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closer to Venice, with similar implications for their aspirations—thus the
Pompei in Verona, associated with Venetian army service.
Venetian authority intervened in matters of municipal politics and
administration in a more concerted fashion towards the end of the 16th
century. By formulating rules and incriminating culprits it sought to pre-
vent and punish malpractice by mainland subjects—both citizens and
contado inhabitants—holding local office. It tried to ease the tensions
within civic elites, supporting reconciliation between opposing families
and groups and also cautiously favoring turnover in access to civic office,
especially if this seemed likely to produce more reliable local partners in
government (it had tried with scant success to favor such turnover in the
relaunching of civic public life after the Agnadello crisis).
The periodic resurfacing of the same problems needs to be related to a
broader context of competition for power between Venice and the main-
land elites, which became gradually more explicit in the later 16th century.
This was partly evident earlier in the spheres of growing Venetian govern-
ment initiative already mentioned above but was connected especially
with issues of terraferma penal justice and law and order, which were
in a critical state in the decades on either side of 1600.42 An important
strand of violent behavior was the work of nobles, whether as outlaws at
the head of roving armed bands or through habitual use of force in their
ordinary urban and rural habitat. Central authority reacted increasingly
drastically to such behavior, partly by seeking to reinforce policing, whose
perennial weakness was demonstrated by the high proportion of sen-
tences outlawing convicted defendants who had escaped arrest—a weak-
ness partly sidestepped and partly compounded by greater recourse to
bounties for capturing or killing outlaws. But it also introduced important
procedural changes in the working of penal justice. It often authorized the
use in terraferma governors’ tribunals of the Council of Ten’s trial rules,
harder on the accused and less risky for damaged parties and witnesses;
it diverted many delicate criminal trials away from tribunals influenced
by local elites and towards reliable mainland governors’ courts; and it
extended punishment from individual noble criminals to their families
by confiscation of their patrimony.
42 Claudio Povolo, L’intrigo dell’onore. Poteri e istituzioni nella Repubblica di Venezia tra
Cinque e Seicento (Verona, 1997); L’amministrazione della giustizia penale nella Repubblica
di Venezia (secoli XVI–XVIII), ed. Giovanni Chiodi and Claudio Povolo (Verona, 2004).