family and society 331
that matter, at least in the first case mentioned, the last name and even
the given name came from the father’s family. the practice of giving the
daughter a name modeled on the father’s last name, which she would
inevitably lose once she married, was typical of the aristocracy, a factor
which in this particular case might lead to the conclusion that the father
had accepted her integration into the family. For that matter, to be an ille-
gitimate son or daughter of a Venetian patrician was a perfectly allowed
and socially accepted identity, even in those cases in which legitimate
birth was a criterion which could not be disregarded by all others.29 these
were women married off to men from the artisan class, yet who for many
years had been lovers or even companions of a patrician man. in some
cases, when their patrician lovers decided to follow the pattern marked
by the family of origin, these women rebelled against their destiny. Some-
times, their requests for separation from a husband they had not chosen
was accepted by the ecclesiastic court. a century later, many young patri-
cians, urged on by the climate of the counter Reformation to regularize
these situations and marry their concubines, chose the formula of the
“secret marriage,” which did not permit offspring to bear their father’s
name nor to inherit his possessions.30
in the 18th century, the family values and political ideals upon which
the social system was founded began to waver: the fraterne split up more
and more frequently; fathers more often privileged one single heir; and
sons refused compulsory bachelorhood, arranged marriages, and some-
times even the institution of marriage itself.31 clandestine marriages and
love-based marriages, formed against the wishes of the family of origin,
were phenomena typical of the century. However, when young patricians
chose these options, their membership in the Maggior Consiglio was at
stake, as was their descendants’ political identity, along with the des-
tiny of their family’s name and, ultimately, of the family itself. the lack
of registration of marriages and births in the registers of the Avogaria di
Comun, an unavoidable consequence of these choices, must in part urge
us to reevaluate the patriciate’s demographic crisis: perhaps it was less
29 andrea Zannini, Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: i cittadini originari
(sec. XVI–XVIII) (Venice, 1993); cowan, Marriage.
30 Ferraro, Marriage War; cozzi, “Padri”; ambrosini, “toward a Social History.”
31 Gaetano cozzi, “note e documenti sulla questione del ‘divorzio’ a Venezia (1782–
1788),” Annali dell’Istituto italo-germanico in Trento 7 (1981), 275–360; luca de Biase, Amore di
Stato. Venezia, Settecento (Palermo, 1992); laura megna, “comportamenti abitativi del patri-
ziato veneziano (1582–1740),” Studi veneziani, n.s. 22 (1991), 253–324; meneghetti casarin,
“diseducazione.”