Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [28]
One hundred yards from the spot where the corpse of the doge Pietro was mutilated lived the Columbus family, in Vico Dritto di Ponticello, in a house owned by Domenico. It was possible that the young boy witnessed the gruesome event—stoning, the mutilation—and heard the shouts of the bloodthirsty victors. And if he was aware of the outrage, he would have had reason to tremble with dread, because his father, Domenico, was allied with the Fregoso faction, and his fortunes declined with theirs.
Then a way out of the deadly rivalry presented itself.
Milan’s ruler, Francesco Sforza, with the support of Genoese citizens who had sickened of the internecine political warfare, won appointment in 1463 as lord of the city. Compared with the ceaseless strife that had preceded it, Sforza’s regime was a great success, a time of relative peace and prosperity. Yet the Sforza clan demonstrated little appreciation of Genoa’s distinguishing feature: its maritime trade. Neglected, Genoese shipping withered, and the few colonies the city had acquired were lost; the Genoese empire, always tentative and fragile, dwindled until even Corsica’s surpassed it. The prospects for ambitious navigators and explorers such as Christopher Columbus vanished.
Coming of age as an outcast in his hometown, and taking to the sea at an early age, Columbus devoted the rest of his life struggling to replace this lost empire. At first personal, the search turned political, and drove Columbus farther than he ever imagined, beyond Italy and Europe, beyond the Mediterranean, England, and Iceland, beyond the Canaries, all the way to the New World. Only an epic quest could match his ambition; nothing less would suffice. What began as recovery would end as discovery.
In Columbus’s youth, Genoa was in the throes of a rapid transformation. Shops, warehouses, stables, and markets piled atop each other in raucous and foul-smelling confusion. The wooden houses characteristic of the medieval era gave way to stone dwellings with tiled floors, massive fireplaces, and loggias arrayed along the narrow, winding streets called carrugi. The newer homes contained bathrooms with washbasins, bowls, and jugs with water, and soap in ivory boxes from Savona. In Columbus’s time, sailors aboard ships in the mandraccio gazed upward to the west to the somber gray stone palaces highlighted with towers of reddish brown and vertiginous battlements.
It was one of the largest cities in western Europe, with a population approaching 75,000, the equal of London, Paris, or Venice. In prosperous times, the port churned with ships and travelers from Genoa’s most popular destinations, instantly distinguishable by their garb and dialect. Lombards stood apart from Tuscans and from Levantines in billowing breeches. Turks in their turbans clustered in small groups, as did Greeks, recognizable from their short pleated blouses known as fustanellas. Catalans were readily identified by the barretinas they wore on their heads; Sardinians in black breeches and hood, and a loose white shirt, easily stood out.
Clothing worn by the Genoese was strictly regulated by the Office of Virtue, beginning in 1439. The Office enforced a series of sumptuary laws to regulate morality by curbing luxury and excess, as well as prostitution. These laws limited the amount of money Genoese could spend on luxury items, and even on weddings, limited to fifty guests. They regulated the days on which prostitutes, a staple