Venice as a Republic

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on Venice nor on the Italian Renaissance in general. This is an undergraduate essay and should not be considered in any way authoritative. Check the bibliography at the end for further reading on this subject. That said, if you do find this essay useful, please drop me a line.

The Oxford English dictionary defines a republic as a “a state in which the supreme power rests in the people and their elected representatives or officers, as opposed to one governed by a king or similar ruler; a commonwealth.” The literature on the Italian Renaissance typically contrasts republics with despotic signorie in which an individual, often a member of a dynastic family who had controlled the city for generations, held power. As many scholars have pointed out, the republic-signory dichotomy is an unrealistic abstraction, a glossing over of the similarities in the workings of governments of, say, Florence and Milan. As even Martines points out, “all government is oligarchical.”

Yet Martines is careful to maintain that there were fundamental distinctions between republican and signorial regimes. In contrast to the “textbook” despotism of Milan, Florence and Venice are typically held up as the archetypal Renaissance republics. It is tempting, perhaps, from the perspective of 21st century citizens of a republic to associate republics with good government and therefore cast aside self-identified republics that fail to live up to republican ideals. In determining whether Venice should be considered a republic, we face an important question: when we speak of republics, are we concerned with the theoretical form of a given state’s government or the extent to which that state succeeds in doing what a republic is “supposed” to do? I propose a two-pronged approach in which Venice is examined from both perspectives. Such an examination demonstrates that Venice was a republic in theory (no great surprise) and that, in practice, Venice had elements of both republicanism and oligarchy. While this answer may prove unsatisfying, it is no more inadequate than an assertion based more on a desire for theoretical coherency than empirical reality.

As the Venetian government lacked a single document that outlined its governmental structures, it is necessary to reconstruct those structures based on scattered evidence. Before the “Serrata” of 1297 (discussed below), the government of Venice can be imagined as a pyramid. The base of the pyramid was the arengo, or General Assembly. The arengo represented Venice at its most republican; a meeting of the people, it ratified basic legislation and formally acclaimed the election of each new doge. Above the General Assembly in power stood the Great Council, which had approximately 300 members. Its members drawn from the General Assembly, the Great Council elected members of other councils, passed legislation, and made judicial decisions. As such, it was the center of power in the Venetian government. Next up in the pyramid, the Forty prepared legislation for the Great Council and represented the top of the judicial system. The ducal council had six members (after 1178) and was responsible for ensuring that the doge acted in accordance with its advice. The doge of Venice, elected for life, occupied the pinnacle of this pyramid.

One might argue that the pyramidal structure described above is incompatible with the idea of Venice as a republic. Indeed, the selection of an individual to serve as the lifelong ruler of the state (and, no less, wear a crown) smacks strongly of monarchism. Such a conclusion would ignore, however, the fact that the power of the doge, at least in theory, ascended from the people. The members of the Great Council were selected from the General Assembly; thus all citizens of Venice had the theoretical opportunity to play a direct role in shaping the rule of the state. Furthermore, the power of the doge was nowhere near absolute, as the responsibilities of the ducal council make clear; more than one doge was deposed for failing to heed the directions of his council.

The composition of the Venetian government changed considerably after the “Serrata” (or closing) in 1297. In short, the Great Council was simultaneously increased in size and closed off for future admission of new families. Rather than the Great Council being chosen each year by a nominating council, it became open to all males (over 25 years of age) who had an ancestor serve in the Great Council at some point between 1293 and 1997. In other words, a clearly defined patrician class was delimited by law. In the decades that followed, the power of the General Assembly declined sharply, eclipsed by the newly enlarged Great Council.

In theory, the composition of the Great Council post-1297 should have reflected the general population; after all, membership in the Council was open to all members of the General Assembly before 1297. However, as Lane and Finlay point out, the Serrata effectively formalized the aristocratic nature of the Great Council that had already been implicit in the body before 1297. Thus, while theoretically the Serrata was not anti-republican (though certainly conservative), in practice it ensured that power would remain in the hands of those who had already been holding it.

It would appear, therefore, that after the Serrata, Venice was no longer a true republic but rather an aristocracy. Lane is careful to point out that “aristocracy” suggests rule by a group larger than in an oligarchy, but in any case, the shift in power away from the “people” is relatively clear. Whether this indicates a lack of concern for interests of the popolani by the government, however, is not entirely obvious. Romano, in seeking to explain Venice’s fabled political stability, discovered a wide network of social and economic connections across traditional “class” lines. The scuole (religious confraternities, some of which later functioned similarly to guilds) were open to both patricians and popolani, and non-nobles had the opportunity to play important roles in the scuole. Furthermore, members of the nobility and the wealthy popolo grande often shared economic interests (the Venetian nobility were more highly involved in commerce than the nobility of other states). In other words, social stratification on hereditary grounds was not strong as the terms nobilità and popolo might suggest. Therefore, while the popolani lacked direct power in the government, it seems plausible that their interests (or, at the very least, the interests of the popolo grande) were in the minds of the nobility that did have political power. Romano fails to address the extent to which this awareness may have contributed to actions on the part of the nobility that that benefited the republic as a whole.

The potential positive effects of the affinity between patricians and popolani grandi should not, however, been overemphasized. As Queller went to great pains to show a large portion of the Venetian nobility (a majority, even) suffered from poverty. While this might suggest a further affinity between impoverished nobles and the popolo, it ignores a crucial fact regarding the make-up of the Senate (which had gradually taken on the functions of the pre-Serrata Great Council and was therefore the place of real power): the Senate consistently drew its membership from thirty or forty wealthy families to the exclusion of the rest of the Great Council. Therefore, even if seems likely that the interests of the poor and middling classes were represented in the government as a whole, those councils that held real power likely lacked any strong social ties to the general population of the republic. Queller also demonstrated that the myth of the Venetian patriciate as selfless and civic-minded is just that, a myth (with some notable exceptions).

This is not to suggest, however, that the government of Venice had decayed to a point where all republican practice was lost. In fact, the very laws of Venice provided a space for republicanism to continue to exist. As Muir concludes in his study of Buia, a Friulian community in the hinterlands of Venice, “the conflicting jurisdictions and competing powers of the various Venetian judicial bodies created a space for legal resistance against local oligarchs and feudal lords.” It is important to note here that it was not the Venetian government itself that was a bastion of republicanism but rather that the fossilized laws allowed those who were persistent to pursue and achieve some republican objectives (in the case of Buia, local communal rule). In other words, Venice’s early republican roots and the accompanying laws provided a foundation for republican action well into the period traditionally seen as oligarchic rule of Venice. This discovery also belies the claims of Bueno de Mesquita and Jones that Renaissance republics ruthlessly undermined republicanism in the territories they controlled.

This is not to suggest, however, that the government of Venice had decayed to a point where all republican practice was lost. In fact, the very laws of Venice provided a space for republicanism to continue to exist. As Muir concludes in his study of Buia, a Friulian community in the hinterlands of Venice, “the conflicting jurisdictions and competing powers of the various Venetian judicial bodies created a space for legal resistance against local oligarchs and feudal lords.” It is important to note here that it was not the Venetian government itself that was a bastion of republicanism but rather that the fossilized laws allowed those who were persistent to pursue and achieve some republican objectives (in the case of Buia, local communal rule). In other words, Venice’s early republican roots and the accompanying laws provided a foundation for republican action well into the period traditionally seen as oligarchic rule of Venice. This discovery also belies the claims of Bueno de Mesquita and Jones that Renaissance republics ruthlessly undermined republicanism in the territories they controlled.

Martines interprets the government of Venice as an oligarchy and, in its inner councils, a plutocracy. This analysis conforms to the observations made above; the Senate, Forty, and other important councils were, in fact, the realm of the wealthiest of the noble families. However, Martines places too little emphasis on the republican form of the government and seemingly ignores the possibilities for republican ideas to be put into motion. Venice’s “constitution” and laws remained republican, even if the government itself had become an oligarchy. Those laws provided space for the persistent to pursue republican goals, albeit slowly and with no large-scale effects.

The picture of Venice that emerges is a complicated one. Its foundations had been republican, its later stages were increasingly plutocratic. The true nature of Venice’s government, like so many things, lay somewhere in the middle.

- Danny Loss, September 2003

Bibliography

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