1

Erasmo Castellani

Cultural brokers. The Bolizza brothers of Kotor and their Relazione

I was in Zadar, Croatia, for a couple of weeks, looking for archival material for

my master thesis. The last day of my stay, almost accidentally, while going

through the catalog of the Scientific Library, I found something that caught my

eyes. Filed under the letter “S” of Giuseppe Scarpi, a man who donated several

documents to the library regarding the Venetian Dalmatia, was the record of an

intriguing report describing the southernmost Dalmatian stronghold of the

Venetian Republic. “Bolizza, Fr. Relazione del Montenero, Scutari, Antivari e

Dulcigno”1 detailed the territories around the city of Cattaro, modern day Kotor,

on the coasts of Montenegro. The author, Francesco Bolizza, was a familiar

name to me: since 1578 his family organized the public correspondence

between Venice and Constantinople. Francesco and two of his brothers,

Mariano and Antonio, were also often summoned by the rettore – the Venetian

Governor of Kotor – to negotiate with Turkish officials and local chieftains. Yet,

it was classified as an eighteenth-century manuscript; could it really come from

the hand of “that” Francesco Bolizza? If so, what might the Relazione be

about? Which kind of information Francesco Bolizza traded in in his role as

one of Kotor’s leading figures at the end of the sixteenth century?

When it finally arrived on my desk, I started skimming the text. I immediately

noted that the author was the Francesco Bolizza that I knew. It was an account

1 “Report of Montenegro, Shkoder, Bar and Ulcinj”. Znanstvena knjižnica Zadar from now ZKZ), inv. 11169, ms. 164. From now: Relazione Zadar.

2

of the surrounding territories of Kotor, in which the author described in details

cities, villages, people, and the natural environment of that southern part of

the Balkans shared between today’s Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia,

Herzegovina and Kosovo. Moreover, the account designated the journey from

Kotor to Constantinople made by couriers to deliver public dispatches to the

Bailo, the Venetian diplomat who oversaw the affairs between Venice and the

Ottoman Empire. Would it shed a light on the postal service, an important, yet

little – and poorly – studied part of the Venetian Empire?

Dating the manuscript raised additional and even more puzzling problems,

however. While not dated, the manuscript mentioned events of the first 15

years of the 1600s, in which Francesco was often involved. Born in 1566, the

author he refers to himself as Cavalier, knight of Saint Mark, the most

important chivalric order of the Venetian Republic, an order which Francesco

joined in 1616. On the last page, however, was written a much later date: April

26th, 1699. Since it is unlikely that Francesco lived over 130 years,2 I assumed

that it was a copy of the manuscript, in which the unknown copyist added

material that was consistent with the rest of the text: following the format, the

2 We can deduce Francesco’s age collating a few documents: a petition to the Venetian Signory

submitted in 1620, in which he claimed that he received his father’s office when he was only

12. Also, we have to consider two contracts: the first one, dated 1578, in which Giovanni Bolizza, father Francesco, received an office from Venice, and another one, from 1604, in which

the office officially passed to Francesco, after his father’s death. Finally, we know that he joined

the Knight of Saint Mark in 1616. Being unlikely that Francesco was honored with such title

when he was only 24, we have to understand the ambiguous formulation in the petition

referring to the first contract that his father signed in 1578, in which he was just mentioned among Giovanni’s children. Hence, Francesco was born probably in 1566. See Archivio di Stato di Venezia (from now: ASV), Dispacci, f. 3, 04/12/1604; ASV, Risposte di fuori, f. 373,

16/09/1620; ASV, Mar, reg. 44 (1578-80), cc. 64v-66v;

ASV, Cancelleria inferiore, Cavalieri di San Marco, Privilegi, b. 174.

3

transcriber added a list of newly acquired towns and villages which passed

under the Venetian rule at the end of the Morean War, exactly in 1699. What

purpose could a seventy-year old report filled with detailed descriptions of

military and travel conditions ca. 1616 possibly serve in 1699? This was one of

the first questions about the document which was doomed to remain

unanswered. Perhaps it was still considered a valuable tool to familiarize with

that area, perhaps it was a way of celebrating someone who had been arguably

one of the most relevant person of his time in Kotor. Hopefully, a deeper

reading of the source would have provide some valuable insights.

Being Friday the library closed early. I was able to take several notes,

transcribe certain passages, but I did not have the opportunity to take pictures

of the manuscript. In the afternoon I had to leave and go back to Venice. It was

unfortunate that I did not have much time to analyze the manuscript, but I

had enough information to work on.

Back in Venice, I discovered that there were multiple copies of the manuscript.

One is in the State Archives of Venice,3 and its content is word by word the

same of the version I found in Zadar, and differs only in its layout and a few

minor misspellings. In the archival inventories it appeared that there was

another version of the document, but unfortunately it was lost in 2010, so I did

not have the chance to see it. A third version is available in the Marciana

library of Venice, and this one has also been published in 1866 by monsieur

3 ASV, Miscellanea codici, Storia veneta, b. 131. From now: Relatione ASV.

4

François Lenormant.4 According to Injac Zamputi,5 the National Library of

Albania, in Tirana, has another version exactly alike the Marciana text, and,

like the former, it has been published – and translated both in Albanian and in

English – in recent years. My efforts to have the reproduction of this

manuscript have been vain, as much as having its archival reference, but I

have read its (alleged) transcription and all I can say is that it is the carbon

copy of the Marciana version. Hence, I will not consider this one in my

analysis.

The text of the three versions is for the most part identical. The opening of the

manuscript summarizes the discussed topics:

Provided here is information on: how many parts this duchy [of Shkoder] is

divided into, how many and which towns it has…who in particular are the

commanders of these villages, what the rites…and how many men in arms

can be supplied by them. Provided here, too, is information on the

journeys made by the couriers of public dispatches to Constantinople,

using the old routes and the new ones…Consideration is also given as to

how the State ought to be interested in ensuring that the dispatches are

sent by one route or another. Lists are provided with the names of towns

visited and stops made by the above mentioned couriers every day on their

trips from Kotor to Constantinople. A detailed description is then provided

of the harbors, rivers and ports for vessels along the coast from Antivari

4 Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, mss. it. Cl. VI nr. 176; François Lenormant, Turcs et Monténégrins. Paris, Libraire Acadèmique, Didier & Ce, Libraires Editeurs, 1866. From now:

Relatione Marciana. 5 Injac Zamputi (ed.): Relacione mbi gjendjen e Shqipërisë veriore dhe të mesme në shekullin XVII. vol. 1, Tirana 1963.

5

(Bar) to Vellona (Vlorë)…Brief information is also provided about…the

rebellious highlanders who border on Podgorica and who are under the

jurisdiction of the Turks who themselves have moved twice…to put the

highlanders down… Finally, a description is provided of the towns of

Castelnovo (Hercegnovi) and Risano (Risan) with their villages, which are

subject to the Duchy and Sanjak of Hercegovina and are situated at the

border, on the coast of the Bay of Kotor.6

From the beginning it was clear the composite nature of the Relazione, which

appear to be a collection of accounts taken in different moments, for different

purposes and…from different people. In fact, the subjects listed resonated

immediately with the dispatches and the reports given at the end of their terms

by the rettori of Kotor, the Venetian noblemen who served as representatives of

the Most Serene Republic in the Dalmatian city.

Slight, but telling differences in the different versions of the manuscript hint at

the report’s repeated use and adaptation to different circumstances. As I

mentioned before, the Zadar’s version and the one of the State Archives are

almost identical, and they are either copies of the same variant, or one has

been the model of the other. It is difficult though to identify the “original” one.

The Venetian one appears to be written on older paper, of the same kind of that

used by the official correspondence of the Venetian government between

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while the one from Zadar looks like a

late eighteenth-early nineteenth century paper. The same thing can be said

6 The English translations of the Relatione Marciana are taken from: Robert Elsie, Early Albania, a Reader of Historical Texts, 11th - 17th Centuries, Wiesbaden, 2003; p. 140.

6

about the handwriting: more compact and frenzied the Venetian, more elegant,

light and spacious the one from Zadar. Yet in the former the lists of villages

and their data, for example, are not organized in charts as in the latter, and in

general the different chapters are not separated from each other. In both, the

handwriting does not change in the part dated 1699, which represent the only

terminus post-quem for the two versions. Unfortunately, we cannot say much

more about them. Both version are located in archival miscellaneous (in Venice

a very generic Miscellanea codici, Storia veneta, in Zadar simply in the private

collection of archival material of the Venetian Republic donated to the library),

and their histories are nowhere to be traced. It is possible to find minor

discrepancies on the spelling of people’ and places’ names, but they appear to

be mistakes of the copyist.

A closer reading brings out several major discrepancies with the other two,

however: the manuscript was introduced by a dedication to Maffio Michiel, a

Venetian nobleman who strenuously fought the pirates in the beginning of

1600 when he was Governor of Zante, today the Greek island of Zakynthos,

and died in 1617 in Istria. This dedication included two striking elements.

First, the author was Mariano Bolizza, Francesco’s brother; and second, the

dedication was dated: May 25th, 1614. That makes it the oldest of the three

versions, and in fact, the 1699 addition is missing here.

7

Reading closer still, several incongruities appear – mostly related to the

different solutions in writing Slavic names of people or towns, sometimes in

radically different ways. Some of them were particularly significant.

For instance – and this happened a handful of times – the Marciana

manuscript reported that “the settlement of Cattuni, Villa Gneguzzi, Miraz

[and] Zalasi are commanded by count Nico Raizev”, while on both Francesco’s

versions the chief is “Stieppo di (of) Nico Ruicez”, that is to say, the son of Nico.

That made me think that the missing archetype of Francesco’s versions, even

before the 1699 supplement, was produced after Mariano’s and with the

concern to keep the report up to date as much as possible. Yet, it has to be

said that only the first dozen of names are actually different, while all the other

are the same. I might not have the chance to ground my conjectures on more

concrete proofs, but it is plausible that Francesco, drafting his version, either

realized how difficult and pointless would have had been doing another census

of all the villages, or limited it to those chiefs who were familiar to him. But

why bother with such details when he was copying his brother’s text claiming

that it was his? Was perhaps the unknown reader pretty familiar with the

described object? These questions concerning the original recipient were far

from being solved, and emerged repeatedly during my reading, as I will show

later. However, I believe that Mariano’s version is the lectio simplicior,

assembled sometimes between November 10th 1613 – the most recent dated

event in the account – and May 25th of the following year, date of the

dedication.

8

Finding the manuscript in Zadar up to that point had given me just few useful

details for my research, but had raised several questions which required to be

investigated. Why did the two Bolizza brothers claim to be the author of the

same text, adding only slight variations to their versions? What purpose could

multiple copies of an only slightly modified report serve?

I hoped that isolating the different parts of the description would have helped

me to find some answers, or at least suggested some hypotheses. Hence I went

back reading my notes of the Dispacci dei rettori and their end-of-term reports

in the Senate. The Bolizzas appear several times in the writings of the Rettori,

both for the importance of their office – organizing the public correspondence

between Venice and Constantinople – and because, unlike the Venetian

noblemen, who often reached Kotor with very little knowledge of that place and

population – and even less enthusiasm in becoming fond of them – they were

very much familiar with people and customs of Turks and Slavs living in the

surroundings. In more than one occasions, the Rettori praised the work of the

Bolizzas, who had been appointed to negotiate and mediate with the people

living around Kotor and with Turkish officials. For example, one Bolizza was

designated to settle down a feud between the Venetian subjects of the

countryside surrounding Kotor and their neighbors under the Turkish rule;7

another time, Francesco met the powerful Bassà of Bosnia, who was visiting

the gulf of Kotor – terrorizing the Venetian representatives with the presence of

7 ASV, Senato, Dispacci dei rettori, Dalmazia e Albania. B. 5 (06/05/1606).

9

his army – as the official spokesman of the Republic in region.8 A handful of

reports of their missions were assembled together to create the Relazione.

This particularly mediating role was not certainly unique, and it has been

defined as cultural brokerage by a number of studies.9 However, it always been

studied in terms of bottom up trajectories well framed in special contexts,

whether they were medieval courts, tribunals, palaces, or marketplaces. In the

case of the Bolizzas, the perspective is necessarily removed from this spaciality:

the information available do not tell who the recipients of these manuscripts

were, and therefore where they were. Even in Mariano’s variant, where there is

the dedication, it is hard to tell if it would have been read by Maffio Michiel at

home, while sailing the Adriatic Sea or in the palace of power in which he was

functioning as an official of the Venetian government. Therefore I will

concentrate my attention on the spaciality of the cultural brokers themselves,

investigate on how they framed their work, and, to a certain extent, the

purpose of it from their perspective.

The largest part of the manuscript, as I mentioned, describes town by town the

nature of the site, the number of families and the how many men could have

been used as soldiers, with a plethora of detailed ethnographic, naturalistic

and military information. I have found no trace in other archival sources about

8 DKZD, In materia di confini, secc. XVI-XVII, ms. 508, cc. 212r-219r (1631). 9 Marika Keblusek and Badeloch Vera Noldus (Ed.), Double agents : cultural and political brokerage in early modern Europe. Leiden, Boston, 2011; Natalie Rothman, Brokering Empire : Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul. Ithaca, New York, London, 2012; Marc

von der Höh, Nikolas Jaspert, Jenny Rahel Oesterle (Ed.), Cultural brokers at Mediterranean courts in the Middle Ages. München, 2013.

10

a governor of Kotor commissioning either Mariano or Francesco to do such an

enquiry; but I have found one Rettore, Zaccaria Soranzo, who in 1613 asked

Antonio Bolizza to go to Adrianopoli, today the Turkish city of Edirne, and

report about a rumored gathering of Ottoman troops.10 At his return, he

explained that they were getting ready for one of their expeditions against some

villages in the mountains of Montenegro and Albania, who were not accepting

the Turkish rule, and were suspected as well of plotting to join the Spanish

army in a much feared, yet chimerical crusade. For this reason, several

Ottoman officials were collecting information about these villages and

estimating their military force. Possibly inspired by these officials, or maybe

having had the chance to copy the information they gathered, Antonio came

back to Kotor with what is likely to be a primordial version of our manuscript.

Yet Antonio’s name does not appear neither as the author, nor is it mentioned

in the text.

Proceeding with the reading of the Relazione, the next chapter dealt with the

description of the route to Constantinople. I was already familiar with this

subject because several Rettori had given information on this regard. In fact,

Venice, for the territorial discontinuity that characterized its empire, paid great

attention - probably more than for other European powers – to the

communication with its possessions and the bordering states, for it was vital,

in order to be up to date with the situation of its territories, to receive news and

deliver orders in the fastest and safest possible way. The Most Serene Republic

10 ASV, Dispacci, b. 12, 03/21/1613.

11

never actually organized a state-postal system. Rather, it relied on local

individuals, who were appointed with the office. The communication with

Constantinople was obviously one of the most important for the Republic, and

in fact, since the thirteenth century, Venice tired different solutions to have the

public dispatches delivered in the most efficient way, in particular through

Dubrovnik, Split and Zadar. The Ottoman Empire itself did not have a postal

system in its Balkan territories either, and for the early modern period it

organized the delivery of dispatches on a case-by-case basis. However, it

allowed curriers – as much as merchants – to freely cross its land. Despite the

Sultan’s permission, still the Balkans was a hostile and dangerous territory.

The journey was everything but safe and pleasant: for the greatest part it was

on mountainous, steep trails, exposed, as it is written, to divinali and humanali

threats, that is to say natural-divine dangers such as diseases, injuries, bad

weather, wild beasts, and the man-made perils, such as highway robberies,

imprisonments and homicides. Nonetheless, it was faster and safer for the

dispatches to travel by land rather than by sea, which was too unsecure even

in time of peace because constantly infested by pirates.

In 1535 the Venetian Senate decided to adopt as official route the one which

centered in Kotor. The local noble family Draghi was the first who managed the

public correspondence. Around 1573, for reasons we do not know, the Draghi

were replaced by the Zaguri family. Finally, in 1578, the Bolizzas secured the

contract to organize both the frigates which connected Venice to Kotor, and the

curriers who walked from Kotor to Constantinople.

12

The itineraries (in yellow the “old” one, in orange the “new”), as they appear on the manuscript,

are respectively of 19 and 22 days, and already required to cover an average of 35 miles per

day. Yet, in the contract are expected additional rewards for those who accomplished the

journey in 16 days, which means almost 50 miles per day, mostly on mountain trails, a pace that a horse would hardly keep up with. Nevertheless, there are letters dated by the Bailo

which arrived in Kotor in 16 and 17 days.

The manuscript described a crucial problem faced by the Bolizzas at the

beginning of the seventeenth century. After 1604 the couriers were forced to

give up the “old road”, the one which crossed the Cuzzi (Kuči) region, between

Albania and Montenegro, because some villages of the Sanjak (a Turkish

administrative division) of Shkoder started a conflict with their neighbors of

Montenegro, making the route too dangerous. The “new road”, if more secure,

was far longer and more expensive. Thus, the Venetian Rettore of Kotor

summoned Giovanni Bolizza to personally arrange negotiates with the fighting

chieftains in order to reopen the old road. Unfortunately, he died before

concluding the mediation, and one of his children had to take over the task. In

the accounts, Francesco took great care in putting his name as the one who

cut a deal with the unruly villages – yet short-lived one – and so did Mariano.

In this case, I do not know who actually did the negotiation, since the reports

13

sent by the Venetian governor of Kotor to the Senate in Venice just tell us that

he sent “the Bolizza” to the Montenegrin populations.11 We do know, however,

that the second, partially more successful, mission to pacify the men of the

mountains, which constitutes the last part of the account on the route to

Constantinople in the text, was Mariano’s work, as the Venetian governor

confirmed in his letters.12

Throughout the text, the parts in which Francesco wrote about himself and his

works, by using Francesco or Cavalier Bolizza, in the Marciana version are

substituted either with Mariano’s name, or with a more neutral “Bolizza the

author”. Moreover, in a couple of occasions, Francesco’s descriptions of his

heroic and successful enterprises are heavily summarized or even absent in

Mariano’s version.

For example, in 1613 Francesco was appointed by the Rettore Soranzo to

rescue the troubled agha of Durazzo (modern day Albanian Durrës). The agha

Mehemet Nazor run away from Durrës and took cover in Budva, Venetian

territory, because his life was threaten by a Turkish conspiracy. Mariano

summarized the events this way:

The Aga had come into conflict with the leading Turk and lord of Albania,

called Elez Bey, because he repudiated his wife, the daughter of the said

lord, whom he had found in bed with her servant. For this, he was

persecuted and given up unto the hands of some subjects of the city of

11 ASV, Senato, Dispacci dei rettori, Dalmazia e Albania. B. 5 (06/05/1606). 12 ASV, Senato, Dispacci dei rettori, Dalmazia e Albania. B. 8 (11/06/1609).

14

Perast. They seized all his valuables and took them away with two

galleys. He was persecuted by a sanjak related to the aforementioned

Elez Bey and took refuge in Budva, continued on to Venice and Kotor

and from there departed for Constantinople.13

Francesco thought about adding his part played in the events, since he was the

one who took care of the situation.

Dispatched [by the Governor] Cavalier Bolizza myself…I was able to sink

the galleys…and bring the agha to the provveditore Generale Pasqualigo

[the Venetian admiral in chief] who commanded me to bring the agha

with me to Venice and report about the events. Here [the Senate] gladly

accepted the offering of the agha to enter in service [for Venice] and

therefore he was sent to Constantinople, where, with the help of his

excellence the Bailo, thanks to the information [the agha] provided to

him, he was able to get back the city and his rank of agha, with great

benefit of the public service.14

Other official correspondence of the Governor of Kotor confirms that Francesco

was the one who organized the escape of Mehemet Nazor, hosted him in his

home and brought him to Venice. Oddly enough though, the story behind the

escape of the agha told by the rettore, the letters of the provveditore generale

and the transcripts of the Senate in Venice had nothing to do with the affair of

the agha’s wife. Mehemet was in fact victim of a conspiracy for having sunk two

13 Robert Elsie, Early Albania, a Reader of Historical Texts, 11th - 17th Centuries, Wiesbaden,

2003; p. 164. 14 ZKZ, Relazione Zadar, p. XLII

15

fustes of local Turkish pirates (as commanded by Constantinople, but against

the will of the local Ottoman officials.) Moreover, there were rumors around his

possible involvement in the aforementioned Spanish crusade.15

It was clear to me that the manuscript was a collective work, and it was drafted

by the Bolizzas for the good of their family and themselves as individual too.

Yet, what was its purpose? If it is understandable that Francesco wanted to

emphasize his personal achievements and the successful missions he did, for

which reason the Bolizzas decided to hide the official reasons of Mehemet’s

escape and told instead a “spicy” tale, perhaps more arousing, but one that

abated the importance of Francesco’s mission? Such a tale was also in striking

contrast with the military nature expressed by the lists of villages and men of

arms, or the political agenda of the account of the itineraries to Constantinople.

It was not an isolated case, however. Both Mariano’s and Francesco’s versions

reported an extensive digression in the part in which they describe the people

and villages of the lake Shkoder in Albania. Besides listing, as usual, village by

village the number of houses and of men ready for war, the nature of the

people, their occupations and their religious creed, the Bolizzas decided to

report a fascinating fishing practice on the lake:

A hodja, that is to say a Muslim priest, stands in a boats in the midst of

the water, and, after saying a prayer in Turkish, he claps his hands,

when he deems the moment to be propitious. He then [gives] the birds a

signal. Indeed, they seem to be waiting for him and understand him from

15 ASV, Dispacci, f. 12, 27/07/1613; 10/08/1613.

16

high up in the trees. All of a sudden, they swoop down to the fishing

spot. Plunging into the water and swimming about with great pleasure,

they feed on the fish which, exhausted and frightened by them, can find

no other escape or refuge than to dart down and hide in the baskets. The

Turks standing over the baskets catch them alive with their bare hands

for fun and then let them go again. Once they see that the birds have had

their feed, they shout at them. The birds take flight with such noise and

commotion and with such a fluttering of wings that whoever happens to

be standing nearby is dumbfounded and gets soaked in the process, too.

The birds then settle on the water a bit farther away. Now I will tell you

something amazing (and yet I swear that it is true). Whoever shoots with

a long arquebus, like those used for hunting in the lagoon of Venice, will

strike as many birds as he has shots.

What is more, since the birds cannot take flight swiftly after such a

feeding, they can readily be caught alive by those in the boats, whom I

mentioned earlier. The birds, as if tame, wait for the boats to approach.

And as for those which can still fly and reach the tops of the trees, I have

on several occasions killed ten birds with one shot, while the rest of the

birds sit motionless in the tree. It must also be noted that, when in flight,

they stay so close to one another that they look like a thick black cloud

darkening the vaults of the sky. In fact, the birds are under protection

and may not be hunted, in particular at this theatre spot [elsewhere, the

author has described that part of the lake as a natural amphitheater].

There is a fine of 300 aspers, equivalent to four ducats, for each bird

slain, plus confiscation of arms. This is for good reason. If it were not for

17

the birds, there would be no bleak fishing. For this reason, the

inhabitants of Zabljak hold the birds in great esteem and judge the

coming fishing season by the number of birds. The owners of the baskets

open them to see the fruits of the birds' work and often find the baskets

full so that they can load their boats to the hilt with fish and, for this

reason, use much bigger vessels than the boats.16

I was mesmerized by reading the passage, and I suspect that so were the

original recipients of the Relazione. The Bolizzas wanted to create a report that

could intrigue their readers with passages like those mentioned above. I still

could not put together the clearly military reports with bleak fishing, but at

least I was narrowing down the pool of possible recipients. It was clear that the

text was written for readers who were not familiar with that region, and most

likely they were Venetian noblemen, as the reference to the hunting in the

lagoon of Venice hints, but definitely not the rettore of Kotor, neither other

representatives of the Most Serene Republic on duty in the area.

It is also true though that Francesco’s account had at least three additions, like

the one of the agha of Durrës seen before (without counting the 1699 one), in

which he described his missions and enlivened the text. Mariano, on the other

hand, dedicated his version to the patrician Maffio Michiel, who served in the

southern part of the Adriatic Sea – although never in Kotor and the neighboring

16 Robert Elsie, Early Albania, a Reader of Historical Texts, 11th - 17th Centuries, Wiesbaden,

2003; pp. 150-151. Interestingly enough, I have found out that the Hungarian Count Fedor

Karaczay, in 1842 describes in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, that

“the lake is also frequented by water-fowl: a kind of diver, called smergo in Italian, is trained to assist the fishermen in taking the scoranzi [bleaks]”.

18

places - and died a few years after still in service for the Republic; hence, I

suppose that the Relazione in this case aimed to give more an account that,

although entertaining, was mostly focused in providing military data.

Unfortunately we know nothing about the recipients of Francesco’s version(s),

but it is clear that here the emphasis was centered more in exalting the figure

of the author himself, describing his successes as negotiator with Slavs and

Turks alike, possibly as a tool to obtain some gratification – maybe the

knighthood of Saint Mark? –

Likewise, I could not forget that poor Antonio, who provided the backbone of

the Relazione itself, was never mentioned in any of the versions and actually,

his work became the work of either Mariano or Francesco according to the

words of his brothers. True, it is possible that there was a version under his

name which is unknown to me, but my guess is different.

I suppose that the Bolizzas created these reports in order to prove that they

were perfect mediators for the needs of the Venetian Republic: close friends –

amicissimi, as it is written in the text – of the mountains’ chieftains, yet familiar

with the Venetian vocabulary. Fond of Slavic and Turkish customs, but loyal to

the Republic and its affairs. Established in the area, and well connected with

the Venetian elite, thanks to the network they were able to build with members

of the Venetian patriciate, the local representatives of the Ottoman government,

and the chieftains of the rebel people of the mountains alike.

19

Yet, if we analyze the meaning of the word amico, friend, in Giuseppe Boerio’s

fundamental Dictionary of Venetian dialect, he describes “essere amicissimo” (to

be the absolute superlative of friend) as such: “to be lost for someone; not being

able to see beyond this person or to consider this person fairly, that is whishing

all the best for this person.”17 Usually, Venetian officials would have described

amicissimo of Turkish subjects someone who was not to trust, as a friend of

enemies. But Francesco Bolizza was labelled by them as “wise and astute man,

who often serves the [Venetian] representative,”18 despite he defined himself

amicissimo of the Turks and Slavs alike. Following Natalie Rothman, Francesco

Bolizza appears to be a trans-imperial subject, who, thanks to his cultural

capital, was able operate as a cultural broker, a “central figure in the process of

boundary-making in Early Modern Mediterranean”, precisely for the fact that

he could cross these boundaries.19

Francesco was however one of the members of a family of brokers of culture,

and according to what we have seen so far, it appears that the Bolizza divided

the labor assigning to each brother precise intermediaries: Mariano was

summoned by the Governor and the Bailo in Constantinople to negotiate with

Slavic leaders in Albania and Montenegro, while Francesco was the one who

handled the relationship with Venice and the Turkish leaders of southern

Dalmatia. We know less about Antonio, not only from the Relazione, but in

17 Giuseppe Boerio, Dizionario del dialetto veneziano, Venice, 1867, p. 31. 18 “soggetto di gran politica, serve a cenni il pubblico rappresentante”. ASV, Collegio, Relazioni dei rettori, ambasciatori ed altre cariche. b. 65 (02/27/1632). 19 Natalie Rothman, Brokering Empire : Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul.

Ithaca, New York, London, 2012. pp. 14-15.

20

general. This very silence of the sources and the nature of the only task

assigned to him (that is, collect information, almost as a spy) may indicate that

he was not as involved in, or capable of establishing his name as Francesco

and Mariano had done.

This hypothesis is strengthen by another couple of documents I have found in

the State Archives of Venice regarding the assignment of the postal service

between Venice and Constantinople to the Bolizza family, in which it appears

that, initially, Giovanni Bolizza thought about passing the office to his son

Antonio, but soon changed his mind and gave it to Francesco before dying.20

I thought it was possible to narrow down even more the pool of potential

recipients to men only and not women. That came to my mind while reading a

passage on sheep.

Describing the richness of Mount Lovcen – the mountain which stands above

Kotor, right behind the city – on its Albanian slope, the Bolizza brothers wrote:

Here, in an area extending twelve miles along the ridge of the mountain,

there are rich and extremely pleasant rangelands. As such, when the

summer heat becomes unbearable, and torments the humble and well-

fed sheep, here she finds comforting and abundant restoration. Once she

have grazed and quenched her thirst, she rests during the torrid heat of

20 ASV, Senato Mar, b. 197.

21

the midday sun under the shadow of the innumerable lofty beeches,

ashes and pine trees which provide shade all day long.21

Why the Bolizzas wrote in bucolic, almost romantic ante litteram prose

something that could have been expressed, for example, in: “there are rich

rangelands surrounded by trees, where sheep graze,” or why did they indulge

describing fishing sessions, different trees and animal species, but did not

spend a word on the women of the villages, the wives of the curriers who sewed

their tarpaulin bags to transport the dispatches, or the women on Lake

Shkoder who weaved the fishing nets? As a matter of fact, the only time a

woman appears in the manuscript is when the author is describing the escape

of the Agha of Durrës, who discovered his unfaithful wife in bed with a slave;

and, as it has been shown before, it is possible that it was an invented story. I

supposed that if the Bolizzas wanted to be popular among female readers, they

would have added some details about the lives of Balkan’s women. Even

considering the Relazione a celebratory patchwork of different missions’

reports, in which the conditions of the women were not a concern, the Bolizzas

could have added later some details familiar to them; after all, with all their

travelling, they must have seen some women in the villages!

One last element caught my attention: how the Bolizzas described the Turkish

officials and the Slavic populations under the Ottoman rule. Especially

comparing that with the perspectives of the rettori, who in their reports

21 Robert Elsie, Early Albania, a Reader of Historical Texts, 11th - 17th Centuries, Wiesbaden,

2003; p. 162

22

characterized repeatedly the populations subjects of Venice living on the

borders with the Turks as “savage, bad-tempered, unruly, violent and barbaric

people,”22 the Bolizzas appeared to be far more generous with the villagers of

Montenegro and Albania. This is evident in particular in the description of the

itineraries for Constantinople.

The Bolizzas organize the public correspondence between Venice and the Porte

for over a century, then, after the war between the Republic and the Turks and

the following peace, the route to Kotor was substitute with the one stopping in

Dubrovnik, which allowed the use of horses and therefore quickened the

correspondence. The postal service was carried through dedicated mail frigates

which connected Venice with Kotor, and from there Montenegrin curriers, all

Turkish subjects coming from the surrounding mountains of Albania and

Montenegro, walked – with no help of horses or donkeys – to the city of

Constantinople.

These people are described in contrasting ways. The Bolizzas underlined their

strength, roughness and belligerence – although never in negative way, – but

also their scrupulousness and loyalty. The Governors of Kotor and the bailii on

the other hand were less consistent with their opinions: sometimes they agreed

with the Bolizzas, and other times, especially when the dispatches were not

delivered or arrived too late, they described them as “misfits, careless and

worthless individuals”.23 To be frank though, most of the time the

22 ASV, Collegio, Relazioni dei rettori, ambasciatori ed altre cariche. b. 65 (09/26/1616). 23 ASV, Senato, Dispacci Costantinopoli, f. 5 (03/11/1571).

23

correspondence arrived at destination as planned. Only the year before the

Bolizzas took charge of the postal service there was an awful lot of problems

with dispatches delayed, opened or lost, to the point that I have wondered if

that happened because the Bolizzas, being “really close friends”, as they said,

with the curriers’ villages, somehow sabotaged the work of the Zaguri family, in

order to take over their contract.

However, not a single time the Bolizzas used derogatory adjective to describe

the Slavic people subject of the Turk. Nor they vilified once the Ottoman

officials. It might seem odd, considering that the large part of the data of the

Relazione was collected in behalf of a possible crusade. It must be excluded as

well a sense of common belonging shared by the Bolizza brothers with the

people of Albania’s and Montenegro’s mountains. In fact, as noble citizens of

Kotor, they considered themselves more Venetian than Slavic people: they

spoke Italian in its Venetian variant, professed the Roman Catholic rite, and

considered the country folks living right outside the walls of Kotor in the

paternalistic fashion typical of Early Modern time. Once again, in my opinion,

this must be read in terms of the purpose of the account: the Bolizzas wanted

to prove to the Venetian noblemen that they were the best possible mediators

with the surrounding people money could buy. The language used and the

references made in the text clearly establish the Relazione as a Venetian

product for Venetian – or Italian – readers, yet they genuinely sounded familiar

and at ease with both Slavic and Turkish people and their customs; so familiar

24

that they were able to understand how to “translate” them in comprehensible

terms for a patrician of the lagoon of Venice.

To support my hypothesis, I want to mention a couple of passages of another,

later report made by Francesco, when he encountered the Bassà of Bosnia (a

high rank official of the Ottoman Empire) as representative of the Venetians in

the area.24

At the end of the first day of meeting, Francesco was about to bid the bassà

farewell by kissing his dress, but the Turkish official stopped him and gave

Francesco his hand, “a sing of friendship and high respect”. Something similar

happened the day after when, sailing in front of the city of Kotor which was

paying homage to the bassà by firing multiple salvos, the bassà expressed his

pleasure by taking Francesco’s hand; at the same time, however, Bolizza noted

that he took his right hand, “which among the Turks is honored less than the

left one”, probably to express the bassà’s slight disappointment for not having

had the chance to meet in person the rettore. Lastly, with ill-concealed pride,

Francesco reported that he was invited by the Turkish official to sit next to him

while having dinner, and be told that, despite it was prescribed that no one

could drink wine at the table of the bassà, he wanted to homage the Bolizza by

granting him this privilege. Francesco declared to be “flattered beyond words,

but despite the insistence of that magnanimous bassà, I humbly declined the

homage and followed the Turkish prescription.”

24 The following passages are taken from DKZD, In materia di confini, secc. XVI-XVII, ms. 508,

cc. 212r-219r (1631).

25

What emerged in these passages was not only the undisputed trust and respect

that both the Venetian and Turkish officials granted Francesco, but also the

attention he paid in putting in his report details perhaps not essential for the

purpose of describing his mission, but certainly very effective. Doing so he

established, on the one hand, his ability of relating with the people of the

Turkish Empire in the Balkans, and on the other his mastery in translating

customary details otherwise insignificant for people with little familiarity with

Ottoman and Slav practices.

As I mentioned already, when I started to work on the Relazione, I thought that

the most important part for my interests would have been the description of

the itinerary to Constantinople. It was almost a unicum of its kind for several

reasons, one of which is that, it described the route from Kotor to

Constantinople, while the majority of the other travel accounts in the southern

Balkans moved in the opposite direction. As far as I am concerned (and

apparently as far as Stefanos Yerasimos – who made an inventory of all the

travel report in the Ottoman Empire up till the XVI century – is, too),25 this is

the oldest account which delineates day by day the route from southern

Dalmatia to the capital of the Empire.

I was surprise to find very few studies on the itinerary of the curriers. I soon

realized why: it is not possible to reconstruct it in details. Besides the problem

of not having other sources with which compare the report of the Bolizzas,

25 Stefanos Yerasimos, Les voyageurs dans l'Empire Ottoman, XIVe-XVIe sie ̀cles : bibliografie, itine ́raires et inventaire des lieux habite ́s. Ankara, 1991.

26

every version of it presented significant inconsistencies with the other

descriptions. Later sources regarding other routes were of partial help,

especially for the last part of the trip, closer to Constantinople, but did not

supply useful information for the first part in Montenegro. In addition, some of

the sites in which the curriers spent their nights along the way are not

traceable anymore, either because they have been renamed in completely

different ways, or perhaps they do not exist anymore. The different versions of

the manuscript, once again, did not help us, since some places were called in

radically different ways and, for example, in the Marciana version two stops are

over 60 miles apart from each other; too much for a day of walk even for the

strong and tireless Montenegrin curriers.

Lastly, Luciano De Zanche, Stefanos Yerasimos, Šime Ljubić, and Velimir

Sokol, to name a few of those who have attempted to identify the locations

along the itinerary, have come to conflicting results, and none of them really

convincing, for the fact that all of them have only referred to the printed version

of the Marciana, which, as we have just seen, it is obviously imprecise (Ljubić

and De Zanche are aware of the existence of the version in the Venetian State

Archives, but they do not take that in consideration; and nobody appeared to

have knowledge of the existence of the copy of Zadar).

Although I have attempted myself to reconstruct this itinerary (see appendix), I

ended up my study realizing that the document could not answer any of the

questions I had in mind when I approached the Relazione. Instead, it was able

27

to inform me on the strategies of a prominent noble family of Kotor to promote

itself within the Venetian context as a family of cultural brokers. Perhaps

sometimes listening to what the sources have to say, rather than imposing on

them our deaf preconceptions, can bear some fruits.

Appendix: the “old” and the “new” itinerary to Constantinople

The “old” and “new” itineraries differed only in the first part of the trip, and

from a place called Cerniza they follow the same path. The old one reached

Cerniza (probably today’s Cernicë, in Kosovo) in 5 days, stopping in Podgorica,

modern capital of Montenegro, then reaching Plava (Plav), Pech (Peć or Pejë in

modern Kosovo), where there was the seat of the Serbian Orthodox archbishop;

lastly, Nollo Villa Golos Planina (either the village of Novo Selo between Orlat

and Malisevo – which will make sense because it is closer both to Pech and

Cernicë –, or Novo Selo, in the outskirts of Skenderaj, an important trading city

at the foot of mount Goles, but further to reach). Here it is already possible to

see that the curriers every day walked some 10 to 12 hours, covering 25 to 45

miles on mountainous trails.

28

Both the contract between Venice and the Bolizza family and the manuscript

tell us that 3 “counts of Montenegro”, accompanied the curriers for the first 3

stops, one for every stretch, to “guarantee the safety of the postmen’s trip

within their territories”. But since 1604 they were not able, nor perhaps willing,

to offer protection anymore. As I briefly mentioned before, an Ottoman army,

whose ranks were filled with Albanian and Montenegrin soldiers, was sent to

attack the rebellious Kuči people; the attack degenerated in a war between

neighbor villages, whose effects lasted for decades, impeding the passage to

Podgorica and beyond.

Realizing that the situation was not easy to fix, Francesco found another

itinerary, the so called “nuovo”, new, which crossed the Sanjak (a Turkish

administrative division) of Herzegovina. It was longer, and somehow harder,

surely more expensive for Venice, but safer than the old itinerary. Despite the

efforts of both Mariano and Francesco, who were able to obtain only ephemeral

results, they had to give up the old itinerary, and therefore the new one will

become the only route to Kotor from Constantinople.

The second part of the trip was common to both itineraries. Despite the

discrepancies in the versions of the manuscript that I mentioned before, I will

present the one which appears to me more reasonable.

29

First part of the vecchio itinerary (until Cerniza) and beginning of the common one. The dotted

line shows the alternative option for the stop of Novo Selo.

The first stretch reached a placed called Govicina, probably in the surrounding

of the Macedonian city of Kumanovo; then they crossed the river Kriva

mostlikely in Psaca, and finally entered in Bulgaria in an unknown town called

Cosmizza. I believe it to be today’s Kyustendil, and if I am wrong, it will be

somewhere around there, also because it is the only passage to reach the next

stop, Samokov, a major iron producing center for all the middle ages and the

early modern time. The importance is underlined by the fact that it is the only

stop in the list of the Bolizzas, which is somehow characterized with “where 21

mills are making iron”. The next stop is an absolute conjecture, since

Francesco calls it Iopranoppo and Mariano Sanxava and both names are not

ascribable to any of the cities in that region. Therefore I have based my

30

Second part of both the itineraries to Constantinople.

hypothesis to locate it near Belovo, considering the following stop, the great city

of Plovdiv, or Filippopoli as it was called. The aforesaid considerations

regarding Sanxava also apply to Siroviza, which is possibly Varbitsa. There are

finally no doubt about the next one, Harmanli, but it is odd that the next stop,

Tecie (today Svilingrad, called under the Ottomans Tchermen), and the

following one, Haps (Havsa) cut off of the itinerary the most important city in

the region, Edirne, also known as Adrianopoli. In their last stretch the curriers

stopped in Bargas (Lulebargaz), Chiorlia (Çorlu), Chiombargas (Çatlaca) and

finally found some rest in the gardens of Pera in Constantinople.

31

First part of the nuovo itinerary. The change of color represent the beginning of the shared

itinerary.

The new itinerary is even more difficult to trace. We know for sure that they

had to avoid the mounts north east of Kotor almost until Pristina, therefore

their passage was north east of the city, passing through Rizan, at the end of

the gulf of Kotor and then going north, up on the mountains, to Plisevicci,

which, reasonably, was located south of Niksic. Dobranti is nowhere to be

found, and my guess is that it was in Savnik, an important trading post in the

area. Next, they had to cross the Tara River and its impressive canyon. In the

manuscript it is not specified (except in the State Archive version) the name of

the place, which makes me think that it was common knowledge at the time

that there were only one bridge in the region. I believe that place to be Lever

32

Tara, where there are some scattered ruins of a Roman bridge. For the next

stops we have, finally, little doubts: Brodaresso (Brodarevo) was followed by

Scenize (modern day Sjenica), the important merchant city of Novo Pasaro (Novi

Pazar), Dimitroviza (Mitrovice), Pristina, and lastly Cernica, where it merged

into the old itinerary.

33

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ASV, Risposte di fuori, f. 373

ASV, Miscellanea codici, Storia veneta, b. 131.

ASV, Senato Mar. f. 197.

ASV, Senato, Dispacci Costantinopoli, f. 5.

ASV, Senato, Dispacci dei rettori et altri, Dalmazia. ff. 5, 8.

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34

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