| Sumario: | This study reconstructs two fifteenth-century lawsuits introduced by merchants attacked by the Genoese pirate Sologrus de Nigro, who was active in the Mediterranean between 1397 and 1401. Both actions sought compensation in civil damages, or restitution, from parties the litigants regarded as responsible for de Nigro's actions, in the first case the commune of Genoa and in the second the Order of Knights Hospitallers. Neither suit appears to have been successful. This article argues that these outcomes derived from distinctions recognized throughout the medieval Mediterranean between unlicensed pirates like de Nigro and corsairs, who interrupted shipping with the sanction of European territorial states. It suggests that restitution represented a source of tension between commercial agents and political authority in fifteenth-century Europe.
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