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political entities (cities, rural communes, feudal jurisdictions), which were
not arranged hierarchically and each of which was each intent on defend-
ing its own identity and autonomy, guaranteed when they became part
of the new state. it was thus a state that while territorially extensive did
not aspire to uniformity and was not defined in political and geographi-
cal terms as an area composed of center and periphery.7 while imperium,
sovereignty, resided in the ruling city of Venice, it was exercised through
an administration that was required to operate within each locality. gov-
ernment of the territory was expressed through jurisdiction,8 that is, it
relied on the administration of justice, which was charged both with
maintaining the peace and the existing order (commutative justice) and
with guaranteeing social and economic relationships and exchanges in
the light of existing law (distributive justice).9 in the ruling city itself, the
conduct of politics and justice was entrusted to institutions fundamen-
tally shaped by the ancient structures of the city-state. only in the last
centuries of the republic would some of the important judicial magistra-
cies, such as the council of ten and the Quarantia, or the more markedly
political ones, such as the senate, noticeably interfere in the stato da terra
and the stato da mar.
the composite state of the medieval and early modern periods was
marked by extreme political and institutional fragmentation. this was
embodied in the highly varied set of judicial practices, which were char-
acterized by a body of legal rituals that made clear the complexity of the
society that was divided into social classes, each of which had its own
dimension of honor. the composite state was administered by means of
the trial, or, better, through legal ritual, which, characterized by the dis-
putation between the parties, had the fundamental goal of ascertaining
and confirming a right that already existed but that nonetheless had to
be reconfirmed.10 by so doing, the judge who oversaw this legal ritual had
the fundamental task of administering and regulating the relationships
between the entities in conflict, while at the same time reaffirming the
ancient jurisdictional system.
7 Maurizio fioravanti, Stato e costituzione, in M. fioravanti, ed., Lo stato moderno in
Europa. Istituzioni e diritto (bari, 2002), pp. 3–14.
8 Luca Mannori and bernardo sordi, Giustizia e amministrazione, in fioravanti, ed., Lo
stato moderno in Europa, pp. 63–67.
9 daniela frigo, Principe, giudici, giustizia: mutamenti dottrinali e vicende istituzionali
fra Sei e Settecento, in L. berlinguer and f. colao, eds., Illuminismo e dottrine penali (Milan,
1990), p. 9.
10 Mannori and sordi, Giustizia e amministrazione, pp. 66–67.