the anthropology of venice 503
heinous because she murdered him in his sleep, had attempted to involve
her daughter in the cover-up, and suborned a military officer into help-
ing her bury the body. The deed required exceptional punishment. like
the murderess of 1506, she was taken to the scene of the crime where her
hand was cut off, but the sentence insisted that she be transported to the
columns of Justice on a high platform on a barge so that everyone could
see her. officials debated about whether she should be beaten senseless
or decapitated before being drawn and quartered. Sanudo noted “that
no other case has been found of a woman who, whatever her crime, was
quartered. This is the first one. This was a very important case: it is quite
true that other women have killed their husbands, but none with so much
ferocity.”48
The complex of buildings and monuments that composed the symbolic
realm of Venetian justice, the Basilica of San Marco and its large open
piazza, created a ritual space that contrasted with genoa, for example,
where houses crowded up to the façade of the cathedral of San lorenzo.
leading away from the piazza toward the lagoon was the secondary cer-
emonial space of the piazzetta, which flanked the Ducal palace. Venetians
and visitors often referred to the Basilica and the surrounding complex
of public spaces of piazza and piazzetta as a “theater.” An inscription
above one of the doorways into the Basilica specifically calls the church a
theatrum, a “gathering place” in the original meaning of the word.49 This
grand theater became a stage for representations of the myths of Venice
through civic rituals. Sanctified by the presence of the body of St Mark
under the high altar in the Basilica, rituals acted out the political theology
of the republic, a model of how divine virtues infused political virtues.
here both Venetians and foreign visitors encountered the archetypes of
a perfected Venice, and these encounters, no matter how divorced from
the turbulent realities of the world, created an image of harmony, peace-
fulness, and probity that established the grounds for the anthropology of
Venice. from renaissance visitors to modern historians, the task of inter-
preting Venice has required evaluating the heuristic value of this mythic
image.
Sanudo treated civic rituals and festivities with an earnest compulsion
to record details as fully and accurately as possible. To him these were mat-
ters as serious as diplomatic negotiations or rumors of war. The principal
48 Sanuto, I diarii, 31:163–65. for translation, see Sanudo, Cità Excelentissima, p. 130.
49 See editors’ comments in Sanudo, Cità Excelentissima, p. 487.