362 anne jacobson schutte
villas, in order to pursue other ends: intimidation, extortion, hetero- and
homosexual rape, and murder. At the end of the 16th century, as part of
the punishment for their crimes, the Council of X deprived at least two of
them, Zuanne Memmo and Lunardo Pesaro, of their noble status.32
In primarily rural Friuli, the northeastern zone of the Republic, mem-
bers of noble clans gained a well-earned reputation for violence, as sev-
eral examples will illustrate. Partially in reaction to the disastrous War of
the League of Cambrai, as Edward Muir has shown, they formed factions
dubbed the Strumieri and Zamberlani. Aided by their partisans and retain-
ers, they did bloody battle, beginning on Fat Tuesday 1511 in Udine and
subsequently spreading all over the region.33 Federica Ambrosini presents
another case study. Thirteen-year-old Isabella da Passano, a girl of Geno-
ese ancestry born and highly educated in Padua, was married off by her
mother in 1555 to Marco della Frattina, member of a noble clan in western
Friuli. On moving to his never-finished residence in Portoguaro, she dis-
covered that like most of his male kin, her husband was an improvident
thug; their sons would follow in his footsteps. Her female peers, disdain-
ing Isabella as a foreigner, never welcomed her into their circle. Over the
years, Marco went deeper and deeper into debt. In 1585, after he and their
son Antonio were banished from Venetian territory for insulting a Vene-
tian official, they went off to Hungary as mercenaries, where they presum-
ably died—when and whether on the battlefield are both uncertain. At no
point in their long, unsatisfactory marriage did Isabella seriously consider
returning to her mother, who had moved to Mantua, or joining her broth-
ers in Genoa. Until her death in 1601, she remained in Friuli, caring for an
illegitimate orphaned grandson. One of the few ties between Isabella and
Marco may have been their mutual attraction to philo-Protestantism.34
This is by no means the only instance of links between violence and her-
esy among Friulan nobles.35
Until historians uncover someone worse, young Paolo Orgiano, brought
to light by Claudio Povolo, will head the list of elite criminals on the
32 Jonathan Walker, “Bravi and Venetian Nobles, c.1550–1650,” Studi veneziani 26 (1998),
85–113, quoted phrase at p. 113.
33 Edward Muir, Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta and Factions in Friuli during the Renais-
sance (Baltimore, 1993).
34 Federica Ambrosini, L’eresia di Isabella. Vita di Isabella da Passano, signora della
Frattina (1542–1601) (Milan, 2005).
35 Nicholas S. Davidson, “An Armed Band and the Local Community in the Venetian
Terraferma in the Sixteenth Century,” in Gherardo Ortalli, ed., Bandi armati, banditi, bandit-
ismo e repressione di giustizia negli stati europei di antico regime (Rome, 1986), pp. 401–22.