THE WORLD'S FIRST MODERN, PUBLIC BANK

By Vincent Boland
On March 2 1408, eight men gathered in the great hall of the Casa di San Giorgio, a trading house on what was then the main street in Genoa, a few metres from where the waters of the Ligurian Sea lap the Italian shore. They were merchants, rich and powerful representatives of the city's most influential families, and they were meeting to discuss a matter of the utmost gravity. The once-glorious republic of Genoa had fallen on hard times. After years of war with Venice and a crushing defeat at the battle of Chioggia in 1381, the state was effectively bankrupt. The task was to rescue it.
A few months earlier, towards the end of 1407, Genoa's Council of Ancients had authorised the Casa di San Giorgio to carry out this job. It would be accomplished by creating a bank that would facilitate the repayment of Genoa's debts in return for interest at 7 per cent and the right to collect taxes and customs owed to the city. The purpose of the meeting that spring day was to declare the Banco di San Giorgio open for business.
The great hall, an enormous room on the first floor, is part of the Casa di San Giorgio's original building that survives today. It is lined by a gallery of statues of the founders of the Casa and their successors, who, to all intents and purposes, were the forerunners of today's merchant bankers. Literally, they were merchants who made themselves bankers. At least one of them – Rabella de Grimaldis – was a member of a dynasty that survives to this day. The Banco di San Giorgio would, in time, become as powerful as the republic that created it – more powerful, according to Niccolò Machiavelli. It would survive for nearly 400 years. It would become the world's first modern, public bank, not just a forerunner of the Bank of England but its prototype. From the 15th to the 18th century its coffers were filled with the riches of Genoese capitalists all over Europe. Christopher Columbus, Genoa's most illustrious son, would be a customer.
Given its origins, purpose and longevity, one would expect the Banco di San Giorgio to be more celebrated than it is. Yet almost nobody today knows what it did, or that it existed at all. In histories of modern banking and finance, Italy's pioneering role is widely acknowledged and the city of Genoa, which had a more advanced banking infrastructure than Venice or Florence, usually gets its due. But the Banco di San Giorgio hardly gets a mention. In The Ascent of Money, his wide-ranging history of finance, Niall Ferguson makes one reference to it. Tim Parks, the author of Medici Money, an account of the rise and fall of the Medici family and its financial empire in Florence in the 15th century, doesn't refer to it at all. Nor does J.K. Galbraith, the American economist, in A History of Economics.
There are a couple of reasons for this lacuna but the most important is that the bank's archives, which have lain mostly unexplored at various locations around Genoa for more than two centuries, were not readily accessible. These records – thousands of books, ledgers, folios and statements documenting nearly every transaction that the Banco di San Giorgio undertook between 1407, when it was incorporated, and 1805, when it was shut down – are written in Latin, in a beautiful script that appears to have changed little over four centuries. Parts of the archive's most striking and illuminating texts – including a letter, dated 1502, from Columbus to the bank's officers – are stored in a handsome former convent that houses the Genoese state archives in a little side street atop a steep rise, where the city reaches up to look out over the sea. The bulk of the bank's records are elsewhere – in a chilly, dimly lit warehouse on the outskirts of the city.
For the past 30 years, Giuseppe Felloni has devoted much of his time to a study of the bank's archives – uncovering and cataloguing the collection of nearly 40,000 books that amount to a day-to-day record of its existence. Felloni is fluent in Latin, and he can read the tiny script and follow the impenetrable internal logic of the transactions. And now that his obsessive scholarship has been completed, he is intent on restoring the Banco di San Giorgio to its rightful place, as he sees it, in the history books.
. . .
It is Felloni's contention that what he has discovered in these archives will transform our understanding of the origins of modern finance and banking, and perhaps even of capitalism itself. Many of the concepts and practices that are commonplace today were, Felloni argues, pioneered or improved upon by the Banco di San Giorgio. They include the issuing and management of government debt, double-entry book-keeping, sinking funds – funds into which payments are made so that a particular debt can be repaid – the role in financial transactions of the clearing house, which wasn't adapted in England until the 18th century, and the organisation and conduct of lotteries.
The Banco di San Giorgio was not the first bank to be established in Europe. A form of banking had been practised in Genoa and elsewhere in Italy since the middle of the 12th century. In 1401, a bank – the Taula de la Ciutat – was founded in Barcelona, in effect to act as the treasury of the government of Catalonia. The Medici are generally regarded, certainly – and, Felloni argues, mistakenly – in the Anglo-Saxon world, as the summit of Italian achievement in banking and finance. But, says Felloni, were historians to visit the archives of the Banco di San Giorgio, they would have to return to their universities and rewrite their histories of the making of the modern world to give this institution its due.
Giuseppe Felloni turned 80 in March. Tall and slim, with a full head of grey hair and exceptional manners, he is an emeritus professor at the University of Genoa, where he has taught the history of economics for much of his academic career. In 2004, he first published his discoveries in a book co-authored with his collaborator Guido Laura, titled, somewhat tentatively, Genoa and the History of Finance: A Series of Firsts? It can be downloaded at his personal website – and he has created another site that will eventually offer a virtual tour of the archive's most striking exhibits.
“Of course, you can write a history of modern finance without visiting the archives of the Banco di San Giorgio, and it has been done,” Felloni told me recently as we stood in the rain on Genoa's seafront outside the building that used to house the Casa di San Giorgio. “If you read English histories, the sinking fund was an English invention. But it was being practised in Genoa 400 years earlier, and now that we have opened the archive, the evidence is here for all to see. The Banco di San Giorgio invented many of the instruments that are still practised today, and the archives prove that.”
Felloni lists 10 innovations (see below) documented in the records of the bank and elsewhere in the Genoese state archives that he regards as pioneering. These innovations contain, as he puts it, “the embryos of several financial institutions still in existence today”.
Felloni speaks carefully and fluently about his discoveries, yet he can come across as shy. I spent three days with him on three visits to Genoa. Once or twice I got the impression that he was hesitant about what he has seen in the archives, as if the findings might be a little late and a little too arcane to insist on their importance to an indifferent world, and that it was sufficient that he himself acknowledge what he has found.
. . .
Guido Laura, who introduced me to Felloni, seems to recognise the professor's hesitation. Acting as a sort of Boswell to Felloni's Johnson, the younger man is pushing Felloni to write an entirely new history of the origins of banking that would put his findings from the archives at the centre of the story. “Don't you think that would be a good idea?” Laura, a businessman who divides his time between Genoa and London, asked me one day as we drove in Felloni's car from one archive to the other.
Felloni is not arguing that existing accounts of the emergence of modern finance are inaccurate. His point is that they are incomplete. In the introduction to his book, Felloni writes: “Regarding Genoa's claims to being first… my greatest wish is that these claims should lead to further research elsewhere. Whatever the findings might be – favourable to these theses or not – such research would serve only to further enrich and benefit our historical knowledge.”
At the heart of Felloni's argument is his feeling – one I have the impression is shared among Italian historians – that British and American accounts of the history of banking give too little credit to the diverse origins of modern banking in Italy, and especially in the Genoa of the Middle Ages, and too much credit to Florence in the age of the Medici. Felloni is adamant that Genoa and Venice were far more important as banking centres in the 15th century than Florence. Indeed, as Tim Parks has written: “The Medici invented nothing in banking practice.”
(To be continued)

世界第一家现代化银行（上）
作者：英国《金融时报》文森特•博兰(Vincent Boland)
1408年3月2日，八名男子个人聚集在热那亚主要街道上的交易所——圣乔治大楼(Casa di San Giorgio)的大厅内，离交易所数米处就是利古里亚海，可以听到海水拍打意大利海岸的声响。八人都是商人，金钱和权势让他们成为城市最具影响力家族的代表。他们会聚于此，讨论一个极其严肃的问题。时世艰难，一度辉煌的热那亚共和国已经衰落。热那亚与威尼斯共和国交战多年，并于1381年在基奥贾战役中遭受毁灭性打击，热那亚实际上已经破产。八人的任务就是拯救它。
几个月前，也就是在1407年年末，热那亚长老议会(Council of Ancients)授权圣乔治大楼执行这个工作。建立一家银行，帮助热那亚偿还债务，这个任务就算完成了，回报是银行获得7%的利息，以及收取欠这座城市的税收和关税。春季这一天的会议，目的是宣布圣乔治银行(Banco di San Giorgio)开业。
底楼宽敞的大厅是圣乔治原始大楼的一部分。这座至今巍然耸立的大楼走廊内，成列着大楼创始人及其继承人的塑像，他们可谓当今商业银行家的前辈。事实上，他们本来是商人，后来自己转型做了银行家。至少，他们之中有一人是参与建立一个朝代的成员之一，而且这个朝代一直延续至今，此人便是拉贝拉•德•格里马尔蒂斯(Rabella de Grimaldis)。尼科洛•马基雅维里(Niccolò Machiavelli)称，圣乔治银行最终和创建它的热那亚共和国变得一样强大，甚至更加强大。它将在今后近400年里继续生存下去。它将成为全球首家现代上市银行，不仅是英格兰银行的前辈，而且还是英格兰银行创建的原型。15世纪至18世纪期间，它的金库中存满了欧洲各地热那亚资本家的财富。热那亚最杰出的后裔克里斯托弗•哥伦布(Christopher Columbus)也是其客户。
鉴于它的出身、创立目的及悠久的历史，你或许会认为它会比现在更出名。但当今，几乎没有人知道它的功绩，甚至根本不知道它存在过。在现代银行和金融的历史中，意大利的先驱角色博得了广泛的认可，而比威尼斯或佛罗伦萨拥有更先进的银行基础设施的热那亚，通常也能得到了其应有的赞赏。但圣乔治银行却很难被人们提起。在涉猎广泛的金融史《金钱的崛起》(The Ascent of Money)一书中，作者尼尔•弗格森(Niall Ferguson)提了它一次。蒂姆•帕克斯(Tim Parks)的著作《美第奇金钱》(Medici Money)讲述了15世纪佛罗伦萨美第奇家族和其金融帝国的兴衰，但书中对圣乔治银行只字未提。同样，美国经济学家J•K•加尔布雷思(J.K. Galbraith)在《经济学史》(A History of Economics)一书中也没有提到它。
出现这种空白现象的原因有很多，但最重要的一个是，在热那亚周围各地尘封了2个多世纪之久的银行档案并不容易得到。这些记录——成千书籍、账目、对开文件和对账单记载着在1407年创立以来至1805年倒闭期间进行的几乎每一笔交易——都是用漂亮的拉丁文写下的，四个多世纪以来，这些字迹并没有多大变化。档案里最瞩目最耀眼的记录——包括1502年哥伦布给银行官员写的一封信，有一部分被收藏在一座漂亮的前修道院内。这座修道院位于陡峭斜坡上的一个小巷子上，专门收藏热那亚共和国的档案。从这里向外眺望，可以看到大海。银行记录大部分存放在其它地方——城市郊区一个阴冷、昏暗的仓库内。
过去30年里，朱塞佩•费罗尼(Giuseppe Felloni)已将大量时间花在了研究银行的档案上——研究收集到的近4万本书并将其编目，这些书记录了银行的日常活动。费罗尼精通拉丁语，还能读懂小型手稿，能理解交易令人费解的内在逻辑。既然他已执着地完成了对这些档案的研究，他决定按照他的想法，恢复圣乔治银行在历史书籍中应有的地位。
…
费罗尼的论点是，他在这些档案中发现的成果将改变我们对现代金融和银行起源、甚至资本主义本身的起源的理解。费罗尼认为，当今盛行的许多概念和惯例，都是由圣乔治银行发起或改进的，包括政府债券的发行和管理、复式记账法、偿债基金——为偿还一个特殊债务而设立的基金，这是清算行在金融交易中起的作用，直到18世纪英国才开始采用，以及彩票的组织和实行。
圣乔治银行并非欧洲建立的第一家银行。自12世纪中叶开始，意大利热那亚和其它地区就已开始实行一种早期银行模式。1401年，一家名为Taula de la Ciutat的银行成立于巴塞罗那，实际上是充当加泰罗尼亚政府国库的作用。当然，费罗尼错误地认为，在盎格鲁-撒克逊世界，人们普遍认为美第奇家族是意大利银行和金融业的顶峰。但他说，要是历史学家们浏览了圣乔治银行的档案，他们准会回到大学，重新改写他们眼中现代世界发展过程的历史，给予圣乔治银行应得的赞赏。
今年3月，朱塞佩•费罗尼步入仗朝之年。这位又高又瘦的老人是热那亚大学荣誉退休教授，满头灰发，礼貌有加，他学术生涯的大部分时间都在这所大学教授经济学史。2004年，他和搭档吉多•拉乌拉(Guido Laura)合作了一本著作，书名暂定为《热那亚及金融史：一系列的第一次？》(Genoa and the History of Finance: A Series of Firsts?)，在书中首次发表了他的发现成果。这本书可在他的个人网站上下载——而且，他还建立了另一个网站，这个网站最终会让访客进行一趟虚拟旅行，欣赏档案中最瞩目的展品。
最近一次，天下着雨，我和费罗尼站在热那亚海滨一度为圣乔治银行大楼的建筑外。“当然，没有看圣乔治银行的档案，你也可以写一本现代金融史，而且人们也是这么做的，”他告诉我说。“如果你看英国人的历史，那么偿还基金的发明专利就是英国人的。但早400多年前，热那亚就已开始使用偿还基金了，既然我们打开了档案文件，证据就显而易见了。圣乔治银行发明了许多沿用至今的金融工具，档案可以证明一切。”
费罗尼列出了10个他认为具有开拓性的新发明（见下文），这些发明都被记载在银行和热那亚国家档案馆内的记录中。用他的话说，这些新发明包括“几个至今仍旧存在的金融工具的雏形”。
费罗尼认真流利地讲述着他的发现，但他给我的印象却是个腼腆的人。在对热那亚的3次访问中，我和他相处了3天。偶尔，他给我的感觉是，他对在档案中发现的结果吞吞吐吐，似乎这些结果来得有点晚，同时又有些太过于神秘，也不好坚持认为这对冷淡的世人很重要；而且他觉得自己一人认可他的发现就足够了。
…
介绍我认识费罗尼的吉多•拉乌拉似乎看出了教授的犹豫。吉多•拉乌拉有点像是费罗尼的传记作家，拉乌拉比教授年轻，迫切想让费罗尼写一段银行业起源的全新历史，让他把从档案中发现的成果成为本书的中心。“难道你不认为这是个好主意吗？”一天，我们驾着费罗尼的车从一个档案馆赶往另一个档案馆，拉乌拉这样问我。他是一个商人，在热那亚和伦敦之间来回奔波。
费罗尼并不是说，现有的现代金融起源的描述不确切。他的观点是描述不完整。费罗尼在自己著作的前言中写道：“关于热那亚是第一的说法……我最大的愿望是这些说法应能引发其它地方的进一步研究。无论结果怎样——是否有利于这些论点——这种研究只会进一步丰富我们的历史，对我们的历史知识有益。”
费罗尼的论点中心是他的感觉——给我的印象是，意大利史学家都有这种感觉，即英美对银行史的阐述中，很少会将起源归因于意大利现代银行业的多种起源，特别是中世纪的热那亚，而把过多的功劳都归功给了美第奇时代的佛罗伦萨。费罗尼坚信，在15世纪，热那亚和威尼斯作为银行业中心的地位要远比佛罗伦萨重要。确实，正如蒂姆•帕克斯所写的那样：“美第奇家族在银行实务方面什么也没发明。”
(待续)

译者/红岭

文森特•博兰是《金融时报》驻米兰记者。费罗尼的著作可在www.giuseppefelloni.it上下载。你可以在www.lacasadisangiorgio.it上展开一次档案馆虚拟之旅。
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