530 claudio povolo
and geographical mobility had weakened the traditional equilibria that
underlay the order centered on peace, which was maintained by the
urban legal institutions, municipal laws, and, most important, a concep-
tion of justice that was inextricably intertwined with the community and
kinship structures.42 the emergence of new groups claiming their share
of honor and an increase in feuding between noble kin groups accompa-
nied a more general climate of social unrest that gave rise to ever more
frequent incidents of a predatory nature, such as robberies along the
roadways or even inside of dwellings, as well as unusual levels of violence
and abuse. the spread of bravi and the ever more frequent incidence of
noble violence further suggest that traditional friendship and patronage
networks centered on aristocratic lineages had broken down, a sign of the
inability of the urban legal institutions to control these networks and keep
the peace in the countryside.
the high point of the Venetian criminal policy came in 1580. on 20 May
it was decided to grant the Venetian governors (rettori) of the large cities
of the terraferma the power to proceed summarily manu militari against
bandits captured within the territory from which they had been banished.
any houses that had sheltered them, if fortified, would be demolished.
furthermore, on 20 July, the council of ten, issued an exceptionally harsh
measure declaring that any bandit could be absolved from his sentence by
killing another bandit under a comparable or more serious type of ban-
ishment. in this way, the penalty of banishment was definitively removed
from the cities’ jurisdiction and lost its centuries-old function as a way
to curb violence. the new legislation, in fact, contributed to the onset of
an extraordinary spiral of violence, as did the bounties and rich rewards
offered to bandit killers, which encouraged the formation of bands of ban-
dit hunters. but the legislation also undoubtedly provided a way to cope
with the most subversive aspects of noble violence and to eliminate the
numerous bands of armed men that raged through the territory, almost
always driven by the unrestrainable desire to fulfill the demands of ven-
detta. the phenomenon was further stimulated by the ability of bandit
killers to sell the rights they acquired (the so-called voci liberar bandito)
to the highest bidder, almost always someone who desired to be released
from his banishment.43
42 on these issues, see Mark cooney, Warriors and Peacemakers: How Third Parties
Shape Violence (new York, 1998), pp. 63–64.
43 Povolo, L’intrigo, pp. 153–70.