130 benjamin arbel
Quarnaro Gulf and those serving in territories lying to the north of this
gulf (including Italy), were subject to different administrative regulations.12
The term of office of Venetian governors in most maritime territories was
longer than service in the mainland ones,13 and so were the deadlines
for presentation of documents required for clearance of former governors,
without which they could not be elected to other offices.14 In the judicial
sphere, unlike the situation in the terraferma, Venetian magistrates in
overseas territories had an exclusive right to adjudicate criminal cases, and
the process of appeal was also sometimes different, especially in the later
period.15 In the financial administration, the reviewing of the accounts
of maritime colonies was entrusted to separate functionaries in Venice,
and the official balance sheets also distinguished between, on the one
hand, Venice and the terraferma (sometimes, though not always, taken
together) and the maritime dominions.16 These administrative, bureau-
cratic, and judicial distinctions must have contributed to a consciousness
among Venetian officials of the differences between the Republic’s main-
land and the overseas territories.
Although the need to reach a subject territory by ship was the basic
criterion of its inclusion in the maritime dominions, this criterion was
somewhat ambiguous. The Senate’s decisions concerning Chioggia some-
times appear in the Deliberazioni Mar registers, probably owing to some
confusion in the Venetian chancery regarding the dividing line between
those two wings of the Venetian lion. Ravenna, which was conquered in
1441 and lay beyond the duchy of Ferrara and, consequently, had to be
reached by sea, was considered to be part of the maritime state until 1485,
when the Council of Ten decreed that it would henceforth be included
12 E.g., Simeon Ljubić, ed., Commissiones et relationes, 8 vols (Zagreb, 1876), 1:1 (1433).
See also Marin Sanudo, I Diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin et al., 58 vols (Venice, 1879–1902), 2:36–37
(1498), 890–891 (1499).
13 Samuele Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, 3rd ed., 10 vols (Venice, 1972–75),
8:345–47.
14 Andrea Zannini, Il sistema di revisione contabile della Serenissima. Istituzioni,
personale, procedure (secc. XVI–XVIII) (Venice, 1994), p. 22.
15 Gaetano Cozzi, “La politica del diritto nella Repubblica di Venezia,” in Gaetano
Cozzi, ed., Stato, società e giustizia nella Repubblica Veneta (sec. XV–XVIII) (Rome, 1980),
p. 66; Filippo Maria Paladini, “Paterni tiranni: mito e antimito, autorità e conflitto nella
Dalmazia veneta,” in Sante Graciotti, ed., Mito e antimito di Venezia nel bacino adriatico
(secoli XV–XIX). Atti del Covegno Italo-Croato, Venezia, Fodazione Giorgio Cini, 11–13
novembre 1997 (Rome, 2001), p. 195. Cf. Angelo Ventura, Nobiltà e popolo nella società veneta
del ’400 e ’500 (Bari, 1964), pp. 440–46; James S. Grubb, Firstborn of Venice. Vicenza in the
Early Renaissance State (Baltimore/London, 1988), pp. 57–58.
16 Zannini, Il sistema di revisione, pp. 18–23; Besta, Bilanci Generali, 1/1:589–90 (mid-16th
century); Romanin, Storia documentata, 9: 358 (1795).