Great Council of Venice

“ The tendency displayed in the reforms of 1172 continued to make itself felt during the next hundred years, until we come to the epoch of the Closing of the Great Council, whereby Venice established her constitution as a close oligarchy.
The growing wealth of the State, especially after the Fourth Crusade, served to increase the influence of those families into whose hands the larger share of Venetian commerce had already fallen. ”

“ That of Venice (by the faithful testimony of my most excellent Lord Linceus de Stella) has obliged a world, sufficiently punished by its own blindness and ingratitude, to repent and be wiser: for whereas a commonwealth in which there is no senate, or where the senate is corrupt, cannot stand, the great Council of Venice, like the statue of Nilus, leans upon an urn or waterpot, which pours forth the Senate in so pure and perpetual a stream, as being unable to stagnate, is forever incapable of corruption. The fuller description of this Senate is contained in that of Oceana ”

“ Nobles alone were eligible for the majority of these offices, and if we consider how small a body the Great Council really was, it is clear that the larger number of Venetian noblemen must have been employed in the service of the State at some time in their lives. The great political and administrative activity which reigned inside the comparatively small body that formed the ruling caste, as compared with the absolute stagnation and quiet which marked the life of the ordinary citizen, is one of the most noteworthy points in the history of Venice. ”

“ The Italian Government allow nearly absolute liberty; and nothing can exceed the courtesy of the officials under their distinguished director, the Commendatore Cecchetti.
Any attempt to explain the archives of Venice and to display their contents, must be preceded by a statement of the main features of the constitution of the Republic upon which the order and the arrangement of the archives is based. The constitution of Venice has frequently been likened to a pyramid, with the Great Council for its base and the Doge for apex. ”

“ Poverty increased, and the aristocracy of Venice was weakened by internal feuds. The rich monopolised the administration, while the less fortunate, with a majority in the Great Council, were ever attempting to overthrow their power by agitation, or by intrigues and plots, often with foreigners. Thus Venice, which had long been the admiration of Europe for the stability of her government, and the honour and patriotism of her nobility, became the victim of selfishness, corruption, and conspiracy. ”

“ To be a member of the Great Council had now only a social value, like those hereditary coats of arms in which there had once been such deep meaning. Throughout ages the aristocracy of Venice had differed altogether from the nobility of other countries, but as decadence advanced to decay, and decay threatened destruction, the Venetian senator grew more and more like the French marquis of the same period. ”

“ As to the election by the scrutiny, it is easily perceived to be Venetian, there being no such way to take in the knowledge; which in all reason must be best in every council of such men as are most fit for their turns, and yet to keep them from the bias of particular affection or interest under that pretence; for the cause why the great Council in Venice scarce ever elects any other than the name that is brought in by the scrutiny, is very probable to be, that they may... This election is the last of those appertaining to the Senate. ”

“ The news of the occupation of Verona produced the utmost alarm in Venice, yet the Great Council was not summoned, nor was there a regular sitting of the Senate. The days had gone by when the great bell of Saint Mark’s was rung backward to call every fighting man to arms, and every aged Senator to the Council. The handful of scared and vacillating men who had steered Venice to her end met stealthily by night in the Casino Pesaro, more like conspirators than defenders of their country. Most of them fancied the French already in the lagoons, if not in the city ”

“ Venetian citizens were tempted to settle in the island by the gift of certain villages with their districts. These they were expected to hold for the Republic in the case of a revolution. The Governor of the island, who bore the title of Duke of Candia, was a Venetian noble elected in the Great Council at Venice ”

“ His incapacity and the anarchic state of the Empire, raised the most vital problem that ever Venetian statesmen were called to face. Events seemed inevitably tending to one solution—that they who were masters in fact of the new Latin Empire should proclaim themselves so in name. Doge Ziani called a meeting of the Great Council and put forward a proposition, fraught with tremendous issues, that the seat of the Government should be transferred from Venice to Constantinople. ”

“ To the east of the Duchy of Milan stood the republic of Venice. Once a democracy, she had by the close of the thirteenth centuryVenice. become a commercial oligarchy. At the close of the fifteenth century, not only did the Great Council monopolise the electoral functions of the state, but the Doge himself had become little more than an ornamental figure-head.4 Venice originally had concerned herself little with the politics of the mainland. Entrenched behind her lagoons, she had turned her attention to the Mediterranean and the East, from whence came her commerce, the source of her wealth. ”

“ But the main point which is impressed upon us is the universality of political training to which all the nobles of Venice were subjected. No matter how frivolous a young patrician might be, he would be obliged to sit in the Great Council ”

“ Venice was never in reality a democracy. The doge, elected for life, in conjunction with the Senate, the Council of Ten, and other aristocratic bodies, ruled at times with almost absolute authority.
Although the Venetian republic was in no sense a democracy, it is interesting to trace the development of its safeguards of liberty. The perils to which the republic was exposed required both unity and continuity in the direction of its affairs. ”

“ In the Middle Ages, when an almost total ignorance reigned of civil principles, it was not unnatural that a system pretending to rise above the common level of crude simplicity should be viewed as slightly cabalistic and inscrutable. The Venetian Executive, indeed, displayed the earliest attempt to organize a bureaucratic machinery and a plan for the distribution of public functions; and Venice also led the way in founding the practice of diplomatic etiquette and official routine. The Council of Ten was, perhaps, a constitutional evil ”

“ In order to hold these possessions, she borrowed from the Franks the feudal system, and granted fiefs in the Greek islands to her more powerful families, on condition that they held the trade route open for her. The expansion of commerce which resulted from the Fourth Crusade soon made itself evident in the city by a rapid development in its architecture and by a decided strengthening of the commercial aristocracy, which eventually led to the great constitutional reform—the closing of the Maggior Consiglio in 1296, whereby Venice became a rigid oligarchy. ”

“ But the prudence of her senate awakened Venice to a just sense of her own want of intrinsic strength to preserve these immense dependencies; and it was wisely resolved to retain under the public government of the state only the colony at Constantinople, with the island of Candia and those in the Ionian Sea. The subjects of the republic were not required to imitate the forbearance of the senate, and many of the great Venetian families were encouraged, or at least permitted, to found principalities among the ruins of the Eastern Empire, with a reservation of feudal allegiance to their country. ”

“ Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, as well as many others that I have seen, especially several bodies of the Holy Innocents, which are entire. These last are in an island called Murano, renowned for its manufactories of glass. The government of Venice is full of wisdom. No one can be a member of the council, nor hold any employment, unless he be noble and born in the town. It has a duke, who is bound to have ever with him, during the day, six of the most ancient and celebrated members of the council. ”

“ For six hundred years, during which the power of Venice was continually on the increase, her government was an elective monarchy, her king or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable magnificence. ”

“ It was the independence born of this prosperity that made Venice feared and hated by all the other powers of Italy—feared and hated, but also admired. We read in Villanic that when in the early part of the fourteenth century Venice condescended to take common cause with Florence against the tyrant of Milan, the Florentines regarded it as a singular honour for their country to have become the confederate of the Venetians, “who, for their great excellence and power, had never allied themselves with any state or prince, except at their ancient conquest of Constantinople and Romania.” ”

“ The traditional splendour which the Venetian ambassadors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had inaugurated was dear to the Senate, and had come to be officially required, if not actually prescribed in so many words. These great families had long been accustomed to play the leading parts, and as the business spirit which had made Venice the richest power in Europe died out, their pride was often greater than their sense of responsibility. ”

“ Equally extensive, but less important in the political sphere, were the Papal States and Venetia, the former torpid under the obscurantist rule of pope and cardinals, the latter enervated by luxury and the policy of unmanly complaisance long pursued by doge and council. The ancient rival of Venice, Genoa, was likewise far gone in decline. The small states, Lucca and San Marino, completed the map of Italy. The worst governed part of the peninsula was the south, where feudalism lay heavily on the cultivators and corruption pervaded all ranks. Milan and Piedmont were comparatively well governed ”

“ We cannot wonder at this; no king, or commonwealth either, can be pleased to see a string of precious coast towns in the hands of a foreign power. Again in 1528 Venice is allied with France against Aragon and Naples, and Aragon and Naples are now only two of the endless kingdoms of Charles of Austria. For a moment the lost cities are again Venetian. Two years later, as part of the great pageant of Bologna, they passed back from the rule of Saint Mark to the last prince who ever wore the crown of Rome. ”

“ This first attempt of Venice to establish herself in possession of mainland territory proved a failure. But the rise of the great Lords of Verona, Padua, Milan, the Scala, Carraresi, and Visconti, and the struggles which took place between them, could not fail to disturb the quiet of the Lagoons and to draw Venice once more into the mesh of Italian politics. It was impossible for Venice to be indifferent to events which were affecting cities so close to herself and so necessary for her commerce as Padua and Treviso. ”

“ As no dissent was heard by this deputy, the election was considered legal. Gradenigo was at Capo d' Istria; and a squadron of honor, carrying twelve noblemen as his escort, was sent to announce his election and invite his return.
And now commenced a reign which continued twenty-two years (1289-1311) , during which time the most important changes were made in the government of Venice; serious wars were undertaken, and great disasters encountered; the Republic was placed under the ban of the Church; grave revolutions occurred. ”

“ But in this adoption of every new development of power, Venice is only proving herself the most faithful representative of the vigorous republic of old. Whatever prejudice or angry love may say, we cannot doubt that the Michiels, the Dandolos, the Foscari, the great rulers who formed Venice, had steamboats existed in their day, serving their purpose better than their barges and peati, would have adopted them without hesitation, without a thought of what any critics might say. ”

“ The evangelist was thenceforth made the patron saint of the city, and his emblem, the lion, became the arms of the republic. The Venetians had not as yet made foreign conquests, but the great Doge, Enrico Dandolo, who went to the Fourth Crusade, conquered Constantinople in 1204, and commenced the grand era of Venice. The breaking up of the Byzantine Empire was a great opportunity for Venice, the republic gaining possession of several islands in the Greek Archipelago, together with numerous cities on the Adriatic. ”

“ A number of patricians declared that if the Council of Ten and the Inquisitors of State were abolished, they themselves would not stay another day in Venice, as there would no longer be any check on the violence and the intrigues of men of their own class: a confession which{298} suddenly exhibits the whole aristocracy in its true light. ”

“ The rise of these city republics of the Middle Ages cannot be fully traced. Everywhere little communities of men seem to have been driven by desperation to build walls about their group of homes and to defy all comers. As it was in Italy that the ancient Roman civilization had been most firmly established and the barbarian dominance least complete, so it was in Italy that these walled towns first asserted their importance. Venice indeed, protected by her marshes, we have seen establishing a somewhat republican form even from her foundation. ”