4 eric r. dursteler
Bembo’s Historiae has also suffered because of comparisons with his
contemporary, Marin Sanudo, whose encyclopedic Diarii chronicle in
rich detail almost every aspect of venetian life over a period of nearly
40 years and are among the most esteemed primary sources among mod-
ern historians. The roots of the venetian tradition of keeping historical
diaries trace back to the Codice Morosini of 1433, which proved the model
for later diarists including Girolamo Priuli and, most famously, Sanudo.
The triumph of the Diarii is ironic, since Sanudo was passed over for the
position of official historian by the Senate in favor of the more influen-
tial Bembo, despite the diarist’s many years of service and his obsessive
compilation of an astounding range of documentary material. And in yet
another blow to Sanudo, Bembo also used the former’s Diarii in compos-
ing his Historiae.8
There is, nonetheless, much to recommend the Historiae venetae.
Whatever his failings as a historian, Bembo was a born storyteller who
narrates the extraordinarily complex political events of his day with clar-
ity and verve and an eye for narrative detail. While not as rich as Sanudo’s,
Bembo’s account is a product both of documentary sources extracted from
venice’s archives and other private document collections, and it also ben-
efits from the author’s personal experience of living through the events he
describes, as well as his contacts with some of the key figures of the day.
There followed over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries a long
series of official historians, each of whom embraced with varying commit-
ment the task of recounting the history of his day. The shift barely begun
under Bembo from literary to more empirical treatments that drew on
the Republic’s rich archives continued. The next official historian, Paolo
Paruta, was given complete access to the records in producing his Historia
vinetiana (1605), and the position of historian was shifted from the pur-
view of the librarian of the Marciana to the Cancelleria Secreta. Among
the long line of official historians, Nicolò Contarini, who held the position
in the 1620s before becoming doge in 1630, merits mention as perhaps the
most penetrating. He declares that “the soul of history is the truth,” and
perhaps unsurprisingly, his unvarnished, wide-ranging, insider’s view of
venice’s history during a difficult period was considered “inopportune,”
and never published.9
8 Benzoni, “Scritti politico-storici,” p. 766.
9 Gino Benzoni, “Introduzione,” in Gino Benzoni and Tiziano Zanato, eds., Storici e
politici veneti del Cinquecento e del Seicento (Milan/Naples, 1982), pp. xl–xlii; Cochrane,
Historians and Historiography, pp. 225–38.