the terraferma state 107
This policy sharply reduced the influence of local aristocracies on
the conduct and outcome of terraferma criminal trials and their built-in
advantage when facing non-noble subjects in the courts; it strengthened
the role of Venetian authority correspondingly, and tended to make prac-
tice more uniform between the different provinces. It also seems to have
set more serious limits to the overall capacity of aristocracies to preserve
honor and power without coming to terms with the state as represented
by Venice. Though peaceful features of terraferma noble families’ strate-
gies of alliances and relationships, such as marriage policy, posed Venice
no intrinsic problem, the reverse side of the coin was often long-running
rivalry and sometimes violent hostility. Venetian policy now cramped aris-
tocratic preference for handling disputes between families or factions by
substantially autonomous mediation or sometimes feuding, rather than
via the law-courts, just as it posed or exacerbated problems in the internal
cohesion of individual families, whether between branches or individual
members. Similar consequences—in asserting Venetian authority and
weakening urban institutions and elites—derived from other trends in
the administration of justice. The increasing flow of civil appeals to Ven-
ice gradually eroded the autonomy of mainland courts, and the burgeon-
ing activity of the judicial college of Ten (later Twenty) Savi of the Senate
handled mainland administrative and fiscal disputes.
Venetian policy in these same decades also sought to assert more
clearly expressed sovereignty over other forms of aristocratic power. A
new central magistracy (1587) acquired responsibility over feudal juris-
dictions, requiring systematic procedures of registration, checking, and
investiture; this policy often matched pressure from enfeoffed commu-
nities for a more direct relationship with Venetian authority, especially
through judicial appeals, and it was variously supported by urban institu-
tions and corpi territoriali intent on limiting the prerogatives of separate
jurisdictions, especially in feudal Friuli.43
In the early 17th century, therefore, there were important signs of dyna-
mism and change in the political relationship between Venice and the
mainland, of initiative by Venetian authority but also by forces in pro-
vincial society. During the jurisdictional and ideological clash with the
papacy in 1606–07, when Venice defied the Interdict banning religious
rites, and in the following years’ alternation of military scares and out-
right war, terraferma society gave significant proof of consensus towards
43 Zamperetti, I piccoli principi.