the terraferma state 93
Venice, only partly balanced by the slow accumulation of Venetian laws
and policy directives concerning the whole terraferma.
From Annexation to the Italian Wars, c.1400–1509a. Venetian Officials in the Mainland, Authority in Venice
Direct Venetian government of the mainland was chiefly the responsi-
bility of patrician officials, sent to 11 principal urban governorships and
several smaller towns, some largely separate from dependence on bigger
cities’ jurisdiction over contadi (e.g., Bassano).14 These teams of officials
comprised one or two governors with broad responsibility, from civil to
military, from judicial to executive and administrative; one or two trea-
surers in charge of the Venetian exchequer; and a few castellans bereft of
jurisdictional powers. They were assisted by a limited number of gover-
nors’ judges, chancellors and police, exchequer staff, minor castellans and
garrison troops, most of them either mainland subjects or non-patrician
Venetians. In the more prestigious governorships (Padua, Vicenza, Verona,
Brescia, and Bergamo), responsibility was shared between a podestà with
primarily civil authority and a captain mainly concerned with the exche-
quer, defense, and the contado. Patrician governors of the main cities were
important political figures, such posts significant in their cursus honorum,
but their terms in office were brief, and many had neither specific apti-
tude nor career specialization in terraferma posts.
This scant presence of ordinary patrician functionaries in the mainland
was sporadically and temporarily increased by extraordinary officials,
mostly patricians, sent from Venice with a variety of mandates—among
them the Sindici Inquisitori, periodically despatched to investigate, judge,
and report on matters concerning justice and good government. Secu-
rity alerts and army mobilization saw the deployment of various grades
of patrician commissioner (provveditore), the most senior of whom—
provveditori generali—outranked ordinary governors, while financial
stringency could stimulate the despatch of officials to inspect and galva-
nize the exchequers.
In the 15th century, government by authority in the capital, which was
partly feeling its way and not always familiar with terraferma issues, was
14 Gian Maria Varanini, “Gli ufficiali veneziani nella Terraferma veneta quattrocent-
esca,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, ser. 4, Quaderni, 1 (1997), 155–80.