liturgies of violence 533
fury and resentment fused into an explosive brew that probably no one
could have stopped or contained. in the hours that followed, the villagers’
determination in laying siege demonstrated that this was truly a day of
reckoning. bundles of wood and other easily flammable materials were
stacked all around the palazzo, and toward evening, smoke and flames
rose ominously to the sky, enveloping the walls of the dovecote and the
ancient palace.
the easily predictable outcome of these events was marked by the
deaths of four men who had attempted a sortie that was as pointless as
it was desperate.
the city of Vicenza quickly stepped in with its judges but also informed
Venice of the events. within just a few days, the council of ten, the pow-
erful supreme magistracy of Venice, decided to take over the case and to
arrest those it held to have been responsible for the uprising. the trial
ended after several months with one death sentence and the banishment
and confiscation of goods of those who, while summoned, never appeared
in Venice.
Looking beyond the episode that sparked the sudden violence, the
revolt took place in a conflict-riven atmosphere characterized by the clear
abuse of power by some members of the nobility. in documents submit-
ted to justify what had happened, the men of the community of Malo
pointed to the history of oppressive tyrannies inflicted on the inhabitants
of the village as the reason behind the peasant uprising, tyrannies that
infringed on the rights of the community itself and damaged the honor of
the women and their families. faced with these noble tyrannies, the com-
munity unequivocally claimed its right of resistance, which, in some cases,
could even justify an unusual and violent reaction against those who had
violated its customs and the honor of its inhabitants.
the 1552 revolt of Malo was an expression of the powerful tensions
that were beginning to become noticeable around this time in economic
and financial matters. the emergence of social groups that not only were
not closely dependent on the aristocracy but also were seeking social and
political visibility and honorable social status, revealed the crisis of the tra-
ditional legal system and of the political dominance of the cities over their
rural territories. Venice eventually satisfied the urgent requests emanating
from some sectors of rural society to establish new representational bod-
ies (the territori) in order to redefine the traditional relationship between
the cities and their respective rural territories.
it is significant that a man named bortolamio Pasqualin, who had sug-
gested and organized the new Vicentine territorial institution approved