The AnThropology of Veniceedward MuirWhat could an anthropology of renaissance Venice possibly be? certainly
one can no longer assume there was any comprehensive, single Venetian
point of view, a universally Venetian way of finding meaning and con-
structing reality.1 Venetian men and women, nuns and prostitutes, sena-
tors and Arsenal workers did not look at the world in the same way or
assume life meant the same thing, no matter how monolithic Venetian
political culture may have been. never isolated despite the fact it was
built on islands, cosmopolitan Venice was one of the first places in europe
connected to a Mediterranean and eurasian system of exchange, making
it the hinge of the nascent world system of the later Middle Ages.2 in
fact, Venice only existed as a metropolis because its location made it an
ideal entrepôt, a convenient place between other places. not only were
many Venetians, like Marco polo, world travelers but also foreigners were
always visiting and residing in Venice—the french, flemings, Slavs, Alba-
nians, Armenians, other italians, and especially germans, greeks, and
Jews. Any attempt to define an anthropology of Venice, therefore, must
be partial, fragmentary, and at best suggestive.3 An anthropology of Ven-
ice must seek meaning from the dialogues of encounters: the encounter
of official Venetian political culture with the other cultures co-existing
in the great cosmopolitan city and the encounter of Venetians with their
terraferma and maritime subjects with the wider world.4 These recurrent
encounters projected themselves onto a Venetian cultural screen, creat-
ing whatever it was that was distinctively Venetian in the religiously and
ethnically diverse Mediterranean world.5
1 edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (princeton, 1981) sometimes verges
on doing just that.
2 William h. Mcneill, Venice: The Hinge of Europe, 1081–1797 (chicago, 1974).
3 James clifford, “introduction: partial Truths,” in James clifford and george Marcus,
eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 1–27.
4 elizabeth horodowich, Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice (cambridge,
2008) pp. 78–79.
5 The historical anthropology of Venice has blossomed since the late 1970s. The most
influential work has been peter Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy:
Essays on Perception and Communication (cambridge, 1987). Significant studies that might