The Creation of Sea Protests
Though some historiography has been struck by the drama and immediacy of sea protests, when analysed in bulk it quickly becomes clear that these were drawn up with the help of legal professionals in a formulaic fashion.
1 Marcello Berti, ‘I rischi nella circolazione marittima tra Europa nordica ed Europa Mediterranea nel primo trentennio del Seicento ed il caso della seconda guerra anglo-olandese (1665–67)’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Ricchezza del mare, richezza dal mare, secc. XIII–XVIII (Florence: Le Monnier, 2006), 809–25. What is more, it is clear that the
testimoniale e domanda was drawn up by a Pisan court official on the basis of the original
consolato, who sometimes ‘touched up’ the
consolato narrative – itself hardly a spontaneous account of the voyage – to regularise the GA using the most salient legal vocabulary. This mediating function therefore played by the university-educated technicians has important implications for how we read and understand this evidence.
The reality behind the legal formalities is naturally difficult to reconstruct, but the evidence we have suggests the master was often not in fact present. Each testimoniale begins with the same formulaic proem (with slight and inconsequential variation) suggesting that he actually presented himself in court to deposit his testimony: ‘before the most illustrious Consoli del Mare of the city of Pisa, their honourable office and audience, ship’s master X presented himself, master of the vessel named Y, and he says how in the weeks passed he found himself in the port of Z …’.
On at least one occasion, however, in a case from 1670, we can be certain that the master was not physically in Pisa on the day that the
testimoniale was presented. Coming from England, a place recently infected by the plague, shipmaster Stephen Dring could technically only have disembarked once he received permission from the
Magistrato di Sanità in Florence, recognising the validity of the quarantine certificate he had received in Alicante. That permission of the
Magistrato is dated 21 August: but Dring had already supposedly appeared before the
Consoli on 20
August, the day after he arrived on 19 August.
2 ASP, CM, AC, 321-30 (30 August 1670), Testimoniale; ASL, Magistrato poi Dipartimento di Sanità, 68-338, Panciatichi to Serristori (21 August 1670); Jake Dyble, ‘Divide and rule: risk sharing and political economy in the free port of Livorno’, in Maria Fusaro, Andrea Addobbati, and Luisa Piccinno (eds), General Average and Risk Management in Medieval and Early Modern Maritime Business (Cham: Springer, 2023), 363–87, at p. 381. The enforcement of these regulations may have been somewhat lax, but allowing Dring to disembark, travel to another city, and physically present himself before a court of law would have made a complete mockery of the procedures. It is unlikely that Dring’s was an isolated case in this respect.
Furthermore, clues from the documents themselves show that the
testimoniale was not his verbatim account but was made on the basis of the written
consolato. The fact that the two documents are near identical is in itself an indiciation of this, and we also find mistakes in the
testimoniale that can only have resulted from copying the
consolato. In a case from 1600, for example, the
consolato makes reference to events which happened in ‘this current month’, which was February; the
testimoniale keeps these references to the ‘current month’, even though the
testimoniale was drawn up in March.
3 ASP, CM, AC, 25-3 (28 June 1600). On another occasion the author of the
testimoniale decided it was necessary to record the date of the arrival in Livorno, which the
consolato, made in Malta, naturally did not provide. The author leaves a blank of the date of arrival, suggesting that there was no one from the voyage present who might have provided the information.
4 ASP, CM, AC, 25-8 (30 May 1600). Who was responsible for preparing the
testimoniale document? The most likely candidates are the chancellor of the court (
cancelliere), the vice-chancellor (
sottocancelliere), and the notary whom the chancellor was obliged to retain.
5 ASF, Auditore poi Segretario delle Riformagioni, 116, ‘Dogana e Consoli di Mare di Pisa con la riforma del 1561’, f. 11r. One of the
testimoniali finishes its narrative with the phrase ‘he made his
consolato which is produced in the chancellery of their [the
Consoli’s] magistrate and court, and again is reproduced to justify the above [events]’.
6 ASP, CM, AC, 25-26 (10 April 1600), Testimoniale. Whoever was precisely responsible, the figure who drew up the
testimoniali had benefitted from a legal education and can thus be expected to have some familiarity with the
ius commune and with the provisions of the
Lex Rhodia.
7 p. 40.