The Republic of Ancona was a medieval commune and maritime republic on the Adriatic coast of what is modern-day Italy. It was notable for its economic development and maritime trade,The International Geographic Encyclopedia and Atlas, Ancona (p. 27), Springer, 1979, ISBN 9781349050024. particularly with the Byzantine Empire and Eastern Mediterranean, although somewhat confined by Venetian supremacy on the sea.* Dizionari Zanichelli, chapter Repubbliche marinare Armando Lodolini Le repubbliche del mare, chapter Ancona; Enciclopedia Treccani, Ancona Guida rossa (red guide) of Touring Club Italiano, Marche, p. 88 e 104 The state enjoyed excellent relations with the Kingdom of Hungary,Guida rossa (red guide) of Touring Club Italiano (p. 88). was an ally of the Republic of Ragusa, Francis F. Carter, Dubrovnik (Ragusa): A Classical City-state, publisher: Seminar Press, London-New York, 1972 ; Robin Harris, Dubrovnik: A History, publisher: Saqi Books, 2006. p. 127, and maintained good relations with the Ottoman Empire. All of these relationships enabled it to serve as central Italy's gateway to the Orient.
Included in the Papal States since 774, the city of Ancona came under the influence of the Holy Roman Empire around 1000, but gradually gained independence to become fully independent with the coming of the communes in the 11th century, under the high jurisdiction of the Papal States.Armando Lodolini, Le repubbliche del mare, publisher: Biblioteca di storia patria, Rome, 1967 (chapter Ancona) World Vexilology and Heraldry: Italy – Centre Its motto was ("Dorian Ancona, city of faith"), referencing the Greek foundation of the city.
Ancona was an oligarchic republic ruled by six Elders, who were elected by the three terzieri into which the city was divided: S. Pietro, Porto, and Capodimonte. It had a series of maritime laws known as ("Statutes of the sea and of the arsenal") and ("Statutes of the Customs").James Reddie, Historical View of the Law of Maritime Commerce, W. Blackwood and sons, 1841.
Maritime relations and warehouses
The (colonies with warehouses and accommodation buildings) of the Republic of Ancona were continuously active in Constantinople, Alexandria and other Eastern Mediterranean ports, while the sorting of goods imported by land (especially textiles and spices) fell to the merchants of Lucca and Florence.
In Constantinople, there was perhaps the most important , where the Anconitans had their own church, Saint Stephen; in 1261, they were granted the privilege of having a chapel in the St. Sophia.Antonio Leoni, Historia of Ancona of 1812 . Other Anconitan were in Syria (Laiazzo and Laodicea), Romania (Constanţa), Egypt (Alexandria), Cyprus (Famagusta), Palestine (San Giovanni d'Acri), Greece (Chios), and Asia Minor (Trebizond). Moving to the west, Anconitan warehouses were present in the Adriatic in Ragusa and Segna, in Sicily (Syracuse and Messina), Spain (Barcelona and Valencia), and Africa (Tripoli).Guglielmo Heyd, Le colonie commerciali degli Italiani in Oriente nel Medioevo, Volume 1. Antonelli, 1868.
Coins
The first reports of Ancona's medieval coinage begin in the 12th century when the independence of the city grew and it began to mint coinage without Imperial or papal oversight.Marco Dubbini e Giancarlo Mancinelli Storia delle monete di Ancona, edizioni Il lavoro editoriale, Ancona 2009 The agontano was the currency used by the Republic of Ancona in its heyday; it was a large silver coin of 18–22 mm in diameter and weighing 2.04–2.42 grams.Lucia Travaini, L'Agontano: una moneta d'argento per l'Italia medievale, Società Numismatica Italiana, 2003.
Later and less famously, Ancona began minting a gold Agnoto coin, also known as the Ancona Ducat. Specimens of this coin have survived from the 15th and 16th centuries, until the city's loss of independence in 1532.Ducato aureo emesso dalla zecca di Ancona nel XV secolo
Art Anconitan art had long been influenced by maritime relations with Dalmatia and the Levant.
Its major medieval monuments show a union between Romanesque and Byzantine art. Among the most notable are the Duomo, with a Greek cross and Byzantine sculptures, and the church of Santa Maria di Portonovo.Michele Polverari, Ancona e Bisanzio, pinacoteca comunale di Ancona, 1993
In the 14th century, Ancona was a centre of what some historians term the "Adriatic Renaissance", a movement in Dalmatia, Venice and the Marches characterised by a rediscovery of classical art and a continuity with Gothic art. A notable architect and sculptor of this movement was Giorgio da Sebenico; his counterpart Carlo Crivelli was a renowned painter. Pietro Zampetti, Pittura nelle Marche, Nardini editore, Firenze, 1988 (p. 333); Fabio Mariano, La Loggia dei Mercanti in Ancona e l'opera di Giorgio di Matteo da Sebenico, editrice Il Lavoro Editoriale, 2003 .
Navigators
The navigator and archaeologist Cyriacus of Ancona was a restlessly itinerant Italian navigator and humanist who came from a prominent family of merchants. He has been called the Father of Archaeology: "Cyriac of Ancona was the most enterprising and prolific recorder of Greek and Roman antiquities, particularly inscriptions, in the fifteenth century, and the general accuracy of his records entitles him to be called the founding father of modern classical archaeology."Edward W. Bodnar, Later travels, with Clive Foss He was named by his fellow humanists "father of the antiquities", who made his contemporaries aware of the existence of the Parthenon, Delphi, the Pyramids, the Sphinx and other famous ancient monuments believed destroyed.Gianfranco Paci, Sergio Sconocchia, Ciriaco d'Ancona e la cultura antiquaria dell'umanesimo, Diabasis, 1998; .
The navigator Grazioso Benincasa was born in Ancona; he was the best-known Italian maritime cartographer of the 15th century and the author of several portolan charts of the Mediterranean: Enciclopedia Treccani, Grazioso Benincasa; The Italian cartographers of the Benincasa and Freducci Families and the so-called Borgiana Map of the Vatican Library, in Imago Mundi, X (1953), p. 23–45.
History
After 1000, Ancona became increasingly independent, eventually turning into an important maritime republic, often clashing against the nearby power of the Republic of Venice. Ancona had to guard against the designs of both the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy. It did not as a rule engage in offensive warfare against rival republics, but was frequently forced to defend itself.Mario Natalucci, Ancona attraverso i secoli – Dalle origini alla fine del Quattrocento, Unione arti grafiche, 1961. Venice never succeeded in subduing Ancona, despite a series of military expeditions, trade wars, and naval blockades.Frederic Chapin Lane. Venice, A Maritime Republic, JHU Press, 1973 (p. 63).
Ancona was strong enough to resist attack by the Holy Roman Empire on three occasions, as the Empire sought to reassert its authority over Ancona and all Italian communes. In 1137 Ancona was besieged by Emperor Lothair II, in 1167 by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and once more in 1174. In that year, Christian I, archbishop of Mainz and the Emperor's archchancellor, joined with Venice to besiege Ancona but were forced to retreat. The Venetians deployed numerous galleys and the galleon Totus Mundus in the port of Ancona, while imperial troops laid siege from the land. After some months of dramatic resistance, the Anconitans were able to send a small contingent to Emilia-Romagna to ask for help. Troops from Ferrara and Bertinoro arrived to save the city and repelled the imperial troops and the Venetians in battle.
In the struggle between the popes and the Holy Roman Emperors that troubled the Italian Peninsula from the 12th century onwards, Ancona sided with the Guelphs.
Originally named (Latin for "Anconitan community"), Ancona had an independence de facto: Pope Alexander III (around 1100–1181) declared it a free city within the Papal States; Pope Eugene IV confirmed the legal position defined by his predecessor and on 2 September 1443 officially declared it a republic, with the name ;The act, with the name of Liber croceus magnus, is preserved at Ancona State Archive almost simultaneously Ragusa was officially called "republic", Josip Vrandečić, Miroslav Bertoša, Dalmacija, Dubrovnik i Istra u ranome novom vijeku, Barbat, 2007 (p. 17); James Stewart, Croatia, New Holland Publishers, 2006 (p. 285) confirming the fraternal bond that united the two Adriatic ports.
Unlike other cities of central and northern Italy, Ancona never became a seignory. The Malatesta took the city in 1348, taking advantage of the Black Death and a fire that had destroyed many of its important buildings. The Malatesta were ousted in 1383.
Pope Clement VII, under the false pretext of an imminent attack on the city by the Ottoman Turks, offered to add new fortifications to the Citadel on Colle Astagno at the papacy's expense and sent the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. This was in fact a pretext for papal troops to occupy Ancona, as Clement was anxious to replenish the empty coffers of the papacy after the Sack of Rome in 1527. On 19 September 1532, Ancona was occupied and, as papal troops in the Citadel aimed their cannons at the city and its main access roads, was forced to unconditionally surrender its independence; with an ante litteram coup d'état, Pope Clement VII put an end to de facto freedom, thus placing the city under the direct dominion of the Papal States.
Communities in the Republic
Ancona had Greek, Albanian, Dalmatian, Armenian, Turkish and Jewish communities.Marina Massa, Il patrimonio disperso: il "caso" esemplare di Carlo Crivelli, Regione Marche, 1999 (p. 214).
Ancona, as well as Venice, became a very important destination for merchants from the Ottoman Empire during the 16th century. The Greeks formed the largest of the communities of foreign merchants. They were refugees from former Byzantine or Venetian territories that were occupied by the Ottomans in the late 15th and 16th centuries. The first Greek community was established in Ancona early in the 16th century. At the opening of the 16th century there were 200 Greek families in Ancona.Mario Natralucci, Ancona durante i secoli, 1960. Most of them came from northwestern Greece, i.e. the Ionian Islands and Epirus. In 1514, Dimitri Caloiri of Ioannina obtained reduced customs duties for Greek merchants coming from the towns of Ioannina, Arta and Avlona in Epirus. In 1518 a Jewish merchant of Avlona succeeded in lowering the duties paid in Ancona for all "the Levantine merchants, subjects to the Turk".Jan W. Woś, La comunità greca di Ancona alla fine del secolo XVI, Tipografia Sonciniana, 1979
In 1531 the Confraternity of the Greeks () was established, which included Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Greeks. They secured the use of the Church of St. Anna dei Greci and were granted permission to hold services according to the Greek and the Latin rite. The church of St. Anna had existed since the 13th century, initially as "Santa Maria in Porta Cipriana," on the ruins of the ancient Greek walls of Ancona.
In 1534 a decision by Pope Paul III favoured the activity of merchants of all nationalities and religions from the Levant and allowed them to settle in Ancona with their families. A Venetian travelling through Ancona in 1535 recorded that the city was "full of merchants from every nation and mostly Greeks and Turks." In the second half of the 16th century, the presence of Greek and other merchants from the Ottoman Empire declined after a series of restrictive measures taken by the Italian authorities and the pope.