the anthropology of venice 501
were unworthy of record.41 To the degree that they were noticed, Sanudo
treated the lower classes with ridicule or condescension. During the War
of the league of cambrai, he reported how the government attempted to
control the bridge battles between the nicolotti and castellani factions
of workers because they had caused fatalities.42 even more troubling to
him were servants who imitated patrician carnival entertainments by
establishing their own festive company. At their party “each came with
his harlot, and they danced all night, and they had supper there, and
they did not admit anyone else. Thus the servants are competing with
the nobles to hold parties. it was a bad thing to do, and the heads of the
Ten should have done something about it.”43 however, Sanudo frequently
wrote about the affairs of Venice’s famous prostitutes, especially the tal-
ented and better-off courtesans. he recorded how musicians esteemed the
courtesan-singer lucia Trevisan, but more often he wrote of scandals—a
fight over a prostitute’s favor, an assault on a courtesan, the marriage of
a patrician widower to a courtesan with a public history of former lovers,
and a case of bigamy involving a prostitute. in Sanudo’s eyes, at least,
courtesans were an accepted part of Venetian life, and he saw nothing
wrong when they were made available to visiting dignitaries, including
cardinal ippolito Medici.44
Venetian Ritual LifeSanudo and his patrician peers most often experienced and memorialized
an entirely different kind of encounter, the encounter with the myth of
Venice and its innumerable ritual manifestations. (on the myth, see the
chapter by James grubb in this volume.) The myth projected an ideal-
ized Venice both in its history and its political structures: a myth of its
auspicious origins in ancient Troy, the patronage of the evangelist Mark,
its imperial prerogatives authorized by the papacy, its serene nature, and
its ideal republican constitution. The ritualization of the myth was not so
much a mirror of Venetian society as it was as a model for what it might
be, but the myth animated the very heart of Venetian patrician culture. As
a result, Venice was intensely conservative in its politics, but the stability
41 on famines, see Sanuto, I diarii, 45:141; 46:380, 612.
42 Sanuto, I diarii, 11:571–72. on bridge battles, see Davis, The War of the Fists.
43 Sanuto, I diarii, 37:578. for translation, see Sanudo, Cità Excelentissima, p. 325.
44 Sanuto, I diarii, 16:555; 19, 138; 33:233; 41:166; 56:95–96; 57:111–12.