20 eric r. dursteler
Chioggia to 1517. A second volume with the same name, which added
Giovanni Scarabello as a third co-author, was published in 1992 and cov-
ers the final centuries of the Republic. Cozzi, one of the most influential
historians of venice in the second half of the 20th century, had originally
intended to be the sole author of both books, but illness forced him to
bring on his young collaborators. Nonetheless, his influence is evident
throughout in the interweaving of politics, religion, intellectual history,
and culture, themes that were at the center of his research for decades.
Indeed, among his many monographic works, the volumes represent
Cozzi’s most complete synthetic treatment of venetian history.53
Histories of Venice TodayThe past two decades have seen a continued, though comparatively mod-
est, production of histories of venice. This has been primarily in the form
of single-volume works, written with an eye toward a popular, rather
than scholarly, reading public. A list of these, by no means exhaustive,
includes Gary Will’s Venice, Lion City: The Religion of Empire, elizabeth
Horodowich’s A Brief History of Venice, Christian Bec, Histoire de Venise,
Jean-Claude Hocquet, Venise: Guide culturel d’une ville d’art de la Renais-
sance à nos jours, Gherardo Ortalli and Giovanni Scarabello’s Breve storia
di Venezia, and Alvise Zorzi’s La repubblica del leone: Storia di Venezia.
Several more substantial works of history deserve mention. J. R. Hale’s
seminal 1973 collection, Renaissance Venice, was revisited a quarter cen-
tury after its publication when venetian scholars from europe and the
United States convened to examine the evolution of venetian studies on
the cusp of the 21st century. A selection of the papers presented at this
gathering were gathered in John Jeffries Martin and Dennis Romano’s
important collection, Venice Reconsidered. The volume’s essays suggest
some of the directions that venetian scholarship has taken in recent years,
introducing new trends such as gender, society, and culture while over-
looking others such as religion, despite the important advances of the past
30 years in this field. Despite certain lacunae, the volume illustrates the
dynamism and diversity of venetian studies today. It also posits a vision
of a venetian society that, instead of being fixed and closed, was fluid and
permeable and suggests that the city may have maintained relative peace
53 Davidson, “ ‘In Dialogue with the Past,’ ” pp. 13–14.