Details

Subjects:

Massaran, Isaac de.
Banks and banking -- Italy -- Mantua.
Jews -- Italy -- Mantua -- History.
Jews.
History.
Banks and banking.
Mantua (Italy) -- History -- 16th century.
Italy -- Mantua.

Form/Genre:

Charters.
Notarial documents.
Seals (artifacts)
Manuscripts, Latin.
Manuscripts, Renaissance.

Language:

In Latin.

Summary:

Charter issued by the cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and the duchess Margherita Paleologa, in their capacity as tutors of the Duke of Mantua, Margherita's two-year-old son Francesco III Gonzaga. They grant to the Jew Isaac de Massaran license to establish a money-lending bank with two other shareholders from the Jewish community of Mantua. The bank may charge 20% annual interest (noted as lower than the 25% charged by the other four banks in Mantua) and will have the same benefits, immunities, privileges, and honors as the other banks in Mantua. Written in Mantua in 14 lines of humanistic cursive script, opening with display capitals for the names of the tutors in the first line, dated 24 May 1542. Ruling in lead for the text of the charter is visible. Three or four signatures or marks; notarial signatures by the ducal notaries Olimpus Zampus and Calandra (Johannes Jacobus Calandra); and the Gonzaga seal in wax now attached to the lower half of the document rather than attached by a tag. The inscription Decreto di banco feneratitio (or, in the inscription in a later hand, feneratizio) is written twice on the verso.

Local notes:

Lawrence J. Schoenberg & Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative.

Penn Provenance:

Sold at auction at Sotheby's, 1 December 1998, lot 66, to Lawrence J. Schoenberg.
Gift of Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle, 2010.

Cited in:

Described in Transformation of knowledge: early manuscripts from the collection of Lawrence J. Schoenberg (London: Paul Holberton, 2006), p. 152 (LJS 285).

Cited as:

UPenn Oversize LJS 285

Contributor:

Margherita Paleologa, Duchess of Mantua, 1510-1566.
Gonzaga, Ercole, 1505-1563.
Calandra, Johannes Jacobus.
Zampus, Olimpus.
Schoenberg, Lawrence J., former owner.
Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

OCLC:

729231911

Web link:

The Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative Fund Home Page