322 anna bellavitis
image constructed between the 15th and 16th centuries and culminating
in Gasparo contarini’s 1542 treatise, Venetian society was divided into
two groups: patriciate and popolo, but within the latter category there
was “the more honest part” for whom particular charges and privileges
were reserved. the existence of a comfortable and “honorable” social class
devoid of political rights is concealed by the tradition of treatises on the
“myth of Venice” but appears in some 15th-century political projects and
treatises, sometimes with polemical overtones.7
the early political definition of the governing class, beginning with the
Serrata at the end of the 13th century, was in reality followed by a series of
adjustments which were ongoing until early modern times and in which
the constant redefinition of family roles and behavior also played a role.8
the forced opening at the end of the 17th century, when the title of patri-
cian was put up for sale in order to meet the financial burden of the wars
of candia and morea, represented a moment of grave crisis of identity
from which it was difficult to emerge.9 Finally, in the last centuries of the
Republic, Venetian political treatises organized the patriciate into various
“classes,” no longer solely on the basis of the family’s relative antiquity but
also on the basis of wealth. the 18th-century categorizations were orga-
nized beginning from the various branches, or patrician “case” [houses],
Il Magistrato alle Pompe nella Repubblica di Venezia (Venice, 1912); luca molà, “leggi sun-
tuarie in Veneto,” in maria Giuseppina muzzarelli and antonella campanini, eds., Disci-
plinare il lusso. La legislazione suntuaria in Italia e in Europa tra Medioevo ed Età moderna
(Rome, 2003), pp. 47–57; tiziana Plebani, “la sociabilità nobiliare veneziana nel secondo
Settecento e i problemi dell’abbigliamento,” in Roberto Bizzocchi and arturo Pacini, eds.,
Sociabilità aristocratica in età moderna. Il caso genovese: paradigmi, interpretazioni e con-
fronti (Pisa, 2008), pp. 87–104.
7 See the following, in Girolamo arnaldi and manlio Pastore Stocchi, eds., Storia della
cultura veneta, 6 vols (Vicenza, 1976–86), vol. 3 (1981): Dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio
di Trento, part 3: Franco Gaeta, “l’idea di Venezia,” pp. 565–641; Franco Gaeta, “Venezia
da Stato misto a aristocrazia esemplare,” pp. 437–94; and angelo Ventura, “Scrittori poli-
tici e scritture di governo,” pp. 513–63; also Gaetano cozzi, “Politica, società istituzioni,”
in Gaetano cozzi and michael Knapton, Storia della Repubblica di Venezia dalla Guerra
di Chioggia alla riconquista della Terraferma (turin, 1986), pp. 3–271; and Gaetano cozzi,
“domenico morosini e il De bene instituta re publica,” Studi veneziani 12 (1970) 405–58.
8 See Stanley chojnacki: “in Search of the Venetian Patriciate. Families and Factions in
14th century Venice,” in John R. Hale, ed., Renaissance Venice (london, 1973), pp. 47–90;
Stanley chojnacki, “Social identity in Renaissance Venice: the Second Serrata,” Renais-
sance Studies 8 (1994), 341–58; and Stanley chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance
Venice (Baltimore, 2000).
9 Roberto Sabbadini, L’acquisto della tradizione. Tradizione aristocratica e nuova nobiltà
a Venezia (sec. XVII–XVIII) (Udine, 1995); Raines, L’invention.