96 michael knapton
In the 1509 crisis of control over the mainland, however, chafing at
Venetian authority was evident in all these elites.18 Hopes for greater local
autonomy and gratification in serving other rulers married with the need
to reconcile advancing armed enemies, in the absence of reliable Venetian
defense, and to maintain local pre-eminence, thus orienting many main-
land aristocrats towards interest in a change of regime—though the new,
temporary rulers generally sharply disappointed them. The Agnadello cri-
sis also revealed raw tension in terraferma society in general: especially
the loyalty to Venice shown by significant parts of the urban popolo and
of the rural population was linked with resentment of the local aristoc-
racy’s pre-eminence. Venice took advantage of such support short-term,
but after the emergency its political choice could only be to resume its
priority relationship in government with the civic aristocracy.
Historians no longer credit Ventura’s hypothesis that Venetian author-
ity pressed for “aristocratic closure” of these civic elites via similar
mechanisms to those defining the capital’s patriciate: smaller and more
tightly regulated councils, their membership determined by co-optation
or inherited right and anyway denied to the low-born.19 Change in these
terms did develop gradually and spontaneously, with the general slow-
ing of social turnover, but despite periodic disputes—over demands for
access to civic bodies by newer, so-called popolari families and infighting
for ranking within the civic aristocracies—such turnover did not cease,
assisted by natural wastage. In the long term, both the internal hierar-
chy and the very composition of urban elites could change considerably.
Especially in Friuli and the Bergamasco, disputes ran deeper: profound
factional loyalties carried earlier political clichés of identification and
rivalry through into the Venetian period.20 Local elites’ behavior there in
the aftermath of Agnadello—especially the “mad blood stirring” into gen-
eralized violence in Friuli in 1511—demonstrates how seriously local splits
endangered political stability, since factional strife comprised antagonism
over loyalty to Venice and favor received from it (the opposing Friulan
18 Giuseppe Del Torre, Venezia e la Terraferma dopo la guerra di Cambrai. Fiscalità e
amministrazione (1515–1530) (Milan, 1986); Gian Maria Varanini, “La terraferma di fronte
alla sconfitta di Agnadello,” in Giuseppe Gullino, ed., L’Europa e la Serenissima: la svolta del
- Nel V centenario della battaglia di Agnadello (Venice, 2011), pp. 115–61.
19 Ventura, Nobiltà e popolo; Law, Venice and the Veneto; Varanini, Comuni cittadini.
20 Paolo Cavalieri, Qui sunt guelfi et partiales nostri: Comunità, patriziato e fazioni a Ber-
gamo tra XV e XVI secolo (Milan, 2008); Edward Muir, Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta and
Factions in Friuli during the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1993); Gian Maria Varanini, “Nelle città
della Marca Trevigiano: dalle fazioni al patriziato (secoli XIII–XV),” in Marco Gentile, ed.,
Guelfi e ghibellini nell’Italia del Rinascimento (Rome, 2005), pp. 563–602.