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The Goudelis family in Italy after the Fall of Constantinople*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Jonathan Harris*
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London

Extract

Two letters from the Vatican Registers for 1461–2, regarding funds lodged in the Bank of St George in Genoa by George Goudelis, are presented. The investment was originally intended to provide an income for the convent of St Nicholas in Constantinople but Goudelis made a proviso that if the city were to fall to the Turks, it should be used to sustain the poor. His son Manuel and granddaughter, Maria, were now petitioning the pope to have the money released to support their families. The differences between the two letters are discussed as is their significance for late Byzantine prosopography.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 2009

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University for its hospitality, Andrea Nanetti for his help and advice on the transcription of the documents presented here, and Dionysios Stathakopoulos for pointing out an important reference that I had missed. Any mistakes that remain are my own.

References

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31 MM II, 549; Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit, no. 4343.

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33 Sphrantzes, 33.6, p. 122, 37.3, p. 144; trans. Philippides, 65, 74.

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36 Document 2 has ‘filia’.

37 I.e. Andreas Trapezuntio.

38 Document 1 has ‘mulier’.

39 Words in brackets are missing from Document 1.

40 Words in brackets are missing from Document 1.

41 Ms has ‘vestre’.