Venice, Seat of an Ideal Government

chapter 3 Venice, Seat of an Ideal Government

Narratives about Venice’s religion and material culture remained important throughout the fifteenth century. However, over the course of this period another narrative about Venice in its urban setting became more prominent, too: Venice as the seat of a perfect government. This chapter looks at the various reasons which have been given in historiography to account for this development. Following this, it analyses the main elements that constituted the idea of Venice as an ideal system of government, using a selection of sources rep- resentative in terms of chronology, geographical origin, and literary genre: not only political treatises, but also texts that are less frequently considered when analysing reflections on Venice’s political system, such as poetry.1 The diffusion of these elements among very diverse types of texts testifies to their strength.

1 The Development of a Political Narrative of Venice

Within a few years of the publication of Gina Fasoli’s seminal article on what she called ‘the myth of Venice,’ a different voice arose concerning when this myth came to maturity: in his 1961 article Franco Gaeta regarded the War of the League of Cambrai as decisive for this.2 This difference in opinion, continued by other scholars, was linked to different characterisations of the ‘myth,’ namely whether the political system was regarded as the crucial component of Venice’s image. For instance, even though Fasoli stated that in the sixteenth century an increasing emphasis on Venice’s good government could be found,

1 I use Margaret King’s definition of treatises: ‘any independent prose work of at least the length of a long essay that is not a dialogue, a history or biography, or a translation of or commentary upon another text.’ Margaret L. King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 162. For an extensive discussion of political treatises about Venice, see in particular: Franco Gaeta, “Alcune considerazioni sul mito di Venezia,” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 23 (1961): 58–75; Franco Gaeta, “L’idea di Venezia,” in Dal primo Quattrocento al concilio di Trento, ed. Girolamo Arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi, vol. III, Storia della cultura veneta 3 (Vicenza, 1981), 565–641; Angelo Ventura, “Scrittori politici e scritture di governo,” in Dal primo Quattrocento al concilio di Trento, ed. Girolamo Arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi, vol. III, Storia della cultura veneta 3 (Vicenza, 1981), 513–63. 2 Gina Fasoli, “Nascita di un mito,” in Studi in onore di Gioacchino Volpe, vol. 1 (Firenze: Sansoni, 1958), 447–79; Gaeta, “Alcune considerazioni sul mito di Venezia.” See also Introduction.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004428201_005 Venice, Seat of an Ideal Government 149 she still maintained that the myth had reached maturity by the middle of the fourteenth century. This was linked with her view of the myth of Venice as mystical rather than political. The moment of this increase in attention for Venice’s political system has been the subject of historiographical debate, too. Although Fasoli and Gaeta had differing opinions on what this development meant for what they regarded as the myth of Venice — Fasoli considered it as the end of the myth as such, while Gaeta saw it as its fulfilment — in their 1958 and 1961 publications they nonetheless agreed on when this shift took place: the sixteenth century or, more precisely, the period after the War of the League of Cambrai. This view was adopted by several other historians.3 In 1975, however, David Robey and John Law argued that the sixteenth-century texts merely gave extensive and systematic form to concepts that had much older origins: they pointed to the description of Venice written by the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century author Henry of Rimini as an early example of a text that regards the lagoon city as a place of ideal government.4 This idea was fully adopted by some scholars.5 Others, though acknowledging the existence of earlier texts that focused on Venice’s political side, continued to maintain that this aspect only took defin- itive shape much later. In a 1981 article, for example, Gaeta now also discussed fourteenth- and fifteenth-century authors (among them Henry of Rimini), but still saw a much later maturity of a political myth: with De magistratibus et republica Venetorum, written by Gasparo Contarini between 1524 and 1534.6 Still others have regarded the fifteenth century as the period in which Venice’s political system was truly mythicised.7

3 For example: William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968). See also: David Robey and John E. Law, “The Venetian Myth and the ‘De Republica Veneta’ of Pier Paolo Vergerio,” Rinascimento: Rivista dell’istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, seconda serie, 15 (1975): 6–8. 4 The precise date of this work is unknown. According to Robey and Law the terminus post quem can be considered 1268; the terminus ante quem sometime not long after 1297. Gaeta dates the work to the early fourteenth century. Gaeta, “L’idea di Venezia,” 567; Robey and Law, “The Venetian Myth and the ‘De Republica Veneta’ of Pier Paolo Vergerio,” 11. An edition of the work can be found in: David Robey and John E. Law, eds., “The Venetian myth and the ‘De republica Veneta’ of Pier Paolo Vergerio,” Rinascimento: Rivista dell’istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, seconda serie, 15 (1975): 54–56. 5 See for example: Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, vol. 2: Renaissance virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 32–35. 6 Gaeta, “L’idea di Venezia.” 7 For example: Élisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, “Immagini di un mito,” in Il Rinascimento, politica e cultura, ed. Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci, Storia di Venezia: Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, IV (Roma: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1996), 579–601; Felix Gilbert,