334 anna bellavitis
in pursuing the title of cittadino originario, it was also useful to dem-
onstrate that one had forged matrimonial ties with the patrician class,
as the case of Gian carlo Scaramella demonstrates: in 1606, Scaramella
attached to the petition he presented to the Avogaria di Comun a list of
women from his family who had married patricians over the centuries,
along with the sum paid for dowries, almost as if to suggest that the fam-
ily had “paid” its dues to the political class. a few years later, alessandro
Ziliol, Venetian cittadino originario and son of a patrician mother, wrote
that “from now on, nobody will be able to gain in riches or in nobility by
means of commerce,” accusing the patriciate of preventing social mobility
in order to seize the wealth of the Venetian populace “by means of family
ties.” these were very serious allegations, which revealed all the frustra-
tions of a “popular gentleman.” Between the 16th and 17th centuries, the
old Venetian families, which, like the Ziliol family, boasted their descent
from families excluded from the Serrata of the Maggior Consiglio, were
transitioning from commerce towards office-holding, private income, and
professions. Progressively, however, the difficulty in finding candidates
who fit all the necessary requirements led to an increased flexibility in
the recruitment of functionaries. the result was a greater social fluidity
but also the monopolization of increasingly elitist positions on the part
of the most ancient families.36
alessandro Ziliol had coined the phrase “popular gentlemen” to define
families such as his. this definition recalled the bifurcation of Venetian
society between patriciate and popolo proposed in the first decades of the
16th century by one of the major authors of the “myth of Venice,” Gasparo
contarini, who had situated the cittadini in the “most honest part of the
popolo.” For Ziliol, in constrast, cittadini were part of the nobility, divided
between “gentlemen of the consiglio” and “popular gentlemen.” even the
18th-century writings of foreign observers provide analogous definitions,
which confirm how new social identities and hierarchies were formed in
the face of the impossibility, for the most ancient families which were not
wealthy enough, to gain access to the patriciate. Furthermore, Ziliol adds
an interesting annotation when he writes that the Serrata reduced “to the
status of families many noble lineages and persons who, as happens in
Republics, were not included in that number” and gave rise to the rank of
the cittadini. more specifically, these “lineages” represent the public and
36 Bellavitis, Identité, pp. 83 and 342; andrea Zannini, “la presenza borghese,” in Storia
di Venezia, vol. 7, La Venezia barocca, ed. Benzoni and cozzi, pp. 225–72.