Episode 59 – Venice: La Serenissma – The History of the Republic

Buongiorno, I’m Dr. Rocky Ruggiero. Join me in Rebuilding the Renaissance, and making art and history come to life.

Welcome to the Rebuilding the Renaissance Podcast, your guide to the art and history of Italy, from the glory of Rome to the magnificence of the Renaissance. And now here’s your host, Dr. Rocky Ruggiero.

Buongiorno, everyone. Today’s podcast is a very important one about the most unique city in the world and that of course is Venice. It’s taken me some time to figure out where and when to insert Venice and its history into this podcast series because Venice is so unique that it really doesn’t tie into any of the history that we’ve been discussing so far. Much of what we have been talking about essentially has to do with Central Italy. We’ve been talking about Florence and Siena and Rome, perhaps with the exception of Ravenna, which fell into that sort of Byzantine episode.

Venice is very much representative like its geography. Venice historically is sort of an Island, physically detached from the boot-shaped peninsula of Italy and historically detached as well. And this is something that you’ll pick up on I think as we go through and essentially define the historical identity again of what is perhaps the most magical place on earth. If you’ve not been to Venice, it really is an almost physical experience when you see it for the first time.

And I think most people when they walk out of that train station… Of course, I’ve been going to Venice regularly for some 20-odd years, and that impact when you walk out of the train station and see that canal, the water directly in front of you, just really defies logic. And the same goes for people who fly into Venice and get on one of those water taxis and essentially are delivered to their hotels, not by land but instead on sea. And that’s kind of part of the magic because it’s the sort of reverse logic where the streets in Venice are in fact water-filled canals. Part of the experience of visiting Venice is getting lost. I would say that if you don’t get lost, then you’ve not technically been to Venice. And the reason you get lost so easily is because technically you shouldn’t be on land. You should be in the water on boats, which is how the Venetians have for so long navigated their city.

But let’s get into the history of the city to try to understand a bit more about its identity. The reason I’ve entitled this Venice: La Serenissma is because Venice sees itself as the most serene republic. La Serenissma means the most serene. And what is implied by this title is this notion of a republic because technically Venice does represent the longest lasting Republic in history, nearly a millennium of democracy in that city.

The traditional foundation date of Venice, which remember it was a city-state. Not only was it a city, it was also its own independent country, and its foundation date is usually given as March 25th of the year 421 after Christ. Now, this date is not arbitrary. Because as I mentioned in past podcasts, March 25th was the first day of the new year. It is the Feast of the Annunciation. And up until the time of Napoleon, March 25th was essentially the January 1st. The idea that Venice was founded on January 1st, on the first day of a new year and the year itself, 421, is not arbitrary either because it is 11 years after the city of Rome was sacked by Alaric the Visigoth. And so technically this was the first and perhaps most traumatic episode in the fall of the Roman Empire when Rome itself, the city, was violated by these Visigoths.

And 421 is also 55 years before the last Western Roman empire, whose name was Romulus Augustus, was deposed. So that the Venetians chose this particular year as their foundation year because what we’ll discover is that Venice actually saw itself as the New Rome, not as the successor, not as the heir, not as the descendant or what have you, but as one pagan empire, the Roman Empire came to an end, a new Christian empire was born and that Christian empire was the city of Venice. This is essentially what the Venetians were trying to say by establishing their foundation on that particular day.

The reason people settled out on these islands in the Venetian Lagoon… So remember that when you’re in Venice and you’re crossing a bridge, you’re essentially going from one geographical island to another, and they built upon these islands in later centuries. In fact, perhaps one of the most amazing things about Venice is how buildings were actually realized. In order to build on this marshy soil, which is essentially what Venice is, they would drive wooden pylons into the ground and the surface created… In other words, the tops of these wooden pylons would be the base for stone foundations upon which buildings would be built. It’s a pretty amazing building process, and millions of these wooden pylons employed for the realization of what Venice is today as it got larger and larger.

And so the reason that Venice was created was because people were in fact fleeing from the mainland because of the fall of the Roman Empire. And so the first wave of Venetians were in fact refugees. In 452 AD, a second wave of barbarian invasions led by Attila the Hun would cause a mass migration to the islands of the Lagoon in search of safety. Attila conquered the Roman city of Aquileia, dramatically undermining the importance of the ninth largest city in the Roman Empire in Northeastern Italy that is Aquileia itself. And the Islands of the lagoon offered refuge to the seafaring refugees as landlocked Central Asian barbarians, who were invading Italy, had little practicability with seamanship, and so essentially they were safe.

Then the salt flats of the Lagoon also offered a lucrative, economic potential because obviously salt played a pivotal role in human history being the only way to preserve food before electricity came along. And so the idea of being out in these islands in the lagoon with the salt flats essentially established the two most fundamental aspects of later Venetian society, which were commerce and sea power. Money and sailing, These are the two most fundamental aspects of Venetian life.

Now, this is all happening in the 400s after Christ. The next important date in Venetian history is 526 AD, which you may remember back to my The Byzantine Empire Strikes Back Podcast, was the year in which the Byzantine Emperor Justinian invaded Italy in hopes of recovering the lost territories. And when he did, he established his Ravenna. And essentially the old Roman provinces of Venetia and Istria would submit to Byzantine control. And so Venice fell technically under the power of the Byzantine Empire at this time.

And to commemorate this occasion, there was a church built in Venice and dedicated to the Eastern St. Theodore, who was Venice’s first titulary saint. In other words the first patron saint of Venice was in fact this Eastern saint by the name of St. Theodore. Who is easy to confuse with St. George because St. Theodore is often depicted as standing over a slain dragon. When in Venice, if you see a figure, a sort of knightish-type figure standing over a slain dragon, it’s not St. George, which is more typical in the Western Christian world, but instead the Eastern version of George, whose name was St. Theodore.

Now the relationship between Venice and the Eastern Christian Empire or the Byzantine Empire is one that would be favorable and lucrative for both parties. In fact, in the year 570 AD, an exclusive contract was signed between Venice, or the people living on the islands of Venice at the time, offering their loyalty and service to the Byzantine Empire in exchange for protection and exclusive trading privileges throughout the empire. And so the idea essentially that Venice now had the monopoly, Venice would establish itself as the sort of middleman between the Western world and the Eastern world. Everything coming from the West would be funneled through Venice and then distributed to the East, and everything from the East vice versa through the West. And this would give them an extraordinarily privileged trading position, and in fact, would be the basis of immeasurable wealth in centuries to come.

Next important date, 568 AD, another barbarian invasion. This time the Lombards, it’s coming from the North and this would cause another massive influx of refugees into the Venetian Lagoon. More people coming onto the island, more people building on the island. Consider that through most of the sixth and seventh centuries after Christ, so the five hundreds and the six hundreds AD, a majority of the Venetian islands were largely uninhabited. The settled islands, that is the islands which actually had people living on them, formed a loose association of communities with no clear nucleus. In other words, there was no Venice proper, there was no civic identity to this city or to this country. And evidence of this is found in the Latin name of Venice, which is a plural noun, the Venetiae. In other words, not Venetia, a singular, Venetiae. The idea that Venice was composed of a bunch of loosely associated island.

But in the eighth century, so now we’re in the 700s after Christ, Venice would play a part in one of the most important moments in Western history. And that is in the year 726 AD when the Byzantine Emperor Leo III ordered the destruction of all icons and holy images in his domains. This famous decree was known as iconoclasm, which literally translates as the destroying of images. In other words, going very Orthodox in prohibiting the use of figurative art in Eastern Christian churches. But remember, Eastern Christianity controlled much of the Western world as well. And this particular decree of iconoclasm in the 726 AD marked the definitive separation between the Latin and Greek Christian worlds because the Latin speaking Christian world, which is what today we call the Roman Catholic world, refused to give up their use of figurative art.

Consider how deeply rooted the West must have been in what many would consider idolatry, mainly because the Western Christian world had come from that pagan world before where statues and paintings, of course, played an incredibly important part in daily worship. So under the encouragement of Pope Gregory II, obviously the leader of the Western Christian world, the imperial provinces of Italy rebelled. That is those territories under Byzantine control rebelled against their Byzantine rulers. The Byzantine exarch of Ravenna, in other words the representative of the Byzantine Empire in the Western world in Ravenna, was assassinated and his provincial governors were put to flight. Local communities began to choose their own leaders.

In other words, instead of now being ruled by the Byzantines, they began to rule themselves and the islands of the Lagoon chose a man named Urses, sometimes referred to as Orso from Haraclea, and he was given the title of dux, D-U-X. He was made the dux technically of these communities and in Venetian dialect that word dux, Latin for duke, would be pronounced doge. And this tradition of a doge leading Venice, ruling over Venice would continue unbroken through 117 successors and for approximately 1000 years. In fact, perhaps the most celebrated political ruler in Venice is the so-called doge who wears this particular hat called the corno because it looks like it has this sort of single horn popping out of the top.

This is essentially the break between Venice and the Byzantine Empire, at least politically, but one that would be reestablished because essentially and eventually favorable relations with Byzantium were restored. There was simply too much money to be made on both sides, and Venice was able to remain largely separated from the political turmoil that characterize the rest of Italy in the Middle Ages. And you may remember back to our discussion about the Guelphs and Ghibellines, the supporters of the Pope versus the supporters of the Holy Roman emperor, and their fight for supremacy, which led to the formation of city-states such as Florence and Siena and Luca.

Well, Venice was completely different. Venice was independent of the feudal system and it resisted offers of alliance with Charlemagne. Charlemagne was very much interested in Venice, obviously because of its strategic location and commercial importance. And in so doing and essentially refusing to play a part in this whole Guelph and Ghibelline conflict would remain isolated and would prosper at a time when a majority of Italy was instead in conflict. In fact, it was only at the end of this conflict in 1266 that other republics such as Florence and Siena were created. Venice’s submission to the empire of the East, would assure its independence and eventual greatness.

Now, as Venice began to develop politically and socially and economically, it began to understand its importance in the global politics of the time. Essentially serving in all three roles as a liaison between East and West. But what it really needed to essentially step up their game, if you will, was one last bit of legitimacy, something that would symbolize the city’s divine destiny as Christian successor to Rome. And that one thing, that one symbol that they were looking for was an important relic. All major Christian capitals possessed an important one, whether it was Peter’s body in Rome or whether it was the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, all major Christian capitals had an important relic and Venice needed one as well.

The mortal remains of Saint Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, were located in a convent complex of the same name… San Zaccaria, if you happened to be there. But just were not sufficient. In other words, St. Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, important but not important enough for a city as important as Venice. And so a popular legend began to spread amongst the Venetians. And that was that at the end of the first century after Christ, while St. Mark the Evangelist, San Marco, was traveling from Aquileia to Rome. His ship had momentarily set shore on the islands of the Rialto. Now, we’ll spend time talking about the Rialto Bridge, which is the most famous bridge in Venice and one of the most famous in the world, but the reason it’s called the Rialto is because it’s situated in an area where the banks of the Grand Canal are the highest, the riva alto.

In other words, St. Mark’s ship pulled up not to the bridge, but to the area that the bridge would eventually occupy. And when this happened, according to legend, an angel appeared to St. Mark and spoke these now famous words, Pax tibi Marce, evangelista meus. Hic requiescet corpus tuum. Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist. Here will your body rest. That allegedly an angel had prophesized what would happen centuries later and that is that Venice would become the resting place of Saint Mark the Evangelist.

And this legend would be the pretext for one of the most famous incidents of grave robbery in the history of Christianity. In the year 829 AD, Venetian merchants or merchants from Venice who were in Alexandria, in the country of Egypt, stole the body of St. Mark and transported it back to Venice, hidden in a case of pork to dissuade suspicious Muslim guards whose curiosity was aroused by the sanctimonious odor which permeated from Mark’s body.

The story goes that two Venetian merchants whose names were Buono and Rustico… In other words, the good guy and the rustic or simple guy… happened to be in Alexandra, which is where St. Mark’s body had rested at this point for approximately seven centuries. And for some unknown reason that particular day, the Muslims living in Alexandria wanted to destroy St. Mark’s body. Of course, to prevent this from happening, these Venetians did the right thing, which was to steal the body away. This was the pretense that the Venetians still give for why they took the body from Alexandria.

And the story goes that Holy people give off this sanctimonious smell, this beautiful smell, which of course can attract attention. And fearful that it would attract the attention of guards as they were passing through the customs station, they essentially put Mark’s body into a case of pork products because of course the Muslims would be disgusted by the pork itself. And at that point, they transport the body of St. Mark back to Venice and St. Theodore… Remember the dragon slayer, was all but forgotten.

And in the year 832 AD, the first church of St. Mark was begun, and now the historical puzzle of Venice was complete. St. Mark who was not St. Peter, who rested of course in the city of Rome, but an actual evangelist, one of the only four evangelists would more than suffice; and his symbol, St. Mark’s symbol, the winged lion would mark all the Venetian endeavors. In fact, when in Venice or in Venetian territory, that winged lion symbol is ubiquitous. Because not only does it represent St. Mark the Evangelist, but by association, the great Serenissima, the great Republic of Venice.

In the year 870 AD, the Venetians turned to reforming their political structure. The doge, so technically the executive figure, would no longer be appointed but instead elected into office along with two consoles or tribunes to curb or prevent executive abuse of power. The idea essentially of kind of check and balance. Just like in ancient Rome where there were always two consults so that one could check the power of the other. Fearful of putting too much power in the hands of too few people, so too in Venice would there be executive figure the doge, but his power essentially would be controlled by the tribunes or the councils who served with him.

Venice was now theoretically a democracy. Because remember, they’re electing these officials into power. Shortly thereafter, judges were instituted in a role as part minister, part magistrate. It is from these judges that the Ducal Curia or Senate would evolve. Rapidly, the Venetian Constitution began to take shape. It was considered so perfect in form it has to be a gift from God.

The Venetian government consisted of several different bodies, the least powerful of which was the role of the doge because essentially the doge became a kind of constitutional monarch. He had no real power, but became more or less just a figurehead or a symbol. The most powerful body of government in Venice was the Senate, which was known as the Consiglio dei Pregadi. And this Senate consisted of some 300 men, 170 of whom would regularly attend meetings. 70 senatorial votes were required for a core. 60 senators were elected by the Great Council. 60 were nominated by the Senate and approved by the Council. The remaining 40 members came from another governmental body.

The next major body was the Great Council known as the Marangora. All patricians belong to this group and were eligible to serve at the age of 25, so this is sort of our house of representatives. This is the major legislative bodies, so we have the Great Council, above it we have the Senate, and above the Senate we have the dosage. Now in this Great Council, 2,500 eligible members, though usually there are only about a thousand to 1400 in attendance. Think about that. 1,000 of these representatives, if you will, in attendance, and there were 600 votes required for a quorum. The last body was the Court of the 40 called the Quarantia Criminal. This was the supreme appeals court for criminal cases, so this is a highly refined political structure that the nations have put together.

Now consider, without getting too detailed, although I think many of you might actually be interested in this, within this governmental framework, there were several smaller councils as well. The signoria was the ducal council that represented the Republic. It consisted of the doge, six counselors and three heads of the 40, remember the 40 Criminal that I just mentioned. This council fixed the agenda of the Great Council. In other words, they were responsible for setting the agenda of the House of Representatives, if you will, but it was otherwise ceremonial. In other words, when people would come to Venice or when Venice would visit on a visit-of-state or what have you, in fact would be this signoria that would represent the state.

There was another council of the 10 and it was often seen as an annex to the otherwise kind of pyramidal form of government, meaning it was sort of off to the side. The 10, although they were called 10, actually consisted of 17 members. Don’t ask. The doge, six ducal councilors and the 10 proper. The heads of the 40 were excluded from the signoria when acting as part of the 10. The third major council was the Collegium, which consisted of 28 members whose duty it was to set the agenda of the Senate and supervise the execution of legislation.

So again, this incredibly elaborate system of sort of checks and balances between these different governmental bodies. It was the collaboration between these councils that was at the heart of Venetian government. The state was conceived as a vessel of divine intention. In other words, the state represented or reflected God’s will and the constitution as a blessing mix of liberty and justice. 15th century humanists considered Venetian government as a perfect constitutional balance of monarchy in the person of the Doge or the Duke, aristocracy in the Senate and its members and then democracy in the Great Council. This idea, technically, this perfect pyramidal construct of democracy with the Great Council, aristocracy with the Senate and its members, and then all the way up to the Doge, who of course a least symbolically represented monarchy.

And this first Christian Republic… Venice, remember, was the first ever Christian Republic, would surpass all of the ancient republics, Greece and Rome in particular, in terms of longevity. Greece and Rome only lasted about 600 years while Venetian democracy lasted a full millennium. But Venice would also supersede ancient Greece and Rome in spirit because they were pagan democracies, where instead Venice was a Christian one.

And in Venice, when you look at the history of the city, there was no Pericles. There was no Julius Caesar. There was no Lorenzo il Magnifico. No great men or traumatic political crises who formed its historical memory. And it’s a pretty amazing thing when you study Venetian history. That’s why when you study Venetian history, there isn’t that definitive historical figure who kind of marked the beginning of the transition or what have you. The individual was the state itself. The Venetian history was simply singularity in the state or as the great humanist Renaissance Pope Pius II would define it, not without any accusatory overtones. Pope Pius and Venice were at odds. He defined Venice as state as deity.

In fact, Venice enjoyed a very important degree of autonomy from the Pope himself. They really didn’t need the Pope. They didn’t need the authority of the pope because they had the doge. And intuitively that doge was almost a substitute for the Pope himself. So very often the Venetians would simply ignore orders or interdites from the Pope himself because they really had no need of him.

And one of my favorite things about the history of Venice is that in the 18th century, a gentleman by the name of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had written letters. Benjamin Franklin had written letters to the Venetian Senate asking them for advice saying, “Look, we are now just creating this new republic of the United States of America and we want to know how you guys did it.” In other words, how were you able to maintain democracy for a millennium in Venice? And that’s a pretty extraordinary thing, connecting a history, which at first seemed so far away and remote. Thinking about Venice almost as this sort of Atlantis, if you will, and making it very modern and contemporary. Because much of what Venetian political philosophy was, did in fact influence our own Founding Fathers in the United States of America.

But consider that this perfect constitutional monarchy, as I mentioned, this perfect constitution that had been given to Venice as a gift from God would change. Because in the year 1297, something the Venetians called the Serrata or the Great Closing took place, and that closing was of the Great Council. Instead of the 2,500 that I mentioned before, the number of people eligible to serve in the Great Council was drastically reduced. Essentially the new law… This happened in the year 1297, the Serrata, was that only males over the age of 25 who could prove that they belonged to a family that had held a place in the Great Council, in the four years before 1297, would be admitted by the Council by a vote of 12 of the 40.

Suddenly the great council, which once was open to all citizens of Venice, anyone could serve, had become an electoral assembly of hereditary membership. All of a sudden, only those guys, 25, who could prove that their family had held a place in the council for years before the passing of the law. Within the generation of this law, the Serrata, membership would become permanent. And the patriciate… Now we don’t talk about an aristocracy. There weren’t nobles in Venice. We talk about patricians, wealthy citizens. And the patriciate, this class of wealthy citizens, had become a caste because you had to be born into it.

In one bold piece of legislation, Venice had disenfranchised 95% of its population. The electorate was now restricted to only 2000 males from 150 Venetian families that were legally defined as patrician families. Venetian society had been reorganized into three unequal parts. All right. Again, if any of you are concerned today about this disparity between the very rich and the wealthy and the very poor, and something that’s obviously happened before. The patriciate in Venice represented 5% of the population.

Now, this was not a landed aristocracy, but one whose wealth derived from maritime trade. The secondary stratus of Venetian society was composed of cittadini or citizens, which was actually more of a kind of secondary aristocracy than it was a bourgeoisie. This rank, the second status, included professionals such as doctors and lawyers, but was mainly made up of merchants. The third level or stratus of Venetian society and historically insignificant rank was made up of the so called popolani. And I want you to realize of course that history usually addresses those people who had political or economic influence, and in Venice the popolani or the lower classes did not.

With such a drastic change it seems that the Venetian social structure sought to re-equiliberate itself with the introduction of a new social and religious entity known as the Scuola. And in fact, I’ll dedicate an entire podcast to this theme. A scuola, which of course is the Italian word for school, but in Venice referred to a devotional confraternity for laypeople and it was meant to aid the members in saving their souls by performing charitable acts.

These scuole, these organizations, these confraternities were subject to the authority of the Venetian state, not the church. Okay, these are lay entities. And these scuole were classified either as grande and there were six scoule grande, or piccole. And there were about 200 small scuole, scuole piccole. And the big schools, the big scuole that you hear about were named Santa Maria della Carità or St. Mary of Charity; San Giovanni Evangelista, St. John the Evangelist; San Marco, the confraternity of St. Mark, the Scuola della Misericordia or the School of Mercy; and then two later comers, which were the Scuola of San Rocco and the Scuola of San Teodoro, who I mentioned earlier.

Now, the members of these organizations could number as many as five or 600, and the scuole were administered by annually elected members with a Grande Guardian, so there was this high council essentially that ruled over. And through the appearance of these, what I like to call microscopic para governments… all right, because remember the infrastructure of the scuola began to look just like the Venetian government. There was the great body, all the members, then there were the chapter members, and then there was the council itself, and then there was the Grand Guardian. In other words, it looked just like Venetian government did with the popular body of representatives, the Senate, and then the doge.

And these what I call para governments, essentially allowed Venetians a way to divert their political ambitions. In other words, if you were suddenly one of that 95% had been cut out from serving in government, that is a very dangerous thing because obviously you could trigger revolution. Those people who have been disenfranchised looking for a way to exercise and vent their political ambitions, well, now they could do it in the scuola. Because if they could reach a high ranking position within one of these societies, it was a way for them to feel important as well.

Focusing your attention on climbing the hierarchical ladder of a scuola and achieving prestige and esteem that came with these important posts was a way for the Venetian cittadino to create and redirect his political energies. And in fact, to the Venetian government now, which of course had made this bold move in disenfranchising so much of its citizenry, the evolution or the appearance of the scuola must have also seem to be a gift from God because it would maintain stability.

Now in later podcasts, we’ll get back to this idea of the scuola because we’ll be looking at the art. In fact, in many ways, these scuola became perhaps the most important artistic and architectural patrons of Venice because they would use art and architecture as a sort of venue, as a language by which to compete amongst each other, but also show the world just how extraordinary they were.

This is the first of many podcasts dedicated to the subject of Venice. There’s much, much for us to talk about. But in my next podcast, we’ll be heading back to Florence and back into our discussion of the beginning of the 15th century, the evolution technically of art, out of that international gothic world and into this early Renaissance world to this day. Stay tuned for more

For more information on lectures and programs in the United States, art history tours in Italy and for online video lectures, visit rockyruggiero.com.