326 anna bellavitis
which also implicated the intervention of the state’s magistracies and
which produced archival sources of great interest.18
the progressive restriction of choice is to be contextualized within a
family system in which access to marriage was also limited: the family
structure of the Venetian fraterna did not permit all sons to marry; rather,
in the course of the early modern era, the percentage of sons who had
access to marriage progressively declined, a phenomenon that coincided
with the evolution of the structure of wealth and of income sources of
patrician families. in the 15th century, Francesco and ermolao Barbaro
had expressed antithetical opinions on the link between marriage and a
political career. indeed, Francesco, unlike ermolao, considered marriage
to be an essential prerequisite for a man’s political identity. However,
this debate, which is part of a wider humanistic tradition, must be con-
textualized within an economic structure in which the major sources of
wealth of the political class were still derived from mercantile activities.
the complex subdivision between political career and mercantile activity
among members of the same family and within a single individual’s life
is a characteristic of the Venetian patriciate, and one which conditioned
marital choices.
in 1420, concurrently with norms defining the limits of patrician exog-
amy, the first sumptuary law on dowries was promulgated, the only one
among numerous laws on the topic to distinguish the dowries of patri-
cian women and the dowries that women from popular classes brought
to patrician husbands. Such norms were symptomatic of the will to define
an aurea mediocritas, imposing both upper and lower limits. even in the
attempt—which was aimed at redefining hierarchies within the patrician
class between new, old, and ducal families—to limit the squandering of
wealth, such norms reveal the intent to make some exceptions, in order to
allow for the influx of new wealth into the governing class. the proposal
not to limit the dowries of women from the popular classes marrying
patrician men was rejected, but a ceiling of 2000 ducats for such dowries
was authorized, while dowries between patricians could not exceed 1600
ducats. numerous other laws followed in the course of the 16th century,
increasing the limits for the dowries of patricians, cittadini, and those
“treated as such,” even though the law provided many loopholes and
exceptions, particularly for widows and only daughters destined to inherit
18 alexander cowan, Marriage, Manners and Mobility in Early Modern Venice (alder-
shot, 2007).