102 michael knapton
property, etc.32 The growth of a non-patrician bureaucracy serving cen-
tral government ran parallel to the tighter definition of criteria for its
recruitment, with more extensive insistence on the requisite of Venetian
citizenship—something immigrants to Venice could acquire, but which
confirmed the exclusion of ordinary terraferma subjects.33 Though there
was greater overall mainland activity by personnel from magistracies in
Venice, the meagre permanent presence of Venetian officials in the ter-
raferma did not increase. Although innately pragmatic, Venetian govern-
ment made increasingly frequent use from the end of the 16th century of
legal opinions from consultants in iure, thus also developing its awareness
of the implications of terraferma sovereignty.34 Pronouncements by the
most famous consultant, Paolo Sarpi (appointed in 1606), dealt too with
rivers, roads, borders, rights claimed by communities, fiefs, and feudato-
ries. Central government’s formulation and assertion of its rights could
indeed toughen, as happened, for example, in the decades either side of
1600 over the balance between the state’s and mainland communities
respective rights over communal property used by the latter.35
Unsurprisingly, more intense central government action in the main-
land paralleled the massive development of Venetian private interests
there, especially via land purchase and reclamation, still concentrated in
areas nearer the capital but gradually spreading. But there was no coher-
ent agricultural policy. Grain needs and profit opportunities driven by
demographic increase—the price revolution—stimulated extension of
the acreage tilled through drainage of marshy areas and cultivation of
marginal land, much more than higher productivity via better agronomic
practice—irrigation, water-meadows and fodder crops, high-yielding rice
fields, stock-raising to balance arable agriculture, etc.36 Strong reciprocal
32 Michael Knapton, “ ‘Dico in scrittura... quello ch’a bocha ho refertto.’ La trasmis-
sione delle conoscenze di governo nelle relazioni dei rettori veneziani in terraferma, secoli
XVI–XVII,” in Massimo Donattini, ed, L’Italia dell’Inquisitore. Storia e geografia dell’Italia
del ’500 nella Descrittione di Leandro Alberti (Bologna, 2007), pp. 531–54; Vladimiro Valerio,
ed., Cartografi veneti. Mappe, uomini e istituzioni per l’immagine e il governo del territorio
(Padua, 2007).
33 Andrea Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: i cittadini originari
(sec. XVI–XVIII) (Venice, 1993).
34 Antonella Barzazi, “I consultori ‘in iure,’ ” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 5: Dalla
Controriforma alla fine della Repubblica. Il Settecento, part 2, pp. 179–99.
35 Stefano Barbacetto, “La più gelosa delle pubbliche regalie”: I “beni communali” della
Repubblica veneta tra dominio della Signoria e diritti delle comunità (secoli XV–XVIII)
(Venice, 2008).
36 Giorgio Borelli, ed., Uomini e civiltà agraria in territorio veronese, 2 vols (Verona,
1982); Salvatore Ciriacono, Acque e agricoltura. Venezia, l’Olanda e la bonifica europea in