the terraferma state 91
in the traditionally conceived, multivolume 1990s Storia di Venezia, and
also in much English-language Venetian historiography.10 Although anal-
ysis of the mainland dominion benefits from comparison with Venice’s
maritime colonies, this essay’s priority is the terraferma, leaving readers
to compare it with the sea empire.
As its development testifies, there are abundant primary sources for
terraferma historiography, both in Venice itself—where state judicial and
financial records, official correspondence etc. are more generously pre-
served for later than earlier centuries—and in mainland town archives
and libraries.11 Unsurprisingly for early modern rather than medieval
sources, the vast majority of this material remains unpublished, despite
significant exceptions.12
c. The Title to Rule, the Language of Dominion
The positive political clichés expressed through the “myth of Venice” were
extended to its dominions via stereotype images of wise, beneficial Vene-
tian government permeating the political language used by both Venetian
and terraferma institutions, and also through such material symbols as
the winged lion of St Mark, regularly present in urban public buildings
and squares.13 But especially in the early years of dominion, neither Vene-
tians nor their subjects produced abundant, explicit analysis of the ter-
raferma’s standing within the state, despite reference to the matter in
treatises, jurists’ writings, and a variety of public and private documents.
Reticence by Venetian patricians on this subject was consistent with
their buttoned-up approach to public life, but it was also convenient
for all parties, considering the lasting differences between Venetian and
mainland elites in general political culture. Especially initially, this margin
publication. As well as Knapton, “Venice and the terraferma,” see a monograph by Michael
Knapton and Andrea Zannini provisionally entitled A Republican Empire—the Venetian
Mainland State, 1509–1797, to be published by Ashgate.
10 Storia di Venezia, all vols; Martin and Romano, Venice Reconsidered, especially the
introduction.
11 See especially the relevant entries in Guida generale degli Archivi di Stato Italiani,
4 vols (Rome, 1981–94), though there is also much relevant material elsewhere, especially
in civic libraries.
12 See, e.g., Relazioni dei rettori veneti in terraferma, ed. Istituto di Storia economica
dell’Università di Trieste, 14 vols (Milan, 1972–79).
13 For this section, see James Grubb, Firstborn of Venice. Vicenza in the Early Renaissance
State (Baltimore, 1988); John Law, Venice and the Veneto (Aldershot, 2000); and Antonio
Menitti Ippolito, “La dedizione e lo stato regionale. Osservazioni sul caso Veneto,” Archivio
veneto, 5th ser., 127 (1986), 5–30.