family and society 337
recreated by the members of the Scuola. the fraterna’s appeal to family
unity, an economic necessity in addition to a fundamental part of its iden-
tity, was very frequent in merchants’ wills, but it was equally frequent that
fathers foresaw the possibility of a separation between the brothers and
attempted to resist or organize it. in 1570, agostino Prezato, merchant and
draper, made a will after the death of his brother, with whom he shared a
mercantile company, and, while he expressed the desire that his brothers
and nephews remain united, he left all necessary instructions for the divi-
sion of capitals and goods, as had occurred when his brother had gone to
study in Rome, where his father had purchased two offices for him.41
Beyond the Fraterna: Individual Destinies and Choices
mercantile, professional, and bureaucratic environments were tightly
interwoven, and it is often difficult to define in relation to one single
sphere of economic interest a family in which various activities coexisted.
the functionaries of the Republic tended to intermarry within the same
social class, that is, when they did not orient their matrimonial choices
towards the daughters of nobles or doctors from the terraferma who
wished to weave ties in the capital, or when they were not able to contract
matrimonial ties with patrician families.
marriage was not the result of free choice even for males, but sometimes
signs of uneasiness can be detected. in his family’s chronicle, alessandro
Ziliol recounted that, at the end of the 16th century, a sort of “race” arose
among his uncles to determine which one would have children, and that
their first division had been determined precisely by one brother’s deci-
sion to marry. instead, this brother had been destined for bachelorhood
and to remain in the house with the other brothers, where, as one sur-
mises from the rest of the chronicle, he could procreate with servant-girls
and concubines children who might eventually join his brother’s family.42
even in the sphere of succession, one perceives the opening up of
individual choices. the will of Girolamo Zuccato, secretary of the Senate,
presents itself before our eyes as uncannily modern, in addition to run-
ning completely counter to the tendencies represented by the image of
the fidei-commissum as a normal modality for thinking about one’s succes-
sion beginning in the second half of the 16th century: “When my son will
reach twenty years of age,” he wrote in 1562, “he will be able to change or
41 Bellavitis, Identité, pp. 129 et seqq., and Famille, p. 153.
42 Bellavitis, Identité, pp. 301–03 and 351