family and society 333
in the second case, international merchants. in order to support the legit-
imacy of their requests, both groups insisted on the fact that they had
married Venetian women or that they had given their daughters’ hands
in marriage to Venetian cittadini. marriage was always a catalyst of social
integration, but, in this case, one would also appeal to a law of 1407, modi-
fied in 1552, which facilitated the granting of citizenship to those men who
had married a “Venetam habitatricem Venetiarum.”34
the definition of what constituted cittadinanza originaria grew progres-
sively more complicated between the medieval period and the early mod-
ern period. in fact, at the end of the 16th century, there was a cittadinanza
originaria that granted some customs privileges to second-generation
natives, as well as one that gave access to posts in the state’s bureaucracy
and, in particular, to the ducal chancellery, to third-generation natives
who could demonstrate their own, their father’s, and their grandfather’s
legitimate birth as well as provide proof that the family had not carried
out manual trades over the past three generations. Between 1569 and 1720,
2789 candidates obtained such a title, and, particularly in the earlier part
of this period, many were the natural sons of patricians (about one-fifth
between 1570 and 1644). it was the only case in which the rule of legiti-
mate birth was not followed. the laws and procedures put into practice
beginning in 1569 allowed for the creation of a bureaucratic elite precisely
in those years when, due to the change in the international economic
equilibrium, Venetian originari encountered escalating challenges in com-
merce, that is to say, the activity that had historically characterized their
identity. the social origins of those neo-originari demonstrate the city’s
economic evolution and the progressive closing off of the bureaucratic
class: sons of merchants declined progressively, while sons of functionar-
ies or of members of the professions increased in number.35
34 Zannini, “il pregiudizio”; anna Bellavitis, “Ars mechanica e gerarchie sociali a Venezia
tra XVi e XVii secolo,” in mathieu arnoux and Pierre monnet, eds., Le “technicien” dans la
cité en Europe occidentale (1250–1650) (Rome, 2004), pp. 161–79; luca molà and Reinhold c.
mueller, “essere straniero a Venezia nel tardo medioevo: accoglienza e rifiuto nei privilegi
di cittadinanza e nelle sentenze criminali,” in Simonetta cavaciocchi, ed., Le migrazioni
in Europa (secc. XIII–XVIII) (Florence, 1994), pp. 839–51; Reinhold c. mueller, “Veneti facti
privilegio: stranieri naturalizzati a Venezia tra XiV e XVi secolo,” in donatella calabi and
Paola lanaro, eds., La città italiana e i luoghi degli stranieri (Bari, 1998), pp. 41–51; James
S. Grubb, “elite citizens,” in John martin and dennis Romano, eds., Venice Reconsidered
(Baltimore/london, 2000), pp. 339–64; Bellavitis, Identité; Reinhold c. mueller, Immigra-
tion and Citizenship in Medieval Venice (Rome, 2010).
35 matteo casini, “la cittadinanza originaria a Venezia tra i secoli XV e XVi. Una linea
interpretativa,” in Studi veneti offerti a Gaetano Cozzi, pp. 133–50; trebbi, “la società”; Zan-
nini, Burocrazia; Bellavitis, Identité.