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Republic of Venice
Most Serene Republic of Venice Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia | |||||||||
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| 697–1797 | |||||||||
 Flag
 Coat of arms
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 Republic of Venice, 1789 | |||||||||
| Status | Maritime republic | ||||||||
| Capital | Venice | ||||||||
| Common languages | Venetian, Latin and Italian | ||||||||
| Other languages | Dalmatian, Istro-Romanian, Medieval Greek | ||||||||
| Religion | Catholic | ||||||||
| Government | Republic | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Established | 697 | ||||||||
• Disestablished | May 16 1797 | ||||||||
| Currency | Venetian lira | ||||||||
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The Most Serene Republic of Venice (in Venetian, Serenìsima Repùblega de Venèsia) was a city-state located in northern Italy, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, which later brought under its rule all the Venetians of the Triveneto, Istria and Dalmatia. Its capital was the city of Venice. It existed as an independent State from the 9th century until 1797. It is also known as the Most Serene Republic of Saint Mark.
The Serenissima gradually took shape as a State during the Middle Ages and became one of the world's leading economic powers, holding a preponderant place in the trade between the Western Mediterranean and the Eastern. In addition, with its oligarchic institutions, remarkably stable for almost a millennium, it played an essential political role.
From the 16th century onward it underwent a phase of political and territorial decline, though partly masked by an extraordinary artistic development, until it disappeared in 1797, after 1,100 years of existence, defeated by Napoleon, subsequently coming under the rule of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy.
History
Origins
The founding date of the City of Venice is held to be the year 421, at the height of the decline of the Western Roman Empire, when the inhabitants of the region, faced with the threat of invasions by the Lombards and Huns, who had destroyed the capital of Roman Venetia, Aquileia, took refuge in the marshes at the mouth of the Po River, in the lagoon located in the gulf between the Italian Peninsula and the Balkan, later called precisely the Gulf of Venice.
The constructions of this first period were simple lake dwellings, erected on stilts and set on islets located in the Venetian Lagoon. Because of this strategic geographic feature, Venice enjoyed from then on great independence from its neighbors thanks to the natural barrier of the Po marshes, followed by a chain of islands in a deep lagoon, which prevented any attack by cavalry or infantry, all the more so at a time when the art of shipbuilding was in full decline in Europe.
Dependence on the Byzantine Empire
General Belisarius conquered much of Italy for the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century, and Venice became part of that empire's dominion, depending administratively on the city of Ravenna, which was the seat of imperial power in the Italian Peninsula, governed by a military officer, the magister militum,[1] and subordinate to him were the tribunes who exercised political authority in their districts.[2] Legendary history holds that, to replace these tribunes, Paolo Lucio Anafesto was elected the first doge in the year 697, though his identity has never been verified. However, the first historical doge emerged from the revolt in the Exarchate of Ravenna against the iconoclasm of the Byzantine Emperor and against the magister militum; in those circumstances the Venetian Orso Ipato was elected doge in 727. Once the Ravenna revolt had been suppressed, the Byzantine Emperor recognized the doge and granted him the title of hypatos (consul). Nevertheless, Venice remained a province of the Exarchate of Ravenna, and the magister militum continued to be appointed. With the Lombard conquest of the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Province of Venice remained alone under the government of the doge Orso Ipato, as an autonomous ruler maintaining loyalty to the Byzantine Empire.[3]
Independence and expansion
Original Venetian core
Expansion up to the 15th century
Later acquisitions
Temporary possessions
The Lombard conquest of Ravenna did not include Venice, because the Venetian geographic situation made a Lombard attack very difficult; on the contrary, Lombards and Byzantines took advantage of Venice's location as a primary hub of trade. Venice took advantage of the decline of Byzantine and Lombard power in the 9th century to act in an increasingly independent manner with the Franks of the young Carolingian Empire and with the Slavs, without fully following the dictates of Byzantium. With the recovery of Byzantine initiative in Italy in the time of Basil I, he granted the Venetian doge the title of protospatharios, placing him on a par with the imperial family.[4]
Venice's location in a natural lagoon made attempts to conquer it difficult and risky, since European naval art in the Late Middle Ages was very poorly developed. It was precisely the Venetian sailors who contributed to the development of shipbuilding in Europe, out of reasons of primary necessity: Venice possessed a very small mainland territory, so its main source of subsistence was trade in the Adriatic, and as a result the encouragement of maritime navigation had become a necessity and, at the same time, a source of political and financial power.
On the other hand, growing Byzantine weakness made it difficult for the emperors of Constantinople to effectively control distant Venice, so Byzantium recognized it de facto as an independent State from the end of the 9th century, while its neighbors in Carolingian Italy were in no position to impose their rule on it.
In the Early Middle Ages, Venice prospered thanks to the profits from controlling trade with the Orient, expanding across the Adriatic Sea, roughly from 991 with the reign of the doge Pietro II Orseolo, under whose rule Venetian expansion along the coasts of Dalmatia began, driving out Arabs and Dalmatians in various military expeditions and taking control of strategic points in the Adriatic that served as ports or fortresses.
The fact that very few countries of the time possessed the naval knowledge of the Venetians favored them in the development of a merchant and military fleet that was very large for its time, which they used to set up trading posts in every corner of the Eastern Mediterranean, making contact with the Aghlabid Arabs of North Africa with ostensible plans for trade and not conquest, which allowed Venetian merchants to access North African markets.
In fact, since the political-military expansion of the Byzantine Empire was concentrated on land routes, the court of Constantinople readily left the Mediterranean islands to the mercantile ambition of the Venetians, who used them as commercial outposts toward Asia Minor and North Africa. The successful Venetian territorial expansion was made manifest in the mid-11th century in a papal bull that recognized Venetian sovereignty over the entire eastern coast of the Adriatic.
Venice's location in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea allowed it an active mercantile role between Byzantium and the rest of Europe; moreover, its location at the northern end of the Adriatic protected it from maritime attacks owing to its military dominance over Dalmatia. These circumstances increased Venetian power at a time when merchant fleets in the Mediterranean (both Christian and Muslim) were still very few. Nevertheless, other Italian maritime republics began to compete openly with Venice, such as the Republic of Pisa, Amalfi and Genoa.
The Venetians in particular maintained a fierce commercial and military rivalry with the Republic of Genoa, located in the far northwest of Italy, which gradually increased its commercial influence in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Despite the growth of Genoese power between the 14th and 15th centuries, Venice was able to maintain its commercial hegemony over Genoa in the long term.
Another key factor in Venetian commercial success was the religious and social tolerance of the Venetian Republic toward Jews and Muslims. Indeed, this tolerance of the Venetians in religious matters allowed them to trade freely with the Islamic countries of North Africa, serving as valuable intermediaries between them and Europe, without religious differences posing any obstacle to commercial relations. Likewise, Venice put commercial relations ahead of politics, and thanks to this, after the fall of the Aghlabids in 909, Venetian merchants maintained contact with their successors of the Fatimid Caliphate.
Likewise, the spirit of enterprise and greed were too powerful for them to refuse, out of religious scruples, to resume their commercial relations with Africa and Syria, even though these were in the hands of the "infidels." From the end of the 9th century, they carried out increasingly intense commercial activities such as, for example, the export to the harems of Syria and Egypt of young female slaves whom they would abduct or buy on the Dalmatian coast—it is well known that the word slave is equivalent or synonymous with the word Slav—or the export of construction timber and iron, materials scarce in Islamic countries.[5]
At the same time, a similar policy was followed with regard to Judaism, as Jewish merchants were granted freedom of settlement in Venetian territory, which allowed them to engage in trade and industry without restrictions, in addition to benefiting Venice by giving it privileged access to the networks of financial contacts maintained by Jewish communities throughout Europe.
In the same way, the Protestant Reformation of the early 16th century found little acceptance among the population of Venice, but it did not prevent the Venetians from maintaining excellent commercial relations with countries of Northern Europe that had embraced Protestantism, despite pressure from the Papal States and Spain during the Counter-Reformation. Although from the early 16th century the Holy See had tried to get Venice to establish the Tribunal of the Inquisition in its dominions, the Venetian rulers refused to apply in practice any measure that would deprive them of their commercial relations with non-Catholics, preserving their financial contacts with the Kingdom of England and the Protestant cities of northern Germany.
Height of the Republic
After the year 1100, Venice was already a great Mediterranean power in economic, political and military terms, to the point that it could offer its services as a naval fleet to the Byzantine Empire itself and thereby gain exceptional commercial privileges in Constantinople, the greatest commercial center of Europe in those years, using for this purpose a combination of diplomacy and mercantile power.
The intermediary role of the Venetians allowed them to exercise almost complete control over European trade with the Near East, while the Muslim kingdoms of the Mediterranean also turned to Venice as a commercial intermediary with the rest of Europe. The Venetian Republic, more interested in preserving international trade than in religious or military expansion, appeared as the ideal mercantile intermediary for the Mediterranean kingdoms of any religion from the 12th century onward, which allowed Venice to accumulate great wealth and gain commercial advantages.
The Venetian fleet, because of its power and great size, was decisive in carrying out the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade in 1204, thereby accelerating the decline of the Byzantine Empire. As a consequence of severe Byzantine weakness, Venice managed to annex Crete and Euboea at the beginning of the 13th century, further expanding its power and wealth, with Venetian merchant fleets even establishing trading bases on the shores of the Black Sea, specifically on the present-day coast of Crimea. This expansion into the territories of Kievan Rus' enabled Venetian merchants to establish themselves at the westernmost points of Asian trade, thereby gaining important access to the valuable products traded along the Silk Road from China. This extremely important commercial advantage, nonexistent for other European countries of the time, was exploited excellently by the Venetians.
In 1380 Venice defeated in battle its recent commercial competitor, the Republic of Genoa, a city that thereafter limited its expansion to the Western Mediterranean, although it remained a commercial competitor of the Venetians for several more centuries in the Black Sea area. By the year 1400 the Adriatic Sea had become the "Mare veneziano," from Corfu (Ionian Islands under Venetian rule) to the Po River, while the possessions of the "Stato da Mar" reached the islands of Crete (Kingdom of Candia) and Euboea (Triarchy of Negroponte), several islands of the Aegean Sea and numerous enclaves in the Balkans (Venetian Albania). The Venetian fleets maintained active trade with the entire Mediterranean and extended their network of mercantile contacts throughout Europe and the Near East, including areas as distant as Transylvania, Poland or Syria, and making contact in northern Europe with the Hanseatic League. As the Republic possessed the first banks of medieval Europe, thanks to bills of exchange, Venetian merchants maintained financial ties from England to Egypt. The city of Venice itself, capital of the Republic, had 180,000 inhabitants and was the second most populous city in Europe, surpassed only by Paris, and was one of the richest cities in the world; there were about 2.1 million subjects spread across the Venetian possessions.
Later, in 1416 Venice defeated the Ottoman Turks at Gallipoli, securing for a century its maritime dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean despite the land expansion of the Ottoman Empire.
The height of Venice reached its zenith in the first half of the 15th century, when the Venetians began their territorial expansion on land in Italy, in response to the threatening advance of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the ambitious Duke of Milan. By 1410, Venice ruled most of the Veneto, including cities such as Verona, Padua and Udine, and later Rovigo, Brescia and Bergamo, forming a territory collectively called the "Domini di Terraferma," and controlling a fleet of 300 warships, plus some 3,000 merchant vessels stationed since the early 12th century at the Arsenal of Venice, a shipyard and naval base that was a core element of Venetian nautical power, where up to 17,000 workers were employed.
The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 marked the beginning of financial and political problems for Venice. The naval expansion of Portugal along the Atlantic coast of Africa and the discovery of America by Spain shifted the focus of the great commercial currents from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean, so that Venetian commercial traffic began to lose importance in Europe slowly but inevitably. Moreover, Venice was forced to sustain an exhausting struggle against the young Ottoman Empire, which had already become a world power. Although at first Venetian merchants retained before the Ottoman Empire the privileges granted by the Byzantines, war became inevitable owing to Ottoman land expansion from 1470, which threatened the commercial enclaves of Venice. In 1489, Venice conquered the crusader State of Cyprus, but this was more an attempt to block Ottoman power than to increase its own conquests.
Expansion in Italy brought them into conflict with the Pope over control of Romagna. To counter the Republic of Venice, Pope Julius II assembled the League of Cambrai in 1508. It included Louis XII of France, Emperor Maximilian I of Austria and Ferdinand II the Catholic. Venice suffered a great defeat in May 1509 at the Battle of Agnadello, which forever halted any Venetian attempt at expansion in the Italian Peninsula. In any case, Venice managed to win the War of the League of Cambrai in 1516, retaining most of its land and maritime dominions.
Reduction of Venetian power
From 1470 the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans began to worry the Venetians; in 1499–1503 a costly war against the Turks (who by 1480 had already reached the shores of the Adriatic) ended only when Venice ceded Mediterranean territories to the Ottoman Empire. In 1538 the Venetians were again defeated in battle by the Ottoman fleet at Preveza, and this confirmed Turkey's naval predominance in the Eastern Mediterranean, coinciding with the height of the Ottoman Empire. In 1570, Cyprus suffered the Turkish invasion, and a year later the Venetians abandoned the island, unable to stop the Ottoman attack. The alliance of the Venetian, papal and Spanish fleets, although it defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, failed to recover these territories, partly because, while Spain saw a potential Mediterranean ally in Venice, it was not willing to support with Spanish troops a new Venetian colonial expansion.
Having already accepted Turkish naval supremacy, Venice strove to maintain its commercial activity throughout the 17th century, observing a careful neutrality toward its more powerful neighbors: Spain, the Ottoman Empire and France. The Portuguese spice trade from India from the 16th century onward severely affected the centuries-old Venetian monopoly of the spice trade in Europe, all the more because of the Portuguese colonial expansion into areas of Africa and Asia that were inaccessible to the Venetians. Venice was also economically eclipsed by the wealth of Spain and its viceregal empire, as well as by the great overseas commercial expansion of England and Holland, based on Atlantic Ocean routes that greatly diminished the commercial influence of Venice, reduced to a less wealthy Mediterranean where it had to compete with other great powers.
Venetian weakness was confirmed when the Ottomans began the invasion of the Island of Crete in 1645, threatening the last great Venetian colony. Ottoman troops completed the conquest of Crete in 1669 after a costly 25-year war (characterized by the long Siege of Candia), in which Venice retained possession only of small Cretan and Balkan enclaves, such as the Principality of Omis, which under the command of Prince Marko Srdanovic resisted the Turkish siege in the year 1624.
In 1684 Venice launched a new war against the Ottoman Empire, allied with Austria and Russia, attempting to recover its lost possessions; in this situation Venetian troops expelled the Turks from Dalmatia, conquered the Peloponnese and succeeded in taking Athens from the Ottomans. The war ended in 1699 with the Treaty of Karlowitz, which greatly favored Austria and Russia to the detriment of the Ottoman Empire and recognized the conquests of Venice, but did not give it the Mediterranean ports so necessary for its trade.
The Venetian situation became complicated again when another war against the Ottomans broke out in 1714; this time the military alliance with Austria did not prevent Venice, after the Treaty of Passarowitz of 1718, from having to return the Peloponnese to the Ottomans and hand over its last enclaves in Crete, now retaining only the Ionian Islands and the enclaves of Preveza and Arta on the coast of Epirus.
By the 18th century, the Most Serene Republic was no more than a pale shadow of its former power; trade in the Mediterranean was now shared with Genoa and Livorno (which were under Spanish protection and therefore less exposed to Ottoman attacks), while in 1719 Austria declared its possession of Trieste a free port and thus avoided Venetian mercantile intermediation; so much commercial competition further reduced the Republic's sources of wealth.
Decline in the 18th century
Venice entered into open political and financial decline at the beginning of the 18th century, while the Venetian aristocracy remained in government as a closed core that prevented the bourgeoisie from rising socially, even prohibiting the purchase of the status of patrician: in this period politics was completely dominated by old aristocratic families such as the Bragadin, Dandolo and Mocenigo.
Meanwhile, the number of impoverished aristocrats (the "barnaboti") with political rights in the Republic increased, and they became a costly financial burden for the government, since they received a state pension to subsist. This happened because in the 18th century Venice had no relevant international trade or notable colonial expansion in which such aristocrats could create any wealth, all the more so since these aristocrats disdained working in bourgeois occupations and the local bureaucracy was already overstaffed. Nevertheless, the accelerated decline in the economy and politics gave way to the cultural vitality that did emerge with the bourgeois Antonio Vivaldi (music), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (painting) and Carlo Goldoni (theater).
Unable to face its new competitors in Mediterranean trade (and in the Adriatic itself) successfully, without large-scale industries and without rich colonies to sustain the State, the Republic found a new vein of wealth in the lottery and games of chance, as well as in officially tolerated prostitution, attracting wealthy visitors from all over Europe to Venice, along with performances of opera, theater and other entertainments aimed at foreigners. By 1797 there were as many as 176 legal casinos in the capital, and public festivities (including the Carnival of Venice) followed one another throughout the year almost without pause, while Venetian aristocrats hired opera singers, actors and musicians from all corners of Europe for the performances.
At the same time, the Domini di Terraferma remained tied to an agriculture of little significance that prevented it from meeting fiscal needs, in addition to becoming a market for Austrian products that eliminated Venetian competition. For their part, the few possessions of the Stato da Mar only served a diminished trade with Balkan territories under Ottoman control, catering to a market lacking great wealth.
In practice, the tourist attractions of gambling and prostitution were the main source of revenue received by the Venetian treasury to sustain itself from 1750, besides depending on the granting of public offices to an aristocracy of dwindling wealth. In contrast, the Venetian merchant fleet consisted in 1792 of only 309 vessels, almost a tenth of what it had been at its height three centuries earlier.
Despite the rapid impoverishment of the population and the deterioration of the economy, Venice still ruled part of the Adriatic coast and some of the Ionian Islands, but these possessions were minuscule compared with the former Venetian power, now greatly reduced in the face of Austria. Attempts at political reform in 1760 and 1774 failed because of the opposition of the oligarchy to allowing the renewal of its ranks or opening its doors to wealthy bourgeois who might have saved the situation; even in 1784 the patrician Andrea Tron lamented that "capital is used to sustain extravagances, spectacles, vices and amusements instead of sustaining trade...".
The last naval success of Venice was the bombardment of Tunis carried out in 1785 and 1786 by the 25-ship fleet under the command of Admiral Angelo Emo (1731–1792) against the Tunisian corsairs, but subsequent attempts to reform and modernize the fleet failed by decision of the doge Paolo Renier. The last doge, Ludovico Manin, was elected in 1789 despite being of recent nobility, since he was one of the few aristocrats who could still give money to the State to cover the most urgent official expenses.
Extinction of the Republic
During the Napoleonic Wars, the territory of Venice, which remained neutral but had been crossed by the Austrian army, was invaded in March 1797 by the troops of General Napoleon Bonaparte, by both land and sea. The cities of the Domini di Terraferma (the mainland part) quickly surrendered to French numerical superiority, while the Venetian war fleet itself consisted of only eleven serviceable ships, incapable of resisting. In April the government faced an ultimatum from Napoleon Bonaparte, while at the beginning of May the French troops completed the occupation of the Domini di Terraferma almost without a fight, leaving only the capital itself to be occupied. The Great Council finally met on May 12 to dissolve itself and establish a "representative government" (Provisional Municipality) following the French model, but four days later French troops took the city without the Venetian troops offering the slightest resistance, definitively extinguishing the Republic. Weeks later the possessions of the Stato da Mar followed the example of the capital and surrendered to the French.
After the signing of the Treaty of Campo Formio on October 17 of the same year, the territory of Venice was divided between Austria, which kept the Veneto, Istria, Dalmatia and the Bocche di Cattaro; France, which kept the Ionian Islands; and the Cisalpine Republic (a "sister republic" of France), into which Bergamo and Brescia were incorporated. Subsequent French victories in the Napoleonic Wars led to the entire former Venetian dominion falling into Napoleon's hands.
After the fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, the Venetian territory of the republic was incorporated into the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, a State dependent on the Austrian Empire, which also took the rest, except for the Ionian Islands, which came under a British protectorate. In 1866, after the third war of independence, the Veneto, and with it Venice, were incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy.
Influence of the Republic of Venice
Although the economic vitality of the Venetian Republic had begun to decline from the 16th century as a consequence of the shift of international trade toward the Atlantic, its political regime still appeared in the 18th century as a model for the philosophers of the Enlightenment because of the characteristics of this "oligarchic republic" in years when absolutism was spreading across Europe.
Indeed, the existence of a political system based on civil liberties for citizens (even though citizenship was accessible to very few), the system of mutual checks between the Great Council and the doge, the fact that the mutual checks did not weaken central authority or its repressive capacity (shown in the Council of Ten), and the care taken by the elite to ensure that the main offices of the public administration were not monopolized, aroused the interest of Enlightenment writers in the Republic of Venice.
In fact, Jean-Jacques Rousseau worked in 1743 in the Republic of Venice as assistant to the French ambassador and was able to become personally acquainted with the Venetian system of government. This brief experience inspired him, upon returning to Paris, to write his masterpiece The Social Contract in 1762.
The economy of the Republic
The government of the Republic
From the very beginning, the organization of the Republic of Venice strove to prevent a single man from gathering all political power. Thus, the supreme function assumed by the doge was soon subjected to the oversight of several councils. The "Maggior Consiglio" (Greater Council or Great Council) drafted the laws, and the Senate was in charge of foreign policy and military and economic affairs. Another body, the "Council of Ten," guaranteed the security of the State and had a police force at its disposal, as well as very broad powers in matters of investigations and judicial punishments.
The republican political organization grew more complex as the economic and political influence of Venice in the Mediterranean Sea grew and it had to confront other commercial powers. In the early years of the Republic the political system of government was an autocracy, with the doge as an almost absolute dictator. This title began to be used when the City of Venice was subject to the sovereignty of the Byzantine Empire, becoming permanent after the city achieved its independence from Constantinople.
According to Venetian tradition, the first doge was Paolo Lucio Anafesto, elected as such in the year 697. The doge was elected to the office for life, through a complicated system of Byzantine inspiration. Traditionally, from 697 each doge had associated a son or other relative with the functions of government, but this custom was quickly prohibited by law; in 1172 the election of the doge by a group of 40 (later 41) citizens, chosen by lot, was established.
In 1268 the electoral system that remained in force until the extinction of the Republic in 1797 was established, consisting of a series of four elections, each of which was followed by a drawing of lots among the elected citizens, successively eliminating electors and designating new ones, until in the fourth drawing the group of 41 patricians who finally selected the doge was formed. Such a complex system sought to avoid the influence of the wealthiest families and to prevent any of them (although closely watched by other families of equal power and wealth) from attempting to take over the government or create a dynasty.
From 1148 the powers of the doge were limited by the "Promissione Ducale," a commitment assumed by the doge at the time of his appointment. As a result, power was shared with the Great Council, composed of 480 members elected from certain aristocratic families, with the declared purpose that "The doge may do nothing without the Great Council and the Great Council may do nothing without the doge."
In the 12th century, the aristocratic families of the Rialto reduced the power of the doge even more drastically with the establishment of the "Minor Council" (created in 1175), composed of six members who advised the doge, and the "Quarantia" (created in 1179) as Supreme Tribunal.
In 1223 these two institutions were combined into the "Signoria," which was formed by the doge, the Minor Council and the three heads of the Quarantia. The Signoria was the central organ of government, which represented the continuity of the Republic, as shown in the expression: "si è morto il Doge, ma non la Signoria" ("the doge has died, but not the Signoria").
Two bodies called "sapientes" were also created, which would later become six. The combination of sapientes and some other groups was called a "collegio," which formed an executive power.
In 1229, the "Consiglio dei Pregadi," commonly called the Senate, was instituted, composed of 60 members elected by the Great Council, from which foreign policy and the election of ambassadors were directed. These developments left the doge with very reduced personal power, as he saw authority exercised essentially by the Great Council, which constituted an extremely limited parliament, in which only members of the great aristocratic families of the republic were authorized to participate.
Venice asserted that its government was a "classical Republic" because it was the combination of the three basic forms present: royal power in the doge, aristocracy in the Senate and democratic power in the Great Council. Nevertheless, the investiture of the doge almost always fell to a member of the wealthiest families of Venice, since holding that office obliged the holder to finance a great many expenses (popular festivals, lavish ceremonies, Carnival festivities, gifts of money to ruined aristocrats) that only a very rich man could sustain. Niccolò Machiavelli also refers to Venice as a Republic, considering it "excellent among modern republics" (unlike his native Florence, politically dominated by the Medici family).[6]
On July 10, 1310 the "Council of Ten" was created, an organization similar to a State secret police, which became very powerful and turned into the central axis of Venetian politics. It was introduced provisionally, as a reaction to the rebellion led by Bajamonte Tiepolo against the closing of the Great Council. It was assigned emergency powers to fight the revolt and, although it was originally established for a period of two months, its authority was renewed continuously until it became a permanent body in 1334. Around 1600 its dominance over the Great Council was considered a threat and its influence was reduced.
In 1454, the "Supreme Tribunal" of the three inquisitors was established to safeguard the security of the Republic. Through espionage, counter-espionage and a network of informants that watched practically all the inhabitants of the Republic, it prevented Venice from falling under the power of an absolute lord ("signore"), as happened to many other Italian cities of the time, owing to the mutual surveillance exercised among the most powerful aristocrats. One of the inquisitors, popularly known as Il Rosso ("The Red," because of his scarlet robe), was chosen from among the councilors of the doge, and the other two, popularly known as I neri ("the Blacks," because of their black robes), were chosen from the Council of Ten. The Supreme Tribunal gradually assumed some of the powers of the Council of Ten.
Although the system prevented the creation of a Monarch or a family dynasty, it also concentrated effective power in very few wealthy families that in practice formed an oligarchy, such as the Contarini, Bragadin, Barbarigo, Giustinian, Mocenigo, Pisan, Cornaro or Loredan, who kept their wealth until the last days of the Republic, while other aristocrats (the so-called barnaboti) became impoverished because of the decline of Venetian power, yet retained their voting rights in the Great Council, which in turn was closed to the wealthiest bourgeois.
In 1556, the "provveditori ai beni inculti" were also created in order to improve agriculture by increasing the cultivated area in the mainland possessions of Venice (practically the entire present-day Veneto Region) and to stimulate private investment in agricultural development. The rise in grain prices during the 16th century stimulated the transfer of capital from trade to the lands of the Veneto to form large landed estates there, all the more so because the wars of Venice with the Ottoman Empire damaged Venetian trade with the Near East, while the most lucrative mercantile traffic was moving outside the Mediterranean Sea basin.
Armed forces
Navy
It played an important role in the history of Venice and of the Mediterranean world. It was one of the great naval forces in the world, especially during the Middle Ages and the modern era. It underwent a long decline that began at the end of the 16th century. The end of the Venetian navy coincided with the surrender of the city to Napoleon's troops.
Army
Initially it consisted mainly of mercenary companies, but from the 16th century a corps of territorial militias was established, the cernide (peasant militia of the Veneto and Istria) and the cranide (militia from Dalmatia), to which a core of regular troops was added in the 18th century.
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Cavalry, 1560 -
Venetian 30-gun frigate. -
Battle of the Venetian and Dutch fleets against the Turks in the Bay of Phocaea, 1649 -
Venetian grenadiers, 1717.
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Demographics
The population of the territories under Venetian rule in 1557 was:[7]
| Author | Venice | Lagoon islands |
Istria | Dalmatia | Ionia | Crete | Brescia Bergamo |
Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beloch (1961) | 158,000 | 50,000 | 52,000 | 93,000 | 52,000 | 194,000 | 1,542,000 | 2,141,000 |
See also
References
- ↑ Nicol, Donald M. (1992). Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge University Press. p. 5. ISBN 9780521428941.
- ↑ Nicol, Donald M. (1992). Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge University Press. p. 9. ISBN 9780521428941.
- ↑ Nicol, Donald M. (1992). Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge University Press. pp. 10–11. ISBN 9780521428941.
- ↑ Nicol, Donald M. (1992). Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge University Press. p. 33. ISBN 9780521428941.
- ↑ Pirenne, Henri (2009). "I". In Heliasta S.R.L. (ed.). Historia Económica y Social de la Edad Media (in español). Buenos Aires, Argentina: Claridad. pp. 22–23. ISBN 9789506202651.
- ↑ Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy, Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996.
- ↑ Angus Maddison (2007) [2001]. The world economy: a millennial perspective. New Delhi: Academic Foundation, p. 55. ISBN 978-81-7188-613-5.
- Geschichte Venedigs. Politik (in German)
- Norwich, John Julius (2009). Historia de Venecia (in español). Madrid: Almed Ediciones. ISBN 9788493119478.
External links
- Venecia,
broadcast of February 24, 2012 of Música antigua, a program of Radio Clásica.
