelle autorità honori et gratie che hanno li consoli christiani di
Levante.’ Privilegi de’ mercanti levantini et ponentini (Florence, 1591), quoted in
Lucia Frattarelli Fischer and Paolo Castignoli (eds.), Le ‘livornine’ del 1591 e del
1593 (Livorno, 1987), 17.
108 Cooperman, ‘Trade and Settlement’, 217–19.
109 Ibid. 149; Steensgaard, ‘Consuls and Nations in the Levant’, 25.
110 The title Shtadlan implied a ‘top commercial position’, to which Maggino
could not realistically lay claim. See Rotraud Ries, ‘Alte Herausforderungen
179