108 michael knapton
Venice, but there were also symptoms of considerable tension. Venetian
awareness of the latter motivated the despatch of various special inspec-
tors, and after a terraferma tour, the Sindici Inquisitori in 1621 emphasized
the difficulties faced by Venetian governors in asserting their authority
at Verona and Brescia.44 These difficulties were partly blamed on lack
of overall cohesion in government action, with organs in the capital too
ready to accept complaints against the governors; and indeed tension was
evident within the Venetian patriciate over both current policy choices
and general power-sharing, with direct repercussions for the terraferma.
In the 1628 Great Council debate over whether and how to limit the Coun-
cil of Ten’s powers, one of the arguments for preserving the Ten’s standing
was the fact that divisions within the patriciate had immediate echoes in
the mainland, especially in Brescia.45
Involution or Evolution (c.1630–1797)?a. Introduction
The great 1630 plague killed more than 20 per cent of the population in
Venice and on the mainland. The last major epidemic of its kind, it was a
turning point in many ways, firstly economic and demographic.46 It more
or less coincided with major structural changes in the international econ-
omy, which downgraded Venice to little more than a regional port on the
edge of international trade, with obvious repercussions for export manu-
facturing associated with the terraferma urban economy. Urban population
in both Venice and the terraferma, which had recovered fairly well from
the 1576 plague, struggled to fill its gaps after 1630. In 1548, 22.5 per cent
of the population in Venice and the terraferma lived in cities of 10,000
or more inhabitants, but in 1766 this proportion was only 16.5 per cent;
terraferma population increased by 44 per cent between those two dates,
but numbers in the larger cities were almost unchanged, with the major
exception of Bergamo, atypically dynamic in trade and manufacturing.
Overall balances in fact swung further: from the sea towards the mainland
44 Leonardo Moro and Marco Giustinian, Relazione sul dominio di terraferma, ed. Clau-
dio Povolo (Vicenza, 1998).
45 Gaetano Cozzi, “Venezia nello scenario europeo (1517–1699),” in Cozzi and Knapton,
La Repubblica di Venezia nell’età moderna, vol. 2, pp. 180–81.
46 Paolo Ulvioni, Il gran castigo di Dio. Carestia ed epidemie a Venezia e nella Terraferma
1628–1632 (Milan, 1989); Fornasin and Zannini, “Crisi e ricostruzione”; more in general, Zan-
nini, “Sempre più agricola.”