94 michael knapton
selective and light, overall.15 An increase in central government activity
due to its extension to new territory and subjects was evident for the Sen-
ate, whose registers of ordinary deliberations separated in 1440 into series
eloquently entitled terra and mar, and there was gradual, empirical accu-
mulation of terraferma competence by the Council of Ten, while judicial
appeals from the dominions influenced the cloning of the Forty (Quaran-
tia) into two and then three courts (1441, 1493). Some magistracies already
competent for Venice developed significant mainland business, and there
were rare new bodies with solely mainland duties, like the Provveditori
sopra le camere di terraferma, set over provincial exchequers in 1449.
b. Terraferma Institutions and Politics
Both central authority in Venice and patrician governors in the dominion
had no other option than extensive collaboration with local elites and
institutions.16 The delegation to the latter of vast responsibility for gov-
ernment, also visible in the numerical imbalance on the ground between
Venetian and local officials, made patrician governors’ actions a point of
intersection and mediation.
The institutions and figures exercising political power and roles in local
government of the mainland may be summarily indicated in partly over-
lapping categories: aristocratic civic councils, generally revamped after
14th-century decline under lordly rulers; numerous executive, judicial,
and administrative bodies depending on them or linked to them; legal
professionals, especially judges and notaries; civic bodies concerned with
social issues, such as hospitals (with only a shadowy city council in Tre-
viso, the big Battuti hospital there was more important than similar insti-
tutions elsewhere, as a bastion of urban élite power and symbol of civic
identity);17 rural communities, the capillary cell of all rural government;
15 Alfredo Viggiano, “Il Dominio da terra: politica e istituzioni,” in Storia di Venezia,
vol. 4: Il Rinascimento. Politica e cultura, ed. Tenenti and Tucci, pp. 529–75; Alfredo Vig-
giano, Governanti e governati. Legittimità del potere ed esercizio dell’autorità sovrana nello
Stato veneto della prima età modern (Treviso, 1993).
16 For this section, see the studies cited in notes 13–15; also Claudio Povolo, “Centro e
periferia nella Repubblica di Venezia. Un profilo,” in Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Molho,
and Pierangelo Schiera, eds., Origini dello Stato. Processi di formazione statale in Italia fra
medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna, 1994), pp. 207–21; Claudio Povolo and Sergio Zam-
peretti, eds., Comunità del passato (Vicenza, 1985) (=Annali Veneti, 1 (1984)); and Sergio
Zamperetti, I piccoli principi. Signorie locali, feudi e comunità soggette nello Stato regionale
veneto dall’espansione territoriale ai primi decenni del ’600 (Treviso, 1991).
17 David D’Andrea, Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy. The Hospital of Treviso, 1400–
1530 (Rochester, 2007).